The Requiem Mass and Sacred Jazz: A Study of catholic Liturgical Forms in the Genre of Sacred Jazz

<p>This exegesis examines the role of religious and spiritual influence on works by jazz composers as related to my composition, Requiem: a Suite of Jazz Orchestra, a jazz suite based on the Requiem Mass. The exegesis details the Catholic origins of the Requiem and the Mass as musical forms and traces their lineages into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as concert works and memorials not bound by liturgical function. These forms and their lineages frame the development of both religious and religion-inspired musical works in the cultural climate of 1960s America. In particular, I focus on two composers, Mary Lou Williams and Duke Ellington, both of whom composed large-scale sacred works related to the jazz idiom. This project situates religion, primarily Catholicism, and spirituality in the context of jazz composition, and discusses music composed in this vein, including my own work influenced by the Catholic liturgical tradition.</p>

The Requiem Mass and Sacred Jazz: A Study of catholic Liturgical Forms in the Genre of Sacred Jazz

<p>This exegesis examines the role of religious and spiritual influence on works by jazz composers as related to my composition, Requiem: a Suite of Jazz Orchestra, a jazz suite based on the Requiem Mass. The exegesis details the Catholic origins of the Requiem and the Mass as musical forms and traces their lineages into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as concert works and memorials not bound by liturgical function. These forms and their lineages frame the development of both religious and religion-inspired musical works in the cultural climate of 1960s America. In particular, I focus on two composers, Mary Lou Williams and Duke Ellington, both of whom composed large-scale sacred works related to the jazz idiom. This project situates religion, primarily Catholicism, and spirituality in the context of jazz composition, and discusses music composed in this vein, including my own work influenced by the Catholic liturgical tradition.</p>

Creativity in Jazz

<p>Common discourses around jazz generally acknowledge the centrality of creativity to the music, but scholarship on what precisely creativity is in jazz, and how it might best be enhanced is not well developed. Building on the important work in this area begun by scholars such as Ed Sarath and R. Keith Sawyer, I first investigate the extensive scholarly literature on creativity, drawing predominantly from social science and education contexts, and then apply some of the most relevant frameworks to jazz. These frameworks draw several key aspects of jazz practice into sharp relief, in particular the respective roles of individuals and ensembles and the ways they work in common, and the provenance of musical materials in creative jazz practice. With these key ideas acting as a theoretical lens, I view the historical practice of three unquestionably creative jazz musicians: Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. The choice of these musicians in particular is important because their example, when understood through the lens of creativity, in part authenticates some of the traditional tools by which we investigate jazz, historically, while at the same time pointing towards some different, less commonly discussed attributes. Most important, the creativity lens reveals important ways in which creative practice can be attributable to understandable procedures that are available to all accomplished musicians, not just a few “great men”. Thus my conclusions call into question more traditional modes of jazz history and criticism which, while acknowledging the music’s collective nature, tend to emphasise the roles of individuals as primary in jazz. Instead, my research suggests that creativity is best achieved in group contexts where diversely gifted participants work collaboratively in egalitarian, interactive, improvised settings. Individuals do make significant contributions to this mix, and in terms of creative advances in jazz – and in terms of achieving meaningful self-expression – the most important quality individual musicians can pursue is the development and expression of unique musical voices. In addition to improvised interactivity among unique individual voices, the adoption of musical materials from outside of jazz and their transformations (along with similar transformations of musical materials already common currency among jazz musicians) can be shown to serve both the expressive goals of musicians and propel jazz in creative and potentially fruitful directions. It is the improvised colloquy of such individual voices, transforming received and newly acquired musical materials in the service of self-expression, that contributed to the lasting allure of the music attributed to Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Saxophonist Jan Garbarek is proposed as a contemporary musician who has made use of all of these strategies in forging jazz music that demonstrates fidelity to the core processes of jazz while only provisionally embracing some of the style features of earlier forms of the music – style features that common jazz discourses have tended to emphasise at the expense of the processes that gave rise to them.</p>

Creativity in Jazz

<p>Common discourses around jazz generally acknowledge the centrality of creativity to the music, but scholarship on what precisely creativity is in jazz, and how it might best be enhanced is not well developed. Building on the important work in this area begun by scholars such as Ed Sarath and R. Keith Sawyer, I first investigate the extensive scholarly literature on creativity, drawing predominantly from social science and education contexts, and then apply some of the most relevant frameworks to jazz. These frameworks draw several key aspects of jazz practice into sharp relief, in particular the respective roles of individuals and ensembles and the ways they work in common, and the provenance of musical materials in creative jazz practice. With these key ideas acting as a theoretical lens, I view the historical practice of three unquestionably creative jazz musicians: Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. The choice of these musicians in particular is important because their example, when understood through the lens of creativity, in part authenticates some of the traditional tools by which we investigate jazz, historically, while at the same time pointing towards some different, less commonly discussed attributes. Most important, the creativity lens reveals important ways in which creative practice can be attributable to understandable procedures that are available to all accomplished musicians, not just a few “great men”. Thus my conclusions call into question more traditional modes of jazz history and criticism which, while acknowledging the music’s collective nature, tend to emphasise the roles of individuals as primary in jazz. Instead, my research suggests that creativity is best achieved in group contexts where diversely gifted participants work collaboratively in egalitarian, interactive, improvised settings. Individuals do make significant contributions to this mix, and in terms of creative advances in jazz – and in terms of achieving meaningful self-expression – the most important quality individual musicians can pursue is the development and expression of unique musical voices. In addition to improvised interactivity among unique individual voices, the adoption of musical materials from outside of jazz and their transformations (along with similar transformations of musical materials already common currency among jazz musicians) can be shown to serve both the expressive goals of musicians and propel jazz in creative and potentially fruitful directions. It is the improvised colloquy of such individual voices, transforming received and newly acquired musical materials in the service of self-expression, that contributed to the lasting allure of the music attributed to Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Saxophonist Jan Garbarek is proposed as a contemporary musician who has made use of all of these strategies in forging jazz music that demonstrates fidelity to the core processes of jazz while only provisionally embracing some of the style features of earlier forms of the music – style features that common jazz discourses have tended to emphasise at the expense of the processes that gave rise to them.</p>

Swing to Bop

This chapter narrates the radical change in musical tastes and musical revolution of swing to bop, and the challenging positioning of the Nicholases within that musical revolution: the brothers’ insistence on remaining within the swing dance tradition and a musical aesthetic that was aligned with the classic jazz of Duke Ellington. This choice ran counter to the choices of such tap dancers as Teddy Hale, Jimmy Slyde, and members of the Hoofers, who forged a transition to the cadences of bebop. The Nicholas brothers carved a path between these two musical traditions, demonstrating a full-bodied expressiveness in their dancing that was steeped in classical jazz and the quintessence of swing.

Brotherhood in Rhythm

This portrait of the Nicholas Brothers, Fayard and Harold, two of the most explosive dancers of the twentieth century, who refined a centuries-old tradition of percussive dance into the rhythmic brilliance of jazz tap at its zenith, interweaves an intimate portrait of these great performers with a detailed history of jazz music and jazz dance, bringing their act to life and explaining their significance through analysis of their eloquent footwork and full-bodied expressiveness. The book narrates the Nicholas Brothers’ soaring careers, from Cotton Club appearances with Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Jimmy Lunceford to film-stealing big-screen performances with Chick Webb, Tommy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller. Drawing on numerous hours of interviews with the Nicholas brothers themselves, the book documents their struggles against the nets of racism and segregation that constantly constrained their careers and denied them the recognition they deserved.

“Mike Fright”

This chapter examines the racialization of sound and language during the transitional period in Hollywood. It argues that the studios’ interest in African American representation in the talkies participated in the ongoing construction in US popular culture of the “Black voice” and of ethnically marked ways of speaking as signifiers of substance and vitality. Tracing the genealogy of this “thrown” voice back through white radio comedians’ vocal mimicry, dialect fiction written by white authors, and blackface minstrelsy, the chapter demonstrates that the talkies were a technological medium of racial ventriloquism. Examining the popular RKO feature Check and Double Check (1930)—a complex product both of radio minstrelsy and the early sound era “vogue” for African American musical performance—the chapter centers on a highly revealing gesture of counter-ventriloquism by the members of the Duke Ellington Orchestra, who refuse to adopt the thrown “Black voice” scripted for them, appropriating white singers’ voices instead.

Harlem

This chapter explores the emergence of Harlem as a center of jazz activity in the 1930s. It looks at the distinctive stride piano style that was popular in Harlem, and the work of pianists Fats Waller, James P. Johnson, Art Tatum, and others. The divide between the so-called Harlem Renaissance and the popular jazz culture of the day is discussed, as well as important local practices such as the “rent party.” The rise of Duke Ellington and his role as bandleader at Harlem’s Cotton Club is examined in this context.

“Something Apart, Yet an Integral Part”: Duke Ellington's Harlem and the Nexus of Race and Nation

Harlem loomed large in the imagination of Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, one of the twentieth century's most significant composers and an important theorist of the condition of being black and American. This article provides insights into Ellington's social thought by foregrounding his evocations of Harlem and his efforts to interpolate that neighborhood into the physical, cultural, and imaginative spaces of US national life. In doing so, it also situates Ellington's ideas in relation to the competing intellectual currents of the Harlem Renaissance movement that had inspired his project of racial vindication. More broadly, the article argues that understanding of the history of African American ideas of race and nation benefits from analysis of discursive place-making and the spatial practices of artistic and intellectual work. Attending to space and place recuperates the complexity and multiplicity of such ideas, which are often concealed by abstracted discussion of concepts such as “integration.”