“Gender Inclusion, Gender Exclusion, and Safety Delusions in Mexican Ska Festivals,” A Presentation for the SEM 2024 Annual Meeting

I am departing from my typical blog post to invite you to my upcoming conference presentation titled “Gender Inclusion, Gender Exclusion, and Safety Delusions in Mexican Ska Festivals.”

Once again, I am honored to present some of my recent work at the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) Annual Meeting. This presentation is part of the session on Gender Exclusion in Performance Spaces being held virtually on Thursday, October 17 at 12:30 pm EDT.

Gender Inclusion, Gender Exclusion, and Safety Delusions in Mexican Ska Festivals

Abstract:

Ska, a popular music genre originating in Jamaica, has idealistically served as a genre that creates spaces for inclusivity and unity. However, researchers have noted that these perceived utopian spaces did not prioritize the inclusion of women (Augustyn 2020, 2023; Black 2011; Sangaline 2022; Stratton, 2011). To further complicate ideas of utopia and unity, these studies of inclusion often exclude ska scenes outside of Jamaica, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Ska music has garnered immense popularity throughout the world, significantly in Mexico. In this paper, I investigate Mexican ska music festivals as a gendered space to address current questions in ethnomusicology regarding intersectionality and gender. I ask: to what extent are ska festivals in Mexico City and Tijuana designed to be inclusive or exclusive gendered environments? Is creating a safe environment a priority for festival organizers? Who is performing? Who is not? How are notions of masculinity like machismo reinforced to serve as barriers? How do women circumvent or operate within such structures of aggressive masculinity? Drawing from digital ethnography and fieldwork in Mexico City and Tijuana, I use these questions as a starting point to examine the similarities and differences of various festivals as they relate to issues of creating gender-inclusive spaces.

Looking into Florence B. Price’s “Five Folksongs in Counterpoint”

Florence B. Price is often cited as the first African American woman to have a large-scale work performed by a major American orchestra; an honor achieved when her Symphony in E Minor was premiered by the Chicago Symphony in 1933. She is also remembered for her art songs and spiritual arrangements. Much of the published attention surrounding Price is related to her symphonic, keyboard, and vocal works, perhaps due to the magnitude of the symphony being a “first,” the status of her Piano Sonata in E Minor as award-winning, and her vocal works’ attachment to Marian Anderson. Even though there has been a growing interest in Price’s work over the last ten-to-fifteen years, there is still relatively little written about her instrumental chamber works.

One reason for this neglect is the until recent scarcity of extant scores. While she received acclaim for her first symphony, her Sonata in E Minor, art songs, and spiritual arrangements, she struggled to get many of her works performed or published. Because of this, many of her works were not saved for posterity and have gone missing. Were it not for the 2009 discovery of a treasure-trove of scores in Price’s former home, and the University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections’ acquisition of Price’s papers (including journals and manuscripts), much more of Price’s music would have been lost forever.[1]

Among the recently rediscovered scores in the Florence B. Price collection is Five Folksongs in Counterpoint. According to the manuscript, the piece was completed in 1951, within two years of Price’s death, though it is unclear when each of the movements was written. In program notes for a score that was edited and sold by the Apollo Chamber Players, Price biographer Linda Rae Brown explained that the string quartet could have been started as early as the 1920s, and erasures on the score indicate that it went through at least one name change.[2] Since the piece was finalized so late in her life, it offers a perspective of what Price sought to convey in her music at the end of her career. The potential that it was composed over the course of thirty years (or completed and edited), makes Five Folksongs in Counterpoint an interesting piece in which to analyze Florence Price’s compositional style for chamber works.

The aim of this study is to review Five Folksongs in Counterpoint as representative of Price’s compositional identity and reflective of her intersectionality as a southern-born, New England Conservatory-trained African American woman. Rather than emphasize whether or not this represents an important piece of American music, I aim to see how this work can exemplify an individual Florence B. Price compositional style.

Five Folksongs in Counterpoint is a string quartet in five movements, each of which is based on a different folksong. Three of the movements are based on African American spirituals: “Calvary,” “Shortnin’ Bread,” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” The original score shows that Five Folksongs in Counterpoint was once titled Five Negro Folksongs in Counterpoint but was likely changed with the addition of “Clementine” and “Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes,” two folksongs that are not of African American derivation.[3]

The use of spirituals was a staple in Price’s compositional oeuvre throughout her career, and the use of spirituals and spiritual-like melodies in her symphonies and piano works has been noted by several scholars.[4] When she attended the New England Conservatory as a teenager, she “had become familiar with the use of vernacular elements in serious composition through her studies with George Chadwick.”[5] It was at the conservatory that she likely studied the work of other composers that made use of African American folksong and spirituals in their work, notably Antonín Dvořák. Writing about Symphony in E Minor, Price’s first symphony which was written while she was a student, Rae Linda Brown notes that:

Both Dvořák’s and Price’s symphonies are in the key of E Minor and both works have subtitles that suggest the inspiration for their primary source material. Originally subtitled the “Negro Symphony,” Price’s work assimilates characteristic Afro-American folk idioms into classical structures. [6]

            The influence of Dvořák has also been noted by at least one reviewer of Five Folksongs in Counterpoint who said it “evoked Dvořák’s famed ‘American’ Quartet.”[7] In his oft-cited article, “The Real Values of Negro Melodies,” Antonin Dvořák stated “I am convinced that the future music of this country must be founded on what are called Negro melodies. These can be the foundation of a serious and original school of composition, to be developed in the United States.”[8] This call for an American nationalist musical identity resonated with Price whose compositional identity appears entwined with black nationalist ideals influenced by the New Negro Movement.[9]

The aspiration for cultural expression in perceived high art associated with the New Negro Movement may be the cause of the telling absence of blues influence in Price’s Five Folksongs in Counterpoint. Figures like Mahalia Jackson have shaped a tradition of substantial use of blues inflections when singing spirituals. This influence is so strong that Price’s relative absence in this instance emphasizes her individuality. It is also interesting that she avoided the influence of jazz given the time she moved to Chicago in 1927. In the late 1920s, Chicago was an important hub for jazz. Louis Armstrong was still based in Chicago and recording some of his seminal work with The Hot Five and The Hot Seven, and Jelly Roll Morton recording with his Red Hot Peppers. Given the city’s vibrant jazz scene at the time and Price’s commitment to including African American influences in her music, it is striking that Price managed to evade a more direct influence. While this shows her individuality, it may also be revealing of Price’s past and her intersectionality as a high-class African American woman. Today, jazz is seen by many as an intellectual music, but in the 1920s it was not seen as highbrow, and the genre’s history is rife with anecdotes of musicians—especially those with privileged backgrounds—who were discouraged from performing jazz. James DeJongh contextualized the view many African American elites’ of jazz and blues:

We may have to remind ourselves that Hughes’s identification of Harlem with jazz and blues, which now seems so natural—perhaps even a bit trite—was severely criticized by black authority figures and rejected in its own time… The spirituals had come to be accepted by the Negro elite as dignified and ennobling folk forms, but blues and jazz were embarrassing reminders of a status they were trying to escape.[10]

With its lack of blues and jazz characteristics, Five Folksongs in Counterpoint reveals that Price sought to elevate the spiritual and African American folksong through the lens of the post-Romanticism of western art music.

Florence Price attended the New England Conservatory from 1903 to 1906, a program that would encourage Price to use vernacular music when composing in the western art tradition. While Price was at the conservatory, it was headed by George Whitefield Chadwick, the institution’s third director who served that role from 1897 to 1931. At Chadwick’s direction, “the school continued to raise its musical standards to such an extent that it was ‘probably the most severe of any music school in the country.’”[11] As Rae Linda Brown noted,

Chadwick moved quickly to raise the academic standard of the Conservatory. He modified the curriculum from its earlier emphasis on singing and piano playing to one that stressed harmony, counterpoint theory and analysis, and composition. In keeping with Chadwick’s aim to establish a first-rate American music school, he developed his own harmony book, Harmony: A Course of Study (published in 1897), for class use. He explained, “I was ambitious to make the book a model of expression, most of the books on Harmony being more or less poor translations from the German.”[12]

Under Chadwick’s instruction, Price honed her compositional craft, and it was here that she created some of her earliest amalgamations of western art music and African American spirituals and folksongs.

The final movement of Five Folksongs in Counterpoint is “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” This movement shows Price taking the iconic pentatonic melody, and masterfully developing it along with new material, and gradually building the intensity resulting in a powerful piece that is telling of Price’s various identities.

In the first thirty-two measures of this movement (example 1) each instrumentalist, in turn, plays faithful renditions of the melody for eight measures, starting with the cello playing in C, the viola a fifth higher—in G, the second violin a fourth higher in C, and finally the first violin playing a fifth above that. The cello plays the melody unaccompanied with all of the parts joining in measure nine as the viola takes the melody. A look at the score for the movement’s opening shows that the melody is not the only shared material. Comparing the parts, it is clear that Price has used the melody of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” as the basis for thirty-two measure canon capable of being repeated and still maintaining its cohesiveness.

Example 1 - Opening melody

In the following section, Price departs from the familiar tune and instead develops themes and motives from the other parts of the canon, concealing melodic fragments of the original spiritual. Price’s choice to use her own thematic material as the primary focus for development rather than the melody of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” reinforces that this is not simply a rendition or arrangement of a spiritual, but a Florence Price composition based off of a spiritual. One example of thematic development of an accompanying part is in measures thirty-seven to forty-six. Price takes a motive heard first by the cello from measures eight to eleven, the viola in measures sixteen to nineteen, and the second violin in measures twenty-four to twenty-seven.

Example 2 - development theme

 The original theme (example 2) starts with ascending eighth notes that imply a B7 chord on the last two beats of measure eight which lead to a descending E minor figure on measure nine. The motive includes a few characteristics that will be developed later in the piece: an upper neighbor figure followed by a descending line, an octave leap, and a descending sixteenth note figure ending on a quarter note.

Example 3 - Development (in red), Melody (in blue)

Example 3 shows exactly how Price uses this theme from measures thirty-seven to forty-six. It is first heard in full by the second violin player, playing in C major. Price then sequences the last two beats of the motive, moving down by step with each repetition.  Two beats after the second violin plays the upper neighbor figure in measure thirty-eight it is played by the viola, followed by the cello in measure thirty-nine. Price uses this theme in every part, either in its entirety or fragmented until measure forty-six. Additionally, the original melody appears briefly in the cello part measure forty-five, and in the viola in measure forty-six. 

Example 4 - Melody Return

In measure seventy-three the main theme returns—in C Major—in the second violin part, with segments of the melody also appearing in the cello part. The first violin plays a driving sixteenth note accompanying line, which seems to deceptively imply the ending of the movement at measure eighty. Price instead creates an exciting drive towards the end of the piece by having the first violin come in alone with a tremolo eighth note line while the second violin fragments the theme in a variety of keys including E-flat major and G-flat major. For the melody’s return, Price no longer adheres to the canon, and the other parts play tremolos of varying length (whole notes in the cello, quarter notes in the viola, and eighth notes in the first violin). Building even more, the first violin, in double stops, plays the melody in A-flat. The melody continues to cycle through different keys before finally settling back to C major at the end.

In this piece, Price reflects her own duality as an African American woman and a conservatory-trained composer navigating a musical idiom, western art music, that has a historic disregard for both Black and female composers. In a letter to Serge Koussevitzky, she explains her music as an attempt to do just this:

Having been born in the South and having spent most of my childhood there I believe I can truthfully say that I understand the real Negro music. In some of my work I make use of the idiom undiluted. Again, at other times it merely flavors my themes. And at still other times thoughts come in the garb of the other side of my mixed racial background. I have tried to for practical purposes to cultivate and preserve a facility of expression in both idioms, although I have an unwavering and compelling faith that a national music very beautiful and very American can come from the melting pot just as the nation itself has done.[13]

The instrumentation, the traditional harmony, the looseness of the form, the contrapuntal texture, and her sense of nationalism are all traits commonly associated with romantic composers and can be viewed as an expression of her identity as a conservatory-trained composer. Her dedicated use of the spiritual, “undiluted” in this case, as the source of national representation, an expression of her identity as an African American woman.

The written histories of western art music have, for the most part, reflected the works of white men. Reviewing the history of western art music specific to the United States, one finds a similar focus on white male composers. As with other countries with a colonial past, the United States has a history of not recognizing the achievements of marginalized people, and African American women in particular have been left out in several areas of American history.[14]Florence Price recognized the stereotypes she had to combat in gaining recognition for her work. After one of the most often-cited achievements of her career, the Chicago Symphony performance of her first symphony in 1933 as part of a program of all-African American compositions, several of the journalists who reviewed the concert either failed to mention Price, or mentioned her in passing between praise for the male contributors.[15]One problematic view Judith Tick points out in her analysis of turn-of-the-century views of women in music is that “musical creativity was… masculine by definition because it relied on male intellectual and psychological resources.”[16] In her article, Tick is responding to a book that was published during Price’s formative years and was written by a prominent music critic, not some fringe personality. Tick also explains ideas of femininity in regard to music:

Femininity in music was alleged to be delicate, graceful, refined, and sensitive. It was defined as the eternal feminine…(ewige weibliche)… Through 1900 the aesthetics of the eternal feminine in music included both form and style, as well as emotive content… Vocal music was the essence of ewige weibliche because it “appeals more directly to the heart.” Since harmony and counterpoint were “logical,” they were alien to femininity.[17]

Florence Price spent her career fighting these preconceived notions of her music. In 1943, Price sent a letter to conductor Serge Koussevitzky of the Boston Symphony advocating for her work in the hopes that Koussevitzky would add one of her pieces to his program. These letters did not bear fruit, but the language Price uses in the beginning of her letter shows that she knew how her scores may be received:

 To begin with I have two handicaps—those of sex and race. I am a woman; and I have some Negro blood in my veins. Knowing the worst, then, would you be good enough to hold in check the possible inclination to regard a woman’s composition as long on emotionalism but short on virility and thought content;—until you shall have examined some of my work?

As to the handicap of race, may I relieve you by saying that I neither expect nor ask any concession on that score. I should like to be judged on merit alone—the great trouble having been to get conductors, who know nothing of my work (I am practically unknown in the East, except perhaps as the composer of two songs, one or the other of which Marian Anderson includes on most of her programs) to even consent to examine a score.[18]

 While Price did write vocal music, and found much success doing so, she continued writing in idioms stereotypically considered to be “intellectual” like the symphony or string quartet. In doing so, Price is put herself in direct opposition with these harmful stereotypes, and demanded the musical establishment judge her by her work. In this context, the choice to title her string quartet Five Folksongs in Counterpoint is telling of Price’s uncompromising compositional identity considering, to Teal’s point, counterpoint was viewed as too “logical” to be considered feminine.

The final comparison to be drawn between Florence B. Price and Five Folksongs for Counterpoint is their virtual disappearance. Florence Price’s name does not grace the pages of many music history books including Burkholder, Grout, and Palisca’s A History of Western Music, Kyle Gann’s American Music in the Twentieth Century, or John Henry Mueller’s The American Symphony Orchestra: A Social History of Musical Taste, a book published the year Five Folksongs for Counterpoint was completed.

Much like Price herself, Five Folksongs for Counterpoint was forgotten for decades. The score was found in Price’s abandoned St. Anne, IL home, “strewn all over the floor” with other lost compositions that had gone unheard. [19]

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[1] Florence Price, “ArchivesSpace at the University of Arkansas,” Collection: Florence Beatrice Smith Price Papers Addendum | ArchivesSpace at the University of Arkansas, accessed December 7, 2020, https://uark.as.atlas-sys.com/repositories/2/resources/1522.

The University of Arkansas bought the manuscripts from Price’s daughter in 2010. In 2018, it was announced that G. Schirmer had purchased the worldwide distribution rights of Price’s entire catalog. Among the formally missing pieces were Price’s fourth symphony, several orchestral works including Colonial Dance and Songs of the Oak, two violin concertos, and her Piano Concerto in One Movement.

[2] Mounir Nessim, “Five Folksongs in Counterpoint by Florence Price,” Mounir Nessim viola (Mounir Nessim viola, July 15, 2020), https://nessimviola.com/blog/five-folksongs-in-counterpoint-by-florence-price.

[3] Rae Linda Brown, Guthrie P. Ramsey, and Carlene J. Brown, The Heart of a Woman: the Life and Music of Florence B. Price (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020), 231.

[4] Rae Linda Brown has included this point in several of her writings on Price including her book The Heart of a Woman and the program notes she contributed to G. Schirmer’s publication of Price’s Sonata in E Minor for Piano. It is also mentioned in an article by Helen Walker-Hill, “Black Women Composers in Chicago: Then and Now,” Black Music Research Journal 12, no. 1 (1992). Several dissertations and theses have cited the use of spirituals including A Study of the Lives and Works of Five Black Women Composers in America by Mildred Denby Green (1975), A Stylistic Comparative Analysis of Selected Art Songs by Florence Price and Margaret Bonds by Meng-Chieh (Mavis) Hsieh (2019).

[5] Brown, The Heart of a Woman: the Life and Music of Florence B. Price, 128

[6] Ibid, 128

[7] Tim Sawyier, “Chicago Classical Review,” Chicago Classical Review RSS, September 5, 2019, https://chicagoclassicalreview.com/2019/09/florence-price-work-provides-a-highlight-with-nexus-chamber-music/.

[8] Meng-Chieh Mavis Hsieh, “A Stylistic and Comparative Analysis of Selected Art Songs by Florence Price and Margaret Bonds” (dissertation, n.d.).

[9] Brown, The Heart of a Woman: the Life and Music of Florence B. Price, 127

[10] James De Jongh, Vicious Modernism: Black Harlem and the Literary Imagination (New York, NY: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010).

[11] Edward John FitzPatrick, “The Music Conservatory in America” (dissertation, 1963).

[12] Brown, The Heart of a Woman: the Life and Music of Florence B. Price, 56

[13] Brown, The Heart of a Woman: the Life and Music of Florence B. Price, 186

[14] Christopher Lebron, “The Invisibility of Black Women,” June 27, 2019, http://bostonreview.net/race-literature-culture-gender-sexuality-arts-society/christopher-lebron-invisibility-black-women.

[15] Brown, The Heart of a Woman: the Life and Music of Florence B. Price, 116-118.

[16] Jane M. Bowers and Judith Tick, “Passed Away Is the Piano Girl,” in Women Making Music: the Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), pp. 325-348.

[17] Ibid

[18] Brown, The Heart of a Woman: the Life and Music of Florence B. Price, 186

[19] Karen Tricot Steward, “After Lost Scores Are Found In Abandoned House, Musicians Give Life To Florence Price's Music,” KUAR, accessed December 16, 2020, https://www.ualrpublicradio.org/post/after-lost-scores-are-found-abandoned-house-musicians-give-life-florence-prices-music.

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Berg, Gregory. 2013. "My Dream: Art Songs and Spirituals by Florence Price." Journal of Singing 69 (3) (Jan): 385-386. https://login.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/my-dream-art-songs-spirituals-florence-price/docview/1270666471/se-2?accountid=10920.

“Biography.” Florence Price. Accessed December 14, 2020. http://www.florenceprice.org/new-page-1.  

Bowers, Jane M., and Judith Tick. “Passed Away Is the Piano Girl.” Essay. In Women Making Music: the Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950, 325–48. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

Brown, Rae Linda. "Price [née Smith], Florence Bea(trice)." Grove Music Online. 30 Mar. 2020;

Accessed 24 Oct. 2020. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-90000367402.

Brown, Rae Linda, Guthrie P. Ramsey, and Carlene J. Brown. The Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020.

Brown, Rae Linda. "The Woman's Symphony Orchestra of Chicago and Florence B. Price's Piano Concerto in One Movement." American Music 11, no. 2 (1993): 185-205. Accessed November 2, 2020. doi:10.2307/3052554.

Carter, Marquese. “The Poet and Her Songs: Analyzing the Art Songs of Florence B. Price,”

2018.

Cooper, Michael. “A Rediscovered African-American Female Composer Gets a Publisher.” The New York Times. The New York Times, November 15, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/arts/music/florence-price-music-publisher-schirmer.html.  

De Jongh, James. Vicious Modernism: Black Harlem and the Literary Imagination. New York, NY: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010.

Douglas Shadleon February 20, 2019. “Plus Ça Change: Florence B. Price in the #BlackLivesMatter Era.” NewMusicBox, February 20, 2019. https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/plus-ca-change-florence-b-price-in-the-blacklivesmatter-era/.  

Ege, Samantha. "Florence Price and the Politics of her Existence.”." Kapralova Society Journal:

A Journal of Women in Music 16 (2018): 1-10.

Fabre Geneviève, and Michel Feith. Temples for Tomorrow: Looking Back at the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001.

FitzPatrick, Edward John. “The Music Conservatory in America,” 1963.

Hine, Darlene Clark, John McCluskey, and Marshanda A. Smith, eds. The Black Chicago Renaissance. Urbana, Chicago; Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2012. Accessed December 8, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1hd18gg.

Hsieh, Meng-Chieh Mavis. “A Stylistic and Comparative Analysis of Selected Art Songs by Florence Price and Margaret Bonds,” 2019.

Howland, John. "Jazz Rhapsodies in Black and White: James P. Johnson's

"Yamekraw"." American Music 24, no. 4 (2006): 445-509. Accessed November 2, 2020. doi:10.2307/25046051.

Jackson, Barbara Garvey. "Florence Price, Composer." The Black Perspective in Music 5, no. 1

(1977): 31-43. Accessed November 2, 2020. doi:10.2307/1214357. 

Lambert, John W. “The Price Is Right for Priceless as Florence Price Emerges from the Shadows at Duke.” CVNC, September 21, 2019. https://cvnc.org/article.cfm?articleId=9550. 

Langley, Allan Lincoln. "Chadwick and the New England Conservatory of Music." The Musical

Quarterly 21, no. 1 (1935): 39-52. http://www.jstor.org/stable/738964.

Lebron, Christopher. “The Invisibility of Black Women,” June 27, 2019. http://bostonreview.net/race-literature-culture-gender-sexuality-arts-society/christopher-lebron-invisibility-black-women.  

Maxile, Horace J. "Signs, Symphonies, Signifyin(G): African-American Cultural Topics as

Analytical Approach to the Music of Black Composers." Black Music Research

Journal 28, no. 1 (2008): 123-38. Accessed November 2, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25433797.

Murchison, Gayle. "Current Research Twelve Years after the William Grant Still

Centennial." Black Music Research Journal 25, no. 1/2 (2005): 119-54. Accessed November 3, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30039288.

“Music.com: Florence Price: ‘Five Folksongs in Counterpoint.’” Classical, November 11, 2018. https://africlassical.blogspot.com/2018/11/classical-musiccom-florence-price-five.html.  

Nash, Jennifer C. “Re-Thinking Intersectionality.” Feminist Review 89, no. 1 (June 2008): 1–

15. https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2008.4.

Nahum, Daniel Brascher. 1933. "Roland Hayes Concert shows Progress of Race in Music." The

Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), Jun 24, 11. https://login.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/historical-newspapers/roland-hayes-concert-shows-progress-race-music/docview/492352126/se-2?accountid=10920.

Nessim, Mounir. “Five Folksongs in Counterpoint by Florence Price.” Mounir Nessim viola. Mounir Nessim viola, July 15, 2020. https://nessimviola.com/blog/five-folksongs-in-counterpoint-by-florence-price.  

Price, Florence. “ArchivesSpace at the University of Arkansas.” Collection: Florence Beatrice Smith Price Papers Addendum | ArchivesSpace at the University of Arkansas. Accessed December 7, 2020. https://uark.as.atlas-sys.com/repositories/2/resources/1522.  

Sawyier, Tim. “Chicago Classical Review.” Chicago Classical Review RSS, September 5, 2019. https://chicagoclassicalreview.com/2019/09/florence-price-work-provides-a-highlight-with-nexus-chamber-music/.  

Smith, Bethany Jo. “Song to the Dark Virgin: Race and Gender in Five Art Songs of Florence B. Price,” 2007.

Steward, Karen Tricot. “After Lost Scores Are Found In Abandoned House, Musicians Give Life To Florence Price's Music.” KUAR. Accessed December 16, 2020. https://www.ualrpublicradio.org/post/after-lost-scores-are-found-abandoned-house-musicians-give-life-florence-prices-music.

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Teacher 40, no. 1 (1990): 20-63. Accessed November 3, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43542379.

Walker, Ryan Thomas. 2015. "Lessons in Musical Excellence: The Pedagogical Contributions of

George Whitefield Chadwick." Order No. 10131862, University of South Dakota. https://login.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/lessons-musical-excellence-pedagogical/docview/1810422312/se-2?accountid=10920.

A Spoonful of Levity Helps the Racism Go Down

T.D. Rice’s minstrel character, Jim Crow, was immensely popular from its inception in the 1820s. The character Jim Crow was instrumental in the popularity of minstrelsy as a form of entertainment and inspired countless songs and skits throughout the nineteenth century. Jim Crow – noted as the first stock character in minstrelsy – promulgated a stereotype of Black field hands being untrustworthy, shiftless, naïve, and boastful. Alan Green notes, somehow by combining blackness, rags, grotesqueness, song, dance, and dialect, ‘Daddy Rice’ had indeed fathered a universally-acceptable comic ‘Negro.’”[1] The legacy of the character continued as it became used as a derogatory term for Black Americans, and later the name became associated with various segregation laws in the United States.

Alongside Jim Crow on the minstrel stage was the city-slicking Zip Coon, created by George Washington Dixon. These two characters represented “two comic types which were to reign throughout the long career of Negro minstrelsy: the plantation or field-hand darky and the citified dandy.[2] Before the Civil War, the Zip Coon and other characters like him were created to make fun of freed African Americans who lived in the cities. Matthew Morrison described the Zip Coon as “the blackfaced urban dandy—attractive, well dressed, ‘educated’—effectively embodies the irony and fear of black ‘upward’ mobility throughout the nation, as he also performs the class frustrations of an urban, white working-class immigrant population on the rise between the 1820s and the 1840s.”[3] The Zip Coon has not had the cultural staying power of Jim Crow, but the impact of the character, the racist songs about him, and the racist songs he and Jim Crow would sing inspired decades of popular songs that spread and upheld racist stereotypes of Black Americans. In this paper, I investigate coon songs, a genre of comic songs popularized by blackface minstrelsy that developed into its own genre. The peak of the coon song’s popularity was about 1880 to the end of the First World War. In this paper, I will show how these songs furthered the spread of racist stereotypes, how they reflect racist ideology of the day, and how widespread its popularity was, reaching the height of American society. Furthermore, I will link these songs to the general attitude of many white Americans – as shown by legislation and writings of the time – towards Black Americans in the decades after the failure of Reconstruction.

The etymology of coon song, as with the Zip Coon, is linked to Black Americans being popularly associated with the raccoon. According to James Dormon, the association had nothing to do physical features, “but the association was largely by way of the ascribed affection of blacks for the amiable and tasty little beasts. By ascription, blacks loved hunting, trapping, and eating raccoons.”[4] Because of this association, the term “coon” became a racial epithet for African Americans. The term may have been further popularized by G.W. Dixon’s famous character, but that was not the genesis of the term. Zip Coon was not even the first known character named to reference raccoons. Andrew Barton’s 1767 The Disappointment; or the Force of Credulity includes a Black character name “Raccoon.”[5] Dixon’s Zip Coon, however, held much more cultural weight than previous characters, and is the titular character of a song that was influential on the coon song genre.

Popularity of coon song began to grow in the 1890s. However, by the end of the century the song form became an undeniable staple in American music and shows that did not include at least one coon song were doomed. As a writer for The Sioux City Journal noted in 1898:

Rising in popularity for about three years the “coon song” has almost swept away all competitors, says the Chicago Tribune. Scarcely a single song outside this classification has become popular within the last year. When the troops lay in the trenches around Santiago it almost seemed that “There’ll Be a Hot Time” had become our national anthem. A vaudeville show without a good “coon act” is as nothing now. A burlesque, according to the latest advices from New York, must be mostly a “black face” performance. Indeed, New York is reported to be quite mad on the subject. In the new Casino burlesque, for example, Miss Belle Davis sings “coon songs,” Miss Alice Atherton sings “coon songs,” Mr. Somebody Else, a “real coon,” sings “coon songs” […] The “real coon” is taking advantage of all this and is pressing hard the popularity of the “black face comedian” who is not the real thing. A team who only a few years ago were singing in a free show in Chicago are now getting one of the biggest salaries in the profession, and there is a story of a phenomenal jump from $35 a week to $350 made by another well known group of singers.[6]

This article makes clear the popularity of coon song, but also reveals that the American public writ large was interested in a more “authentic” portrayal of African Americans in public performance of coon song. Like the minstrel tradition that predated and gave birth to the musical genre, coon song offered a foot in the door for Black performers and songwriters to make a living in show business. This comparison has been made by other scholars who attempt to explain why Black actors, singers and songwriters willfully participate in their own denigration. Patricia Schroeder notes that beyond job opportunities, coon song writers – and minstrels before them – received benefits like “mobility, good pay, community status, and training in professional musicianship, all rare and valuable commodities for former slaves and the children of former slaves.”[7]

While the composition and performance of these songs may have led to upward mobility and fame for Black entertainers, it did not grant them immunity from American racism. On August 13, 1900, a police officer named Robert J. Thorpe died after he was stabbed by an African American man named Arthur Harris the night before. This triggered race riots and lynch mobs across the United States. A writer for the Birmingham Age-Herald wrote:

A mob of several hundred persons formed at 11 o’clock tonight in front of the home of Policeman Robert J. Thorpe… to wreak vengeance upon the negroes of that neighborhood because one of their race had caused the policeman’s death… in a few minutes the mob tonight swelled to 1,500 people or more, and as they became violent the negroes fled in terror into any hiding place they could find… The mob of white men, which grew with rapidity, raged through the district and negroes regardless of age or sex were indiscriminately attacked.[8]

Two weeks after this event, there were still rioters in New York. The Indianapolis paper, The Freeman wrote about Black entertainers being victimized by the mobs including Ernest Hogan, the composer of the famous coon song, “All Coons Look Alike to Me,”

The wild, uncontrollable passion of the mob was best shown on Broadway at 12:30 o’clock this morning, when that popular comedian and song writer, Ernest Hogan, was chased like a wild beast with a pack at his heels…

‘All Coons Look Alike to Me,’ Mr. Hogan’s own composition, had been rendered, to the applause of a large audience. Hogan, fashionably dressed, stood on the curb, twirling his cane.

A cry came from Forty-fourth street and Eight avenue, and a mob of five hundred men, armed with clubs and stones, surged over toward Broadway. Hogan was seen. ‘Get the [n-word]’ was the chorus. Hogan dropped his cane and started down Broadway on a run. The mob followed and for the next three minutes it had a life and death race for Hogan.[9]

As evidenced by this event, the upward mobility provided to Black artists could hardly be enough to justify coon song as a positive means of racial expression since the violence of racists could not be undone or avoided by these tunes. Additionally, the historic harm done by the genre far out-weighs the historic benefit. Beyond its being named after a racial slur, coon songs featured Black characters who were often portrayed as “foppish…, thieves, highly sexed, and violent.”[10] An article from 1906 published in the Kansas City Star notes, “There were hundreds of these songs and they treated of every variety of vice from the chicken-stealing, gambling, shiftless, gin-drinking, razor-fighting ‘[n-word].’”[11]

Looking into examples that portray African Americans as shiftless, the 1902 song “If Time Was Money, I’d Be a Millionaire” opens with the description of the song’s character as “a lazy coon a hangin’ round.” From there the first verse perpetuates the Jim Crow character of a Black American who is both lazy yet big and strong, which was used to imply natural ability of Black individuals for field work:

A lazy coon a hangin’ ‘round heard Parson Jenkins say

“Dat time was money” and it almost took his breath away

He never done a stroke of work he was too big and strong,

He’d stretch out in the boilin’ sun and sleep de whole day long

Of course he never had a dollar in his tattered clothes,

And didn’t own a pair of shoes to cover up his toes

De only thing he had was lots of time to pass away

An’ when he heard that time was money dis is what he did say[12]

This song also insinuates that this character is stupid and fundamentally does not understand the phrase “time is money.” The refrain of the song hammers this point in a way that leaves little to the imagination:

If time was money I'd be a millionaire

I’ve got time honey an’ chunks of it to spare

Oh dere ain’t no other coon could get wealthy half so soon

If time was money I’d be a millionaire[13]

In the second verse, Felix F Feist is more aggressive with his language – using the n-word twice – and asserting this man’s laziness in every line, saying:

Dis [n-word] was too lazy fo to raid a chicken roost

Because he’d have to lift his arm to give his hand a boost

He nearly starved to death one day fo’ certainly because

Didn’t have the energy to move his lazy jaws

Dis coon was never sociable it tired him to talk

If twenty mules would kick him all at once he wouldn’t walk

‘an so a baskin’ in the sun dis [n-word] laid all day,

A grinnin’, chucklin’ to himself an’ dis am what he’d say

 The use of the n-word in the second verse of “If Time Was Money” caught the attention of a writer for the Indianapolis paper, The Freeman who noted,

Felix F. Fiest, a white man, author of the words to the coon song, “If Time was Money” has used the word “n-word” in the second verse of his song. I find the word… to be common place and not appreciated by the best classes of people. There seems to be no objections to the word “coon” and the word “darkey” could easily be substituted.”[14]

Elsewhere in the article, the author notes “music publishers took a trip abroad last winter in search of a substitute for the ‘coon’ song… In the meantime, Jos. W. Stearn’s music company has consumed all the famous song writers in New York… to flood the market with genuine coon songs.” The two quotes show that this author does not take as much issue with the practice of writing such offensive songs (though the article mentions a publisher who refuses to write them), but does take issue with the language of certain tunes, showing that even for the Black press, racism in music is not completely unacceptable provided the songwriters use more admissible racist nomenclature. Furthermore, it is not bothersome or worth mentioning in the article that the mere premise of the song is perpetuating racist stereotypes and portraying a Jim Crow-like character that is so lazy he would starve to death since he cannot bring himself to chew. At this point, however, the premise of racist song themes was so commonplace that it would not be noteworthy since it was simply part of the song form.

“If Time Was Money” was not the only song that leaned on the trope of racialized laziness and relating it to economic misfortune. Two other examples of this stereotype were both written in1898 song: “I Wish My Rent Was Paid,” and “I’m Having a Million Dollar Dream.” “I Wish My Rent Was Paid,” begins: “A group of coons one day / Was a wishin’ their time away / They were wishin’ for wealth, and a-wishin for health / And a-wishin’ they could get more pay.” “I’m Having a Million Dollar Dream” begins by describing a character, Bill Jackson as “a lazy coon, as lazy as could be / I never seen such worthless loon since coons were first set free.” All three of these songs portray African Americans as both obsessed with being rich as well as unwilling or unable to work to make money. The latter two songs describe lazy, day-dreaming dead beats before adding stanzas about how they go find jobs and are then unsuccessful. The writing of characters too lazy to lift a finger, who then find work but are not financially rewarded is an antinomy within the stereotype. African Americans are seen as simultaneously too lazy to earn any money and too stupid to keep the money they earn from working – ultimately making them unfit to do business in the eyes of white Americans.

            Alongside being portrayed as lazy, African Americans were also often portrayed as violent. The threat of violence was most often signified with a character wielding a razor. Sometimes the reference is in the title like the 1885 song, “De Coon Dat Had De Razor,” or it could be worked into the song for the sake of mentioning a razor. The song “Armazindy Lee” is a love song in which the point of view is a man singing about the woman he wants to marry. In the second verse while talking about the wedding ceremony, the songwriter Eugene Todd includes the line, “Of case there is a fight in the middle of the night / why you’d better have a razor up your sleeve.”[15]  Additionally, some songs portrayed a dangerous character like the 1896 song, “Bully Song,” which includes these starting lines for the two verses:

 Have yo’ heard about dat bully dat’s just come to town

He’s round among de [n-words] a layin’ their bodies down

I’m a lookin’ for dat bully and he must be found

I’m a Tennessee [n-word] and I don’t allow

[…]

I’s gwine down the street with my ax in my hand

I’m lookin’ for dat bully and I’ll sweep him off dis land

I’m a lookin’ for dat bully and he must be found

I’ll take ‘long my razor, I’se gwine to carve him deep[16]

            This song sticks tightly to the theme of violence, making sure in the second verse to reference the protagonist’s weapons: an ax and a razor. These songs amplify the notion that African Americans are violent and to be feared. If their laziness was justification to exclude them in business, the violence was a justification to keep African Americans at arm’s length socially.

Coon songs were written as comedy songs, but the stereotypes they spread had very real and unhumorous consequences. Notions that African Americans were inherently violent, stupid, lazy, and more sexually deviant than white Americans were not just littering the pages of coon song but represented widespread American thought. These stereotypes had an influence on business practices, social dynamics, scientific theories, and legislation. Moreover, the legislation birthed out of insidious American racism further impacted the social and business lives of African Americans.

Outside of the context of music and theater, coon song is used as a pop culture reference for American racists. Coon song was referenced in a 1903 poem sent into the Belleville News Democrat by a reader who was furious that President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington over to the White House for a dinner two years prior. The poem entitled “[N-words] in the White House” begins with, “Things in the White House / Looking mighty curious / [N-words] running everywhere / White people furious.”[17] The fourteen-stanza poem is penned by “Unchained Poet in Democrat Leader, Missouri,” who primarily complains that Black men have been allowed to step foot inside the White House with passages like:

[N-words] on the front porch

[N-words] on the gable

[N-words] in the dining room

[N-words] at the table

The poem also advocates beheading the president as well as including references to African American music styles like the cake walk and coon song:

[N-words] in the sitting room

Making all the talk

[N-words] in the ball room

Doing cake walk

[N-words] in the east room

Make a might throng

[N-words] in the music room

Singing a coon song

            The song references these two popular forms of entertainment along with playing craps, plundering, and “raising hell” as though these are strictly activities and forms of entertainment enjoyed by African Americans. As noted, however, coon songs were first written by white entertainers, reflecting white perception of African Americans more than reality. The vitriol for African Americans being spewed across the pages of the Belleville News Democrat shows themes found in coon songs were not innocent fun or light-hearted jabs, they were heart-felt sentiments for a substantial number of Americans around the start of the twentieth century. These racist beliefs are being reinforced with every new song being heard, as listeners ingest another spoonful of racism every time the gather around the piano. This happened often, as coon song’s popularity was so immense that in 1898 an article was written about President William McKinley’s acceptance of the genre.

In the Afro-American Sentinel titled “McKinley’s Musical Tastes,” President McKinley is portrayed as a pious, hymn-singing man who enjoys listening to opera. The article’s subheading, “The President Has Succumbed to the ‘Coon Song’ Craze,” is addressed laying affirming the president’s high-brow taste, saying that the president does not “despise the modern songs of light opera and the vaudevilles.”[18] The article notes that McKinley was delighted to have singer Kate Huntington serenade him with the song “Louisiana Lou.” The lyrics are not as overtly racist as songs like “If Time Was Money, I’d Be a Millionaire” or the myriad of other songs that portray African Americans as lazy, violent, and oversexed. However, the lyrics are still bursting with mimicry of “Black” dialect. For instance, the refrain of the piece is written:

Lou, Lou, I lub you; I lub you, dat's true

Don't cry, don't sigh, you'll see me in de mornin'

Dream, dream, dream ob me, and I'll dream ob you

My Louisiana, Louisiana, Louisiana Lou

The refrain is filled with the typical trappings of apparent Black dialect often found in coon song: “d” replaces “th” as in “dat’s true,” “b” replaces “v” and “f” as in “I lub you” or “dream ob me.” These linguistic mannerisms are carried over from the minstrel caricatures of African Americans like Jim Crow or Zip Coon. The use of faux “Black” dialect was the most universal stereotype in coon song and is included in the very definition of the genre provided on Grove Music Online.[19] The acceptance of the stereotype by McKinley, who was voted into office with the expectation that he would be as progressive as other Republicans of the time, exemplifies how normalized these stereotypes were by the end of the nineteenth century.

Stereotypes found in coon song proved to be most harmful in the creation of legislation. In the early days of minstrelsy, the perceived lazy plantation-dwelling enslaved Jim Crow and well-dressed yet undignified city-dwelling dandy Zip Coon were created to poke fun at African Americans. These portrayals primarily made African Americans look foolish and lazy. However, in the decades following emancipation, violence became a more significant theme and the laziness amplified to paint newly freed African Americans as both inferior and threatening. Notions of white superiority and fear were used to rationalize laws meant to keep white people as distanced from African Americans as possible.

In 1875, congress passed the Civil Rights Act which stated:

That all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude. [20]

In 1883, about the year that “the fad [of coon songs] had its origins,” the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act was called to question and swiftly nullified by the United States Supreme Court.[21] This made it possible for states to enact laws that kept African American passengers separated from white passengers on public conveyances like steamboats, train cars, and busses – which many states adopted during the heyday of coon songs. Part of the justification for racial separation on public transit was the perceived threat to white people. This perception was fueled by ideas seen in coon songs as Phillip Bruce makes clear in his 1911 article when he justifies segregating train cars:

The white people… demanded the change [to double accommodations in order to separate by race], and the railways offered no serious opposition. A more useful law was never inserted in the Southern statute book. No one who remembers the former promiscuous commingling of whites and blacks in the Southern trains can fail to recall the scenes of violence witnessed there in consequence of the aggressive attitude of negroes inflamed by drink. [22] 

The duel stereotyping of African Americans as both lacking intelligence and averse to work ethic resulted in their being treated as a truly inferior race of people. This was compounded by scientific racists who espoused the view that “innate physiological and biological differences [that] separated the races.”[23]  This resulted in extremely condescending views of African American’s role in American society. William Starr Myers claims “the negro must be recognized as one of an inferior, not merely a backward, race. He must be treated as a ‘grown-up child’ – with justice, but with authority. He must be educated and given every opportunity to develop to the limit of his capacity.”[24] He then minimizes the achievements of any African Americans and marginalizes their place in society as a helper to the white establishment by saying, “a few of the thoroughly capable negroes (and their number is pitifully small) should be educated above the average of their fellows to aid the whites in leading their people.”[25] Philip Bruce echoes the presentation of African American intellect in coon song in his reasoning for treating them as second class citizens, saying:

In rushing in and arbitrarily and prematurely requiring the South to enfranchise the indigent and illiterate black man almost as soon as he had obtained his freedom, the North dislocated hopelessly for a time that judicious evolutionary process through which negro suffrage would have passed, had the Southern people been left to confer that right gradually and to regulate its exercise.[26]

Negative stereotypes that were reinforced by coon song did incalculable damage to the ways in which African Americans were perceived, as evidenced by the way in which writers present Jim Crow laws as ways to preserve Southern (white) society as well as to protect the apparently helpless (but also overly violent) African Americans during their process of social evolution. Preserving Southern society is central to Philip Bruce’s article:

The most notable achievements of this constructive local statesmanship consist of five great enactments, namely, the practical disfranchisement of the negro, the prohibition of the intermarriage of the races, the interdiction of their co-education, their separation in all public conveyances, and their domiciliary segregation in the cities.[27]

            The racist drivel found throughout the coon song genre showed a sort of fascination with African American culture. Not an accurate depiction of African American life, but a construction of Blackness created by white Americans – a construction that would allow for the continued oppression of a formerly-enslaved group of people. The construction of race and racial stereotyping in the United States is still not completely solved more than fifty years after the end of segregation and over one hundred years after the popularity of coon songs died out. Coon songs started to fade away in the early 1900s with articles marking the end of the genre appearing throughout the latter half of the aughts. In 1906, a white-owned newspaper, The Kansas City Star published an article titled “’Coon Songs’ on the Wane: The Rapid Rise and Decline of ‘Rag Time’ Music” in which they gleefully declare that the sun is setting on coon songs and its parent genre ragtime:

The American public have renounced the “coon song” with its negro “rag time” Probably no fad in the musical world ever took hold of the popular fancy with a more tenacious or longed-lived grip than the “coon” song… The public mind was saturated with it…

About three years ago the popularity of the rag-time song began to wane and it has been rapidly approaching the extinction since then. It isn’t quite dead, of course. Once in a while somebody has the heartlessness to hammer out a rag-time “selection” on the piano. But hardly anybody composes one nowadays.[28]

The article continues its obituary for ragtime and coon song, lamenting that such annoying music has remained in the public sphere for nearly two decades. Not once, however, does the author cite the racist lyrics as a reason to celebrate the genre’s demise. Rather, they are more interested in the quality of the lyrical structure and repetition of themes than the message of the genre. An African American-owned newspaper, The Freeman, on the other hand, published an article in 1909 entitled “’Coon’ Songs Must Go” in which they lambast the laziness of lyricists who rely on tired stereotypes to sell a song. This lengthy article dissects how damaging the music is for African Americans, how African Americans participated in their own denigration, and notes how the repeated use of racial epithets in songs started as fun but did not stay tethered to the music.

Coon songs, after the great damage they have done to the American colored man are now dying out. Although “rag” time melody may live forever, the words “coon,” “[n-word]” and darkey are now being omitted by song writers. Usually some fictitious name as “Sam Johnson” and “Linda Lue” are used in the lines of poetry instead of the word “coon” which is very offensive to the colored race and makes the hair raise on their heads when they hear it. There is a great difference in composers of 20 years ago to the later day poets… Nowadays the composers have no respect for good people, no thought of elevating, careless of hurting good innocent people’s, they rush their horrible junk on the market for sale. Out for graft they use slang hurried-up poetry – anything that will sell quickly. The colored writers not knowing the harm they were doing took a stick to break their own hands by writing “coon” songs.

[…]

Williams & Walker are a great deal to blame for being the originators and establishing the name “coon” upon our race… In order to achieve success or to attract the attention of the public they branded themselves as “the two real coons.” Their names accompanied with “coon” songs was soon heralded… As much as to say the Negro has now changed his name. He is no more human, but a “coon.” [Williams & Walker and Ernest Hogan] needed the money, what little they received, and the white people needed the laugh on the ignorant… Colored men in general took no offense… and laughed as heartily on hearing a “coon” song as the whites. But where the rub came is when the colored man was called a “coon” outside of the opera house. Instead of the whole race raising up in arms and protesting against such slang used in songs and such horrible caricatures on the title pages, they good naturedly joined in the chorus “All Coons Look Alike to Me.”[29]

Additionally, the author discusses the effects on children hearing the casual racism of coons songs.

Every colored man and woman of any pride, whether educated or not, becomes grossly insulted when called a “coon.” Yet he can’t go to a theatre nor listen to a phonograph without being told that he is a “coon.” The name “coon” in a song we understand is only meant… to amuse or to cause laughter while you play the song… but it don’t stop there. A show goes to a country town – some low down, loud-mouth “coon shouter” sings “Coon, Coon, Coon” or some other song… with an emphasis on the word “coon.” Then the people, especially the children are educated that a colored man is a “coon.” What was meant for a jest is taken seriously. [30]

            The legacy of the coon song is summed up well in the sentiment that it was a jest taken seriously. However, in the wake of the Civil War along with the rise and fall of reconstruction, it is more likely that coon song was never truly jest. The hatred that filled the pages of hundreds of song books represented real resentment that had festered in primarily Southern whites since the end of the war. By repeating heinous phrases with a laugh and a smile, racism could be made more palatable for white audiences who took little pushing to hop on board, as well as African American audiences.

---

[1] Green, Alan W. C. “‘Jim Crow,’ ‘Zip Coon’: The Northern Origins of Negro Minstrelsy.” The Massachusetts Review 11, no. 2 (1970): 385–97. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25087995.

[2] Ibid, 390.

[3]Matthew D. Morrison, “Race, Blacksound, and the (Re)Making of Musicological Discourse,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 72, no. 3 (2019), 81-823. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2019.72.3.781.

[4] James H. Dormon, “Shaping the Popular Image of Post-Reconstruction American Blacks: The ‘Coon Song’ Phenomenon of the Gilded Age, American Quarterly, Vol. 40, no. 4 (December 1988), 452

[5] Ibid, 451.

[6] "In the Theatrical World the Dramatic Season in Sioux City in New in Full Sway." Sioux City Journal (Sioux City, Iowa), September 4, 1898: 5. Readex: America's Historical Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A11A8291E9BB54EB8%40EANX-11B5CA0A379EA5C0%402414537-11B5CA0A68056C20%404-11B5CA0B295C8810%40In%2Bthe%2BTheatrical%2BWorld%2Bthe%2BDramatic%2BSeason%2Bin%2BSioux%2BCity%2Bin%2BNew%2Bin%2BFull%2BSway.

[7] Patricia R. Schroeder, “Passing for Black: Coon Songs and the Performance of Race,” Wiley Online Library (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, June 9, 2010), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1542-734X.2010.00740.x,143. 

[8] "New York Mob after Negroes Repetition of the Recent Riot in New Orleans. Many Blacks." Age-Herald (Birmingham, Alabama), August 16, 1900: [1]. Readex: America's Historical Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A11EC25AD467AEC15%40EANX-11F4787A26D6C3A8%402415248-11F4787A30408A00%400-11F4787A6E1276D0%40New%2BYork%2BMob%2Bafter%2BNegroes%2BRepetition%2Bof%2Bthe%2BRecent%2BRiot%2Bin%2BNew%2BOrleans.%2BMany%2BBlacks.

[9] "Stage." Freeman (Indianapolis, Indiana), September 1, 1900: 5. Readex: America's Historical Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A12B28495A8DAB1C8%40EANX-12C8A2616CAAF3A8%402415264-12C8A261A1BF5010%404-12C8A2625527F460%40Stage.

[10] Neal, Brandi A. "Coon song." Grove Music Online. 16 Oct. 2013; Accessed 10 Dec. 2021. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002249084.

[11] "'Coon Songs' on the Wane. The Rapid Rise and Decline of 'Rag Time' Music." Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri), March 4, 1906: 13. Readex: America's Historical Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A1126152C152E4978%40EANX-11650C30B0520690%402417274-11650C34C55F6590%4038-11650C43C3C86A10%40%2522Coon%2BSongs%2522%2Bon%2Bthe%2BWane.%2BThe%2BRapid%2BRise%2Band%2BDecline%2Bof%2B%2522Rag%2BTime%2522%2BMusic.

[12] Felix F. Feist, If Time was Money, I’d be a Millionaire, 1902

[13] Feist, 1902.

[14] "Professional Philosophy." Freeman (Indianapolis, Indiana), July 19, 1902: [5]. Readex: African American Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANAAA&docref=image/v2%3A12B28495A8DAB1C8%40EANAAA-12C4F968687037F8%402415950-12C4F968964ADD08%404-12C4F96979992DA0%40Professional%2BPhilosophy.

[15] Armazindy Lee,

[16] Bully Song

[17] "Poetry," Belleville News Democrat (Belleville, Illinois), July 25, 1903: 2. Readex: America's Historical Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A114CEEB0320B0130%40EANX-11532DC0A49130D8%402416321-11532DC126037DB8%401-11532DC24D9B8928%40Poetry.

[18] "McKinley's Musical Tastes. The President Has Succumbed to the 'Coon Song' Craze." Afro-American Sentinel (Omaha, Nebraska), February 5, 1898: 1. Readex: African American Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANAAA&docref=image/v2%3A12B9767335867038%40EANAAA-12CE2CDC1312D7D0%402414326-12CC42BC041E1F78%400-12EA3C091ACE8C80%40McKinley%2527s%2BMusical%2BTastes.%2BThe%2BPresident%2BHas%2BSuccumbed%2Bto%2Bthe%2B%2522Coon%2BSong%2522%2BCraze.

[19] Neal, “Coon Song.”

[20] Stephenson, Gilbert Thomas. “The Separation of the Races in Public Conveyances. The American Political Science Review. (1909):180-204.

[21] "'Coon Songs' on the Wane. The Rapid Rise and Decline of 'Rag Time' Music." Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri), March 4, 1906: 13. Readex: America's Historical Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A1126152C152E4978%40EANX-11650C30B0520690%402417274-11650C34C55F6590%4038-11650C43C3C86A10%40%2522Coon%2BSongs%2522%2Bon%2Bthe%2BWane.%2BThe%2BRapid%2BRise%2Band%2BDecline%2Bof%2B%2522Rag%2BTime%2522%2BMusic.

[22] Philip Alexander Bruce, “Evolution of the Negro Problem,” in The Sewanee Review 19, No. 4 (1911), 392

[23] Andrea Patterson, “Germs and Jim Crow: The Impact of Microbiology on Public Health Policies in Progressive Era American South,” in Journal of the History of Biology 42, no. 3 (2009), 530

[24] Wm. Starr Myers, “Some Present-Day Views of the Southern Race Problem,” in The Sewanee Review 21, No. 3 (1913), 348

[25] Ibid., 348.

[26] Philip Alexander Bruce, “Evolution of the Negro Problem,” in The Sewanee Review 19, No. 4 (1911), 387

[27] Ibid, 386

[28] "'Coon Songs' on the Wane. The Rapid Rise and Decline of 'Rag Time' Music." Kansas City Star 

[29] Freeman (Indianapolis, Indiana), January 2, 1909: [5]. Readex: America's Historical Newspapers. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A12B28495A8DAB1C8%40EANX-12C55FDC3692A460%402418309-12C55FDC927A4920%40.

[30] Ibid.

The Performance of Outrage Over Black Androgyny

In this post, I consider reception of the ways in which Prince and Grace Jones blurred or defied the norms of gender performance, with an aim to explain visceral reactions of their androgyny. In this paper, I examine the reception of nonheteronormative musicians, how they have been viewed as distasteful, and explore the visceral reactions and the embodiment of disgust displayed by their critics. I first give a brief overview of androgyny, and analyze the performance of androgyny in the work of Prince and Grace Jones after which visceral negative criticism of their androgyny is presented, and the embodiment of these reactions is discussed.

 The term androgynous is defined by the AACRAO as Identifying and/or presenting as neither distinguishably masculine nor feminine.[1] Androgyny is being used over terms like bigender, nonbinary, gender fluid, and genderqueer since androgyny does not necessarily relate to gender identity and can be used to refer to both Prince and Grace Jones. Focusing on the embodiment of androgyny and the critical reception of androgynous artists, it is necessary to discuss the performativity of doing gender. Given the nature of their professions as entertainers,  Prince and Grace Jones have been spoken of as performing gender or androgyny. In Undoing Gender Judith Butler discusses the social inclination to conform to constructions of gender as a way of belonging, but suggests a kind of spiritual rightness in maintaining one’s ambiguity,

There are advantages to remaining less than intelligible, if intelligibility is understood as that which is produced as a consequence of recognition according to prevailing social norms. Indeed, if my options are loathsome, if I have no desire to be recognized within a certain set of norms, then it follows that my sense of survival depends upon escaping the clutch of those norms by which recognition is conferred. It may well be that my sense of social belonging is impaired by the distance I take, but surely that estrangement is preferable to gaining a sense of intelligibility by virtue of norms that will only do me in from another direction. Indeed, the capacity to develop a critical relation to these norms presupposes a distance from them, an ability to suspend or defer the need for them, even as there is a desire for norms that might let one live.[2]

Prince Rogers Nelson was a prolific singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer who is often regarded as one of the most talented and influential musicians of his generation. Prince self-produced and recorded his debut record, For You, for Warner Bros. Records when the artist was 19 years old.[3] For You was the first of nearly forty studio albums Prince would release under his own name over the course of his life. Prince increased his creative output by forming several other side projects, notably The Time (AKA Morris Day and The Time), for which he would write the music and perform the instrumental parts on records.  Michael Wells penned an early writeup of Prince for the New York Amsterdam News in which he said, “I can sum up the totality of Prince in two words, musical genius. On his debut album, For You, he played twenty-seven instruments and sang all lead and background vocals.”[4] Throughout his career, Prince was often noted for his musical mastery as well as his sexuality and his ambiguous performance of gender. In the very same article, Wells describes the masculinity and femineity of his vocal performances, asking readers, “Can you imagine a voice that is a mixture of Minnie Riperton, Smokey Robinson and Robert Plant? No! Well that’s what kind of voice God has blessed Prince with.”[5] This vocal performance is one of myriad of way that Prince, “denie[d] himself and his audience the luxury of an intelligible gender,” and “altered and transcended the culture in the 80s and 90s by regularly wearing make-up and women’s clothing – yet was considered a hetero-sex icon.”[6]

 Several critics in the early 1980s noted his falsetto voice as well as the sensuality of his performances. In another article printed for New York Amsterdam News, Gene Gillis writes about the crowd’s frenzy over Prince’s sexuality. Interestingly, beyond the use of male pronouns for Prince, the description of the artist’s sensuality and the reaction by the crowd does not contain many gender descriptors:

This is the only time the crowd really got a chance to see Prince’s body, as he took off his shirt, and set off a giant roar from the crowd as they were expecting to see more and he teased them as he unzipped his pants and toyed with his little black bikini, to the roar of the crowd’s ‘take it all off’ which he did not do… He would take his guitar, stroke and lick it at the same time while making sexual gestures on the long end of the instrument with his hands.[7]

Not every critic wrote so favorably of Prince’s performances at the time. The very same month as Gillis’s review, The New York Times printed a review that read:

Prince, the Minneapolis-based funk-rock star who appeared at the Palladium on Wednesday, appears to have reached a delicate crossroads in his career. Having achieved notoriety for his racy songs and flamboyantly erotic performing style. Prince has embraced controversy for its own sake.

His latest album addresses political and religious issues with the same simplistic bravado that he used to devote solely to sexual matters.[8]

The album referred to in the New York Times review was his fourth record, Controversy. The opening lyrics of Controversy’s title track addresses the reception of Prince’s sexual performances, specifically noting the perceived ambiguity of his race and sexual orientation

            I just cant believe all the things people say – controversy

            Am I black or white, am I straight or gay? – controversy[9]

This would not be the first time Prince alludes to ambiguity in his lyrics. As other scholars have noted, Prince references his androgyny more directly in the opening lyrics to his hit “I Would Die 4 U, stating,”

I’m not a woman, I’m not a man

I am something that you’ll never understand[10]

Prince was revered and reviled for his androgyny, which appeared not only in his lyrics and the performance of his music, but in his wardrobe on and off stage as well as his interview performativity. Shortly after Prince’s death, Slate published a story that read, “few could claim to fully grasp Prince’s easy embodiment of both maleness and femaleness. His schooled evasion of conventional classifiers made him endlessly fascinating.”[11] One of his earliest on-camera interviews exemplifies this fluid performance of gender and shows Prince’s sense of humor as he plays off of the perception of his persona. During the interview, Prince is asked “some people have criticized you for selling out to the white rock audience with Purple Rain and leaving your black listeners behind; how do you respond to that?” after which Prince yells “Come on, come on,” clears his throat, stares down the barrel of the camera, and pitches his voice higher to exclaim, “cufflinks like this cost money, okay. Let’s be frank, can we be frank? If we can’t be nothing else then we might as well be frank, okay?” He proceeds to blow kisses at the camera before lowering the pitch of his voice to say,

seriously, I was brought up in a black and white world… I listened to all kinds of music when I was young, and when I was younger, I always said that one day I was going to play all kinds of music and not be judged by the color of my skin, but the quality of my work.[12]

            The effeminate diva response to the initial question was being played for laughs, but it shows a sort of ease Prince possessed of code switching between masculinity and femineity in vocal performance. The facet of Prince’s androgyny that received the harshest criticism and the most overt displays of hate was his sense of fashion. From the start of his career, Prince challenged gender norms with his stage attire. During his 1981 tour promoting the album Dirty Minds, “Prince, dressed like his album cover—long coat, red handkerchief around his neck, his hair cut in punk rock style, black leg warmers and little black, bikini-style briefs.”[13]  This was Prince’s stage attire when he and his band opened for The Rolling Stones, causing a contemptuous reaction from the predominately white audience as a 1981 Chicago Tribune article states:

How rigid are racial categories in contemporary pop music? Prince recently found out when The Rolling Stones invited him to open several West Coast concerts on their 1981 tour. The suggestions of androgyny in his fluid body movements and flamboyantly minimal stage costume were more than a little reminiscent of some of Mick Jagger's early performances, but the almost entirely white stones audience apparently failed to make the connection. They pelted Prince with fruit and bottles, causing him to cut his sets short.[14]  

The writer stresses displays of disgust from the Rolling Stones audience is not just due to the sight of an androgynous artist, after all Mick Jagger was wearing dresses and eye makeup a decade before Prince had. What sparked such explosive reactions was black androgyny; an otherness that the crowd deemed unacceptable. Not all of Prince’s “othering” by the press spectators was so overt. Furthermore, Prince’s displays of androgyny were also not always so overt.

An example from the height of his popularity of blurring gender lines is the movie Under the Cherry Moon, a film that has been jokingly described as “a film noir in which Prince is the femme-fatale.”[15]: Under the Cherry Moon was written by, directed by, and starred Prince, so his presentation was in his complete control. The film begins with a narrator setting scene and identifying the protagonist, Christopher Tracy [Prince], as a “bad boy” and womanizer:

Once upon a time in France, there lived a bad boy named Christopher Tracy . Only one thing mattered to Christopher. Money. The women he knew came in all sizes, shapes, and colors, and they were all rich. Very rich. Private concertos, kind words, and fun is what he had to offer them. Yes, Christopher lived for all women, but he died for one. Somewhere along the way, he learned the true meaning of love.[16]

Figure 1: Stills of Prince in Under the Cherry Moon wearing a jacket that from the front resembles a men’s suit, but from behind shows the back exposed in a way more common of women’s clothing. 

In the movie, Prince played a gigolo who seduces wealthy women, and was presented with an implied level of machismo that women found irresistible. Regardless, Prince is still presented as feminine as well as masculine: his wardrobe includes suits that are opened to show his untrimmed chest but cropped short to display his lower back [fig. 1]; an outfit in which he wore a crop top under a big leather jacket [fig. 2]; his face is covered in sideburns and light facial hair, but he is wearing high heels and eyeliner. Additionally, at several points in the movie, Prince the director films Prince the actor using camera techniques stereotypically used to sexualize women in movies, including: POV often with a male subject to a female object; framing fragmented body parts (when only certain body parts are in frame), and body pans      [fig 3]. Similar to press surrounding his albums and performances, critics focused on Prince’s androgyny in their reviews of Under the Cherry Moon:

Though Under the Cherry Moon is quite awful as movie making, it’s not without social significance, not because of what it actually says but because of what it wants to say. Like so much of our heavily merchandised rock culture, it assumes attitudes and manners that seem designed to shake up traditional American values (God, country and family) in order to make a buck. Subversion-as-mass entertainment has become big business.

…The film’s most effective moments –and the funniest—have nothing to do with Christopher’s Romeo-and-Juliet affair with Mary Sharon, but with his life with Tricky and their friendship since childhood. In their scenes together, the two men are no less androgynous than their costumes. When they camp it up and treat each other with tender loving care, their sexuality is intentionally made to seem ambiguous.  Their behavior is another knowing affront to our forefathers’ expectations of traditional American manhood, white as well as black.[17]

This review does not exemplify the same reactions of disgust shown in Prince’s 1981 concert with The Rolling Stones. However, this review does focus on how “traditional manhood” is woven into the core of American society, allying performance of gender—particularly masculinity— to national identity and moral values. This perception of American moral manhood could explain how Prince’s androgyny has been so negatively received. It is not just
being perceived as distasteful; to some, it is an undoing of American moral fabric.

Figure 2: still of Prince in Under the Cherry Moon wearing a crop top and leather jacket.

Figure 3: Still of Prince in Under the Cherry Moon in which the camera is slowly panning body in a way directors often reserve for sexualizing women in movies.

Another star who has often been noted for her embodiment of androgyny is the Jamaican-born singer, model, and actress Grace Jones. Jones gained notoriety in the late 1970s and 1980s for her modeling, and later music career, and her celebrity grew throughout the 1980s as she appeared in big-budget Hollywood films. On the cover of her 1981 album Nightclubbing, Jones’ embodiment of androgyny can be seen in the way she is presented wearing a men’s suitcoat and her hair cut into a flattop crewcut, but also wearing bright red lipstick and eye makeup [fig. 4]. The indistinctness of Jones’ gender presentation is also reflected in the lyrics of Nightclubbing’s opening track, “Walking in the Rain,” “Feeling like a woman, looking like a man / Sounding like a no-no, mating when I can.”[18] Francesca Royster said of Jones’s work “and that of other black artists influenced by her, we see the wedding of disco and punk, art and fashion, male and female, animal and human, and human and machine to create new notions of black sexuality.”[19] As was seen with Prince’s presentation of gender, Jones’ androgyny not only complicates perceptions of gender, but perceptions of black sexuality. Jones’ performance of identity—in particular—presents a more complicated presentation of race with her use of animal drag, which “puts her into the larger history of the ways that performers of the African diaspora use
performance in complex ways to critique the dehumanization of black people.”[20]

Figure 4: Album cover. Grace Jones. Nightclubbing

Perhaps it is due to the intersectionality of Grace Jones as a gender-defying black woman who challenged prevailing perceptions of both gender and race, the criticism of her appearance in mainstream media was more abundant and more consistently disturbing than the criticism levied against Prince. The harshness of these criticisms could also be influenced by Jones’ appearances in these films being so far removed from the context of her musical and modeling careers. The presented anecdata was collected from IMDb and Amazon reviews of the 1985 James Bond film A View to a Kill, and the 1992 Eddie Murphy comedy, Boomerang.

In A View to a Kill, Jones plays the May Day, the bodyguard to antagonist Max Zorin (Christopher Walken). Early on she is presented as an imposing physical presence, being able to practice martial arts at an elite level, reign in an out-of-control horse by herself, and hoist grown men over her head with ease. Throughout the film, Jones is either presented in a varied wardrobe including outfits that highlight her muscular build, full-length dresses, men’s business attire, and oversized leather jackets; the blazer she wears in several scenes is reminiscent of the Nightclubbing cover.

Her wardrobe and physicality both exemplify Jones’ being –as Royster points out—a “known quantity of strangeness, packaged, in some ways to create an experience of risk.”[21]  Grace Jones stands out even more since, like most James Bond movies, most of the cast was white—Jones having been one of a handful of non-white characters featured. A View to a Kill was Sir Roger Moore’s final appearance as Bond. Moore was 57 at the time, and in the film, he slept with four women including three petite white blonds 28-30 years his junior. However, it was his sex scene with Grace Jones, and her general presence in the movie that drew the ire of many online reviewers.

The scene between Bond and May Day is less than a minute. At this point in the movie, Bond is spying on Zorin and May Day, staying on the grounds of their palatial estate under an assumed identity. Bond is found out by Zorin and May Day as being an intruder, and as Bond is sneaking back into the building after a night of sleuthing, the two villains enter Bond’s room looking for him. Seeing this, Bond slips into May Day’s room, and is found by May Day, naked in her bed. May Day disrobes, showing the camera her bare back, before sliding into bed next to Bond. May Day pushes Bond onto his back and the two kiss for a while before the scene fades to black. The sex scene itself is short and not very risqué especially when compared to a different point in the film in which Bond and Pola Ivanova (Fiona Fullerton) are naked in a hot tub together for more than two minutes.[22]  Additionally, Bond acts as the aggressor in his scene with May Day, which I mention because several reviews suggest May Day forced herself onto Bond. One reviewer bluntly puts it, “the poor old boy is practically raped by Grace Jones!”[23]

Some of the less-extreme reviews (both ostensibly positive and negative) describe Jones as: weird, strange, exotic, butchy, bizarre, annoying, odd, unattractive, and beastial. There were several, though, that go beyond simply using quick descriptors to display their visceral disgust and sexual repulsion. The first example shows a revulsion toward the idea of sleeping with Jones, but also a secret desire for the experience:

Moore must be getting senile or have cataracts coz [sic] he voluntarily has sex with Grace Jones (okay, fine. Maybe I’d do it just to say I did, but keep that under your hats).[24]

The following two examples both illustrate the writers’ negative opinions of Jones’s looks as well as reactions to her mere presence on screen with the first review simply saying her presence created an unpleasant experience, while the second reviewer considered bodily harm due to the sight of Jones.

Grace Jones as May Day is so masculine it's impossible to find her attractive, therefore any screen time involving her is quite unpleasant, particularly the scene where Bond beds her. Ouch.[25]

Grace Jones – she's got to be the most unattractive female to ever appear in a Bond movie. Who in the world ever thought she was sexy? If I saw anymore of her backside, I think I might have ripped my eyes out.[26]

The final review from A View to a Kill is the most upsetting and hate-filled, containing warn out comparisons of homosexuality to perversion and the assertion that Grace Jones is not a woman:

This is the only movie for Bond which required from him having a homosexual experience, since I don't consider (Grace Jones) a woman in the first place! Casting her as an evil Bond girl was [an] historical fatal mistake, one of the stupidest decisions I've ever witnessed, and a lousy try to attract the pervert audience. She seemed, with those creepy costumes and that awful haircut, more like "The Bogeywoman". Honestly, I've had some time till I became convinced of her as not a MAN![27]

Boomerang is a raunchy romantic comedy in which Eddie Murphey plays a “womanizing advertising executive” who sleeps with most of the women in the movie. The entire movie is filled with sexual content including several conversations that go into graphic sexual detail. Jones plays Strangé, a character that has been described as “a wild diva whose outrageousness is eagerly sought after to energize a flagging cosmetics line, but threatens to steal the show.”[28] Reviews of Jones’ performance in this film are not as hate-filled as the Bond even though the character is more overtly sexual and eccentric.  On its Rotten Tomato page, Boomerang’s critic consensus states the movie “injects some fresh color into the corporate rom-com formula, but the frothy fun is undercut by off-putting gender dynamics and misjudged gags.”[29]  Perhaps the movie’s focus on black sexuality, or the presence of Eartha Kitt, another black woman who has been described as eccentric, provided a backdrop that it more difficult for critics to “other” Grace Jones for her eccentric performance. That is not to say there was a lack of problematic reviews, there were just fewer of them. Even though reviews of Jones’s performance are generally more favorable, the language some used to describe her sexuality still articulate a level of disgust:

Grace Jones, the outrageous singer/actress never lost her touch. Playing the raunchy Strangé made everyone uneasy. Especially when she takes off her panties and rubs it all over Lloyd’s face. I would freak out as well. What’s worse, she grabs Marcus… Then flashes her crotch at Marcus which is really distasteful and visually unpleasant to patrons. I would go to the restrooms and yak my appetizer in seconds.[30]

The worst character in the whole film is Strangé, she dresses up like a freak and all she ever talked and shouted about was dirty sexual things and rudely calling out different people in a restaurant “gay” after Marcus declined her ridiculous offer of sex.[31]

I stress the sexual content of the movies to further highlight the criticisms of Jones since there is a lack of visceral outrage aimed towards the sexuality of other actors and actresses in the films. Grace Jones—like Prince—has had to endure considerable criticism for embodying black androgyny, but the question I still aim to address is “Why?” Why are artists like Prince and Grace Jones the recipients of such visceral reactions? What is it that disturbs people so severely that they throw bottles at a singer, or pen misspelled manifestos in review sections? Furthermore, what is it about black androgyny that causes such harsh responses? To answer these questions, I turn to scholarship regarding disgust and moral outrage.

In Disgust: Theory and History of a Strong Sensation,  Winfried Menninghaus describes disgust as “one of the most violent affections of the human perceptual system… a strong vital sensation” that “whether triggered primarily through smell or touch, eye or intellect… always affect[s]  ‘the whole nervous system’… It is a state of alarm and emergency, an acute crisis of self-preservation in the face of an unassimilable otherness.”[32]  For a Rolling Stones audience of white bikers, or James Bond enthusiasts, the sight of black androgyny functioned as an unassimilable otherness. For Stones fans, it could not be androgyny alone or sexuality in general. The music of The Rolling Stones was hardly G-rated; their 1971 album Sticky Fingers pictured a pair of men’s jeans on the cover with a working zipper that revealed underwear underneath. Furthermore, the opening track, “Brown Sugar” is about having sex with black women, though the lyrics were not enlightened in the least, with Mick Jagger—no stranger to androgyny himself—singing about slavers in New Orleans having sex with African women who were recently “sold in a market.”[33] The Rolling Stones audience also should not have been shocked by the mere presence of black artists since the previous tour was supported by Jamaican musician and former Wailer Peter Tosh.[34] Therefore it was the dual otherness of a black man performing androgyny and wearing skimpy clothes that pushed the crowd past disgust.

In “Disgust as Moral Judgment,” the force of disgust as such a triggering emotion is explained as having roots in evolution, starting as a survival reflex to spoiled food, but being mapped on to social rejection:

Disgust evolved to help our omnivorous species decide what to eat in a world full of parasites and microbes that spread by physical contact. Discussed indicates that a substance either should be avoided or, if ingestion has already a curd, should be expelled. Although disgust evolved as a food related emotion, it was well suited for use as an emotion of social rejection.[35]

The mapping of violent biological rejection onto emotional social rejection of gender non-conformity interestingly ties back to a quote by Judith Butler,

…if I have no desire to be recognized within a certain set of norms, then it follows that my sense of survival depends upon escaping the clutch of those norms by which recognition is conferred. It may well be that my sense of social belonging is impaired by the distance I take.[36]

By expressing their own sense of identity, Grace Jones and Prince incurred the wrath of complete strangers who were only affected in such that they had to see these individuals. Jones and Prince did not harm these people, they did not wrong them, they simply distanced themselves from heteronormative behavior, and it was perceived as being worthy of visceral social rejection. This may be partially explained by studies linking effects of disgust to a sense of moral outrage. Moral outrage being defined as “anger provoked by the perception that a moral standard or principle has been violated.”[37]

In “Origins of human cooperation and morality,” Tomasello and Vaish consider a “first tier” of morality, “where individuals can observe and reciprocate the treatment they receive from others to elicit and reward cooperative and empathetic behaviors that help to protect individual and small group survival,” and a “second tier” which “emphasizes the social signaling functions of moral behavior and distinguishes human from animal morality.[38] At this level, behavioral guidelines that have lost their immediate survival value in modern societies may nevertheless come to be seen as prescribing an essential behavior that is morally “right.”[39]

It is not farfetched to suggest nonheteronormative expressions of gender could create a perception of moral outrage when one considers how deeply doing gender is engrained to much of Euro-American society.

Gender is such a familiar part of daily life that it usually takes a deliberate disruption of our expectations of how women and men are supposed to act to pay attention to how it is produced. Gender signs and signals are so ubiquitous that we usually fail to note them – unless they are missing or ambiguous. Then we are uncomfortable until we have successfully placed the other person in a gender status; otherwise, we feel socially dislocated. In our society, in addition to man and woman, the status can be transvestite and transsexual.[40]

            Lorber goes even further by discussing gender as part of a stratification system in which different social differences are categorized and ranked (gender, race, class, etc.), and quotes Nancy Jay in saying “That which is defined, separated out, isolated from all else is A and pure. Not-A is necessarily impure, a random catchall to which nothing is external except A and the principle of order that separates it from Not-A.”[41] Lorber later states that

In Western society, ‘man,’ is A, ‘woman’ is Not-A… in the United States, white is A, African American is Not-A; middle class is A, working class is Not-A, and ‘African-American women occupy a position whereby the inferior half of a series of these dichotomies converge’…. The dominant categories are the hegemonic ideals, taken so for granted as the way things should be that white is not ordinarily thought of as a race, middle class as a class, or men as a gender. The characteristics of these categories define the Other as that which lacks the valuable qualities the dominants exhibit.”[42]

In the cases of Grace Jones and Prince, these artists are not only performing the “opposite” gender than what they are assigned, they are acting out elements of both man and woman simultaneously. By performing androgyny in the public sphere, Prince and Grace Jones illuminated the performative nature of gender writ large, and this presentation of living outside of the gender binary has created such a level of discomfort, that some of those who feel “subjected” to this ambiguity are incensed with a feeling of moral indignation or violent repulsion that vile (if not violent) displays of disgust are justified, since black androgyny is categorically “Not-A” on so many stratification levels.

---

[1]

[2] Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2004)

[3] Furniss, Charlie. "Prince." Grove Music Online. 2001; Accessed 26 Apr. 2021. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000046844.

[4] Michael Welles, "Count, Uke, Arl -- Move Over! here's Prince!" New York Amsterdam News

(1962-1993) Mar 29, 1980

[5] Ibid.

[6] Tyler Gay, Tina H. Deshotels, and Craig J. Forsyth, “Performing Deviance in Front Stage Spaces: Prince Roger Nelson and the Boundary Fluidity of Masculinity,” Deviant Behavior 42, no. 1 (June 2019): pp. 1-17, https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2019.1635862.

[7] Gene Gillis,. "Prince's Dirty Mind Delights Palladium Crowd,” New York Amsterdam News (1962-1993), Dec. 12, 1981.

[8] Stephen Holden, "Rock: Prince at Palladium," New York Times (1923-Current File), Dec 04, 1981.

[9]

[10]

[11] Slate

[12]

[13] Gillis, Gene. 1981. "Prince -- Tomorrow's Black Superstar!" New York Amsterdam News (1962-1993), Jan 24, 35. https://login.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/prince-tomorrows-black-superstar/docview/226440002/se-2?accountid=10920.

[14] Palmer, Robert. "ROCK: PRINCE SINGS, RACE AND SEX TABOOS TOPPLE." Chicago Tribune (1963-1996), Dec 13, 1981. https://login.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/rock/docview/172491975/se-2?accountid=10920 .

[15] Jason Mantzoukas, June Diane Raphael, and Paul Scheer, “Under the Cherry Moon,” How Did This Get Made, (October 8, 2020).

[16] A View to a Kill (United Artists, 1985).

[17] Canby, Vincent. 1986. "Prince's 'Cherry Moon' Lacks a Glow: FILM VIEW FILM VIEW 'Cherry Moon'." New York Times (1923-Current File), Jul 13, 2. https://login.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/princes-cherry-moon-lacks-glow/docview/110881115/se-2?accountid=10920.

[18] Nightclubbing (Compass Point Studios, n.d.).

[19] Francesca T. Royster, “‘Feeling like a Woman, Looking like a Man, Sounding like a No-No’: Grace Jones and the Performance of Strangé in the Post-Soul Moment,” Women & Performance: a Journal of Feminist Theory 19, no. 1 (2009): pp. 77-94, https://doi.org/10.1080/07407700802655570.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Francesca T. Royster, “‘Feeling like a Woman, Looking like a Man, Sounding like a No-No’: Grace Jones and the Performance of Strangé in the Post-Soul Moment,” Women & Performance: a Journal of Feminist Theory 19, no. 1 (2009): pp. 77-94, https://doi.org/10.1080/07407700802655570.

[22] A View to a Kill (United Artists, 1985).

[23] Ian Fleming, “A View to a Kill,” Amazon (MGM Home Entertainment, 1985), https://www.amazon.com/View-Kill-Roger-Moore/dp/B011MHDDOO#customerReviews.

[24] Ibid.

[25] “A View to a Kill,” IMDb (IMDb.com), accessed April 15, 2021, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090264/reviews?sort=userRating&dir=desc&ratingFilter=0.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Francesca T. Royster, “‘Feeling like a Woman, Looking like a Man, Sounding like a No-No’: Grace Jones and the Performance of Strangé in the Post-Soul Moment,” Women & Performance: a Journal of Feminist Theory 19, no. 1 (2009): pp. 77-94, https://doi.org/10.1080/07407700802655570.

[29] “Boomerang (1992),” Rotten Tomatoes, accessed April 25, 2021, https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1039796_boomerang.

[30] “Boomerang,” IMDb (IMDb.com), accessed April 16, 2021, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103859/reviews?sort=userRating&dir=asc&ratingFilter=0.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Winfried Menninghaus, Disgust: Theory and History of a Strong Sensation (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003).

[33]

[34]

[35] Simone Schnall et al., “Disgust as Embodied Moral Judgment,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34, no. 8 (September 2008): pp. 1096-1109, https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167208317771.

[36] Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2004).

[37] C. Daniel Batson, Mary C. Chao, and Jeffery M. Givens, “Pursuing Moral Outrage: Anger at Torture,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45, no. 1 (2009): pp. 155-160, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2008.07.017.

[38] Michael Tomasello and Amrisha Vaish, “Origins of Human Cooperation and Morality,” Annual Review of Psychology 64, no. 1 (March 2013): pp. 231-255, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143812.

[39] Naomi Ellemers et al., “The Psychology of Morality: A Review and Analysis of Empirical Studies Published From 1940 Through 2017,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 23, no. 4 (2019): pp. 332-366, https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868318811759.

[40] Judith Lorber, The Social Construction of Gender (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1991).

[41] Ibid.

[42] Ibid.

Jungle Music and a Legacy of Primitive African Portrayal

In December of 1927, Duke Ellington began his four-year tenure as the band leader at Harlem’s famed Cotton Club. As part of Ellington’s duties at the Cotton Club, he composed and arranged music to accompany floor shows intended to exoticize and eroticize African and African American women for white male gazes. The music written to accompany African-set portions of the shows became known as Ellington’s jungle style or jungle music. In the context of Cotton Club floor shows, jungle sounds were understood as representations of erotic behaviors and figures; therefore, the instrumental parts of Ellington’s songs became aural erotics that contributed to what Caren Holmes described as “the sexual debasement of black bodies and black women [which] has been maintained through stereotypes, laws, and pseudo-science.”[1]  In this paper, I will examination the ways in which Ellington’s music was contextualized by extramusical forces and marketed in order to perpetuate long-standing primitivized erotic narratives of African and African American people.

Documentation of European and Euro-American’s penchant for the eroticization of Africans traces back at least to the 1600s when white explorers, eager to publish their journals on West African exploration, edited their journals to include sensualized, borderline pornographic descriptions of African people dancing.[2] In Katrina Dyonne Thompson’s examination of how the white male gaze sexualized African dance, she points out how explorer-slavers like Jean Barbot “used black womanhood to show the inferior and erotic nature of blackness,” and often overlooked the “textured cultural expressions of dance.”[3] In other words, white intruders placed their own erotic value judgements on African dancing without exploring how these dances functioned within the cultures they observed. In Thompson’s study she asserts “the gaze functioned in these writings not only as a way to assert males as dominant and females as passive but also as a way to declare West Africans and blackness as subordinate and savage, while promoting European hegemony and whiteness as dominant and civilized.”[4]

Descriptions like this led to the stereotype that African people, particularly African women, were more inclined to dance seductively, fostering a belief among Europeans and Euro-Americans that women were “immoral or lascivious,” and were “not only portrayed as potential labor but also as sexual pleasure for white men.”[5] The writings of many white slavers, missionaries, militants, and scholars shaped “black women into objects that were willing and capable of satisfying the sexual desires of white males,” a pervasive belief that was still being reinforced in the twentieth century when Duke Ellington was working as the musical director for the Cotton Club.[6]

 The Cotton Club, opened in 1922 on 142nd and Lenox Avenue, was one of most famed night clubs in Harlem, New York. The club also showed the continued oppressive power dynamic between white Americans and African Americans, and the continued primitivizing and eroticizing African dance and women.  Nestled in the heart of Harlem, New York, The Cotton Club was a segregated hotspot for whites to engage in voyeurism as they watched African American entertainers in a predominantly African American-inhabited area, were serviced by an African American staff, but did not have to interact with any of the people they traveled up town to see. Joseph Vogel describes the dynamic at the Cotton Club in a way that the extension of the history of slavers and missionaries who traveled great distances to watch how “others” behave without having to engage meaningfully with those who have caught their fascination: 

While the Harlem Renaissance did many things, it did not, however, fundamentally change white power structures or shift the dynamics of black-white relations. White enthusiasm for black culture often simply exemplified the latest attempt to exploit, purchase, and/or exhibit black bodies… white interest in black art, entertainment, and culture in the Jazz Age, then, was often grounded in primitivism, voyeurism, and exploitation.[7]

In this environment, Duke Ellington was able to make significant advancements in his career when he took a residency at the Cotton Club from 1927 to 1931. During this time Ellington was able to secure key personnel for his band and his music could reach a national audience via radio broadcasts from the club. Important for this study, Ellington made the often discussed use of his jungle music.[8] Generally, Ellington’s jungle music is characterized by the brass section’s growling and use of mutes, tom-toms, and pentatonic or whole tone scales.[9] Ellington himself discussed this style multiple times in his memoir, Music is My Mistress,  “it was at the Kentucky Club that our music acquired new colors and characteristics...Joe ‘Tricky Sam’ Nanton came in, and he and Bubber became a great team, working together hand in glove they made a fine art out of what became known as jungle style,”[10] later adding that,

during one period at the Cotton Club, much attention was paid to acts with an African setting, and to accompany these we developed what was termed “jungle style” jazz. (As a student of Negro history I had, in any case, a natural inclination in this direction.) its most striking characteristic was the use of mutes—often the plumber’s everyday rubber plunger—by Bubber Miley on trumpet and Joe “Tricky Sam” Nanton on trombone.[11]

The choice of words Ellington used in these excerpts implies a couple of things. First, the mention of the Kentucky Club implies that the musical style was created before the term, and second, the style was not necessarily originated as a form of African music, although he cites a “natural inclination” for writing African or African-like music.

There has been significant debate among scholars in regard to the ethics of Ellington’s use of the term “jungle” to refer to his music style in general or in specific song titles.[12] Looking at the ethics used by a musician of color navigating Harlem nearly one hundred years ago hardly seems like a fruitful exercise. First, he was working a demanding job at a busy nightclub. Between rehearsals, personal practice, and time taken to compose and arrange, he may simply not have had the luxury of time to research and design a nuanced amalgamation of African music and jazz. Furthermore, he was an African American working for white bootleggers and mobsters who would have been less concerned with the enduring artistic integrity of their establishment, and more concerned with making sure the entertainment kept the wealthy downtown crowd coming so they could sell more alcohol. Second, he was not the only decision maker at this point in his career. Alongside the power dynamic that came with working for a violent gangster, Ellington also had to contend with the vision of Irving Mills, whom Ellington had signed to be his manager. Mills was an aggressive manager who was hired to help navigate not only the world of performing as a club musician looking to secure gigs, a band leader looking to record, and composer trying to sell sheet music, but also a musician who had to consider the brand-new world of radio. In his article about the marketing of Duke Ellington, Harvey G. Cohen points out that:

To compete in this new mass media at the highest level, recording artists needed more than a solitary manager. They needed an agency behind them, armed with numerous people supervising the various aspects of an artist's career and remuneration, including recordings, sheet music, touring, film, merchandising, promotion, and newspaper publicity. In his creation of the Mills Artists agency in the late 1920s, Mills devised an early and successful version of how a music business firm should operate in the expanding national music marketplace.[13]

With this type of organizational power behind him, a growing number of musicians in front of him who also depended on his professional and financial success for their own, and a child at home to support, he may not have had the power nor the agency as a performer to voice dissent regarding the settings in which his music was presented or question what role he was playing in continuing dangerous sexual stereotypes. It is important to recognize Duke Ellington’s agency and what power he had at the time to say “no” before starting this sort of critique of his work, and not conflate his silence regarding the exploitative use of his music with complacency or consent. He was hired to compose music for floor shows designed to sexually exploit African and African American women and men for the entertainment of white men, and it took more than Ellington himself to use his music as part of the long and continuing history of Black sexploitation.

            In The Story of Jazz, Marshall Stearns provides an account of Cotton Club floor shows that “admitted only gangsters, whites, and Negro celebrities,” that were “a mishmash of talent and nonsense which might well fascinate both sociologists and psychiatrists.”[14] Describing the show itself, Stearns gives insight on how out-of-hand these portrayals of Africa could get:

I recall one where a light-skinned and magnificently muscled Negro burst through a papier-mâché jungle onto the dance floor, clad in an aviator’s helmet, goggles, and shorts. He had obviously been ‘forced down in darkest Africa,’ and in the center of the floor he came upon a ‘white’ goddess clad in long golden tresses and being worshipped by a circle of cringing ‘blacks.’ Producing a bull whip from heaven knows where, the aviator rescued the blonde and they did an erotic dance. In the background, Bubber Miley, Tricky Sam Nanton, and other members of the Ellington band growled, wheezed, and snorted obscenely.[15]

            This depiction from Stearns has been cited by several scholars studying Ellington’s music.[16] Although the most erotic characters in this scene were not necessarily African or African American, it still illustrates use of primitivized African characters who descended on the “hero” and the “goddess.” The shows presented at the Cotton Club presented several scenes including jungle skits like the one depicted by Stearns, dance numbers showcasing scantily clad women, and “various shows [that] offer up African women as tasty delicacies for white spectators.”[17]

The excerpt from Stearns also included an important detail of what the Ellington band was doing in the background. With their growls, wheezes, and snorts, they are clearly using jungle sounds in order to aurally signify Africa and the eroticism of the characters. Ellington songs from around the time of his Cotton Club tenure that feature these effects include “Jungle Blues,” “Echoes of the Jungle,” “Jungle Jamboree,” “Jungle Nights in Harlem.”[18] Several other songs were performed in this style, or at least partly in this style, that did not allude to the jungle in their title including: “The Mooche,” “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo,”[19]  “Black and Tan Fantasy,” “Take it Easy,” “Black Beauty.” It is worth noting that for as much as this style is written about and discussed for its importance to Ellington’s career, and for its exploitative use at the Cotton Club, there are relatively few songs with titles referencing Africa or the jungle. There are also relatively few recordings in his output from this time that have song titles that would allude to African eroticism. There are a few tunes recorded by the band including “Black Beauty,” “Hot and Bothered,” “Creole Love Call,” that reference the body or erotic feelings, but not a significant number. Also, the songs are themselves are no more overtly erotic than works by popular musicians of the day even though the group recorded several times as The Whoopee Makers during Ellington’s tenure at the Cotton Club.

Looking at his recordings from the time, it does not seem as though Ellington was trying to capitalize on the exoticism and eroticism of Cotton Club performances when releasing records for the mass market. The mass market tool that could have better promulgated this aspect of Ellington’s music is radio. During his time at the Cotton Club, Ellington made hundreds of appearances on national radio broadcasts in which he was presented as “the greatest living master of jungle music” as well as several other monikers.[20] With radio, the jungle sound in its floor show context was not just contained to the confines of the Cotton Club but was broadcast into homes across the country. While the sexual images of a floor show would obviously not accompany a radio broadcast, “the Cotton Club theme of safely contained exoticism played an important role in allowing Ellington to present over the airwaves music that sounded so unabashedly different from popular white bands like that of Paul Whiteman.”[21] The jazz of a perceived exotic and erotic Africa was not exclusively for the ears of well-to-do New York voyeurs.

Whether Duke Ellington set out to write music that eroticized or exoticized Africa, he wrote music that contributed to the legacy of both. Features of the so-called jungle sound have endured and continue to be used as aural signifiers of exoticism and eroticism. In order to investigate the ways in which aspects of jungle music have lived in popular culture outside the scope of Duke Ellington and the Cotton Club, aspects of jungle music need to be defined.

A review of published articles regarding Ellington’s jungle music reveals no standard definition of the style and what all it entails. Lock notes it is “characterized by wailing, growling brass,”[22] Cohen also cites “the distinctive growling, shrieking, and moaning sounds.”[23] It seems the only musical characteristic consistently cited as an integral part of jungle music is the use of growling and wailing. Carl Woideck provided more detail in regard to musical techniques present in jungle music. Woideck also gives insight as to why a clear meaning has not been established, pointing out that “Ellington never publicly defined jungle music.”[24] Woideck’s more detailed categorization of jungle music states

The most-often recurring musical characteristic discussed is the sound of the band’s plunger-muted  and growling trumpet and trombone that seemed to pronounce syllables like “wah wah” and “yah yah.” This was a technique that had been brought into the Ellington band by trumpeter James “Bubber” Miley… A minor tonality…is also sometimes associated with the jungle style. [25]

            Woideck also mentions the use of tom-toms in some of Ellington’s music from this time, explaining “Tom-toms are not universally found in the jungle music of jazz, but for most of the twentieth century, Westerners, including Ellington, often generically associated tom-toms with the music of African jungles.”[26] Ellington’s use of malleted tom-toms, though inconsistent, shows that his interpretation of an “African” sound includes the influence of popular tropes. As Kimberly Hannon Teal notes,

Ellington also employed types of generalized exoticism popular in classical or Tin Pan Alley works such as drones, open fifths, pentatonic or non-western scales, folk-like melodic simplicity, extreme registers, dissonance, ostinato, and a general tendency toward minor keys in the pieces he used in conjunction with jungle themes.[27]

Looking at the use of music in film, many of the varying characteristics recognized as part of Ellington’s compositional oeuvre during his time at the Cotton Club in the 1920s and 1930s—mainly growls, shrieks, and low drums—can be heard in the continued exoticizing and primitivizing of Africa, and the eroticization of women in general. The representation of Africa in film has its own long and fraught history. According to N. Frank Ukadike:

Since the simultaneous inventions of the motion picture in Europe and America coincided with the height of European imperialism, it is not surprising that for many years the dominant image of Africa seen on Western screens was that of condescension and paternalism. Western filmmakers began to film in Africa taking advantage of the beauty of the landscape, the so-called exoticism of its customs, relegating the African to the background.[28]

The use of malleted drumming that was a an occasional feature of Ellington’s jungle music has been used to represent an often-primitivized Africa in a glut of films set in Africa or the jungle including: Jungle Man (1941), a film in which the only Africans seen wear loin cloths, carry spears, and live in huts; Drums of Africa (1963), a movie about a group of white people on a safari that need to save Africans (armed with spears) from slavers; George of the Jungle (1997), in which the protagonist is a white man in a loin cloth who was raised by a talking gorilla and has a pet elephant; and The Jungle Book (1967).

The Jungle Book, though set in India and features primarily animals as characters, is an example of how Ellington’s jungle music has been used in children’s movies to subtly paint African Americans as a primitive Other by basing characters on stereotypes. One of the most harmfully constructed characters, King Louie, is analyzed by Susan Miller and Greg Rode in “The Movie You See, The Movie You Don’t,” in which they point out:

This racial stereotyping… finds its fullest expression in a scene in King Louie’s jungle kingdom, the decaying, abandoned remains of some now extinct, supposedly “primitive” culture. Mowgli is captured by King Louie’s subjects and brought to this “other” world, where monkeys speak in jazz vocalese and everybody “swings.” …Taking the boy by the hand, King Louie, sporting a familiar black-coded voice, sings to him his famous song, “I Wanna Be Like You.” Once we make the obvious connection between King Louie and African Americanism—at least the African Americanism dear to white bourgeois liberal culture—the lyrics of his song become a humiliating revelation, for King Louie sings of his desire to be a man “and stroll right into town . . . ooo—I want to be like you.” According to Disney, “an ape can learn to be human too.”[29]

King Louie—voiced by Louis Prima, a white musician—and the other apes are (not so) thinly veiled caricatures of people of color, living in the ruins of a bygone jungle society, and dance to the sounds of Ellintonian jungle music. The use of jungle characteristics in “I Wanna Be Like You” shows how Ellington’s music has been appropriated by white filmmakers to subtly primitivize African and diasporic populations and marketed to children. “I Wanna Be Like You” starts in a minor tonality, includes use of tom-toms, as well as solos by a growling and muted trombone and trumpet. The use of so many of Ellington’s jungle tropes along with the setting of the movie in the jungle makes this, perhaps, one of the most on-the-nose uses of jungle music characteristics in cinema.

Techniques used by Ellingtonian wind instrumentalists in his jungle style remained as a musical trope representing the (often white) male gaze in cinema and television, though the target of that gaze has not consistently targeted Black women. The film Belly (1998) is an example of a movie written and directed by an Black filmmaker, and stars Black actors. In Belly, there is a graphic montage of Tommy, played by rapper DMX, having sex with a number of different women. The soundtrack employs distant drumming that has often used in movies to signify Africa, much like the examples previously examined. These drums are used briefly throughout the soundtrack, and while they do not sound like Ellintonian drumming of the 1920s and 1930s, they show how film composers of the more recent past have, as Ellington did, use preexisting musical tropes. Belly also references Africa as a key plot point and ends with the main character moving to Africa to start a new life.

The most commonly recognized feature of jungle music, growling wind instruments, also has the most enduring legacy as an erotic signifier. The eroticization of a growling brass instrument or saxophone has often been used as accompaniment for the entrance of the leading lady. In the movie Gilda (1946), when Johnny Farrell meets Gilda Mundson, the quintessential femme fatale, for the first time she is singing along with a recording of “Put the Blame on Me” featuring call-and-response by the big band’s raspy brass section and the woodwinds in a way that is reminiscent of Ellington’s “Ko-Ko,” an oft-cited example of the jungle style reappearing in post-Cotton Club work.

The growling wind instrument as an aural stand-in for sexual attraction and the white male gaze became such a cliché that it appears in a wide range of cinema including: children’s movies (Atlantis: The Lost Empire, 2001), action movies (Tango & Cash, 1989), and comedies (Airplane!, 1980; Naked Gun, 1988). The pervasive prevalence of saxophone being used in this cinematic role has led to the practice being dubbed “sexophone” or “high-heel saxophone.”[30] Much like the use of jungle style during floor shows, sexophone does not rely on the music alone, but its use within a visual medium. These examples also steer the eroticization away from Africa and African American women since all of the aforementioned cinematic examples feature white men meeting white women or a white man in drag in the case of Tango & Cash.  This usage shows how certain musical devices that have been used to signify African primitivization and eroticization have remained to signify any target of the male gaze.

The use of  jungle music characteristics in film and as accompaniment for Cotton Club floor shows carry much of their exploitive power due to their attachment to visual media. Many of Ellington’s post-Cotton Club works that utilized these same qualities were concert pieces that were not criticized for containing erotic undertones, though they have been examined for using the same problematically constructed tropes while boasting their “authenticity.”[31] Furthermore, Ellington’s use of jungle music elements as musical representations of Africa decades after his departure from the Cotton Club indicates that he did not conflate the sound of his music with the images they accompanied.

Duke Ellington is far from the only musician whose music has been used to fetishize Black women. In the opening lines of “Brown Sugar” by The Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger sexualizes Black women while making reference to painful chapters of African history without any sense of trying to make a profound point: “Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields / Sold in the market down in New Orleans / Scarred old slaver knows he's doin' all right / Hear him whip the women just around midnight/ Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good / Brown Sugar, just like a young girl should.”[32] This example from The Rolling Stones illustrates the harmful sexualization of Black women by an all-white band playing, and profiting immensely from, an African American-conceived form of music. It is apt that The Rolling Stones are labeled a British Invasion band given the way they contributed to the legacy of fetishizing Black women that is rooted in colonial history.

The treatment of women in some hip hop videos has been viewed as so sexually exploitative that, as Rebollo-Gil and Moras note, “it is used as yet another tool by which white American critics and politicians further stigmatize the black male as violent and/or criminal,”[33] blaming the genre rather than critiquing or even acknowledging the historic social structures that have repeatedly reinforced a view of Black women as sexual objects. In Busta Rhymes’s music video for his song “Czar,” scantily clad women in exotic, Egyptian-like jewels and red skirts dance throughout. With this video, Busta Rhymes eroticizes African women similarly to the way they were eroticized in Cotton Club floor shows. One significant difference is jungle music was presenting an exploitative experience exclusive to white elites who had to pay big money while “Czar” is for the eyes of anybody with an internet connection. Duke Ellington was not the first artist to use (or have his music used) in a way that primitivized, exoticized, or eroticized African and diasporic people. As proven by songs like “Brown Sugar” and videos for songs like “Czar,” Ellington was also not the last artist. There is a long and continuing history of viewing Africa and African people as primitive “Others,” and the music of the Cotton Club is just a chapter in the narrative.

Navigating the competitive Prohibition-Era Harlem music scene, Duke Ellington employed a compositional idiom that would earn him acclaim as an individual artist of note. This same musical style would also be used to further narratives of a primitive and eroticized Africa, a centuries-long narrative that continually sexualizes and exploits black women at disproportionate rates. Because of this, the historic legacy of Duke Ellington’s jungle music represents the duality of an important body of work for one of the most recognized artistic geniuses in jazz history and the tool for upholding primitive colonial stereotypes of African and African American people.

---

[1] Caren M Holmes, “The Colonial Roots of the Racial Fetishization of Black Women,” Black Gold Vol. 2, 2016.

[2] Katrina Dyonne Thompson, “‘Some Were Wild, Some Were Soft, Some Were Tame, and Some Were Fiery’: Female Dancers, Male Explorers, and the Sexualization of Blackness, 1600-1900,” Black Women, Gender + Families 6, no. 2 (2012): https://doi.org/10.5406/blacwomegendfami.6.2.0001, 3.

[3] Ibid, 4

[4] Ibid, 5

[5] Ibid, 9-11

[6] Ibid, 14

[7] Joseph Vogel, “‘Civilization's Going to Pieces’: The Great Gatsby, Identity, and Race, From the Jazz Age to the Obama Era,” The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 13, no. 1 (2015): 46-47, https://doi.org/10.5325/fscotfitzrevi.13.1.0029.

[8] “Jungle Music” has been the main focus of a plethora of writings on Ellington. Kimberly Hannon Teal’s “Beyond the Cotton Club: The Persistence of Duke Ellington's Jungle Style” in Jazz Perspectives 6, no. 1-2 does a fantastic job reviewing the previous literature surrounding Ellington’s signature sound and the myriad of ways scholars have praised and lambasted him for the style’s use.

[9] Tucker, Mark. "Jungle music," Grove Music Online, 2003, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-2000240200.

[10] Duke Ellington, Music Is My Mistress (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973) 71-72

[11] Ibid, 419-420

[12] The debate centered around Ellington’s intentions in using the term “jungle music” has been well-considered by many scholars over the last 35 years. A list of works that dissect this topic include: Norman C. Weinstein, A Night in Tunisia: Imaginings of Africa in Jazz (Metuchen, N.J. and London: Scarecrow Press, 1992), 12.; James Lincoln Collier, Duke Ellington (London: Michael Joseph, 1987), 93.; Richard Middleton, “Musical Belongings: Western Music and Its Low-Other,” in Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music, Georgina Born, ed. (Ewing, NJ: University of California Press, 2000), 72.; Lock, Graham. Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999), 98; Teal, Kimberley Hannon. “Beyond the Cotton Club: The Persistence of Duke Ellington's Jungle Style.” Jazz Perspectives 6, no. 1-2 (2012): 123–49. https://doi.org/10.1080/17494060.2012.721292.

[13] Harvey G. Cohen, "The Marketing of Duke Ellington: Setting the Strategy for an African American Maestro," The Journal of African American History 89, no. 4 (2004), doi:10.2307/4134056, 292.

[14] Marshall W. Stearns, The Story of Jazz (London ...: Oxford University Press, 1970), 183

[15] Ibid, 183-184

[16] This same quote was used in Teachout, Terry. Duke: A Life of Duke Ellinton. New York, NY: Gotham Books, 2014; Lock, Graham. Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999); Grandt Jürgen E. Gettin' around: Jazz, Script, Transnationalism. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2018.

[17] Kimberley Hannon Teal, “Beyond the Cotton Club: The Persistence of Duke Ellington's Jungle Style,” Jazz Perspectives 6, no. 1-2 (2012): pp. 123-149, https://doi.org/10.1080/17494060.2012.721292.

[18] Track information provided from private collection as well as Ellingtonia Discography. http://www.ellingtonia.com/discography/1924-1930.html

[19] Also recorded as “Harlem Twist” on January 19, 1928.

[20] Aaron J. Johnson, "A Date with the Duke: Ellington on Radio." The Musical Quarterly 96, no. 3/4 (2013), 370

[21] Teal, “Beyond the Cotton Club: The Persistence of Duke Ellington's Jungle Style,” 132

[22] Graham Lock, “Chapter 3: In the Jungles of America,” 80

[23] Cohen, “The Marketing of Duke Ellington: Setting the Strategy for an African American Maestro,” pp. 296, https://doi.org/10.2307/4134056.

[24] John Howland and Carl Woideck, “Authentic Synthetic Hybrid: Ellington's Concepts of Africa and Its Music,” in Duke Ellington Studies (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 228.

[25] Ibid, 228

[26] Ibid, 230

[27] Teal, “Beyond the Cotton Club: The Persistence of Duke Ellington's Jungle Style,” 130, https://doi.org/10.1080/17494060.2012.721292.

[28] N. Frank Ukadike, “Western Film Images of Africa: Genealogy of an Ideological Formulation,” The Black Scholar 21, no. 2 (1990): pp. 30-48, https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.1990.11412965, 30.

[29] Elizabeth Bell, Susan Miller, and Greg Rode, “The Movie You See, The Movie You Don't: How Disney Do's That Old Time Derision,” in From Mouse to Mermaid the Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2012).

[30] “Sexophone: Definition of Sexophone by Oxford Dictionary on Lexico.com Also Meaning of Sexophone,” Lexico Dictionaries | English (Lexico Dictionaries), accessed December 13, 2020, https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/sexophone.

[31] Woideck, “Authentic Synthetic Hybrid: Ellington's Concepts of Africa and Its Music,” 238

[32] The Rolling Stones, “Brown Sugar,” track 1 on Sticky Fingers, Rolling Stones Records, 1971, LP

[33] Guillermo Rebollo-Gil and Amanda Moras, “Black Women and Black Men in Hip Hop Music: Misogyny, Violence and the Negotiation of (White-Owned) Space,” The Journal of Popular Culture 45, no. 1 (2012): pp. 118-132, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2011.00898.x.

Adolescent Rebellion and the Taboo Music of Blink 182

“Those are the Kind of Words You Should Be Using at Home, Kids”[1]

-Tom DeLonge

In eighth grade I purchased Blink 182’s self-titled album; it was the first CD I bought with my own money. I remember seeing the Parental Advisory sticker on the front and feeling a rush when the cashier at Wherehouse Music did not ask for my age; I was getting away with my transgression. Soon I would rebel in the solitude of my room as words I was not supposed to hear poured out of my Walkman; and with headphones on, my parents—those fools—would never even know. In this paper, I will analyze the use of taboo words on Blink 182’s albums The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show (2000), and Take Off Your Pants and Jacket (2001) to show how the taboo content on these two albums served as the voice of their adolescent audience. Moreover, I will explore the power of the taboo, and why their utterance functions as an effective and satisfying form of rebellion against power structures present in the lives of many adolescents.

Blink 182 is a pop-punk trio from Southern California formed in 1992. They first achieved mainstream success with their 1999 album, Enema of the State. Credit for the group’s success has been attributed to their “uncanny ability to capture the mind-set of angst-ridden teens navigating the social minefields of adolescence.”[2] At the height of their fame, between 1999-2001, the three members of Blink 182, Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge, and Travis Barker would have been between ages 24 and 30 (Barker and DeLong born in 1975, Hoppus in 1972).

The peak of their success occurred at a time when a significant faction of American youth culture glorified obscenity and opposition to authority. In a ratings sample from fall 2001, the top shows for teenage boys included Jackass, South Park, The Simpsons, Celebrity Death Match, and WWF SmackDown, all of which featured taboo subject matter, or children getting the better of parents, teachers, and adults.[3]

The movie South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut was released the same year as Blink 182’s breakout album, Enema of the State. The plot of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut was centered around a parental overreaction to children watching a movie containing taboo language. In the film, one of the main character’s mother “is the object of ridicule and resentment in South Park and is scathingly scorned in Cartman’s song ‘Kyle’s Mom is a Bitch (in D Minor).”[4] The film made such an impact on popular culture that the song “Blame Canada” earned Trey Parker and Marc Shaiman an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song. In the Blink 182 live album The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show, the trio makes reference to this movie, quoting the South Park song “Uncle Fucka” before launching into the band’s closing number.

WWF Smack Down made its network premier just months after the release of Enema of the State in the summer of 1999 during World Wrestling Entertainment’s (WWE) Attitude Era.[5] WWE was enjoying the height of its success in the late 1990s and early 2000s due to the popularity of characters who flouted authority or basked in the joys of transgressions. “Stone Cold” Steve Austin rose to fame, becoming the face of the company by giving his boss the finger and drinking beer on the job. Shawn Michaels, Triple H and a host of other characters were part of a team called D-Generation X who made near-weekly references to their genitals and shouted catchphrases that included “if you’re not down with that, we’ve got two words for you – suck it” and performed their signature taunt, the crotch chop.[6]

These shows and movies indicate that the media many teens were consuming promoted a crass sense of rebellion, making ample use of taboo words, sexual references, and aggression towards authority figures. Blink 182 and the infantile sense of humor reflected in their music was a logical addition to this social landscape. The band was a welcomed and celebrated part of this subculture, leading to appearances on television and major motion pictures. In American Pie, a movie about a group of high school boys trying to lose their virginities before prom, Blink 182 plays a garage band that watches a live stream of the film’s protagonist trying to sleep with a girl from school. American Pie was the twentieth-highest grossing film of 1999 and was the subject of multiple academic writings on youth culture and sexuality in the early 2000s.[7] The band later appeared on an episode of the sketch comedy show Mad TV playing themselves in a Leave it to Beaver spoof called Leave it to Blink 182 which ends with “the Blink” getting a lecture from their dad, “Alright everybody listen up. Now Blink, part of growing up is having friends over for fellowship. But the idea that you boys would bring adult film stars, bikers, leather perverts—not to mention naked munchkins—into our home without inviting us is simply beyond the pale.”[8] These on-screen appearances show that, at the height of their fame, Blink 182 represented a youth culture that idolized juvenile debauchery.

Speaking for this youth culture, Blink 182 CDs came complete with a parental advisory sticker and included songs about trying to date, party, skip class, drink alcohol, and complain about adults. As Mark Hoppus said, “teens do not like what they sense they are supposed to like.”[9] By singing about doing the things parents and teachers tell kids not to do and using the words adults told them not to utter, they became the rebellious degenerative voice of their adolescent audience, giving teens an avenue to revel in the taboo.

A taboo is a prohibition imposed by social custom or as a protective measure. Taboo words have been defined as words that are “sanctioned or restricted on both institutional and individual levels under the assumption that some harm will occur if a taboo word is spoken.”[10] Taboo words represent “the lexicon of offensive emotional language,” and are often policed by some authoritative entity.[11] Taboo words are not uniformly categorized, and taboos on speech can be placed at various institutional levels. The scope of this study focuses on the taboos that broadly affect adolescents in their daily lives such as taboos placed by educational institutions and caretakers.

While there is no “one size fits all” approach to taboo words and cursing,[12] there are certain categories of words that are more often deemed inappropriate for general us:

Taboos in English are placed primarily on sexual references (blow job, cunt) and on those that are considered profane or blasphemous (goddamn, ,Jesus Christ). taboos extend to scatological referents and disgusting objects (shit, crap, douche bag); some animal names  (bitch, pig, ass); ethnic-racial-gender slurs… insulting references to perceived psychological, physical, or social deviations; ancestral illusions (son of a bitch, bastard); standard vulgar terms (fart face…); and offensive slang (cluster fuck…).[13] 

            By categorizing these words as taboo, there is an implication that some form of punishment is associated with their use. For instance, some countries including Canada have hate speech laws to protect against the use of racial slurs; there are sexual harassment laws that protect from use of directed sexual references in the workplace. Most relevant to this study, students can get sent to detention for using any number of curse words, and parents often employ some sort of disciplinary measure for language deemed inappropriate in the home. A study by Jay, King, and Duncan concludes that by associating the use of curse words with punishments, the words carry more emotional weight, and the effectiveness of using those words is reinforced. They explain:

There are two reasons for this. First, an extreme reaction from a caregiver confirms that the word is not socially acceptable; it alerts the child to the strong emotional meaning of the taboo word. Second the cause of the cursing is not addressed at all. If the child cursed as a result of being under stress, the focus should be on reducing stress. Here we can say that the tabooness of the topic has perpetuated the tabooness of the words, as philosophers such as Foucault have predicted.[14]

            Since taboo words carry the power that systems of authority place on them, they work as a powerful means of rebellious expression for those in the throes of adolescence, striving for greater autonomy from their parents or caretakers and figuring out their identity outside of their family unit.

During adolescence, the parent-child relationship evolves as the child develops. There are several theories that suggest “the greater autonomy and individuation lead to a temporary decrease in closeness, an increase in conflicts, and gradually more equal power.”[15] According to De Goede, et al, separation-individuation theory and autonomy-relatedness theory are both relevant in the course of increasing balance of power:

according to the separation-individuation theory, adolescents develop autonomy and become independent of parents, with parent-child conflicts stimulating the dissolution of ties to parents…the autonomy-relatedness perspective theorizes that adolescents develop more autonomy, which may create a temporary dip in parent-child connectedness, although connectedness to parents remains important...Both perspectives state that distance in relationships is needed to redefine relationships, although under conditions of relatedness.”[16]

As teenagers physically and mentally develop, it is natural to crave a greater sense of freedom. However, conflicts arise “as parents disagree with their children that physical development is an adequate reason to gain more autonomy.”[17] Domestic disagreements that arise between parents and their brood over the maturity of their teenage children can explain the complaint stereotypically attributed to teens that their parents do not understand what they are feeling. Adolescence is a time of massive physical and mental changes that is often “associated with intense and, at times, unmanageable emotional, behavioural and social needs.”[18] Simply put, adolescence is hard. The feelings of isolation and of being misunderstood can explain such widespread appeal for Blink 182’s catchy and angst-filled anthems. The use of strong language was necessary to describe such strong emotions.

Blink 182 used taboo language on two song types that frequently appeared on their albums at the start of the millennium: songs that subvert the authority of adults—primarily parents, and short ostensibly-joke songs that used an overabundance of curse words.

The music of Blink 182 resonated strongly with adolescents because several songs gave voice to the changing perceptions of parental power and the feelings of increased conflict described in the aforementioned study. In fact, separating from parental authority and the societal mainstream as a whole is a theme that appears throughout Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. The album’s opening track, “Anthem Part II,” sets the tone for the entire album. It is a song written in the voice of a young person blaming the society that reared them for any shortcomings they possess.

Corporate leaders, politicians

Kids can’t vote, adults elect them

Laws that rule the school and workplace

Signs that caution sixteen’s unsafe

Let this train wreck burn more slowly

Kids are victims in this story

Drown the youth with useless warnings

Teenage rules, they’re fucked and boring

We really need to see this through

We never wanted to be abused

We’ll never give up, it’s no use

If we’re fucked up, you’re to blame[19]

The first two stanzas of the lyrics relate to a feeling of hopelessness, absence of social and political advocacy, and vague objections to being controlled, saving the strongest language to aid in making their strongest point, “teenage rules, they’re fucked and boring.” The chorus of the song acts as the band’s thesis statement: teens are being abused, and if they are flawed, it is the fault of those in charge. Lyrics such as these perfectly reflect the changing perceptions of parental relationships. For children, it is typical to view adult caregivers as having all of the answers because they are seemingly making all of the decisions.  During the power struggle of adolescence, the decision-making ability of those caretakers may come into question, especially if one feels as though they are being generally unacknowledged. This was clearly a message the band felt was important since it appears first on the album, and, more importantly, is being presented as an anthem to represent their audience.

Another song from Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, “Give Me One Good Reason,” relates to the feeling of being misunderstood and the conflict associated with shifting parent-child relationships. The first words, as clichéd as they may be, address the growing distance adolescents feel with their parents before offering examples of behavior typically seen in teenagers who are “acting out:”

Mom and Dad they quite don’t understand it

All the kids they laugh as if they planned it

Why do girls want to pierce their nose

And walk around in torn pantyhose [20]

 The second stanza deals with the antimony of teenage desire to find a sense of individuality by conforming with an alternative group identity, driving home their points with taboo language.

I like the ones who say they listened to the punk rock

I like the kids who fight against how they were brought up

They hate the trends and think it's fucked to care

It's cool when they piss people off with what they wear [21]

The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show and Take Off Your Pants and Jacket both include several short songs that contain an overabundance of taboo words. Taken at face value these songs appear crass, tasteless, and juvenile. However, through their gratuitous use of taboo words and the targeting of parents and other family members these short songs function on their own as an expressive form of rebellion.

In pragmatics and speech act theory, speech-act performativity is reliant on what John Austin called felicity conditions, conditions and criteria that must be met for an utterance to count as an act. According the Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language, for an act to be felicitous, it must satisfy all relevant felicity conditions:

1.     The sincerity condition establishes that a statement cannot be considered an act unless the speaker intends to carry out what it is they are saying.

2.     A preparatory condition to establish whether or not the circumstances of the speech act and the participants in it are appropriate to it's being performed successfully

3.     an executive condition to determine whether or not the speech act has been properly executed

4.     a fulfillment condition determined by the perlocutionary effect of the speech act[22]

To illustrate, Luke Fleming and Michael Lempert explain “for a wedding to be successful, the individual who says ‘I now pronounce you man and wife' must be an ordained minister, the couple willing, and a witness present. Such Felicity conditions precede, condition, and otherwise constrain the performativity of language; without them the performative utterance wouldn't count as an act.”[23] Taboo words, however, play by a much simpler set of rules. In the book Beyond Bad Words, Fleming and Lempert note that “taboo utterances rest on few, if any, such conditions…these expressions seem to have their context coiled tight inside. Utter them, and they count as a social act irrespective of felicity conditions like the intentions of speech participants or the institutional authority of the speaker to engage in the act.”[24] The power and freedom of the profane to act alone as a performative protest can be heard in many of Blink 182’s songs.

For example, the lyrical content of their songs “Family Reunion” and “Blow Job” are exclusively taboo words and subject matter. “Family Reunion” repeatedly cycles through every single one of George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television” along with a few extra terms added. 

“Family Reunion”

Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, fart, turd, and twat

I fucked your mom

“Blow Job”

It would be nice to have a blow job
From your mom[25]

“Family Reunion” has been called their “most juvenile song”[26] by Rolling Stone, and when The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show came out, one reviewer denigrated the band by saying they “are still thrilled by the whole notion of swearing and remain more obsessed by bodily functions than the average seven-year-old.”[27] Looking at the lyrical content of several songs, one can see that Blink 182 is not just performing songs that use crass language. Many of these songs are targeted towards parents, and though they have no intent on following through on the messages of any of these songs, the utterances of these taboos alone can fulfill their objective of making parents feel attacked.

Reviewing the last line of “Family Reuinion” and “Blow Job” shows Blink 182’s fascination with sexualizing parents that is reminiscent of the Oedipus Complex. Sigmund Freud’s Oedipal Theory is based on the idea that during the Phallic stage of a boy’s psychosexual development, he becomes fascinated sexually by his mother, and treats his father like a sexual rival.[28] While Freud theorized that a boy’s fascination with both his mother and his genitalia occurs between the ages of three and six, Blink 182 showed a disturbing fascination with both through the music they produced in their late twenties and early thirties. Studying the lyrical content of seven short, crass songs (see Appendix A), reveals a deep parental-erotic obsession. Out of seven songs: six make reference to performing sex acts with somebody’s mother, two of which implies their own mother; three make reference to performing sex acts with someone’s father, one of which is the singer’s father; one makes reference to sex acts with a grandparent; and one makes reference to sex acts with an animal. There is little room to debate the juvenility of these types of songs. However, due to the deep level of taboo associated with acts of incest and bestiality, they do lend themselves as effected acts of defiance towards the institutions that dubbed the mention of those topics taboo.

The thematic prevalence of intercourse with the listener’s adult family makes it even more clear that this music was meant for the enjoyment of kids at the exclusion of their caretakers. At times it seems as though Blink 182 goes out of their way to write music that would upset parents, and would not be typically considered acceptable family listening, or public listening in classrooms. This brings me to my last point, the role of this music in identity formation.

In Jean Aitchison’s “Whassup? Slang and swearing among school children,” Aitchison points out the generational gap that begins to form when “at the pre-adolescent stage, we find the beginnings of a move from parent-oriented to peer-oriented networks.”[29] The connections between popular music, youth culture, and identity formation has been examined in the works of scholars from several disciplinary backgrounds including sociologists, psychologists, educators, ethnomusicologists, and musicologists.[30] Thomas Turino advocates framing definitions of identity, self, and culture through the concept of habits because “habits are both relatively stable and also dynamic and changeable.”[31] This framework makes sense when applied to the identity building of adolescence, as well as the music of Blink 182.[32] As teens drift from their parents, they begin to exhibit new habits to separate themselves from their parents. Perhaps they start asking for a different haircut, pick out more of their own clothing at stores, listen to different styles of music on the way to school, etc. When they return home, they may continue to perform these habits at home. Turino’s work begins with an anecdote that perfectly exemplifies musical habit and self-identity:

When my children were younger, the phrase my music echoed around our house…My children, like many people, identified themselves through musical style—sounds heard outside that represented how they felt and who they felt they were inside… controlling the Sonic space was a way to assert this individual identity and sense of self within the family ... controlling the Sonic space was literally one way to project oneself throughout the house.[33]

This sentiment relates to what O’Neill’s point that adolescents adopt “the music style or presentational style of popular musicians in constructing their sense of self and identifying with particular subcultures.”[34] Taking another look at the song “Give Me One Good Reason,” Blink 182 fixes the aim of their taboo language towards other subcultures, denigrating those who adhere to another fashion sense, “Hate the jocks, the hippie fucking scumbags / Heavy-metallers with their awful pussy hair bands.”[35] By belittling the members of another subculture, they reinforce a toxic sense of togetherness within their own subculture. Not only is this music for kids at the exclusion of their parents, but it is also for kids at the exclusion of peers with alternate taste. 

In the late 1990s and early 2000s the music of Blink 182 was part of a subculture that was built around and marketed towards a collection of shared habits. The band took part on the annual Warped Tour, a travelling concert series that featured punk, ska, and other popular music genres. The tour also featured professional skateboarders and BMX bikers, eventually gaining sponsorship by Vans shoes.[36] This created a community of people identified by their collection of habits: listeners of punk music, skaters, people who wear Vans, watch South Park and American Pie, like D-Generation X, etc. Eventually Blink 182 realized the market appeal of these identities and each member started their own companies including Hoppus and DeLonge’s clothing line, Atticus and shoe line, Macbeth.[37] It is noteworthy that they would choose the literary references they did for their clothing lines since To Kill a Mockingbird and Macbeth were standard reading for grade school and high school students, most anybody with a high school diploma can relate to the reference.

By the time children reach around age fourteen, the generational gap that started in the pre-adolescence stage expands; vocabulary starts to include more slang and swearing becomes more present as they build an identity away from their parents. The taboo songs of Blink 182 can certainly provide a litany of new words for kids to add to their personal lexicons, but more importantly these songs and all their juvenile angst can help adolescents try on new personalities as they go through the years-long process of asking the questions: “who am I?” “Who am I not?” “What is and is not meaningful?” “What is funny?” “Who is my community?”

Blink 182 created a body of work that offered snappy melodies and apparent arrested development combined with a glut of taboo words and topics for no apparent greater purpose than to bask in immaturity. By doing so, the music served as a tool to help keep parents at arm’s length, allowing a sense of greater autonomy for teens clamoring for a sense of individuality as well as sense of community outside of the home. Transgressive pop punk bands like Blink 182 gave voice to an adolescent rebellion, allowing them to savor the transgression of listening to taboo utterances, broadening their vocabulary, and asking the important questions like “What’s My Age Again?”

---

[1] The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show (The Enema Strikes Back) (The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium and The Universal Amphitheater, 2000).

[2] Joshua Klein, "BLINK-182 Blink-182," The Washington Post (1974-Current File), (Nov 19,

2003) 1, https://login.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/blink-182/docview/2267528779/se-2?accountid=10920.

[3] Jane D. Brown and Carol J. Pardun, “Little in Common: Racial and Gender Differences in Adolescents' Television Diets,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 48, no. 2 (2004): pp. 266-278, https://doi.org/10.1207/s15506878jobem4802_6.

[4] Victoria Nagy, “Motherhood, Stereotypes, AndSouth Park,” Women's Studies 39, no. 1 (2009): pp. 1-17, https://doi.org/10.1080/00497870903368948, 9.

[5] At the time the company was named World Wrestling Federation (WWF).

Hau Chu, “Where Are They Now? WWE Attitude Era Superstars ,” nydailynews.com (New York Daily News, April 9, 2018), https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/wwe-attitude-era-superstars-article-1.2470329.

[6] Matthew J Bernthal, “Marketing Professional Wrestling to Children: An Ethical Examination,” The SMART Journal V, no. I (2009): pp. 19-29, 21.

[7] Catherine Ashcraft, “Adolescent Ambiguities in American Pie,” Youth & Society 35, no. 1 (2003): pp. 37-70, https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118x03254558.

[8] “Episode 7,” Mad TV (Hollywood, CA: Fox Network, November 24, 2001).

[9] D.H. Freedman, “What Do Teens Want? ,” Inc, December 2000, pp. 98-105.

[10] Timothy Jay, “The Utility and Ubiquity of Taboo Words,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 4, no. 2 (2009): pp. 153-161, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01115.x, 153.

[11] Ibid, 153.

[12] Cursing (as defined by Jay, King, and Duncan - 2006), refers to the use of taboo, vulgar, profane, offensive, scatological, or obscene language. In this paper, “curse words” and “taboo words” will be used interchangeably.

[13] Timothy Jay, Krista King, and Tim Duncan, “Memories of Punishment for Cursing,” Sex Roles 55, no. 1-2 (May 2006): pp. 123-133, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-006-9064-5, 130.

[14] Ibid, 130

[15] Irene H. A. De Goede, Susan J. T. Branje, and Wim H. J. Meeus, “Developmental Changes in Adolescents’ Perceptions of Relationships with Their Parents,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 38, no. 1 (2008): pp. 75-88, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-008-9286-7, 75.

[16] Ibid, 75.

[17] Ibid, 76

[18] Helen Payne, Julie Joseph, and Vickey Karkou, “Holding and Adolescent Angst,” in Essentials of Dance Movement Psychotherapy: International Perspectives on Theory, Research and Practice (London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017), pp. 201-222.

[19] Take Off Your Pants and Jacket (Signature Sound, 2001).

[20] Take Off Your Pants and Jacket (Signature Sound, 2001).

[21] Ibid

[22] Peter Lamarque and K Allan, “Felicity Conditions,” in Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language (Oxford: Pergamon, 1997), 397

[23] Luke Fleming and Michael Lempert, “Introduction: Beyond Bad Words,” Anthropological Quarterly 84, no. 1 (2011): pp. 5-13, 6.

[24] Ibid, 6.

[25] The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show (The Enema Strikes Back) (The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium and The Universal Amphitheater, 2000).

[26] Andy Greene, “Flashback: Is This Blink-182's Final Song With Tom DeLonge?,” Rolling Stone (Rolling Stone, June 25, 2018), https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/flashback-is-this-blink-182s-final-performance-with-tom-delonge-61692/.

[27] NME, “The Mark, Tom & Travis Show: The Enema Strikes Back,” NME, September 12, 2005, https://www.nme.com/reviews/reviews-nme-3339-336613.

[28] Saul Mcleod, “Oedipal Complex,” Oedipus Complex | Simply Psychology, 2018, https://www.simplypsychology.org/oedipal-complex.html.

[29] Jean Aitchison, “Whassup? Slang and Swearing among School Children,” Education Review 19, no. 2 (October 2006): pp. 18-24.

[30] Works that have covered the role of popular music in identity formation include: Arnett, Jeffrey. “The Soundtrack of Recklessness.” Journal of Adolescent Research 7, no. 3 (1992): 313–31; Bennett, Andy. Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity and Place. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.; Bosacki, Sandra, Nancy Francis-Murray, Dawn E. Pollon, and Anne Elliott. “‘Sounds Good to Me’: Canadian Children's Perceptions of Popular Music.” Music Education Research 8, no. 3 (2006): 369–85.; Bosacki, Sandra, Nancy Francis-Murray, Dawn E. Pollon, and Anne Elliott. “‘Sounds Good to Me’: Canadian Children's Perceptions of Popular Music.” Music Education Research 8, no. 3 (2006): 369–85; O'Neill, Susan A., and Sandra Leanne Bosacki. “Youth Culture and Personal Identity in Adolescents: Implications for Music Learning.” Essay. In Personhood and Music Learning: Connecting Perspectives and Narratives, 153–64. Waterloo, Ont.: Canadian, 2012;

Turino, Thomas. Music as Social Life: the Politics of Participation, 93–121. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

[31] Thomas Turino, “Chapter 4: Habits of Self, Identity, and Culture,” in Music as Social Life: the Politics of Participation (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 93-121.

[32] After the release of Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, the musical output by Blink 182 took a decidedly more serious tone. Available videos of Blink 182’s tour in 2004 show the band’s total departure from the habit of performing songs that allude to performing sex acts with parents. Compared to concerts filmed one year prior (during promotion of Take Off Your Pants and Jacket), the joking between songs, though still using taboo words, make far fewer graphic references to sex, incest, and bestiality.

[33] Ibid, 93

[34] Susan A. O'Neill and Sandra Leanne Bosacki, “Youth Culture and Personal Identity in Adolescents: Implications for Music Learning,” in Personhood and Music Learning: Connecting Perspectives and Narratives (Waterloo, Ont.: Canadian Music Educators' Association = Association canadienne des musiciens éducateurs, 2012), pp. 153-164, 155.

[35] Take Off Your Pants and Jacket (Signature Sound, 2001).

[36] Hilary George-Parkin, “How Warped Tour Led the Consumerist Music Festival Revolution,” Vox (Vox, July 23, 2019), https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/23/20704187/warped-tour-consumerist-music-festival-revolution.

[37] Bo Weber, “Is Tom DeLonge Crazy or Genius? From Rockstar To UFO Hunter,” Music In Minnesota, September 20, 2019, https://www.musicinminnesota.com/tom-delonge-to-the-stars-blink-182-crazy-genius-rockstar-ufo-hunter/.

Comparing Charlie Parker and Sonny Criss on ‘The Squirrel’

Charlie Parker left an imprint with his improvisational style that was unavoidable for any alto saxophonist that came after him. Many saxophonists are scrutinized for sounding too much like Parker. In fact, players like Sonny Stitt and John Coltrane went so far as to switch to tenor before they ceased sounding like Charlie Parker impersonators.[1] It is fascinating to hear Parker play with one of his disciples, especially when they are playing the same horn. For this paper, I will be comparing the playing of Charlie Parker to one of his followers, Sonny Criss.

Sonny Criss was an alto saxophonist who was heavily influenced by Parker in the late 1940s. While Criss would eventually find his own style, during the beginning of his career he sounded very similar to Parker. The two are recorded together on two occasions; the first was a Jazz at the Philharmonic performance at Carnegie Hall in 1949, and the second was a live recording from a venue called Trade Winds in Inglewood, California.

Of the two recordings, the better known seems to be the Inglewood jam session where Chet Baker joins them on trumpet, Russ Freeman and possibly Al Haig on piano, Harry Babasin on bass, and Lawrence Marable on drums.  The session consists of four songs: “The Squirrel,” “Irresistible You,” “Indiana,” and “Liza.” I have chosen Tadd Dameron’s “The Squirrel” as the vehicle for my comparison since it is a blues in F, which would have been a familiar form and key for both players.

Upon listening to the track, it is noticeable that Parker and Criss both have similar stylistic conceptions for their solos. Both players use patterns, descending eighth note scale lines, arpeggios, double-time figures, and use the eighth note line to propel their solos forward.  Despite the similarities to both of their approaches, there are plenty of aspects of Parker’s playing that make it sound more authentic than Criss’s improvisations. This is not a novel observation regarding Parker’s playing in comparison to those he immediately influenced. In Yardbird Suite: A Compendium of the Music and Life of Charlie Parker, Lawrence Koch notes Parker and Criss’s playing during this session:

A striking comparison can be made between Parker and Criss, then a young Bird disciple. Parker’s mastery of rhythm in his inventions is not present in Criss’s work. Criss mainly alternates strings of eighth notes with rifflike figures and is often rhythmically repetitive in his phrasing. This same problem was present with many of the Bird-schooled alto players of the period; they grasped much of the essential sound of Parker’s music but failed to assimilate the rhythmic subtleties (which was a large part of Bird’s genius).[2]

            Koch’s remarks about Sonny Criss’s playing seem harsh, but they receive ample support when comparing the two saxophonists’ transcribed solos. In Figure 1, a chorus of Parker improvising is compared to a chorus of Criss improvising. This happens towards the end of the track when Criss, Baker, and Parker are trading choruses. In these two choruses, Parker and Criss are very similar for a few reasons: they both start their solos with the same formula, they both go on to develop the formula, they both use the same formula over the D7(b9) chord (both play the same formula over D7, but this formula is different than the one used to open each of their choruses), and they each use the eighth note line to drive their solos forward.

To begin examining the differences between the two, look at the way each player develops the initial formula (the formula and its repetitions are bracketed. On Criss’s chorus, partial repetitions are bracketed at the top). In Parker’s solo, notice that he plays the formula starting on beat one of measure one, then rests for two beats before repeating the formula on beat two of measure two. The second time he plays it, he changes the A to and A-flat to better fit the chord. Parker subtly varies the rhythm of the formula the third time he plays it by starting it on the “and” of beat one of measure three, and puts an eight rest between the first and second note of the formula. Parker also adds a string of eighth notes to the end of the formula to finish the phrase. On beat one of measure five, Parker plays the formula one more time to start the second four-bar hyper-measure. Parker’s development of his formula is rather subtle rhythmically as well as melodically. In the first repetition, only one note is changed; on the second repetition, none of the notes are changed, though notes are added as an extension; the last time Parker plays the formula, the ending is slightly changed.

            Compared to Parker, Criss’s development of the formula is about as subtle as a gunshot. On beat one of Criss’s first measure he plays the formula, though he changes the last three notes. On beat three of the next measure Criss repeats the formula, this time ending on a quarter note on beat one of measure three. On beat two of that same measure, Criss plays a fraction of the formula. By removing the first note, the formula becomes a descending arpeggio. Criss also changes the intervals of the arpeggio, making it an augmented triad (enharmonically spelled) followed by a half step, ending on E.  On beat one of measure four, Criss tags his formula fragment with a descending augmented triad, ending on E again. Starting on beat four of measure four, Criss begins rapidly repeating his formula—an augmented triad followed by an E—and drops the augmented triad by a half step on each repetition. On beat two of measure six, Criss ornaments his final formula fragment with a mordent.

            The next point of comparison between these two choruses is Parker and Criss’s treatment of the D7(b9) on the eighth measure of each chorus. Both players arpeggiate the D7(b9) with a triplet starting on the third of the chord (Parker starting on beat two of the measure, Criss starting on beat four.  After the triplet, both saxophonists play an E-flat, an upper mordent, and follow with a descending eighth note line starting on a D. Furthermore, both players lead into the triplet with the same notes. Starting on beat three of measure seven, Parker plays six eighth notes before the triplet: A, B-flat, C, B-flat, A, and G. Criss plays those same six notes starting on the “and” of beat one on measure eight of his chorus, though the B-flat and second A are sixteenth notes.

            These two choruses have a staggering number of similarities. However, focusing on the things these players did differently reveals why Parker is considered the master in this session and Criss is the tenderfoot. In Parker’s chorus, he gave the formula and each of its repetitions the same arching contour by starting on a C, followed by an F a perfect fourth above, and then returning to C before descending (usually stepwise). However, Parker developed the formula using slight variation in rhythm and note choice—the latter was previously discussed. Parker started the formula on a different place in the measure three out of the four times he played it, and on the third he used eighth rests to alter the rhythm.

            One important difference between Parker and Criss’s playing here is their use of space throughout their entire choruses. Parker uses more rests between formulas and phrases to give his chorus a relaxed pace. After playing the formula in measure one, Parker rests for two beats before repeating the formula. He leaves an eighth note between playing it the second and third time, and leaves a quarter note at the end of the four-bar phrase. In measure six he rests for a beat and a half, two and a half beats in measure nine, and a beat and a half between measures 11 and 12. Criss, on the other hand, leaves hardly any rest throughout his entire chorus. He starts playing on beat one of measure one and does not rest until beat three of measure three. Following this rest, Criss plays a long string of eighth notes from beat four of measure four until resting for a dotted quarter starting on beat one of measure ten. Until ending the phrase with a quarter note, Criss’s run-on line contains nothing larger than an eighth note. However, this line contains several mordents: beat two of measure six, beat one and again on beat two of measure seven, beat two of measure eight, beat one and finally beat three of measure nine.

This comparison shows that Parker breaks up his lines using rests, while Criss favors to break the eighth note line with ornaments.  I would argue that this comparison demonstrates Parker’s maturity as a player for two reasons. First, as was previously mentioned, the use of space gives Parker’s playing a more relaxed sound, as though his ideas are clear and easily transmitted through the horn. Second, this shows that Parker learned a valuable lesson that Criss had not: excessive ornamentation of your lines does not mean they will sound more interesting. Due to Criss’s disregard for space between his phrases and penchant for playing fast notes, his playing in this chorus and throughout the recording sounds hurried and uncertain. Criss’s playing is reminiscent of a modern student’s playing. This makes sense since many players were struggling at first to learn the advanced ideas presented in Parker’s music.

Further examination of each saxophonist’s use of space yields interesting results. To continue this analysis, the rests in each of their transcribed solos were counted. In Criss’s extended solo he rests for one beat or more 18 times over the course of eight choruses. Interestingly, Criss rests for at least a measure ten times over those eight choruses. Looking at Parker’s extended solo, he rests for at least one beat 47 times over 12 choruses, only eight of which are a measure or more. With this information, one could argue that Criss uses rests more as a way to search for ideas while Parker utilizes rests to break up his lines.

In order to further analyze what devices Parker and Criss use to break up their lines, a list of each of the saxophonists’ descending scale lines can be found here. Investigating Criss’s lines shows he uses a lot of chromatic passing tones, which is not abnormal for a bebop player. Not surprisingly, Criss also heavily uses mordents to break up his eighth note lines. Out of 24 descending scale lines, 17 feature mordents as a way of varying his lines. A few of Criss’s lines that do not descend the scale in eighth notes depend on rhythmic repetition for their flow; the line labeled SC2 starts with an eighth note on beat two of the pickup measure followed by two tied eighth notes. After this, the line continues with a pattern of two descending eighth notes followed by two tied eighth notes. The line labeled SC4 relies on a series of neighboring and descending triplet figures. By repeating these rhythmic figures throughout the course of the line, I believe their impact is lessened. These rhythmic devices could have been used as a way of creating unpredictability within the eighth note line, but Criss squanders this opportunity by repeating them so many consecutive times that they become predictable patterns. The SC4 line also begins with a held out note. This is a device that appears in a few of Criss’s lines (SC10 and SC14), and it seems as though Criss is using these long tones to mentally regroup and prepare for his next move.

Parker’s descending scale lines are broken up in more diverse ways than Criss’s lines. While he still employs a fair number of mordents—17 out of 38 of Parker’s lines use them—he does not rely on them nearly as much as Criss. Parker also uses devices not seen in Criss’s playing. Looking at the line labeled CP1, Parker starts on the “and” of beat three in the pickup measure with a chromatic descending line; on beat one of measure CP-15 he plays a C and an A to enclose the B-flat mordent on beat two. On beat three Parker breaks up the scale line with a descending arpeggio, ending the measure on a C. On beat one of the next measure he leaps up a fifth to a G mordent, plays an E-flat on beat two, leaps down to a G on the “and” of two, arpeggiates up to a D, and finally goes stepwise down to B-flat to complete the scale. This example alone shows a more diverse way of altering scale lines than seen in Criss’s playing, and it is only the first example. In the line labeled CP3 Parker repeats a figure from CP1: on beat three of the first full measure, Parker again uses C and A eighth notes to enclose a B-flat mordent. Later in the line, Parker outlines the D7(b9) chord, starting on the third and apreggiating to the ninth. Looking at the last few notes of CP3, it is interesting that Parker ends the phrase by descending the scale in thirds. I find this interesting because it is a scale pattern that Parker only uses for a few beats as opposed to Criss’s lines which uses scale patterns for multiple measures when they appear. Another interesting scale line is CP8, in which Parker starts his eighth note line off the beat on an A-flat and descends to an F before taking a quarter rest. He then continues his line with an E-flat mordent, moving down to a B-flat. Parker takes another quarter rest before ending the line on an A. Again, this shows that Parker does not rely on ornaments alone to disrupt his flow of eighth notes. On the contrary, he was able to make his line more interesting by resting and not playing anything. Using these many devices creates much more interest in Parker’s lines than is seen in Criss’s.

Parker’s Achilles heel in this analysis is arguably his over-reliance of certain formulas. Looking at Parker’s extended solo, significant similarities can be seen by comparing first four measures of the choruses starting on CP-25 (Figure 2), CP-37 (Figure 3), and CP-61 (Figure 4). Notice Figure 2 and Figure 3 both have the same rhythms, the same pick-ups to the third measure, and both of the patterns’ third measures are identical. The third measure and its pick-up in Figure 4 are also the same, and Figure 4 has a similar rhythmic structure in the first and second measures.

Parker’s formula repetition is possibly at its worse when looking at his treatment of the D7(b9) chord, since there are hardly any formulas that are seen only once over the chord. Some are slightly varied, like the pattern seen in CP-20 and CP-32, however, as shown in Figure 5, many are completely identical.

The top two staves of Figure 5 show Parker’s playing from the seventh to the ninth bars of two consecutive choruses: from measure CP-55 to CP-57, and CP-67 to CP-69. Note how every note is the same except for the grace note at the beginning, and leap down by perfect fifth at the end of the second staff. Other than that, every note and every rhythm is identical. The bottom three staves show a different formula. The examples starting on CP-91 and CP-103 are completely identical, while the last example keeps the same approximate rhythms for the first measure before. However, the second measure of the last example is identical to the two previous examples. Furthermore, the bottom three examples arpeggiate the D7(b9) starting on the F-sharp up to the E-flat, which is a pattern that has already been discussed in other parts of Parker’s solos.  

The influence of Parker on Criss’s playing is a relatively simple matter to pinpoint. Criss was a known follower of Parker’s playing early in his career, so Criss’s playing is riddled with Parker’s ideas. A great show of respect for Parker is shown in Criss’s opening statement when he pays homage to his idol by quoting Parker’s “Billie’s Bounce” solo from his famous 1945 recording. Looking at how Criss influenced Parker’s playing on this session is a more difficult task. However, upon inspection, Criss’s aforementioned overuse of mordents may have rubbed off on Parker. While Parker does not use nearly as many as Criss, he still seems to be using mordents a lot on this recording. It is hard to argue with any sense of certainty without providing examples from other live recordings from around this time, but he seems to be using more than he usually does. Other than that, I argue that Parker’s playing does not seem changed by the presence of Sonny Criss.

Parker’s original style was influential on scores of musicians that came after him, including some of the most distinct voices in jazz.[3] An argument could be made that the vast majority of instrumentalists since 1945 who have developed their own voice in jazz first had to absorb the essence of Parker’s playing.  In fact, Sonny Criss would develop a style much more removed from Parker than this session suggests. The information I have found analyzing Parker and Criss’s performances supports Lawrence Koch’s claim that “Parker’s mastery of rhythm in his inventions is not present in Criss’s work.” The comparison of their playing provides much insight to how Parker’s playing stands above the playing of his imitators. While a lot can be learned of Parker’s genius by analysis of his solos alone, the point is magnified when measured against the playing of another soloist.

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[1] In the few recordings featuring Coltrane playing alto, the influence of Charlie Parker can be heard along with influence from other alto saxophonists: Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter.

[2] Lawrence Koch, Yardbird Suite: A Compendium of the Music and Life of Charlie Parker, (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999), 262.

[3] Players like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, Rudresh Mahanthappa, and many others cited Parker as an influence.

“Kenny Wheeler’s Music and the Craft of Musical Composition”

Because of its improvisational nature, some of the analytical methods created with Western art music in mind have not seen significant use in examining jazz. For this study, the theory for musical analysis that Paul Hindemith presented in his 1937 book, The Craft of Musical Composition, will be applied to “Sweet Time Suite, Part 1: Opening” from Kenny Wheeler’s Music for Large and Small Ensembles.

As has been discussed Kenny Wheeler was one of the exceptional composers of modern jazz. As was discussed, John Abercrombie played guitar on Music For Large Ensembles, and describes Wheeler’s music:

His music was kind of timeless; it just kind of seemed like it covered a wide range of the tradition and forward thinking, but again, it was all about melody, for the most part, about melody and harmony, which is what I love the most I think… it’s just beautiful music. I mean, that’s all I would say, and I would say anybody that’s not aware of him—they should really listen to him because he does kind of bridge a certain gap to me, I mean, he kind of takes the tradition to a different place because of his unusual phrasing… But he still comes from the tradition, you know, and that’s what I love about it.[1]

In his liner notes for the album, Steve Lake says, “Music for Large and Small Ensembles is the most comprehensive of Kenny Wheeler’s recordings to date. It could almost be titled The Complete Wheeler.”[2]

In interviews, Kenny Wheeler cited Paul Hindemith as one of the composers that influenced him most:

I love a lot of classical music, from very early music such as Gesualdo and Byrd up to the present day… and I like to be affected somehow by music. I was very much affected by Paul Hindemith’s “Mathis der Mahler,” I especially liked the quartal harmonies, which reminded me a little of McCoy Tyner’s music.[3]

Wheeler has also said that he studied out of Hindemith’s book, Traditional Harmony. [4] In the preface for Traditional Harmony, Hindemith makes the distinction that the book is not meant to provide a foundation for The Craft of Musical Composition, and that the two series do not correlate.

There is no evidence that proves Wheeler read The Craft of Musical Composition. However, Wheeler’s citation of Hindemith’s music and writings as an influence and important component to his education makes Hindemith’s analytical methods defined in The Craft of Musical Composition an interesting source for analysis.

In the beginning of the Craft of Musical Composition, Hindemith explains what he sees as shortcomings in music theory, composition, and pedagogy. Of the material presented in the first part of the book, it is important to mention his thoughts on scale development. Hindemith writes, “For the melodic endeavor… series of tones are needed to guide into definite channels what would otherwise be arbitrary wandering.”[5] In other words, in order to write or play melodies one needs some sort of system in which to derive tones. Hindemith goes on to say:

The intervals used for this purpose may be measured in various ways. But however they are arrived at, they must be small enough so that the progression from a tone to an adjacent tone is felt as a step and not a skip... and in the series there must be an easily discernible order.[6]

            Another consideration for scale development is its use. Hindemith intends for the scale to serve melodic functions as well as harmonic. Hindemith writes:

If a scale is to perform both functions, the intervals must be such that the combinations of tones are as pure as possible (that is, consist of intervals such as are contained in the lower reaches of the overtone series)… [However], the grouping of intervals must not be so rigid that it does not permit… the age-old use of impure intonation as an artistic means, the most extreme instance being the purposeful mistuning of subordinate tones in the melody, and the most minute divergence from the pitch being the vibrato, with countless melodic subtleties between those two extremes.[7]

Hindemith sets out more guidelines in scale development by saying, “a prerequisite for the construction of a usable scale is the division of the entire tonal supply into fairly large sections of equal range, lying one above the other, each section filled out with the tones of the scale.”[8]  As in traditional theory, Hindemith separates his scale into octaves. This decision is only natural because the octave is the most universally recognized musical phenomenon; most every musical culture recognizes notes an octave apart as being of the same pitch class. Also, the octave is natural because it is found in the first two tones of the overtone series.

 Hindemith’s construction of a scale comes directly from the overtone series. Using C with a frequency of 64 Hz as the fundamental tone, to get the second note in the series, add 64 Hz to the frequency of the original to yield another C at 128 Hz.[9] These are going to be the lower and upper limits of the scale, so each new scale tone’s frequency has to lie within 64 and 128 Hz.

Image 9-1

To find the next note in the series, add another 64 Hz to the frequency, making the third note in the series G (192 Hz). Since this is outside the scale, divide by two to yield a G with a frequency of 96 Hz. After this, Hindemith creates a rule; “to arrive at each new tone of the scale, divide the vibration-number of each overtone successively by the order-numbers of the preceding tones in the series.”[10] The third tone of the series, a C with a frequency of 256 Hz, yields an F (85.33 Hz) when divided by three.

Image 9-2

The next overtone is an E (320 Hz). Dividing by two will only yield an E still outside of the scale range, dividing by three provides the scale an A (106.66 Hz), and dividing by four, introduces an E (80 Hz) that is within the range of the scale.

Image 9-3

The next overtone is G (384 Hz). Dividing by two yields an out of range G, dividing by three yields C, which the scale already has, dividing by four yields another G, which is not needed, but dividing by five yields an E-flat (76.8 Hz). The next overtone, the sixth note of the series, is not used in creating the scale.

Image 9-4

To continue, Hindemith considers the relations of each successive tone of the original series as if it were considered to lie higher in the series.[11] Taking the third overtone, G (192 Hz), and treating it as the fourth, fifth and sixth tones of the series yields no new notes. Treating the fourth overtone, C (256 Hz), as the fifth and sixth tones yields an A-flat (51.2 Hz), the octave (102.4 Hz) of which fits in the scale, and F, which is already present the scale. Again, since the sixth overtone becomes too convoluted to yield exclusively usable results, it is not suitable for scale building purposes. So in order to continue, Hindemith treats each scale degree already present as its own fundamental tone.

Image 9-5

  Taking G (96 Hz) as a new fundamental, the third note in the series is D (288 Hz), which fits in the scale when divided by four (72 Hz). The next overtone in this series, G, produces no new tones since it has been dealt with previously as the sixth overtone of C.

Image 9-6

Using F (85.33 Hz) as a fundamental, one can use its fourth overtone, F (341.33 Hz), divide it by three to find B-flat (113.78 Hz), and divide it by five to find a D-flat (68.27 Hz). Using E (80 Hz) as the fundamental, divide its third overtone, B (240 Hz), by two in order to find a usable B (120 Hz).

Image 9-7

Using E-flat and A-flat as fundamentals does not yield any usable results, which exhausts the possibilities from the “sons” of C. Looking at the scale, Hindemith is missing just one note, the tritone of C, F-sharp/G-flat. This makes the tritone the most distantly related note to its fundamental.

Image 9-8

 To find the tritone and complete the scale, Hindemith uses the “grandchild” of C, B-flat (113.78 Hz), as a fundamental. Taking B-flat’s second overtone, B-flat (227.56 Hz), and dividing by five yields G-flat (91.02 Hz).

Image 9-9

Now the scale is constructed, and the result is a chromatic scale. It would have been simple enough to say that Hindemith bases his theory on the chromatic scale instead of the major/minor diatonic system, but these details illustrate Hindemith’s point that the chromatic scale can be constructed using phenomena found in nature. It also illustrates an important point to Hindemith’s theory: the importance of each tone of the chromatic scale is directly related to the fundamental. When one lines up the tones according to the order in which they were found, Series 1 results.[12] In The Craft of Musical Composition, Hindemith says, “the values of the relationships established in that series will be the basis for our understanding of the connection of tones and chords, the ordering of harmonic progressions, and accordingly the tonal progress of compositions.”[13]

Image 9-10

By taking the tones of Series 1 and comparing them to the fundamental, one finds every interval possible in the Western music tradition. The order of these intervals creates Series 2. The octave does not provide much meaning harmonically, but starting with the perfect fifth and moving to the right, the intervals decrease in harmonic importance.  

Image 9-11

According to Hindemith, most intervals have roots, because there is usually one tone that is subordinate to the other. To find which note of an interval is dominant over another, one uses combination tones. While one tone sounding contains a series of overtones heard above it, when two tones are sounded simultaneously, additional tones are involuntarily produced, which are combination tones. The frequency of a combination tone is the difference between the frequencies of the directly produced tones of the interval. If a tone of the originally produced interval is doubled by a combination tone either in unison or in the octave, this gives that tone dominance over the other.

In the example below, there is a G with a frequency of 192 Hz, and a C with a frequency of 128 Hz. Subtracting 128 from 192 yields 64, which is also a C (64 Hz). Since the fundamental C is doubled by the combination tone, C is the root of the interval.  This means the interval of a fifth’s root will always be the lower tone.

Image 9-12

Finding the roots of chords is a simple process; just find the strongest interval according to Series 2, disregarding the octave, and find the root of that interval. The notes can be more than an octave apart, and if the chord contains two or more equal intervals that are the “best” intervals, use the lowest pitched.

            Hindemith classifies chords into six categories, split into two groups, A and B, each containing three sub-groups. Group A contains all chords without tritones, and Group B contains chords with tritones.[14]

            Chords in sub-group I are no more than three voices and do not contain any seconds or sevenths. This is the strongest sub-group and best for concluding phrases and pieces. Sub-group one separates into two sections; I1, chords in which the root and bass tone are the same, and I2, chords in which the root is not the bass tone. Hindemith says the only chords that fit the criteria for sub-group I are the major and minor triads.[15]

Chords in sub-group II are chords of three or more voices and are limited to the intervals of sub-group I, but can also contain major seconds and minor sevenths. This sub-group can be broken up into a few categories. IIa contains the minor seventh, but no major second. IIb can contain the major second as well as minor seventh. IIb1, the root and bass are the same. IIb2, the root and bass are different. IIb3 chords contain multiple tritones.[16]

Chords of sub-group III are chords of any number of tones, do not have any tritones, and contain seconds and sevenths. Again, this sub-group separates into two categories; III1, the root is in the bass, and III2, the root is not the bass tone. Sub-group IV chords can have as many tritones, minor seconds, and major sevenths as needed. When referring to this group, Hindemith says, “all the chords that serve the most intensified expression, that make a noise, that irritate, stir the emotions, excite strong aversion—all are home here.”[17] Again, if the root is the bass, it is IV1, and if the root is not the bass it belongs to IV2.[18]

            Sub-groups V and VI are chords that have unclassifiable roots. These are mostly chords that are symmetrical. Though Hindemith says to find the root you just use the lowest, strongest interval, he still makes these categories. Sub-group V includes the augmented triad and quartal chords in their most condensed form, because if it were inverted, a fifth would be created, which would become the dominant interval. Sub-group VI contains the diminished triad and diminished seventh chord.[19]

            These chord classifications represent the varying level of consonance and dissonance or stability of different chord types. The lower the number, the less tension created by the chord. Chords labeled as I are more stable than those labeled III, and those labeled IIIa are more stable than those labeled IIIb, and so on.

            The excerpt below shows the first three measures of Wheeler’s “Sweet Time Suite, Part 1” with labels below each of the chords. In all but one of the chords, the tritone is absent, so they must be Group A, and there are no chords in this excerpt with less than four voices, so none of them can belong to sub-group I, and all of their roots are identifiable, so none of them can belong to sub-group V. Also, each chord without the tritone have their roots in the bass, classifying them as III1. The root of each of the chords is directly below them in the example.

Image 9-13: Opening measures to Kenny Wheeler's Sweet Time Suite

The only chord in this passage containing a tritone is the second to last chord of the excerpt. Since it has the tritone, it must belong to Group B. The bottom two notes are a major seventh apart, which means it cannot belong to sub-group II, and there is an identifiable root, meaning this chord must belong to sub-group IV. The strongest interval is the fifth between the A-flat and the E-flat, making A-flat the root; since A-natural is the bass note, not the A-flat root, the chord is classified as IV2. Typically one would not spell a chord to include both A-flat and A-natural, but the A-natural is used as the leading tone to B-flat, and the A-flat is used because it is the root of the chord and better fits the key of the piece. So, looking at these measures, Hindemith’s method shows that there is not much variance in the tension from chord to chord until the last two chords.

Hindemith defines this method of harmonic analysis as harmonic fluctuation. In order for harmonic fluctuation to take place, chords of different values must be present, even if the difference in value is very slight. Tension can fluctuate between chords from sub-group IV moving to sub-group I, or, for more minute fluctuation, chords classified as I2 moving to I1. [20]

            Looking at “The Sweet Time Suite, Part 1” as a whole—located on pages 130 and 131—the analysis illustrates the harmonic tension does not fluctuate significantly throughout the excerpt. The section of the analysis consisting of Roman numerals and labeled “fluctuation” shows the majority of the piece consists of III1 chords, occasionally moving to and from II and IV chords, which leaves few examples to illustrate harmonic fluctuation. The phrase with the greatest fluctuation starts on beat four of measure five and ends with the half note starting measure seven. The phrase begins with five III1 chords before showing any harmonic fluctuation by moving to a IIb2 chord. After the IIb2 chord, the tension increases with a IV1 chord, and increases even more with the IV2 chord that follows. After the IV2 chord, the phrase resolves on a III1 chord.  Another example of harmonic fluctuation in this piece is in the last two measures. This example shows a nice gradual release of tension. First, the tension builds with a III1 chord moving to a IV2, then moves to a IV1 chord which releases a little bit of tension before resolving back to a III1 chord.

            Those accustomed to more traditional harmonic analysis might wonder how harmonies can be said to resolve without any consideration of the chords’ root movement. It is true that in Hindemith’s theory as presented so far, harmonic fluctuation pays no mind to root movement. However, Hindemith addresses root movement separately. The succession of the roots of chords creates what Hindemith calls a degree-progression. Taking the strongest intervals found in the degree-progression, one could decide tonal centers as well as the tonality of a piece.[21] The perfect fifth carries the most significant harmonic weight, followed by the fourth, then the third, the sixth, and so on. A cadence that proceeds from the subdominant to the dominant before ending on the tonic is the strongest cadence.

In the last couple of measures, we find a B-flat root on the first chord of measure fourteen, followed by two A-flat roots before resolving to D-flat on beat one of measure fifteen. This motion of the five to the one (A-flat to D-flat), just as in traditional theory, creates a strong argument for D-flat to be the tonal center. Hindemith compromises his theory by saying if a tone is repeated enough, or if it is long enough, it does not matter where the degree-progression leads; a note repeated or played long enough can carry enough weight to show itself as the tonal center. However, the strong resolution to D-flat as the last chord of “Part I,” and the D-flat’s appearance throughout the form supports the argument for D-flat as this piece’s tonal center even though many phrases do not resolve to D-flat.

A problem in chord identification arises in the last chord of the piece. Looking at the top two lines of the analysis, we notice the A-flat in the bass with the D-flat above it and the E-flat above both. According to Hindemith, this should be an A-flat rooted chord since the fifth created with the E-flat would be the strongest interval. However, it can be argued that the D-flat and the A-flat are so prominent when heard, that this interval of a fourth should be considered the dominant interval. Since the fourth is being treated as the best interval, the top note, D-flat, is the dominant tone and the root of the chord.

Another important idea in Hindemith’s system of analysis is the two-voice framework. Hindemith says the bass voice and the most important of the upper voices must create, on their own, an interesting piece of music that has a balance of tension and release.[22]

            With regard to melodic analysis, Hindemith says that melodies form degree progressions of their own since melodies are just arpeggiated chords separated by non-chord tones. Since each note is technically a part of a different chord in this piece, it is difficult to find a convincing degree-progression in the melody.[23]  Included in the analysis on pages 130 and 131, however, is an attempt to label degree progressions in order to show how one could find melodic tonal centers. The first five measures have been bracketed as a D-flat tonal center. Within those five measures there is also an argument for a B-flat tonal center for that phrase. The pick-up to measure six all the way to the first beat of measure eight is argued as a possible F tonal center, measure eight and nine show a D-flat center, and measures nine and ten resolve to G-flat. The melodic tonal center moves to A-flat in measure eleven before resolving to a final D-flat in the last three measures.

Another way to analyze melody is by using step progression. Hindemith says, “the primary law of melodic construction is that a smooth and convincing melodic outline is achieved only when these important points form a progression in seconds.”[24] “These important points” refers to highest notes, lowest notes, longest notes, or any other note that can be considered prominently featured. One cannot help but think of principles of Schenker’s theory for analysis when it comes to this principle; that behind every melody is some sort of stepwise movement. On the line labeled “step progression” notice the most significant step progressions in this excerpt. The connection of the D-flat on the “and” of one in measure two, to the C on beat three of measure seven, to the B-flat on beat two of measure eight, to the A-flat on beat three of measure twelve, and the descent in seconds down to a D-flat in measures thirteen through fifteen shows the most prominent step progression. Another important step progression shows ends of phrases making their way down in seconds. This step progression starts on the F on beat one of measure seven, moves to the E-flat on beat one of measure ten, and concludes on the D-flat in measure fourteen. To reference the Schenkerian paradigms, the first step progression discussed shows, arguably, an 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 primary line and the second perhaps a 3-2-1 primary line.

There are shortcomings in using Hindemith’s method for analysis in jazz. The principal problem is its harmonic analysis. Since there is not uniform voicing in rhythm sections, analyzing the harmony (finding roots, two-voice frameworks, etc.) in a combo’s performance can be problematic. Now, the composition in question here is not a small ensemble performance, but rather a big band arrangement.  Indeed, this excerpt was able to work as well as it did because the rhythm section was absent. Yet, even in this ideal musical situation, Hindemith’s theory reveals certain limitations, for example the exceptions that had to be made when finding the roots of chords, or the issue of ascertaining the work’s tonality. However, despite these deficiencies, The Craft of Musical Composition offers a distinctive way of approaching harmony that might prove productive in jazz analysis.

Image 9-14

Image 9-15

Image 9-16

[1] John Abercrombie, interview by the author, 23 April 2015, Newark, tape recording

[2] Steve Lake, liner notes to Kenny Wheeler, Music for Large and Small Ensemble, ECM 1415/16, 1990, compact disc

[3] Fred Sturm, “Kenny Wheeler, Evolved Simplicity,” Jazz Educators Journal, March, 1998, 45

[4] Gene Lees, “An Absolute Original: A Profile of Kenny Wheeler.” The Jazz Report, Spring 1995, 22

[5] Paul Hindemith, The Craft of Musical Composition: Book I-The Theoretical Part   (New York, NY: Associated Music Publishers, Inc., 1937), 24-25

[6] Ibid. 25 

[7] Ibid. 25

[8] Ibid. 25

[9] These frequencies are not derived using standard A4=440 tuning. The frequencies used in this study come from Hindemith’s Craft of Musical Composition, in which A4=426.64.

[10] Ibid. 34

[11] Ibid. 35

[12] Ibid. 53-56

[13] Ibid. 56

[14] Ibid. 95-96

[15] Ibid. 101-102

[16] Ibid. 102-103

[17] Ibid. 103

[18] Ibid. 103

[19] Ibid. 103-104

[20] Ibid. 115-121

[21] Ibid. 121-126

[22] Ibid. 113-115.  In the second volume of Hindemith’s Craft of Musical Composition, he goes into greater detail on the two-voice framework, but I am concerned only with the ideas presented in book one.

[23] Ibid. 183-187.

[24] Ibid. 193

Charlie Parker on Tenor

The music of Charlie Parker has been put under the microscope more than the music of just about any other jazz musician. His style of writing and improvising was not just an inspiration for other saxophonists, but the benchmark for every player who followed. Considering it was his main instrument, it is no surprise that there have been scores of studies and analyses of his work on the alto saxophone. However, there has not been a significant study of Charlie Parker’s work on tenor saxophone.

            The only available recordings of Parker on tenor are of jam sessions from 1943, a Miles Davis-led studio date from 1947, and another Miles Davis session from 1953. While his output on tenor pales in comparison to that of his alto, looking at his history and approach on the bigger horn does provide interesting insight regarding his playing.

            It is important to note that Parker’s musical genealogy and overall playing did have some roots in the tenor saxophone. Some of the musicians he admired most were tenor saxophonists. His great love for the playing of tenor legend Chu Berry was shown in the name of Parker’s first child Francis Leon Smith, “Francis is for Francis Scott Key, and Leon is for Mr. Leon ‘Chu’ Berry, the greatest saxophonist that ever lived.”[1]

Like many jazz musicians whose formative years coincided with the swing era, Parker had a fascination with Lester Young. His adoration for Young has previously been the topic of conversation in jazz lore. One bold example is Gene Ramey discussing how Charlie Parker memorized Lester Young solos during his developmental years. Ramey is quoted: 

In the summer of 1937, Bird underwent a radical change musically. He got a job with a little band led by a singer, George E. Lee. They played at country resorts in the mountains. Charlie took with him all the Count Basie records with Lester Young solos on them and learned Lester cold, note for note… Well, that Jones-Smith record come out, and Prez had made that “Lady Be Good.” And Bird came back and he startled everybody.[2]

            In the first set of recordings made of Parker on tenor, he plays a lengthy section of Lester Young’s famous solo from the song “Shoe Shine Boy,” making this the second confirmed Young solo he memorized at least in part. This set of recordings, which were recorded by Bob Redcross in his Chicago hotel room, offer not just an initial glimpse of Charlie Parker on tenor saxophone, but the first recording of Parker and Dizzy Gillespie as well. It is worth explaining why Parker was even playing tenor saxophone during these recordings. Towards the very end of 1942, the tenor saxophone chair was vacant in the Earl Hines orchestra. As Gunther Schuller wrote:

Not having the composer arranger talent of an Ellington or a Henderson, and lacking the clear vision of how the band should sound that Basie or Webb had, Hines failed to exploit Budd Johnson, who probably had the ability to forge a distinctive orchestral conception, but was never really encouraged to do so.[3]

            Hines’s failure to recognize and use his band members’ unique talents would arguably be the cause of many great players leaving his band prematurely. However, the tenor saxophone chair was up for grabs, and band members like Dizzy Gillespie and George “Scoops” Carry encouraged Hines to hire Charlie Parker, who had just been released by the Jay McShann band, to fill the chair.

When Budd Johnson’s tenor saxophone “chair opened up in December of 1942, Hines’s alto saxophonist George “Scoops” Carry brought Hines to a club to hear Parker. Hines was told that Parker would switch over from alto to tenor sax, and Hines was willing to buy Parker a new one. Evidently, Parker was not cleanly and decisively out of the McShann band, because Hines felt he had to approach McShann to get his release on Parker.[4]

It would not take long for Parker to show the true price of hiring him. Soon after being hired, Parker owed money to everybody in the band, and the new tenor saxophone was gone. While Parker’s personal problems that lost him his last job with McShann would continue to be problematic during his time with Hines, the legendary pianist later spoke highly of Parker’s skills:

I never heard so much tenor horn in my life… You know how the guy got all over that alto; you know that he was just as bad [meaning good] on tenor… Charlie was a good section man, and a very good reader… I mean, he was a musician.[5]

            Around this time it is also said that Parker garnered the attention of another Kansas City bread saxophonist of the highest quality, Ben Webster:

Charlie’s fleet execution on the tenor at first confounded Ben Webster… After walking into Minton’s one night and seeing Charlie on stage, Webster protested “What the hell is that up there? Man is that cat crazy?” Webster, who was a balladeer at heart, strode up to the band stand and snatched the tenor out of Charlie’s hand and proclaimed, “That horn ain’t s’posed to sound that fast.” Later that night, Webster changed his tune, walking all over town telling musicians “Man I heard a guy—I swear he is going to make everybody crazy on tenor.”[6]

While the Hines band was in Chicago in February of 1943, Parker would join a few other players, including Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Pettiford, in Bob Redcross’s room at the Savoy Hotel. Redcross would record multiple jam sessions in the hotel with Parker playing the tenor. Parker’s playing on these recordings reflects the influence of jazz’s greatest tenor saxophonists. One of the best recordings of these sessions is “Sweet Georgia Brown.” As Carl Woideck wrote:

“Sweet Georgia Brown” is performed at a “medium swing”… although the tempo varies. Parker’s two lengthy solos are bursting with ideas and represent some of his best work of the period. His long eighth-note lines swing with compelling power… Parker also seems inspired by the presence of trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie who not only solos inventively, but also audibly urges Parker on.[7]

            Woideck also discusses the influence of other tenor players in Parker’s solo on “Sweet Georgia Brown,” citing the growl and rasp of Coleman Hawkins and Chu Berry, and the alternate fingerings found in the playing of Lester Young. Parker also shows some of his original genius in this recording as well:

“Sweet Georgia Brown” contains many brief examples of a melodic device that would become characteristic of Parker’s post- 1944 work, the “chromatic passing tone…” nonharmonic tones that continue a downward or upward melodic line by chromatically filling in between two tones that are part of the prevailing scale or harmony.[8]

As previously mentioned, Parker quotes Lester Young’s famous “Shoe Shine Boy” solo during these sessions. When the group played Coleman Hawkins’s calling card, “Body and Soul,” Parker has a few phrases that are a little reminiscent of Hawkins’s playing, as well as Lester Young’s playing.

Compared to his tone on alto saxophone at this time, his tone on tenor seems more conventional and less abrasive. Listening to Parker’s tone, I noticed the sound is not far removed from Chu Berry’s tone on many of the recordings Berry made with Roy Eldridge. The Redcross recordings are fascinating because they show Parker still playing like a student. He is not using much of his own language yet, he is playing along with records, and he still sounds like he is putting himself together.  However, he is stepping out of the shadows of his influences, and showing an individual style. As Koch puts it, “the solos are lengthy and provide an illuminating look at the developmental stages of bebop, but the lack of harmonic support makes examination a chore.”[9] This lack of harmonic support is the fault of the guitarist, who was unable to keep the form in many of the recordings. However, the accompanist’s shortcomings arguably caused Parker to try playing along with recordings. One recording was Hazel Scott’s 1942 rendition of “Embraceable You.”

While the Redcross recordings offer a look at Parker’s playing during the latter part of his development, the recordings of him playing tenor with Miles Davis in August 1947 and January 1953 provide a look at a professional Parker on the big horn. Unlike the Redcross recordings, the Davis sessions serve as a way to compare Parker with himself rather than his influences. By the time of these recordings, Parker found his own voice, and it is interesting to see what carries over and what adapts between his alto and tenor playing. Much like the Redcross sessions, Parker’s tone on tenor compared to his tone on alto is much smoother and conventional sounding.

With the 1947 recordings, I thought it would be interesting to compare Parker’s tone on both horns. By raising the recording of his tenor playing seven half steps, we are able to hear Parker’s tenor playing sounding in the range of an alto. Interestingly enough, Parker’s tone on tenor sounds remarkably close to his alto playing when the pitch is raised. Upon first hearing the difference in tone, I assumed he sounded so different because he was uncomfortable. However, the eerie similarity between the tones using the edited tenor version may show that, arguably, his approach to tone quality does not change while playing the different horns. It is possible that Parker’s unique tone on alto is a product of overblowing, and when he puts the same amount of air into the tenor, his tone quality sounds less harsh and more conventional. Furthermore, while Parker was more comfortable playing alto, it is possible that his way of moving air through the saxophone is more suitable for the tenor horn than the alto.

            Parker’s tenor playing shows fascinating departures from his alto playing beyond just tone quality. It is worth noting that throughout the entire session in August of 1947, there is no extended sixteenth-note run. He uses occasional sixteenth-notes as well as triplets, but he does not do any double time runs. It is possible that, since Miles Davis was acting as the bandleader while still a current member of Parker’s band, Parker did not want to upstage Davis on his own session. In other words, this Davis’s day, and Parker’s strong voice on alto and his association with Davis threatened to overshadow the young trumpeter. Evidence for this argument is Parker’s willingness to play sixteenth note runs throughout the Redcross recordings, as well as the 1953 recordings. While there is no way to know for sure, it seems likely that this reserved approach is for Davis’s benefit rather than Parker’s being uncomfortable. The fact that Parker was on tenor saxophone at all during this session was Davis’s idea, and Carl Woideck wrote in his book about that and other observations about the session:

On the Miles Davis date that featured Parker playing tenor sax, Parker’s tenor timbre is consistent with his earlier work on that horn in that it is streamlined, without pronounced vibrato, rasp, or growl. It is not perhaps as luch and sensuous as before, sounding a little more blunt and less incisive; Parker was reportedly playing on a borrowed horn. Miles Davis had specifically wanted Parker to play the tenor, and, indeed, a trumpet-tenor sax front line became increasingly popular in bop and hard bop styles.[10]

            Parker’s use of formulas may show a certain lack of comfort on the larger horn. While Parker is generally a formulaic player, and used certain licks in certain places throughout his career, it has been discussed in class how he seemed to depend on them more when he was not in an ideal musical situation. In order to analyze his use of formulas, I used the list of formulas from Thomas Owens’s 1974 PhD dissertation and marked any formulas I found.

Looking at the analysis for “Sippin’ at Bells,” it is interesting that most of the formulas spotted are ornaments. In measure one, Parker used M. 7b, which is two sixteenth notes, descending by half notes, and leading into a phrase. The note being stressed using this formula is the first eighth note of the phrase, while the sixteenth notes serve as a form of pick-up. In measure four, we see one of the most common Parker formulas, M. 2Ab. This formula is simply a mordent followed by a second, third or even a fourth. This formula is more or less an ornamented eighth note pattern, however instead of playing the E-flat to D, Parker ads an upper neighbor and return to the E-flat. Since this formula is so easy and basic, Parker is able to use it in many places during the twenty-four-measure solo: measure eleven, measure sixteen, and measure twenty. Another formula used in this solo is Parker’s most frequently used, M.1A. This formula consists of a minor, or sometimes major, arpeggio, with the fourth note in the series serving as the target note. In this solo alone, Parker uses M.1A in measure nine, measure ten, measure thirteen, and measure twenty-two.

Besides those formulas, I found a slight variation of formula M.4Cb in measure fourteen, and formula M.4Ea in measure thirteen. While I could not find formulas to match the phrases in measures two and three, measures five through nine, measures eighteen and nineteen, or measures twenty-three and twenty-four, the lines sounded like standard Parker playing.

             The analysis for “Half Nelson” also shows Parker using primarily ornamental formulas. M. 2A appears five times during the thirty-two bar solo, and M. 7 appears three times. Surprisingly, formula M. 1A is only used once. Again, many of the unmarked parts of the solo seem like typical Parker language—like the circled part in measure sixteen—though I could not spot a corresponding formula on Owens’s list. I find it interesting that over the CMaj7 in measures five and six as well as in measures twenty-one and twenty-two, Parker uses the same formula. This formula—consisting of an A, followed by a B, then a C, and ending a forth down on a G—is not listed by Owens, but Parker uses it twice in this solo. Perhaps his use of formulas similar parts of the form shows discomfort with the horn or the tune. However, it could be argued that Parker used this to bring a sort of unity to the solo. Either way, I think it is interesting that he would use the same phrase-ending formula twice in the same solo.

            The most interesting use of formulas occurs in his solo for “Little Willie Leaps.” Again, Parker frequently uses M. 1A, M. 2A, and M. 7. However, in this solo, Parker keeps repeating formula M. 20. H uses it first in measure three, then in measure nineteen, and last starting on beat four of measure twenty-nine. This is a formula that Parker plays exclusively in the key of B-flat when he plays alto. However, since Parker is on the B-flat transposing instrument, instead of an E-flat transposing instrument, it is not surprising that he is using a B-flat lick even though this song is in F, since the fingering would be the same for Parker.

            Another interesting observation is Parker’s use of chromatic passing tones. It was discussed that Parker was starting to show use of chromatic passing tones throughout the Redcross recordings, but he uses these passing tones much more consistently throughout each solo. Throughout all three solos, Parker creates much interest in his solos with his use of passing tones in ascending and descending lines, but the most noteworthy is his use of chromatic passing tones in his solo break for “Little Willie Leaps.” Parker starts by outlining a Dmin7 chord, and then goes down chromatically, enclosing the A natural on beat one of the second measure of the break. He then descends in half steps until landing on the F natural on beat three. Parker’s use of passing tones is indicative of his alto playing at the time, but Carl Woideck points out aspects of this solo break point to some of his influences:

Both Parker’s tenor sax timbre and the break’s overall contour are somewhat reminiscent of his major influence, Lester Young. Parker’s unique contribution, however, is seen in his characteristic chromatic passing tones.[11]

Parker’s last session on tenor provides a glimpse at Parker’s tenor playing in a different atmosphere. On the January 1953 recording date, another tenor saxophonist, Sonny Rollins, joins Parker and Davis. On “Serpent’s Tooth,” Davis takes two choruses, followed by two choruses each by Rollins and then Parker. Hearing the two tenor men solo right next to each other provides an interesting comparison. At this time, Parker’s influence on Rollins could still be heard in the twenty-two year old’s playing. While Rollins plays many Parker-like phrases, his rhythmic variance gives him away. Also, Rollins has a very unique tone in the high range of the horn. However, he and Parker’s tone in the middle range of the horn is quite similar on this recording session.

On this recording, Parker’s tenor tone has more of an edge to it than his previous sessions on the instrument. Raising the pitch of his playing by seven half steps on this session again shows an interesting comparison to his alto playing. While his tenor playing is rougher sounding and more adventurous than the session from 1947, it still reflects the change heard in his alto tone, and the 1953 recordings sounds similar to his alto playing of the time when the pitch is raised.

During this recording session, Parker does not hold back. Unlike the previous session under Davis, Parker shows brilliant technique. Perhaps he chose to let loose more on this session due to the presence of Sonny Rollins. It is also possible that he chose to play in a more aggressive manner because of Davis’s milder manner of playing. In 1947, Davis was still playing a more strict form of bebop, but by 1953 had started taking a cooler approach.

Without a doubt, Charlie Parker’s output on tenor saxophone pales in comparison to his output on alto saxophone. However, the spacing of his tenor recordings creates an interesting narrative of his growth. The Redcross recordings in 1943 show Parker towards the end of his development. The influence of players like Lester Young, Chu Berry, and even Coleman Hawkins can be heard clearly. The Miles Davis All-Stars session took place around the time of some of his best work as a leader for Dial Records. Parker had really matured as a player, and comparing these recordings to his work on alto at the time is an interesting exercise. During this session, Parker almost sounds like a tenor player influenced by Charlie Parker rather than Charlie Parker on tenor. The 1953 recording for Prestige was in the middle of Parker’s Verve years. Parker’s sound was evolving in his final years, and the same is heard in his tenor playing. To me, this is when his tenor saxophone playing sounded the most like Charlie Parker.

This study of Parker has been a good starting place, but it far from extensive. Further comparison of his solos on both alto and tenor saxophone that uses more transcription than I could provide would be interesting. Indeed, Parker’s output on tenor saxophone shows an interesting reflection and departure from his normal playing.

[1] Stanley Crouch, Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker. (New York: Harper Collins, 2013), 232.

[2] Carl Woideck, Charlie Parker: His Life and Music. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), 11-12.

[3] Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz 1930-1945. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 290.

[4] Woideck (1998), 25.

[5] Koch, Lawrence, Yardbird Suite: A Compendium of the Music and Life of Charlie Parker. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999). 37.

[6] Chuck Haddix, Bird: The Life and Music Charlie Parker, (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 61.

[7] Woideck (1998) 96.

[8] Woideck (1998), 97.

[9] Koch (1999), 38.

[10] Woideck (1998) 142.

[11] Woideck (1998), 143-144.