Brian Reager

September 24, 2012

Professor Tietze

Jazz and the American Identity

Jazz and the American Identity: Reflection #1

Art is the expression of human creative skills and imagination, usually

allowing access into human emotions. Whether it is music, sculpting, painting, or

dance, art has been widely accepted as a means to discover an individual’s identity.

Throughout our existence, the human race has had to struggle, mourn, and jubilate.

Regardless of medium, art has been known to mirror these emotions through

technical and aesthetic properties. Jazz is no exception.

Jazz is, in a way, the identity of an entire group of people or an entire culture,

as apposed to a singular person. According to Tietze, Jazz and individual identity

are both intimately connected to the American experience—an experience where

one must struggle and find ways of coping. Created and consequently expanded by

the African American community, Jazz represents a blending of African rhythmic

and expressive elements, with European musical elements, producing a unique

musical structure and practice. According to Tietze, it was created as an attempt to

balance the oppositional forces of life in its music. Thanks to Jim Crow laws that

were notorious throughout the beginning of the 20th century, African Americans

found it extremely difficult to find places to perform their music. Tietze states in

one of his articles that Jazz deals with the relationship between sadness and coping.

Just as the African American community mourned and subsequently hoped to cope

from their discrimination and socio-economic status, the musical and technical

aspects of Jazz seemed to mirror these struggles.

An example of this “marriage” between sadness and coping would be in the

blues song by Robert Johnson, entitled, “Come in my Kitchen”. First recorded in

1936, the song is sung from the point of view of a man whose significant other left

him for another suitor. Throughout the song, he regrets the fact that she will not be

returning (“Well she’s gone, I know she won’t come back.”) in addition to finding

ways of coping with it (“I took the last nickel out of her nation sack.”). The style of

blues in itself helps to broaden the range of emotions by shifting into minor keys as

well as a slower tempo.

Another example of this relationship between mourning and finding comfort

would be in Jelly Roll Morton’s rendition of the 1902 song, “Didn’t He Ramble?” The

song begins as a funeral march, invoking a very somber tone. With the line, "ashes

to ashes, dust to dust, if the women don't get you the liquor must", the music

switches over to a jubilant jitterbug. This marriage of divergent tones is only one

specific example of the many motifs that Jazz utilizes to communicate the African-

American experience. This mirroring of emotions to technical aspects of musical

aesthetic is the very paramour of why Jazz is one of the most effective links to the

human condition.

In addition to the technical and expressive qualities, Jazz’s relationship to the

human identity can be accounted for neurologically as well. According to Tietze, our

brain’s ability to parallel process allows us to combine positive and negative social

emotions with our imaginations. Thanks to this added emotional ingredient, it is

easier to relate and find the identity and purpose behind another person’s art as

well as create art with emotional resonance. In the same way we use our brain to

tell stories (through “whole-brain” activity) we are able to perceive music—in this

case, Jazz. According to Tietze, human responses to music engage strong emotional

and memory information. The different musical elements and influences presented

in Jazz, access different parts of our brains, creating one’s own unique emotionally

charged perception.

Thanks to the endless ability of the brain and it’s processing, we are able to

connect emotional responses to not just Jazz, but all matter of art. What sets Jazz

aside from all other styles of music—as well as all other matter of art, is the

immediate imagery that is presented to us when we listen to it. When experiencing

Jazz we hear the struggle as well as the accomplishment, the sadness and the

jubilation, the glumness and the hopefulness, the pain and the healing, all within the

same song. In the same way that our brain processes these conflicting emotions,

Jazz seems to work just as hard to convey them through music.