370 ChaPter^7
Music as Politics
In 1949 and 1950 the noted jazz trumpet player and composer Miles Davis
recorded a series of sessions titled Birth of the Cool. Davis was a pioneer in
what was called “cool jazz.” Jazz had been around for decades, and along with
the blues, both coming out of the African American music community, was
perhaps the only uniquely American form of music [classical music had come
from Europe and folk music, about which we will talk later, was brought over
by immigrants]. While jazz was usually linked to events like The Harlem
Renaissance and Black culture, it had been also taken over to a degree by
White musicians such as Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman, who “softened”
it up, often giving it a “swing” beat, and made it popular among White listen-
ers as well. By the postwar years, though, Black and White musicians began
to “cool” jazz down and reclaim its heritage–and Davis’s album was a mile-
stone in that development. Whereas swing/jazz hybrid songs like “In the
Mood” characterized artists like Glenn Miller, cool jazz artists like Davis and
John Coltrane took traditional jazz riffs and added “bebop,” a more boisterous
music form with faster tempos and improvisations popularized by Black musi-
cians [who also began dabbling in “free jazz,” which was improvisational in
full, with artists playing whatever they wanted at the same time as others, who
were also playing whatever they wanted].
“Cool” jazz was more than just a musical movement; it had socio-political
meanings as well. “Cool” implied a way of life, an approach that was more
open-minded, less uptight, and experimental. To be cool meant one did not
always go along with the crowd, that one thought for him or herself and was
more likely to have different political ideas about race, war, entertainment, or
the dominant culture of conformity. “Cool” also integrated music more than
it had been before. Both Black and White listeners praised Davis, Coltrane and
others, and the audiences at their shows were more racially mixed than at any
other type of musical performance. In addition to being a forerunner for cul-
tural civil rights, these shows, and these artists, also were challenging the
dominant culture of the day. While White singers like Bing Crosby, Doris Day,
or Perry Como were at the top of the music charts, jazz artists were making
a statement that their music–this hybrid of jazz and bebop, performed by
African-American musicians before racially integrated crowds–was “American”
music as well, that it belonged on the nation’s playlists. Bebop and jazz