In this regard, my interpretation and categorization of creative processes are based on data derived from the combination of the approaches described earlier. In particular, experimental improvising with a set of known model phrases reveals precise transformational processes at play, shedding light on ruminations of the musical imagination and such potentially enigmatic matters as the difference between intention and realization in the articulation of ideas. Experience with this method guides my conjectures about possible musical models and transformational procedures underlying related recurring ideas in other artists’ improvisations as discussed in this work and illustrated in its musical examples. My interpretation of the examples also relies on the orientation I received from players concerning the features of jazz that they consider important.
Insight provided by such corroborative evidence found its way into the evolving manuscript as, over several years, I boiled down initial interview data, extracting salient material and arranging it in search of logical organization. The challenge became to create a structure appropriate for discussing the many aspects of improvisation revealed as essential to understanding the music, and for exploring their connections. After numerous revisions of the manuscript, I settled on a final structure based, in part, on the artist’s musical life cycle. It begins with the relatively clean slate that new members of every culture initially bring to the task of learning music—regardless of innate talent—and proceeds by identifying different learning processes, stages of development, categories of knowledge, and other aspects of making music.
While reworking the data’s presentation along these lines, it seemed to me that two tasks remained. The first was to update my review of the jazz literature because it had grown considerably since 1978, a development greatly encouraging to the future of jazz studies. An increasing number of scholars in different disciplines had become interested in specific issues that have bearing on particular aspects of the knowledge system that my study attempts to understand and define. Thus, having drawn conclusions from my own data, I took a fresh look at the secondary sources I had sampled initially and reviewed the work that had been published over the course of my research.
Of special relevance was research published in several Ph.D. dissertations, including fine data on the transmission of jazz by folklorist Al Fraser (1983) and on the collective aspects of improvisation carefully detailed by ethnomusicologist Ingrid Monson (1991). Additional studies by musicologists Lewis Porter (1983, 1985b), Barry Kemfeld (1981), Gregory Smith (1983, 1991), and others provided important analysis of the language of particular improvisers and speculation about processes underlying the improviser’s formulation of solos. In this regard, Lawrence Gushee’s exemplary article on Lester Young was heartening, demonstrating the value of applying “a versatility of analysis” to the interpretation of improvisation (1981, 151).
Broadening the scope of jazz research in still other areas were contributions in cognitive psychology by John Sloboda (1989), Jeff Pressing (1984, 1988), and Philip Johnson-Laird (1988), whose studies have aimed, in large part, to construct psychological models of improvisation from the individual’s standpoint. Keith Sawyer (1991) extended such perspectives with consideration of the group aspects of improvisation. Additionally, musicologists Samuel Floyd Jr. (1991) and Gary Tomlinson (1991) and anthropologist Ann Beeson (1990) have contributed articles that, as does Monson’s dissertation, interpret jazz in light of recent theories in such disciplines as anthropology, sociolinguistics, and literary criticism. Finally, The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, edited by Barry Kemfeld (1988d), and the second volume of Gunther Schuller’s jazz history (1989) were helpful research tools, filling in gaps in my knowledge and providing useful historical sketches on the roles of different instruments that I drew upon when contextualizing my interview data.
Together with this review of the literature, perusing an additional sample of jazz biographies, autobiographies, and interviews has enabled me to compare my conclusions with those of other scholars and to compare the views expressed by artists in my study with a larger sample of artists of earlier generations, thereby broadening the project’s historical dimensions. Ultimately, as data from other sources corroborated and amplified my own findings, I became convinced that, despite stylistic changes over time, jazz retains the continuity of certain underlying practices and values associated with improvisation, learning, and transmission. These factors of continuity, moreover, rest at the very core of the tradition, contributing to its integrity as a music system. Although I have periodically interwoven information from secondary sources into the fabric of my text, I have largely used endnotes for this purpose. For interested readers they present supplementary data and refer to additional technical studies by scholars and musicians that complement and expand upon this book’s themes. Endnotes place analytical observations of practitioners next to scholarly analysis, which juxtaposition often highlights common concerns and overlapping perspectives.
My final task was to circulate a draft of the manuscript among a few of the participants in the study in order to check my representation and interpretation of the interview material. Just as methodological emphasis on the concepts and the values of artists leads scholars to interact with artists during various stages of data collection, thus it was important to me to solicit reactions from artists in the last stretch of the project, opening my work to criticism and treating their responses as additional data.
At every level of interpretation, as jazz musicians reacted to their own quoted material and to that of other musicians, their comments were invaluable. At times, they suggested alternative viewpoints on musical concepts or reflected in new ways on their own experience. At other times, they made significant editorial suggestions, questioning a word usage or grammatical construction or calling my attention to an unnecessary piece of jargon that had eluded my editorial eye. Especially reassuring were their reactions to the presentation as a whole. I had been concerned that, although every interview had been valuable, the relative length of artists’ sessions and the particular issues on which the work had ultimately focused had resulted in some artists being represented more frequently than others. “What difference does that make?” one musician-reviewer asked. “We’re not just speaking for ourselves in this book. It’s like we’re all speaking for each other.” Said another, “You know what this book’s really about? It’s about all the things that we share in common— the things that we know and care about but we don’t necessarily ever say to one another.” Several musicians made suggestions for revision, many of which have been incorporated into the final text, as has material from informal follow-up discussions clarifying or expanding original interview data.
An important aspect of the study generally missing from past research is its focus, not simply on the artworks produced by improvisation, but on the wide compass of practice and thought that improvisers give to music outside formal performance events. This includes group rehearsals, individual practice routines, and imaginative compositional play while away from an instrument. Jazz artists are among those who are especially attuned to the general sound-scape of their environments, constantly assessing its features for musical value. Moreover, many periodically engage in their tradition through the subconscious ruminations of dreams that unfold explicitly in the language of music.
Based on a compilation of the materials described above, this book tells the story of the remarkableness of the training and rigorous musical thinking that underlie improvisation. It elucidates the creative processes that lie at the heart of the music culture of jazz. Intimate accounts of artistic growth from childhood to old age portray the deeply creative experiences that engage artists, revealing a serious, ongoing preoccupation with the music and music making that define their lives. The book’s overall goal is to increase the abilities of readers to comprehend jazz in much the same terms as do its improvisers. Having a framework for interpreting the rich yet disparate nuggets of technical information divulged by artists t
hrough interviews and other public forums can greatly enhance the experience of listening to jazz.13
Although this work is not a practical manual, its documentation of traditional learning practices contains advice useful to young musicians. Moreover, as, sadly, so many of the field’s major figures are passing away, educators also need to understand these practices if they are to be effective in supporting the jazz tradition. By emphasizing the larger, value-laden music culture of jazz, this study can supply background for the increasing number of improvisation method books, helping to guide the function and application of various individual techniques in jazz. The 100th United States Congress, in a telling symbolic gesture, passed a resolution recognizing jazz as “a rare and valuable American national treasure to which we should devote our attention, support and resources to make certain it is preserved, understood and promulgated.”14 In light of this mandate, it is important for educators to ensure that students gain early exposure to jazz and learn to appreciate its rich and varied practices, thereby fostering their continued contributions to the tradition as future artists and knowledgeable audience members.
Finally, while this book is a case study of jazz improvisation, its insights should also shed light on creativity across various disciplines. Its findings should have relevance not only for musicians and jazz aficionados but for readers interested in cultural studies generally and in African American and American studies specifically. Scholars in the fields of musicology, performance studies, folklore, anthropology, psychology, sociology, education, and linguistics may also find it pertinent. Within my own field of ethnomusicology, I hope it serves as a useful model for understanding comparable processes of learning and improvisation germane to music communities worldwide.15
In the overall design of this work, part I samples the contexts in which jazz musicians develop skill and considers the methods that assist them. Parts 2 and 3 explore the two major categories of understanding-that comprise the artist’s base of knowledge. One category, improvisation as an individual enterprise, includes those skills and conventions that enable performers to formulate a credible contribution of their own. The second, collective aspects of improvisation, discusses a complementary set of skills and conventions, social as well as technical, that enables band members to integrate their distinctive musical thoughts during performances.
Successive chapters within these sections identify different musical models that are integral to jazz, examine ways in which improvisers interpret and transform them, and discuss the improviser’s relative success at these operations. In accord with this work’s view of jazz as a language and its emphasis on traditional learning methods, the presentation of material emphasizes the aural absorption of jazz before the study of music theory, a relationship that, within the contemporary pedagogy of jazz, is sometimes reversed.16 Part 4 looks at the effect on improvisation of factors external to the music, such as audience and concert setting. The epilogue presents reflections by performers on the challenge and satisfaction of a career in jazz and offers the study’s conclusions about improvisation as a creative process. Part 5 contains musical examples and additional commentary.
Pondering the overlapping issues discussed above and sharing jazz musicians’ sometimes harsh experiences in the throes of learning, lead one to realize that, for the improviser, there is a great distance between common misconceptions about improvisation and the reality of music making. In this regard, some earlier accounts by seasoned artists about their performance’s intuitive nature are more incomplete than inaccurate. “Improvisation is an intuitive process for me now,” Arthur Rhames asserts, “but in the way in which it’s intuitive,” he adds, “I’m calling upon all the resources of all the years of my playing at once: my academic understanding of the music, my historical understanding of the music, and my technical understanding of the instrument that I’m playing. All these things are going into one concentrated effort to produce something that is indicative of what I’m feeling at the time I’m performing.”
Rhames’s explanation makes clear that the popular conception of improvisation as “performance without previous preparation” is fundamentally misleading. There is, in fact, a lifetime of preparation and knowledge behind every idea that an improviser performs. As the following chapter reveals, this preparation begins long before prospective performers seize upon music as the central focus of their lives.
* * *
* Background and explanatory information on the preparation and presentation of musical examples is found in the headnote to part 5. The trumpet and saxophone notation key (ex. 1.1) and the drum set notation key (ex. 1.2) also provide pertinent information.
PART I
Initial Preparations for Jazz
ONE
Love at First Sound
Early Musical Environment
Jazz was a street music in a sense, the kind of expression coming out of the black community. When I discovered jazz, it was like going to some part of the world where I hadn’t actually studied the language, but finding out that I could understand certain things immediately, that it spoke to me somehow. I knew that I would have to travel a long and rocky road in my endeavor to play jazz, but I felt like I already understood the language. —Curtis Fuller
Precisely when musical development begins is a matter for speculation. It depends on definitions of both music and development. Some consider that the earliest musical conditioning takes place in the womb, where the heartbeat of the mother accompanies her baby’s growth. Late in its development the unborn child also responds to sounds outside the womb as they are transmitted through the mother’s body, although it is impossible to know how the sounds are transformed in the process or what perception the unborn child has of them. The act of birth itself can be viewed as the newborn’s first performance. Raised in the hands of the attendant, its flailing arms and kicking legs comprise its first dance; its expressive cry, its first song.1
Once out of the womb, the infant finds itself in a rich auditory world, many of whose elements are not easily differentiatable. Intermittent bird song, episodes of thunder, and the patter of rain melt together, filtering into the infant’s immediate setting. Sounds made by machines with their own specialized dialects of pitch and rhythm intermingle with nature’s patterns and sometimes impose upon them forcefully. The playful voices of parents periodically assume the foreground within this kaleidophonic array to engage the infant in responsive exchanges. In part, the infant gains a sense of its identity by discovering its own power as a sound producer and manipulator. Stirring on its mattress and extending its reach creates an entertaining counterpoint of escaping air, crinkling plastic sheets, and colliding toys. Vocal cords summon relatives to nurse it or pacify it with their company.
As infants make headway in sorting out the diverse patterns in their surroundings and defining their own relationship to them, they discover other sounds that, although differing from all others, bear a curious relationship to them, at times even mimicking their elements. The new sounds are called music, of course, and their precise characteristics can vary greatly from one part of the world to the next, from one community to the next, from one household to the next, and ultimately from one imagination to the next.
It is within the soundscape of the home and its environs that children develop their early musical sensibilities, learning their culture’s definition of music and developing expectations of what music ought to be. Similarly, within the confines of their music community or music culture, children learn the aesthetic boundaries that define differing realms of performance, forming impressions of the most basic attributes of musicianship.
Early Performance Models
In reflecting on their early childhoods, many jazz artists describe the process by which they acquired an initial base of musical knowledge as one of osmosis. They cultivated skills during activities as much social as musical, absorbing models from varied performances—some dramatic, others incidental yet profoundly effective—that attun
ed them to the fundamental values of African American music. Ronald Shannon Jackson remembers his father’s infectious habit of humming the blues “around the house” while carrying out daily routines. Vea Williams’s mother sang jazz “all the time” at home; she possessed a beautiful, powerful voice that passed easily through the apartment’s screens and resonated throughout the courtyard.
The children of professional musicians receive a particularly intense exposure to performance. Tommy Turrentine fondly recollects his father’s “saxophone section” that practiced regularly in their living room. Music literally “surrounded” Turrentine as a child. Lonnie Hillyer also describes much of his early musical education as “environmental”; his older brother “played jazz, and he always had guys in the house fooling around with their instruments.” In Barry Harris’s Detroit neighborhood, he and his young friends absorbed the intricate rhythms of the “ham bone”; its clever body percussion—slapping movements between the thigh and chest—accompanied improvised texts. Additionally, in the surrounding neighborhood, the “average black family had a piano and at least one family member who could play boogie-woogie.” Kenny Barron used to anticipate eagerly the daily arrival of the neighborhood ice peddler, a blues player who routinely availed himself of the Barrons’ piano after delivering the family’s ice, fascinating the youngster with his musical prowess. After he left, Barron would try to pick out on the piano “the little melodies and chords” he remembered from the performance.
Within the larger community, hymnody at church services, marches at football games, and soul music at social dances contribute further to the children’s education, as do concerts in performance halls and informal presentations in parks and at parades. During the thirties, Charli Persip was especially fascinated by a black orphanage’s high-stepping marching band that performed jazz and by the swing bands that accompanied stage shows in the intervals between film showings at New York City’s renowned Apollo Theatre. Moreover, in some neighborhoods “every comer bistro had a piano, and the pianists were sometimes joined by a bassist and a drummer and, sometimes, a horn player. There was live music all over the community” (MR). Sympathetic club owners in Detroit left their back doors open so that passersby and underage audiences who congregated in the alleyways could sample the music of featured artists. Performers in the “bars, weekend storefronts, and neighborhood jazz clubs” in other cities similarly made a deep impression upon youngsters, as did informal get-togethers by musicians. George Johnson Jr. was enticed by weekly jam sessions conducted in the apartment of his building superintendent.
Thinking in Jazz Page 4
