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Jazz… African-American music… the music of American experience…America’s classical music? Katrina provokes old questions anew: how to account for the infinite and universal vitality of the music that was said to have come up the river from New Orleans, and what to call it. We will take a crack at it on Thursday with Maurice Peress, the (white Jewish) conductor with a lifetime’s immersion in, as he says, “America’s music and its African-American roots.” You feel you’re on the bandstand reading Maurice Peress’ new book, “Dvorak to Duke Ellington.” It begins with the clarion pronouncement from Johannes Brahms’ friend and musical heir Anton Dvorak in New York in 1893: “In the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music…” Peress closes on his own four years at Duke’s side as an orchestrator and conductor of late Ellington works like the ballet score, “The River,” and the comic opera for television, “Queenie Pie.”
Peress is an experimentalist, a showman, a classicist and an innovator, a musician “beyond category” in love with the Ellington mystery at multiple levels. Along the way he observes:
In stark contrast to his contemporary Gershwin, who sought acceptance by the musical establishment as a “legitimate” composer, Ellington rejected the notion entirely. Whenever we talked about his music, he spoke of feelings or images–about people standing outside a church they could not enter and harmonizing with the beautiful music they heard from within, knowing they all shared the same God. How than can I justify analyzing his compositional secrets?
The answer lies in the realization that I do this for myself, to legitimize my own passion for this music and that of others like me who, despite brainwashing by the academy of our youth, have been drawn to and nourished by Ellington’s music. Notwithstanding my sense that Duke would not approve, I find myself compelled to demonstrate how complex is the compositional process that creates his seemingly happy-go-lucky music, how even the defining idea of jazz-inspired music–a tenor saxophonist “taking off” on an improvised flight–was controlled, bent, premeditated by Ellington in the service of his muse, and how he crafted his music from his own poetry.
Maurice Peress, Dvorak to Duke Ellington
So, be prepared to give us your own experience of this “great and noble school of music.” And while we’re up, let’s talk about Duke Ellington’s place in the pantheon of all the world?s 20th Century music, including Bartok, Ravel and Stravinsky.
Maurice Peress
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Author of Dvorak to Duke Ellington: A Conductor Explores America’s Music and Its African American Roots
Guest conductor all over the world
Teacher at the Aaron Copland School of Music and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York
[In studio in Cambridge]
Jimmy Heath
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Composer, The Heath Brothers
[On the phone from Queens]
Michael James
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Nephew of Duke Ellington
Walking repository of Ellington knowledge.
[On the phone from Manhattan]
The modern trumpet star Clark Terry, who joined the Ellington band in the 1950s, will be teaching the first class of his fall course at William Patterson University in New Jersey during our broadcast. But he was fascinating on the phone just now when I invited him to join us. Clark is a marvellous player, now in his 80s, with an uncanny memory for all the solos he’s ever played, or heard in the Ellington context. It would have been a privilege to have him on Open Source if only to hear him sing his answers to all my questions. Here’s a taste of what he said:
“The connection between Western Classical music and African-American Classical music is what Maurice Peress has been working on for years. Here’s the difference. You could assemble 17 or 18 of the world’s greatest players and give them an Ellington charts and they would not sound like Duke’s band. The reason is that he relied on players to extend his ideas and his sound. I remember Duke and Billy Strayhorn giving out the parts of a new arrangement of “Sophisticated Lady,” and they would ask, “did you enjoy your part?” Anybody else would have said: here’s your part. Rex Stewart had an uncanny way of suppressing the 3d valve of his trumpet, and Duke liked that sound. Harry Carney would jump out of his register to go low, which Duke loved. And think of all the things Rab (Johnny Hodges) did. Listen to “Mainstem,” or 8 notes at the beginning of “Harlem Airshaft.” It’s just 8 eighth notes, but it comes out ‘ah-oo-oomp-bee’ and it couldn’t have been written that way. Duke’s language and the players’ pronunciation of it was more important than the notes.”
People have lost sight of the the musical debt owed to African descendents. A casual modern music fan might assume that popular music is a white invention, courtesy of Elvis Presley and The Beatles, while acknowledging Rap music as the main contribution of African Americans.
But from 1925 to 1945 and a little beyond, jazz was the country’s popular music. And during its heyday, jazz was called “Jungle Music”, among other things. This was part insult but also partly a term of pride. Duke Ellington used the term himself.
Jazz begat Rock, Soul, R&B, etc. And of course folk music traces much of its origins to Blues music.
So, what happened to jazz? Did it evolve into supposedly superior forms? Was it done in by technological and economic forces? Is it all but dead now? I listen to (old) jazz all day at work, but it’s hard to find anyone among my friends who cares anything about it.
Duke was a genius and indeed “beyond category,” I look forward to listening to the show. I’m hoping to hear more about Ellington’s role in the civil rights movement– not as composer of anthems for it, but more in setting the table.
I hope that assessment of Ellington in the intersection of civil rights and culture has some merit. One of the most enduring characteristics of the Duke is that he endured.
I don’t like Rap much. But it’s an intriguing notion that perhaps it is now playing the role that Jazz used to — it was created by African-Americans, it speaks of their experiences, and it has grown into popular entertainment enjoyed and performed by white kids while being disliked by their parents.
Further, just as Jazz made the saxophone the new primary instrument and left more traditional instruments behind (the tuba, the cornet, eventually the clarinet), now Rap is making electronica more central and leaving lots of traditional instrumentation (maybe all of it) behind.
Musically, then, are NYC and LA the new New Orleans, the pressure cookers that boil African-American experiences into new forms of musical expression?
It’s hard to talk about music. Like painting or any art form to be experienced, felt and it’s so personal. But we do anyway.
Ellington is an artistic genius, refined and sophisticated and transcending, yet still so much of his people.
Katrina was mentioned above. We were talking about race and poverty. The blues comes right out of that. I went right away to Delta blues… the music of Fred McDowell. Lonnie Johnson . Victoria Spivey an others. This is what I am listening to now and can’t get enough of it…
Last night after the Rebuilding New Orleans show comes on Jazz with Eric in the Evening. I stayed on for something very pleasant in my ear… Ellington’s “Low Key Lightly” a great new recording by Dave Peck.
Favorite Ellington CD’s are “Back to Back” and “Side by Side” ( Ellington and Johnny Hodges). I just also listened again to my early Ellington CD ( Decca) version of Black and Tan Fantasy. Wonderful! I look forward to this show.
Excellent and informative show. Keep it coming!
It will be interesting to hear the response to Katrina in music, but it will take time. Only now is the outline of the musical response to 9/11 or the Iraq war becoming visible. Katrina was a mythic event, and with a nod to Campbell, it will take mythic shape in our imaginations.