THE SWING ERA (DUKE ELLINGTON)

In 1932 Duke Ellington (1899-1974) wrote a song, It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing, that provided a label for a new style of jazz developing among big bands during the 1930s. Duke was no newcomer to the field of jazz, having written his first song, Soda Fountain Rag, at the age of fourteen and having organized his first band not too many years later.

He had little formal training in music other than piano lessons. As a pianist he came in contact with Harlem's active pianists during the time and was particularly influenced by the playing of James P. Johnson, Willie-the-Lion Smith, Luckey Roberts, and Fats Waller. But Ellington's ideas were his own and his genius led him to create an orchestra style marked by rich and daring harmonies, by subtle contrasting of colors and timbres, and by an ingenious handling of solo and ensemble relationships. The orchestra became the vehicle through which Ellington expressed his creativity; it came to represent the ideal big "swinging band".

When Ellington's band began its memorable engagement in 1927 at the famed Cotton Club in Harlem, it included two trumpets, trombone, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, tenor saxophone (doubling with clarinet), guitar (doubling with banjo), bass, drums, and piano. Later it was enlarged to include three trumpets and two trombones, and in 1932 a third trombone and a fourth saxophone were added. It was during the Cotton Club years that Duke's orchestra began to win distinctions for its thorough musicianship and

homogeneity.

Duke, as the leader, could accept the credit for it, but the contributions of his sidemen were significant. They were brilliant soloists in their own rights; they fitted in well with Duke's temperament; and they remained with him over long periods of

time.

Many of Duke's arrangements were worked out with his sidemen in the true tradition of collective improvisation. Duke would bring to the meeting his musical ideas, and one or another of the bandsmen would make suggestions for changes or additions. Things were tried out on the spot in order to find out whether they worked. Often a composition was changed after it had been performed three or four times, sometimes resulting in an entirely new work. Duke's constantly reiterated statement was, "Good music is music that sounds good". Sometimes other musicians of the orchestra would bring their compositions to "creating sessions" to be worked out by the entire group. In 1939 Billy Strayhorn (1915-67), pianist-composer, joined Duke's orchestra as an arranger ana over the years developed into Duke's musical alter ego.* The collaboration between the two men was so close that often neither could identify which part of a musical work was his.

Ellington left more than 2,000 compositions, an impressive record equaled by few composers in the history of American music. His best known works included the symphonic suites Creole Rhapsody (1931), Black, Brown, and Beige (1943), Deep South Suite (1947), Liberian Suite (1947), Such Sweet Thunder (1957), and Far East Suite (1970); the ballet The River (1970); the pageant My People (1963); the television musical A Drum Is a Woman (CBS,* 1957); and the musicals Jump for Joy (1941; 1959) and Beggar's Holiday (1946). Best known of the hundreds of songs he wrote were Sophisticated Lady, In a Sentimental Mood, I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart, Mood Indigo, and / Got It Bad and That Ain't

Good.

Ellington made enormous contributions to the development of jazz and, indeed, to American music in general. His innovations, unusual at the time introduced, passed into the sounds of jazz so quickly that the jazz world accepted them as if always there; for example, the use of the voice as an instrument in Adelaide Hall's wordless solo on Creole Love Call (1928), or the employment of Cuban elements in Caravan (1937), or the use of concerto form in

Concerto for Cootie (1939). He was the first jazzman to write concert jazz in extended forms, and for seven years (1943-50) he presented annual concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York. He also was among the first to present jazz in the church.

From: The Music of Black Americans by E. Southern

SPIRITUALS

The largest number of Negro folk-songs collected thus far are spirituals. They were first presented to the world at large by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who toured America and Europe from 1871 to 1878. The story of these singers - their organization and tours - is a fascinating and heroic one, and is so closely connected with the development of America's interest in the spirituals that it seems appropriate to relate a part of it.

Fisk University was established in 1866 for freed men by northern educational interests, as were so many of the schools for Negroes which were established in the South after the Civil War. Shortly after its founding many unforeseen problems arose to perplex the administration. The gravest of these was the problem of funds to carry forward the work of the school. The lack of money produced such a precarious situation that it seemed inevitable that Fisk must close its doors.

The treasurer of the school, Mr. George L. White, had listened with keen interest to the singing of the students, and in a moment of inspiration stated his belief that if the world could hear these strange songs it would experience the same exaltation which he felt when listening to them, and somehow, out of this, sufficient interest could be aroused to help the new educational experiment. He gained the reluctant permission of the authorities to undertake the organization of a group of students into a chorus, with the purpose of making a concert tour.

Excellent voices were abundant among the students. From these Mr. White selected twelve and began more than two years of intensive training.

The type of program to be offered presented several problems of large proportions. America had seen Negroes on the stage before - but they were minstrels. Was America prepared to receive Negroes on the stage in a serious role? What could these young people offer that would interest America and at the same time be worthy of a college? By what name should they be known?

Mr. White decided on a style of singing the spiritual which eliminated every element that detracted from the pure emotion of the song. Harmony was diatonic and limited very largely to the primary triads and the dominant seventh. Dialect was not stressed but was used only where it was vital to the spirit of the song. Finish, precision, and sincerety were demanded by this leader. While

the program featured the spirituals, variety was given it by the use of numbers of classical standard. Mr. White strove for an art presentation, not a caricature of atmosphere.

At last the singers were ready. They left Nashville on October 6th, 1871. During the first part of the tour Mr. White gave the group the inspired name, The Jubilee Singers, and called their music Jubilee Songs.

At first America did not know how to receive the Jubilee Singers. Its first attitude was one of indifference and derision. There soon developed, however, an enthusiasm which led the singers to heights of success far beyond their hopes.

After a successful tour of America, a smaller company of eight singers were taken to Europe where they scored a triumph. They sang before the crowned heads and were entertained by Gladstone.

In 1878 the Singers returned to Fisk with more than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Just as important as this money, however, was the interest the Jubilee Singers had created over the world in Negro education and in the spirituals, known until recently by the name they gave them-Jubilee Songs.

Frequently today, but quite generally before and during the Reconstruction Period, the spiritual functioned in two ways other than religious expression. It served as the work song and as the social song. However, any spiritual which was used generally as a work song or a social song soon lost its religious significance.

Many grand songs have been eschewed by the church because they had been used too commonly in non-religious activities. One typical example of this is the spiritual Wasn't That a Mighty Day when Jesus Christ was Bom, majestic in melodic Une as well as in word. It was used and still is used by minstrel quartets who feature it with some ridiculous cadenzas for the bass singer.

So strong were the demands of the Negro church upon a member that he was forced to refrain from singing all songs of a secular nature. But, the Negro, compelled by nature to sing as he worked, had to sing religious songs. Frequently, in my search for songs I have found it impossible to persuade church members to sing a work song or a social song for me, because it was "sinful". The church placed the same ban on secular songs in entertainments and suppers that it sponsored.

From the standpoint of form, melodic variety, and emotional expressiveness, the spiritual is the most highly developed of the Negro folk-songs. There are many types of spirituals, but they can be classed in three groups: the "call and response chant"; the slow, sustained, long-phrase melody, and the syncopated, segmented

melody.

In the first main type we find such songs as Great Camp Meeting, Shout for Joy, Good Morning Everybody, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, and Sittin' Down beside the Lamb. The largest number of spirituals, and possibly the most interesting ones,

embrace this form. These songs are sung in a rapid tempo, and are characterized by fiery spirit. The calmness of Swing Low Sweet Chariot is an exception.

The second type of spiritual includes such songs as Deep River, Nobody Knows the Trouble I see, My Lord What a Morning, and Were You There? Several noteworthy characteristics are discernible from an analysis of these sprirituals. The tempo of songs in this class is slow and the phrase line long and sustained. Usually the words make long phrases or complete sentences. Fewer songs are known in this mold than in the others. In the spirituals created today this type is rare.

In the third class of spiritual we find the songs which probably are the most popular, such as Shout All over God's Heab'n, Little David Play on Yo' Harp, Ain't Going to Study War No Mo. The tempo of these songs is usually fast and the rhythm features a swing which stimulates bodily movement. The musical line instead of being a complete, sustained phrase is often made up of segments or rhythmic patterns with a syncopated figure. As is to be expected the words are usually in short phrase length, or one repeated word, rather than in complete lines as are found in Were You There? and songs of its class.

A prominent characteristic of this type of spiritual is a repeated, short rhythmic-pattern usually syncopated, but if not syncopated, featuring an important pulse note. There is frequently an unusual distribution of notes within the pattern.

There is a certain elusive quality heard in the native singing of the melodies that defies musical notation. For lack of suitable symbols, it is impossible to record on paper many of these songs as they are sung in their native environment. Extravagant postamenta, slurs, and free use of extra notes serve to mystify the collector of these songs who strives for accuracy.

Of much interest are the scales of the Negro employed in the spirituals. He unconsciously avoided the fourth and seventh major scale steps in many songs, thereby using the pentatonic scale. But there were employed notes foreign to the conventional major and minor scales with such frequency as to justify their being regarded as distinct. The most common of these are the "flatted third" (the feature note of the blues) and the "flatted seventh".

The latter note is seen prominently in the songs Roll Jordan Roll, Soon-a Will Be Done (second tune), Great Camp Meeting, and Wish I's in Heab'n Settin' Down. The scale employed in You May Bury me in the East corresponds closely to the Dorian mode. Several songs make use of the Phrygian mode. Lord Help the Po' and Needy is one.

Although the spirituals usually lend themselves readily to four-part harmony, and concert singers have sung them with varied tempos and dynamics quite effectively, nevertheless, in the rural churches from where they mostly spring they are sung with a

minimum of such modifications. There are few contrasting passages such as loud and soft; no notes are held for effect longer than the pulse indicates; and strangest of all, there are no retards to anticipate the closing cadence. The leader establishes his tempo and maintains it throughout the song. Harmony occasionally is in two parts, rarely in three. I have never encountered four-part harmony.

The leader is a most important factor in the singing of spirituals. It is he who sets the pitch and tempo, and it is he who sings the verses. The leader sometimes must sing his refrain through several times before the group will join him. He must have at his disposal many verses for each song.

Many churches have spirituals which are led exclusively by special singers. Thus, within a church a spiritual may be designated as Brother Jones' Song, or Sister Mary's Song. Such songs may have been composed, or merely introduced into the church singing by the leader. The "ownership" of such a song carried with it the indisputable ability to sing it effectively. In this manner traditions of singing grew around certain spirituals. It was not unusual that a song ceased to be sung in a church after a famous leader of it had died.

From: American Negro Songs and Spirituals Ed. by John Work

BLUES

The spirituals are the manifestation of Afro-American folk music in choral singing. The blues are the manifestation of Afro-American folk music in solo singing.

The blues probably took shape gradually after the Civil War. They were widely sung throughout the rural South in the final decades of the nineteenth century, and soon emerged as a (normally) twelve-bar song form with instrumental accompaniment, basically antiphonal in structure. Taken up by the Negro musicians who con­verged on the cities of the South and Middle West in the 1890s in search of employment, the urbanized blues branched off from the archaic or folk blues (which continued on their own course) and took a Une of development that in turn branched off into two dis­tinct channels: the blues as popular song and the blues as jazz.

Often the verses of the blues, likе those of the spirituals, were made up of current tag Unes strung together in the moment of im­provisation.

Since the singer was giving relief to his feelings - of lonesome-ness, or longing, or resentment, or sorrow - there was consolation in repeating the sentiment that he wanted to express. He began by telling what was on his mind, repeated it once for emphasis, and finished it off with a second repetition for good measure. This pattern was certainly no strain upon the singer's powers of improvisation. When the latter sought more scope, a variation in the

third line resulted:

I've never seen such real hard times before

I've never seen such real hard times before

The wolf keeps walkin' all 'round my door.

This three-line stanza, consisting of statement, repetition, and "response", is the classic verse form of the blues.

Although most blues have the burden of lament associated with the expression "Feeling blue", they have an undertone of humour, not so much stressed as implied, that gives them a character utterly different from that of the ordinary sentimental song.

Besides being a type of folk song in their own right, and later a form of American popular music, the blues were a means of effecting the transition of Afro-American "hot" music from the vocal to the instrumental realm through the medium of piano blues and the jazz band. The blues are therefore of far-reaching significance in the development of American music.

The usual structure of the blues consists of a twelve-bar pattern. Each line of the verse corresponds to four measures of the music. To express it in another way, there are two complete melodic state­ments (corresponding to the verse statement and its repetition), each ending on the tonic (or the third or fifth of the tonic chord), fol­lowed by the melodic "response" (corresponding to the third line of the verse), which also ends on the tonic.

Many of the folk blues use the pentatonic scale, but this scale, so wide spread in folk music, is not what gives to the blues their peculiar melodic quality. The characteristic trait is rather the flatting of the third and seventh degrees of the diatonic scale. These are the so-called "blue notes" that have been of such significance in modern music. I

The blues scale (diatonic, with microtonally flatted third and sev­enth) lies at the very core of Afro-American folk song, and its influ­ence has permeated large sectors of American music, both in the popular and in the fine-art idioms.

All the evidence indicates that the blues scale, and the blues intonation that goes with it, are an original and unique contribution of the Negro race to America's music.

Many musicians and many singers, some anonymous, some leg­endary, some obscure, some famous, many now dead, some still living, were responsible for the transition of the blues from a folk song of one region and one group to a type of song known throughout the land, widely imitated, often changed, frequently dis­torted, occasionally cheapened, but generally asserting its essential integrity and individuality as a musical form and as a nonsentimental expression of feeling. Among these musicians, there is one whose name has been particularly associated with the rise of the blues as a type of popular music: W.C. Handy, known above all as the com­poser of St. Louis Blues.

From: America's Music From the Pilgrims to the Present by G. Chase

When Africans sang, they slid into and around notes instead of hitting them straight. They didn't stay on pitch. Their voices played around it; and the slides and swoops gave their songs a strange haunting quality quite unlike anything known in Western music. American Negroes, in slave days, sang with the same changes of pitch and the same subtle gliding from note to note.

It seems likely that the blues sound - so important in jazz - goes back to the African way of singing between and around notes. In blues, the third and seventh notes of the scale are flatted - not by half tone, to which we are accustomed, but by a fraction close to a

quarter tone.

These slurred notes occur through Negro folk music and jazz. The great blue singer, Bessie Smith, could slide lazily into tones that can't be placed exactly on the scale. So could Billie Holiday. Ella Fitzgerald and Mahalia Jackson, among present-day singers, swoop and glide into notes in a way impossible to put down on paper. This is the opposite of the European musical tradition. A classically trained singer is taught to hit notes in a straightforward, precise way. To such a singer a deviation from pitch is a catastrophe. This differ­ence in training may explain why opera singers do not make good

blues singers.

West Africans used vibrato in their songs, and this, too, was adopted in jazz. Vibrato is a slightly tremulous or pulsating effect. African singers used this device to make certain parts of the songs more important or to give them emotional intensity. In jazz, vibrato serves much the same purpose and also sets up a rhythmic pulsation within the larger system rhythm of the piece - a beat within a beat.

From: What Jazz is All About? by L. Erlich

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1503