K.O.N.Y
Superstar
That's what I was alluding to. But yeah 100% on point
Music Theory and White Supremacy
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IllmaticDelta
Veteran
for sure, Charlie Parker and Dizz story on reading/knowing western-classical theory
but the anti-classicalism in many black jazz musicians is why Hard Bop was invented
Insensitive
Superstar
for sure, Charlie Parker and Dizz story on reading/knowing western-classical theory
but the anti-classicalism in many black jazz musicians is why Hard Bop was invented
During the 40's & 50's Jazz became increasingly more sophisticated and borrowed ideas from the classical
world but it also kept distinct rhythmic and melodic cues that come from the Jazz & Blues tradition.
Earlier forms of Jazz like Stride, Big Band, and so on were pretty clearly founded in aspects of "Classical" Harmony.
What made them DIFFERENT however was the focus on increasingly complex harmony, looking at scales chromatically and abandoning
"traditional" approaches to music like adopting modes then eventually transitioning to using instruments to add "color" even if they should
in theory "clash" harmonically. However it was during the "black power" movements of the 60's and 70's that Jazz got more explicitly "BLACK".
Guys like:
Abdullah Ibrahim - Wikipedia
Ahmad Jamal - Wikipedia
Pharoah Sanders - Wikipedia
and many more !
"Anti-classicism" kinda came from a whirlwind of anti-Jazz and pro-Jazz sentiment and the obvious civil rights movement.
You have to remember during this period Jazz was struggling for cultural legitimacy in the face of blatant and obvious
racism. I mentioned David baker on the last page because just as we were moving into "Free Jazz", Jazz was also being
codified and explained and of course, this required looking at it's history and it's relation to Classical music.
Why ?
Because it was moving into Universities:
Timeline of jazz education - Wikipedia
To codify jazz and move it out of being a aural tradition, they had to have a way to explain it.
And many contemporary Jazz musicians still get their basic foundation and understanding of
Harmony/Melody from Classical Music before moving full on into Jazz.
You have guys like Wynton Marsalis who was raised on "The classics":
But he can also swing with the best of them:
For the record so can his entire family because they learned and trained under his father the LEGEND. THE GAWD:
Ellis Marsalis Jr. - Wikipedia. !
So yeah, discussing Jazz and it's relation to Classical music is a little more complex than just "well they didn't care for it"
or "well they loved and needed it". It served as the necessary foundation and primary learning grounds for several musicians
while also being the way for someone primarily learned in the Blues to expand their tonal palette.
For the brehs who may not know, the Jazz black power movement in the 60's and 70's:
Black power jazz and the cultural shifts of the 70s
Music and Black liberation - Wikipedia
Makes perfect sense. Subs.
Black Haven
We will find another road to glory!!!
I’ve been torn on whether or not I really need to learn music theory when many great guitarist in blues, rock, and metal never really needed it. Interesting....
staticshock
Veteran
Interesting topic..I’m a music nerd, having marched in the band in high school, college, & I assist with a high school band now.
I’ll watch the video later, but the music theory & white supremacy thing is still going on today as it relates to bands.
In HBCU bands, all of that classical music theory stuff gets thrown to the bushes. We play our way, & if someone doesn’t like it, we don’t give a fukk.
traditionally, music is “supposed” to have balance & all that, but in hbcu bands we do something that we termed “cranking” which basically means playing your instrument loud.
Some white folks like our style, but you’ll see a majority of them on YouTube & IG leave comments saying “all HBCU bands sound horrible” or “they don’t follow the rules of music”. Music is subjective, rules can be whatever you want them to be.
Here’s a quick comparison
Troy University playing Cameo’s old song “Neck”
Southern University playing the same song.
now you can pick which one you like, but cacs will automatically say SU’s isn’t good based off the fact it’s an HBCU & we don’t follow traditional methods. Music isn’t a quantifiable thing like math, so what sounds good to you may not sound good to me, but cacs will put down our stuff based on their own theories. Another thing that pisses me off about white folks and music is that they swear they invented everything. For example, LSU started playing “Neck” maybe a decade ago. They swore they were the first band to play it, but when I told them HBCU bands have been playing it since 84 when the song came out, they wanted to have me banned on another site.
it’s a whole fukkin thread I can make on this, but I’ll just post in here. Sorry for the long post, but music is my passion & it’s literally the only thing that keeps me sane these days. I hate to see my people’s style get talked down on because we don’t subscribe to some bullshyt them cacs were doing back in the day.
I’ll watch the video later, but the music theory & white supremacy thing is still going on today as it relates to bands.
In HBCU bands, all of that classical music theory stuff gets thrown to the bushes. We play our way, & if someone doesn’t like it, we don’t give a fukk.
traditionally, music is “supposed” to have balance & all that, but in hbcu bands we do something that we termed “cranking” which basically means playing your instrument loud.
Some white folks like our style, but you’ll see a majority of them on YouTube & IG leave comments saying “all HBCU bands sound horrible” or “they don’t follow the rules of music”. Music is subjective, rules can be whatever you want them to be.
Here’s a quick comparison
Troy University playing Cameo’s old song “Neck”
Southern University playing the same song.
now you can pick which one you like, but cacs will automatically say SU’s isn’t good based off the fact it’s an HBCU & we don’t follow traditional methods. Music isn’t a quantifiable thing like math, so what sounds good to you may not sound good to me, but cacs will put down our stuff based on their own theories. Another thing that pisses me off about white folks and music is that they swear they invented everything. For example, LSU started playing “Neck” maybe a decade ago. They swore they were the first band to play it, but when I told them HBCU bands have been playing it since 84 when the song came out, they wanted to have me banned on another site.
it’s a whole fukkin thread I can make on this, but I’ll just post in here. Sorry for the long post, but music is my passion & it’s literally the only thing that keeps me sane these days. I hate to see my people’s style get talked down on because we don’t subscribe to some bullshyt them cacs were doing back in the day.
Insensitive
Superstar
As a guitarist myself, I say learn it.
The guitar is already difficult compared to the piano (it isn't really laid out in a simple manner
like a keyboard) and understanding what's going on, on the fretboard is essential to freeing
yourself from being locked into shapes and grips. People become "pattern players" and they
don't really have an understanding of WHY these sounds interact with each other the way they do.
So while you're learning the Blues (Dom7 chords, Minor & Major Pentatonic scales with blue notes, how to "swing",
I,IV & V Chord Progression) etc. and you finally reach the edge of the Blues and venture into Jazz (m7b5 chords, major 7th
chords, 2-5-1, chord substitutions, more exotic rhythms(Jazz funk, Bossa Nova etc.) you'll want to increase your
harmonic knowledge. And the best part about it is Jazz & Blues are attached at the hip, so when you return to
the Blues you can keep the same form & structure but add that harmony on top. A perfect example of this is the GAWD Wes Montgomery:
Certain greats in Jazz Blues like Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery, Kevin Eubanks or modern monsters like Thundercat have a very strong understanding of melody/harmony that eats most rock & metal guys for dinner and allows for very sophisticated yet still bluesy music and the virtuosity on the instrument is more evenly distributed beyond being a purely technical exercise (like playing triplets really fast! Breaking up minor triads into triplets is still just a triad at the end of the day....)
I say this as a guy who's in the middle of really going back and learning the blues from the ground
up listening to the three kings and other greats while also filling out my musical diet with
funk, soul & jazz.
The blues gives you such a strong backbone that you can hold your own in everything that it birthed
with some minor course correction (Jazz, Hip-Hop, Neo-Soul, Blues rock, Hard Rock, Soul, R&B, Metal etc.)
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Fashytsho, man HBCU (sub)culture is an entire of aados hertiage in of itself almost. From the swingin, high stepping, punchin, breakin, cranking, battling marching bands to the strolling and steppin greeks. It's truly a world of it's own. HBCU style been getting jocked by OSU and the likes for the longest low key. It's a whole history behind all that.
I always say that if nothing else hbcu, black churches, the hood and prison seem to produce the rawest most unfiltered unapologetic forms of black american cultural expression.
Which brings me back to my point. That we should stop looking at our culture as a deviation or dissonant from "the classical way" of doing things and start viewing it as it's own stand alone tradition and fully functioning theoretical system with it's own rules completely separate from "classical" theory.
We're naturally more musical than other's. but I think there's something deeper to it than just the music as in "songs" themselves. There's a term that Cornel West coined and other black american scholars have used to describe an attribute our people possess which is 'kinetic orality'- meaning that black americans naturally process and interact with each other and the world musically. We are naturally rhythmic, dynamic, energetic, improvisational, and creative in order to cope with our environment. We don't think and process things the same way white people do who are stiff and mechanic by nature.
Take the black church for example. Totally different world than white churches.
White preachers just talk to their congregation in their regular voice. Black preachers "PREACH"(for lack of a better word) with delivering their messages with rhythmical and melodic chants, whooping in between in call and response format with their congregation
White congregations sit in their seats and remain quite. Black congregations interact with the preacher as part of the sermon often provide adlibs and accentuation to the preacher.
White churches only play music in the beginning, middle, and end if they play at all. In black churches music is a ubiquitous omnipresent part of the experience from the way the pastor preachers to the way the person on the keys and drums follows the preacher by improvising rhythms, melodies, and chords during the sermon and in response to his words in call and response format and will spontaneously enter into a praise break with music and dance. And that not even the main part with the choir.
Black sermonic tradition - Wikipedia
Preaching Chords - Wikipedia
With all of it's flaws you gotta admit the black church does a GREAT job prioritizing our culture and using it to tapping into black american sensibilities to appeal specifically to us to create an intimate one of a kind at-home experience that they wont get at bigger, nicer, more mainstream churches. HBCUS also do a pretty good job of doing this as well, cuz imo most of em would been gone bankrupt and shutdown if it weren't for that intimate black american cultural experience.
I think there's a lesson to be had here in how this can be applied to other areas of life namely academics, cuz I don't believe the standard education system works for our natural sensibilities as a people and we need a more tailor made cultural experience like what the black church provides for it's congregation but in mathematics and sciences, for instance. I don't believe solid hard line distinction between the arts and sciences is helpful for our children, since we naturally have a musical proclivity. I think what's artistic, mathematic, scientific should be more fluid, incorporating both into all lessons. John Coltrane's "changes" system was a musical, mathematical, and physics break through.
I wanna contribute more to this thread though and get around to responding to more people and giving more of my own take, but time and writers block get in the way.
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IllmaticDelta
Veteran
IllmaticDelta
Veteran
Yes, to EXPLAIN jazz from a scores perspective, it had to be explained in European terms even if those same terms couldn't accurately describe it but jazz is Jazz mainly because it originated with who didn't follow European theory. To the New Orleans pioneers, this was known as "playing hot" or "faking it" (blues based improvisers who couldn't read muisc) vs "legitimate" (sight readers with some grasp of the european way)
funny that you mention him because I see alot of people complain that while he has the chops, his playing lacks "soul"
also
Wynton Marsalis: trumpeting controversial ideas of classicism
Insensitive
Superstar
Oh you're not telling me anything new about Wynton trust
I'm on a Hip-Hop website championingmusically rich Hip-Hop every chance I can get, that already puts me to the left of Marsalis
I've had my own issues with the guy politically and musically for years however this idea, (the main topic
of this discussion) that Common Practice Period as far as being discriptive can and does serve a purpose within Jazz isn't new.
And while there are people who may not have much respect for his playing there are others who most certainly did & do.
Stanley crouch (ugh. another person I don't politically agree with !)
Nicholas Payton (better than Wynton IMO) and others have considerable respect for the guy.
Payton is a New Orleans (the birthplace!) native Jazz Musician much like Marsalis which champions the idea of Black
American Music as a longstanding lineage which includes Hip-Hop (much to the Chagrin of Wynton Marsalis!)
There's a lot to this discussion and frankly, Marsalis agrees with the both of us more than others do.
There are those outside of our community who'd like to remove the Blues altogether and try to understate
the Black American influence on the genre and it's growth, where I disagree with Marsalis is the idea
that Smooth Jazz, Jazz fusion (Jazz-Funk,Jazz-Soul, Jazz&Hip-Hop etc.) and the other forms of Jazz
which have propped up since the 60's are Jazz and they're to be respected, he thinks otherwise
Marsalis for all his faults as a Jazz gatekeeper is the one who remembers to champion
Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet and yes, even Miles Davis when others forget.
Also since you mentioned Miles Davis, I'll counter with Bill Evans:
Bill Evans - Wikipedia
Classically trained pianist who worked on Kind Of Blue and went on to have his own
legendary career within Jazz music.
I'll also add in:
Oscar Peterson - Wikipedia <-- The Maharaja of the keyboard himself. Canadian Giant
and highly skilled/studied classical musician.
Duke Ellington - Wikipedia <----- One of (several) Musical Heroes. Classy. Intelligent. And
monstrously skilled and despite lacking the "Classical" grounding of the others on this list, he had
(Classically Trained) Billy strayhorn to give him that harmonic boost when necessary.
I'll add more:
Art Tatum - Wikipedia <--- it's fukking Art Tatum. Nough' Said.
Herbie Hancock - Wikipedia <---- Insane talent. Classical is in his DNA.
And this song in particular let us know what time it is:
You even have modern greats like Kamasi Washington Solo-ing classical pieces:
Jazz also didn't exist within a bubble, as the genre grew increasingly more complex there was
cross pollination with Neo-romanticism and impressionists, they took from us, we took from them.
Debussy, Ravel, Chopin etc. Neo-romantics and impressionists had their own violent reaction to the "old masters", much
like Jazz had it's departure and separation from the previous period (while maintaining the Blues !!)
I say all of this while maintaining that Jazz stands as a shining beacon of Black American Music
and our distinct approach/take to being creatives.
I'll end this post with Wynton shredding this shyt.
Please do not think for a second that Wynton Marsalis is a hack in anyway, shape or form.
He's a long way from Kenny G that's for sure.
IllmaticDelta
Veteran
Oh you're not telling me anything new about Wynton trust
musically rich Hip-Hop every chance I can get, that already puts me to the left of Marsalis
I've had my own issues with the guy politically and musically for years however this idea, (the main topic
of this discussion) that Common Practice Period as far as being discriptive can and does serve a purpose within Jazz isn't new.
And while there are people who may not have much respect for his playing there are others who most certainly did & do.
Stanley crouch (ugh. another person I don't politically agree with !)
Nicholas Payton (better than Wynton IMO) and others have considerable respect for the guy.
Payton is a New Orleans (the birthplace!) native Jazz Musician much like Marsalis which champions the idea of Black
American Music as a longstanding lineage which includes Hip-Hop (much to the Chagrin of Wynton Marsalis!)
There's a lot to this discussion and frankly, Marsalis agrees with the both of us more than others do.
There are those outside of our community who'd like to remove the Blues altogether and try to understate
the Black American influence on the genre and it's growth, where I disagree with Marsalis is the idea
that Smooth Jazz, Jazz fusion (Jazz-Funk,Jazz-Soul, Jazz&Hip-Hop etc.) and the other forms of Jazz
which have propped up since the 60's are Jazz and they're to be respected, he thinks otherwise
facts
true...I give him credit for that
All true but the worlds of classical vs blues-based jazz merged more heavily starting with bebop era. Obviously there swing era jazzers (ragtime->stride pianist too) who first had a foot in the classical world
(needed a reason to post this clip of Eubie Blake who was a east coast ragtime pianist. He was an influence on Duke Ellington)
but they didn't know how to play Jazz until they heard it from the authentic non-European trained sources
I rock with Wynton alot musically...
Insensitive
Superstar
I agree !
To clarify, I'm just saying Black Americans had the unique situation of blending African
and European musical ideals (which is in itself a larger statement on being Black in America).
The Blues as we both know it came directly from Africa to the states and much like Black Americans
it developed it's own distinct language and approach. However as the blues moved into Jazz and became
increasingly more sophisticated several progenitors within the genre being Black Americans obviously
were and continue to be exposed to the European tradition and I say that, not to say that the Europeans
have some overriding powers or say in Jazz only that it can be heard in Jazz just like English, Spanish
or Portugese is spoken by many Black folks in the new world, yet it still has our distinct and unique
flavor.
I hear this often, but I think that's a simplistic characterization of the black american musical tradition that overlooks all the unique black american innovation that had already developed by the time of jazz and even the blues, rather than just a combination of various old world traditions. There are certain things about black american music that weren't present in any old world tradition whether it be african, europeam, or pre columbian american.
The standarized blues form evolved directly from various stems of older black american folk song and dance like work songs, hollers, spirituals, "string" soloist and bands, various black takes on corps marching etc
One of the key characteristics of blues is the shuffled swinging rhythm where we get our "groove" from which is %100 black american originated as well as the 12 bar structure. Now of course many other core motifs can be traced back to certain types of West African music, but it's simply not just a direct transposition of an intact african style of music during the slave trade that stayed perfectly preserved throught slavery all the way until the end of the reconstruction era.
The story of the development of black american music and culture as a whole is the story of shattered old world heritage and picking up the pieces as well as smelting completely new material to create something totally unique. IE the creation of the drum set.
So, it isn't a case that black americans have to chose whether to lean on either old world African or European traditions or rules, but that we have our own long established completely unique traditions with it's own set of rules that we can work within. The blues form is an example of that. Western classical music and rules are simply outside of our tradition and don't apply. Many black amercan musicians in academia have done work to codify our tradition, george russell being one of the first with modal jazz moving away from european classical rules of tonal restrictions to a more natural open way of harmonizing that was already in use by ear playing blues musicians.
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Insensitive
Superstar
That's exactly what I tried to imply when saying the above as succinctly as possible.
I realize "The Blues" isn't African but African American and everything that entails.
It hails back to the "old world" in certain ways but it's evolution and sonic qualities are
distinctly African American. And as you stated the 12 Bar Blues structure and Swing are
defining characteristics of Blues and would go on to be a structure maintained in Jazz until
this day.
Much respect !