When friend and Jazz Education Network board colleague (and fine keyboardist in her own right) Monika Herzig - a proud Indiana University grad and student of National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master David Baker – asked me to contribute a chapter to the book she was editing on David’s rich career and life, I was honored. That ask also took me back to when I first met David after years of reading about his exploits, first as a very promising trombonist whose horn had been silenced by the aftermaths of an auto accident, then as an honored composer, and later how he had contributed so diligently and expertly to jazz pedagogy as an educator. Most important to this writing assignment however was David’s quite significant career as an arts & jazz advocate of the highest order.

In 1984 my work as an arts administrator commenced with a contract with the former Great Lakes Arts Alliance to conduct a jazz field needs assessment in the midwestern states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. (GLAA later merged with a fellow regional that worked the upper midwest states of Iowa, Minnesota, North & South Dakota, and Wisconsin to become today’s thriving and visionary 9-state regional Arts Midwest, which took my family to Minneapolis for four wonderful years.) That needs assignment, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, meant traveling those four states to interview musicians, educators, broadcasters, presenters, and jazz club owners.

David Baker was definitely on the A-list of top priority interviewees for the project, along with folks like drummer J.C. Heard and trumpeter Marcus Belgrave in Michigan, jazz radio legend Oscar Treadwell in Ohio, and members of the AACM in Illinois. Eventually we interviewed over a hundred jazz folks in the region, gathering needs evidence which led to the new merged agency Arts Midwest adopting our nascent efforts into a core jazz services program for the midwest. (Proud to say that among other efforts which arose from that program, we produced the first jazz media conference, at the University of Illinois-Chicago which gave birth to the Jazz Journalists Association, which is about to celebrate its annual Jazz Awards program.)

So early one Thursday morning in ’84 I flew into Indianapolis, rented a car and drove down to Bloomington to meet and interview David Baker. We took the tour of IU’s music conservatory, met some of Dave’s students at the time (including bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Shawn Pelton, and trumpeter Pat Harbison), and sat down at the Baker home for a very illuminating interview. I was impressed by Baker’s obvious credentials as a true jazz renaissance man. Little did I know at the time that our paths would cross quite significantly in the future, starting in ’89 when I was appointed executive director of the ill-fated National Jazz Service Organization, when Baker was still the NJSO board chair. We’ve continued to connect, through yet another ill-fated jazz service organization, the late International Association of Jazz Educators, and more recently through my coordinating work with the NEA Jazz Masters Live grant program. So Monika’s assignment of chronicling David Baker’s jazz and arts service career was a no-brainer. Below is one of our more extensive conversations for that chapter in the 2011 book David Baker: A Legacy in Music (by Monika Herzig; Indiana University Press).

David Baker conversation

Willard Jenkins: Beyond playing, composing & educating, you’ve also had a career in service to jazz. What do you consider true service to the artform?

David Baker: I think the basic thing is the perpetuation of the artform, and that perpetuation is in the hands of young people; making sure that they get the truth from our griots – because we’re losing them every time you look up. It was such a shock again, even at 91 that Hank Jones would pass away. But this is happening with some regularity, we’re losing what’s remaining of the people who were the progenitors of the music. If we don’t do something to make sure that those things are preserved – while we’re getting them in truth from people who were there, much like the perpetuation of the legends in an African tribe when you’re talking about the griots, and I guess in every generation.

The other thing is investing money in trying to set up situations where old and young come together. I think basically one of my jobs, like with the Smithsonian [Jazz Masterworks Orchestra], is to take the Smithsonian to places where we make the impossible possible – by having them hear Chick Webb in 1934 and people like Ella – but to hear how the music keeps changing, because I think any time a music starts to stagnate it’s gonna die. I know people – educators as well as writers — are becoming a lot more tolerant of hip hop and all of these other tangents because a lot has changed since the major books were written in the 1950s and 1960s, and somebody’s got to replace them.

It is happening somewhat in the new book on Fats Navarro and one on Duke Ellington, Monk and those people. Those are very, very good, but it needs also the vibrancy of the major writers to deal with this in a lot of ways, because many of them have fallen into the business of perpetuating the music that you fell in love to. I can dig that, but I just think that putting boundaries to the music – Ellington said ‘don’t put the music in a box’, and it’s easy enough to do. I think Clark Terry said ‘the difference between a groove and a grave is just a couple of letters.’

As you developed your craft as a musician, composer & educator, at what point did you begin to seriously contemplate actual service to the artform and why?

DB: I’m not sure that I made the decision, I think the decision was made for me because I was drafted into it. I think one of the most valuable ones was the one you were executive director of [NJSO]. As somebody who was a goody two shoes in school, I got things thrust upon me that I would not anticipate always doing. Like with the jazz program here at [IU], I didn’t start out to try to put that together – Jerry Coker had single [jazz ] courses and things. But then Dean Bain asked me to do that, then I understood a little bit how that led up to the appointment to the National Council on the Arts and the NEA and stuff like that. And I think that it is as much happenstance as it is planning the thing, but I think the good idea is to be prepared when that circumstance takes place.

What would you say was your first effort in the way of service to jazz in particular and the arts in general?

DB: I think maybe it wasn’t even within the purview of just jazz, because it was being appointed, right after Nancy Hanks had taken over, being appointed to those NEA panels. The panels gave us, if nothing else, a picture of how the American government viewed us. Those very first meetings – late 1960s – you stop and think that at that time they were giving maybe a million dollars to the symphony and the ballet, and the entire money for the Folk-Ethnic panel [which covered jazz grants at the time] which I chaired, with Milt Hinton and all those guys, that whole amount was probably less than $5K; that’s anecdotal, I don’t remember the exact number.

But it was enough to show me that jazz was not being afforded the same kind of position in the music world that classical music was.

Were you selected for that NEA Folk-Ethnic panel in the 60s out of the blue, or was that something that developed over time?

DB: I think it was out of the blue at the time, because basically Jimmy Owens, Clark Terry, a few of us were at that time stationary. So consequently, because they could locate me all of the time [due to his teaching position at IU] here at IU, they would ask me to be on the panels more quickly than somebody like Cannonball [Adderley], who they had to chase [due to the Adderley Quintet's busy schedule]. So it was the luck of the draw a lot of the times that I would get in those kind of situations, and one inevitably led to the other.

I remember Antoinette Handy [dir. of the Music program], busy as she could be sometimes, was very instrumental in picking out people [for NEA panel service] who she thought would take the time – and since I didn’t have a major career playing the music, I was stationary at the school – she was able to do that, and knowing that I didn’t have any axes to grind either. At that time I hadn’t built any kind of large career, except with George Russell.

You mentioned some of the people who were involved in those early stages of jazz funding support and some of those early panels. Was it your sense that at that time the Endowment was looking for ways to support jazz, and looking for you and the members of that panel to help guide them in that sense?

DB: I think it was partially that, but the other thing I think they were responding to any criticism of them that was aimed at them about them NOT doing what they should for American music; and particularly American music which – as Quincy Jones has said so many times, you can go anywhere… Japan, China, Romania… and the music that you hear that is common to everybody is not often the folk songs, but it’s American jazz and American music; whether it’s American jazz, American blues, hip hop or whatever. And then I heard A.B. Spellman say once that anywhere there was music on a Saturday night, you could trace it back to the jazz diaspora. I really believe that. For me, because I’m stationary [giving service to jazz] is something that I enjoy doing, even though I have never learned how to say no to somebody who needs something [from me].

With those NEA panels, were they asking questions of you in terms of seeking to find ways to better support jazz?

DB: I think that was the case, but I also think they were looking for things which were high profile enough to enable them to say ‘this is what we’re doing [for jazz].’ For instance when they ran that study that Harold Horowitz did [1985] on the jazz audience, I think it was as much publicity as it was devotion to the music. What seemed to happen was that each time they had a new person [as Director of the NEA] – they had started with a bureacrat and then they started going to people like Jane Alexander and people who had big faces but people also who had a lot of cache as far as being able to publicize what they were doing. When we went through the whole [Mapplethorpe controversy during the Reagan administration] thing when they tried to take the NEA out, when they had the really controversial [visual arts] exhibitions.

When you were on the panel did you find a sense of openness for what you, Jimmy Owens and some of the others were recommending?

DB: Only in the sense that they were giving individual grants, and the individual grants almost always mirrored the people who were enjoying some kind of adulation with the public, the names I would have seen in the music magazines.

One of the next service opportunities was when you became President of the [late] International Association of Jazz Educators.

DB: And that came as a little bit of a surprise, because at that time we [the jazz education field] were still in the throes of Stan Kenton and Neophonic Jazz… anything that was like “spectacular” or whatever. I’m not even sure how it came about [his IAJE presidency], but again I think it was because I was in a central location. We had seen in the jazz education situation, teachers teaching teachers to teach teachers to teach teachers… and not going to people [as educators] who had some experience playing the music.

Certainly they had Clark Terry, they had Milt Hinton, George Russell… but when they got somebody to take charge of [IAJE], I think maybe they wanted somebody who maybe had a little distance so they weren’t simply in search of grants. Now again, that’s speculation on my part.

What year were you president of IAJE? Is it your suggestion that at the time you were president of IAJE, jazz education was at a bit of a crossroads?

DB: (June 2002-July 2004) I think it was at a crossroads, but the crossroads this time was one that was on its way trying to go up. I told them when they asked me if I would take that position, my first thing was is it going to be a point of stasis where we’re standing still, if not why don’t we change the name to International because basically we’re still the leaders of the world as far as changes – formative changes – in this music. That had been denied by a lot of people; I got tired of reading in magazines where ‘if its gonna be good, it’s going to come from Europe, Japan or somewhere else, even back then. I thought this was a timely place for IAJE to begin expanding; I have no notion how it worked because we know [IAJE] had a troublesome ending, but I think the idea [of moving NAJE to IAJE] was the right one because we know there were people in Czechoslovakia, people who were in other places, who did acknowledge that America was the birthplace of this music. Not only that, I’m not sure that it was the most accurate use of the word “America’s Music”, but I think it certainly was very, very high on the pole representing what this music was supposed to stand for in the world.

[Warrick Carter and Bunky Green preceded DB and Ron McCurdy succeeded him. He muses that IAJE wanted to make sure it wasn’t an African dynasty.]

Then we come to NJSO. How did you become involved in the development of the National Jazz Service Organization?

DB: This again was Antoinette Handy. She called a meeting and said why don’t we get together some of the best minds in jazz and we’ll meet up at Wingspread [the Johnson Foundation conference center in Wisconsin]. It was intended to just explore ideas; and the ideas – they had Billy Taylor, Donald Byrd and all the cats up there. Out of that grew the notion that maybe – and at this time it really was groundbreaking because when they asked us ‘what is a service organization?’ I don’t think any one of us could have told them what’s the model we were going to use, what is it supposed to do and how does it work.

So, all across those years – however many you & us were together with this, it was still trying in a lot of ways to find out [what we were supposed to do with this]. We were bailed out a little bit by the Lila Wallace Fund, which gave a kind of illusory notion that this was the way it was going to be continually, that there would be these major funding sources making themselves available. [Here David is speaking about the then-unprecedented $3.4 million dollar grant from Lila Wallace that NJSO co-administered with the New England Foundation for the Arts and which developed the pioneering National Jazz Network of presenting organizations, which later morphed, after a fashion, into the Doris Duke Foundation JazzNet project.]

But when we fell out of the limelight, it seemed like that money began to dry up also. I think people look for something that they think is already successful and I don’t care how you try to perpetuate that success, it depends then on new blood all the time. I think it became like an albatross at the time, because if we hadn’t had that [Wallace] money we might have been encouraged to try to find a [funding] source that was going to be a continuing source. I think that was not going to happen, I didn’t see any of the big companies buying into [NJSO] like they might have had it been West Side Story and Leonard Bernstein.

Describe some of the responsibilities you took on in the initial stages of NJSO.

DB: We put together what we thought was a very good and very diverse board. I think Muhal [Richard Abrams], Donald Byrd, James Jordan… we all had great things in mind but I’m not sure we had a firm plan. I would like sometime to go back and see what our mission statement was. And after the mission statement, what were the goals that would come out of that mission statement. You can have a vision, but a vision without action is marking time. The only way we could have gotten the action that we wanted was to have the same thing that happens to these major organizations now that exist that are in classical music or contemporary art, because we have since run into the same kind of wall trying to do something with Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra; trying to find people to back it; we find people who say ‘I believe in it, but I ain’t got no money…’

I think there was a good mix of brainpower [on IAJE’s board] of people who could get along with each other about what we were going to do because I don’t think we were wedded to any particular [style] of [jazz]. For instance, it would have been very easy given the fluidity of the thinking of Muhal for it to have gone that route. But at the same token you’ve got Billy [Taylor] who’s standing in the center of jazz at that time, and I think if we maybe had been able to have each one of these factors brought into play it would have made sense. But none of us could contribute full time to this.

You were the first and only board president of NJSO?

DB: Yes.

One of the original aims of NJSO was the development of a national center for jazz, which is how you characterized it [in the New Perspectives on Jazz book which chronicled the discussions at Wingspread that led to NJSO's birth; a book which was eventually marketed as NJSO's first "product"]. We’re seeing such efforts on different scales in different parts of the world, but what would you say happened to that plan for a national center for jazz?

DB: I think first of all it got diffused, because it went from that to having a support system. To be truthful, I didn’t know and I think a lot of these cats didn’t know what a service organization did, what had it done in other areas. We were still floundering trying to figure out how do we cover something that covers America as a whole and [the many styles of jazz] in general rather than specific things. It’s a little easier when you concentrate on a particular area, which means inevitably you have people who have like goals. I think it would have been easier to focus had our goals not been so lofty.

So you think it was a matter of NJSO never really developing a true focus?

DB: I think it was partly that, but I also think it was a matter of not being able to devote the [board] time. I think maybe we were naïve, we just didn’t have all the business sense; I think you brought a certain business sense to it, but again somewhere there should have been – even if it was a silent or distant partner who said ‘hey look, you got such a good idea here’s what Eli Lilly, here’s what Ford… can do to help you. I think they might have done that if it had been something about new music – and I’m not talking about jazz music – but new American music that the symphony orchestras were going to play. Now we see that happening because composers get commissions and it’s unbelievable because that commission is committed to be played by an orchestra in every one of the states. We didn’t have anything like that; I don’t think there was even a [board/organizational] consensus as to which is the most I important music to be concentrating on; and I think without that there is a focus missing, because
people have different ideas about what [jazz] is supposed to be and if those ideas don’t somehow or another coalesce, then you’re left struggling. It’s easy, because we didn’t have like an angel.

Was it during or after your tenure at NJSO that you were appointed to a seat on the National Council on the Arts?

DB: I was on the Council before NJSO. That again was Antoinette; by this time I had been on many NEA panels, and they had also called me about educational things because I was the one probably who was the busiest [jazz rep panelist] in strictly education because I was not trying to divide my time [between playing and teaching], except in a very kind of loose way. She never told me this but I believe [Antoinette Handy] came up with the notion that there ought to be jazz representation on the National Council on the Arts.

At that time, as far as jazz is concerned [on the National Council], there was Duke Ellington, then Gunther Schuller, then Billy Taylor, then me. Since that time there have been a couple of [jazz reps] who’ve stepped down. Chico Hamilton only stayed there a year. This guy there now – Irvin Mayfield – I was surprised because of his youth. I don’t think anybody who takes that job, takes that job knowing how it becomes your only job. By the time you read all those [panel-approved grant proposals} – and we had to approve everything, all the grants in whatever area of the arts… You did have people like [choreographer] Arthur Mitchell, who were still very active in what they were doing, so that helped a lot. But I don’t think we ever got full cooperation [from the National Council] as far as jazz goes. That’s why I’m so glad we did get that book “New Perspectives in Jazz” published, because first of all it showed that NJSO was not a monolithic organization; anytime you’ve got Muhal [representing the avant garde side of jazz] and the other people who were very strong-minded, it can be a lot of different things.

Any more I’m so glad that whenever something [a new jazz org.] comes up we start out by setting realistic goals, and I think sometimes the goals can be so extravagant – even though they are so attractive – that they almost carry the seeds of their demise.

When an organization’s goals are too broad, demise is almost a foregone conclusion?

DB: It certainly seems to have been borne out in a lot of situations in the jazz area. I can see now with [the new jazz education organization] Jazz Education Network – and I think they’re starting out the right way – I’m just hoping they can get the numbers, because the numbers are what attract other people. Somebody once said that beyond some point every quantitative change will produce a qualitative change. Until they see the numbers – like when you go to a jazz club and people go where there are people, and I remember when we were playing if the place was packed by Friday night people would be standing around the block trying to get in. But if there were just 10 people in there, nobody went in.

During your tenure on the National Council on the Arts there were a lot of questions about funding for the arts and even the very existence of the NEA. How would you characterize those times on the National Council on the Arts?

DB: Turbulent. I ended up being on there longer than the four-year term. We had a good group but we were being attacked consistently. The Mapplethorpe exhibition was the last straw. People came and picketed us, they stood outside the Old Post Office and picketed us; we had a police escort just in case. Because basically, I felt at that time that Americans weren’t really ready to be respectful of the diversity in the arts. Then you had people who maybe didn’t have the background [on the National Council on the Arts; like if you were talking about black American dance you had one representative, Arthur Mitchell.

One of the things I was surprised they were able to do, which helped [remove some of the anti-Endowment fervor] was to stop giving individual [artist] grants; because with the individual grants I think they had less control.

That was the major upshot of that whole period of controversy, the elimination of Endowment support for individual artists.

DB: I felt that too.

You felt that was a prudent move, to eliminate support for individual artists?

DB: I think, unless they were able to establish some way of tracking the grants, making sure the grants were spent properly, and there was a consistency… but for instance, Clark [Terry] said he went out with one of his groups and one of the groups that had won a grant to travel with him, and he didn’t realize until after a year that he wasn’t supposed to pay for their travel, that the grant was supposed to do that. We made a lot of decisions that were not the most informed decisions, in terms of individual grants.

I just think that we are maybe now finally entering a time when there is enough experience in the jazz field – and maybe enough experience in the American music field – that there are ways of determining [between styles and approaches]. Because to compare an Ellington piece with something which is so far afield that its got nothing to do with African American music, it’s like a lost cause. I don’t care how good the outcome is, it still does not give you solid ground to stand on [as far as making those value judgments between different styles of the music.]

What were some of the other issues of the day that you and your fellow National Council on the Arts members faced in those days?

DB: During that tenure we had cats who were arguing about basically things that came out of the Civil Rights movement. It was never couched in racial language, but it was things that had to do with race. [People who argued against what they viewed as “set asides” on the grounds that this is a democracy.] The same things that were happening with Dr. King when he was trying to deal with some of the most dramatic Civil Rights changes that we’ve seen.

Were people talking in terms of perceived “quotas”?

DB: It was never put that blatantly, but in my mind was what it was about.

So let’s say you or someone else might argue about the fact that jazz should be supported at certain levels, arguments in response to that would be to say ‘we can’t have quotas’?

DB: I don’t think it was ever put that blatantly. They would find a psychological or a political reason, or whatever to not go that direction. Remember, with the Council we didn’t make the initial decisions [to fund or not to fund], we had to adjudicate those decisions. So, for example, if an opera company was granted funding what we did was then argue for however long it took whether that was the way. What was good about [the Council] was you had somebody representing almost every discipline of the arts.

You were there specifically to represent the jazz art form?

DB: They didn’t say that, but maybe [he was there to represent] American music.

Did you ever feel like the proverbial Spook Who Sat By The Door?

DB: What I did feel like sometimes was a voice screaming into the wind. There would be people on the Council like a Gregory Peck or Robert Stack who rarely spoke , but when they spoke it would be a sentence or a paragraph that really had impact. A lot of people told me when I first came on the council, they said ‘look, you don’t have to talk all the time you don’t have to talk just because somebody else is talking. Wait until you have something specific that you have in mind, something you really want to fight for, then bring it up – and look for allies.

It was an exciting experience, except when they came over there because somebody had gotten a grant because they played the cello nude, or somebody else was bathed in chocolate. There were people who vociferously argued that was frivolous. Sometimes we’d reach consensus, sometimes we didn’t. It was a learning experience for me because it also taught me how to deal with people where there is an unequal background – people who had a legal background, people who were millionaires, different backgrounds.

It continued the notion that there needed to be somebody – hopefully from academia or who was academia plus performance – that needed to be there to represent American music. I wasn’t the only one or the most prominent voice [for American music] on there because they’d had this lineage of four or five people spread across the years. I would assume Billy Taylor was very active when he was on the Council; I would doubt that Ellington ever even went to a meeting. I know Gunther Schuller would have been very active when he was on there, I don’t know what happened with Chico Hamilton, he didn’t stay on a full term.

What were some of your other learning experiences from that National Council tenure?

DB: I learned first of all – again quoting Quincy Jones – I learned that I needed to listen more than I needed to talk if I was going to make a decision.. Quincy says the reason we should do that is because we have two ears and one mouth. In retrospect that makes good sense to me. I learned a lot about listening and I learned a lot about reaching compromises, compromises that did not destroy an idea but meant you had to make concessions so you can get along, assuming that maybe you’ll need that vote when YOU bring up something. So if I took anything away from the experience at all it would be consensus-building, because that is something that you do on such a minor scale when you’re dealing with a university.

When we are in a position like that, where we are seen as representing a particular artform, we have a tendency to wear our advocacy on our sleeves, to be zealots on behalf of the music, sometimes you have to temper that zealotry in order to make your points.

DB: That is one of the lessons. I did a lot of listening, and I think that out of that I’m able to better function in the world I live in now.

When certain things would come before the Council relative to jazz, did your fellow Council members look for you to take a lead role or did they look to you for your expertise in jazz?

DB: Very often they would ask about the validity of something; it usually wouldn’t be about jazz, because that was too obvious, but it would be about something that affected the jazz field. Asking what kind of music is good music, how do we give one orchestra $4M and another just $2M, what are the criteria we’re gonna use. Then I was able to contribute in a way that I felt conviction for, and I was also aware that they could go another direction. I tried to always throw off anything I felt was dismissed – justifiably dismissed in a way that seemed to be logical, even to somebody that was a neophyte at that moment. There’d be questions about why we needed to support something because it was a “popular” music, or why you need to have support for this because it has never had support before. I was vociferous in dealing with that.

What other service efforts have you been involved in since IAJE, NJSO, and the National Council on the Arts?

DB: One of the things is trying to get our kids – meaning all jazz kids – into this music much earlier than has been. What I’ve been trying to do is reconcile the youth with the older people. For instance, what is it that I learned in the street as a player very young that comes back to me and makes my life rich and makes other people who are retiring from jobs from RCA or wherever, that if they go back again they’re helping these kids find what their life is about. I really feel strongly about that; that we live in a world that you cannot look at with blinders on.

My life’s lesson to kids now is go to sources whenever you can, take advantage of these people that we’re going to be losing at some point; there’s no way we’ll ever be able to do that again. So we’re trying to expose people to as much truth as we can by going back to these sources and seeing that [for example] clog dancing is not so different than tap dancing so maybe there is a common source. If we can succeed in that, when people start to see the commonalities, it is a whole lot easier to reach consensus when they understand that that cat in ancient Africa singing those tones and that we find a cat in Alabama now [doing similar work], to make a case that maybe there’s a relationship there.

For me right now its bringing together the knowledge that I’ve accrued teaching for 50 years and be able to disseminate that knowledge to kids where they’re able to change. When I buy a book now and it says the first thing you have to do if you want to live to be 100 is make sure your parents did, I can’t change that. But if you tell me a kid needs such and such, I can change that. So there’s no point in me worrying about what’s been done and I can’t do, but to profit from the mistakes I’ve made.

Modern Jazz at the Apollo: 1950s-1960s
By Willard Jenkins
When the Apollo Theatre opened the doors for its inaugural show on Friday, January 26, 1934, the trendsetting variety bill included the great jazzman Benny Carter and his orchestra. The big band, or so-called Swing Era was in full flower and these swinging 17-piece behemoths, sparkplugs of the happy feet crowd at historic Harlem haunts like the Savoy Ballroom, soon found a welcoming home at the Apollo. Such great big bands as those of Duke Ellington, Chick Webb, Fletcher Henderson, Coleman Hawkins, Cab Calloway, Earl Hines, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton and others were a core element of the Apollo’s salad days in the 30s and 40s. They paved the way towards the Apollo accommodating the modern jazz combos of succeeding years. It was in those wonderful big bands that ignited the 125th street entertainment palace that so many of the original vanguard of the modern jazz movement prepped.

The early 40s proto-bebop Earl Hines Orchestra was a classic example. That band was a veritable prep school for modernists, including two of the pacesetters of the small group jazz also known as bebop, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and alto saxophonist Charlie “Yardbird” Parker. As writer Ted Fox recounts in his valuable book Showtime at the Apollo, “The Apollo led the way to exposing bebop to a larger audience. It was Frank Schiffman who first booked the experimental bop band of Earl Hines early in 1943 – with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and [trumpeter] Little Benny Harris.” Significantly that Hines band featured the voices of Billy Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan, who also doubled as the band’s second pianist.

In ’44 when Eckstine formed his own band, one that took further steps into the modern era, he not only took Vaughan (who at 18 won the Apollo’s famed Amateur Night) with him, but Mr. B also opened up his trumpet section to Gillespie, Fats Navarro, and younger firebreathers like Kenny Dorham and Miles Davis. The saxophone section was equally prodigious, including Bird, Leo Parker, Gene Ammons, Dexter Gordon, and Lucky Thompson. The rhythm section included bassist Tommy Potter, drummer Art Blakey, and pianist John Malachi.

Apollo Theatre impresario and major domo Frank Schiffman was no moldy fig, he was said to be quite supportive of the new, modern jazz sound. This new sound developed almost out of rebellion against the strictures of big band playing in favor of a sound that afforded freer flights of improvisation, plus more intricate rhythms and a broader harmonic universe. Although bebop grew out of the jazz atmosphere that encouraged social dancing, its various advancements limited dancing to this new music to only the most skilled terpsichorean hipsters. Ironically it was only natural that this music which seemingly required more of a listening commitment on the part of its audience, would find a place on the Apollo stage shows. It’s safe to say that some of the first modern jazz theatre performances took place on 125th Street.

The two Harlem haunts which served as the most famous modern jazz laboratories were Minton’s Playhouse at 210 W. 118th St., and Monroe’s Uptown House at 198 W. 134th St., with the Apollo roughly equidistant between them. At Minton’s the man later dubbed the High Priest of Bebop, pianist Thelonious Monk, held court at the nightly jam sessions with drummer Kenny “Klook” Clarke, trumpeter Joe Guy, and bassist Nick Fenton. Those sessions, conducted on the downlow beyond the prying eyes of musicians’ union officials who had banned jam sessions (though Minton’s had a leg up in part because its owner was an ex-union official), were particularly combustible on Monday nights. Bandleader Teddy Hill, the manager of Minton’s who controlled the music policy, hosted Monday night buffet dinners for Apollo performers on their night off. This savvy move ensured that the cream of the crop would show up on Mondays to jam, some of the club’s greatest sessions evolved from those buffets.

As Dizzy Gillespie remarked in his memoirs, To Be or Not to Bop, “On Monday nights we used to have a ball. Everybody from the Apollo on Monday nights was a guest at Minton’s, the whole band. We had a big jam session. There was always some food there for you. I was with the [big] bands at the time, and I would come in and out of town. When I was in the city, we were appearing at the Apollo… After the last show we’d go to Minton’s and sit and listen to some of the guys play.” Gillespie met his wife Lorraine at the Apollo, where she was a dancer in the chorus line.
Dizzy Gillespie, who unlike so many of his bop cohorts still had a lingering taste for the big band format, brought his pioneering bebop orchestra into the Apollo on several occasions, most notably in January, 1947 and for two stints in 1949. Performances from these gigs were captured for the film “Jivin’ in Bebop.” Charlie Parker’s dream was his series of Bird with Strings sessions, which for him were efforts at engaging the classical atmosphere he relished. The week of August 17, 1950 Parker’s peerless alto sax bathed in strings onstage at the Apollo, which was also a live radio broadcast. The record shows however that these Parker efforts on the “legit” side came up short of the ever-demanding Apollo audience expectations and were met with a lukewarm response.

Ever the iconoclast, apparently Thelonious Monk brought a different vision to 125th Street. According to Fox in Showtime at the Apollo, “…when the continually inventive pianist and one of the jazz world’s great eccentrics played the Apollo in the late fifties he wore a pink sequined necktie – his one concession to the demands of show business.” Experiencing Monk onstage at the Apollo amidst comics and dancers must’ve been quite the vision. Accessing Frank Schiffman’s meticulous 5 X 8 typed artist ratings index cards in the Smithsonian collection reveals the following Monk notation: “3/13/59 Very exciting jazz group.” Later that year… “6/5/59 Not nearly as good as first time. No box office.” The following year Thelonious’ new band apparently righted the ship… “7/22/60 With quintet… very well received.”

As the forties evolved into the fifties and sixties jazz made further stylistic advancements; those developments were more frequently featured on the stage of the Apollo than bebop, particularly in the early ‘60s. By this time bebop had evolved into post- or hard bop, a sound characterized by more extended lines imbued with bluesy qualities that were labeled as funky or soul jazz as the next generation of jazz musicians expanded on the examples of Monk, Gillespie, Parker and their cohorts.

Concurrently, particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s rhythm & blues, an Apollo staple, began giving way to its natural progression, what came to be labeled “soul music.” As a result the Schiffmans opened up their shows to more jazz attractions. The more song oriented, and the bluesiest of the hard boppers who had that sanctified sound were the most frequent modern jazzers then booked into the Apollo: Horace Silver, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Cannonball Adderley, Jimmy Smith and the like. Popular white jazz artists of the day also found a welcome Apollo stage, including Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz, Buddy Rich, and Maynard Ferguson. The singers were an essential element of these shows, particularly to balance out the more innovative types, like Miles Davis, Monk, and John Coltrane. According to Lionel Hampton: “I saw Coltrane play the Apollo one time. The place was packed when he went in there. When he left, there wasn’t but a handful of people in there. He was playing his piece “My Favorite Things” [his 1960 hit recording] and he played that piece for about half an hour.”

Reflecting the fact that this was a period when the Apollo opened up to various radio deejay-produced extravaganzas, on the jazz side such radio show hosts as Symphony Sid (“the all night, all frantic one”) and Mort Fega brought shows to the Harlem stage. On March 30, 1962 Symphony Sid hosted a power-packed lineup featuring John Coltrane, Herbie Mann, Betty Carter, Jimmy Smith, Barry Harris, and Oscar Brown Jr. And it was the Apollo stage that engaged Sid’s growing taste in Latin sounds as well; witness his June 22, 1962 show featuring Tito Puente, Thelonious Monk, Mongo Santamaria, Arthur Prysock, the Tommy Ray Steel Band, and dancers. Such a show was clearly in keeping with the Apollo policy of mixing genres, as with another 1962 show mixing Horace Silver, Aretha Franklin, sonero Tito Rodriguez, (comic) Timmie Rogers, Nigerian drummer Olatunji, and Herbie Mann – with this Schiffman notation: “…may keep [this show] 10 days…” The week of September 6, 1963 Mort Fega hosted Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers (“Cooperative and probably the finest jazz group in the country,” according to Frank Schiffman’s rating card, “individually & collectively – but worn a bit thin in this house [attraction-wise]”), singer Teri Thornton, organist Jimmy McGriff, Flip Wilson, and Oscar Peterson.

“Symphony Sid’s Afro Jazz” brought Art Blakey (with guest Montego Joe), 3 dancers, Arthur Prysock, Mongo Santamaria, Eddie Palmieri, and Flip Wilson to the theatre. One notes a common thread through all of these jazz-laden shows – the presence of at least one singer and usually a comedian as well. Singers in particular were included because Schiffman, despite his support of and appreciation of modern jazz, always felt that his shows needed at least one singer to ensure box office success. One of the great singers who came to prominence in the 1960s was Nancy Wilson. Her longtime manager John Levy, former bassist and pioneering African American artist personal manager, produced several shows at the Apollo with the Schiffmans’ blessings. “I had a great working relationship with the Schiffmans, both Bobby and the old man [Frank],” Levy, 97 years young and sharp as a tack at publication time, exclaimed during a recent conversation.
The week of March 6, 1964 the Apollo hosted “John Levy presents Free Sounds of ‘64”, featuring Nancy Wilson, Cannonball Adderley, Ramsey Lewis, and comic Slappy White. A high point of the show came when Nancy sang her big hit of the day, “Guess Who I Saw Today,” and as she sang the big finish – “…I saw YOU…” she gestured stage left and the spotlight shone on a big white chair with Oscar Brown Jr. sitting with his back to the audience, whereupon Brown rose from his chair to the audience’s delight, intoning the signature line from one of his hits “…But I was cool!” Unlike jazz festival shows of today, these shows were not a matter of one full set following another. According to John Levy the entire cast would come on together to open the show, the duration of which was typically 90 minutes; “…one act introduced the other act,” says Levy. Then in typical Apollo tradition… 30 minute break… do it all over again. Showtime at the Apollo – on a jazz tip. “We got a great response, we sold the houses out… and I made money,” Levy concluded.

What was your overall intent with “Freedom’s Children” (and talk about the subtitle “A Celebration”)?

The intent of the album was to heal and inspire using music. Each song contains a double meaning; one for community and the other for the individual. I feel we are all Freedom’s Children. Our ancestors have paid a great price for us to be here today. The subtitle “The Celebration” stands for where we can be if we achieve the goal of equality. As a community we have come a long way, but we still have not arrived at a place where social justice is the norm.

What part of the Virgin Islands are you from and how did you determine to play this creative music?

I was born on the island of Dominica and raised in the US Virgin Islands (USVI). I was introduced to jazz by drummer Amin Gumbs. We grew up together. We are the same age and we were born on the same day. While I was playing European classical music, he was exploring the music we call jazz with his cousin [bassist] Reuben Rogers. One day, he handed me a Miles Davis recording and I fell in love with the vibe of this creative music.

What role does your background play in how you express this music, and how do you filter your upbringing through this music?

The traditional music of the Virgin Islands contains an element of spontaneous composition. I remember hearing the music everywhere as a child. As I became comfortable with playing the trombone, I would imitate the way my mentors played festive USVI songs. When I began learning jazz standards, I would listen to elders play them with a Caribbean groove. It felt natural to express my musical voice illuminating the beauty of my USVI home. Depending on the setting, the Caribbean vibe can be subtle or obvious. I just do my best to be sincere.

Considering your contemporaries, musicians like Reuben Rogers, Ron Blake, Dion Parson (all from V.I.), Trinidad & Tobago’s Etienne Charles, Jonathan Schwartz-Bart (Guadeloupe) and yourelf, would you say there’s a new pipeline of Caribbean-born musicians of jazz orientation from islands other than Cuba and Puerto Rico?

Yes. I believe the jazz musicians coming out of the Caribbean today are celebrating their unique cultural heritage. Musicians like Ron Blake can clearly articulate the jazz lineage on his instrument but you can also hear that he is from the “islands.” In the early stages of jazz, many Caribbean musicians performed and inspired other musicians at Congo Square. Later on, Caribbean musicians, like Lord Kitchener, were influenced by great jazz musicians. Today’s Caribbean jazz-oriented musicians are the perfect marriage of the two worlds.

Who have you discovered for inspiration on your instrument, and what have these inspirations contributed to your own expression?

As a child, I was inspired by Christian Lindberg and J.J. Johnson. Christian Lindberg showed me that anything is possible on the trombone. When I first heard J.J. Johnson, I loved the clarity and tastefulness that came from his playing. I loved the way J.J. would edit lines and make clear statements. Later on I was inspired by Curtis Fuller, Slide Hampton, Steve Turre and Robin Eubanks. With Curtis Fuller, I loved his soulfulness. His playing on John Coltrane’s “Blue Train” made me an instant fan. Slide Hampton’s extended lines made me smile and gave me a lot of work in the shed. Steve Turre and Robin Eubanks opened the door for modern trombone playing. Steve’s harmonic sense opened my ears to fourths and fifths. I was fortunate to study with Steve Turre and gain a greater understanding of the trombone. Each of these great players expressed their unique personality in their music. To build on their legacy, I do my best to be tasteful, clear, expressive, knowledgeable and inspirational.

What have you got planned for your next release?

For the next album, I want to record songs that inspire the listener to be their best self. Focusing on self awareness and self respect, I want the title of the album to be “Love” and have each song elaborate on the principles of love. I feel that it is the responsibility of the artist to inspire the listener. I want to save lives with music.

www.reginaldcyntje.com

African Rhythms, Roots, Culture – Randy Weston in conversation with Willard Jenkins. from AfrobeatRadio on Vimeo.

Paul Carr
Standard Domain
(Summer 2012 release)

The scene: Blue House recording studio in Kensington, MD, suburban DC, on an unusually balmy December afternoon.

Arriving by the back door adjacent to drummer Lewis Nash’s isolation booth, Lewis is practicing; Bret Primack/The Jazz Video Guy is busily setting up his cameras in each room for his YouTube shoots; pianist Joey Calderazzo and trumpeter Terell Stafford casually shoot the breeze on the studio couch as the leader, saxophonist Paul Carr readies for the next take, which will be the title track, his original “Standard Domain”.

Terell Stafford: “This is my third Paul Carr record session. Paul Carr taught me everything I know. Just look at these musicians; he gets the greatest bands, the music is great… He was the very first jazz gig I had, when I was in grad school (Rutgers) getting my Masters in classical tpt I decided I wanted to play jazz. I called Paul Carr and said “I haven’t played jazz before, but can I come play at the jam session?” He said “sure,” and that’s where I started learning tunes, he taught me tunes, taught me about harmony, gave me lessons in the morning before I had to go back to grad school and finish my Masters… so he did everything. I was finishing my classical trumpet degree and Paul was gracious enough to have me come to Takoma Station every week; this was around 1989-90. He gave me my first opportunity. And from being at the jam session with Paul is where I met Bobby Watson.” Terell went on to become a core member of Watson’s vibrant Horizon band.

Michael Bowie: “This is [my] fourth [Paul Carr] session.” [What keeps you coming back?] [laughs] “By the grace of God, and Paul.” [What is it about Paul?] “I just love Paul’s music, and I love the varied-ness of the records; he throws me into different pools and I’ve gotta sink or swim and I love it! Paul has taught me a backstroke or two.”

Paul Carr: “I wanted to do some tunes that people have heard before, and then some tunes that maybe I felt needed more exposure; they’re standards or standards that jazz fans like, so that was the thing with the tunes that I picked.” [What about Standard Domain, your title piece?] “That tune is a combination of a lot of… the harmony on that tune is a combination of a lot of different standards that we play all the time; that set of changes, you could see that was the first time the guys ever played it, but the changes are so standard – you hear them all the time – so that’s what its like in the domain of standards; these are some options, and I put a little kind of Latin-free feel in it. All that is encompassed in the world of standards.”

[What about some of the other tunes that’ll be on the album, like “Dream Dancing,” “Warm Valley,” “Tetragon”…?] “That’s the same thing; “Dream Dancing” is a beautiful tune that is not played or sung enough in my opinion; it’s a beautiful Cole Porter tune. “Warm Valley” is another tune… there’s the Ellington-Mingus recording and a few other sources; I love that tune, it’s a beautiful melody, so I wanted to record that.” [“Tetragon” seems like a natural because I do hear some Joe Henderson in your tenor playing from time to time.] “I love Joe Henderson [PC has the tribute album Musically Yours: Remembering Joe Henderson in his discography], “I love that tune, and its another one that hasn’t been played a lot.”

Joey Calderazzo: [What compelled you to come up from your home in North Carolina and do this session?] “That big paycheck at the end of the day [laughs]. Branford [Marsalis, in whose quartet Calderazzo has performed for many years] and Paul are friends and I met Paul through Branford, we played some golf together and I dig him. And when I found out Lewis Nash was on the date – I’d never played with Lewis before, so count me in. I’ve wanted to play with Lewis, and Terell’s been my boy for 20-something years, I played with him in Bobby Watson’s [Horizon] band. I don’t get out much either, I don’t do many record dates anymore. I just choose not to do ‘em. I’ve been really busy, maybe it’s where I am – out of that New York loop.”

Lewis Nash: “This is the third session I’ve done with PC.” [What compelled you to come back?] “My previous experiences with Paul have been enjoyable and musical, so I didn’t see any reason NOT to come back again!” [How long have you been acquainted with Paul?] “Terell introduced us in ’07.”

PC: “The Joe Henderson session was when I first met [Lewis].”

Lewis: “That’s a testament to the fact that they’re all just a blast, all [sessions] with musicians that I hook up with in a way that’s fulfilling.” [This is the first time you and Joey have worked together.] “We’ve known each other through the years, we’ve ALMOST been on stuff, but this is the first time it actually happened.” [You just got off the plane from Japan. What were you there for?] “I did a couple of things: I co-led a big band called the USA/Japan All-Star Big Band with Terumasa Hino, the Japanese trumpet player; and we had 9 musicians from the States, 9 musicians from Japan; we did a 6-concert tour. Following that was a trio tour with Ron Carter and a Japanese guitarist named Takeishi Yamaguchi. I’m still a little jet lagged, but glad to be back here before the holidays.”

Engineer Jeff Gruber: [With a session like this, when you’ve got a quintet with two horns, what are your challenges?] “When the horn players want to be in separate rooms it makes it a little bit more challenging for them because they can’t see each other physically; so you want to make sure their mix is good enough so that they can HEAR each other and catch the nuances of each other’s playing. It’s kinda like the next best thing to being there, but jazz musicians really, really love the physical interaction of being close together. But for the best possible sound and to be able to fix mistakes, we have to have some kind of separation. So if somebody wants to do something over again… if Terell is in the room with Paul and one makes a mistake, you have to do the whole thing over again. There are also tuning issues, if somebody doesn’t feel like their intonation is that good at that particular moment, if they feel like they’re out of tune, then the other guy is stuck with that guy’s chocolate on their peanut butter. But when they’re separated they can always do their parts over as much as they want to, and perfect it. The separation is better for the player who wants second chances, and that’s a big deal for a record that you’re going to hear over and over again.”

Standard Domain is set for early summer 2012 release. To learn more visit www.paulcarrjazz.com. And learn more about Paul Carr’s annual Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival at www.midatlanticjazzfestival.org.

New York–The scientific world is finally paying some heed to the marijuana problem and attacking it from a musician’s viewpoint. According to reliable sources, research doctors attached to government prison-hospitals where drug addicts are confined for cure are currently working on a series of experiments with marijuana, using musicians as guinea pigs. The experiments are designed to find out the effect, if any, the weed has on the quality of a musician’s work and the medics and music-makers are locking themselves up in rooms then blowing their top – but scientifically.

Volunteers for the tests are being taken from among inmates with a musical background. A musical aptitude test is given each subject, both while he is in a normal condition and again while under the influence of marijuana. In this manner the doctors hope to determine why some musicians are attracted to the drug; whether it improves the quality of their playing and whether the whole idea is a bad kick.

Exaggerated Influence

It’s no secret that many musicians have been offenders against have been offenders against the Marijuana Tax Act. The records show this even though the facts have been over-stated to the point where the public believes all musicians and their friends live in a perpetual narcotic whirl.

Marijuana derives its name from a Mexican slang-word, meaning “Mary Jane.” In the United States the drug is known variously as tea, muggles, weed, dry gauge, reefers and hemp. The dried, crushed leaves of the plant are smoked heavily in Oriental countries, including India, Africa [ed's note: you know, that "country" called Africa], Egypt [ed's note: ...which apparently Egypt is not a part of!], Syria, Greece and Arabia. In many sections of the United States, the plant is grown commercially for its hemp, used in manufacturing rope, hats, and paper. It can be cultivated easily. Due to its rapid spread as a stimulant, the Marijuana Tax Act was passed in 1937 and a curb put on the growing influence of the weed. [Ed's note: well, they certainly put a cap on that demon weed, didn't they?]

Problem Studied
Medical men and sociologists regard the drug as a stimulant, having the same physical and mental effects as alcohol. Unlike the pernicious drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, marijuana does not addict its user with an insatiable craving. Case histories of confirmed drug addicts disclose that many found their start with marijuana, which because of its availability and low price is within reach of everyone.

Stories and movies about marijuana users have misinterpreted the drug habit. Rather than the drug creating mental cases for the psychotic ward, the people who use marijuana are already emotionally unstable and turn to the drug as a refuge from life’s problems. [Ed's note: Is that your excuse?] The basic problem with inveterate users involves a mental rehabilitation of the shattered mind drawn to drugs.

Acquiring the records was only part of the task however. Through the graces of good friend Judy Pillay at the SA tourism office in New York who accompanied us on the trip, CTIJF founder Rashid Lombard, and Gwen Ansell (who annually hosts an extensive workshop for aspiring music print & radio journalists during the week leading up to the festival) I connected with several South African musicians for extensive interviews, none more informative or knowledgable than pianist-composer Hotep Idris Galeta.

A native of Cape Town, who passed suddenly in November 2010 at age 69, Hotep brought a broad perspective on jazz in SA. In addition to his work as a music educator and a player in-country (check his discs on the SA label Sheer), Hotep’s perspective was broadened by his world touring and recording experiences, with such artists as Hugh Masakela, Herb Alpert, John Handy, Letta Mbulu, Jackie McLean (Hotep also taught at JMac’s program at the University of Hartford), Joshua Redman, Archie Shepp, Elvin Jones, Bobby Hutcherson, Woody Shaw, and even David Crosby and the Byrds. Hotep and I developed a friendship from that first interview and he subsequently contributed the following piece to The Independent Ear. On the eve of the 2012 edition of the Cape Town Jazz Festival, I thought it would be a good opportunity to revisit Hotep’s wisdom on jazz in South Africa.

The Development of Jazz in South Africa

By

Hotep Idris Galeta

African music, the progenitor of jazz and all other forms of African-American music has been around for a while. Given its ancient track record of longevity and creativity, I suspect it will be around for a long time to come, molding and influencing the various genres of world music. From a historical point of view and in this particular case, the musical chickens have come home to roost. Jazz has come full circle returning to its African roots.
South African Jazz has had many elements contributing to its evolution and development. The most prominent and significant being the rich eclectic cultural diversity of the country’s inhabitants and the influence of African/American musical culture upon it over the years. These two variants coupled with an environment of legislated racism, gross human rights violations, created the unique artistic forge and mould responsible for the evolution of South African Jazz. The first informal contact the inhabitants of Cape Town had with African Americans was during the American Civil War, when the Confederate warship the “Alabama” came into the port of Cape Town in 1862 to replenish its supplies. The “Alabama” patrolled the South Atlantic where it would lie in wait for Union Ships to come around the Cape from the Far East on its way to the east coast ports of Philadelphia, New York, New Port and Boston. It would then attack, plunder and sink them. The “Alabama” was one of the most notorious and feared Southern commerce raiders on patrol in the South Atlantic sending some fifty eight Union vessels to the bottom of the ocean during her two year patrol. Confederate captain Raphael Semmes commanded this British built steam powered schooner.

A mixed crew of British mercenary and Southern white sailors manned the ship. On board there were also a small contingent of African-American slaves who served as cleaners, mess stewards and also provided some sort of musical entertainment for the crew. When the Alabama docked in Cape Town the local population flocked to the waterfront to look at her. It was then that the African-Americans dressed in their minstrel outfits gave impromptu musical recitals at the dockside where the “Alabama” was moored. When the inhabitants of Cape Town enquired from the white crew who the black entertainers were, the reply was “These are just our “Coons”! Or more succinctly put, “Just Our Niggers!
The Alabama was finally tracked down and sunk off Cherbourg, France by the Union Warship the U.S.S. Kearsarge on the 19th of June 1864. On June 19th 1890 South Africans had their first formal contact with black-Americans and Black-American music when the minstrel troupe of Orpheus Myron McAdoo’s “Virginia Jubilee Singers” from Hampton Virginia presented a series of concerts in Cape Town. Orpheus McAdoo was born in 1858 in Greensborough, North Carolina. As a young man he attended the Hampton Institute in Hampton Virginia, where he studied and graduated as a teacher in 1876. Before turning to music as a professional career in 1886 he taught school in Pulaski and Accomac Counties in the state of Virginia for ten years. In 1886 he toured Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the Far East after joining five members of the original Fisk Jubilee singers. Upon his return to the U.S. a year or two later McAdoo formed his own company by recruiting some ex students and graduates from Hampton amongst who were his future wife Mattie Allen and his brother Eugene. With his newly formed troupe consisting of six women and four men, they set sail on a European tour in 1888. Two years later we find them arriving in South Africa. Their appearance was to have a significant impact upon the music scene as it later influenced the creation and formation of the “Kaapse Klopse” or “Coon Carnival.” Since it’s inception at the turn of the century the minstrel street carnival became an integral part of Cape Town’s performing arts culture during the New Year celebrations. To use the derogatory term of the racist American, south of that time,“ Coon” or “Nigger” being the equivalent of the South African derogatory term of “Kaffir,” “Boesman,” “ Cooley” or “Hotnot”. If we look back to the Alabama’s visit to Cape Town we can now clearly see how the derogatory racist American term “Coon’ came to be known and adopted in Cape Town. Given South Africa’s colonial past of class consciousness, racism, divide and rule tactics, leaves little doubt for any speculation as to the name “Coon” and its tenure, popularity and longevity amongst the working class coloured population of Cape Town.

The “Coon carnival’s” popularity however decreased as more and more young people became politicized as the struggle for liberation intensified during the late 1970′s and into the 1980′s. McAdoo’s Minstrels stayed and toured throughout South Africa for eighteen months visiting places such as Grahamstown, King Williams Town and Alice where they visited and performed at Lovedale College, a South African equivalent of Tuskegee University. Musical history also indicates that their impact and influence upon the performing arts culture of the Eastern Cape was quite significant as it influenced the rich Xhosa choral traditions in existence there. It is somehow ironic that this genre of Creole/African/American minstrel-spiritual music which became one of the key developmental elements of jazz in New Orleans in 1895 should also become a contributing factor and play a crucial role in the development of South African Jazz. The introduction of Jazz into South Africa took place shortly after the 1st World War, around 1918 and this introduction was again via Cape Town. The first Jazz recording was only made in 1917, and this by the all white New Orleans Band called “The Original New Orleans Dixieland Band”. Some of these early recordings were brought to Cape Town by American merchant seaman. Local white and coloured bands (the Creole mixed racial population group resident in the Cape Town area) and even some visiting American musicians were instrumental in popularizing early New Orleans style jazz at the Cape after the 1st World War. To the white musicians who played it and the white audiences who danced to it in America and elsewhere in the British and European Imperial colonies it became known as Dixieland. Given the dreary social life and appalling conditions in the black South African townships, it is easy to understand why the introduction of the radio, gramophone and recordings of New Orleans Jazz served as the biggest catalyst for the developing styles of early township music and black professional musicianship in the 1920’s. It was in Queenstown in the province of the Eastern Cape that Jazz first developed and started to take on its South African character. Of all black people in South Africa at that time, the Xhosa nation were the most educated as the result of the early establishment of the British Missionary school system. Formal education, exposure to European hymnody and western classical music gave rise to a black upper class and a group of very sophisticated musicians and composers who embraced this new black American art form called Jazz.

In the 1920’s Queenstown became known as “Little Jazz Town” because of the many New Orleans style bands that were resident there. The most popular bands there in the 20’s and 30’s were Meekly Matshikiza’s “Blue Rhythm Syncopators” and William Mbali’s “Big Four” who entertained both whites and upper class blacks. Some of the earliest preserved examples of South African Jazz were recorded by Gumede’s Swing Band on Gallotone GE 942 in the late 1920’s. It was during the late 20’s that Boet Gashe an itinerant organist from Queenstown popularized the three chord system the forerunner to the Marabi and Mbaqanga styles that were later to be perfected in the township shebeen environments of Johannesburg and Marabastad situated on the outskirts of Pretoria. Sophiatown the legendary ghetto of Johannesburg became the experimental ground for this vibrant new township music that was to under go further innovation during the 1930’s into the 50’s. The music of the townships served as an important platform and vehicle for developing singers and instrumentalists. Larger 15 piece bands such as the “Jazz Maniacs” were formed by popular Doornfontein shebeen pianist turned saxophonist, Solomon “Zulu Boy” Cele. Cele who was listening to the African/American bands of Fletcher Henderson,Count Basie and Duke Ellington saw the enormous potential of developing marabi into a big band style. This band was to feature and develop some of the legendary township Jazz players. They included saxophonists Mackay Davashe, Zakes Nkosi, Ntemi Pilliso and Wilson “King Fish” Silgee. The Jazz Maniacs are significant because they carried the spirit of marabi to the dance halls and provided inspiration for a new breed of emergent Jazz musicians such as Dollar Brand now known as Abdullah Ibrahim, Hugh Masekela, Kiepie Moeketsie, Jonas Gwangwa, Sol Klaaste, Early Mabuse and Gwigwi Mwerebi. Some of the legendary Sophiatown vocal groups and singers associated with the “Jazz Maniacs” are the Manhattan Brothers, The Quad Sisters, The Woody Wood Peckers and a group that was to launch four great individual singers, The Skylarks, consisting of Miriam Makeba, Abigail Khubeka, Letta Mbulu and Mary Rabotaba. The demise of marabi big bands can be directly attributed to encroaching legislated racism, forced removals and regulations forbidding blacks to appear at venues where liquor was served.
As the dance halls in Sophiatown and other areas around the country were destroyed, black musicians were shut out of the inner cities or had to play behind a curtain when playing with some of their white counterparts at whites only clubs, Jazz was gradually being deprived of its multi racial audience.

The 1950’s are remembered as the days of passive resistance against the Nationalist government’s institutionalized racism, but it also remembered as a great age of Jazz development in South Africa. A new strain of Jazz began to emerge which contained a greater American influence. This new strain was the result of the Bebop revolution in the U.S. Young emergent musicians such as Dollar Brand, Chris McGregor, Johnny Gertse, Sammy Moritz, Makaya Ntoshoko Mra “Cristopher Columbus” Ngcukana, Jonas Gwangwa, Jimmy Adams, Early Mabuza, “Cups and Saucers” Nkanuka, Hugh Masekela, Kippie Moeketsie, Henry February, Anthony and Richard Schilder, Harold Japhta and this writer included took to this new exciting Jazz form from America like ducks to water. The real milestone occurred when one of my future mentors to be, visiting American pianist and Jazz educator John Mehegan came to South Africa in the late 50’s on an American State Department sponsored tour. After the tour he assembled a local group to record an album for Gallo Records entitled “Jazz in Africa”. Beside Mehegan on piano the group consisted of Hugh Masekela on Trumpet, Jonas Gwangwa on Trombone, Kiepie Moeketsie on Alto Saxophone, Gene Latimore on Drums and Claude Shange on Bass. When Mehegan departed for the U.S. Dollar Brand added Johnny Gertse on Bass and Makaya Ntoshoko on Drums, creating a new rhythm section to which he added Masekela, Gwangwa and Moeketsie, calling this new band “The Jazz Epistles” One of the most dynamic and creative bands of the late 50’s. The band recorded two albums “The Jazz Epistles Vol. 1 and Vol. 2” played a few gigs around the country and disbanded when Masekela and Gwangwa left to study in the U.S. in 1960. That unfortunately was the end of the line for that kind of American Jazz in South Africa. Many of the musicians who played it left the country because of the increasingly repressive political situation, this writer included. With the advent of the Avant Garde in the 60’s the “Blue Notes” led by Eastern Cape born pianist Chris McGregor together with saxophonist Dudu Pukwane, trumpeter Mongezi Feza, bassist Johnny Mbizo Dyani and drummer Louis Tebogo Moholo took up the banner and propelled the music in a new direction. They also had to leave the country but made a huge impact upon the European and British jazz scene with their fiery brand of South African Avant Garde Jazz. It is only Louis Tebogo Moholo that is alive today. The rest of them all died in exile before they could experience the freedom of democracy in the land of their birth. Many stayed and continued to produce creative music in a political environment that became increasingly oppressive and brutal.

In the province of the Western Cape in the city of Cape Town musicians such as Basil “Mannenberg” Coetzee, Robbie Jansen, Paul Abrahams, Chris Schilder, Gilbert Matthews, and many others to numerous to mention gave their commitment, time and creativity to the struggle for democracy. They used South African Jazz as a platform and became deeply involved in the struggle for democracy on a creative level using their music as a clarion call for liberation at United Democratic Front political rallies in the townships. Today in a democratic South Africa jazz is thriving in an environment of freedom and racial reconciliation. At present there exists an up and coming core of extremely masterful young musicians, both black and white. Some of them are graduates from tertiary institutions here in South Africa with vibrant jazz education programs and some come from community jazz education programs. Gloria Bosman, Judith Sephuma, Melanie Scholtz, Zim Ngqawana, Kevin Gibson, Andile Yenana, Lulu Gontsana, Mark Fransman , Eddie Jooste, Buddy Wells, Paul Hamner, Keshivan Naidoo, Dominic Peters , Andre Petersen, Victor Masondo, Marcus Wyatt, Herbie Tshoali, Themba Mkize and the late Moses Taiwa Molelekwa. These are just a few of some of the new innovative core of younger South African musicians who are responsible for taking the music into a new creative direction. Their vision and innovative approaches is creating a significant impact upon the South African jazz scene by the development of new concepts and ideas within the South African jazz genre. This bodes extremely well for the development of jazz in South African which like in Nazi Germany some sixty odd years ago had been suppressed and stifled during the turbulent apartheid era.

Copyright: by Hotep Idris Galeta

A good source of information on South African jazz musicians, and SA musicians in general, is the website www.music.org.za