First off, in LaBas' story he tells there are all kinds of things about Moses and music. When Moses begins to learn about Jes Grew he learns from Jethro, a man who plays his instrument (guitar?) like no one else. He plays it with deep loud powerful resonance--the way Jes Grew intends music to be played. So Moses wants to play that kind of music. He learns some, and then wants to learn the better, older music, in the Book of Thoth. He goes to ISIS, but Jethro warns him that he will not gain the true music. So Moses goes and gets the music and comes back and plays it but it is flat and weak. It is here that Reed does some interesting stuff. Moses says that he would revitalize the Black Mud Sound, which is dying. He becomes a soloist, "music wouldn't just be used as a background to dancing but he would be a soloist and no 1 would be allowed to play a whistle or bead a drum", and he plays and he uses an "applause sign" (Reed 182-3). What this does is it shows Moses becoming what we might think of as a classical musician. The idea of a virtuoso is a classical music idea, and while Jazz had solo's it didn't discourage dancing. He becomes a white musician, who get's angry when the crowd is rowdy (which happened, Beethoven once walked out of a concert because the crowd wouldn't shut up). He put's up an applause sign, making it not real music, but rather like old white radio music. These are examples of Moses as a white musician, selling out, not being a true Jes Grew artist.
There are also subtler things going on. When Moses is first learning music from Jethro he would "write it all down", which is a dig at white musicians writing Jazz. Jazz is often not written out. There are jazz "charts" not "scores", with chords and some rhythms and ideas, but nothing written out on sheet music with perfect traditional accuracy. White jazz is often written out completely, like Bill Evans who is an excellent jazz musician but someone who wrote it out. To drive home the point of Moses as the equivalent of a white man stealing black music, Reed gives us the description of Moses "gyrating his hips", which was a movement associated with Elvis, who was a white man who stole “RocknRoll” from Chuck Berry a black musician (whom I believe Ishmael Reed probably prefers to Elvis), just as Moses stole Jes Grew’s music but performed it worse. So in all this, not only is Reed outright stating how Moses is failing at Jes Grew music, he is using very specific ideas about white music, and white appropriation of black music.
That's it. Just a lot of observations. The last one I'll leave you with is the quote "distinguished musicologist Fats Waller was to comment later". He then proceeds to quote Fats Waller. Now Fats Waller was an early jazz musician and comedic entertainer. So this is just a way of taking white academia and forcing it to acknowledge someone who is incredibly knowledgeable about music, but not academically trained about music. This part didn't fit with everything else, but i thought it was interesting.
Interesting post! I had picked up on some of the digs at white music, but you definitely made me see way more of them, and actually understand the references. I feel like the root of this musical discourse is that jazz (and any other jes grew music) is meant to be danced to, and putting it into a sterilized, atonist setting like a concert hall takes the power away from it. It's a little like the difference between break dancers on the street and a hip-hop performance on a stage. The break dance just feels so much more impactful and alive, and while the stage hip hop (just like concert jazz) is, although technically correct, lacking the "spirit" that is jes grew.
ReplyDeleteInteresting!! I totally had not made the connection between Moses wanting to write all the music down and how that relates to white musicians wanting to write out jazz. In a way it sort of destroys the Jes Grew part of the jazz - the improvisation. I also did not know that solo-ism was an aspect specifically characteristic of classical/white music. Good to know. I think in general it's interesting to think about how Moses' appropriation of the music is Atonist in that it tries to control it - it has to be written out, has to be applauded at the right time, planned. Just as food for thought, what do you think Moses' music sounded like? Was it classical music? Was it just bad, lifeless jazz? How controlling did he get with it? Is there any kind of "real life" equivalent?
ReplyDeleteSo for me, I don't think that Moses would be playing classical music, because there is artistic genius in classical music that was not stolen from Egypt and African cultures. I think that what is atonist about classical music is how it get's used to criticize black music, because classical musicians used to improvise variations (on pieces) and concerts were not often austere, crowds were rowdy etc. But when jazz came about people criticized it as not being how they thought of classical music (the austere well dressed concerts etc). So even though the soloing is a late classical thing, I would probably say that Reed was envisioning white jazz, or maybe even elvis. I mean he definitely wasn't picking one thing, but I think Elvis rock would be a good equivalent.
DeleteI think of Moses and his "theft" of Jethro's music as something more like "classic rock" than classical music (although your points about him wanting to write down and codify the art form is certainly Atonist in its proclivities). Jethro, with his "Black Mud sound" and humble guitar, is like a Mississippi Delta blues musician whose works would be covered (to much greater popularity and wealth) by white American and British musicians. Elvis is a point of departure, but so are the Beatles, Stones, Cream, et al. (all of whom had hits from songs by Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, et al.). Reed's sad example of a Moses concert always evokes an attempt at something like a stadium rock show, only he is unable to play the songs in a way that will move the crowd.
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