Paying Your Dues II
Pianist, composer, conceptual artist, MacArthur Fellow, and overall person to listen to, Jason Moran, has described college jazz programs as good at teaching the how of jazz, but not the why or the what-it’s-for.
As jazz education became formalized in colleges, universities, and summer camps in the mid-twentieth century, white male educators taught those aspects of African American music that they prioritized and understood: jazz as an autonomous art (separate from dancing and audience participation); a focus on the individual; ranked competition; a homogenous sound ideal; and a type of precision that emphasized locatable boundaries over blur: measurable pitch, clear articulation, measurable rhythmic complexity; etc. The focus on the individual, on ranked competition, and on clear boundaries shows the proclivity for exclusivity and hierarchy embedded in a European world view. This how of jazz was systematized in a way that removed the need to engage with elder jazz players beyond the predominantly white faculty.
Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue played the State Theatre last week on their Shorty Gras tour. Troy Andrews (Trombone Shorty) grew up in the musical culture of New Orleans and was pulled on stage to play trombone at the tender age of 4 by none other than Bo Diddley. He learned jazz within a tradition that centered the why and the what-it's for. His new album, Lifted, expresses his gratitude for all who have helped him become the musician he is today. He did not do it alone but has a community and predecessors from whom he has received the music. The cover of Lifted shows him at age two, playing a plastic saxophone as his mother lifts him up to view a passing marching band. The gratitude he feels for the community that supported him and the music that was passed on to him led to his founding of the Trombone Shorty Foundation over ten years ago. It is a way of “honoring the New Orleans’ tradition of ‘playing it forward’ from the earliest jazz legend’s onward.”
Like his fellow New Orleanian, Jon Batiste, Trombone Shorty’s music performs inclusion. The invitation to clap along, the call and response with the audience, and ultimately, the dissolving of the most obvious boundary of musical performances by moving into the audience to play. Trombone Shorty along with the bari and tenor sax players marched through the audience at the close of the performance, just as Jon Batiste and his band did to close out the Newport Jazz Festival last summer. This is in sharp contrast to the vibe of the Newport Jazz Festival before Christian McBride became artistic director, what an audience member this summer described to me as “jazz snobs.” This entrenched idea of jazz that was created by white critics and educators in the mid-twentieth century is a big reason why many women musicians survived becoming musicians by literally saying, “I’m not a jazz musician,” and why many Black musicians move away from the term. It is also why many still existing jazz snobs would say Trombone Shorty and Jon Batiste are not jazz.
We are always passing on something. If we feel we don’t owe anyone any dues for supporting us, that we don’t have any obligation to pass on to others what was given to us, that it is ok and even normal to have a musical space that is only men or only white, we are passing on this bankrupt lineage. If we continue to pass on a narrow, limiting, segregated world and can’t find the courage to break out of that habit, we are not paying the dues we owe to the music and musicians who have come before us. We haven’t learned the lessons the music is teaching.
