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Abstract
This essay proposes a way of understanding the formation of jazz as part of a broader transnational exchange of culture. It argues that the processes by which jazz came into being closely resemble others taking place in Cuba and elsewhere, and thus calls for analysis that positions jazz as part of a hemispheric exchange of cultural influences that extend beyond the United States. Second, it reviews and critiques existing scholarship on New Orleans jazz from a transnationalist perspective. It suggests that such literature presents turn-of-the-twentieth-century New Orleans culture as insular, with little or no recognition of the international movement of artists and musical forms. Finally, it suggests that the cultural projects associated with jazz in the United States have necessitated a strong emphasis on the contributions of black US artists to the exclusion of Hispanics.
Notes
1. See Danzón chapter 4 for an extended analysis of such features, and links to representative recordings.
2. Such groups were known locally as orquestas típicas.
3. See especially chapter 2 on musical style, and chapter 4 on melodic improvisation in the danzón and cultural routes/routes linking New Orleans to the Caribbean region.
4. Many thanks to the anonymous readers who evaluated this manuscript as part of blind review and helped strengthen its focus. Special thanks are due to Charles Carson, Lorraine Leu, and Alejandro Madrid who read early versions of the text and offered critical insights.
5. The full comment can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Tinge.
6. The term was first used by Deborah Pacini-Hernandez in ‘From Cumbia Colombiana to Cumbia Cosmopolatina’. Oye Como Va. Hybridity and Identity in Latino Popular Music. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2009, 106–41.
7. Scholars of minstrelsy such as Dale Cockrell (Citation1997) and Robert Toll (Citation1974) have noted the way in which Anglo-American performers freely combined musical influences from European popular song traditions, opera, Irish American traditional music and dance, and other elements with others of African-American origin in their representations of ‘black’ heritage on stage. Others such as Andrew Saxton (Citation1975) have analyzed the ways in which such shows helped justify the institution of slavery and in other ways supported dominant political views.
8. Views of this nature were by no means confined to the United States, but instead represented the perspective of prominent authors in Europe, Latin America, and beyond. For a discussion of similar racial anxieties manifest in the Cuban and Mexican context, see Madrid and Moore Citation2013, 75–88 and 94–8.
9. Influential performer Dan Emmett was Irish-American, for instance, as were many members of his Virginia Minstrels troupe. Percussion performance on the ‘bones’ and dance styles were influenced by traditional Irish forms.
10. See for instance the views of music critics Carl Van Vechten and Gilbert Sedes in Evans (Citation2000, 87).
11. The initiative lasted only for three years; see http://www.jazzdiscography.com/Lenox/lenhome.htm.
12. The University of North Texas lays claim to the first performance ensemble in a post-secondary institution devoted to the performance of jazz, established in 1946. Owing to mainstream bias against jazz at the time, the ensemble was named the ‘One O’Clock Lab Band’, a title that members continue to use to this day: http://jazz.unt.edu/oneoclock/.
13. More information on the topic can be found in Eitan Wilf’s recent book School for Cool (Citation2014). My thanks to Gabriel Solis for bringing the work to my attention.
14. In fact, during the culture wars of the 1980s and beyond some publications began to aggressively assert the importance of white performers to jazz history. These included Gene Lees’s Cats of Any Color: Jazz, Black and White (Citation1994) and James Collier’s Jazz: The American Theme Song (Citation1993).
15. Note that the Jazz at the Lincoln Center webpage makes the association between jazz and US democracy overt: http://www.jazz.org/about/.
16. Gridley’s introduction devotes a paragraph to the many classical musicians who have been influenced by jazz through the years, suggesting he still perceives a need to evaluate the music in terms established by the European classical community.
17. Brass and military band performance in New Orleans actually began prior to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and during a period in which the city had direct political and cultural ties with the Hispanic Caribbean and Francophone world.