If Nas could have witnessed the “Swing Era,” he might have said ‘jazz is dead.’[1] After all, hip-hop and jazz are not so different. The factors that derailed hip-hop are similar to what befell jazz during the 1930’s; both were afflicted by producers, contracts, money, and a nearly instantaneous transition from the cultural outskirts to center-stage pop-America. As jazz found its way into the “Cotton Club” and other segregated venues, it also found itself coalescing into a mainstream – one defined more by formulas for success than artistic expression. Swing was now little more than an easy dance meter. It had moved away from the people that had built it from blues and stride, and towards popular society. Nonetheless, the “Swing Era” might be the most essential digression that jazz underwent, for several reasons. First, commercialism allowed for artists like Billie Holiday to make the occasional foray into civil activism with songs like “Strange Fruit.”[i] Second, it highlighted the division between white industry and musicians. Last, it furthered the general tension between white and black. Thus, jazz’s hyper-commercialization in the 1930’s fostered an explicit racial dialogue that was not extant in previous iterations of jazz.
The Swing formula encouraged artists to produce whatever arrangement would satisfy popular society. However, this was a double-edged sword to a segregated, pre-civil equality, Jim Crow society like 1930’s America. Jazz, up until this point, had been built upon blues and the relative oppression that accompanied such an art form. In the 1930’s these elements had not been entirely eclipsed by the commercial movement. Thus, mainstream artists, like Duke Ellington, now had a commercial platform on which they could broadcast racially-influenced songs like “Black Beauty.” Thus, popular culture began to experience race and commercial jazz as complements, if only in small doses.
Although the labels and producers allowed for jazz artists to become commercially successful, many artists resented the band-agent relationship. As bands “surrendered much of [their power] to the impersonal institutions and corporations that increasingly controlled the business,” they became less involved in the direction of the music.[ii] With the totality of the labels, producers, and corporate analogs that controlled the swing business being white, an obvious dichotomy arises; the black musicians are subject to the white record company rules. Although not all of the bands were black, John Hammond, a premiere white jazz critic/agent, believed that “Negroes [were] superior” jazz musicians, thus furthering the notion that black bands were at the helm of the swing movement, and similarly, the premiere subjects of white-corporate industry.[iii] Thus, the commercialization of jazz emphasizes race roles, specifically between producers and musicians.
Surely, Duke Ellington would have loved to perform on the same stage with any of the accomplished white musicians of the 1930’s. However, this idea was a taboo fantasy of an integrated society, much unlike 1930’s America. Nevertheless, most musicians still understood each other as equals. In this context, swing was the point “at which racial and class boundaries of brutally segregated 1930’s America were most permeable.”[iv] However, the clubs still kept the audiences segregated, if not entirely exclusive to blacks. In addition, the moguls of the swing industry were engrossed in the business of deciphering which musician was better, the white man or Negro.[v] Furthermore, mass-media seemed to be more receptive to a white-washed imitation of black swing. Thus, race became an ever-prevalent topic, tossed around between audiences, bands, and moguls alike.
Even though hip-hop and jazz were both victims of the same hyper-commercialism and corporate industry, the respective end result was nuanced from one to the next. That is, jazz came out of the “Swing Era” with a newly found racial discussion, whereas hip-hop simply approached the asymptotic limit of mass production and commercialism. However, both jazz and hip-hop succeeded in sprouting some kind of counter-culture that sought to restore an art form, not a hierarchy of corporate mass-media business. In hip-hop, this came from the progressives – The Roots, K-OS, Nas and the like. In jazz, this came from the pioneering sidemen of bebop – Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Dizzie Gillespie. Ultimately, the promoters, agents, and executives that spurred the “Swing Era,” catalyzed a racial discussion of jazz, inspecting which color of musician had the best tone, and what kind of social message was acceptable under a white, corporate industry.
[1] A reference to Nas’s “Hip-Hop is Dead” – a record inspecting the commercialization of hip-hop by record companies and industry executives.
[i] 1939."YouTube - Billie Holiday - Strange Fruit." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. 4 Apr. 2006. Web. 08 Nov. 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs>.
[ii] Stowe, David. Swing Changes: Between Conjure and Kapital. 101
[iii] Stowe, David. Swing Changes: Between Conjure and Kapital. 78.
[iv] Stowe, David. Swing Changes: Between Conjure and Kapital. 73.
[v] Stowe, David. Swing Changes: Between Conjure and Kapital. 78-79.
No comments:
Post a Comment