Because I was interested in many variables that potentially bore on learning, creativity, and the development of extraordinary skill, I had prepared a twenty-five-page set of diverse questions for artists. In my first interview, I decided to make a complete run through the questions. Although it was useful to collect such a comprehensive response from one participant, the approach turned out to be impractical; the questions required three sessions and nine hours to complete. After this experience, I drew selectively from the prepared questions during each interview: What were the earliest musical memories of the artists? When did they first encounter jazz, and how did they go about learning it? Jazz players, even the great masters, knew nothing about their subject at one time; yet, by their middle teen years, many had become proficient players-without the aid of formal educational institutions or instruction. How did the youngsters develop such exceptional ability and technical knowledge? Along other lines, I asked about activities of musical thinking and experiences associated with improvisation. Moreover, how do improvisers evaluate one another’s performances?
The early interview data stimulated additional questions. Some concerned the dilemma of reconciling the notion of the artist’s changing perceptions about improvisation with the long-standing popular definitions of improvisation. For example, Arthur Rhames stated that in the beginning he had not understood “that the motives, the riffs” jazz musicians performed “had any history behind them.” Patience Higgins recalled that initially he had “no idea of the form of what [great artists] were playing,” especially when they played “very fast.” Nor could he figure out how older soloists could improvise with such “logic,” a feature that “sounded easy” until Higgins himself “tried to do it.” If the object of improvising is for performers to create music anew, I asked, then what did it mean that their phrases “had history behind them?” Moreover, if improvisers express personal feelings of the moment, what do considerations of form and logic have to do with this?
Equally important for the study was the posing of questions to artists of different backgrounds so that I could collect material that would provide a basis for comparison. Although most of the participants are African American, members of other ethnic groups are included as well; both men and women; performers of different instruments and singers; individuals at varying stages of development—beginners, young professionals, and veterans, some of whom are historic figures in jazz. Most of the performers developed their skills between the late thirties and early sixties and subsequently devoted their careers to bebop or related hard-bop styles. I had a special interest in these styles because they represent great periods of empowerment in jazz history, periods in which a concentration of virtuosos forged and refined many practices that have remained conventions of the language of jazz. The musicians also include a few representatives from the early jazz period and from the avant-garde, as well as some who perform multiple styles from New Orleans jazz to jazz rock. This diversity provides a representative sample of the professional artists and aspirants who make up the core of the jazz community. Art worlds consist not only of their most seasoned and single-minded members, but of a large support system made up of individuals with different interests and varying degrees of talent and knowledge.8
The interviews, once transcribed, produced over three thousand pages of material. It took about six months to complete a single careful reading. Because I had never before worked with such a huge mass of formal interview material, it was not immediately clear how to absorb the data. After several passes through the typescript—cutting, pasting, and collating—I found that I could begin to cross-reference musicians’ remarks. The subsequent search for common themes and idiosyncratic patterns was like being host to a large meeting in which participants were engaged in a lively discussion. In a sense, this imagined discourse samples and re-creates the larger, ongoing discourse among artists that forms an essential part of the jazz community’s intellectual life. “What do you listen to in other band members’ performances when you improvise?” I had asked. “Your mind is basically on yourself,” one musician had replied. “It takes everything you’ve got just to improvise your part because everything is happening so quickly.” Another had said, “You have to listen to other people very closely. If you’re not doing that, you’re not playing jazz.” According to a third, “It depends; sometimes you listen to other people, sometimes you don’t.” Through these questions, my role, as was inevitable, moved beyond collector and monitor of the discussion to interpreter of the data.
At such moments during research, when confronted with apparent inconsistencies in the data yet aware of the basic interconnectedness of ideas related to an issue, one can take various positions to reconcile seemingly contradictory statements. On the one hand, perceptions of the experience of improvising may differ, even significantly, from player to player. On the other hand, an individual may be mistaken in the information given during an interview. For example, if a player has not recently or previously reflected on a particular issue, impressions of performances recollected during an interview may differ from actual performance experiences. Still another interpretive position can be fruitful. When a scholar adopts complex and variable models for improvising and for learning, contradictions typically turn out to be more apparent than real. As suggested by the questions and answers sampled above, musicians contemplating variable processes of performance, out of an intricate web of possibilities, talk about those aspects that come to mind at the time. Collectively, their accounts provide insight into the multifaceted nature of improvisation. Similarly, performers of different ages are likely to remember different kinds of details about learning and to contribute insightfully on those issues with which they have recently been grappling. Collectively, their accounts chronicle broad developmental processes that occur over a career. By examining and piecing together the observations of various artists over an extended period, one gets a picture of what many musicians experience as a whole. Recognizing the necessity for flexibility in interpreting such comprehensive data, I generally adopted the viewpoint that every observation of the musicians was important for the understanding of improvisation.
The performers who participated in the interviews patiently fielded my questions during sessions that, at times lighthearted and at other times grueling, were always informative. To translate into words impressions of mental and physical activities, some of which are nonverbal in nature, is a demanding task; having to recall these activities outside the special contexts in which jazz is made compounds these difficulties. It was their own curiosity about the topics under study and their interest in educating audiences and young musicians that inspired artists to contribute the important data on which this work rests. As their comments indicate, there may be elements of creativity that are destined to remain mysteries, but it is possible to talk effectively about many aspects of the subject that previously had eluded articulation by scholars.
My approach in the presentation of this study’s data has been to quote and paraphrase liberally from interviews, elucidating many salient issues by allowing artists to speak for themselves. Presenting artists’ ideas from interview data necessarily requires the reductive process of extracting quotations from a larger body of recorded discussions. I found it interesting that, while artists shared common understanding, one or another was often exceptionally articulate on certain features of the music, thereby contributing multiple gems of insight on a subject. My selection of quoted material reflects this.
In preparing this manuscript, I became aware of the liabilities of translating oral discourse onto the page. Language that sparkles in conversation—enhanced by inflection and by various features of nonverbal communication—sometimes appears dull when printed. Moreover, the asides and redundancies of speech, normally filtered out cognitively in conversation, seem disproportionately weighted in print and can be distracting. For the sake of continuity and flow, I have deleted portions of longer quotations and, with general permission, m
ade minor editorial changes. At times, when artists fielding difficult questions revised their own ideas over the course of discussions or supplemented earlier responses with afterthoughts in later portions of interviews, I have reassembled or condensed their remarks accordingly. In some instances, for aural and visual clarity, conversational markers or pieces of information not central or pertinent to the point of discussion have been deleted without ellipsis indicators. Repeated verification with musicians of my use and interpretation of interview excerpts has made it possible for this study to embody both the intent and the spirit of the artists’ words. One of the goals of this work is to present artists in the light by which their own community has always appreciated them—as knowledgeable, articulate, exacting practitioners of a highly valued art form.9
Typically, I identify quotations by giving the speakers’ names or by providing their initials in parentheses.10 Most unidentified quotations or similar data represent references to formal interviews concerning information too personal or sensitive to ascribe to the individual, such as frank assessments of the musical abilities of other players on the scene. Some are frequently used expressions that suggest common agreement among artists about various aspects of jazz. A very few are memorable comments heard here and there from artists whom I encountered casually within the community.
In an effort to serve as an evenhanded interpreter of the data gathered from interviews, I engaged in several other activities during the project, both as participant and observer, standard methodological fare in ethnomusicology. To consider ideas expressed about music in light of the music itself, I routinely attended rehearsals and performances by jazz groups where I could collect data that would contextualize artists’ remarks. I refer to these experiences throughout this study because they cast light on aspects of group interaction that a listener may not hear or recognize in a studio recording. They also added to my understanding of repertory and playing styles and suggested appropriate questions to raise during subsequent interviews. The interview data gave me cause to reflect on my own early learning experiences as well.
To keep comparable issues before me during this project, I resumed my former study as a jazz trumpeter and took periodic lessons with various artists. This allowed me to observe how different players evaluated my performance and the methods they adopted for correcting my mistakes and encouraging my progress. Using myself as a subject for the study—training myself according to the same techniques described by musicians—offered the kind of detail about musical development and creative process that can be virtually impossible to obtain from other methods. So, too, did reflection during my own performances on the experiential realm of jazz. Musical experiments in the practice room—for example, trying to invent and develop musical ideas—proved especially useful for testing different ideas about improvisation.
As my former experience had taught me, such activities as direct study with improvisers can present their own challenges. It is not always apparent to fluent improvisers who have grown up in the jazz tradition what, precisely, naive learners need from them. A trumpet player who once accepted me as student gave me a series of musical exercises to practice. Each time we met, he encouraged me to learn them more thoroughly. When I had finally developed the technical control to repeat them unerringly, he praised my efforts in a manner that seemed to say, “That’s fine and that’s what I have to teach you.” The problem was that what I had learned did not sound like jazz to me. When he first sensed my disappointment, he seemed surprised. Then he picked up his instrument and added modestly, “Well, of course, you have to throw in a little of this here and there,” To my ears, the lifeless exercises I had been practicing were transformed into a vibrant stream of imaginative variations that became progressively more ornate until I could barely recognize their relationship to the original models. This experience awakened me to my responsibility for effecting meaningful exchange between us as teacher and student.
In connection with the current project, inquiries in New York City about learning jazz inevitably led me to “Coach” Barry Harris, the man who became my principal mentor.11 Harris, a pianist and disciple of Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, is not only a great musician, he is a charismatic figure, renowned for his successful teaching of difficult and elusive matters. Old and young alike attended Harris’s lively biweekly workshops, which attracted an international, multiethnic following. From the moment they set foot in his workshops, participants knew themselves to be in the presence of a true master teacher. His sessions were sometimes intimate, a small group in attendance; at other times they swelled to over a hundred participants. Harris handled the classes comfortably, with virtuosity. For a year and a few subsequent summers, faithful attendance not only provided a forum in which I could observe Harris’s teaching methods and the gradual development of the skills of other participants but expanded my own understanding of bebop, Harris’s specialty, a complex style of which I had only a basic grasp.
Amid the trials and tribulations of research, it is sometimes unclear which circumstantial features, even initially frustrating ones, may prove helpful in the long run. At the beginning of the jazz study, after many years of mbira playing, I returned to the trumpet only to discover considerable technical limitations. Ultimately, however, my struggle to regain control over the trumpet elicited important advice from other performers and made me sensitive to the potential constraints that a musician’s anatomy and relative mastery over instruments place upon improvisation.
To complete my immersion in the subject, I devoted time throughout the project to studying and transcribing jazz recordings, those precious resources of the oral tradition of improvisation. Although performances embedded in recordings are primarily useful for aural analysis, the painstaking work of transcription provides interpretive pictures of improvisers’ thoughts. Allowing for the imprecision of translating sounds into visual representation, these images lend themselves to more conventional kinds of musical analysis. Consequently, this book includes numerous samples of improvisations—from published compilations, my own, and those solicited from musicians—amplifying some of the more subtle themes that emerge from the players’ verbal accounts. Amid many examples by better known improvisers like saxophonist Charlie Parker, I include performance samples of artists like trumpeter Booker Little—as a tribute to the contributions of jazz prodigies. Little died at the age of twenty-three, of uremia. By that young age, Little had achieved what some spend a lifetime pursuing. An improviser, composer, and arranger, his was a unique voice whose recognition within the jazz community attests to his meaningful contribution to the tradition.
So that readers with musical training may refer to them in one place, transcriptions are in part 5 (Music Texts) at the back of the book. This allows the general reader to glean the essential points through the discussion in the main body of the text without the disruption of extensive musical notation. As transcribed, the musical examples range from basic building blocks for fashioning individual parts to extended group performances, presented in large score samples at the end of part 5.* The latter examples showing improvised group interplay have special importance insofar as they have been virtually unavailable to those interested in the serious study of jazz.12
I intend the transcribed examples to serve as the basis for a variety of analytical exercises. Some illustrate compositional materials and forms in and of themselves. Others provide the basis for speculation on the processes of musical transformation by comparing, for example, a hypothetical skeletal or lead sheet model of a composition to a solo or an accompaniment, or comparing variant improvised phrases to each other. Overall, the intention behind the selection and arrangement of examples is to show a variety of musical ideas in the ever-wider contexts in which jazz artists conceive and manage them. Within individual parts, artists fashion gestures from small musical components, phrases from gestures, and complete solos or accompaniments from phrases; within the ensemble, they interrelate their musical ideas.
/> Toward such ends, examples excerpted from the large score samples isolate particular features of the music for analysis. Readers can examine the highlighted musical features per se or, by referring to the scores, pore over them in the context of their extended settings. Ultimately, this work’s analysis and discussion of representative features of the scores are intended as guides for readers who may wish to immerse themselves in the original recordings, exploring yet other comparable features of the music.
Putting It All Together
What I found most exciting at the project’s outset was the prospect that corroborating data from several approaches would clarify various elusive, inextricably interwoven issues connected with learning and improvisation, and that each illuminated issue would, in turn, throw light on the others. I expected an examination of the creative process to demystify artistic products and vice versa. By looking at the aspirations and successes of learners when acquiring their skills and at their struggles and frustrations through different stages of development, I hoped to discover those skills most valuable to artists and their criteria for judging standards of excellence in jazz performance. It seemed to me that pinning down the interrelated features of jazz would demonstrate that there is a functioning pedagogy of instruction within the tradition. It was a great breakthrough for the project when, after several years, data obtained through each of the approaches began to correlate, one facet reinforcing another: remarks in interviews began to tally with my own experiences in the practice room; observing a master’s approach to teaching enlarged my understanding of ideas expressed by musicians in a nightclub audience; and analysis of transcribed improvisations verified described impressions of performance.
Thinking in Jazz Page 3
