CHAPTER 22 | JAZZ: AMERICA’S CLASSICAL MUSIC? 535
CD 4.13 Listening Guide 22.1“Devotional,” from In This House, on This Morning
WYNTON MARSALISlinked chiefl y by improvisation. Some have also challenged his image of jazz musi-
cians. As clarinetist Don Byron has put it: “One of the fallacies of the Wynton era
is that jazz cats don’t listen to rap.” For trumpeter Lester Bowie, the tradition is
far broader than Marsalis has granted. Jazz, Bowie said shortly before his death in
1999, is “not simple music anymore. So it does belong in the concert hall. But it also
belongs in the street, on the farm, it needs equal access every where, the same as
country western, rap, anything. Because jazz is all of these.”
Marsalis told an interviewer in 1984 that a society’s ultimate achievement “is
the establishment of an art form... indigenous to that society.” He explained
that during the 1940s, jazz musicians, including Armstrong, Parker, Ellington,
and Monk, “introduced an entire range of mood and emotion into the vocabu-
lary of Western music, an entirely new way of phrasing, an entirely new way of
thinking in the language of music” that “perfectly captures the spirit and tone
of America.” Their contribution, however, went unrecognized. For one thing,
racism and economic inequality had marginalized jazz. For another, impro-
visation was thought to rely more on intuition than on intellect. And for yet
another, cultural standards had slipped to the point that “anything can pass
for art.” Marsalis blamed the mass media for promoting a popular culture with
everything reduced to the lowest common denominator. And he challenged his
colleagues to fi ght for standards: “We musicians should never forget that it is our
job to educate people, to stand up for excellence and quality.” In his view, the
excellence and quality of jazz are democratic and characteristically American
because the music combines a vernacular base with a hunger for artistic explo-
ration. “To me,” Marsalis declared, “the test of true greatness in an artist is the
ability to write or perform music that is on the very highest level but can also
appeal to common people. That’s the problem Beethoven, Stravinsky, Charlie
Parker, and Louis Armstrong all faced.”
Marsalis’s comments reveal a belief in hierarchy: jazz deserves to be part of
an educational agenda; Ellington’s artistry places him on an equal footing with
such European composers as Beethoven and Stravinsky. But perhaps the most
striking notion of all is that no music is more thoroughly American than jazz—that
is, the blues-based strain of jazz championed by Marsalis—whose civilizing force
has provided a much-needed boost to the nation’s sense of humanity.Listen & Refl ect
- What aspects of “Devotional” remind you of any of the blues, gospel, and jazz music
studied in earlier chapters? What aspects remind you of modernist classical music?
Do those different aspects seem to merge smoothly or stand in opposition to one another,
and why? - What arguments can you make that “Devotional” supports the idea that jazz is now a clas-
sical music, not a popular music? How might you argue the opposite: that “Devotional”
shows how jazz remains in the popular sphere?
jazz and cultural
hierarchy172028_22_531-558_r3_sd.indd 535 23/01/13 11:20 AM