A TONE PARALLELJAZZ MUSIC, LEFTIST POLITICS, AND THE

COUNTER-MINSTREL NARRATIVE, 1930-1970

by Kevin Michael Angelo Strait
B.A., 1997, Wesleyan University
M.A., 2002, The George Washington University
A Dissertation submitted to
The Faculty of
Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
of The George Washington University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

May 16, 2010

Dissertation directed by
James A. Miller
Professor of English and American Studies

UMI Number: 3397350

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The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University
certifies that Kevin M. Strait has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy as of December 15, 2009. This is the final and approved form of the
dissertation.

"A TONE PARALLELJAZZ MUSIC, LEFTIST POLITICS, AND THE COUNTERMINSTREL NARRATIVE, 1930-1970
Kevin Michael Angelo Strait

Dissertation Research Committee:

James A. Miller, Professor of English and American Studies, Dissertation
Director
Gayle Wald, Associate Professor of English, Committee Member
Thomas A. Guglielmo, Associate Professor of American Studies,
Committee Member

ii

 Copyright 2010 by Kevin M. A. Strait

All rights reserved

iii

Dedication
For Ty, and my two golden nephews Nicolas and Zachary

iv

Acknowledgments

I owe a debt of gratitude to the friends, family, and teachers who have been with me
since the beginning stages of this project. I am especially thankful for the guidance,
patience, and friendship of my advisor James A. Miller. I met Jim on my third day of
graduate school and nervously told him of my interest in music, in which he promptly
affirmed, There hasnt been a significant piece of music since John Coltranes A Love
Supreme. Although we disagreed on that detail, Ive had the privilege of conversing with
Jim over the years on a number of issues serious and trivial, professional and personal.
Jims encouragement during the research stage of this dissertation allowed me to trust the
foundations of my root ideas and his keen insight helped me to develop a better sense of
clarity with the more complex issues of this project. I am honored to have been his student
and I am forever grateful for his reassuring counsel. I am also thankful for the 9 years (and
counting) of advice and tutelage from my unofficial co-advisor James O. Horton.
Throughout the years, Jim has been my fiercest advocate and he remains the model of what
a teacher, scholar, and mentor should be. Without a doubt, the two Jims have been a
stabilizing force for me during my years of graduate study and I feel genuinely privileged
having gone through this experience with such wonderful people.
To the members of my dissertation committee, I owe special thanks. Since my days
as a Masters student, Gayle Walds candor, reassurance, and tough questions have helped
me to develop into a more thoughtful and effective scholar. Whether reading drafts or
requiring me to dig deeper in my analysis, Thomas Guglielmos support has been

unwavering throughout this process. I also want to thank Charlie McGovern and John
Vlach for their insightful assistance during my defense.
I am deeply indebted for the years of intellectual and emotional support from the
faculty and staff at GWU, including Terry Murphy, Melani McAlister, Phyllis Palmer,
Barney Mergen, and Maureen Kentoff. I also want to thank Kip Lornell, who during the
early stages of my graduate student career, helped me develop several of the key ideas I am
now pursuing in my scholarship.
The friendships I have made with my colleagues at GWU have been the highlight
of my graduate school experience. In this ever-expanding community, we share an endless
amount of inside jokes and references that have made the grind endurable. The diversity of
their personalities and ideas has truly enriched my life. I am especially indebted to the
tireless efforts of my writing group, affectionately (and perhaps, bewilderingly) known as
the Stallions and consisting of my classmates David Kieran, Lars Lierow, and Jeremy
Hill. Without these good and generous friends I am sure I could not have finished this
project. I owe each of them many, many thanks.
Julie Elman deserves several pages in her honor for her extraordinary ability to
unravel my unfinished ideas into comprehensible strands of thought. Julie is a remarkable
scholar, musician, and friend. I also want to thank my fellow GWU comrades throughout
the years, including Kyle Riismandel, Laurel Clark, Stephanie Ricker Schulte, and
Cameron Logan. Many thanks as well to Laura Cook Kenna, Yusuke Torii, Charity Fox,
Joan Fragazsy Troyano, Amber Wiley, Laurie Lahey, Sandra Heard, Denise Meringolo,
Paul Gardullo, Kim Yates, Ramzi Fawaz, Kathleen Brian, Elizabeth Breiseth, and Emily
Dietsch for their friendship and encouragement along the way.
vi

Thanks as well to my dear friends from Wesleyan University, including Maria

Magana, Sabelo Narasimhan, Jessica Thompson, Caleb Tucker-Raymond, Caroline
Cummings, Jennifer Kelly Dewitt, Mike Shen, Ama Greenrose, and Courtney Cavellier.
Im especially grateful to my good friend Allison Perlman who was never too busy (even
though she definitely was) to lend a hand. I also want to thank Jay Hoggard, Anthony
Braxton, Ashraf Rushdie, Gayle Pemberton, and Pheeroan Aklaff for inspiring me to
pursue a Ph.D. Many thanks as well to my friends Sean and Dayna Gibbons for their
extraordinary support throughout my graduate career.
I want to thank my family, beginning with my father, George, who has believed in
my ability to complete a dissertation years before I even considered graduate school.
Getting me out of my shell over the years has at times been a tough sell, but I want to thank
my father for coaching me through my unfinished ideas, and inspiring me to complete my
degree through his own effortlessly inquisitive and diligent nature. My mother Lisa kept
me going during the toughest stages of writing and researching, whether with a care
package of brownies, a thoughtful card, or just a reassuring phone call to say how proud
she was and how proud my grandparents would be of my accomplishments.

My oldest

friend also happens to be my brother, Eric. I am most thankful for his extraordinary
capacity to listen and hear me out when graduate school presented its toughest challenges.
Always just a phone call away, Erics positive contributions to my work and life have been
simply enormous and witnessing him with his wonderful wife Diana and their two
beautiful children Nicolas and Zachary has inspired me to progress in life far beyond a
career in academia. Finally, thanks to my soon-to-be-wife Tyrese. My best friend and
soulmate, Ty also happens to be the funniest person I know and I can honestly say that our
vii

happy life at home granted me the personal and intellectual space to think creatively and
finish this dissertation. My words cannot adequately express my level of admiration for
her kind spirit and her own assiduous work ethic that inspired me to work the extra hour to
complete this project. Luckily, I will have the rest of my life to thank her for everything
she has done for me throughout this process.

viii

Abstract of Dissertation
"A Tone ParallelJazz Music, Leftist Politics, and the Counter-Minstrel Narrative, 19301970
My dissertation analyzes the ways that musicians voiced, through the medium of jazz, the
values and politics of black public intellectuals and the political left. By arguing that jazz
was a sonic expression of the anti-racist politics of black public intellectuals, my
dissertation works to extend the scope and study of race and racial politics outside the well
traversed realms of literary and visual studies to incorporate music. Ultimately, this project
reveals the music as a form of political activism and illustrates how jazz of the New Deal
era developed a viable, tangible political resonance that shaped the history of race and
racial politics to the era of the Civil Rights Movement. My project begins by locating the
modern incarnations of jazz outside of its blues-associated, New Orleans roots, and
instead as a product of the leftist, Marxist values that circulated amongst black public
intellectuals during the New Deal. Understanding jazz as a product of the Popular Front
offers insight into the ways debates concerning black radical politics shaped not only the
music, but the manner in which politically active black artists influenced the politics and
ideals of American society.

Additionally, this dissertation explores how the musical

language of jazz functioned as a narrative for what I call the counter-minstrel activity of
jazz musicians.

This counter-minstrel activity enabled jazz musicians to work as

entertainers and political figures within a mainstream that still operated on the logic
inherited from blackface minstrelsy, contrary to the purportedly apolitical stance of the
musicians themselves. Thus, this dissertation contends that the primary political actions of
ix

black jazz musicians were articulated in the display of their artistic responses to the
lingering history of the minstrel show. This dissertation also argues that the soundings of
musicians, located in the cultural work of their music and public endeavors, allowed for
these artists to function as black public intellectuals engaging in the pursuit of AfricanAmerican social, artistic, and political freedom.

Table of Contents

Dedication ........................................................................................................... iv
Acknowledgments ............................................................................................... v
Abstract of Dissertation ..................................................................................... ix
Table of Contents ............................................................................................... xi
Introduction..1
Chapter 1: "The Duke Steps Out of the Jungle;" Race, Minstrelsy, and
the Counter-Minstrel Narrative of "Reminiscing in Tempo .......................... 21
Chapter 2: "A People's Music;" The Jazz Community, Communism,
and Counter-Minstrel Strategies....................................................................... 71
Chapter 3: "The Secret Weapon is a Long Blue Note;" The Foreign Stage,
Transnational Influence, and the Counter-Minstrel Identiy of Jazz in
the Cold War.................................................................................................... 117
Chapter 4: "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down;" The Transitional Cultural
Politics of Black Power Ideology, the "Free" Period, and the Post-Minstrel
Jazz Identity ..................................................................................................... 162
Conclusion: ...................................................................................................... 208
Bibliography .................................................................................................... 213

xi

Introduction
This study is an examination of the ways that musicians articulated, through the
medium of jazz, the values and politics of black public intellectuals and the political Left
from 1930-1970. The goal of this project is to raise the stakes concerning the significance
of jazz in the political discourse of African-Americans. Although jazz, as a medium, has
consistently been the focus of ethnomusicological and aesthetic critique, my study offers a
novel historical evacuation of its performers and its political and ideological tonalities at
the levels of composition, sound, and performance. And by arguing that jazz was a
functional tool that interpreted ideology, this dissertation extends the scope and study of
race and racial politics outside the well traversed visual and literary realms by incorporating
music.
This project illustrates how jazz of the New Deal era developed a viable, tangible
political resonance that shaped the history of race and racial politics to the period of the
Black Power Movement. It begins by locating the modern incarnations of jazz outside of
its blues-associated, New Orleans roots, examining it instead as a product of the leftist,
Marxist values that circulated amongst black public intellectuals during the New Deal.
Understanding jazz as a product of the Popular Front offers insight into the ways debates
about race and racial politics shaped the music and the manner in which politically active
black artists influenced the politics and ideals of American society. My project therefore
analyzes the cultural work of jazz music and places the art alongside the trajectory of the
Marxist ideology that framed the discussion of black public intellectuals in the 1930sa
trajectory complicated by the difficult history of minstrelsy that significantly circumscribed
1

the scope and depth of popular art, as well as the art that voiced the radical, politically
alternative concerns of the Left.
Specifically, this dissertation argues that the musical language of jazz functioned as
a narrative for what I call the counter-minstrel activity of jazz musicians. This counterminstrel activity enabled jazz musicians to work as entertainers and political figures within
a mainstream that still operated on the logic inherited from blackface minstrelsy, contrary
to the purportedly apolitical stance of the musicians themselves. This dissertation argues
that the soundings of musicians, located in the cultural work of their music and public
endeavors, allowed for these artists to function as black public intellectuals engaging in the
pursuit of African-American social, artistic, and political freedom.1
As stated, this dissertation begins its investigation by examining the jazz of the
swing era. An over-emphasis of the meta-narrative of jazzs blues heritage occludes the
significance of the modernist applications specific to jazz of the New Deal.

This

dissertation therefore continues with current scholarship that historicizes the art outside of
the folk-art blueprint, beginning with a discussion of Duke Ellington, his jungle music
phase, and specifically his 1935 long-form piece, Reminiscing in Tempo. Investigating
Ellingtons piece and the political development of his musical language in the 1930s
diverges from the new jazz studies scholarship that broadly characterizes the music of the
1

My use of the term soundings stems directly from the work of Houston Baker
Jr., who defines this term as a transformative and unifying metaphor for the discursive
capacities of African-Americans. Bakers term was conceived to apply to black modernists
of the Harlem Renaissance and represents the broad narrative dynamics of black public
intellectuals to convey the gamut of human emotion, specifically through artistic
expression. For this dissertation, I conceive the soundings of jazz musicians as a
discursive strategy, producing art that narrates a path through the artistic, social, structural
confines of minstrelsy. Houston Baker, Afro-American Poetics: Revisions of Harlem and
the Black Aesthetic (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996).
2

swing era as either the compositionally interchangeable or the ideologically conjoined

results of the mechanized products of cultural industry and the amalgamated politics of the
Popular Front, New Deal artistic programs.
Commenting on the stylized machine rhythms and aesthetics of AfricanAmerican music in the swing era, Joel Dinerstein argues that jazz performed functionally in
the adaptation to modernity, noting its industrialized aesthetics as the nations popular
music in the Machine Age (1919-45) because its driving, syncopated rhythms reflected the
speeded-up tempo of life produced by industrialization in the American work place and the
mechanization of urban life.2 This perspective on jazz firmly situates the music within an
historical era by citing its identity as a stamped product of industry.

And although

musically derivative, this artistic uniformity hints at the musical language emanating from
swing that produced a narrative for the times.

Specifically, Dinersteins analysis

contributes to the commonplace perception of jazz in the swing era as a reconstruction of

the tempo of life that provides a degree of steady rhythm through the fluctuations
experienced as a result of the tumultuous politics of the New Deal.3 Limited in the study of
1930s jazz, however, is the recognition of swings capacity for compositional and aesthetic
variety; two musical components that indicate a more encompassing narrative of the times,
accounting for the numerous shifts and diversity of thought ubiquitously characteristic of
the New Deal era.
On one hand, swing is often defined through a Tin-Pan Alley, mass-produced,
sonically static, and artistically interchangeable perspective regardless of the efforts of new

Joel Dinerstein, Swinging the Machine (Massachusetts: University of

Massachusetts Press, 2003), 4-7.
3

jazz scholars to re-envision the music as something other than the creatively inferior middle
child of New Orleans based Jazz Age post-ragtime style and post-WWII bebop jazz. The
current reclamation of the swing era, however, takes shape from an illustration of the music
and its musicians as emergent emblems of the nationalized tenets of the early stages of the
FDR era that symbolically embraced populist and democratic ideals with examples of
interracial alliance and economic agency in the face of a segregated nation. Indeed, much
of the scholarship concerning the music of the 1930s has reclaimed the artistic relevancy
and ideological agency of the swing era from the rubric laid out by the multivalent works of
David Stowe, Lewis Erenberg, and others who have provided a functional template for jazz
studies in the past decade. Arguing candidly for the democratic functionality of jazz in the
1930s, David Stowes analysis of the era describes swing as the preeminent expression of
the New Deal: a cultural form of the people, accessible, inclusive, distinctively
democratic, and thus distinctively American.4 Presenting the associations of jazz and
Marxist politics as imperfect and solely part of swings ambiguously left-leaning
ideology, Stowe ultimately preserves his rubric claiming that despite these alignments,
the fit between the Communist Party and big-band jazz was never a seamless one.5 Lewis
Erenberg presents a similar foundation, stating that swing symbolized a major
reorientation in American national culture; claiming that, for many of its most devoted
fans, the music expressed a new model of a pluralist democracy capable of challenging

Dinerstein, Swinging the Machine, 25.

David Stowe, Swing Changes: Big Band Jazz and New Deal America
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 13.
5
Stowe, Swing Changes, 72-73.
4
4

classical music for the mantle of cultural legitimacy and American national identity.6
Casting a foundation for the study of music, New Jazz Scholars utilize jazz to define the
cultural consciousness of the New Deal era, manifesting the art forms democratic aesthetic
in both the melting pot of the sound and the interracial harmony of the band. Critically
shaping central ideas of citizenship and identity in African-American culture these
explorations of the democratic tropes of jazz vividly determine the trajectory of racial
politics as the soundtrack and performance of jazz symbolized, and in some cases, reflected
the progressive coalitions indicative of the Popular Front era. This dissertation absorbs the
legitimacy of these principles but emphasizes that the pervasive racialized constraints of
minstrelsy has complicated the democratic vision of jazz held by New Jazz scholars. As
this dissertation will argue, the compositional fabric and public discourse concerning
Reminiscing points towards the intrinsically racialized definitions historically placed
upon jazz, complicating the egalitarian metaphor and motif of jazz as democratic.
Additionally within the scholarship of New Jazz Studies, Scott DeVeauxs work
acts to revise Martin Williams prior notion of the jazz tradition and the decades of
formal jazz analyses that, as declared by John Gennari, have adhered to, the Romantic
tragic view of jazz.7 DeVeauxs work, along with that of Stowe, Erenberg, Denning, and
6

Lewis A. Erenberg, Swingin the Dream (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1998), xiii.
7
Gennari continues, commenting on British critic Geoff Dyer, that, The tradition
of jazz criticism per se, as it has come to be known, Dyer does not explicitly engagewith
the result that he fails to acknowledge that his imaginative criticism is crucially dependent
on anecdotes, notions, images, and arguments that have come from the trench work of jazz
critics. Dyer is an adherent of the Romantic Tragic view of jazz, one that likens Charlie
Parker, John Coltrane, and Eric Dolphy to Shelly, Keats, and Shubert, seeing in all both a
talent consuming itself even as it flourishes and the grounds for an argument that
premature death is a condition of creativity. John Gennari, Blowin Hot and Cool
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 7.
5

Gennari have issued a conceptual framework that, according to DeVeaux, isolates jazz
from the politics of culture and society as an autonomous art formsubject to its own
aesthetic principles and laws of development rather than to forces of the marketplace.8
Moreover, the revisionist work of New Jazz Studies interprets the effects of music on
culture from a broader range of sources, incorporating oral histories, printed sources and
other non-musical data in order to draw upon what Gennari classifies as the jazz
superstructure, with an analysis consisting not just of the art and the musicians, but the
audience and the critics alike.9
DeVeauxs critique of the jazz tradition offers a revisionist perspective that
declares jazz musicians as similarly high-minded, pursing their artistic vision in serene
disregard of commercial considerations.10 DeVeaux proclaims this assertion in order to
re-imagine the agency of the musicians of the swing era from a perspective that works to
incorporate the realities of the Popular Front ideological shiftsrealities that allowed for
the advancement of African-American cultural politics and the expression of these ideas in
the commercialized age of the New Deal.11 DeVeauxs work thus reclaims the insistent
commercialization of jazz in spite of the consistent themes in writing about jazz that
projects commercialism as both demonizing, and a corrupting influence.12 DeVeauxs
work challenges the critical rendering of envisioning jazz as a privileged sphere,
8

Scott DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1999), 13.
9
Gennari states: Critics, historians, educators, and other members of the jazz
superstructure often embrace static models of jazz because doing so simplifies their job
of making sense of the complex world of improvisation. Gennari, Blowin Hot and Cool,
4.
10
DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop, 13.
11
DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop, 13.
12
DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop, 13.
6

proposing instead, that, by the height of the Swing Era in the late 1930s, when jazz (or
swing) had become clearly visible to at least a determined minority as both an artistic
activity, and the object of cultural enthusiasm, the ties that bound jazz musicians to the
networks of the culture industry were even more obvious.13 Similarly, DeVeaux and other
scholars have set forth to re-envision and reformulate the template of jazz criticism in order
to reveal the significance that ideological shifts, particularly represented in the
amalgamated politics of the New Deal, afford in the conceptualization of swing era jazz.14
The jazz of the era, and its musicians, serve as the representational result of the New Deal
movement itself, literally forming a body of work that ideologically amalgamates and
stylistically matures alongside the progressive trajectory of New Deal politics.
My work in this dissertation stems from this elastic rubric of study but specifically
expands upon the work of swing era new jazz scholars by pointing to another
demonstration of the expression of agency among black public intellectuals through the
individual work of Reminiscing in Tempo, and, later, with the compositions of Miles
Davis and Ornette Coleman. The focus of chapter one and again, specifically in chapter
four, is to solidify the sonic in the study of jazz and culture, and to explore how tropes of
music theory provide a useful narrative of history, race, and politics. Therefore, this project
interrupts jazz studies to recuperate the sonic, forging an analysis that interprets how

13

DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop, 13.

Gennari states, in what has emerged as a clarion call for jazz scholars across the
disciplines, the music historian Scott DeVeaux wrote in 1991 that the time has come for an
approach that is less invested in the ideology of jazz as an aesthetic object and more
responsive to issues of historical particularity. Gennari, Blowin Hot and Cold, 13.
7
14

compositional format, aurality, musical technique, and innovation voice a textualized and
accessible mode of expression in the communication of political ideals.15
This dissertation also recuperates the sonic to recognize the ideological works
presented within the specific musical components of jazz of the swing era.

Further

validating the progressive radicalism of individual swing piecespieces formerly

presumed as stylistically and ideologically identical in the pantheon of the genrethe
distinctive composition of Ellingtons piece performs this ideological work as the creation,
recording, performance, and reception of Reminiscing reorganized perceptions and
discourses concerning race and racial politics both at home and abroad. In Ellingtons case,
his politics, like those of most black artists remained publically non-distinct, preferring an
artistic discourse over an outright display of political rhetoric. However, as a result of his
artistic worksworks which went on to shape the scope of his public endeavors
Ellingtons coiled political trajectory is straightened through his musical process. And in
doing so, Ellingtons piece serves as an ideological touchstone in the reorganization of jazz
to create a functional language through its musical dialogue that reflected the strands of

15

Of particular note concerning the sonic is this dissertations intervention from

Michael Dennings, The Cultural Front. Dennings detailed argument examines the myriad
of Popular Front movements on the part of the American proletariat that contributed to
massive social and class upheaval in the 1930's. Denning asks why the Left had a powerful
and unprecedented impact on U.S. culture in the 1930s, and refutes the idea of the
Cultural Front as a product of individual political commitment, and instead argues that
mass social movements of education, labor, and education, effected the most significant
change during the era.
Dennings theoretical stake locates the Popular Front as a
historical bloc, and recognizes the cultural politics and aesthetic ideologies that were
shaped by this perspective. Beyond Dennings virtually encompassing treatment of the
1930s, my dissertation focuses on jazz and extends the chronological parameters of his
argument. In essence, my intervention with Dennings analysis specifically investigates the
composition, playing, and sonic practice of music, and how a musical language informs the
dialogue concerning political radicalism on a level tantamount to verbal art. Michael
8

modernized

political

discourse

circulating

amongst

African-American

creative

intellectualsstrands that publically navigated through the constraints of minstrelsy and

segregation presented by the industry of swing and mainstream American culture. And
strands that eventually established a functional musical dialogue for the further
transmission of Leftist political culture amongst African-American creative intellectuals in
the 1930s.
Generally speaking, this dissertation is about the different moments that shape the
discourse of jazz performance. And that discourse is ultimately determined by the various
settings of minstrelsy emerging throughout the 20th century that functioned to dictate the
intellectual, expressive, aesthetic, and political scope of black art. In this dissertation,
minstrelsy describes an existent racialized structure and social dynamic that accompanies
the visual history provided by blackface theater to discursively subjugate AfricanAmerican artistry. My dissertation conjugates the numerous conceptual uses of this term,
identifying the separate minstrel milieus of the various decades that addressed the
differing historical conditions and visualizations of minstrelsy effecting the production and
discernment of black art.16 This dissertation unpacks minstrelsy as a conceptual racialized
Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century
(London: Verso, 1997), xvii.
16
My study will also specifically ask the reader to compartmentalize black U.S.
history into musical periods in the attempt to argue that musical expression constitutes a
specified political, social, and cultural space and plays a role in contextualizing the linear
and historical aspects of African-American life. Amiri Baraka gives precedent to this
approach by specifying that African-American life is of course effected by, but remains
outside the parameters of the mainstream. In Blues People, Baraka notes for example how
the Depression was experienced by the Negro, but ultimately how these encompassing
societal events served as an insular catalyst for the contemporary expression of the Negro
Soul, and specifically how black music survived and progressed through these societal
hardships. Music therefore provides a constant and epistemological force in the sustained
function of African-American life. When history typically points to massive historical
9

setting specific to American culture. Understanding minstrelsy as a system of thought

outside of the historical litmus of blackface characterization, this dissertation employs
terms such as minstrelized surroundings, constraints, and character to express the
encompassing cultural, societal qualities, and personal effects of this racially oppressive
domain.
The encompassing domain of minstrelsy, on one hand, can be understood using a
Foucauldian model, as the domain partially represents what Foucault perceives as the
permanent, repetitious, inert, and self-reproducing force of power that defines
discourse.17 Taking it a step further, Judith Butler analyzes the power dynamics involved
in sex and gender construction through constant performativity, repetition, and ritual, where
gender norms become naturalized over the course of this persistent discourse.18 Within this
schema, minstrelsy could be understood to function as a performative actnot just in the
sense of deliberate blackface performance, but in the naturalized performativity that the act
produces on the part of African-Americans whereas blacks interact within the realm of
minstrelsy as naturalized, racialized figures.

Minstrelsy also functions within a

Foucauldian/Butler diagnosis as a productive, discursive power that works broadly as a

events from the Depression to WW2, African-American life is often marginalized by this
discourse as being simply affected by these world events. And as a strident example of
radical intellectualism, music must not be looked upon simply as a reaction to world events
and its effects on African-Americansit instead usefully provides a unique, viable, and uneffected gateway towards a specifically African-American ideological language. LeRoi
Jones [Imamu Amiri Baraka], Blues People: Negro Music in White America (New York:
Quill / William Morrow, 1971), 118-119.
17
Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume 1(New York:
Vintage Books, 1990), 93.
18
See Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (New
York: Routledge, 1993).
10

societal matrixpermeating, influencing, and dictating elements of black culture as its

subjects are racialized, and therefore, naturalized within fixed categories of identity.
However, it must be stated that a consistent critique of Foucault lies in his disregard
for racial theory in the formulation of his analysis. Marx is also criticized for this omission;
however, the structure of a Marxist analysis on oppression and liberation lends itself to a
specified understanding of the pursuit of black creative intellectuals, their desire for
tangible, realized freedoms, and their liberating breaks from the system of oppression
presented by minstrelsy. Ultimately, a Foucauldian analysis fails to properly categorize the
challenges to minstrelsy presented by African-Americans due to Foucaults disbelief in
intentionality or a resistive consciousness against systems of poweras this failure is
highlighted by the realized and vocalized actions, thoughts, and results of black creative
intellectuals. Instead, the basis of Foucauldian analysis posits that these forms of resistance
represent a brief rupture within the system of power, and that ultimately produces or
reinforces the same or identical oppressive system. The environment created by the system
of minstrelsy, and the reactions and cultural forms produced by black creative intellectuals
in response to minstrelsy coincide with the fundamentals presented in Marxs belief in
actualized liberation. Further falling into a Marxist theoretical rubric, Marx speaks of
reification as a process of applying living characteristics, qualities, and abilities to abstract
ideas or non-living objects. Jazz, therefore, presents itself as a reified tool in this struggle
against minstrelsy, potentially liberating artists from oppressive boundaries through its
expressive, intellectual practice.19

19

See Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (Second Edition) (New
York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1978).
11

This dissertation imagines jazz as a discourse that can be interpreted, thus

producing narrative voices that disrupt, challenge, or resolve the totalizing domain of
minstrelsy. Centrally, this project maintains that a political, counter-minstrel narrative,
rather than being an ancillary function of, or simply an assumed corollary, has been a
central trope through which the music of jazz has been composed, conceptualized, and
expressed by African-American artists. The counter-minstrel narrative is a theoretical
device employed throughout this dissertation that expresses the efforts of black creative
public intellectuals to circumvent the racist constraints presented by minstrelsy. Broadly,
this term emerges at specific moments in the discourse of jazz, and this dissertation
employs the term as a device to survey the jazz field for the various instances in which the
music presents a tangible response to the confines of minstrelsy.
The counter-minstrel narrative in this project is concerned with the politics of the
sonic and specifically, how jazz artists articulate a realm of sound that changes the raciallysubjugated perception of the musician. With Reminiscing, Ellington creates a regime of
sound that is very different from the minstrelized swing of his peers and his own earlier
works. The work of chapter one will reveal this sound of minstrelsy and will situate
Ellingtons piece as a response to these artistic, intellectual, racial, and ultimately political
constraints. The counter-minstrel narrative therefore is identified through these sonic
displays, determined primarily by the innovative qualities of musical composition that
demarcate a space from the pervasively minstrelized music of the field. This dissertation
locates Ellington, Miles Davis, and Ornette Coleman as the primary purveyors of this
activist narrative as determined by the significance of their compositional innovations.
This dissertation does not exclude without exception the multiple, distinct, contributions of
12

other artists, specifically the improvisational techniques mastered by those involved with
the Kansas City pre-bop movement and Charlie Parker in the 1940s..

Instead, this

dissertation centers its discussion of the counter-minstrel narrative with the musicians
primarily noted for their advancements in jazz composition (not necessarily jazz
improvisation), focusing on that intellectual history as a guide for the counter-minstrel
narrative.
Through the use of narrative, this dissertation provides an interpretive strategy for
music that bridges the foundational concepts indicative of musical theory with terms
specific to cultural history in order to unpack and expose the musical language that
represents the discourse of radicalism amongst black public intellectuals. This convergence
of terms refocuses the lens in which we dissect, process, and discern the narrative history of
black radical politics. By a process of conceptualizing race within the field of music, this
dissertation works to implicate both the performance of race and the display of political
intentionalities within the history of music and the production of sound. Ultimately, the
goals for this dissertation is to further project the study of race outside the visual and
literary realm in order to conceptualize musical theory and musical performance as viable
texts for the discussion of black radical politics and the cultural endeavors of black public
intellectuals.
With these goals in view, the chapters seek to answer questions regarding the
productive uses music has for the discussion of history, and in particular, how the tropes of
music concerning harmony, melody, and rhythm could contribute to a discourse about the
politics of black public intellectuals?

Additionally, by signifying the musician as a

historian, and the music as the historical narrative, the chapters also seek to answer broader
13

queries that ask what a musician can contribute that is unique to the narratives of history
and race? These questions frame the general scope of my analysis, as my study is less
about a discussion of lyrics or an itinerant history that details the actual performances of
jazz since the 1930s. Instead, this study is more about the music itself, in terms of
calculating the defining points in jazz innovation that occurred in the 20th century as well as
the various components of musical theory that unlock a narrative of African-American
social and political culture.
Theoretically, this dissertation rationally intervenes in the current discussions of
temporality as a way of excavating a narrative of history within the practice of the music
and in order to investigate this dissertations claims of music translating and transmitting
political and social ideology. In Michael Kleins article, Chopins Fourth Ballade as
Musical Narrative, Klein traces temporal shifts as indicators of narrativity and works to
repulse the commonplace contentions that argue against specified narrativity in music by
claiming that there is nothing in the music per se that allows it to point unambiguously to
actions or characters.20 Klein presents a breakdown of Chopins piece, investigating its
discursive possibilities by putting forth an argument that embraces the possibility of music
to deliver a predesigned emotional narrative through a consideration of Raymond
Monelles use of temporality.21 Klein details Monelles argument of temporality, stating in
musical terms that there are two types of time signified in the music of this period: lyric
and narrative. Klein continues:

20

Michael Klein, Chopins Fourth Ballade as Musical Narrative, Music Theory

Spectrum 26, no. 1, (Spring, 2004): 23.
21
See Raymond Monelle, The Sense of Music: Semiotic Essays (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2000).
14

Lyric time is signified in those presentational sections in which melody comes to

the fore, and in which harmonic and phrase structures are relatively stable.
Narrative time is signified in those sections in which harmonic and phrase
structures become more complex, and in which there is generally an increase in
rhythmic activity.22
Providing the idea that differing narratives emerge in different sections of a musical piece,
Kleins analysis pinpoints moments in compositional technique that work to structure a
narrative voice in non-lyrical music.
The chapters of this dissertation follow the logic behind this thesis, and examine the
political content of the music itself, intervening with current discussions of temporality in
particular with chapter ones focus on Ellingtons recalibration of rhythmic feel in the
genre of swing.

Emphasizing the rhythmic components of harmony, Ellingtons

innovations uncover a relevant societal and political narrative function or musical

language, as his progressive jazz was created not only as a detailed account of the
musicians sadness over the passing of his mother, but also as a documented response of
the longstanding, minstrelized musical, professional, and societal restrictions that caged the
aesthetic scope of his art. The negative reception of his piece after its release also grants
narrative meaning as the artistic totality of his piece was stringently categorized by a
racialized format. With Reminiscing in Tempo facing criticism for betraying the musical
elements indicative of swing and traditional black popular art, a politicized narrative is
constructed as Ellington consciously began to stray outside of the controls of minstrelsy.
Chapter one begins by identifying a specific moment in the music itself, where this
piece was composed in a cumulative response to the artistic, social, economic, cultural, and
racial trappings placed upon it by the critics, managers, label executives, and general record
22

Klein, Chopins Fourth Ballade as Musical Narrative, 23-25.

15

buying public. Written to express the grief over his mothers passing, Duke Ellingtons
Reminiscing in Tempo, signifies the primary moment where jazz articulated a defining
political narrative by betraying the conventions of minstrelized form with its innovative
musical design. This chapter identifies the composition of Reminiscing in Tempo as this
touchstone moment in jazz history and immediately debunks the standard apolitical stance
employed by jazz artists with an excavation of the political and politicized content of
Ellingtons artistic and cultural works. Much of the jazz before and during the 1930s was
good-time swing in a post-rag tradition developed from the pop template provided by Tin
Pan Alley. The more serious tone of jazz developed amidst the plethora of popular swing
with the efforts of Ellington and a select few who began to compose long-form suites in
order to concertize the swing genre with classically derived sonic elements. This chapter
identifies Reminiscing in Tempo out of the collection due to its musical innovations and
the uncommon politicized nature of its critical reception. Ellingtons piece transitions from
the racial, artistic, and aesthetic boundaries presented in swing and his own jungle music to
exist as a point of definition in the reorganization of jazzcreating a musical language that
reflected the modernized public political consciousness of African-Americans that rejected
minstrelized stereotypes and the racially structured parameters of mainstream culture. With
Ellingtons piece producing political resonance from its viable and politicized musical
language, Ellingtons work in this period provides a starting point for the larger discussion
concerning the impact of the counter-minstrel narrative and the outward expressions of
radicalism in the art of black creative intellectuals.
The majority of the second chapter explores the period just following
Reminiscing; however, chapter twos focus shifts between the teens to the early 1940s to
16

supply a detailed analytical history of the various physical and discursive settings where
this counter-minstrel narrative developed and took shape. Chapter two describes how the
music became politicized on the ground level, specifically tracing how (and eventually
where) jazz was utilized in the public expression of leftist politics. This chapter departs
slightly from the methodology presented in chapter one and shifts the analysis towards a
more historical outlook to provide the necessary background to the racially conscious
Marxist strategies that greatly influenced the public discourse and creative works of black
public intellectuals. To clarify, the counter-minstrel narrative was already supplied by
Ellington as detailed in chapter one, and as a result, jazzs political context became more
readily identifiable (and accessible) amongst public intellectuals.

Picking up on this

political current within the music, the Left began to employ jazz to publically display its
radical politics. Therefore, this chapter examines the role of the Left in the development of
the art and public spheres of black creative intellectuals in the New Deal.
This investigation adds historical weight to this dissertations claims about the
politicized counter-minstrel narrative. This investigation details the ways in which the
Left, and specifically, the Communist Party, influenced black public intellectuals and how
this Marxist radicalism was developed and eventually carried forth sonically through the
various channels of media and musical venues that became viable and expressive pathways
for the transmission of progressive anti-racist politics. The idea for this chapter stems in
part from an observation made by St. Clair Drake in 1932, who broadly claimed that he
scarcely knew of any black intellectuals who privately or publicly didnt claim to be some

17

kind of Marxist.23 Recognizing Marxism as the dominant political discourse, this chapter
identifies Marxisms pervasive influence and practice amongst black public intellectuals
and observes how this ideology structured a political trajectory for jazz music of the New
Deal.24

This chapter, however, maintains an important distinction that distinguishes

between black creative intellectuals who were Marxists and those who simply drew on it
creatively and whose artistic activism was facilitated by its broad cultural resonance.
Investigating close as well as distant associations, this chapter by no means defines all
public intellectuals (including jazz artists) as Marxists. Instead, this chapter investigates
the creative process through which jazz engaged and worked through Marxist political
ideals and social thought (directly and indirectly) as it emerged as a popular and attractive
political perspective almost simultaneously with the New Negro Renaissance and other
artistic modernisms. This chapter also investigates the creative process through which
jazz was discursively and sonically transformed into an increasingly radical, politically
charged art form.

23

Nikhil Singh, Retracing the Black-Red Thread, American Literary History

American Literary History 15, no. 4, (Winter, 2003): 830.
24
Anthony Dawahare comments on the Marxist dynamic of the 1930s and specifies
how it functioned in the amalgamated and competing political ideologies of the New Deal.
Dawahare points out the Marxist underpinnings of black literature, stating: I also argue
that the strongest black writers of the period are precisely those who did not heed the call of
nationalism and were, on the contrary, receptive to the internationalist ideas of the
American and European Left. Understanding that receptivity implies availability, I
demonstrate that it is during the Red Decade that black writers developed some of the
sharpest critiques of nationalism. Black Communist writers, as well as their white
comrades (most of whom are out of the purview of this study), historically anticipate a
growing body of contemporary scholarship that reveals the intellectual vapidity and
political hazards of nationalism, especially its ability to generate feelings of grandeur in
return for the working class's cooperation in an exploitative peace or an imperialist war.
Furthermore, Dawahare specifies that his work demonstrates the dominance of
nationalism in the 1920s and Marxism in the 1930s. Anthony Dawahare , Marxism and
18

The content of chapter three chronologically follows the analysis presented in the second
chapter and examines the developing, internationally inspired political content and counterminstrel identity of jazz in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Essentially, this chapter tells the
story of jazzs developing and increasingly public political identity, and investigates how
the musicians augmented exposure to the global community and the fatigue of government
sponsored segregation increased their efforts to voice their developing expressive agency.
The counter-minstrel identity emphasized in this chapter stems from and continues the
work of the counter-minstrel narrative, articulating a regime of artistry and sound that
contests the racist parameters of minstrelsy. The counter-minstrel identity, however, is
measured as an outcome of the narratives lasting effect on the jazz scene, displaying the
augmented politicized agency of black artists influenced by the potential freedoms of the
foreign stage, and the increased public narrative of American civil rights during the Cold
War. Displayed in internationally renowned artists such as Paul Robeson and Louis
Armstrong, the counter-minstrel identity is also presented in this chapter as a response to
the increased surveillance enacted upon black artists suspected of Communist subversion
under the Cold War social controls of the U.S. government.
Chapter three follows a similar methodology to chapter two by concentrating on a
series of shifts and occurrences that further shape the politicized discourse of jazz
performance. This chapter analyzes jazz artists, who, by the 1950s, gained a voice on the
world stage and evaluates how this global prominence augmented and influenced their
increasingly defiant response to the minstrel milieu. Speaking out against racism to the
American and global community, the black musicians role as witness and historian is
African American Literature between the Wars: A New Pandora's Box (Mississippi:
19

analyzed as a broader symptom of the counter-minstrel identity. Ultimately, this chapter

also previews the increased reactions of the mainstream community to this counter-minstrel
activity. And with the U.S. government also picking up on the political current within the
music, the problematic relationship between the U.S. government and black creative public
intellectuals during the Cold War is exposed and investigated through an analysis of
government records that closely observe the subversive Communist threat purportedly
posed by black artists.
The presentation of chapter fours analysis resembles that of chapter one, focusing
primarily on the sonic and cultural contributions of a single artist in response to his minstrel
milieu. Investigating Miles Davis and his cultural and artistic influence on the free jazz of
the 1960s, this dissertation completes its theoretical arc by positioning Davis as a sonic
legatee of Ellington and an artist who deconstructs the racist confines of minstrelsy with
his post-minstrel identity. Outlined in my analysis, the post-minstrel identity represents the
sonic and cultural efforts of jazz to resolve minstrelsy. With the first three chapters
locating excursions and steps to navigate through the oppressive realm of minstrelsy,
chapter four positions Davis as a primary model for the liberating force indicative of the
post-minstrel identity. Parallel to this discussion of minstrelsy, this chapter traces the
demise of Communism and post-Depression black Marxism and the ideological
reconfiguration expressed through the broader tenets of Black Nationalism that mapped the
subsequent sonic expressions of jazz in the post-WWII period.

University Press of Mississippi, 2003), xii.

20

Chapter 1: The Duke Steps Out of the Jungle; Race, Minstrelsy, and the CounterMinstrel Narrative of Reminiscing in Tempo.
In 1935, bandleader, composer, and pianist Edward Kennedy Duke Ellington
recorded a long form, four-suite piece entitled, Reminiscing in Tempo, in memory of his
beloved mother Daisy who succumbed to cancer on May 27th of the same year.1 Although
having previously experimented with extended works, this specific piece was a stylistic
departure for Ellington, eschewing the standard three minute song format in favor of an
original piece that juxtaposed the theoretical foundations behind improvisational jazz with
the formatted orchestral discipline of classical and theatrical music.2 For the ever dashing
and cosmopolitan musician, the harmonic complexity and distinctive format of his foursuite piece matched the inimitable, trendsetting style of his effortlessly regal public
persona.3 With his new piece standing in direct artistic contrast to the popular swing of his
1

For additional information on Reminiscing in Tempo, see John Hasses Beyond

Category. Hasse also states, Ellington wrote Reminiscing in Tempo in the summer of
1935 to reflect on his beloved mothers death. He said that the manuscript was stained with
tears. John Hasse, Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1993), 192.
2
His prior extended work was 1931s Creole Rhapsody. His later works included
1937s Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue and 1943s Black Brown and Beige. I have
mentioned orchestral discipline in terms of illustrating the rigidly formatted nature of
Ellingtons composition. With this piece for example, Ellington and his orchestra are
strictly reading the notes, however Ellington himself is quick to point out that his
compositions of this era were purely negroid, in origin, weaving a musical thread which
runs parallel to the history of the American Negro. Paul Allen Anderson, Deep River
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 267.
3
In A.J. Bishop, Reminiscing in Tempo: A Landmark in Jazz Composition,
Bishops useful evaluation of Ellingtons work breaks down the unique layout of the piece
into three sections that accompany and identify the pieces varying moods. Bishop
comments: It was certainly attempt to break through the limitations of the 78-rpm
recordImprovisation, which plays such a large part in jazz, needs a simple framework;
and no one has provided a better framework for it than Duke. However, there is no reason
why a composition should be tied to four bar phrases and thirty-two bar AABA section.
Duke realized this much earlier. In Creole Rhapsody, he used five bar phrases. In
21

peers, Ellington traversed the boundaries of his minstrelized surroundingsproducing a

sound, style, and identity that contradicted the predetermined and often pejorative
mainstream interpretation of African-American art, tradition, and community.4
Gained in part from the dues paid on the jazz circuit at home and abroad, his
augmented wealth of cultural and musical influences, and his growing distaste for the
thematic trappings placed upon his work by the mainstream audience, the piece was
publicized by Ellington himself as an example of an emergent personal awareness within
his art and craft.5 An awareness centered in his desire for complete artistic freedom in both
the modern musical scene and a modern American society that routinely dictated the scope,
purpose, and depth of his art according to a predetermined set of financial, artistic, and
indeed, racialized limitations.6 In his biographical work on Ellington, jazz historian John
Reminiscing in Tempo, this idea is carried much further. A.J. Bishop, Reminiscing in
Tempo: A Landmark in Jazz Composition, Jazz Journal 17, no. 2, (1964): 5-6.
4
These minstrelized surroundings will be described throughout the chapter. The
surroundings generally pertain not only to the artistic scope of African-American
endeavors, but rather the gamut of black public culture and life. In Love and Theft, Eric
Lott hints at these surroundings and the cumulative effects of minstrelsy as part of the
racist logic that was created and sustained by the minstrel show that staged, racial
categories, boundaries, and types in American popular, social, and political culture. Lotts
analysis gives voice to the notion of minstrelized surroundings by acknowledging that a
racist logic ultimately supported the fraudulent and constructed character of blackness
that forged the mainstream popular identity of African-Americans and diluted the creative
output of creative black intellectuals in the process. Eric Lott, Love and Theft (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1993), 36.
5
Reflecting on this sentiment, his compositions, and his complex relations with the
audience and critics of 1930s, Ellington commented on these changing roles in a 1964
self-penned article. Ellington: Out of this came, I think, a closer relationship between the
listener and player, even a degree of intimacy. That is, more people came to regard the
musician on the stand as a human being rather than a uniformed figure producing agreeable
sounds. Duke Ellington, Reminiscing in Tempo, Down Beat, July 2, 1964, 8-9.
6
Nikhil Singh offers an interesting perspective on these limitations, with an
analysis designed to describe racial climate of the New Deal era as it pertained to the
black political actors, who faced a world defined by competing versions of capitalist
imperialismand a nation-state organized around herrenvolk republicanism. To clarify,
22

Edward Hasse provides a useful overview of the piece within the pantheon of Ellingtons
work, commenting that Reminiscing was the grandest piece he had yet written, that
signaled an effort by Ellington to break out of the commercial realm, just as he fought to
break musical barriers and limitations.7 Specifying these artistic goals, Ellington affirmed
with Reminiscing, his core belief in musical experimentation, surmising that, to stand
still musically is the equivalent to losing ground.8 Hasse summarizes the importance of
the piece to both Ellington and the jazz scene by positioning Reminiscing outside of the
more commercial and socially trivial categories commonly reserved for popular music and
African-American artistry.9 Hasse states:
Singh describes the antiracist works of black public figures but also cites the augmented
stature and cumulative power of whiteness that in fact, gives voice to my use of the term
limitations. Singh states, in fact, whiteness was arguably solidified as a structure of
privilege during this period, further claiming that, the power of whiteness was enhanced
by it mutability in a context of national and global expansion, even as the idea of blackness
was more powerfully fixed as its antithesis. Nikhil Singh, Black is a Country
(Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004), 31-32.
7
Hasse, Beyond Category, 187.
8
As stated by Ellington in Hasse, Beyond Category, 187. Additionally, the
Baltimore Afro-American ran a 3 page story about the static quality of Tin Pan Alley
produced songs and how the politics and big business, of the music industry worked in
league to rob composers of their creations. The piece adds that by 1935, music has been
industrialized and tunes have become a basic commodity, and cites Ellington as typical
songwriter afflicted by regulatory production methods of the industry. Tin Pan Alley
Sings the Blues, Baltimore Afro-American, November 2, 1935, 8.
9
A.J. Bishops 1964 article works to emphasize the structural distinctions of the
piece, suggesting that the form of the composition could be divided into three separate
harmonically and thematically unique parts. Bishops analysis begins by acknowledging
the strong criticisms applied to the piece, yet offers that, not only was the piece the most
ambitious jazz composition, in terms of length, attempted up till that time, but it contained,
as we shall see, some unconventional ideas. Bishops proclamation of Reminiscings
unconventionality focuses on the thematic components offered in the 3 sections, with
harmonic changes, antiphony (call and response), and tempo shifts evoking a variety of
moods from forward movement, elegiacal and somber introspection. Proclaiming
Reminiscing, as the most ambitious jazz composition of the era, Bishops structural
analysis provides insight towards the careful interplay between improvisation and
formatted orchestral dynamics that work to produce narrativity in the piece. This interplay
23

Reminiscing in Tempo announced to the world that Duke Ellington, the composer,
was diverging in even more pronounced ways from big-band jazz of the time
moving beyond the expected, beyond the category of jazz. These works proved
again that with brilliant compositions and orchestrations a jazz orchestra could
express a wide variety of emotions. Breaking through more restrictions that
industry and society placed upon all musiciansblack and whitewho worked in
jazz, these works hinted that Ellington had even more interesting ideas in store for
the future.10
Amidst the expressive nature of his summation, Hasse cites the critical feature of
Ellingtons latest work by clarifying the pieces artistic divergence from the swing of the
era. Illustrating this divergence, Hasse importantly suggests the potential of utility and
narrativity inherent to this specific piece; tropes commonly associated with classical and
operatic music. Referencing Reminiscings ability to break through restrictions, and
move, beyond the category of jazz, Hasse declares a social functionality to the piece
contemporaneous to both the radical non-commercial art and circulating political
aspirations of the era. With Reminiscing musically moving beyond the expected, by
rupturing the ever present sonic and racial boundaries inflicted upon black artists through
an overhaul of swing jazz, the piece functioned to concurrently express the emotional and
political articulations of radical African-American public intellectuals concerned with the
cause of black freedom. Hasse therefore introduces with Reminiscing an example of
music not only clearing an artistic path within the jazz scene but importantly hints at the
creation of a blueprint for a musical language that operates discursively to express the
created a work unconventional to jazz forms at the time and was indicative of Ellingtons
changing artistic and perspective. Bishops summation concludes, stating, Reminiscing is
completely different from any other jazz of the middle thirties. Not only in form, but the
sound, has very little in common with other jazz of the period. Bishops attention to the
pieces harmonic and rhythmic variations serves as a relative precursor for my analysis, as
this chapter will investigate Ellingtons recalibration of harmonic structure to serve as an
alternative output of rhythm, thus expanding the rhythmic and overall sonic possibilities of
swing jazz. A.J. Bishop, Reminiscing in Tempo, 5-6.
24

larger politicized desires of the era. And although Hasses references to the restrictions
of industry and society remain somewhat vague, it importantly suggests the notion of a
musical piece serving as a literal, functional device, capable of performing ideological
work in the face of the racialized social and political constraints presented by racism and
minstrelsy.
This chapter will discuss how Ellingtons jazz in the early to mid 1930s performed
this work, culminating with the construction of Reminiscing as the principal counterminstrel narrative that indirectly absorbed leftist modalities of social critique and activism,
specifically the anti-racist social endeavors and reformatory political interests expressed by
African-Americans public intellectuals during the New Deal. Marked by his transition
from his jungle style and repulsion of the minstrelized applications of popular swing, this
chapter analyzes the cultural and aesthetic output of Ellingtons total work and frames it
within the current trajectories of leftist politics to investigate how Ellingtons piece
established jazz as mode of interpreting and producing the circulating ideology of the
emergent public and activist culture of the Popular Front. This public culture consisted of
the corps of literary and performance artists referred to by Michael Denning as the strong
cultural superstructure in New York, and the ranks of the Harlem Left invested in
campaigns of radical racial, labor, and judicial reform.11 And within this setting, this
analysis begins the process of determining jazzs unique role in the transmission of the

10
11

Hasse, Beyond Category, 187.

Denning, The Cultural Front, 15.
25

ideology that was composed through these loose alliances of Leftist intellectuals, artists,
political and labor leaders during the New Deal era.12
With Reminiscing, Ellingtons work establishes a point of definition for
conceptualizing jazz as an ideological device that communicated through a counterminstrel narrative the anti-racist, liberal humanism that clarified the political and social
works of black public intellectuals in the 1930s. Campaigning against a broad spectrum of
hegemonic social controls, the works of black public intellectuals confronted the systematic
and cultural roots of American racism, producing ideological and material resistance in the
form of creative expression, activism and legislature that vigorously opposed the
widespread poverty, violence and segregated oppression faced by African-Americans in
rural and urban communities.13 Alongside the ranks of politicians, activists, and writers,
select musicians associatively emerged as public intellectuals who produced sonic strands

12

Dennings analysis dives deeply into the core of this superstructure, stating, the
Harlem Popular Front also had deep roots in African American cultural circles. Denning
lists, the prominence of Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes and the young Richard Wright,
as part of the African-American wing of the emergent lefty tradition, and the progenitors
of a racial revolution that inaugurated a postmodern racial regime. Importantly, Denning
also cites Duke Ellington in terms that give insight towards his role of eliminating
preconceived artistic and racial barriers in the pursuit of his artistic and cultural agenda,
stating, as a result, the popular arts no longer seemed a sometimes quaint, sometimes
vulgar enclave that could be safely ignored. Denning, The Cultural Front, 43.
13
This activism came in spite of the halted legislature and denial of protections on
the basis of race. Nikhil Singh offers, for three decades, reformist and putatively raceneutral social policies formulated in the New Deal era actually reinforced and expanded
numerous racial disparities. Singh continues that, those denied protection under the
Social Security Act of 1935 were disproportionately black farm workers and black and
female domestic workers living in the South. Despite institutionalizing collective
bargaining and a host of new protections to trade unions, the 1935 Wagner Act did nothing
to stop existing union practices of racial discrimination and exclusion. After the creation of
the Federal Housing Authority in 1937, appraisers used race as an evaluative tool.
Additionally, notwithstanding the 1930 announcement of the NAACP to end lynching, the
Costigan-Wagner Anti-Lynching bill drawn by the Senators Edward Costigan and Robert
26

of resistance to these same social controls. Articulating the ideals and radical designs of
the circulating anti-racist, black Marxist-oriented politics of the New Deal, this sonic
resistance was produced by the very practice and public presentation of artistic works
expressly composed to contest the racially and ideologically restrictive boundaries
presented by minstrelsy. As the hegemony of minstrelsy limited and regulated the creative
and intellectual possibilities of swing, the sonic resistance of the 1930s was identified by
specific musical works that employed theoretical musical innovations to circumvent the
minstrelized classifications that determined the artistic and social scope of the swing genre.
With the presentation of Reminiscing, Ellington serves as a primary example of this
black public creative intellectual, producing sonic and cultural work that implemented a
modernized field of jazz composition that further rebuked the racialized trappings placed
upon swing. And with Reminiscing, Ellington continued his construction of a public
persona that articulated a viable challenge to the visual marginalization of AfricanAmericans presented through minstrel stereotype. Unearthing the political significance of
jazz innovations to traditional musical components such as rhythm, harmony, and tonality,
Ellingtons Reminiscing, emerged in 1935 as a highly controversial yet strident
culmination of modernized jazz technique, clarifying the circulating tenets of anti-racist
ideology by rejecting the encompassing practices of minstrelsy on the practice, display, and
discernment of black art.
Summarizing Duke Ellingtons work, A.J. Bishops 1964 analysis of
Reminiscing, critically hails the piece as jazzs most ambitious composition, of its
time, distinguishing the song from Ellingtons prior long form compositions and the
Wagner (with the aid of the NAACP) was defeated in 1934, 1935, 1937, 1938 and again in
27

associated works of his peers by specifying its musical structure as both new, and
revolutionary for jazz in 1935.

Citing its removal from conventional jazz form,

Bishops musicological analysis of Reminiscing, additionally emphasizes the aspects of

Dukes lyricism residing in the piece, revealing a narrative of mood and feeling that is
deciphered through the musics innovative structure.14

Within Bishops analysis, a

discursive identity of Ellingtons work is imagined and this chapter clarifies the stakes of
this identity by isolating 'Reminiscing' as a critical juncture in the development of sonic
resistance in jazz music. A juncture composed of stylistic innovation, Ellington's nascent
public intellectual persona, and a Leftist political and cultural milieu that together, infused
the composition with a political significance beyond Ellington's professed intentions.
Furthermore, this juncture reveals Ellington's effort to develop a musical grammar that
could communicate African American life honestly and realistically. This effort provided a
discourse for his open defiance of the boundaries placed upon jazz performance, and many
other public articulations of African American culture for that matter, rendering his work
(and 'Reminiscing' specifically) as a political act that disturbed the hegemony of a
constricting political and cultural environment steeped in the tradition of blackface
minstrelsy.15 Channeled into the jazz format, the challenges that Ellington's work posed
were an example of the radical expressions by creative intellectuals of the post-Harlem
1940. Singh, Black is a Country, 7.
14
A.J. Bishop, Reminiscing in Tempo: A Landmark in Jazz Composition, 5.
15
In a 1941 interview, John Pittman declared Ellingtons abhorrence of Uncle
Tomism, as part of Ellingtons perspective that dissonance is a part of the AfricanAmerican and racialized way of life in America. A way of life that contends with the
discord of racism and the minstrelized American culture, but connects all Americans from
the African-American contribution of Negro music. John Pittman, The Duke Will Stay
on Top! in The Duke Ellington Reader, ed. Mark Tucker (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1993), 148.
28

Renaissance, Depression Era society and Ellingtons innovations provided specific creative
examples and models for the anti-racist ideals of black public intellectuals. With his
sporadic journalistic efforts complementing his musical piece a corroborative narrative
formed through Ellingtons total work, colliding openly with the minstrelized constraints of
the swing era. Despite his eschewing of ostensible politics, I contend that Ellington
produced political resonance with a schematic and representational musical language
through Reminiscing that became an integral example for the outward expressions of
radicalism expressed by creative intellectuals in the post-Harlem, Depression-era society.

The Musical Identity of Black Public Intellectuals and the Popular Front
Navigating through the complex terrain of racial stereotype as well as the broader
legalized limitations of Jim Crow was the primary focus of the newly public AfricanAmerican creative intellectual. Writers, artists, and an array of activists were among these
intellectuals who utilized various strategies steeped in political ideology, social critique,
and cultural practices such as jazz to develop a more public and autonomous AfricanAmerican visage by the 1930s. Emerging from the post-war, post-migratory period of the
1920s and still recuperating from the lingering effects of the Depression and the oppressive
social realities of Jim Crow, the black intellectual surfaced to become a viable public voice
for the newly urban African-American communities of the early 20th century.16
Harlem spatially operated as the geographical forum for the diverse ideological
thought surfacing from the endeavors of black public intellectuals. Although far from
being the only urban center for African-Americans, Harlem was situated as a symbolic
16

Anderson, Deep River, 210-214.

29

capital for the black intelligentsia by the 1920s, spawning and influencing a generation of
black creative public thinkers that began their work of permeating the mainstream. With
these intellectuals circulating over sites across the North and Mid-West, the Harlem
identity of the 1920s transformed to the new post-Harlem intellectual of the 1930s
performing the ideological work of its generational predecessor yet functioning outside of
the confines of the city and into the newly populated urban centers of the American
landscape. Functioning within these spaces, this diverse intellectual identity often sparred
over ideologyyet ultimately found corroboration in its response to the fervent racial
exclusivity of American democratic nationalism with a radical activism sited in their works
that challenged the encompassing, oppressive dynamics of a minstrelized racial
environment.17 Expressed through artistic works and social activism, their radical response
constructed a practical ideology that challenged a variety of racially defined oppressive
legal, social, and political parameters that continued to work towards socially and
economically relegating African-Americans towards a marginalized status.
Offering a useful definition of the public black activist intellectuals of the postHarlem, post-Depression era, Nikhil Singh classifies the thinkers and their organizations
17

This diversity is evidenced by the competing strategies for black societal uplift
expressed in the works and theories of an array of African-American public intellectuals.
Alain Lockes vision of the New Negro was a re-cultivation of the African-American
character, creating a formalized, cosmopolitan identity that infused the folk traditions of
the culture but was ultimately valid in the eyes of the mainstream culture. Lockes New
Negro concurred in a variety of ways with the overall agenda of W. E. B. DuBois.
Coinciding with DuBoiss talented- tenth theory, Locke and DuBois developed a
paternalistic outlook towards the redevelopment of the folk, embracing a romanticized
vision of tradition in order to break away from the confines of the past and situate and
redefine their plans for the New Negro. As a response to these cosmopolitan ideals,
Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, (and eventually, Duke Ellington) and others of the
new guard of intellectuals redefined Lockes New Negro to placate their specific agenda in
the realm of black societal uplift. See Anderson, Deep River, 60-111.
30

chiefly as social protagonists, working to repel the assertions of the universal moral,
political, and ethical values of the nation-state in the breech created by the reproduction of
historical racism.18 In other words, these intellectuals challenged the pejorative voicings
of the mainstream, as these assertions and values continued to be cultivated from
generations of systemic and cultural oppressionleaving black public intellectuals not
only in a struggle for legal equalities but in a pervasive struggle against the minstrelized
culture of the United States. A culture transfixed by racialized stereotype, thus powerfully
casting the sum of African-American endeavors within a discourse of subjugation.
Singhs classification places this intellectual firmly in the Depression-era, with their
creative and public works reaching a broad audience. Commenting on the expanded scope
of the black public intellectual, Singh states that, by the 1930s a highly internationalist and
leftist cohort of black intellectuals had begun to produce a sophisticated body of work
analyzing racism and colonialism as a global history of Euro-American dominance.19
Singhs perspective assists in the categorization of the public thinkers as arbiters of
African-American political discourse piloting through the relentlessly negative dialectic
of American racial discourse.20

Importantly, Singh declares the ideological and

geographical diversity of scope concerning the black public intellectual, compensating for
the influx of leftist rhetoric and activism taking place under the auspices or general
influence of the New Deal.
Complicating this identity as potential arbiters of American racial and political
discourse, black public intellectuals were also defined within the structural environment of
18

Singh, Black is a Country, 44.

Singh, Black is a Country, 48.
20
Singh, Black is a Country, 44.
19

31

the New Deal. Established by rigorous details of social and economic policy, the New
Deal fostered progressive programs of civic and racial equality. However, the bureaucracy
presented by the governmental initiative also set in place the terms in which black public
intellectuals could engage within the multifaceted federal program. In more recent studies,
scholars of the era have sought to revisit how the New Deal produced a more specified
political fabric for the culture of black public intellectuals in the swing era and how its
democratic policies specifically reintroduced various forms of cultural, economic, and
political controls towards African-American cultural products including jazz. Regarding
the logistics of a New Deal enforced democratic stamp, Kenneth Bindas provides a detailed
examination of the developing culture of creative black public intellectuals in the
Depression era, highlighting jazz musicians and the music created through the direct
funding of the federal government. For example, with legislation approved by Congress in
1935, the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act budgeted approximately 4 billion dollars
for relief efforts from the adverse social and economic effects of the Great Depression.
From this law came the Works Progress Administration (WPA), an act promising that the
government would not refuse responsibility for providing jobs to those whom private
industry does not hire.21 In August of 1935, the WPA announced the creation of the FAP
(Federal Art Project) an effort that spawned a variety of artistic employment programs such
as the FTP (Fed Theater Project), FMP (Federal Music Project), and FWP (Fed Writers
Project).22

Concerning the FMP, Bindas concluded that the project, provide(d) an

excellent example of the cultural battlefield that was Great Depression-era America.
21

Kenneth Bindas, All of this Music Belongs to Us (Knoxville: The University of

Tennessee Press, 1995), ix-x.
22
Bindas, All of this Music Belongs to Us, ix-7.
32

Bindas further added that, in the larger context, the FMPs problems and means of
addressing the fundamental questions of its existence mirror the cultural tensions
concerning popular, vernacular culture in relation to its antithetical relationship with the
traditional, cultivated culture.23 Bindass work presents a culture of swing in which black
public intellectuals functioneda culture that is part of a new vernacular music that
symbolize(d) the popular, but also one that was created in large part from the legislative
and economic policies of the New Deal.24 Bindas concludes that swing, was providing
employment to many musicians and reviving a nearly dead recording industry and places
an interesting context on the peoples music, whereas swing transmits the policies of the
New Deal, reaching homes and communities through the aid of the government in an effort
to revitalize a nation traumatized by the Great Depression.25
Bindas further posits that African-Americans were new to the Democratic
umbrella, exposing the FMPs difficulty with the ideals of the democratic, pluralistic
vision promoted by the New Deal, particularly in, its employment of African-American
musicians.26 Regardless, Bindas notes that the political shift in the mid 1930s, marked an
augmented number of African-American voters towards the Democratic Party where, as
late as 1932, 70 percent of the African-American vote had gone to the Republican Party.27
However, stemming from the inefficiencies of the National Industrial Recovery Act, (also
deemed the Negro Removal Act by the black press) a point was suggested that FDRs
racial sympathies expressed in the legislation of the New Deal did not translate to direct
23

Bindas, All of this Music Belongs to Us, xiv.

Bindas, All of this Music Belongs to Us, 7.
25
Bindas, All of this Music Belongs to Us, 15.
26
Bindas, All of this Music Belongs to Us, vii, 71.
27
Bindas, All of this Music Belongs to Us, 72.
33
24

change in the American racial landscape.28 Bindas sees a parallel between the inaction of
the federal government towards African-Americans and the difficulties encountered by
black swing musicians to achieve fame in mainstream America. While white artists such as
Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, and Tommy Dorsey achieved great
popularity using arrangements by African Americans and deemphasized the blackness of
jazz whereas black originators like Duke Ellington and Count Basieearned about half
as much money as their white counterparts.29 Bindas concludes, suggesting that the lack
of political and economic agency experienced by African-Americans in the New Deal
translated towards a lack of agency in the production of culture itself, stating, to its credit,
swing did encourage racial integration and helped introduced many great black musicians
to the American people, but the music, while rooted in black jazz, remained in the cultural
control of whites.30 The work of Bindas remains crucial to the evolving template of New
Jazz Studies, particularly in its efforts to bring African-Americans into focus as ideological
products of the New Deal Era, symbolizing both its ideals and failures in the umbrella
politics of the Popular Front. Indicating the ways in which swing culture was shaped by
the regulatory politics of the New Deal, Bindas hints at the developing identity of
minstrelsy, expanding past blackface caricature towards a systematic devaluing of black art
and culture. And as Bindass analysis recognizes the important political shifts and results
of New Deal inspired political alterations, and specifically, those alterations upon the
cultural landscaping of African-American identity, his work inevitably underscores the
28

Bindas also states, discriminatory practices occurred in other New deal agencies,
such as the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), Tennessee valley Authority
(TVA), Farm Credit Administration, and Resettlement Administration. Bindas, All of this
Music Belongs to Us, 73.
29
Bindas, All of this Music Belongs to Us, 76.
34

individualized efforts of black public intellectuals that were set forth to counter the
constraints presented by segregation and the ubiquitous minstrelized controls of postDepression America.
Within the structural environment presented by the New Deal, the post-Harlem,
public intellectual identity worked to re-define black cultural forms on African-American
terms, combating the stridently anti-intellectual and vigorously primitive stamp of identity
expressed directly in the form of minstrelsy, which functioned both as an artistic practice
and a broader system of racialized thought.31 Represented artistically as well as politically,
from the newly appointed members in Roosevelts Black Cabinet who pushed the
President for social and economic reforms, to the diversity of leftist political ideologies
expressed in New Deal liberalism, radical Marxism, and Garvey-ite nationalism, this newly
public, creatively intellectual, post-Harlem thinker emerged to express the broad scope of
African-American identity during the 1930s.32 This intellectual also absorbed the artistic
content of the Harlem Renaissance, but mostly worked to reorganize and redefine the
traditions planted from the 1920sserving as a response to the minstrelized social climate
and its domineering effects on African-American cultural, political, and creative
expression. As indicative of the Popular Front era, the production of art often served both a
cultural and political purpose. And in the field of jazz the works of Duke Ellingtona
prototypical post-Harlem intellectualmaterialized to serve as an effective example of this
emergent tradition and the further development of a counter-minstrel narrative.

30

Bindas, All of this Music Belongs to Us, 76.

Anderson, Deep River, 234.
32
Erenberg, Swingin the Dream, 114-132.
35
31

Ellington and the Minstrel Milieu of the 1930s

For Ellington, his 1935 piece symbolized a new commitment towards his artistry.
Deviating from his previous musical works as well as the structural limitations common to
the Tin Pan Alley produced 78-rpm record, Reminiscing pointed towards a more
personalized artistic focus that clarified his newfound approach to composition and jazz
improvisation.33 A press clipping on the piece clarified its musical intentions, noting that
the solos were written specifically to coincide with the musical themes of the piece.
According to jazz historian Kenneth Vail:
It is longer than the usual Ellington opus, occupying over twelve minutes in actual
playing time. It is the first time in Ellington history that one of his selections was
completely orchestrated before playing. Duke was extremely anxious that the
selection be played by his famous orchestra as written. No solo ad libs were
attempted during the recording of Reminiscing.34
Janna Tull Steed further elaborated on the sonic complexities of the piece in her analysis of
the spirituality of Ellingtons works.

Steed states that the piece is characterized by

complex harmonic structures and an interweaving of asymmetrical melodic motifs.35

Steed however, also noted that Ellingtons manager, Irving Mills, regretted the release of
the work, classifying it as, the beginning of an unfortunate departure from Ellingtons
style, that indicated a detrimental change in musical focus the commercially viable icon.36
Concerned that Ellington was no longer writing for his audience at the tables of the Cotton
Club, Reminiscings intricate musicality challenged the conceptions held by both the
33

Hasse also cites how a slight commercial slump in the sales of jazz provided this
artistic window for Ellington. Hasse states, In some ways, this dip gave Ellington the
composer even freer rein to experiment. Hasse, Beyond Category, 203.
34
Ken Vail, Dukes Diary. Part One: The Life of Duke Ellington 1927-1950,
(Cambridge: Vail Publishing, 1999), 116.
35
Janna Tull Steed, Duke Ellington: A Spiritual Biography, (New York: Crossroad
Publishing Co., 1999), 68.
36

audience and music industry over the sound, style, and function of swing jazz.
Intrinsically, the piece held deeper resonance outside of Mills thwarted commercial
aspirations, sonically outlining a distinctly counter-minstrel narrative in the midst of an
artistic landscape still subjugated by the lasting effects of the minstrel show.37 Before
detailing these sonic features, this chapter will analyze the oppressive cultural setting that
led to Ellingtons counter-minstrel narrative. Similar to a number of noteworthy black
artists of the period, Ellingtons own connection to minstrel stereotyping remained
complicated throughout the post-Depression era. For example, in 1942 Ellington willfully
engaged in a minstrel setting, supplying the music to the film version of Uncle Toms
Cabin, staring Charles Grapwin, a white vaudevillian actor donning blackface for the
starring role.38 However, Ellington had earlier been praised by the Pittsburgh Courier for
being one of the sepia theatrical folks, who, have not disgraced their race by clowning
and uncle toming.39 The complexity of Ellingtons minstrel setting is characterized by
this dual role with the artist serving as both a functional abettor and stern opponent of
minstrelsy. Straddling these oppositional lines neither side is resolved. Unable to fully
circumvent these common racialized depictions, Ellington reliably navigated a troubled
course within these surroundings by maintaining an ability to project positive racial
imagery in minstrelsys shadow.

36

Steed, Duke Ellington, 68.

Hasse outlines Ellingtons growing distaste for these minstrelized trappings,
identifying the racist parameters which affected his work. Hasse states, despite his
unmatched genius, (Ellington) saw many other bands, especially white ones, zoom past
him in popularity and recompense. No wonder he once said, Jazz is music; swing is
business. Hasse, Beyond Category, 203.
38
Edwin Schallert, Seventh Column Set; Metro Buys Dog Story, Los Angeles
Times, April 30, 1942, a10.
37
37

Providing a context for the historical circumstances of this duality, Henry Louis
Gates Jr. concerns his analysis with the artificially formed, tropes of blackness, similar to
Ellingtons example, who bear an antithetical relation to one another, as both New
Negroes and minstrelized figures.40

Struggling with the pervasive burden of racial

stereotype, Gates traces the efforts of black public intellectuals to rewrite the received text
of themselves, in order to erase their received racist image in the Western imagination,
even citing Ellington as an underappreciated example of the New Negro intelligentsia
whose creative works, defined a new era in the history of Western music.41 Moreso,
Gates analysis presents the idea of why Ellington among others came to be the trope of a
reconstructed black image, with the musician signing through name and artistry a
projected antithesis of minstrel imagery. However, Gatess research, which draws upon a
collection of ten thousand racist visual images of blacks between 1800 and 1940, offers a
perspective into my classification of minstrelized settings and surroundings as the constant
visual and rhetorical backdrop of racist imagery stains the field of black cultural
production.42 Compensating effectively for its inevitable dissemination from a purely stage
routine to film and other media, minstrelsy undoubtedly maintained its foundation as a
coded system of racialized oppression in the 1930s, exercised through racial lampoon,
segregated performances, and the promotion of white artistic imitations of black cultural
39

Earl Morris, Grandtown Editor Advises Skip Itand Foget it! The Pittsburgh
Courier, March 6, 1937, 19.
40
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "The Trope of a New Negro and the Reconstruction of
the Image of the Black," Representations (Fall, 1988): 130.
41
Gates, Jr., "The Trope of a New Negro and the Reconstruction of the Image of
the Black," 148.
42
Gates, Jr., "The Trope of a New Negro and the Reconstruction of the Image of
the Black," 137.
38

forms. And although no longer exclusively relegated to the overt performance of blackface
caricature, the milieu of minstrelsy functioned ubiquitously as a fixed racialized anchor in
the 1930sproducing a dominant characterization of African-Americans based upon
pejorative stereotype and experienced by blacks throughout the whole of mainstream
society.43
Minstrelsy, however, also functioned adjacently to these traditional stereotypical
distinctions of black and white, particularly as African-American entertainers themselves
increasingly seized upon minstrel routines to perform before a mainstream audience. In her
examination of Virgil Thomsons 1934 opera, Four Saints in Three Acts, a Broadway show
that combined (the) novelty of (an) African-American cast and Gertrude steins name,
Lisa Barg examines how minstrelsy existed discursively within the swing cultures of New
Deal society.44 Bargs analysis documents the circulating language of racial ideology and
discloses how the promotion of blackness within art produced consonant ideas to the
discourse concerning racial difference. Citing Carl Van Vechten as one of the operas
most enthusiastic promoters, Barg quotes Van Vechten, who states that African-American
singers alone possess the dignity and the poise, the lack of self-consciousness that proper
interpretation of the opera demands.45

Barg also cites Van Vechtens generalized

compliments towards African-Americans, stating that, they have the rich, resonant voices
43

As the dominant model for American expressive art, a basis for societal
construction, and a method for measuring cultural identity, minstrelsy is based upon a
fabricated sense of cultural, and of course, racial fascination. Adding to this discussion,
Eric Lott argues that, blackness, as constructed through minstrelsy, is not innate but
produced, a cultural construction. Lott, Love and Theft, 36.
44
Lisa Barg, Black Voices/White Sounds: Race and Representation in Virgil
Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts American Music, Vol. 18, No. 2, (Summer, 2000),
122.
45
Barg, Black Voices/White Sounds, 123.
39

essential to the singing of my music and the clear enunciation required to deliver
Gertrudes text.46 Bargs analysis points towards minstrelsys persistent nature, in spite of
the liberal discourse designed to promote the cultural and intellectual value of black art.
Exemplified through Van Vechtens promotion of artistic virtue that is authenticated solely
through racial defined means, Barg singles out the language that transmitted a sense of
racial totalization in liberal circles that adversely rendered the anti-racist intentionalities of
progressive discourse moot within the discursive shadow of minstrelsy. Barg sums up her
perspective, stating that the casting of, African-Americans as figures of sublime
premodern essence, worked to fix black subjects as fetishized objects of inquiry.47 In
essence, minstrelsy expands past its historically antagonistic and seemingly transparent
black and white binary. With Bargs analysis, we see how the minstrel setting expands past
its historically antagonistic and seemingly transparent black and white binary. As black
cultural products became vogue or in some cases dignified in the cultural eye of the
mainstream, the artistic value is predicated on a basis of racialization thus compromising
the dialogue and practice in which the cultural products could be transmitted and discerned.
The minstrel milieu of the 1930s is further uncovered in Jeff Magees study of
Fletcher Henderson. In Magees analysis, minstrelsy is discussed indirectly through an
analysis that recognizes the ensuing artistic and social power of select black musicians as a
result of the paradigm shift in the record industry, that occurred by 1920 that marked the
beginning, when music industry executives began to realize that record sales had become a

46
47

Barg, Black Voices/White Sounds, 123.

Barg, Black Voices/White Sounds, 152.
40

better measure of success and popularity than sheet music sales.48 Henderson, who had
chart hits with both race records and general records the industrys term for records
that sold well amongst the white mainstreamlike his contemporary Edward Kennedy
Duke Ellington, two years his junior, complicate the presumed boundaries of the
minstrel milieu as both artists attempted to straddle these commercial lines, facing the
advantages and setbacks in (their) effort(s) to parlay a cultivated upbringing into a musical
career.49 Through an analysis that provides an example of the developing social and
artistic power of black creative intellectuals a deeper understanding of minstrelsy unfolds
as artists such as Henderson and Ellington negotiate minstrelsys terms in an attempt to
straddle black and white commercial lines.
Positioning this negotiation in Lockian fashion, Magee envisions Henderson (and
thus, Ellington) as the New Negro from the Old South, to symbolize, in terms similar to
Gates an innate representation of the aspirations and talents of the New Negro. While
inverting racist stereotype and classification through a cultivated artistic presence, this
New Negro negotiates the terms of minstrelsy, acknowledging the centrality of these
stereotypes in signifying the primitive appeal of jazz and the minstrelized virtues and
practices of the old South.50

Magee funnels a vision of swing culture through

Hendersons example, encapsulating the nascent agency of black jazz composers in the era
through a realization of their progressive contributions while highlighting their negotiation
of that agency within the constraints of minstrelsy.
Magees singular analysis of the swing movement further uncovers the minstrel
48

Jeff Magee, The Uncrowned King of Swing: Fletcher Henderson and Big Band
Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 7.
49
Magee, The Uncrowned King of Swing, 7, 26.
41

milieu as African-American musicians such as Henderson traversed through the

increasing power of the Paul Whiteman paradigm, which cannot be dismissed as merely a
transient commercial alternative.51

Whiteman, the icon of symphonic jazz, a

contradictory style of traditional black musical practice and performance was the art forms
most popular musician, eschewing improvisational technique in his orchestral compositions
in favor of a formalized classical musical approach. Magees analysis of Henderson is
largely a recognition of his compromise of the Whiteman paradigm, showcasing an ability
to ultimately reflect DuBoiss unreconciled strivings through a deliberate strategy, and
a deft balancing act between mainstream tastes, the New Negro agenda, that called for a
refinement and stylization of those folkways, and the expression of the improvised folk
elements indicative of the African-American jazz tradition.52

Indeed, Magee cites

Hendersons double consciousness as an employment of the unique negotiation

necessary to produce progressive music through these discordant elements found within the
Whiteman paradigm of jazz.53 As Paul Whitemans musical popularity briefly constituted
not just the wave of the future of jazz but the only kind of jazz there was, Magees work
gives insight into the racialized confines indicative of swing culture, but importantly,
presents an example of how the minstrel milieu was defined by the borders and constraints
presented by mainstream tastes.54
Ellingtons minstrel milieu is defined by these examples and his efforts to reorganize popular swing into a concertized bastion of musical art. As his pieces developed
50

Magee, The Uncrowned King of Swing, 12.

Magee, The Uncrowned King of Swing, 97.
52
Magee, The Uncrowned King of Swing, 98-99.
53
Magee, The Uncrowned King of Swing, 99.
54
Magee, The Uncrowned King of Swing, 97.
42
51

on both ideological and sonic planesdeveloping narrative themes, historical lineage,

hybridization, and recalculating rhythmthe presence of his minstrel milieu tangentially
expanded in a progressive unison.55 From the gradual exposure of African-Americans in
the mainstream, the overt practice of blackface minstrelsy waned as the demand for
authentic and replicated versions of African-American art slowly gained in popularity.
However, its spectral legacy worked to contaminate the production, perception, and
discernment of African-American themed art in the period. And alongside the oppressive
and distinctly racialized legalities of Jim Crow segregation, the milieu of minstrelsy
maintained its power by surrounding the practice of African-American and black-oriented
art, producing a racialized stamp that defined the works, its practice, and discernment
amongst the American public.56

Jungle Music and the Minstrel Milieu

Setting the stage for the unabashed radicalism of Ellingtons 1935 extended piece
were his experiments in the realm of jungle music, with popular songs such as East St.
Louis Toodle-O, (1926) Skeedely-Un-Dum, (1927) and his enormous hit, Black and
Tan Fantasy (1927).57 Showcasing his new musical approach, Ellingtons 1931 piece,
Echoes of the Jungle, became a popular standard that typified the thematic and artistic
55

It was very evident that here was one colored composer who realized the
cramping forces of exploitation which handicap not only him and his colleagues, but the
Negro masses as well. That is why their expression is filled with protest. He is also fully
conscious that there are imitators and chiselers, always ready to capitalize on specious
products purporting to represent the Negro. Edward Morrow, Duke Ellington on
Gershwins Porgy, New Theatre, December 1935, 6.
56
Craig Werner also joins the debate, noting the minstrel dilutions of swing that
contributed to the diminished creativity and racialized parameters placed upon the musical
field. Craig Werner, A Change is Gonna Come (New York: Plume, 1999), 132-136.
43

content indicative of his elaborate jungle style. The song was constructed over four distinct
musical themes, driving along the familiar swing-based up-tempo rhythmic stomp often
played in unison in the piece by the bass, piano, and percussion, incorporating an orchestral
approach to the blues, the use of the plunger mute became jungles trademark sonic
gimmick, producing a variety of sounds that imitated human voices ranging from an
aggressive growl to a wah-wah sound that mimicked both joy and sadness.
Instructing the Brunswick label to market Ellingtons recordings under the
pseudonym, the Jungle Band, Ellingtons manager Irving mills along with Ellington
capitalized on the publics appetite for this new brand of emotive, blues derived swing.58
The jungle period represented the initial stages of Ellingtons developing authority as a
composer and band leader. Gunther Schuller comments that the period represented a
musical partnership, truly unprecedented in the history of Western music, developed in
which a major composer forged a musical style and concept which, though totally original
and individual, nevertheless consistently incorporated and integrated the no less original
musical ideas of his players.59

Reliably, Schuller documents Ellingtons developing

promise as a composer but notes his lingering reliance on the individual improvisations of
soloists that marked the insouciant, swinging style of his jungle period. And in short,
jungle music represented Ellingtons most artistically daring yet contextually confining
music to date.

With tunes such as Jungle Nights in Dixie, Ellingtons music clearly

demarcated his persistent space within the minstrel milieu a racially charged pieces such as
57

Hasse, Beyond Category, 98-110.

A. H. Lawrence, Duke Ellington and His World: A Biography (New York:
Rutledge, 2001), 117.
59
A. H. Lawrence, Duke Ellington and His World: A Biography (New York:
Rutledge, 2001), 117.
44
58

Jim Dandy, were later described by John Franceschina as Ellingtons paean to the
strutting dandy archetype.60 In accordance with the racist social parameters presented in
the all-white Cotton Club where Ellington popularized his new sound, the jungle genre
conferred upon the artist an array of stylistic, musical, and social limitations based upon the
forms dominant reliance on stereotypes and rhythmic clichs in its overall productionall
of which were musical sensibilities that Ellington hoped to escape.61
The proscribed confines presented in his jungle style matched the stifling
minstrelized climate found in the spatial boundaries of the Cotton Club. According to
Martin Williams critical analysis of Ellingtons music, Williams posits that Ellington
approached jungle music with his own kind of urbane but optimistic irony, using
preposterous titles like Jungle Nights in Harlem for the benefit of the slumming white
crowds at the club, while simultaneously expanding the sonorities, the color, the
orchestrational resources of his ensemble and creating a memorable and durable music.62
Ironically, the musical sensibilities in jungle style nascently provided a portal towards a
progressive form of jazz artistry as its emphasis to construct a discernable sonic narrative
indicated its developing role as a visual-based form of music. In essence, the perceived
(and imagined) theatricality of the African and early African-American landscaped
experienced through the process of visualization became synonymous components in the
60

John Franceschina, Duke Ellingtons Music for the Theatre (Jefferson:

McFarrland & Company, Inc., 2001), 13.
61
Franceschina describes the singularity of Ellingtons jungle style as marked
indicating the consistency of the musical form yet also indicating his persistent need for
change, according to his quotes indicating the stagnant and monotonous nature of his
own music. Franceschina, Duke Ellingtons Music for the Theatre, 17-20.
62
Martin Williams, Form Beyond Form, in The Duke Ellington Reader, ed. Mark
Tucker, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 404.
45

overall discernment of the art form. And the visual theatricality became the primary
motivation behind the music, as well as the main reason for its widespread popularity
amongst its audience, particularly in Harlems exclusively white Cotton Club.63 Favoring
the exotic setting of an Africanized jungle over the traditional plantation-style landscape,
jungle music satiated the primitivist perception of jazz as an animalistic, instinctive activity
creatively bound to the racial essentialism inherent of minstrelsy. Furthermore, the sound
was designed to illustrate this visual context and imagined memory of traditional
blacknessa sensibility stemming from a fractured depiction of African traditional forms
resulting from the practice of minstrelsy.
The visual created from the jungle style was so successful that it also found a home
in movies and plays as the music was used to literally paint a picture of the perceived
environment of the jungles of Africa and voodoo rituals of the Diaspora. With King Kong
and Tarzan popularizing the exotic myth of the jungle to mainstream America, Tin Pan
Alley also turned out a variety of jungle songs including 1926s Babes in the Jungle and
1929s The Jungle Rhythm. In the 1933 film adaptation of Eugene ONeils The Emperor
Jones, the discursive and physical setting is established in terms similar to the content
expressed in jungle style as the opening shots, which juxtapose a black, Southern Baptist
church with an African dance ritual, represent a continuum theory of primitivism in black
culture as the exotic and savage elements of the rituals blend in the lens of the
mainstream audience.

Central to the narrative of the story is the drumming heard

throughout most of the film that supplies a sonic representation of the land and culture,

63

Williams continues, stating, some of the sketches and production numbers in the
Cotton Club shows were lurid affairs, with jungle nonsense, or sheiks kidnapping fair
46

sonically identifying the exotic allure and mysterious danger of natives who eventually lead
to Emperor Joness madness. The sound of the drum faintly originates from a distant
hilltop and becomes more persistent and louder as the plays narrative reaches its climax,
providing a dialogue for the silent characters, from the apparitions who haunt Emperor
Jones to those who eventually drive him to madness. The sound of the drums also serve as
a counterpoint for the internal dialogue of Emperor Jonesrepresenting his overwhelming
fear and loss of sanity with a pulsating beat of a tom-tom. The film provides an adaptive
example of the communicative aspect of drumming that provides a discernable narrative
through a repetitious, coded, and traditional musical language reminiscent of the cultural
legacy of African drumming.64
Ultimately, jungle music provided a discursive context for the minstrel milieu,
delving in to the popular, hedonistic, and exotic allure or nighttime jazz experienced in
Jungle Alley near 133rd Street in Harlem. Commenting on the Cotton Clubs primitive
appeal, Langston Hughes was quoted as saying that, strangers were given the best ringside
tables to sit and stare at the Negro, like amusing animals in a zoo.65 Gaining popularity
amongst its whites-only audience a variety of black performers such as Josephine Baker
and Louis Armstrong adopted the sound and visual aesthetic, donning costumes that
symbolized the exotic appeal of the jungle style. Gail Bedermans thesis provides a
noteworthy glimpse into this popular appeal. As Bederman theorizes, the popular vision of
the American male at the turn of the 20th century was in its rejection of the Victorian ethics

maidens, etc., and the music occasionally had to be bizarre and always immediate in its
effect. Williams, Form Beyond Form, 404.
64
The Emperor Jones, directed by Dudley Murphy, 76 minutes, Criterion
Collection, 2006, DVD.
47

of manliness and its overall promotion of the rough working class masculinity of the
virile, physical, and powerful man. Jack Johnson, a black boxing champion is located by
Bederman as an embodiment of these traits but due to his race is the literal antithesis of the
equation. As Bederman testifies, the revision of manhood at the turn of the 20th century
was a response to the impact of modernityfrom urbanization, mass (im)migration, and
postreconstructionand the revision efforts on the part of middle and upper class men
was an attempt to control the tumultuous, nascent modern American environment. As the
American civilization formed in accordance with this cult of masculinity, it constructed
modes of dominance, and race and gender were classified in order to maintain these
privileges. Presumably, Bedermans thesis also accounts for the fear amongst naturalist
theorists that humans were inherently passive victims of natural forces and social
environments. By adopting the primitive, Bederman argues that men, and white men in
particular, upheld society and could justify their violent, racist and sexist actions under
the pretext of maintaining the integrity and prosperity of the American civilization.66
Accompanying Ellingtons music was the floorshow of scantily clad black women,
equipped with feathery headdresses and bikini-styled animal print outfits. Symbolic of the
stereotyped depiction of the exotic Mulatto, these dancers performed syncopated routines
with steps partially reminiscent of the Charleston (a dance popularized by whites who were
imitating African-American routines) and that of an African ceremonial motif, due to its
down to earth, crouching style. The dancers were routinely positioned in front of
65

Ken Burns and Geoffrey C. Ward, Jazz; A History of Americas Music, (New
York: Knopf, 2000), 149-151.
66
See Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender
and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Urbana: University Of Chicago Press, 1996), 921.
48

Ellingtons stage providing an alternative visual component to the music and clearly
representing the musics implied sexuality and racialized presentation. Observing the
spectacle and illustrating his growing disdain for his own creation, Ellington noted that,
that part was degrading and humiliating to both Negroes and whites.67 With full-length
mirrors underneath them, the dancers were a depiction of outlandish fantasy, but were in
place as a spectacle to exoticize the music and provide an ambiguous representation of
African and African-derived music and culture for a white audience.
Often starting from a heavy and monotonous bass drum pattern, the standard
rhythms of the jungle sound were perceived as both the familiar voice and face of African
and Africanized music.68 As the rhythmic pattern would inevitably become poly-rhythmic,
the seemingly mysterious and primal music, as well as its practitioners came to life in the
night clubs of America.69 The musical depiction of the African environment was further
punctuated by the brass section that mimicked the various sounds of the jungle through the
squeals of muted horns as an array of female dancers completed the audiences journey
towards the far reaching corners of the African safari from the comforts of their floor
seating. Mimi Clar clarifies the identifiable sound of jungle music, stating that, the well
known jungle style arising in the late twenties developed with the beat of the rhythm and
plaintive wail of the reeds, as well as with the muted growls, dirty tones, and wah-wah lines
of the brass.70 The artistic result was one of significance as Ellington established a
progressive approach to jazz through its incorporation of a visual medium to provide a
67

Burns and Ward, Jazz, 151.

Burns and Ward, Jazz, 145-151.
69
Burns and Ward, Jazz, 151.
70
Mimi Clar, The Style of Duke Ellington, The Jazz Review 2, no. 3, (April
1959): 7.
49
68

discursive basis for non-lyrical music to follow. Therefore, the style, regardless of its
racialized trappings, marked an intellectual breakthrough outlining the theoretical potential
of jazz, directly centering abstract musical expression towards tangible pathways for
messages to be shared.
With its development of visual themes for the purpose of accessible narrativity,
jungle music, although mired in minstrel stereotype represents the initial stages of
Ellingtons progressive musical approach and the compositional foundations of what would
become his counter-minstrel technique displayed in Reminiscing.

Recognizing the

multifaceted sonic possibilities of the muted horn to represent the complexities of human
voice and emotion, the stage marked Ellingtons emergent interest in emphasizing harmony
as the primary sonic fixture in jazz song. This is not to suggest that Ellington during his
Reminiscing stage eschewed rhythmhe did not, however, it is appropriate to posit that
Ellingtons intellectual response to the musical, contextual, and ultimately social trappings
of minstrelsy presented in jungle and swing music is signaled through his eventual
incorporation of a harmonic induced rhythm that served as the clarifying statement of his
progressive musical and social individuality.
In 1931, the Pittsburgh Courier evaluated Ellingtons music and noted the
following concerning his new template of rhythm:
Delightful and tricky rhythmic effects are never introduced for sheer sensational
purposes, rather they are developed and combined with others as a logical part and
parcel of a whole work.71
Throughout the 1930s, Ellington is still deeply entrenched in the overall structure of
traditional African-American based rhythm. His time signatures, his emphasis on swing
71

R. D. Darrell, Black Beauty, disques, June 1932, 156.

50

beats, and his call and response rhythmic interplay between instruments, are all indicative
characteristics of a traditional, African-American derived basis of rhythm. However, what
comes to distinguish Reminiscing from his earlier jungle period is the development of a
progressive musical language, emphasized primarily by the brass and reed sections that
transferred rhythmic responsibilities from the drum to the horn.

By the time of

Reminiscing, Ellingtons approach had become poly-rhythmic; however, his newly

adopted approach produces these alternative beat patterns through typically non-rhythmic
instrumentation. The Pittsburgh Courier concluded that, there is a high degree of subtlety
in treating the inexorable fundamental dance beat, stating that, it is never disguised,
indeed often stressed, but it is combined with the flowing bass so adroitly that it provides
the sturdy substructure on which Ellington rears his luxuriant structure of moving parts,
forgotten except in that it provides the measure by which to appreciate the boldly
declamatory freedom of the upper voices.72 The luxuriant structure of Ellingtons sound
characterizes the musical pursuit. A musical pursuit that ideologically coincides with the
agenda of black public intellectuals of the era such as Alain Locke, who sought to present
the ideal of cultural, societal, and therefore political equality in a musical language that
combats the trappings of an oppressive culture.73 With his new artistic mission in mind,
Ellington summed up his progressive approach, stating I have already said that it is my
firm belief that what is still known as jazz is going to play a considerable part in the
serious music of the future. I am proud of that part my race is playing in the artistic life of
the world.74
72

Darrell, Black Beauty, 156.

Duke Ellington, The Duke Steps Out, Rhythm, March 1931, 22.
74
Ellington, The Duke Steps Out, 22.
51
73

An Alternative Musical Paradigm

Transitioning from his jungle style, Ellington faced increased competition from his
musical peers along with a number of obstacles along the way.

Gunther Schuller

summarizes the pressures presented to Ellington by 1935:

In point of fact things were suddenly not going well for Ellington. Was it the
instability of the orchestras personnel and the constant rumors of more leavetakings? Was it the growing nagging criticism by some of the jazz writers? Was it
the inroads made by swing music, by bands like Goodman and Dorsey, the
growing profusion of commercial dance bands? Was it the consistent inability of
his potentially popular successesSophisticated Lady, Solitude, In a Sentimental
Moodto break through the Tin Pan Alley machinery? Was it the relentless
pressures and frustrations inherent in a white-controlled market? Or was it his
mothers illness and her imminent death?75
The composition of Ellingtons 1935 extended piece gave the artist ample time to reflect
the gamut of his emotions towards his mother, but importantly, the piece signified his
growing disdain for the creative and ultimately racialized confines placed upon him by an
array of critics and his white audience. In a recent essay documenting Ellingtons postHarlem perspective, Marc Tucker quotes Nathan Hugginss claim that Ellington became a
social crusader through his music because of these boundaries, taking up the mission, to
discover and define his culture and his contribution to what had been thought a white
civilization.76 Marking a clear departure from both his upbeat swing catalogue and the
jungle sensibilities of his previous popular works that made him a mainstay at the Cotton
Club (and solidified his band as one of the top working groups of the swing era) 1935s
Reminiscing helped situate Ellington into an artistic context and social standing

75

Schuller, The Swing Era, 70.

52

previously vacant to the majority of mainstream friendly African-American performers.77

Coming into 1935, the jazz scene segued from the golden age of carefree jazz
marked by hot players and Dixieland soloists like King Oliver and Geary Bunk
Johnson who popularized a modernized style of jazz from its ragtime and vaudevillian
roots. The scene by 1935 fully entered the swing era, a term initially popularized by
Ellingtons compositions, and a genre of music categorically defined by its 4/4 time
signature and its accented emphasis on the 2nd and 4th beats of the measure, which
stylistically placed the music into a separate sonic context from the previous eras emphasis
on the 1st and 3rd beats, typically associated with the waltz and other formally associated
dance music. The large uniform swing bands were popular in great part due to their broad
musical and dance oriented accessibility and provided the soundtrack for a generation of
Americans who were inexorably defined by the lasting political, social, and economic
effects of the Depression, but who found solace in the music and were eager to experience
the spirited nightlife still offered in cities such as Harlem, Chicago and other havens of
swing jazz.
The bands of Don Redman, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, and Duke Ellington
laid the foundations for swing as the bands of Chick Webb and white artists such as Paul
Whiteman saw great success by 1935.

76

Benny Goodman, a white classically trained

Marc Tucker, The Renaissance Education of Duke Ellington, in Black Music in

the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Samuel A. Floyd, Jr. (Knoxville: The University Tennessee
Press, 1990), 112.
77
Floyd Snelson, Story of Duke Ellingtons Rise to Kingship of Jazz, Pittsburgh
Courier, December 19th, 1931. Ellingtons gig at the Cotton Club remained steady for over
3 years until 1931 as the artist embarked on a number of cross country tours. John Hasse
speculates that, why he left the Cotton Club is not clear. It is possible that Ellingtons
popularity at the Cotton Club had begun to decline, but it seems more likely that Mills
53

clarinetist was arguably jazzs most popular artist as his music became a household and
radio favorite amongst young, white college students and casual music fans. In his analysis
of Ellingtons place in the scene, Paul Allen Anderson states, Ellington represented a
distinctive alternative to Goodmans and Basies senses of band leadership and (John)
Hammonds conception of the Swing Era, continuing that, unlike Goodman, Ellington
enjoyed a reputation as jazz musics preeminent composer. Anderson also states that,
unlike Basie, Ellington often wrote pieces that were not so much blues-laced frames for
improvisation and riffing as idiosyncratic compositions indelibly associated with the
specific musical personalities in his band.78 Individual, smaller band leaders such as
Louis Satchmo Armstrong, and popular jazz vocalists such as Billie Holliday also
contributed an alternative musical context to the scene, often relying less on dance oriented
swing and focusing on virtuoso individualized instrumentation and performancea style
laden with blues oriented textures and the early swing principles commonly associated with
early New Orleans based jazz. In some regards, Armstrong, also known as Pops for his
amiable and paternalistic relationship both musically and socially with younger musicians
was an influence and musical antecedent to Ellingtons jungle style as well as an
unavoidable rival to Ellingtons claim of jazzs top African-American icon. However, as
Ellingtons musical style began to stray from the purely jungle sensibilities that initially
defined him, musicians and critics began to demarcate a clear line between Ellingtons
sound and that of the majority of his contemporaries, including Armstrong. In a 1934
review written by British composer and critic Constant Lambert, Lambert speculates on
(Irving, Ellingtons manager), exploiting Ellingtons growing fame, found that he and
Ellington could make more money by touring the country. Hasse, Beyond Category, 144.
78
Anderson , Deep River, 259.
54

this difference and marks the emergent intellectual artistry of Ellingtons compositions as
the primary signifier between Ellington and his musical peers.
An artist like Louis Armstrong, who is one of the most remarkable virtuosi of the
present day, enthralls us at a first hearing, but after a few records one realizes that
all his improvisations are based on the same restricted circle of ideas, and in the end
there is no music which more quickly provokes a state of exasperation and ennui.
The best records of Duke Ellington, on the other hand, can be listened to again and
again because they are not just decorations of a familiar shape but a new
arrangement of shapes. Ellington, in fact, is a real composer, the first jazz
composer of distinction, and the first Negro composer of distinction.79
From the artist who previously recorded the insouciantly titled standard It Dont Mean a
Thing if it Aint Got that Swing, Ellington sought to escape the myopic stylistic and
contextual rules as well as the monotonous popular definitions of swing. He even sought to
escape his own jungle based compositions, producing a work through Reminiscing that
prominently highlighted a harmonic structure that re-conceptualized the scope of jazz
rhythm by augmenting the sonic capacities of standard rhythmic instruments (drums, bass)
with brass instrumentation and providing counter melodies to the song that deepened the
range of the overall rhythm. The result, in essence, betrays the expectations and precincts
placed on African-American blues based and drum produced swing, initially popularized
by Ellington and especially his contemporaries such as Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton,
and Cab Calloway who generally featured lead soloists and vocalists whose dominant
melody would provide the primary (and often exclusive) sonic benchmark to the song.
Ellington explained his growing aversion to purely drum produced rhythmic centric music
of swing, stating like the monotonous rhythmical bouncing of a ball. After you hear just
so much, you get sick of it because it hasnt enough harmony and there isnt enough to

79

Tucker, The Renaissance Education of Duke Ellington, 110.

55

it.80 Preferring, as John Franceschina would write, the color, harmony, (and) melody of
African-American music that would far outlive the swing phenomenon.81

The Sound and Social Components of Ellingtons Rhythm

Ellingtons reshaped musical focus recognized the limitations in popular swing as
well as his own brand of jungle music. Seeking a deeper analysis and application of
rhythm, Ellington publicly theorized his intensifying views with his article, The Duke
Steps Out; a 1931 essay in which the then 32 year-old musician spoke candidly about the
musical innovations, historical development, and present status of modern AfricanAmerican music. Given that the name of the publication was Rhythm, Ellington aptly
concentrated on this specific aspect of music, targeting jazz and describing its rhythmic
history from the multi-perspective of an African-American, a pioneering musical theorist,
and a leading, progressive force in the development of American popular music. Focal to
Ellingtons study was a discussion of natural lawa theory Ellington employed to
describe the inherent artistic, social, political, and communal values of music that are
expressed through a basis of rhythm.82

Succinctly, Ellington explains his discursive

analysis of rhythm, stating that, our very lives are dependent on rhythm, for everything we
do is governed by ordered rhythmic sequences.83 Ellington applied this concept of natural

80

Franceschina, Duke Ellingtons Music for the Theatre, 21.

Franceschina, Duke Ellingtons Music for the Theatre, 21.
82
The natural qualities of rhythm are an expression of nature, in which Ellington
connects the aspects of life and environment within an overall structure of rhythm.
Ellingtons application of the term law is an expression of the consistency of the beat in
which all things in the spectrum of nature may be active but ultimately remain connected
and rooted within the basis of rhythm.
83
Ellington, The Duke Steps Out, 22.
56
81

law as a pillar of the burgeoning identities of the colored races, at home and abroad.84
Granting a theoretical outlook on the application of rhythm, Ellingtons developing
counter-minstrel identity was strengthened by a world-view that recognized the prevailing
influence of African-American artistry. Locating rhythm as the primary basis for all
musical expression deriving from an African heritage, Ellington states:
The music of my race is something more than the American idiom. It is the result
of our transplantation to the American soil, and was pure reaction in the plantation
days to the tyranny we enduredIt expresses our personality, and, right down in
us, our souls react to the elemental but eternal rhythm, and the dance is timeless and
unhampered by any lineal form.85
Ellington concludes his piece by remaining focused on the proposed societal functions of
rhythm and discusses its role as an intangible feature of African based art and one that
eclipses the boundaries of minstrelsy, musical form, and the vulnerabilities of historical
dissemination.
What Ellington experimented with in jungle music and came to perfect with
Reminiscing, was a determination that the theoretical possibilities of rhythm could
extend far past the musical categories proscribed by mainstream culture, thus unlocking an
explicit language that allowed for non-lyrical music to supply an intellectual dialogue for a
nascent culture to follow.

Gunther Schullers musicological analysis adds insight to

Ellingtons innovative use of harmony to express rhythmic principlesprinciples that were

investigated during his jungle period, but ultimately distinguished by Reminiscing.
Citing the use of a harmonic vamp to establish the repetitive, and indeed, rhythmic nature
84

Ellington, The Duke Steps Out, 22. This notion of a foundational concept
representing emergent identities parallels the Clyde Woods theory of a blues
epistemology, whereas the blues represent a pillar of identity for African-American
culture in the shape of a rooted yet consistently expanding and influential culture.
85
Ellington, The Duke Steps Out, 22.
57

of the songs main musical theme, Schuller adds that the flow of the piece was greatly
aided by its single tempo throughout, thus clarifying the pieces aversion to the up-tempo
rhythms commonplace in swing jazz.86

Utilizing harmony for rhythmic purposes,

Ellington revises the template of swing jazz.87 Schuller comments on this approach, stating
that, Ellington was composing music, not jazz necessarily. Furthermore, Schuller states
that:
In Reminiscing, more than ever before, he was trying to break out beyond the
narrow categorizations of the commercial world which by an accident of fate he
was forced to inhabit. He was determined more than ever before, to avoid the trap
into which the market place and the obsession for labeling were trying to lure him
to do.88
With these traps in mind, Schullers analysis also lends perspective to the artistic and
commercially confining weight of minstrelsy on Ellingtons work.

Emphasizing the

rhythmic possibilities of harmony presented a musical language that represented his clear
departure from jungle style and the swing of his pears. And this musical departure
indicates his formation of a viable counter-minstrel narrative.
In a truly modernist sense, Ellingtons hybrid application of established rhythmic
forms from both an African and African-American base with current and developing
86

Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era, 76-78.

Schuller comments, another passage of striking harmonic invention occurs near
the end of side three (version 9 of the main theme). In its textual density, powerful
polytonal harmonies striding across the theme in unison brass, and anchored by two basses
grinding out deep parallel fifths, the passage is overwhelming in its dramatic intensity.
Schuller, The Swing Era, 80. Schuller also compliments Reminiscings harmonic
innovations, arguing that the pieces use of flatted fifths and blue notes were arrived at by
a process of extending harmonic structures upward. Schuller, The Swing Era, 82. Thus,
Schuller claims that Ellingtons harmonic incorporation of the note most commonly
associated with the melodic improvisations of Bop musicians was originally a feature of
harmonic tradition, explicitly expressed and more consummately realized in
Reminiscing in Tempo. Schuller, The Swing Era, 83.
88
Schuller, The Swing Era, 78.
58
87

musical trends directly exposed through a reapplication of harmony and rhythm reveal the
theoretical framework of his artistry. Ellingtons statement also infuses a specifically nonmusical application to the ideals of jazz composition. Therefore, its his incorporation of
societal, cultural, and prototypically non-musical elements towards his music that allowed
jazz access into the recesses of a broader idiom to represent the full social, political, and
creative scope of the black public intellectual. Conceptualizing the social and cultural
components of rhythm and jazz in general has seen numerous debates over the years.
Ellingtons theories concerning the complexities of rhythm and natural law fall under a
continuum perspective, in which the music accounts for its African roots and regardless of
its diasporic displacement, has avoided the devastating effects of dissemination by
remaining uniquely connected to its place of origin. This rhythmic continuum is contested
by Kofi Agawu who challenged the very notion by rallying against a perspective of African
cultural homogeneity and the widespread implication that African music can be collectively
theorized without taking into account the seemingly limitless diversity of the enormous
continent. Agawu states that, African rhythm, then is an invention, a construction, a
fiction, a myth, ultimately a lie.89 Agawus perspective argues that African-based rhythm
serves as a vehicle for the preservation of myth, specifically on the part of white cultural
observers who invented these Africanisms to propel both negative cultural stereotypes and
the pervasive idea of European musical dominance, particularly in terms of championing
the notated tradition over the improvised highly oral traditions typically associated with
African and African-American based music.90
89

Kofi Agawu, The Invention of African Rhythm, Journal of the American

Musicological Society 48, no. 3, (Autumn, 1995): 387.
90
Agawu, The Invention of African Rhythm, 390.
59

Agawu also extends his critique to black artists and theorists as he states that their
broad assessments on the rhythmic practices and artistic innovations of Africa ironically
contribute to the overall dialogue of unanimist presuppositions, advocated by white
cultural theorists. As Agawu comments on the black discourse of appropriated Africanisms
he designates these perspectives as part of a semantic field of rhythm, concluding that
there is, an unwillingness to lift the veil that now enshrouds Africa, a fear that doing so
might have a civilizing effect on the discourse of the West, thus depriving its practitioners
of one of their most cherished sources of fantasy and imaginative play.91
What Agawu states as the source of fantasy and imaginative play, is a direct
reference to the overall discourse concerning the musical and cultural practices of Africa
and the Diaspora on the part of black nationalist activism and thought. The statement also
suggests a problematic in the interpretation of the counter-minstrel identity being located in
Ellingtons efforts to recalibrate rhythm and place his jazz outside of a minstrel spectrum.
The validity of Agawus argument is apparent as the concept of Africanized rhythm is a
long-standing staple of black intellectual discourse, complying with the grand notions of a
shared community between Africa and its cultural descendents. Agawus claims also
account for the lingering notion of primitivism, a championed aspect of modernity with
distinct racial overtones that still found a home in 1930s America primarily as an
accompanying signifier of minstrelsy and marking black creative intellectualism, such as
jungle music, as exotic, othered, and authentically negro. However, Agawus analysis
confines the black artist creatively and intellectuallynot in the premise behind his
challenge of the mythical attributes commonly associated with measuring authentic black
91

Agawu, The Invention of African Rhythm, 390.

60

musical formsbut rather in the disregard for the new musical language being established
that allows for artists like Ellington to ponder the possibilities of the natural law of
rhythm. The language is set upon Ellingtons emergent paradigm of recalibrated AfricanAmerican and African musical principles, incorporating the oral traditions of transplanted
African rhythms into a notated format allowing the music to be dissected and analyzed
without the burden of aesthetic mythology. Ellingtons recalibration of rhythm for the
purpose of gaining greater artistic depths alongside creating a tangible musical voice for the
nascent black public intellectual culture was a shared process amongst black creative
intellectuals during the 1930s.
This analysis finds a parallel with Larry Scanlon, who convincingly argues that the
works of Langston Hughes fell under the general rubric of rhythm, de-emphasizing
rhythm as a subordinate musical feature when examining its role in media, musical pitch,
and poetic meaning and instead, positing a grander notion of rhythmic consciousness that
became the basis of a distinctively modern notion of temporality.92 The merits of this
connection were not lost on black social and cultural critics of the time as well. Lockes
seminal 1936 work, The Negro and his Music situates the musical idioms of black public
and private intellectuals as formal and standardized expressions of American culture.
Previously, W.E.B. DuBois utilized music, specifically spirituals to represent a formalized
(and romanticized) interpretation of humanity as the rich childhood of a people was
celebrated through the revision of black folk musical forms.93

Avoiding the secular

displays of blues and jazz DuBois focused on the sacred aesthetics of spirituals to represent
92

Larry Scanlon, Death is a Drum: Rhythm, Modernity, and the Negro Poet
Laureate, in Music and the Racial Imagination, ed. Philip Bohlman and Ronald Radano,
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 511.
61

the precedent of culture, humanity, and intellectual expression within black musical forms.
Locke, realizing the popular effect of musicians such as Ellington, utilized modern music to
represent a mark of distinction between the ideology of the Old and New Negro. As the
decidedly African-American aesthetics embedded in jazz gave a sonic portrait to Lockes
interpretive vision of the modern African-American, Lockes use of music provided a clear
public discourse in the associations of music and politics. And with each instance, music is
reclaimed for the purpose of developing an indispensable public vehicle for the emergent
public discourse of black intellectuals.

The Radicalism of Reminiscing

Although quick to label himself merely as an artist without a political platform,
Ellingtons augmented artistic focus and sporadic journalistic pursuits in the 1930s
inevitably challenged this self-proclaimed stance.

Throughout the 1930s Ellington

affirmed the aesthetic virtues of African-American cultural forms, articulating in a selfpenned music publication that:
We are children of the sun and our race has a definite tradition of beauty and glory
and vitality that is as rich and powerful as the sun itself. These traditions are ours to
express, and will enrich our careers in proportion to the sincerity and faithfulness
with which we interpret them.94
Offering contextual accompaniment through his journalistic pursuits, Ellington emerged
from the music community during this era as a vocal statesmen outlining the importance of
jazz to the modern construction of a publicly intellectual, creative, and politically relevant
African-American. And 1935 served as defining moment for Ellington and jazz in general
93
94

Anderson, Deep River, 114.

Duke Ellington, From Where I Lie, The Negro Actor 1, no. 1, July 15, 1938, 4.
62

as the distinctive compositional framework of Reminiscing provided a primary example

of the emergent parallel engagements between music and politics within the nascent sphere
of radical black public intellectuals.
The radicalism of Ellingtons piece stemmed from his disillusionment with the
current musical scene and his proscribed, relegated place within that environment. Written
on a train during a tour of the segregated South, Ellington remarked that the piece emerged
as a detailed account of my aloneness, and although that statement refers to the loss of
his mother, it also reflects the solitary results of Ellingtons artistic ambition to create
relevant and progressive music in spite of the preconceived parameters black artists faced
in a minstrelized society.

95

In a 1939 article written by Ellington the artist recounts this

ambition, offering a critique that reflected on the static levels of creativity in the 1930s
musical scene.
The most significant thing that can be said about swing music today is that it has
become stagnant. Nothing of importance, nothing new, nothing either original or
creative has occurred in the swing field...It becomes necessary to adopt a far-seeing
and mature point of view when considering the current popularity of swing,
revising in the minds eye its inception, the conditions and circumstances
surrounding its birth and growth and the completion of the cycle as it appears
today.96
Outwardly concerned about music, his plan of revision revealed an urge to interpret and
contextualize swing from a newly politicized and societal format.97 Ellingtons statement
also broadly indicated his need for the reader to externalize music beyond its proscribed
capacity to entertain by recognizing its integral link to the realities of African-American
95

Steed, Duke Ellington: A Spiritual Biography, 68.

Duke Ellington, Duke Says Swing is Stagnant, Down Beat, February 1939, 16.
97
This sense of revision is a topic often visited by Ellington. In a response to
whether or not black music should contain social criticism Ellingtons response was a
definitive absolutely. Edward Morrow, Duke Ellington on Gershwins Porgy, 6.
63
96

culture and life.98

Although Ellington had little praise for the field of swing his

commitment to revising the structural framework of jazz for the sake of augmenting its
creative and social relevance is ideologically parallel the Popular Front surges of the 1930s
which embarked to unite the principles of diverse leftist organizations to revise the political
traditions of the country and create a relevant, active, and politically viable AfricanAmerican populous.
In fact, Ellington was embarking on an ideological pursuit to expand the artistic and
societal scope of jazz, made clear by his declaration to restructure the format whenever
necessary.99

As Ellington speaks of conditions and circumstances, he hints at the

importance of recognizing political, social, and cultural change outside of the field of
music. His perspective tangibly links the disparate forces of art and politics to synthesize a
parallel engagement that symbiotically exists to define one another.

In other words,

Ellington recognizes that progressive jazz potentially served a multi-functional purpose of

defining and representing the changes of a politicized world and simply that the
complexities of emergent, creative communities, like the black public intellectuals of a
post-Harlem generation cannot be understood without understanding its art, and in this
case, its jazz. And it was this vanguard, far-seeing, approach and overall need for
musical change that marked Reminiscing as a defining moment in jazz. A moment
98

Hasse cites the perspective of Rex Stewart, who commented on the vast new
vistas in Ellingtons sound that gave way to an entire new spectrum of emotional
experiences. The creations of these musical vistas, perhaps, coincide with Ellingtons
preference of referring to his art as Negro music, allowing for a broader social and
cultural association between music and racial politics of the 1930s. Hasse, Beyond
Category, 203.
99
Hasse states, Ellingtons music exceeded the conventions, accomplishments,
and boundaries of swing; gradually and increasingly, in fact, no single musical category
could contain Ellington. Hasse, Beyond Category, 203.
64

where radicalism took sonic formexpressed directly through the pieces progressive
changes to the standard compositional approach to jazz, thus creating an associative
musical dialogue for the community of intellectuals concerned with black societal uplift
during the era. From these aspects along with the numerous debates of critics concerning
the piece, Ellingtons artistry provided a sonic benchmark and musical paradigm for an
emergent culture of post-Harlem Renaissance black intellectuals to express the social,
artistic, and importantly, political concerns of their nascent community.
Entering the music scene of the mid-1930s, critic Leonard Hibbs scrutinized
Reminiscing for its repetitive nature yet submitted that from the emotional quality of
the piece, that Duke has allowed us to tune in on his mind at work.100 In a scholarly
analysis of Ellingtons various works, A. H. Lawrence surmised that, Hibbss discussion
made Reminiscing in Tempo, the first work in the jazz idiomRhapsody in Blue not
withstandingto receive such critical analysis.101 Horace Van Norman remarked on the
value of the piece, claiming it a work of incalculable importance, to the current scene of
jazz and African-American creative production.102 Vocalist Mel Torme also commented
on the place of Reminiscing within the genres history, but also on its racially
progressive musical functionality, stating, to me, that piece of music said it allIt was
every back stair in Chicago, all the frustration and misery and beauty of the black friends
Id had in my youth. It was eight years before its time.103
However, in a scene dominated by dance friendly, blues based, post-ragtime swing,
along with his jungle imitators, Reminiscing, was largely labeled as an un-welcomed
100

Lawrence, Duke Ellington and His World, 196.

Lawrence, Duke Ellington and His World, 196.
102
Lawrence, Duke Ellington and His World, 196.
65
101

addition to the musical landscape of the era.104 Although heralded in a column of the
American Music Lover as the producer of the most significant American music being
created today, Ellington and his piece withstood a barrage of criticism from a variety of
critics indicting the musician as a failure and betrayer of the The Cause because he no
longer writes any Black and Tans or Mood Indigos.105 Indeed, a change from the lighter
fare of Ellingtons prior work had begun, as his music stepped away from the accessible
format of swing to reflect a more academic approach towards jazz composition. A trend
encouraged by the generation of black intellectuals who spawned from the ashes of the
Harlem Renaissance and began to locate the modern incarnations of jazz outside of its
blues-oriented, New Orleans, romanticized background and instead as a product of the
leftist values that circulated amongst black public intellectuals during the New Deal.
Defending Ellingtons extended work, American critic Enzo Archetti commented
that other critics, dismissed (Reminiscing) as a failure without any attempt being made
to analyze or understand the work.106 He further commented on the challenging nature of
the music, stating, to them it was something in which the rhythm could not be tapped out
with a foot nor the melody whistled.107 However, Archettis praise stood virtually unaided
as critics such as John Hammond lined up to bash Ellingtons new found approach noting
the tragedy of Ellingtons latest long, rambling monstrosity, associating the
disconnected nature of the piece and its discordant relationship with the popular swing
103

Lawrence, Duke Ellington and His World, 196.

Hasse mentions that Ellington would have an uneasy relationship with the
phenomenon of swing, and that Ellington was slighted in the early years of swing.
Hasse, Beyond Category, 196.
105
Enzo Archetti, In Defense of Ellington and His Reminiscing in Tempo,
American Music Lover 1, April 1936, 359.
106
Archetti, In Defense of Ellington and His Reminiscing in Tempo, 359.
66
104

music of the time with an assertion that Ellington and his music were culturally, socially,
and politically irrelevant as he strived to avoid the troubles of his people or mankind in
general.108
This assessment of Ellington, his piece, and its overall critical reception brings into
focus the developing political resonance of his counter-minstrel narrative. And although
Hammonds accusations work to render his work as irrelevant or even dangerous to the
political survival of African-Americans and the leftist ideologies that represented them, the
challenge itself places Ellingtons new artistic focus into an unwaveringly politicized
category. In effect, Ellington and his art are no longer part of the everyday scene; they are
radicalized as the critical interpretation of the music is brought into a context where its
social and political importance is evaluated just as thoroughly as the music itself. As a
result, his music escapes the predictable confines of swing to represent the newly adapted
focus of a different generation of musician thinkersa black creative intellectual whose
music worked to influence conceptual and restructural artistic change, thus publically
creating a sonic forum for the expression of African-American themed social, cultural, and
political affairs to the mainstream.109 Through this piece, Ellington stands as a primary
example of a musician thinker; escaping the racialized confines of the minstrelized swing
scene with a musical departure that signaled the formation of a counter-minstrel narrative.
Reminiscing in Tempo also signified a touchstone for a valid association between
jazz and radical politics, specifically the Marxism of African-Americans in the era of the

107

Archetti, In Defense of Ellington and His Reminiscing in Tempo, 360.

John Hammond, The Tragedy of Duke Ellington, the Black Prince of Jazz,
Down Beat Magazine, November 1935, 6.
67
108

New Deal. With Reminiscing, Ellington designed a creative pathway to technically and
musically break free from the minstrelized standards of Tin Pan Alley and the racialized
tastes of the mainstream audience. In a 1934 article from the New Challenge, Richard
Wright, under a supposition of Marxism, spoke of the dynamics in which black public
intellectuals traversed racist expectations in the pursuit of greater artistic and ideological
freedoms. Wright states, It is through a Marxian conception of reality and society that the
maximum degree of freedom in thought and feeling can be gained for the Negro writer.110
Wright further adds that, this dramatic Marxist vision, when consciously grasped, endows
the writer with a sense of dignity which no other vision can give.111 Wrights use of the
term Marxian speaks volumes to the weight of his central message. The term represents a
broader framework of thought concerning the principles of black Marxists and those even
merely inspired by Marxist ideology to create a new conception of reality and society, in
order to achieve the maximum degree of freedom. Wrights description of literatures
association with politics caters to the parties and people invested in alternate strategies and
unorthodox pathways towards freedom, furthermore stating that the basis of Marxist
ideology serves as an avenue for greater intellectual empowerment. Ellingtons 1935 piece
speaks to this association as its very design acted as a portal towards greater artistic and
intellectual agency within a racially and artistically marginalized environment. This is not
to suggest that Reminiscing was a direct signifier of Marxism. However, given that
Marxism is central to the milieu of black public intellectuals and their influential discourse
109

A number of scholars, including Erenberg have theorized on similar topics

relating to the social, cultural, and politicized role of jazz and its musicians. See Erenberg,
Swingin the Dream, 101.
110
Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York: Quill, 1984),
185.
68

of black freedom, Ellington fits this mold as defined by Wright as his compositions place
him in the category of a Negro writer who sought to escape his minstrelized surroundings
in order to produce unrestrained, meaningful, and progressive art.

Conclusion
In 1936, Alain Locke pointed to Reminiscing and explicitly labeled Ellington as
the pioneer of super-jazz, commenting on his ability to create a piece that bridged the
folk elements and blues principles of African-American centered art with the modern,
worldly, and uniquely innovative field of modern jazz.112

Committed to upholding

cosmopolitan folk principles (the music of my race) in a musical language that combated
the trappings of an oppressive culture Ellington commented with Lockian regard, I am
therefore now engaged on a rhapsody unhampered by any musical form in which I intend
to portray the experiences of the coloured races in America in the syncopated idiom.113
Indeed, Ellington found himself and his art by the mid 1930s establishing an
alternative musical paradigm and one that would be directly accompanied by the nascent
yet viable public intellectual community of African-Americans. Intrinsically, as the music
began to change and reflect Ellingtons aversion, distrust, and impatience with the current
scene, so did the encompassing politicized dialogue which made its way in the scene since
the beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance over a decade earlier. Ellington and his music
became a figure piece of expression for public black intellectuals. Locke again, praised
Ellington for emphasizing and developing the more serious aspects of jazz, in accordance
111

Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 185.

Anderson, Deep River, 166.
113
Ellington, The Duke Steps Out, 21.
69
112

with his New Negro philosophy that identified the social political and cultural
responsibilities of public intellectuals.114 The piece was also reflective of a new era in
popular jazz, in large part spearheaded by Ellington, that extended the parameters of swing
towards a more open and personalized musical structure, engaging its down home blues
based roots along with the cosmopolitan and ultimately modern artistic ideals presented in
the composite theories of the New Negro. In essence, the music was no longer limited to
the confines of radio friendly dance music, or even swing for that matter. The music began
to reflect the imagery pronounced through the modern ideals of African-American
intellectual culture providing a creative template for the emerging radical and politicized
community of black artists and thinkers. And by the 1930s, the transmission of these
politicized and intellectual ideals found a unique sonic vehicle in the acculturated forms of
progressive jazz.

114

Anderson, Deep River, 162-166.

70

Chapter 2: A Peoples Music; The Jazz Community, Communism, and CounterMinstrel Strategies
For most critics and historians, the story of jazz and the Left has been a
curious dance of black musicians with natural instincts and slumming
white leftists.1
The Feud and the Fractured Discourse of Racial Politics
Prior to the release of his controversial 1935 piece, bandleader Duke Ellington
emerged from his first professional stint as a member of the Washingtonians to become an
established jazz superstar, gaining worldwide attention as the music and artistry of AfricanAmericans steadily gained recognition on radio and bandstands at home and abroad.2
While setting course in 1933 for a European tour after a successful three-month gig at the
Cotton Club, Ellington was paid a visit by John Hammond who came to bid his friend bon
voyage, equipped with gifts and good wishes, all of which, recalled Ellington, were, very
good, nothing but the best, just like the man who gave them to me.3 Widely known as a
resource, patron, and friend to a number of black artists, Hammond was an integral insider
and public figure in the jazz scene who critically observed its meteoric rise in popularity
from the mid 1930s on to the WWII era. From an investigation of Hammonds role in the
swing scene and specifically his relationship with Ellington, a template is revealed that
brings into focus the ways in which leftist whites and black public intellectuals forged an
uneasy discourse concerning interracial politics in the New Deal era leading into the 1940s.
Beginning with an interrogation of this example, this chapter will examine how jazz
1

Denning, The Cultural Front, 324.

Edward Kennedy Ellington, Music is My Mistress (New York: Da Capo Press,
1973), 82-83.
3
Stuart Nicholson, Reminiscing in Tempo: A Portrait of Duke Ellington (Boston:
Northeastern University Press, 1999), 131-132.
71
2

acquired its political trajectory. This chapter will also locate the developments of the
counter minstrel narrative on the ground level and examine how jazz was eventually
utilized as a functional tool for the public expression of a leftist agenda within the
communal spheres of the Popular Front.
Before the documented collapse of their relationship as a result of Hammonds
public assertions that Ellingtons work had become artistically and socially irrelevant with
the release of Reminiscing, the artist had shared a friendship and successful working
relationship with Hammondwho in addition to his role as a patron of the arts was a noted
record producer, music critic, and ceaseless activist for the cause of civil justice in a
racially segregated nation.4 Hammonds illustrious career began in the early 1930s as a
columnist for Melody Maker, as well as the British publications Gramophone and Rhythm.
Simultaneously, Hammond immersed himself in the industry and artistic circles of black
popular music, critiquing the works of black public creative intellectuals from multiple
artistic genres and fostering their talent as a scout and recording engineer for a wide variety
of jazz and blues musicians across the country.
Hammonds work earned the generalist a prominent voice within the increasingly
politicized atmosphere of the swing scene, infusing a viable social commentary into his
musical reviews that exposed the racist practices and parameters that continually plagued

Regarding Hammonds assessment of Ellingtons work, Robin Kelley puts forth

an analysis that surveys this push amongst leftists, specifically Communists to engage their
art with societal issues. Kelley notes the criticisms of black Harlemite William L. Patterson
in 1928, who called upon poets and composers of Negro songs, to adopt, as Kelley states,
revolutionary verse that described the conditions of the black masses and captured the
traditions of resistance instead of catering to patrons. Robin Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture,
Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 109-110.
72

African-American musicians in the cultural industry of the Popular Front.5 The popularity
and political strength of Hammonds commentary also stemmed from his unabashed
extolling of the unique aesthetic qualities of African-American art, revealing an
unfalteringly racialized perspective that culturally designated African-Americans as the
crucial progenitors and arbiters of black folk-derived art and American popular music in
general.6 Concurrently committed to issues of civil and social rights, Hammond utilized
African-American music as a symbolic apparatus to display the principle virtues of
integration, putting these views into practice by breaking the age-old minstrelized taboo of
interracial recording and performing by bringing together white musicians like Benny
Goodman and Jack Teagarden and black musicians like Frank Newton and Shirley Clay to
back Bessie Smith and Billie Holliday, to mark, the beginning of integrated jazz
recording.7 With Hammonds work utilizing the platform of jazz to editorialize against
racial exploitation and segregated social policy, including the discrimination in the
recording companies, radio networks and musicians unions, Hammond played a decisive
5

Michael Denning reports, Hammond was one of the first producers to record
racially integrated bands; he wrote pseudonymous attacks on the exploitation of recording
artists for the New Masses; and he produced the landmark Spirituals to Swing concerts of
1938 and 1939 that presented a remarkable range of African American vernacular music
and brought musicians like Sonny Terry, Meade Lux Lewis, and the Golden Gate Quartet
to National attention. Denning, The Cultural Front, 90-91.
6
David Stowes work analyzes the various facets of Hammonds activism and
critical readings of black music and puts forth a perspective that brings Hammonds
racially biased dialogue under close analysis. Stowe states that, perhaps the most
controversial among Hammonds critical positions was his outspoken belief that blacks
played superior swing. The best of the white folk still cannot compare to the really good
Negroes in relaxed, unpretentious dance music, he was quoted as saying, an opinion that
struck many as clearly intolerant, according to the New Yorker. Stowes analysis also
reveals Hammonds reluctance to evince an interest in revealing the systemic causes of
racial inequality in the swing industry, complicating Hammonds relationship to the cause
of equality amongst the black musicians he assisted. See Stowe, Swing Changes, 55-65.
7
Denning, The Cultural Front, 336-337.
73

role in not only popularizing, but implementing a politicized subtext in the public
discussion of jazz.8 Furthermore, Hammond efficiently used the genres celebrity to assist
in the cause of civil rights and vaulting the art to worldwide recognition in order to display
the creative and intellectual ingenuity of African-Americans in the face of systematic racial
oppression.
While born into affluence as the great grandson of railroad mogul William Henry
Vanderbilt, Hammonds lifelong commitment towards the cause of public activism
redirected his seemingly preordained trajectory.

Operating from personal funds and

connections, Hammond acted on behalf of public platforms that vociferously advocated the
cause of civil rights and the authentic music of the American Negro.9

Although

monitored by the F.B.I. as a fellow traveler, due to his lavish output of leftist affiliated
activism, Hammond avoided these labels and preferred to traffic his political agenda
amongst the broad liberal spectrum of the Popular Front for various causes of social
reform.10

Hammonds work however, ideologically aligned with Communist cultural

critics on a variety of fronts, specifically in their mutual exaltation of the more genuine

Denning, The Cultural Front, 336.

The quote is from John Hammond, From Spirituals to Swing, New York Times,
December 18, 1938, 159. Erenberg also elaborates on this mission of Hammonds, and
challenges Stowes perspective on Hammond and the musical industry. Erenberg states
that, Hammonds many activities make it clear that the effort to integrate big bands and
other musical institutions and to bring recognition to black artists drew on the support of
the organized Left during the 1930s. See Stowe, Swing Changes, 130-139.
10
Stowe, Swing Changes, 62. Stowes analysis covers the majority of Hammonds
association with Communist and leftist radicals, from the National Scottsboro Action
Committee in 1933, the National Committee for Defense of Political Prisoners in 1934, the
NAACP in 1935, and the Citizens Committee in 1941, a mostly Communist organization
that also spurred a J. Edgar Hoover to take a personal interest in Hammonds case.
Stowe, Swing Changes, 62. Stowe also states that, Hammonds ideology was remarkably
clear and consistent. He was fundamentally a Progressive, a high-minded crusader whose
74
9

folk and blues derived expressions of African Americans that, as Robin Kelley describes,
at least implicitly, if not explicitly were marked as revolutionary.11 Although not a
member of the Communist Party, Hammonds promotion of what Kelley also refers to as
the proletarian realism reportedly inherent of black, folk, cultural expression summarized
his mutual interests with the Communist sects of the organized left engaged in AfricanAmerican affairs.12 This persistent adulation of a resistive black folk culture revealed by
Hammonds work and the activist writings of white leftist cultural critics in the mid to late
1930s demonstrated the often complicated dynamics that existed between Communist and
African-American public intellectuals concerning the liberal politics of race. Inadvertently
essentializing black folk culture to minstrelized proportions, Hammonds template of
celebratory analysis was strictly defined by its racial distinctions.

Furthermore,

Hammonds analysis complicated the progress of interracial cooperative politics by

proposing a set of racialized boundaries to determine the societal and artistic relevance of
black creative intellectuals.
The racially dogmatic assumptions of this discourse illustrated the driving impetus
behind his feud with Ellington. Hammonds severely titled 1935 article, the Tragedy of
social background, energy, and temperament in a previous generation might have attracted
him to, and evoked comparisons with, Theodore Roosevelt. Stowe, Swing Changes, 62-63.
11
Furthermore, Robin Kelley comments on the tendency of Communist cultural
critics, who like most American interpreters of culture, they tended to place virtually
everything black people did under the rubric of folk. Kelley further assesses the
paradoxically limited vision of African-American culture, that emerged as a result of
holding on to an essentialist, race-bound definition of culture. Kelley, Race Rebels, 116.
12
Kelley, Race Rebels, 116. Kelley explains this label as part of an essentializing
and limited vision of African American culture. Kelley explains the debates which
raged over the meaning of proletarian realism, of folk expressions, specifically in its
liberal application amongst Communist and liberal cultural critics, as Kelley details that,
folk artists were not subject to the same criticism and scrutiny that legitimate
intellectuals faced. Kelley, Race Rebels, 116.
75

Duke Ellington, clarified the general tenets of the fractured dialogue that publically
emerged between black and white leftist intellectuals concerning the function of black art
in 1930s American society. Issued as a response to the complete sterility of Ellingtons
most recent works and specifically Reminiscing, Hammond classified Ellingtons artistry
as vapid without the slightest semblance of guts, in reference to his claim that Ellingtons
work no longer represented the genuine articulations of black folk culture and therefore the
circulating radical racial politics of the New Deal era.13 Specifically, Hammonds analysis
focused on the Duke himself, in an effort to expose the non-revolutionary, socially
irrelevant state of his artistic interests. Hammonds conclusions resulted from a racialized
perspective, observing Ellingtons seemingly classically inclined musical ambitions as the
slick, un-negroid force that keeps himself from thinking about such problems as those
southern share croppers, the Scottsboro boys, regardless of Hammonds take that
Ellington was too intelligent not to know that these all do exist.14 Hammonds critique
positions Ellington as a minstrelized figure and an instrument of the designs of white
mainstream culture made manifest through his composition of Reminiscing. Unable to
stand up for even his most elemental rights, Hammond further states that Ellington
sought a superficial resemblance in his artistry to Debussy and Delius, thus evidencing
a minstrelized status as Hammond proclaims the distorted cultural, aesthetic, and political
values of Ellington in his attempt to meet a white standard of artistic merit.15
Ironically, Hammond was also instituting a white standard of artistic merit for
black musicians to follow. The content of Hammonds critique was consistent with his
13

Hammond, The Tragedy of Duke Ellington, the Black Prince of Jazz, 6.

Hammond, The Tragedy of Duke Ellington, the Black Prince of Jazz, 6.
15
Hammond, The Tragedy of Duke Ellington, the Black Prince of Jazz, 6.
76
14

publicized efforts to promote a folk-oriented authenticity within black cultural forms, as

further evidenced in his reviews of classically trained black musicians such as Paul
Robeson and Marian Anderson, and the highly publicized Negro jazz bands, some of
whom have made serious concessions to white taste by adding spurious showmanship to
their wares and imitating the habits and tricks of the more commercially successful white
orchestras.16

Conversely, Hammonds promotion of the un-buttoned, never-too-

disciplined, blues oriented swing of artists such as Billie Holliday and Count Basie,
articulated the counter-perspective of Hammonds racialized analysisan analysis
Hammond championed, that favored the blacker acts to fully represent the revolutionary,
folk-inspired articulations of African-American culture.17

Furthermore, Hammonds

overview demarcated a separate discursive space where leftist whites concerned with the
cause of black freedom became arbiters themselves, of the artistic merit, cultural value, and
political validity of black cultural expression.18
Reacting to the marginalizing attacks on his works, Ellington issued forth his own
judgment of the modus operandi, of Hammond and the swing scene.19

Labeling

Hammond as an ardent propagandist and champion of the lost cause, Ellington resorts to
red-baiting Hammond to express his displeasure with the slightly warped vehemence of
Hammonds self-appointed role as a public intermediary of black social and political
freedom in the form of the Communist Party.20 Whereas Hammonds article calls upon
16

Stowe, Swing Changes, 61.

Erenberg, Swingin the Dream, 127.
18
Erenberg, Swingin the Dream, 127.
19
Duke Ellington, Situation Between the Critics and Musicians is LaughableEllington, Down Beat Magazine, April 1939, 9.
20
Ellington, Situation Between the Critics and Musicians is Laughable
Ellington, 9. Ellington states, he apparently has consistently identified himself with the
77
17

Ellington to represent the cause of black civil rights, Ellingtons expression speaks to the
failed efforts of the Left, and specifically the CP to effectively act on behalf of AfricanAmerican freedom struggles outside of the rhetorical discourse commonly associated to the
cause. And alongside the speculations of Ellingtons exploitative personal critique lies
the foundational language of a powerful challenge to the validity of the discursive space
that Hammond had drawn out regarding the assumed cultural agency of Communist and
leftist whites concerned with the issues of black freedom.21
Commenting on the exchange, David Stowe proposes that the feud was unique
but ultimately, emblematic of a relationship that was crucial in shaping the music and
cultural meaning of swing.22 Lewis Erenberg argues along similar lines that the feud and
the contributions of young jazz critics and impresarios, gave jazz a specific ideological
content.23 Alongside these views this chapter similarly contends that the ideological
meanings that circulated within the dialogue of the feud helped to firmly placed jazz within
interests of the minorities, the Negro peoples, to a lesser degree, the Jew, and to the
underdog, in the form of the Communist party. Ellington, Situation Between the Critics
and Musicians is LaughableEllington, 9.
21
However, Ellingtons challenge of white influence over black cultural forms
ironically echoed a familiar tone of his own, as a 1935 review of Porgy and Bess recalled
Ellingtons promotion of the genuine aesthetics of black folk culture in spite of his
subsequent labeling of these same cultural tropes as an irretrievable standard for white
composers. Commenting on the popularity of the Gershwin brothers work, Ellington
remarks tepidly that it was a swell play, I guess, further surmising that the music did not
hitch with the mood and spirit of the story, and concluding that, I have noted this in other
things lately too. Furthermore, when asked whether an honest Negro play would contain
social criticism, Ellington responded, absolutely, clarifying, that is, if it is expected to
hold up. And focusing on the authentic aesthetics of black cultural expression,
Ellington declares that Porgy and Bess, despite its popularity and musical appeal, does
not use the Negro musical idiom, further citing its lack of blues oriented influence by
stating, it was the music of Catfish Row or any kind of Negroes. Morrow, Duke
Ellington on Gershwins Porgy, 6.
22
Stowe, Swing Changes, 52.
23
Erenberg, Swingin the Dream, 122.
78

a politicized context. However, what the feud ultimately comes to symbolize is the
problematic that Ellington noted in his critique of the warped politics expressed by the
Left concerning matters of race. In their dialogue, Ellington is clearly familiar with the
politicized discourse Hammond wields, but he is also sharply dissenting from the
minstrelized proportions exerted by the practicioners and purveyors of the so-called
progressive left. What the feud broadcasted were the demarcated discursive spaces of
black and white Leftist intellectuals and the continuous fractured dialogue, mired in
minstrelized rhetoric that existed in their associative struggle for black freedom. And this
chapter seeks to clarify some of the uneven, fraught relationship that existed between
African-American creative public intellectuals and the racialized ideals expressed by
Marxist activists of the Popular Front.
The content of Chapter one focused on Ellingtons piece, which served as a catalyst
for jazzs construction of a musical language that exposed the modernized developments of
political resonance in jazz music itself and signified the ways in which musical innovation
and aurality evidenced an alternative textual language to transmit (through a counterminstrel narrative) the public agenda of black public intellectuals.

The chapter also

positioned Ellington among the ranks of black public intellectuals in the age of the New
Deal, utilizing jazz to discursively engage in the politicized schema of a minstrelized
public. Chapter two works to further this investigation by localizing the discourse of black
public intellectuals, those concerned with the endeavors of black public intellectuals and
the overall effect of this broad, Leftist political influence on black art. Fundamentally, this
chapter examines the politics involved with jazz on the ground level to observe how the
musics eventual correspondence with the Left in media and music venues further shaped
79

and in some cases, delegitimized its developing presence as a counter-minstrel narrative.

Following the examination of Reminiscing in Tempo as paradigmatic for the stylistic
changes of jazz and its transformation into a form of political articulation, this chapter
ultimately locates the interchange between ideology and musical form within specific
settings of the Marxist and black public culture. Therefore, this investigation will identify
the spaces where the radical sonic discourse was formulated and dispersed, tracing how the
Left's influence on music culture took shape in an effort to broadcast the activist sentiment
and general influence of the developing counter-minstrel narrative in jazz.
Broadly, my analysis begins from the period in which Communists rethought black
culture, and moves to a more specific understanding of how the Left's interest in black
culture eventually shaped the political radicalization of jazz. By insisting that this process
occurred not only through artistic innovation and individual creativity but through political
formation, my analysis is able to add insight into how the Left's eventual deployment of
jazz was part of a total acculturation process that affected the general work of black public
intellectuals as well as the minstrelized milieu of the jazz era. Therefore, what follows
begins with a historicized outlook of the ways in which Marxist principles were mapped
onto the wide social, cultural, and political agenda of black public intellectuals. This
chapter, therefore, contends that the black adaptation of Marxism was a part of the
cumulative non-musical counter-minstrel strategies that resisted the dominant discourses
that subjugated African-Americans. Secondly, this chapter observes the engagements
between the Communist Party and black cultural media in order to eventually discern how
the Left, and specifically the Communist Party fostered a dominant political trajectory for
jazz to follow. This chapter, however, will also observe how this Marxist trajectory
80

inadvertantly supported Ellingtons critique of warped politics by inevitably structuring a

minstrelized setting within its discourse of racial freedom, thereby loosening the
proletarian realism claim of the Left that Marxism constitutes the only counter-minstrel
discourse. By its conclusion, this chapter situates and conceptualizes jazz in its physical
and discursive Leftist settings, identifying the spaces where this influence took shape,
where its discourse formulated, and where its circulating displays of radical activism
occurred.

Communism and Black Public Intellectuals

As African-Americans slowly forged a path towards the spheres of mainstream
American culture, black intellectuals began to fully discern the overwhelming dichotomy
of modernity as it specifically pertained to the public and private realms of AfricanAmerican life.24 The dichotomy of black modernity was identified by a division between
the ideal perspectives of the black modernist and the societal realities that the modernist
continually faced in the pursuit of cultural freedoms. The realities of black modernity
immediately identified a widely illiterate, disenfranchised, and scattered mass of largely
Southern transplantsfacing the quotidian realties of violence and racialized subjugation

24

Constructed from the myriad of influences that shaped the lives of black people,
Paul Gilroy speaks of black modernity mostly from diasporic termssignifying a sense of
racial commonality but located outside of a definitive and often biological specification of
race. However, Gilroys analysis offers insight towards modernity and the African
American public intellectual of the post-Depression era by identifying black identity as an
open category, theorizing not only on diasporic spatiality, but in the contention of
identity with historicity, memory, and narrativity as the articulating principles of the
black political spheres that emerged as a result of modernity. In other words, Gilroys
focus allows for a discussion of the counter-minstrel narrative and understanding this
alternative branch of narrativity as an integral signifier of black identity and modernity.
81

as well as the persistent effects of an intensely segregated racial climate. In essence, the
marginalized realities of modernity issued forth a fractured composite of the 1930s Negro
charactera constructed character composed of fraudulent and minstrelized stereotypes
relegated towards an oppressed and subjugated status as a result of the lack of political,
economic, and individualized agency experienced within the racialized hierarchy of
American mainstream culture.
This character, however, was also comprised of the ideal perspectives of the
modern, post-Harlem, publicly intellectual African-Americanrepresented by an
assortment of activists whose alternate perception of the potential of blacks to acquire
individual (and subsequently, communal) agency within the American mainstream worked
to combat the harsh realities of modernity expressed through Jim Crow and their
minstrelized surroundings. Alongside the economic, social, and political campaigns and
reforms put forth by activists in the era, the ideal perspective of the black modernist
centered upon redefining the perception of the Negro as an enlightened, autonomous
Americanized entityan entity that drew individual strength from its heritage but was
ultimately committed to the ideals of the American mainstream and the potential of
inclusion within this societal framework.
Concerned with this inclusion and eager to gain a wider base of constituents was
the Communist Party, which localized more formally under the organizational framework
of the Communist Party of the United States of America. Along with the more leftist wing
of the Socialist Party, the CP originally consisted primarily of whites looming over black
communities with a small yet noticeable presence, forging interracial campaigns to assist
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge:
82

southern black farm workers before WWI, and proposing over the years a number of plans
concerning unionization, the enforcement of civil rights, and the call for a separate Black
Belt Republic in designated areas with a majority black population.25 Recognizing the
merits and inherent power of a constituent mass the concept of a Black Nation transitioned
over the years to compensate for the migrating masses of African-Americans transitioning
from the agrarian Southern economy towards the industrialized zones of the North and
Mid-West.26 As potential African-American constituents exited the South, the thesis built
upon a semi-static constituent mass adapted towards the broadly defined the broadly
defined Negro Question, a conceptual platform designed to inclusively represent the

Harvard UP, 1992), 185-192.

25
Ideologically acculturated by its black constituents, the various sects of the SP
that emerged in black communities became more engaged in the logistical matters of race
as segregated trade unions, Jim Crow laws, and lynch mobs became the focus of attack of
by the early 1920s. These individual sects of the SP also clarified ideological lines of
division, sparring diligently with the nationalist and perceived imperialistic tenets of
Marcus Garvey and his back to Africa movement for African-Americans. In a 1924
issue of the Crisis, DuBois, then considered a moderate Socialist, launched an attack on
Garvey, branding the nationalist as a lunatic or a traitor, stating, Marcus Garvey, is
without a doubt, the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America and in the
world. W. E. B. DuBois, Crisis, Vol. 28, May 1924, 8-9. In addition, W.A. Domingo, a
Jamaican journalist and Socialist educator branded Garvey a virtual dictator, questioning
his rise to prominence and his overall character, labeling the tenor of his Nationalist efforts,
with an ungenerousness that is despicable, and an unscrupulousness of methods that is
beyond the pale of decency. W. A. Domingo, Figures Never Lie, But Liars Do Figure,
The Crusader, 13, File on the African Blood Brotherhood, 1:1, Tamiment Library &
Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (New York). Garveys
nationalism conflicted with the practice of traditional Marxist politics amongst African
American in Socialist and Communist circles. These public displays signaled the extreme
philosophical diversity amongst black modernist public intellectuals yet allowed for
Socialist politics and the overall discourse of Marxism to gain a viable footing within the
developing platform of African-American political culture. However, due to the infighting
between party members, as well as the Red Scare and Palmer Raids which fractured the
partys ability to strike deep political roots the SP floundered in the emergent vacuum of
black centered leftist politics in post WW1 America. Mark Naison, Communists In Harlem
During The Depression (Urbana and Chicago: University Of Illinois Press, 1983), 4.
83

placement and status of black affairs under both a Communist political system and a
Marxist discourse.27
By 1933, intellectuals such as W.E.B. DuBois continued to bridge the political
ideology of Marxism with the growing racially-based concerns of African-Americans.
Summarizing the foundational strength of the associative threads, DuBois proclaimed that,
we see in Karl Marx a colossal genius of infinite sacrifice and monumental industry, and
with a mind of extraordinary logical keenness and grasp.28 Furthering this call for the
adoption of Marxist principles and politics amongst African-Americans, Loren Miller
declared that there was one way out, for African-Americans in a segregated,
minstrelized, capitalist society, clarifying that a Negro nation requires a Socialist
American and with that achieved there would be no place for group exploitation.29
Dubois summarized these perspectives, concluding that the incorporation of Marxism
must be modified in the United States of America and especially so far as the Negro group
is concerned.30

Envisioning Marxism as a liberating political and discursive force,

DuBois and other black public intellectuals cited the need for an acculturation of Marxist
philosophy in order to accommodate the specific economic needs and racialized concerns
of African-Americans.31
26

Barbara Foley, Spectres of 1919: Class and Nation in the Making of the New
Negro (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 24.
27
Foley, Spectres of 1919, 82.
28
W.E.B. DuBois, Marxism and the Negro Problem, Crisis, May 1933. DuBois
adds, the Marxian philosophy is a true diagnosis of the situation.
29
Loren Miller, One Way OutCommunism, Journal of Negro Life, July 1934,
File on Black Response to Communism, 11:1, Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner
Labor Archives, New York University (New York).
30
DuBois, Marxism and the Negro Problem.
31
Building upon the potential premise of these ties and seeking to capitalize on the
eruption of black militancy in 1919, the CP and various (and often disparate) sects of the
84

Stepping back for a moment, when traditionally analyzing Communism or

conceptualizing a Marxist theoretical framework the historical definition addresses the
dismantling of capitalism to liberate the masses of the proletariat.

Investigating the

Americanized, and in fact, African-American adaptation of this framework, this analysis is

immediately racialized to concern itself with the liberation and enlightenment of black
Americans through revolutionary actions.32 In essence, Marxism and Communist activity
party began making its presence known, establishing multiple and racially inclusive
political organizations in cities such as New York and Chicago and spreading its Marxist
drawn influence amongst African-Americans disgruntled with their economic and political
position within American society. Earl Hutchinson cites the emergent political capital of
the black northern industrial workforce, which by 1920, had increased more than 150
percent, while the percentage of black farmers and sharecroppers had decreased thirty
percent. Hutchinson concludes, stating that, the decade promised to be one of intense
struggle by both blacks and Communists to gain a real foothold in unions and industry.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Blacks and Reds: Race and Class in Conflict, 1919-1990 (East
Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1994), 10. In a message of propaganda put forth
by the African Blood Brotherhoodan early conglomerate of radical black CP and SP
members and rival organization of the CPUSAthe pamphlet stated, whatever interest
the capitalist displayed in the Negro was always motivated by considerations of cheap
labour power, and concluded that, the only effective way to secure better conditions and
steady employment in America is to organize the Negros Labour Power as indicated
before into labour organizations. The radical process of incorporating racial concerns in
the politics of labor represented a significant occurrence in the transmission of Communist
ideology in America, certainly on the part of black Marxist thinkers but also amongst the
ranks of the partys white practitioners. Recognizing the political capital of race through
the specific incorporation of racial strategies in Communist discourse signified a process of
ideological adaptation that uncovered the logical path for CP organizers who sought
African-American inclusion. And through years of grass roots organizing, the racialized
Communist message slowly gained notoriety in the aftermath of the Depression as
approximately ten thousand African-Americans joined the party by the mid 1930s in hopes
of acquiring more political, economic, and social equity and agencya far cry from its
initial support of roughly two dozen in 1927. The Communist Review, Programme of
African Brotherhood, 451, 453, File on the African Blood Brotherhood, 1:1, Tamiment
Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (New York).
32

Tracing the origins of the partys ties with African-Americans, historians Philip
Foner and James Allen comment on the party position with respect to Black Americans,
citing the era of Marx as part of the general process of transition, yet state that the party
did not have at hand a substantive Marxist theory to cope specifically with the situation of
85

as channeled through the agenda of African-American public intellectuals throughout the

1930s and 1940s was less about dismantling the systematic controls of capitalism. More
so, this relationship was about unhinging the lock to wealthpolitical, social, intellectual,
and artistic wealthand achieving the ideals of American equality by traversing through
the oppressive qualities of its proscribed capitalist-based, racially exclusive system.33
Black Americans. However, Foner and Allen also cite Marxs Capital, as an example of
an emergent, associative discourse between Communism and African-Americans. Marx
states, labor with a white skin cannot emancipate itself where labor with a black skin is
branded, indicating, as Foner and Allen state, the importance of the Black franchise to
the transmission of Communist ideology to the United States. James S. Allen and Philip S.
Foner, American Communism and Black Americans: A Documentary History, 1919-1929
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), vii.
33
The tenets and practices of the CP in the 1930s, stemmed in part from the
Socialist Party doctrine concerning fair labor and civic equality that attained power in the
1910s and collapsed by the era of the New Deal. Eventually acculturated on the basis of
ideology by its more left leaning party members including black cultural critics ranging
from Cyril Briggs, to W.E.B. DuBois and A. Phillip Randolph, a former Socialist political
candidate in New York City in 1928, the Socialist Party historically consisted of white and
other non-English speaking immigrants disengaged from African-American politics, in
spite of public disavowals of lynchings and racial segregation from noted leaders such as
Eugene V. Debs, a traditional labor-oriented and left-wing Socialist. Concerning this
ethnic exclusivity, Buhles analysis states, from an empirical standpoint, the party did not
attract the native-born, urban, eastern or Midwestern worker in any significant proportion.
Hutchinson, Blacks and Reds, 12. By 1932, an editorial in the Crusader further clarified
the ideological as well as racial divisions experienced within the SP as the push for
Communism reached its stride. The editorial states: I have no faith in the Socialists, for I
have dealt with them. Four years ago I worked with them in Maryland. From the day the
campaign ended to the next election period, I never saw a Socialist. Socialist represented a
group of people who, had they lived in the days of slavery, would have tried to persuade
the owners to give up their slaves. With the word persuade being the operative term, the
perceived inaction and presumed moderate stance of the CP became its undoing on the part
of radical Communists and Marxist thinkers. The term persuade, however, also denotes
the development of discourse concerning race in Marxist political ideologyand
regardless of its usage in this article as an ineffectual strategy of radicalism, the term
indicates a claim of associative politics that the leftist members of the SP began to
formulate for the cause of civil justice. And as the agenda of the SP formally characterized
racial hierarchies as indicative of the exploitive nature of American capitalism, the SP,
however faint, offered an initial and therefore, viable voice towards the reconstructive
social, economic, and political goals of African-Americans in a segregated, minstrelized
and capitalist society. Editor of Baltimore Afro-American Speaks for Communists, The
86

Going back to the rift between Ellington and Hammond, an impression is left that the
political capital and the activist spheres associated with black public intellectuals had
already been clearly mapped out by the time of their feud. However, this discursive
constellation emerged in a complex process of intellectual and ideological translation. And
from the 1910s to the 1930s, black intellectuals, especially in Northern urban centers,
translated Communism for the general agenda of black liberation.
Still largely considered the political party of the outsider, the sparsely affiliated CP
in its early years of black inclusion suffered from internal divisions, ideological disparities
with fellow Communists and Socialists both at home and abroad, and government
persecution to eventually surface as a political party concerned with Diasporic
revolutionary efforts but also the affairs of the racially mixed American proletariat.34
Communism survived, however, gaining strength initially as an emergent grass roots
interracial subculture that endured in communities such as Harlem and Chicago because of
its radical focus on race and its unique ability to attract blacks who possessed a strong
nationalist orientation.35 During the 1920s, the CP began to consolidate its constituents,
having more or less brought together divergent tendencies arising from the different roots
of American Communism and having overcome the state of internecine war between

Crusader, November 5, 1932, File on Black Response to Communism, 11:1, Tamiment

Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (New York).
34
Hutchinson cites the governmental pressure placed upon Communists, stating,
governmental officials dug deep to make their case that a Communist-led uprising was
imminent: The entire program is intended to incite the Negroes to attain by violence the
ends specified. The press added a little spice to the sinister dalings when it revealed that
the document was smuggled into the country by an authorized Soviet courierWas any of
this true? Historians are divided on it. Hutchinson, Blacks and Reds, 12-14.
35
Naison, Communists In Harlem During The Depression, 4.
87

itsfactions.36 Foner and Allen cite the efforts of Cyril Briggs, Otto Huiswood, and Otto
Hall as the most insistent prodders of the party, vigorously campaigning, within the
party to raise its consciousness on the Negro Question.37 Foner and Allen further posited
on the burgeoning political association between Communists and black Americans,
commenting that the compelling reason for blacks to remain in the party, lied in, their
conviction that Marxism and the socialist perspective would in time evolve a solution if the
party stuck to the revolutionary path.38
36

Foner and Allen, American Communism and Black Americans, vii.

Foner and Allen, American Communism and Black Americans, ix.
38
Foner and Allen, American Communism and Black Americans, ix. By 1925,
groups such as the American Negro Labor Congress assembled in Chicago as an auxiliary
of the CP to augment the partys efforts to organize black laborers. The mission goals of
the ANLC was, to bring the Negro working people into the trade unions and the general
labor movement with the white workers, as well as to extend its focus towards
international and Diasporic affairs that aided in the general liberation of the darker races
and the working people throughout all countries. The ANLC called for a more racialized
focus in the organizational ranks of the CPhowever, the organization also specified its
terms of garnering agency for African-Americans by centering on the workforce in order to
apply that agency towards a broader discussion of class equality. With its rhetoric drawn
from the perspective of African-Americans, racial concerns were addressed through the
vehicle of class and from this convergence the associative dynamics between Communists
and African-Americans became mutually beneficial on a theoretical basis. Commenting on
this amalgamation of racial and class politics, the ANLC preamble stated, It is a
fundamental error to assume that our oppression arises from racial differences. Racial
difference simply serves to make more brutal this oppressionTo appreciate the true
nature of our oppression it is necessary that we understand the class structure of the society
in which we live. In capitalist society we distinguish two classes: on class, the workers or
proletariatthe first class belong to the vast bulk of Negroes in this countryThere is
urgent need for a militant mass Negro organization to lead the struggle of the Negro
workers. Organized through the premise of racial solidarity, The ANLC propose an
acculturation of traditional Communist politics in which the proletariat class is identified by
the struggle of the Negro workers, in an effort to organize and survive the brutal racial
oppression experienced in a segregated capitalist environment. Lasting only until 1930 due
to a series of ineffective efforts to organize in African-American as well as Afro-Caribbean
labor intensive sites, the organization splintered to the National Negro Labor Congress by
1931. The A.N.L.C. Preamble, 1-2, File on the American Labor Committee, 5:1,
Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (New
York).
88
37

The CP in its early stages of inclusion within African-American society, however,

still represented only a marginal phenomenon in the overall landscape of black political,
social, and cultural life.39 Still fighting with other popular leftist organizations such as the
moderate interracial alliance of the NAACP and the nationalist, all black and perceived
imperialist perspective of Marcus Garveys Universal Negro Improvement Association, the
CP of the 1920s found it difficult to maintain its members and to gain a clear voice to
adequately and pragmatically address the growing needs, questions, and financial
aspirations of African-Americans.40 Amidst the confusion of acculturating Communist
politics towards a racialized focus, the African-Blood Brotherhood, a radical Marxist
themed organization with strong SP roots established in 1918 and led mostly by West
Indian immigrants in New York City found an influential although brief voice in the
organizational ranks of the party. In the wake of the Red Summer race riots, the ABB
exemplified the alternative platform that Communist themed politics would come to
represent for Black Americans. Centering their cause towards the goal of black civil justice
and the total abolishment of Jim Crow segregation, the ABB theorized their platform
around the Leninist concept of self determination, calling for the creation of an
autonomous colored state with a government of the Negro, by the Negro, and for the
39

Naison, Communists In Harlem During The Depression, 3.

In a scathing review of the NAACP tactics, Eugene Gordon presented the case of
radicalism versus moderate activism, stating, (The) statement of the NAACPs
characterizes the attitude of Nice People everywhere; nice, respectable folks who shudder
daintily. We must not stir up trouble. Let the ruling class rape and plunder and murder,
let it invade workers homes and churches, burning those structures to express its hatred
and contempt; let it swagger and bludgeon, let it spit in your face; but for Gods sake, dont
raise a hand! Dont so much as make a gesture of defending your face from the bullys spit!
Dont! It might stir up trouble. Eugene Gordon, Communism vs. NAACP, The
Chicago Whip, August 1, 1931, File on Black Response to Communism, 1:11, Tamiment
Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (New York).
89
40

Negro.41
Further clarifying a racialized stand in Communist politics, Cyril Briggs stated that,
we must aim to encourage existent divisions and even to foster new divisions in the ranks
of the white race.42 This publicized radicalism also attracted the attention of governmental
authorities as the Military Intelligence Division on Negro Activities targeted the ABB and
Briggs in particular and branded the activist as well known radical agitators amongst the
Negroes that seem to be capitalizing on racial discord for their own particular
benefit.43 Comprised of newly migrated African-American workers from the South as
well as the West Indies, the ABB gained support and notoriety from the inclusion of black
intellectuals concerned with the ideology of imperialism and segregated racial policies
suffered under the system of capitalism. Although the ABB represented only a small but
vocal minority of black Marxist radicals, factions and individuals within the CP further
clarified its message of black radicalism, and Communism progressed in the late 1920s and
1930s due to its reorganized commitment toward including African-Americans within its
policy and rhetoric. Concerning this rhetoric, Cyril Briggs mentioned in The Crusader
that, propaganda is everywhere, and that the Negro needs to put out propaganda not
only on the inside to wake up the masses and mobilize Negro thought in the Liberation

41

Naison, Communists In Harlem During The Depression, 3.

Cyril V. Briggs, Lessons in Tactics; for the Liberation Movement, The
Crusader, 15, File on the African Blood Brotherhood, 1:1, Tamiment Library & Robert F.
Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (New York).
43
Cyril V. Briggs, Lessons in Tactics; for the Liberation Movement, The
Crusader,
15, File on the African Blood Brotherhood, 1:1, Tamiment Library & Robert F.
Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (New York).
90
42

struggle, but on the outside, among the whites as well.44 Additionally, in his 1932
pamphlets on Negro Liberation, James Allen posited on the African-American right to
self-determination and the call for African-American intellectuals to adopt a more racially
militant perspective within the ethos of Communism. Allen states, No longer can the
Negro people, as the Negro misleader W.E.B. DuBois advises, look to the white
bourgeoisie as their ally in the struggle for liberation.45 Allen further states:
In general, the demand for the right of the oppressed nations to self determination
means the right to free political separation from the oppressing nationthe right of
self-determination as applied to the Negroes in this country means(to) have the
right to set up a republic of the Black Belt in which the Negroes would exercise
governmental authority (and where the significant white minority would have full
equal rights with the Negroes), and determine for themselves whether their country
should be federated to the United States or have complete political independence.46
Indicative of the nebulous political spirit of the age, black public intellectuals found
both allies and adversaries within their own organizations, as well as their associate and
rival organizations. Clear lines of ideological division were often drawn, whether between
Garveyite Nationalists and Communists, or amongst the numerous splits between the ranks
of Marxist thinkers from the dialectical divisions of Communists and Socialists to the
oppositional politics that came into a clearer focus after WWII between Trotskyists,
Stalinists, Leninists, and other sects of new and traditional Marxists. Commenting on the
diversity and contradictions of shared ideology amongst Marxist thinkers, historian Cedric
44

Cyril V. Briggs, Lessons in Tactics; for the Liberation Movement, The

Crusader,
15, File on the African Blood Brotherhood, 1:1, Tamiment Library & Robert F.
Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (New York).
45
W. E. B. DuBois, The Struggle for Negro Liberation, File on James S. Allen,
1:4, Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (New
York).
46
James S. Allen, The Right of Self-Determination, File on James S. Allen, 1:4,
Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (New
York).
91

Robinson rationalized that, as Marxists they were compelled to juggle contending

impulses, and that despite their sometimes feverish energies they were essentially
contemplative didactics coupled with revolutionary action.47

Falling under a broad

Marxian rubric, however, political and ideological overlap was both inevitable and a
natural catalyst for the severe fissions within developing and constantly acculturated
political ideologies. In tracing the historiography of radical leftist black activism as well as
the construction of the modernist black public intellectual there is an acknowledged
difficulty by what Nikhil Singh cites as a tendency to overstate the importance of both
formal Marxist thinking and the concrete organizing efforts of the American Communist
Party.48 Suffering from questions over philosophy, practice, and strategy, the tide of
Marxist influenced thought amongst black Americans began its journey in spite of and as a
direct result of this nebulous political atmosphere. And this trajectory offered alternative
discourse to the racially marginalized and indeed, minstrelized political, economic, and
social ideologies of a capitalist America.
By the beginning of the 1930s, the black political positions within the Left
increasingly grew apart from the white leftist milieu and its organizations. The fascination
with black 'folk' traditions as well as the minstrelized expectations of black authenticity on
the Left constrained an independent course of black cultural politics. Marxism was thus
central to the debates about black modernity beyond the sphere of music. The development
of intellectual cross-currents between white Leftists and black intellectuals and the eventual
development of ideological distance have been analyzed in order to arrive at a more
47

Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition
(Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 280.
48
Singh, Black is a Country, 1.
92

nuanced and comprehensive picture of the discourse in which Hammond and Ellington
were eventually able to assume their stances on jazz and politics.

Communism and Black Cultural Media

Through a domestic agenda concerned with labor unions and anti-lynching
campaigns, the subject of race became an explored topic of the CP placing the party in
concert with the affairs of African-Americans and those concerned with the Negro
Problem.49 Along with its working class constituents the party also appealed to a large
number of African-Americans concerned with international issues as campaigns committed
to toppling fascism and colonialism abroad spoke to an array of creative intellectuals
concerned with the affairs of the black Diaspora.50 Initially centered on the internationalist,
Stalinist position of Non-Alignment under the direction of the Comintern, the CP with the
help of various New York intellectuals and independent reform groups such as the John
Reed Club, the Composers Club, and the Workers Alliance created a more reformfavored and inclusive party that backed the democratic initiatives of the Popular Front and
eschewed the Cominterns mandate to assemble a tightly knit political machine with a

49

Although a common question amongst black public intellectuals, this term gained
worldwide prominence with references by Leon Trotskys 1933 interview, The Negro
Question in America, C.L.R. Jamess 1948 speech, The Revolutionary Answer to the
Negro Problem in the U.S.A among others.
50
Robin Kelley, however, cites this trans-national approach as a primary reason for
the low number of black constituents in the party, citing that an internationalist vision
sometimes hindered the Partys work in the African-American community. Kelley also
states that, the Communists failure to mobilize significant black support in the early and
mid-1920s can be partially attributed to the Cominterns vision of internationalism which
extended beyond Pan-Africanism and/or racial solidarity. Kelley, Race Rebels, 107-108.
93

disciplined membership.51 By the mid 1930s leaning into the 1940s, the face of this
emerging party was uniquely that of New York; an interracial association of artists and
thinkers, as diverse as Countee Cullen, Lincoln Steffens, Langston Hughes, and Theodore
Dreiser aligned themselves with the revolutionary practices and Marxist principles of the
party.52 Spreading the Communist message through publications such as The Messenger,
the New Masses, and The Daily Worker, and alongside the discourse and their individual
works, the CP gained steadily in membership and general influence, forcing its ideologies
out of seclusion and into the reformatory environment of the Popular Front era. The
inclusion of African-Americans in the Communist Party marked a significant moment in
the practical employment of Marxist-based theory in the United States.53 As Communists
acculturated the philosophical tenets of traditional Marxism to accommodate AfricanAmerican inclusion, Communism became a pragmatic political alternative for AfricanAmericans concerned with revolutionary ideas and direct alternatives to Garveyism and

51

William B. Scott and Peter M. Rutkoff, New York Modern: The Arts and the City
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 198. Scott and Rutkoff further
claim that, between 1931 and 1935, Communist strategy in Harlem ran counter to national
and international strategy, concluding that the New York CP, as an open, reform-minded,
pragmatic political organizationattracted independent, but radicalized artists and
writers.
52
Scott and Rutkoff, New York Modern, 200-205.
53
Earl Hutchinson comments that, Despite misgivings about black recruiting,
white chauvinism, and Moscow-directed policy shifts, communists were generally satisfied
that they had made more friends than enemies among blacks in the Depressions early
years. Now it was time to raise the stakes. 1932 was an election year. Depression
discontent among blacks and whites was so great that it was practically a sure bet that
Americans would pick a new president. The big migrations from the South had swelled the
ranks of black voters in northern cities. For the first time since Reconstruction, the political
arena might offer fresh opportunities for the redress of black grievances. Hutchinson,
Blacks and Reds, 81.
94

Americas segregated democracy.54

The CP continued to gain influence leading into the 1930s as Harlem notables such
as Cyril Briggs and Richard Moore began to center the ethos of Communism on a more
racially focused and radicalized crusade.55 There were still a number of setbacks. In party
fighting remained a constant fixture of the grassroots organizations and their compromised
ability to stabilize the various sects of the movement.

The popularity of Garveys

capitalist inspired and racially pure nationalist movement also deterred the momentum of
Communism. In an article acerbically titled, Communism is Bad for Black People Says
Marcus Garvey, a common critique concerning the ideology and its effects on AfricanAmericans is offered by the famed black nationalist.56 Garvey states, when we take off
the mask of Communism in Americawhat is left is a determined effort to trick the Negro
54

As Communists abroad began considering the Negro Question the 4th

Congress of the Comintern addressed the struggles of black workers in the face of the
imperialist exploitation, practiced by the United States. Although not a focal concern,
the following Comintern Congress sessions continued to fuse American racialized politics
with its Marxist ethos, thus establishing a political foundation for the discussion of racial
justice with the rubric of Communist practice and ideology. However, this Congress of the
Comintern was not the first that dealt with matters of race and African-Americans. Claude
McKay attended the Fourth Congress of the Comintern in 1922 to speak on behalf of
African-Americans and against the color-blind political perspective of Communists and
Socialists in the U. S. A. and abroad. Additionally, in an article by Gilbert Lewis, Lewis
states, the Comintern in the thesis of the Sixth World Congress on the Negro question in
the U.S.A. declared that a major task of the American party is to utilize the revolutionary
traditions of the Negro, to awaken his dormant revolutionary spirit, and win him for the
class struggle. That the Negros past is indeed rich in revolutionary tradition is a fact that a
glance at any history of the Negro in America will amply demonstrate. Gilbert Lewis,
Revolutionary Negro Tradition, File on Culture, 1:27, Tamiment Library & Robert F.
Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (New York).
55
Co-founders of the African Blood Brotherhood, along with Claude McKay and
Wilfrid Domingo. As stated, the ABB was an organization dedicated to black liberation
and had direct ties to the Communist party in the early 1920s. It later amalgamated with
the CPUSA.
56
Communism is Bad for Black People Says Marcus Garvey, Chicago Defender,
July 4, 1936, 24.
95

worker as to starve him out of existence.57 Stirring distrust of the party as well as the
incoming effects of the conservative political current, worked to effectively measure the
total numbers of activist within the party.58 However, Communism survived as a realistic
political alternative as new resolutions to the Negro Question were prominently explored
through the ideology and political agency through individual affiliations with radical
Communist aligned brotherhoods and societies granted African-Americans a larger stake in
the American political arena.59
The questions concerning Communism were debated in historically black
publications such as The Chicago Defender. Commenting on the influence of the black
press in the early to mid 20th century in her study Race Against Empire, Penny Von Eschen
stated that the African-American news outlets were, the main vehicle through which
public intellectuals spoke to one another and to their main audiences: the black middle
classes and working classes, including teachers, ministers, other professionals, and blue
collar and domestic workers.60 Circulating the topic of Communism became a focus of
the Defender in the period just following WW1 and into the Popular Front era. An
unsigned Defender column published in 1922 the article comments on the sudden rise of
Communist activity amongst African-Americans stating, had the black man of the United
States been as inflammable as the Russian reds blood would have run freely in many
communities, for there would have been a race war.61 Citing the growing frustrations of
57

Communism is Bad for Black People Says Marcus Garvey, Chicago Defender,
July 4, 1936, 24.
58
Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression, 8.
59
Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression, 10.
60
Penny Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism
1937-1957 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 8.
61
Chicago Defender, December 30, 1922.
96

African-Americans concerning the segregated political and racial climate of the United
States, the article also suggests the notion of African-Americans determining their own
political fate through the expression of radical political ideology.
The Defender also analyzed the influence of Communism amongst AfricanAmericans with a critical perspective investigating the distrust felt over the foreign
ideology and in some efforts, casting a shadowy pall over the practice of its politics. In an
article published in 1930, Communism is labeled as a menace and an impractical solution
to the segregated and violent conditions African-Americans faced on a daily basis.62 Other
articles, with such sensationalized headings as Communists Fail to Help Tenets, and
Girl Thrown Down Stairs in Red Fight, assisted in stirring the anti-Communist
sentiment, labeling its constituents as agitators and detractors to the cause of black social
equality.
By 1932, following the trend amongst outwardly political African-Americans, the
publication took a more tolerant stance towards Communism and sought out the
perspectives of black public intellectuals to extrapolate on the ideological function(s) of
Communism in the struggle for civil rights. Langston Hughes was quoted in the Defender
stating that, the hysterical fear of Communism displayed by whites is born of the fact that
they fear it will awaken the Negro and lead him to take active steps to better his
condition.63 This article, among others worked to personify members of the party as
young, educated, socially aware, and creatively intellectual African-Americans concerned
with the general politics presented by the CP concerning the cause of racial justice. Dr.
Carter G. Woodson, a notable political moderate as well as the director of the National
62

Investigating Communism, Chicago Defender, August 9, 1930.

97

Association for the Study of Negro Life and History even praised Communist activism in
the various urban communities of African-Americans. Woodson states, Negroes who are
charged with being Communists advocate the stoppage of lynching, the abrogation of laws
of disenfranchisement, equality in the employment of laborIf this makes a man a Red
the worlds greatest reformers belong to this class and we shall have to condemn our own
greatest statesmen, some of whom attained the presidency of the United States.64 These
statements worked to secure a broader definition of Communism both as a radical ideology
and an accessible political vehicle for moderately inclined
Forging an alliance and entering the discursive dimensions of African-American
public and political life, Communists began the process of utilizing media outlets to convey
the content of their message of progressivism.65 In his analysis of Communist radio outlet
WEVD, Nathan Godfried explores the transmission of the Communist message amidst the
process of social democratization in the era of the Popular Front.66 Godfried investigates
this history by citing the initial philosophical problems encountered by Marxists who
branded media outlets as proselytizers of mass culture established to manipulate, restrict,
and passify the expressions and actions of the proletariat public. Godfried states, By the
early years of the Great Depression, corporate-controlled national radio networks,
Hollywood-centered motion picture producers, and large-circulation daily newspapers
63
64

1936.

65

Langston Hughes Extols Communist Party, Chicago Defender, June 25, 1932.
Whats Wrong With Being A Communist? Chicago Defender, March 14th

By the mid 1930s, Communist interest in black art becomes a public and party
sanctioned matter. As Earl Hutchinson states, Communists recognized that since the
Democrats and Republicans had virtually written blacks out of American politics, it would
be to their advantage to write them back in. Hutchinson, Blacks and Reds, 81.
66
Nathan GodFried, Struggling Over Politics and Culture: Organized Labor and
Radio Station WEVD During the 1930s, Labor History 42, no. 4 (2001): 348.
98

appeared to dominate the means of ideological and cultural production in the U.S.67
Godfried further expresses the doubts of Communists over the use of media claiming that,
the Socialist Party contended that commercial radio programs were as standardized as
anything rolling out of a Ford factory and that Labor, progressive, and radical leaders
correctly perceived the mass media as an integral part of the larger social and economic
relations of production.68
Godfried, however, also cites the work of Michael Denning, who pronounced that
the societal radicalism of the 1930s and the 1940s was an inevitable force of the laboring
of American culture in which Americans of all class varieties became integral producers,
laborers, and consumers of cultural industry, and thus helped to advance the social
democratization of national culture and politics.69 Through Dennings focus, Godfried
positions the cultural shift amongst Marxist thinkers as an avenue to create a stake in the
production of mass media, utilizing grass roots media and cultural institutions to produce
labor programming during the 1930s and engage with the use of stations such as WEVD
and WCFL out of Chicago a publically Marxist discursive atmosphere through the use of
mass media outlets.70 Godfried states that, leaders of both WEVD and WCFL hoped to
use their outlets to create just such a new social order by educating, organizing, and

67

Nathan GodFried, Struggling Over Politics and Culture: Organized Labor and
Radio Station WEVD During the 1930s, 348.
68
Nathan GodFried, Struggling Over Politics and Culture: Organized Labor and
Radio Station WEVD During the 1930s, 348.
69
Nathan GodFried, Struggling Over Politics and Culture: Organized Labor and
Radio Station WEVD During the 1930s, 347.
70
Nathan GodFried, Struggling Over Politics and Culture: Organized Labor and
Radio Station WEVD During the 1930s, 348-350.
99

entertaining workers and their communities.71 Cited by Denning as a proletarian public

sphere, these stations perceived their intended audiences not as special interests, but
rather as a large public of politically and economically subordinated groups, labor radio
advocates fought to protect their rights of these subaltern groups, enhance their members
class identity, and increase their social cohesiveness.72

Importantly, this process of

reformatting station playlists increasingly standardized Marxist thought towards a diverse

population, thus continuing a process of acculturation amongst traditional Marxist thinkers
to reconceptualize the philosophy towards a more inclusive audience from a perspective
that incorporates the realities of a capitalistic, technologically transformative mass culture.
Not surprisingly, new and diverse music rotations were incorporated to seize upon
these recently recognized audiences. In 1932, the New York Amsterdam reported that
George Maynard, the program director of Station WEVD was ballyhooing in no
uncertain terms the fact that the welcome sign is out to all colored artists.73 Specifically,
jazz became a regular feature of the traditionally classical WEVD broadcast, justifying its
rotation under Marxist-oriented terms that declared, to split melody into casts, the result is
as bad as class legislation.74 Furthermore, the hostility initially served through print media
71

Nathan GodFried, Struggling Over Politics and Culture: Organized Labor and
Radio Station WEVD During the 1930s, 350.
72
Nathan GodFried, Struggling. over Politics and Culture: Organized Labor and
Radio Station WEVD During the 1930s, 350
73
R. Vincent Ottley, Are You Listenin? The New York Amsterdam News,
August 24, 1932, 7. Additional sources mention the reformatted station playlists of
Communist radio, declaring that Negroes being featured significantly on all broadcasting
chains. See, Ida Mae Ryan, Along Radio Lane, The New York Amsterdam News,
December 12, 1936, 11.
74
Mental Diet Calls For Music, New York Times, August 13, 1933, x7. The
article continues to ingratiate its audience towards jazz, stating, jazz, for example, may be
very classical, and concluding that, in fact, jazz may be more classical in structure than
much so-called high class music.
100

began to thaw as specific periodicals came to effectively serve Communist goals of

developing a functional political and social discourse with African-American constituents.
Capitalizing on the popularity of swing, Communists by the mid to late 1930s promoted a
favorable perspective on black musical art in order to parlay a visage of relevance amongst
CP leadership towards its grass roots organizers and potential party members.75

In

contention with the prior, and indeed, present day labeling of jazz as decadent amongst
traditional and European Communists,76 the Daily Worker led the charge in promoting the
idea of African-American progressive thought through the expressions of radicalism in jazz
music by the late 1930s and early 1940s.77
The Daily Worker highlighted the African-American presence at CP fundraisers
75

In David Stowes analysis, Stowe cites that Communists, were eagerly aligning
themselves with swing and other forms of black music, and that beginning in 1937, the
Daily Worker began publishing articles favorable to swing and regularly reviewed jazz
records. Stowe, Swing Changes, 64-65. Additionally, Earl Hutchinson in Blacks and Reds
states, By 1934, Party leaders, probably spurred by pressure from black Communists, had
done some reevaluation of black culture. Suddenly, the poems and music the Party had
once labeled gutter became acceptable. Many Party members became staunch defenders
of black cultural traditions. Communists were ordered to fight against the suppression of
Negro culture by the white ruling class. Ads for the Party-sponsored All Negro Recitals
and spirituals and African dance shows occasionally ran in the New Masses and Daily
Worker. The poetry and plays of Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and other Harlem
Renaissance writers were hailed by the Party. Hutchinson, Blacks and Reds, 79-80.
76
Erenberg cites Mike Gold of the Daily Worker, whos editorials proclaimed jazz
as fairly tawdry and cheap, renouncing the references of a proletarian connection,
claiming it had no roots in anything except the Broadway pavement, lacking both high
and folk standards as a kind of commercial product, rootless, meaningless, adulterated,
and a source of bourgeois corruption. Erenberg, Swingin the Dream, 132.
77
Stowe continues, stating that the partys desire to recruit members of oppressed
groups such as African-Americans fueled this agenda, citing that the CPs prior dismissal
of vernacular music resulted in a dissonance between the party leadership and its rank-andfile organizers. Stowe concludes, explaining that the more tolerant, inclusive
atmosphere of Communist and Marxist-oriented public intellectuals envisioned popular
music, to be seen as an important vehicle, along with black theater, literature, and
professional sports, for promoting the idea that African-American culture was integrally
American, quintessentially democratic and progressive. Stowe, Swing Changes, 65.
101

with advertisements including a public notice for jazz at the Halloween Eve concert at
the Savoy Ballroom, with proceeds are going to Party Building Drive.78 In addition to
the advertisements, the paper set a tone of racial inclusivity with articles such as AntiNegro Song Bood; Singer Stops; Wins Prize. Establishing a claim for swings social and
cultural relevance within the CP, the article swiftly reveals an intolerance of minstrel
stereotypes through the account of Roy Laurence, an amateur baritone singer who got off
to a bad start at the movie house on 125th St. when he tried a chauvinistic little ballad called
Thats Why Darkies Were Born. The article further declared that the boos, deep and
insistent halted him three times.79
A year earlier in an article entitled Swing Hi-De-Ho, the subject of jazz is
evaluated along similar ideological lines in order to promote the artistic virtue of
progressive musicianship and to dispel all the nonsense that has been written about
swing music both by ignorant music critics and fervent dilettantes suggests.80 In an
attempt to legitimize the art amongst classically inclined readers, the article unabashedly
demarcates between good and bad orchestras in accordance with its Communist
principles, declaring:
Because swing or hot jazz cannot be judged from the point of view of
classical music it is infinitely baffling to one who is unaware of its totally
different principles. In terms of swing the jazz field is composed of good
and bad orchestras. The bad orchestras are better known; they rarely play
real jazz, but exploit the commercial side of popular music. They are
78

Anti-Negro Song Bood; Singer Stops; Wins Prize, The Daily Worker,
December 2, 1938. In the same issue, an advertisement listed Chick Webb, Ted Hill and
the Savoy Sultans for Celebrity Night at the Savoy Ballroom under the auspices of the
friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. The Daily Worker, October 27th, 1937.
79
Anti-Negro Song Bood; Singer Stops; Wins Prize, The Daily Worker,
December 2, 1938.
80
Swing Hi-De-Ho, The Daily Worker, September, 12, 1937, 4.
102

successful because of publicity and the incompetence of critics who are

influenced by publicity.81
The article engages in an argument that categorizes the good and bad of the field
according to its ability to represent Marxist principles.

Similar to Hammonds

interpretations of Ellingtons piece, the article designates the good jazz as removed from
the mechanations of mainstream and mass culture and representative of proletariat
principles. The article continues to explore these principles of good and bad jazz,
focusing on the individual artist and their contributions to the discourse of progressive
thought, stating:
The real jazz artist does not merely transmit the ready-made music on his stand.
His business is to create on the spot, to compose or improvise ever new elaborations
or variations upon a given ground melody. This, briefly, is the hot artists
uniqueness. Swing is not required by him but is a gift, and although he must be
constantly inspired never to play a melody the same way twice, he plays
characteristically with the greatest of ease.82
Defining jazz, or real jazz along the lines of improvisational acumen indirectly racializes
the argument of the article. Careful to place jazz outside of the qualitative category of
classical music, the uniqueness of real jazz is still evaluated within a framework that is
racialized as improvisational dexterity characteristic of African-derived music is
championed in the discernment of jazz over the regimented practice of composition,
indicative of a European, classical tradition.
In an effort to portray black musical ingenuity as progressive, the article specifies
the development of jazz improvisation as the characteristic trait of authentic, innovative,
and indeed, proletarian art. The article continues, however, by vaulting the qualities of
81

Swing Hi-De-Ho, The Daily Worker, September, 12, 1937, 4.

103

real jazz back towards a classical categorizationstill the standard template for an
evaluation of musical merit, stating:
The development of swing took a new, revolutionary turn when the harmonic
elements gained increasing prominence. This element, which drew from the
impressionist composers as remoteat first sightas Debussy and Delius,
provided coloristic, atmospheric subtlety and sophistication.83
The article concludes by introducing Duke Ellington as a figure representative of the
sophisticated qualities of the real jazz artist. With a strategy of amalgamation, Ellington
musically compliments the hot artists uniqueness, while identically complimenting the
atmospheric sophistication, of the icons of classical music. The article concludes:
Unquestionably at the very peak of the new trend is Duke Ellington. Ellingtons
orchestra is probably the most perfect swing ensemble extant. Its personnel are
first rate artists who play as if they are organically inseparabletrue, Ellington
generally writes out their music, but there is no recognizable loss of spontaneity in
their performance.84
In its evaluation of the jazz scene, the Daily Worker clarifies this strategy of amalgamation
with the example of Ellington, who serves as an indicator of the political subtext within
jazz that is brought into light within a Communist discourse. In a dual effort to attract an
audience with popular culture and to parlay the revolutionary characteristics of the art
and artists to its existing readership, Ellington is positioned in the article as an example of
the progressive expression unique upon the role of Negro musicians.85 However, in his
apparent mastery of classical musical signatures and his cross-over appeal, he is also
portrayed as a public figure capable of classical, and indeed, white standardization,
therefore compromising his Negro style towards a palatable format for the more
82

Swing Hi-De-Ho, The Daily Worker, September, 12, 1937, 4.

Swing Hi-De-Ho, The Daily Worker, September, 12, 1937, 4.
84
Swing Hi-De-Ho, The Daily Worker, September, 12, 1937, 4.
85
Swing Hi-De-Ho, The Daily Worker, September, 12, 1937, 4.
104
83

traditional guard of musical (and indeed, political) purist.86 This reading of Ellington
differs from the sentiment espoused by Hammond who valued the authentic aesthetics of
traditional black art.

However, there is a notable theoretical overlap as Ellingtons

classically inclined qualities are celebrated due to a racialized critique of his artistry.
Regardless of Hammonds or the Daily Workers accuracy reading Ellingtons work, the
centrality of racial politics within the analysis subjects Ellingtons art to an unavoidably
minstrelized state.
Recognizing the value of politicized popular art for the transmission of the
Communist message, the Daily Worker published more articles that favorably reviewed
jazz.

In 1939, an article entitled, Theyll Swing in Swing America, instructed

comrades to listen for that good progressive beat, at the Swing America show held at
Madison Square Garden.87 Catering towards the perspective of Hammond and others
invested with proletarian realism, the Daily Worker claimed that the songs have a down
to earth Negro theme, stating that the kids take on an improvisational cue from jazz,
inserting their own slogans, and producing lyrics such as, gotta make a difference how a
black man lives, and the other one a stirring call, aint going to be no lynching; no more,
When I build the heaven that Im fighting for!88

86

Swing Hi-De-Ho, The Daily Worker, September, 12, 1937, 4.

Theyll Swing in Swing America, The Daily Worker, May 3, 1939.
88
Theyll Swing in Swing America, The Daily Worker, May 3, 1939. In the same
issue, the Daily Worker also printed a story on the Harlem Cultural Conference which was
held to consider present-day opportunities for the stimulation of Negro art and culture.
The article states, the main aims of the Conference, in the light of what the Federal Arts
Projects have meant to America generally and to the Negro in particular, will be to arouse
community support in maintaining existing facilities for employment of Negroes in the
Cultural fields. It will also explore the need for a coordinating body of Harlem citizens and
organizations that will interest itself to sustaining and widening cultural horizons for Negro
105
87

Echoing the content of this article, the Daily Worker by 1943 exposed the work of
Lucky Roberts, an original creator of swing music, who proved that composers of
popular music are fighters too through his endorsement of black Communist
representative Benjamin J. Davis for the New York City Council.89 Expounding that
musicians are not spectators in the fight against Jim Crow or in the fight against fascism
and Nazism, the article crystallizes the viewpoint of Roberts, stating that we are fighting
against Hitler racism everywhere in every song we write and will continue to fight until
racial discrimination is destroyed.90 Conflating Hitler racism with U.S. racism, the
article articulates a clear politicized content that again, bridges the struggles between
domestic and foreign anti-racist agendas. Stating that I use the ballad and the ballot, the
depth of musics political importance is ultimately declared as the jazz ballad (not the
bullet) becomes the enfranchising weapon in the struggle for black freedom within the
trajectory of Communism.91

Communism, Black Music, and Black Culture

Communism also survived in the 1930s and 1940s because of its incorporation of
culture in the proliferation of its message. Historian and cultural critic Harold Cruse
posited years later on the inevitable conflation of politics and art within the American
Negro point of view.92 Harold Cruse cites DuBoiss speech on the Criteria of Negro
men, women, and children as an integral part of the fabric of American life. Harlem to
Hold Cultural Parley This Week-End, The Daily Worker, May 3, 1939.
89
Ballads and Ballots to Fight Jim Crow, The Daily Worker, October 29, 1943, 5.
90
Ballads and Ballots to Fight Jim Crow, The Daily Worker, October 29, 1943, 5.
91
Ballads and Ballots to Fight Jim Crow, The Daily Worker, October 29, 1943, 5.
92
Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York: Quill, 1984), 4243.
106

Art, in 1926 and refers to DuBoiss insistence on maintaining a functional relationship

between black art and politics to benefit the cause of civil justice and the American
nationality idea.93 DuBois states:
People are thinking something like this: How is it that an organization like this, a
group of radicals, trying to bring new things into the world, a fighting
organizationhow is it that an organization of this kind can turn aside to talk about
Art? After all, what have we who are slaves and black to do with Art? We who are
dark can see America in a way that white Americans can not. And seeing our
country thus, are we satisfied with its present goals and ideals?94
With this racialized discursive template, DuBois presents the black artist in an unavoidably
political light as an alternative activist in the struggle for social, economic and political
equality. Just as black creative intellectuals from the field of literature were involved in
Communist politics, musicians also took note of the partys interest in racial equality and
lent their services towards a number of fundraisers.
The most notable example was the Communist led legal efforts to overturn the
convictions of the Scottsboro Nine, a group of black youths arrested in 1931 and charged
with the crime of rape. The concerts benefited the ILD (International Labor Defense)
defense fund as artists such as Duke Ellington gave the services of himself and his
orchestra free of charge.95

With the inclusion of jazz artists, a public forum was

maintained that broadcasted to a wider, interracial audience the CPs stated commitment to

93

Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 42-43.

W. E. B. DuBois, Criteria of Negro Art, Crisis 32, October 1926.
95
Ellington in Benefit for Scottsboro Boys, Pittsburgh Courier, October 24th,
1931. Addtionally, Earl Hutchinson notes that, jazz musician Duke Ellington was so
impressed with the spirit the Reds aroused in Harlem that he agreed to provide
entertainment for a Party sponsored-dance at Harlems Rockland Palace in March 1931.
More than one thousand black and white activists showed up for the affair. In between
dancing to Ellington, they sang the Internationale, watched an interracial dance troupe, and
listened to speeches by Party leaders. (William) Foster, basking in the glow of the
107
94

enacting policies and practices against racial injustice.

This commitment fueled the

engaging sense of purpose and radicalism circulating the trial and CP sponsored events as
Earl Hutchinson noted the arousing spirit of the Reds that influenced Ellington and other
musicians to additionally provide entertainment for a series of CP sponsored gigs that year.
Employing a racialized rhetoric to embolden the CPs real fight against the whole brutal
system of racist oppression, The CP legitimized its political agenda with the aid of black
musicians invested in the cause of black freedom.96
In some cases, associations between Communist activists and black creative public
intellectuals came in a more blas form. Alongside the numerous dances, fundraisers, and
concerts, performances at Camp Unitya Communist holiday center in New York
gained notoriety in the jazz circles for its laissez-faire approach to interracial unity.97

evenings revelry, promised to organize Negro workers side by side with white workers.
Hutchinson, Blacks and Reds, 70.
96
Daily Worker, January 31st, 1933. In addition, in a March 1933 issue of The
Labor Defender, an article entitled, Lynchers Prepare Blood Bath in Alabama, the radical
discourse of the Scottsboro event was further emphasized by ILD leaders concerned with
the trial. The article states, the lynch bosses of the south are tightening their forces into a
state wide organization, to prepare a blood bath in the Scottsboro case. Every official force
in Alabama is mobilized to burn the nine innocent Negro boys went they come up for
retrial in March. An organization of vigilance committees; is being perfected for an extra
legal lynching in case of an acquittal. Their plans call for the murder, not only of the
Scottsboro boys, but of their defenders, the representatives of the ILD. Lynchers Prepare
Blood Bath in Alabama, File on Anti-Lynching Movement and Activities, 1:6, Tamiment
Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (New York).
97
Investigating this climate of curiosity, Hutchinson gives detail on the Communist
sponsored environments where this discourse was advocated. Hutchinson states, At
Party forums and lectures, Communists lionized Frederick Douglass, Nat Turner, Harriet
Tubman, and African history. At Party gatherings in Harlem and on Chicagos southside,
black Communists were more likely to discourse on Duke Ellington or Joe Louis than on
Marx or the Communist Manifesto. Hutchinson adds that, Black writers like Countee
Cullen and Alain Locke liked the Partys new attitude. In 1936 Cullen endorsed Party
electoral and anti-lynching campaigns. Locke proclaimed the triumph of social realism
and proletarian expression in art. Locke suggested that America should emulate the
108

David Stowes analysis of the event cites that the musicians who attended were all struck
by the extent of interracial dating, that occurred at the retreats.98 Stowe points to Dizzy
Gillespies personal interpretation of the event, with the artist recalling that they were
trying to prove how equalitarian they were by throwing together the white or the black
counterparts of the opposite sex.99

Gillespies comments indicate his being hip to

Communism, while labeling the event as part of a larger game that seemed to be to
make blacks embrace their philosophy.100 On one hand Gillespie, like others, embraced
the perks, stating that to become a card-carrying Communist was directly associated
with my work.101 On the other hand, Gillespies analysis indicates his mistrust of the CP,
similar to Ellingtons eventual critique of the partys warped politics, over the
unorthodox techniques employed by Communists to gain black constituents, particularly
black creative public intellectuals in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The Camp Unity
atmosphere mirrored the interracial nightlife celebrated overseas (Paris, in particular) as
African-American musicians such as Gillespie began to reflect on their status as American
citizens and question their place within a segregated, minstrelized society.
Caf Society also provided a non-segregated refuge under a broadly Communist
banner. A club in Greenwich Village and the place where stars are made and sold, Caf
Society became a popular hotspot for musicians, activists, and those casually and seriously
cultural program for minorities brilliantly developed in the Soviet Union. Hutchinson,
Blacks and Reds, 80.
98
Stowe, Swing Changes, 66.
99
Stowe, Swing Changes, 66. Additionally, Shiptons Groovin High, offers more
of Gillespies observations, citing, almost everybody up there was mixed. Whit-black
relationships were very close among Communistsa lot of white girls were there, oh yes.
Alyn Shipton, Groovin' High: The Life of Dizzy Gillespie (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001), 44.
100
Stowe, Swing Changes, 66.
109

engaged in leftist politics.102 The previous examples have evidenced the attempts of the CP
to advocate its political agenda through jazz.103 Identifying the club as a communal space
of Marxist discourse, an analysis of Caf Society brings forth a challenge to debates and
perceptions concerning the distinctions between the cultural politics of artists as agents of
cultural resistance and the formal activists of organized traditional politics involved with
campaigns, unions, and commit acts of civil disobedience.104

In David Stowes

interpretation of the radical climate and politics of Caf Society, Stowes intervention lies
not between the distinctions of these separate, yet at times, overlapping political
101

Stowe, Swing Changes, 66.

Caf Society: Must Now Be Called the Place Where Stars are Made and Sold,
Chicago Defender, January 11, 1941, 20.
103
Additionally, in Dance and the Workers Struggle, Stacey Prickett provides
detailed examples of the explicit connections and associations of Marxist philosophy and
artistic endeavors. Pricket notes that, Artists and intellectuals were among those who
embraced various versions of Marxism during the inter-war period, as a tool for
understanding and changing society. The working class, the proletariat, held the hope for a
better future. Following the example set by actors, painters, musicians and writers, young
dancers soon took the stage to the strains of the socialist anthem, the Internationale. A new
movement began, one of dance for and by the worker. The blend of Marxist ideology and
dance spread as the Workers Dance League was founded in 1932. Prickett also provides a
detailed perspective concerning the data found in the various spaces. Prickett states that,
Much of the early work was agit-prop (agitation-propaganda) material which presented
political and social problems and potential solutions. The themes were specific to the
proletariat and presented in clear, highly accessible formsPrecedents for linking Marxism
and dance appeared in America as early as 1924dance programs, sponsorship,
etcsymbolized the harmony and unity that could be achieved in a Marxist society.
Prickett lists The Workers Dance League, the Dance Unit, the Needle Trades Industrial
Workers Union Dance Group, the Furriers Dance Group , the Harlem Dance Group, and
the New Dance Group (supported by the Workers Laboratory Theater) which put out calls
for dancers and artists in March 1933 concluding, in this period of tremendous historical
importance, we call upon all dancers to watch the march of events and make the dance a
means of social protest, a revolutionary expression of the workers. Prickett continues,
stating that the belief that capitalism as a system had failed, fuelled the radicals optimism
in the midst of the Depression. Stacey Prickett, Dance and the Workers' Struggle, Dance
Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research 8, No. 1 (Spring 1990): 47-54.
104
David Stowe, The Politics of Caf Society, The Journal of American History
84, No. 4. (March 1998): 1385.
110
102

strategiesrather, in the different types of cultural politics that worked to intentionally or

unconsciously legitimate political activity, thus determining Caf Society as a site where
music, murals, or comedy functioned as the vehicle for political expression.105 Through
an analysis of political intentionality, Stowes illustration of Caf Society situates the New
York City nightclub as a domain of the flourishing left, and the primary, known
hangout(s) for Communist intellectuals, under the Hoover administration of the F.B.I.106
Amidst this environment of liberal thinking people, Stowes analysis also brings
into focus the racialized climate of this radicalized sphere and the minstrelized setting that
existed as a result of its politics.107 Citing the performances of Lena Horne as a case study,
Stowe states that, middle class African American performer such as Horne would
actually complicate the attempts of owner Barney Josephson to break down racial
barriers.108 Calling for Horne and others performers to black up, culturally if not in
terms of grease paint, Josephson relied on racializing the artists to convey a sense of
authentic, folk-oriented, racial merit in order to put authentic blackness and middle class
values at odds with one another. Stowe concludes that this impulse to see a tension
between racial authenticity and bourgeois background affected other members of the Left
jazz community, engaging in politics where authentic blackness is both exalted and

105

David Stowe, The Politics of Caf Society, 1385. Additionally, Earl

Hutchinson comments on this forging dynamic between Communists and black artists,
stating that, The records of Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, and W.C. Handy were on the
must-listen-to-list of white communists. The party encouraged black members with
musical talent to join the Liberator Chorus, which performed a repertoire of spirituals,
classical, and blues-oriented songs at Party-sponsored socials and community events.
Hutchinson, Blacks and Reds, 80.
106
Stowe, Swing Changes, 67
107
David Stowe, The Politics of Caf Society, 1389.
108
David Stowe, The Politics of Caf Society, 1392.
111

pitied in order to counter the perceived minstrelized trappings of segregated society.109

Stowes analysis correctly cites this practice of conflating class and race as indicative of
the inelegant politics of the radical left, schematically employing displays of racialized
identity to convey to one another a process of debunking racist stereotypes.110 However, in
the creation of these Marxist centered jazz spheres, a milieu of minstrelsy is actually
maintained through the efforts of promoting black artistic and cultural virtue.

And

although a counter-minstrel narrative, as described in chapter 1, is sonically crafted as jazz

employed the ideals of Marxism, the practice of Marxist politics presents, in these cases, a
converse narrative as fractured racial stereotypes are unavoidably employed to convey its
seemingly progressive politics.

Conclusion
The vehicle of black music had an underdeveloped yet historically noted
association with the discourse concerning Communist politics. In an article by Richard
Frank in the New Masses, Frank broadly states that, one of the greatest forward strides in
the development of the American revolutionary movement has been the policy of the
Communist Party upon the Negro question, eventually specifying that through the
advancements of cultural media these strides had gained a viable audience in American
culture.111

Generally concerned with the transmission of Communist ideology, Franks

article focuses on the musical representations of radical expression from radical spheres,
109

David Stowe, The Politics of Caf Society, 1392-1393.

David Stowe, The Politics of Caf Society, 1392.
111
Richard Frank, Negro Revolutionary Music, New Masses, May 15, 1934, 24,
File on New Masses, 2:24, Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New
York University (New York).
112
110

whereas native Negro music functions as a mouthpiece for the concerns, agenda, and
ideology of the proletariat masses.

Frank states, in the south, the ideology of the

international working class movement is beginning to be expressed in native Negro

music.112 Furthering this comment, Frank states that, the importance of this cannot be
overemphasized.

113

This importance foreshadows a grander role for black music,

alternatively functioning as the discursive language that bridges and binds a collective
sphere concerned with the tenets of social, economic, political and ultimately, racial
equality. Frank concludes:
The emergence of the music means that Marxism-Leninism is being expressed in
native cultural media, for if the Negroes of America do not form a basic section of
the native masses of American, there are no such unions. Furthermore, Negro
culture has this peculiarity. While it is the expression of an oppressed people, it still
possesses such virility it has an irresistible attraction even for working class whites,
who even while they brutally oppress the Negro people are fascinated by Negro
music and Negro dancing. How much greater than is the influence of this music
upon the white workers whose condition society is similar to that of the negro
workers!114
Citing art as a weapon, Cyril Briggs also promoted the creation, discernment, and
literal usage of black art as a rallying tool of the proletariat. Referring to the contribution
of Negro artists, Briggs advocated the proletarian content of genuine Negro culture,
falling in line with the Marxist ideals promoted in Duboiss template for the black artist.
Briggs states:
112

Richard Frank, Negro Revolutionary Music, New Masses, May 15, 1934, 24,
File on New Masses, 2:24, Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New
York University (New York).
113
Richard Frank, Negro Revolutionary Music, New Masses, May 15, 1934, 24,
File on New Masses, 2:24, Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New
York University (New York).
114
Richard Frank, Negro Revolutionary Music, New Masses, May 15, 1934, 24,
File on New Masses, 2:24, Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New
York University (New York).
113

The contribution of Negro artistsshows further that they are becoming conscious
of the class forces in struggle, that they recognize in the CP a weapon in the
struggle against national and social oppression, if not yet a recognition of the CP as
the leader and organizer of the growing revolt of all oppressed classes and peoples
against the common enemy.The promotion of genuine Negro culture, with its
proletarian content (work songs, songs of revolt,etc) as against the prostitution of
Negro culture to suit the commercial aims and the Negro Inferiority dictum of the
white ruling class. They are helping to combat the cultural disarming of the Negro
people by the white ruling classof confining Negro art to the limits of black face
buffoonery. These negro artists have taken up their historic task.115
In a 1932 column concerning the Negro in the Communist party the article states
that, the American white man, with his superiority complex is unconsciously instilling
radical ideas into the minds of Negroes.116 Radicalism therefore, in the shape of social
and political reform as well as the creative endeavors of black public intellectuals becomes
a justified response to the racist trappings of American culture. With this concept in mind,
a practice of ideological acculturation within music was utilized by a number of composers
and particularly those within the neoclassical tradition of the 1930s to incorporate an
increasingly radical narrative to music. Authors Scott and Rutkoff research years later
pinpoints a strong historical association between Marxist ideals, Communist politics and
musical expression. Scott and Rutkoff note the Marxist vocabulary provided by students
of German proletarian composer Hans Eisler who worked with the Composers
Collective of New York to reject the formalism of neoclassical music in favor of
compositions that embraced an enlightened social and political purpose.117 In line with
the politics of Communism, Marc Blitzsteins music also embodied his allegiance to
proletariat sensibilities, associating a strong Marxist thematic format to compose the kind

115

Cyril Briggs, Art is a Weapon, File on New Masses, 2:24, Tamiment Library
& Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (New York).
116
Americas Chance, Chicago Defender, July 30, 1932.
114

of music that would transform the velvet sweetness of Die Dreigros (musical piece) into
political steel.118 On the surface, the regal quality and formalized functions of Ellingtons
work is ideologically converse to the ethos behind Blitzsteins Marxist infused music. Yet
although Ellingtons work embraces a formalized quality, his music expresses a similar
ideal to those presented by Blitzstein and Communist thinkers alike as Ellington redirects
formalism to represent the expressionistic desires of African-Americansall for the sake
of granting greater social and political purpose, and encapsulating a wider avenue for the
black proletariat intellectual and artistic agenda. Thus, given the racist parameters and
minstrelized surroundings placed upon African-American artists, as well as the heavily
resuscitated format of Tin Pan Alley which routinely churned out authentic black music,
the most soluble method to achieve this greater purpose was through an augmented sense
of formalism. In short, Ellington fused radical ideals with formalism to create politically
relevant, high art for the masses of the African-American proletariat. Unburdened by the
specifics of politics, Ellingtons works by the mid 1930s and into the 1940s begin to
represent the process in which radical ideas were placed into the minds of Negroes as
his progressive artistry provides the narrative history of jazzs increasingly political
trajectory.119
117

Scott and Rutkoff, New York Modern, 220.

Scott and Rutkoff, New York Modern, 220.
119
By 1943, Duke Ellingtons composition Black, Brown, and Beige premiered in
front of a standing room only, racially mixed audience at the famed Carnegie Hall.
Equipped with a 39-page booklet about the mythical, 300 year journey of an African
named Boola, the audience was exposed to the musically transposed social history of the
African-American, from its ancestral roots in Africa, to the cultural and social contributions
of the African Diaspora, to the present day, post-Depression, WWII era black-American.
Ellington established the piece as a tone parallel to the history of the American Negro,
and approached the work as cultural history, emphasizing the role of heritage as a central
factor in the understanding and interpretation of black identity. Borrowing from his days in
115
118

the Cotton Club, Ellingtons stage presentation made few changes from his jungle approach
in terms of pure theatrics. However as evidenced by the operatic content as well as the
pieces focus on developing continuum characteristics around a central character, his music
completed its transition towards a style relatively free of racialized constraint. In his
autobiography, Ellington discusses this transitional phase of his music. He states, The
show was done on a highly intellectual levelno crying, no moaning, but entertaining, and
with social demands as a potent spice. Anyone who attended those backstage meetings for
twelve weeks got a full college education in social significance. Ellington, Music is My
Mistress, 176. Harvey Cohens analysis states that the piece and premiere exemplified,
Ellingtons lifelong efforts to advance the politics of race through music, lifestyle and
image, but rarely words. Cohen continues on this transition, stating that Ellington, did
this by carefully cultivating an image of respectability and genius in his music,
advertisements, shows, and film appearances, concluding that, Ellington did not fight for
civil rights in the manner of political activists, but he contributed much to that cause, most
of it unrecognized because it did not fall within traditional forms of racial protest. Harvey
Cohen, Duke Ellington and Black, Brown, and Beige: The Composer as Historian at
Carnegie Hall. AQ 56, no. 4 (December 2004): 1004-1005.
116

Chapter 3: The Secret Weapon is a Long Blue Note; The Foreign Stage,
Transnational Influence, and the Counter-Minstrel Identity of Jazz in the Cold War
In late 1955, Felix Belair Jr. wrote an article for the New York Times detailing the
current foreign policy measures of the United States government and its latest attempts to
spread the ideology of capitalism and democracy across the globe. Belair notes that in the
continual endeavor to advance U.S. social and economic policy, the nation had acquired a
secret weapon in a minor key.1 Armed with a trumpet in hand and a swing orchestra
behind him, the sonic weapon was jazz and its 56-year-old soldier was the long-standing
icon of twentieth century popular musicLouis Satchmo Armstrong.
Belairs article came at the eve of a landmark musical tour in which several jazz
musicians, under the auspices of the U.S. State Department, were chosen to embark on
separate six-week gigs of Europe, Asia, Northern Africa, and the Middle East as part of the
Goodwill Tours Jazz Ambassador program.2 Billed as cultural ambassadors, and
touring alongside a variety of world renowned performers from other artistic disciplines,
jazz musicians took the center rostrum as representatives of American diplomacy and
democratic ideals on the foreign stage. In practice, however, the tours presented little that
was new to much of the foreign public, as jazz musicians had worked to increase their

Felix Belair, Jr., United States has Secret Sonic WeaponJazz, New York
Times, November 6, 1955, 12.
2
The tour schedule also included the Soviet Union as part of a strategy of goodwill
diplomacy. Jazz had entered the international public sphere also as an olive branch to
Russia, as Benny Goodman served under the VOA to broadcast Americas best dance
music to the USSR. Penny Von Eschen also notes that, the idea of promoting jazz
musicians as cultural ambassadors was the brainchild of an alliance of musicians, civil
rights proponents, and cultural entrepreneurs and critics. Penny Von Eschen, Satchmo
Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2004), 5- 6.
117

worldwide audience for decades prior to the tours.3 Routinely clamoring for AfricanAmerican based art, European fans had established a viable foreign market for jazz music
and revered its predominantly black musicians as vanguard artisans of the highest caliber.4
Performing abroad regularly and eventually making his home in Paris and Copenhagen,
tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, who initially cut his teeth with Lionel Hamptons and
Billy Eckstines big bands and later as a accompanist of Charlie Parker was among the
many renowned black artists of the period who found life and the expression of his art less
confining overseas due to the absence of Jim Crow segregation and the specifically
minstrelized rubric of American society.5 Armstrong was another jazz artist who routinely
3

Jerome Harris states, jazz had entered Germany at the end of World War I and
received a boost by the postwar dance craze. Visiting American and British players and
bands helped spark interest in the new music; recordings became an additional factor
during the 1920s, as gramophones improved in quality and numbers, and domestic and
imported records were actively shared and traded among fansan activity that would
gradually be driven underground by the rise of the Third Reich. Specifically, Harris also
provides information on the radio broadcasts of jazz artists such as King Olivers Creole
Jazz band and the radio mania that swept the nation by the 1930s. Internationally,
Harris cites the technological advances of pirate stations such as Radio Luxembourg, Radio
Normandie, Radio Toulouse, Radio Fecamp and Radio Athlone that expanded the audience
of jazz in the international public. Jerome Harris, Jazz on the Global Stage, in African
Diaspora: A Musical Perspective, edited by Ingrid Monson (New York: Routledge, 2003),
109-111.
4
A number of scholars posit on the phenomena of African-American jazz in the
foreign market. Burns and Ward reflect on the Belgian author Robert Goffins trip to
London to see Louis Armstrong in the 1930s, who cites the full-blooded Negro qualities
of the entertainer and further claims that I know of no white musician who is able to forget
himself, to create his own atmosphere, and to whip himself up into a state of complete
frenzy. Burns and Ward, Jazz; A History of Americas Music, 199-200.
5
Uta Poiger, however, cites the measures taken by foreign governments to quell the
interest in jazz amongst overseas youth. Poiger cites the attackers from the Stalinist Soviet
Union, who under the 1928 article by Maxim Gorky entitled, The Music of the Gross,
associated the music with unbridled sexuality, homosexuality, degeneracy, and bourgeois
decadence. Uta Poiger, Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture
in a Divided Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 22. Burns and
Ward also cite the earlier efforts of the Nazi party, banning Nigger-Jew music, holding
national contests for the purpose of finding a suitably Aryan substitute for jazz that
118

toured internationally, having lived in Paris for a year in 1934 and toured various parts of
the globe including Japan, Australia, and South America by the mid-fifties, establishing a
worldwide fan base and circumventing the racist social, political, economic, and artistic
barriers at home in the states.6 By 1955, Americas secret weapon was no secret to the
world, with jazz working independently to secure its place on the foreign stage,
establishing a functional international sphere for the music and its artists to flourish.
The foreign stage was conceptualized by a variety of artists as a de-minstrelized
space and a model public forum for musicians to display their art.7 Seeking a space with
relative freedom from the entanglements and oppressive complexities of racialized
segregation, black creative intellectuals from a number of artistic genres became enticed
with the ideal behind this conceptualization of the foreign stagea stage seemingly distant
from the debilitating surroundings of minstrelsy and exclusively attended by an
enthusiastic, intellectual, and fawning public. Drummer Kenny Clarke observed that black
musicians in general were committing suicide in the United States, and advocated on
behalf of the perceived merits of the international sphere by moralizing Europes reputation
eschewed improvisation and further labeled jazz as bacillus. Burns and Ward, Jazz; A
History of Americas Music, 216.
6
Poigers work also cites the ultimate futility of the attempts of foreign
governments to repress jazz and jazz inspired culture, citing that, one of the first riots took
place during a Hamburg concert by jazz musician Louis Armstrong in October 1955, when
adolescents aired their dissatisfaction with the brevity of the concert and the cancellation of
a second one. Poiger, Jazz, Rock, and Rebels 79.
7
Harriss analysis ponders the global stages potential as a social and political
communal sphere, and quotes bell hooks who stated that the transnational existence of
jazz may, in fact, be evidence that many other groups now share with black folks a sense
of deep alienation, despair, uncertainty, loss of a sense of grounding even if it is not
informed by shared circumstance. Harris posits, however, that the movement of jazz
onto the global stage is a trend that may be judged to hold some dangers, in the form of
posing a direct threat to those who view jazz as an exclusively African American art
form. Jerome Harris, Jazz on the Global Stage, 122-123.
119

for racial tolerance and artistic appreciation. Clarke continued, explaining that jazz was
teaching them (the audience) (that) there was a message in our music.

The foreign

stage revitalized the artistic, intellectual, and cultural progression of the music and its
African-American artists who chose to perform their work overseas. In 1951, the Chicago
Defender cited Josephine Bakers declarations that Europe offers tremendous
opportunities for Negro entertainers at this time.9 Baker further clarified that a large
number of colored artists have found sympathetic audiences in France and an appreciation
for their talents that they did not get anywhere else.10 Granting black musical art the
ability to expand past the minstrelized constraints of its nationalistic borders, the foreign
stage permitted African-American musicians the opportunity to embody the lasting
qualities of Lockes New Negro aesthetic as applied to the cosmopolitan ideals of jazz that
Locke hoped would symbolize Americas outstanding contributionto world music.11
This international character ascribed to jazz was also crucial to the art forms receptive
association with ideological influence, as international causes emerging from PostColonial, Marxist, and Pan-Africanist dialogues often worked in league or in reference with
jazzfostering an art and intellectual discourse that conjointly reflected the diverse
concerns of social and political liberty from people of color, both domestically and abroad
during the initial stages of the Cold War era.12
8

Scott and Rutkoff, New York Modern, 277.

Europe is Place for talented Negro Artists, Jo Baker Says, Chicago Defender,
June 30, 1951, 22.
10
Europe is Place for talented Negro Artists, Jo Baker Says, Chicago Defender,
June 30, 1951, 22.
11
Scott and Rutkoff, New York Modern, 140.
12
Ingrid Monson comments on this association historically, stating, from the PanAfricanism of W. E. B. DuBois to the black nationalism (and internationalism) of Marcus
GarveyAfrican American leaders have consistently looked beyond Americas borders for
120
9

The libratory interpretation of the foreign stage and the development of the
international character of jazz came in response to the minstrelized constraints indicative of
American culture and specifically the broadened milieu of minstrelsy experienced by
African-Americans during the Cold War. Indeed, the jazz stage had historically provided
the potential of an enclosed haven relatively free from minstrelized constraint where black
and interracial groups could exercise their art with very little racist feeling.13 However,
the artistic and personal freedoms experienced onstage were often short-livedregardless
of whether the venue was in the North or South, at a segregated theatre or even at clubs
known for their racially inclusive atmosphere. Commenting on the physical dangers
presented from the fractured discourse of American race relations, Dizzy Gillespie
remarked that he used to carry a carpenter knife after gigs for a fear that once you left
52nd Streetlook out.14

Referencing the physical harassments made by police and

neighboring whites angered by the open displays of integration, Gillespies comments

illustrate the potentially dangerous complexities concerning race, community, and the
expression of art on the domestic stage that culminated in the years leading towards and
just after the Second World War.

Although existing as a productive space for the

solutions to domestic racism. Ingrid Monson, Art Blakeys African Diaspora, in

African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective, edited by Ingrid Monson (New York: Routledge,
2003), 330.
13
Erenberg cites the radical currents of Harlem that re-emerged in the 1940s that
attributed to this progressive sentiment of racial unity. Further stating that, some
musicians joined the Communist party, Erenberg posits that this advanced feeling of
equality was a direct result of the political maneuvers and augmented sense of the social
order amongst musicians, who, as Miles Davis recalled were figuratively, trying to get
our Masters degrees and Ph.D.s from Mintons University of Bebop. Erenberg,
Swingin the Dream, 226-227.
14
Erenberg, Swingin the Dream, 226.
121

integrationist subsets of the jazz community, the domestic stage, still, conversely existed as
a site of potential and actualized racial altercation.
By the late 1940s, jazz, its musicians, and corresponding communities were
increasingly labeled as part of a subversive, counter-culture element, evidenced particularly
as the threat of violence and legal persecution became publically synonymous to its
environment. As these experiences became a matter of public record through media
exposure and governmental campaigns, the milieu of minstrelsy by the 1950s reconfigured
to include these outside, non-musical forces that also worked to challenge the production
and expression of African-American art based upon fundamental characterizations of
African-American artists (and white purveyors of black art) as subversive threats to white
mainstream culture. In the prior chapters, minstrelsy was defined systematically, existing
predominantly as an ingrained and encompassing specter that racialized the terms in which
the artistry and intellectual expressions of African-Americans were discerned by the public.
By the mid-century, minstrelsy also existed as a conspicuous socio-political structure that
engaged black art as a mechanism of the state and curtailed the production and articulation
of African-American creative and intellectual expression.15 Tracing jazzs transition from
15

This theoretical lens is best interpreted through the framework established by

Marxist-thinker Louis Althusser, specifically interpreting my use of mechanism as a
theoretical viewpoint in reference to Althussers Ideological State Apparatuses. Through
an Althusserian framework, the structural ideology presented in minstrelsy turns AfricanAmericans into subjects within the system. And through his theory of interpolation,
minstrelsy interpolates, names, or hails both the cultural producers (black creative
intellectuals) and audiences into its racist system. In essence, following an Althusserian
framework, African-Americans are interpolated into this system of minstrelsy, even as
some are resisting it. And the Ideological State Apparatuses, represented through
institutional forms and societal organizations relegate individuals to subjects. Louis
Althusser,
Ideology
and
Ideological
State
Apparatuses,
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm (accessed, January
1, 2009).
122

swing to bop, jazzs influence reached worldwide proportions on the strength of its
distinctive talents, as individual, vocal, and iconic artists with growing youth appeal
constituted the emergent branch of African-American creative intellectuals. But by the
mid-century, the milieu of minstrelsy existed beyond its immediately identifiable
definitions of racial bias and pejorative stereotype, adapting itself structurally through
conservative legal means to accommodate and propel to the stifling socio-political
environment of McCarthyism and its efforts to control and confine the radical intellectual
expression of black artists.
The strength of this minstrelized societal system, however, was complicated by the
challenges presented by the advent of the post-war climate, as African-American public
intellectuals began to broadly form as Lewis Erenberg notes a new community of avantgardists rebelling against musical conventions, racism, and the limitations of an organized
and routinized world.16 At the conclusion WWII, the continuous process of government
sanctioned racism and the wide disregard of African-American contributions to the
domestic and foreign public amplified the determination of black public intellectuals to
publically expose the contradictions and injustices of racial relations in American society
through rhetoric, policy, and artistic culture. Evidencing the artistic, social and political
resolve of this community, Erenberg cites the perspective of Dizzy Gillespie who emerged
from the post-war climate rejecting racism, poverty or economic exploitation and
refusing to live out uncreative humdrum lives merely for the sake of our survival.17
Dexter Gordon also commented on this viable public, stating it was a time of change and
the music was reflecting this. And we were putting our voice into what we thought was
16

Erenberg, Swingin the Dream, 227.

123

about to be the thing.18 The augmented resolve of this community strengthened as the
ideal of the foreign stage became a non-minstrelized venue and salving refuge for the
overall survival of both the art and its artists. 19
Peculiarly, the Goodwill Tours presented a conflicting ideological paradox to the
formation of this foreign-inspired artistic and socially progressive milieu. As the creative,
seemingly non-minstrelized, international stage came to being, the foreign stage became
entangled with and predicated upon the thematic principles of American nationalist Cold
War policya government sponsored policy that worked to discount and disregard the
racist realities of Jim Crow segregation while specifically working to defeat the influence
of Communist politics and Marxist inspired thought at home and abroad. As the cultural
ambassadors engaged in their toursmany with tangible ties or indirect connections with
Communist activitythe paradox culminated with an enormously complex condition
concerning the proscribed role of jazz as a defining symbol of American social and political
freedom and cultural ingenuity. In her detailed analysis of the Goodwill Tours, Penny Von
Eschen describes part of this complex condition, noting the primary contradiction of the
tours by locating the tangible irony of sending the very citizens affected by the racist
17

Erenberg, Swingin the Dream, 226.

Erenberg, Swingin the Dream, 225.
19
Erenberg cites many of these examples concerning the failure of swings
ecstatic promise of a modern America rooted in pluralism and individualism. Noting the
role of bop in creating a racial and generational revolt for the postwar world, Erenberg
comments on the perspectives of major bop architects such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie
Parker, and Lester Young, and their role in evidenc(ing) that criticism. Citing Gillespie,
I saw a lot of stories about how they wouldnt respect a black U.S. soldier down
Southhe had to go in the colored entrance and everything, and hes out there dying for
his country. It was awful. Commenting on Lester Youngs perspective, Erenberg further
cites a friend of Youngs stating that, A feeling of revenge lingered in him for years, due
to the injustice and inhumanity under which Negroes in the South lived. Erenberg,
Swingin the Dream, 225.
124
18

realities of Jim Crow segregation to inexplicably preach the values and virtues of American
Democracy to a foreign audience.20
Von Eschens description remains a useful argument. Yet, it also leaves space for
another distinct irony concerning the Goodwill Tours and the government sponsored efforts
to transnationalize jazz. In addition to the reality of race within the intellectual framework
of this primary contradiction, the reality of sending Marxist influenced art and artists to
fight Communism remains an evident paradox of strategy.

The process of

transnationalizing jazz locates this irony as symptomatic of its very method. On the one
hand, the tours represented the governmental efforts to control and contain Communist
radical thinking at home and abroad by placing ideological controls on African-American
public creative intellectuals, the presumed Third World people of color abroad and the
overall radical and potentially subversive content of jazz by applying a democratic,
culturally egalitarian and ultimately Americanized face on jazz music. On the other hand,
the Marxist contradiction of the tours was symptomatic of the broader efforts of jazz to
internationalize its own fieldto broaden its borders past its minstrelized surroundings and
segregated settings towards the transnational and ideologically infusing environment of the
foreign stage. And as the details of this chapter unfold, the Marxist underpinnings found
within the discourse of this foreign stage will be uncovered. With the government latching
onto the international appeal of jazz as a new form of political strategy, and jazz musicians
utilizing the government to bankroll their art, the disparate ideological factions worked
together and in response to one another, to foster the still burgeoning transnational appeal

20

Penny Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the
Cold War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 4. Von Eschen adds in RAE that
125

of jazz music. And it is the function of this chapter to unpack the complexity of this
process by arguing that the government sponsored procedure of transnationalizing jazz,
specifically within the politically tumultuous anti-Communist climate of the mid to late
1940s and 1950s, was an inevitable result of the artistically stifling and intellectually
suffocating environment fostered by the American government in its treatment and
discernment of jazz and African-American art.
In the sections leading to this third chapter, the focus has been to establish the sonic
and ideological tonalities of jazz through an examination of the musics association with
the political discourses of black public intellectuals beginning from the 1930s. Chapter one
located the catalyst for this political resonance as the selected works of Duke Ellington
represented the creation of the counter-minstrel narrative in modern jazz. Chapter two
investigated both the history and current debates that influenced the artistic radicalism
within jazz in the 1930s, specifically through an investigation of the musics association
with the Communist politics that shaped the discourse of black public intellectuals.
Chapter three continues to explore jazzs political trajectory focusing on how the counterminstrel identity was further constructed by the politics at home and abroad. The third
chapter follows jazzs transition towards the 1950s, beginning with a discussion of Paul
Robeson to establish the template of the transnational, politically active counter-minstrel
identity in jazz discourse. This chapter also begins with Robeson in order to preview how
the music engaged in a transnational setting, attempting to free itself from minstrelized
constraints, while still negotiating its associative roots within a Leftist political discourse.
Afterwards, this chapter introduces the tours as one example of a larger set of cultural
the deepest ironies and limits of the U.S. strategy of promoting black American jazz artists
126

occurrences that provide a representative springboard for the larger debates concerning the
transnationalization of jazz in the 1950s. Therefore, what follows is not a description or an
evaluation of the effectiveness of the individual tours. The history behind the tours,
however, is presented in this chapter to demonstrate the burgeoning political capital of the
musicians and the developing transnational appeal of jazz that was realized and put to use
by the 1950s. Specifically, though, the tours signal the complex condition of the American
racial environmentindicating the pressing need for the foreign stage and how the
international practice and display of jazz provided an opportunity to voice an extended,
counter-minstrel dialogue that expressed the concerns of liberation by people of color at
home and abroad.
Robeson, Black Creative Intellectuals, and the American Government
Although Paul Robeson was not commonly referred to as a jazz artist, the singer,
actor, public intellectual and activist was a crucial figure in the development of the foreign
stage for black musicians and an integral arbiter of the transnationalization of AfricanAmerican cultural forms. In his career as an actor and singer, Robeson was defined by his
unique bass-baritone voice, performing acclaimed renditions of African-American
spirituals and folk songs to American and international crowds since the early 1920s. From
his title role in Eugene ONeills, The Emperor Jones, to his Broadway and overseas
theatrical roles as Othello and Haitian revolutionary Toussaint LOuverture, Robeson was
an established celebrity and arguably the most famous African-American in the world by
the 1950s. His stardom was the result of his talents but also because of his controversial
commitment towards politicizing his artistic presence as he performed to a worldwide
127Race Against Empire, 179.
as pro-American propaganda. Von Eschen,

stage. As Robeson freed himself from the myopic stylistic constraints affixed to AfricanAmerican artists due to minstrelsy, his artistic versatility allowed for his celebrity and
cultural influence to grow exponentially in a variety of artistic markets, engaging in a
multitude of artistic projects as well as social and humanitarian causes worldwide.
A product of the Harlem Renaissance cultural explosion, Robeson was connected to
the cultural and artistic sphere of jazz in a variety of ways. Artistically, Robeson associated
with Harlems musical awakening in the 1920s, performingin addition to his repertoire
of spiritual and folk based songspopular songs from the Tin Pan Alley production
machine alongside the theaters and ballrooms occupied predominantly by jazz artists, who
coincidentally, played many of the same pieces. Alongside Robeson, other classically
trained African-American vocalists, such as Roland Hayes and Marian Anderson, also fit
securely within this unified rubric of jazz and jazz inspired performance. As numerous
sonic elements from spirituals, blues, and ragtime shaped and defined the sonic, artistic,
thematic, and general aesthetics of jazz, an amalgamated and unified vision of jazz that
worked to include artistically minded black creative intellectuals with a variety of expertise.
Creatively speculating on this unified, rubric theory of jazz, Langston Hughes wrote a
number of pieces that sought to connect the thematic aesthetics of jazz to the various
political and intellectual movements found within the black community. In one example,
Hughes states:
Let the blare of Negro jazz bands and the bellowing voice of Bessie Smith singing
Blues penetrate the closed ears of the Colored near-intellectuals until they listen and
perhaps understand. Let Paul Robeson singing Water Boy, and Rudolph Fisher
writing about the streets of Harlem, and Jean Toomer holding the heart of Georgia
in his hands, and Aaron Douglas drawing strange black fantasies cause the smug
Negro middle class to turn from their white respectability, ordinary books and
128

papers and catch a glimmer of their own individual dark-skinned selves without
fear or shameThe tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs.21
Hughess poetry ties a connective thread between Robeson, jazz, and alternate
forms of black art, highlighting the musics functionality as a strident and unified black
voice that would penetrate the closed ears of a specifically minstrelized American
climate. Granted illustrative voice by Hughes, the romanticized characterization of black
artistic culture signifies the wide berth granted to folk elements as positive appraisals of
black intellectual culture, particularly in the face of a segregated, minstrelized society that
worked to negate those very attributes. Legitimated by this sense of shared traditional folk
culture, Hughes concluded that the numerous strands all serve the same purpose of cultural
representation, producing a unified and distinctly musical voice that illustrated the public
concerns of African-American society.
In the 1920s, Robeson critiqued the legitimacy of this philosophical rubric,
branding jazz as decadent and rejecting the music as an inauthentic source and
representation of African-American folk culture. Commenting that jazz exploits a Negro
technique, but isnt Negro, Robeson branded the music as childish with something of
the Negro sense of rhythm, but only some.22 However, Robeson began to soften his
analysis in years later as the musical icon began frequenting jazz clubs and engaging in its
circles by the late 1930s, declaratively stating by 1958 that for my money, modern jazz is
one of the most important musical things there is in the world.23
21
22

176.

23

Scott and Rutkoff, New York Modern, 142.

Martin Duberman, Paul Robeson: A Biography (New York: New Press, 1995),

Duberman, Paul Robeson, 177. Also, Duberman includes Paul Robesons

positive theoretical assessment of jazz, stating, the jazz scale is a new and significant
development in the history of music in general and American music in particular (there
129

Robesons viewpoint also changed as a result of his iconic influence on jazz

musicians.

In his analysis of swings broad associations with leftist politics, Lewis

Erenberg identifies Robeson as a pop icon on par with heavyweight boxer Joe Louis
occupying a small space of mainstream oriented black identities that strongly challenged
the minstrelized perceptions of African-American achievement on a publically recognized
platform.

Erenberg cites Dizzy Gillespies cynical take on the subject, as Gillespie

explained Robesons preeminent stature amongst the African-American public, stating to

be a hero in the black community, all you have to do is make the white folks look up to
you and recognize the fact that youve contributed something worthwhile.24
Specifically, Robesons iconic relevancy was often filtered through the music of
jazz, intensifying as the artist recognized the musics youthful following and capacity to
incorporate, illustrate, and promote radicalized politics through its artistry. By 1941,
Robeson recorded King Joe, a song written by John Hammond and accompanied by the
Count Basie Orchestra that glorified the athletic prowess and heroic stature of Joe Louis,
and promoted his defeat of Nazi boxer Max Schemeling as a primary example of American
and specifically, African-American accomplishment. In spite of the pieces upbeat and
casual musical feel, Erenberg suggests the direct political poignancy of the piece as
Robeson and Hammond sought to provide a creative space to unify black and white
leftists and merge politics and music in an associative cause against the minstrelized
trappings of a segregated society.25

is) a unique immediacy, a direct communication here and nowfrom the living to the
livingwhich jazz seems to provide. Duberman, Paul Robeson, 625.
24
Erenberg, Swingin the Dream, 117.
25
Erenberg, Swingin the Dream, 117.
130

Although stylistically a classically trained singer, Robeson was a part of the jazz
rubric by the 1950s. If not linked by his direct musical endeavors, Robesons lasting
cultural and political influence amongst jazz musicians was measured by his status as an
international icon and reputation as a radical public intellectual who frequently utilized his
public platform as a stage for his politics. Ingrid Monson notes, Robesons prestige
cannot be overestimated as an inspiration to many in the entertainment industry.26
Gillespie further clarified this authority as the prestige and influence granted to
Robeson accessed various members of the growingly diverse community of black public
intellectuals interested in black domestic and Pan-Africanist affairs. Gillespie stated that
black people appreciate my playing in the same way I looked up to Paul Robeson or to Joe
LouisJust because of his prowess in the field and because hes black like me.27 With
this successful amalgamation of art, political relevance, and iconic recognition, Robeson
was crucial in the implementation of a distinctly political and internationalist agenda within
the conceptual, cultural, and sonic context of jazz. With his publicized interest in leftleaning internationalism and African culture and politics Robeson was the figure
through which many jazz musicians came to know this perspective.28
Further noting Robesons influence on the jazz public, historians Scott and Rutkoff
commented on the activism of Robeson, along with longtime leftist and Pan-Africanist
historian W.E.B. DuBois and their lasting radical influence on the artistic scene of New
York during the height of the Cold War.
W. E. B. DuBois and Paul Robeson inspired (jazz musicians) (Milt)
Hinton and (Charlie) Parker. On the road the two often talked of
26

Ingrid Monson, Art Blakeys African Diaspora, 331.

Erenberg, Swingin the Dream, 117.
28
Ingrid Monson, Art Blakeys African Diaspora, 330-331.
131
27

DuBoiss message to black people. When they arrived at a new

destination, wed get off the bus and be sure we got to this place to
hear W. E. B. DuBois and this would be the focal point of our
conversation.29
However, this politically themed dialogue between jazz artists concerning
Robesons influence came with a level of fear and suspicion. Although meaningful in its
radical display, Hinton and Gillespie remained cognizant of the stifling political climate of
the Cold War era and were openly cautious of public retribution to their adherence of
controversial, racially configurated ideology. As Scott and Rutkoff state:
To (Milt) Hinton and (Dizzy) Gillespie, Paul Robeson (also) symbolized the social
aspirations of African-Americans at a time when his reputation had been tainted by
his Communist Party affiliation. Fearful of Red-baiters, the politically minded jazz
performers reacted cautiously, meeting Robeson on one occasion in Cleveland to
talk about music and race relations but generally keeping their distance.30
Robesons radical approach to politics and his continual critique of American racial
policy was filtered through a staunchly Communist perspective, shaped in part from his
travels to Russia and Western Europe in the 1930s. In 1935, Robesons visit to Moscow
was covered by Vern Smith of the Daily Worker, and illustrated Robeson, the son of a
slave, as an ideological and physical counterpart to the Russian sons of serfs who now are
freed by their own efforts.31 Robesons visit was marked by his unflinchingly affirmative
rhetoric towards Communist policy and its perceived positive effects on the people of
Russia, stating furthermore that from what I have already seen of the workings of the

29

Scott and Rutkoff, New York Modern, 277.

Scott and Rutkoff, New York Modern, 277.
31
Vern Smith, "I Am at Home, Says Robeson at Reception in Soviet Union,
Daily Worker, January 15, 1935.
132
30

Soviet government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be
shot!32
Robesons radicalism formed though his scholarship of international politics in
Haiti and Africa and particularly the Italo-Ethiopian war of 1935 which Brenda Plummer
summarized as the first great manifestation of Afro-American interest in foreign affairs,
in part because of Ethiopias refusal to surrender in spite of the former Kingdom of Italys
superior forces.33 As Italy invaded Ethiopia in the occupational scramble of Africa with
the monetary aid of the Soviet Union, black communists faced a conflict of ideological
interests stemming from their Pan-Africanist inclinations as opposed to their political and
philosophical associations with Russia. Robeson went on record to criticize the Soviet
sponsored invasion without indicting the U.S.S.R., stating my sympathy is all with the
Ethiopians. It would seem that these people could get along without the kind of civilizing
that European nations do with bombs and machine guns.34 Faithful to the Soviet Union,
Robesons internationalist perspective was funneled through an unyielding pro-Communist
ethos, as biographers Boyle and Bunie comment that in 1935, Robesons relationship with
the (Pan-African) movement centered primarily around his own interest in African cultures
and languagesand not on African political issues.35 Throughout the 1930s and 1940s,
Robesons international agenda reflected these centered interests, co-founding the Council
32

Smith, "I Am at Home, Daily Worker. Dubermans biography on Robeson

detailed the singers affinity for Russia and its political foundation. Robeson declares, the
country was entirely free of racial prejudice andAfro-American spiritual music resonated
to Russian folk traditions. Here for the first time in my lifeI walk in full human dignity.
Duberman, Paul Robeson, 461.
33
L. Lamphere, "Paul Robeson, Freedom Newspaper, and the Black Press" (PhD
diss., Boston College, 2003), 22.
34
Lamphere, "Paul Robeson, Freedom Newspaper, and the Black Press, 22.
35
Lamphere, "Paul Robeson, Freedom Newspaper, and the Black Press, 23.
133

on African Affairs (CAA) in 1937 which, according to Von Eschen, helped keep the issue
of colonial liberation on the U.S. agenda and provided links to international anticolonial
networks and African Liberation groups.36
Working to restructure the image of Communists in the Harlem scene during WW2,
Mark Naison positions the leftist organization as a, towering presence over Harlems
leftist cultural scene. Naison continues, citing that, giving it much of its energy, stood the
figure of Paul Robeson, highlighting Robesons luminous personality and immense
talents that gave an aura of legitimacy to his political posture, which differed little from
the official party line.37

In part, Robesons visits to the Soviet Union outlined his

theoretical connection with the intellectual community of the jazz sphere. This association
was outlined in Robesons description of the perceived merits of the foreign stage, whereas
the artist and black public intellectual could traverse the trappings of their minstrelized
surroundings and present their work and persona in a light unaffected by segregated racial
politics. Smith comments further on his travels abroad:
What he admitted he had not been expecting was the simple, wholehearted,
affectionate welcome that lay in store for him. Robeson declares himself that he
knows he has made a sufficient place for himself by his singing and acting, that
even in the capitalist world some of the bitterest aspects of Jim Crowism and white
chauvinism are not applied to him. But it is just this feeling that a condescending
exception has been made of him that is missing here.38
As the foreign stage was exalted by Robeson, his rhetoric established his clear
connection to the rubric of jazz. In his efforts to escape the bitterest aspects of Jim
Crowism, Robeson presents a response to the chauvinist domain of minstrelsy and
ideologically aligns himself with the artistic goals and functions of jazz music and its
36
37

Lamphere, "Paul Robeson, Freedom Newspaper, and the Black Press, 27.
Lamphere, "Paul Robeson, Freedom Newspaper, and the Black Press, 34, 35.
134

musicians through an internationalist perspective. His association is also solidified by his

commitment to the central tenets exalted in Lockes New Negro. Serving as a discursive
shadow to a counter-minstrel identity, New Negro ideology provides the template for a
vision of black cultural uplift that is carried into existence through a number of societal
philosophies including Marxism, democracy and black nationalist identity.

Clearly

representing its display through Communist activity, Robesons New Negroism is shaped
by his internationalist perspective and the freedoms granted through the foreign stage.
Robesons persistent activism was channeled through his artistic endeavors as the
singer often incorporated his political perspective in the midst of his performances on
foreign and domestic stages during the thirties and forties. With his example instituting an
international character to the black public creative intellectual, Robesons controversial
Stalinist perspective was concertized broadly abroad in Europe and the Soviet Union using
his celebrity to publicize a forum for his art and political discourse. At home as well,
Robeson used the stage and his influence to critique the violently racist conditions of the
American south and the perceived racial hypocrisies of the American north. In 1946,
Robeson founded the American Crusade Against Lynching and issued forth his political
message alongside various presidential campaigns, amongst the congregations of black
churches, and in the halls of various conferences and symposiums. Reflecting on the
various details of Robesons life, journalist Phil Ponce detailed the artists communistinspired political activism illustrating his numerous struggles to speak his message of black
political, social, and economic empowerment during the height of the cold war climate.
Robeson continually spoke out against the U.S. government accusing it of
genocidal policies toward the 15 million blacks in America. A 1949 concert in
38

Smith, "I Am at Home, Daily Worker.

135

Peekskill, New York, turned into a riot, when anti-Communist demonstrators

stopped the performance. Anti-Communist riots like these led to an industry-wide
boycott of Robeson from any American concert hall or recording contract, nor was
he allowed to perform overseas.39
Alongside these Anti-Communist riots, Jane De Hart Matthews suggests that the
swift and oppressive tactics employed by the federal government to quiet this perceived
Communist threat was the result of a failing U.S. foreign policy to control the same
subversion abroad.40 Matthews further states that the prompt reactions of censorship,
surveillance, and anti-Communist crusades leading to patriotic excesses were the lasting
reactions of the American government due in part to the deteriorating political climate of
the early fifties.41 The result of this backlash to the non-conformist, radically motivated
politics of African-Americans was decisive. Alongside Robeson, W.E.B. DuBois were
dealt with promptly once it became clear that their socialist-inspired, subversive voices
were in essence, loud enough to reach the masses of African-Americans and other persons
of color who felt the effects of marginalization at the hands of racially motivated,
democratic politics.

Mary Dudziak speaks of the environment of the 1950s as a

tumultuous and racialized climate and one which immediately expelled any persons who
39

Phil
Ponce,
Remembering
Paul
Robeson,
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/remember/1998/robeson_4-9a.html, (April 9, 1998).
Venturing on a similar terrain to that of Robeson was the noted scholar, W. E. B. DuBois
who embodied the socialist ethic in his politicized activism throughout his career. His
voice against the societal injustices of the American mainstream began in the early
twentieth century as DuBois affirmed a notion of black racialism, which radically
embodied the twoness of the African-American, and gave voice to the inherent
Americanized qualities (qualities, traits, class benefits, and merits typically afforded to
whites) in the total self of the Negro. Both DuBois and Robeson were vigorous activists in
the continual pursuit of African-American civil rights.
40
Matthews states, fed by frustrations with a U. S. foreign policy that failed to
win diplomatic victories against the Soviet Union, these (anti-Communist) crusades
became increasingly concerned with internal subversion. Jane de Hart Mathews, "Art and
Politics in Cold War America," American Historical Review 81 (October 1976): 768.
136

threatened not only the mainstream way of life in America but also endangered the foreign
policies of the American government.
In this environment, African-Americans who criticized race discrimination in the
United States before an international audience added fuel to an already troublesome
fire. When the actor and singer Paul Robeson, the writer W. E. B. DuBois, and
others spoke out abroad about American racial problems, they angered government
officials because the officials saw them as exacerbating an already difficult
problem. The State Department could and did attempt to counter the influence of
such critics on international opinion by sending speakers around the world who
would say the right things about American race relations. The right thing to say
was, yes, there were racial problems in the United States, but it was through
democratic processes (not Communism) that optimal social change for African
Americans would occurConsequently, in the early 1950s the passports of
Robeson, DuBois, and Civil Rights Congress chairperson William Patterson were
confiscated because their travel abroad was contrary to the best interests of the
United States.42
Dudziaks paragraph also illustrates a specific strategy of the American government
to control all facets of its foreign policy, specifically through the methods of altruism and
philanthropy in which broad notions of goodwill and democratic progressivism were
championed in order to counter the realistic perception of Americas difficult problem
concerning race relations. Robesons example displays a dedicated case of a black creative
public intellectual influenced by a Marxist trajectory. However, his development into a
global icon clarifies the agency and lasting legacy of his counter-minstrel identity.
The Real Ambassadors and the Albatross of Racism
Established during the height of post-WWII international tensions, the Goodwill
Tours were drafted and carried out through various levels of government to function as a

41

Mathews, "Art and Politics in Cold War America," 768.

Mary Dudziak, "Josephine Baker, Racial Protest and the Cold War," Journal of
American History (September 1994): 546.
137
42

diplomatic employment of Cold War foreign policy.43 Devised to display a sense of

diplomacy and goodwill abroad, musicians with noted appeal and worldwide experience,
such as Ambassador Satch, were ideally positioned as representatives of the State to
project the ideological merits of American democracy in an international setting through a
display of their art and celebrity.44 The tours were strategically set forth in various cities of
the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, with gigs taking place predominantly in the concert
venues of redeveloping nations under colonial rule, where the specter of Communism
loomed over the re-establishing governments.45 As part of a campaign of influence set
forth by the United States government in the late 1940s, along with other federally funded
endeavors of arts and leisure, the tours engaged Americas Cold War acquisition of
ideological real estate in the politically, socially, and industrially redeveloping world of the
Post-WWII era.

46

By 1956, government spending in the field of Cold War sponsored foreign policy
endeavors spiked to a yearly average of $109 million in the federal budget. This increase
allowed for the creation of cultural-based programs that organized as part of a general plan

43

Von Eschen connects the tours with the CIA, Congress, and initially supervised
by the State Department in conjunction with the American National Theatre and Academy
(ANTA), the programs involved an expansive notion of culture and a wide array of the
arts. Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World, 6.
44
The moniker was coined by George Avakian, a record producer for Columbia
Records.
45
Von Eschen states, Aiming to spread jazz globally in order to win converts to
the American way of life, proponents of the tours cited the popularity of jazz in Europe to
make their case. Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World, 7.
46
Von Eschen states that the U.S. government sketched a vision in which band
leaders such as Gillespie, Armstrong, and Count Basie and their bands would be sent into
countries where Communism has a foothold. Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World,
7.
138

to dismantle the growing ideological effects of Communism in redeveloping nations.47

Eventually falling under the direct auspices of the State Department, the Goodwill Tours
provided the foreign public with the, more soothing sounds of America, instilling the
projected virtues of American diversity and artistry upon a foreign public and effectively
reorganizing the Popular Front strategy of Cultural programming abroad as a newly viable
tactic in the acquisition of influence in the Post-WW2 world.48 Among the supporters was
President Eisenhower who had appealed to the Senate in 1954 for specialized budgetary
funds for the formation of artistic and cultural programs, noting the overseas success and
influence of Porgy and Bess as an indicator of the international demand for American
cultural products and its potential usefulness in matters of foreign policy.49 Originally
instituted in 1954 under the Presidents Special International Program for Cultural
Presentations, and overseen by the Bureau of International Educational and Cultural Affairs
of the Department of State, by 1956, the program received full legislative sanction under
the International Cultural and Trade Fairs Participation Act of 1956 (PL-806).50 After the
initial brief tours of the American Ballet Theater and New York Philharmonic, Harlem
congressman Adam Clayton Powell encouraged the Bureau of Educational and Cultural
Affairs to send jazz musicians as the chief ambassadors of the program. With help from

47

Scott Gac calculates that these figures represent part of a broader foreign policy
that included military and diplomatic resources. Scott Gac, Jazz Strategy: Dizzy, Foreign
Policy, and Government in 1956, The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900present) 4, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 1.
48
Von Eschen adds to this discussion by stating: As for jazz, State Department
officials had picked up on the fact that there was avid interest in jazz in the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe, providing officials with what they viewed as a unique opportunity to
fight the cultural cold war. Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World, 166.
49
Eisenhower to the President of the Senate, No. 82, 83rd Congress, 2nd Session,
July 27, 1954 found in Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World, 4.
139

noted jazz aficionado Marshall Sterns, Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Stan
Kenton and Duke Ellington were named as the top choices for the ambassadorial
program.51
Conspicuously, the headliners of the early tours consisted predominantly of
African-Americans and interracial combosthus, publically endorsing the artistic
virtuosity and professional accomplishments of black creative intellectuals to display an
impression of cultural plurality against the aggressively minstrelized and internationally
perceived realities of a Jim Crow society. Von Eschens analysis comments on the State
Departments desire to suggest that African-American artistry, with its improvised and
sonically palatable appeal would better sell the ideological package of the Goodwill
Tours. Furthermore, Von Eschen declared U.S. officials would simultaneously insist on
the universal, race-transcending quality of jazz while depending on the blackness of
musicians to legitimize Americas global agendas was an abiding paradox of the tours.52
In his study of the tours, Scott Gac posited on the pressing need for black
ambassadors, citing the charge of racism put forth by the Soviet Union to the
international public, noting specifically that this propagandized assertion was the one

50

Ingrid Monson, Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 111.
51
Alyn Shipton describes the selection process of Dizzy Gillespie after the artist
gained a more mainstream footing in popular music. Shipton states, it was at this point
that Adam Clayton Powell recommended to the International Exchange Program of the
American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA) that Dizzy, leading a big band, would
be a suitable candidate to pioneer a proposed series of overseas tours by American
musiciansBy actively promoting one of Americas most visible and internationally
popular assets, jazz, through a budget underwritten by the State Department, a positive
image of the United States would be conveyed to audiences across the globe. Shipton,
Groovin' High, 280.
52
Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World, 4.
140

censure that stuck, in evidencing an unenlightened America.53 The problematic of

race as interpreted through this transnational gaze suggested a newfound dilemma
experienced by the American government in its pursuit of Cold War ideological and
geographic real estate. Realized in a number of Supreme Court briefs, as well as a
variety of reports from the Fair Employment Practices Commission and the Presidents
Committee on Civil Rights, the problem of racial discrimination as well as its impact on
foreign relations had escalated into a widespread dilemma for the overall prosperity and
civil peace of the United States.54 In 1946, the American Embassy in Moscow reported
that various articles on American racial problems had been published in the Soviet media,
indicating that the realities of U.S. racial politics promoted an image nightmare for the
promotion of the mainstream American way of life.55
53

As the minstrelized and

Gac, Jazz Strategy, 2. Gac continues that the, communist media accessed a
seemingly endless stream of material to present to their readers, concerning the state of
racial affairs in the United States. Also, Von Eschen states that the Eisenhower
administration had tried to counter Soviet charges of American racism through its financing
of the four-year Cold War tour of Porgy and Bess. Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the
World, 4.
54
Excerpts from Secretary of State Dean Acheson in 1946, The Presidents Civil
Rights Committee report To Secure These Rights from 1947, and Brown v. Board all detail
this burgeoning problem of racial discrimination. Dean Acheson stated, The existence of
discrimination against minority groups in this country has had an adverse effect upon our
relations with other countries. We are reminded over and over by some foreign newspapers
and spokesman, that our treatment of various minorities leaves much to be desired. See
Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 80,100.
55
Dudziak states, In a world divided by Cold War, it was frightening to see the
Soviet Union capitalize on Americas Achilles heel. Soviet propaganda exploited U.S.
racial problems, arguing that American professions of liberty and equality under
democracy were a sham. The U.S. embassy in Moscow took notice of this issue in 1946,
reporting that a number of articles a year may portend stronger emphasis on this theme as
(a) Soviet propaganda weapon. In August 1946, the U.S. embassy in Moscow sent the
State Department a translation of an editorial from the periodical Trud that was,
representative of the frequent Soviet press comment on the question of Negro
discrimination in the United States. Soviet reporting did not require extensive research.
141

systematically encompassing order of racial discrimination ran virtually uninterrupted in

the domestic sphere, the international community observed these contradictions of
democratic social policy and presented the United States with a peculiar problem.56 In
essence, Americas albatross in the acquisition of global influence was its own
certification of government sanctioned racism.57 Von Eschen contributes to this query,
stating that, despite the governments complacency on domestic race relations, even
Eisenhower was profoundly affected by the widely shared sense that race was Americas
Achilles heel internationally.58
Countering these proclamations became a primary concentration of the State
Department as the United States gained its most useful ally in the Cold War fight with the
American press. Felix Belair of the New York Times further simplified the charges
behind the Soviet argument, stating in his opening lead that, Americas secret weapon
right now is a blue note, explaining that right now its most effective ambassador is

The Trud article was based on information the Soviets had gathered from the, progressive
American press. It described lynchings and poor conditions for African Americans in the
South. Dudziak concludes, According to Trud, American periodicals had reported, the
increasing frequency of terroristic acts against Negroes, including the bestial mobbing of
four negroes by a band of 20 to 25 whites in July 1946 in Monroe, Georgia. Dudziak,
Cold War Civil Rights, 35-39.
56
Dudziak adds, Concern about the impact of race discrimination on foreign
relations permeated government-sponsored civil rights efforts in the late 1940s and early
1950s. the international implications of civil rights were continually noted in briefs in the
United States Supreme Court and in government reports. Dudziak, "Josephine Baker,
Racial Protest and the Cold War," 546.
57
Again, Dudziak posits that, on one hand, the United states claimed that
democracy was superior to Communism as a form of government, particularly in its
protection of individual rights and liberties; on the other hand, the nation practiced
pervasive race discrimination. Dudziak, "Josephine Baker, Racial Protest and the Cold
War," 544.
58
Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World, 5.
142

Louis (Satchmo) Armstrong.59 Belair concludes, stating a telling propaganda line is

the hopped-up tempo of (his) Dixieland band heard on the Voice of America in far off
Tangiers.60 Curiously, the only specific mention of race in Belairs article remained
verbally implicit as the picture of Armstrong served as Belairs only identifiable indicator
of race. Without its specific mention, Belairs account adds towards the discourse of
jazzs explicit connection to democratic ideals; as Satchmos smiling, black visage
signified the proposed willingness of African-American jazz artists to represent the
racially inclusive, democratic tenets of the nation.

Belair concludes, stating that

American jazz has now become a universal language. It knows no boundaries but
everybody knows where it comes from and where to look for more.61 This constructed
message concerning a perceived universality within jazz and particularly Belairs indirect
reference to the collective appeal of artists such as Armstrong is the primary assumption
on the part of the State Department as it followed its interests in the pursuit of influence
during the tumultuous climate of the Cold War. In essence, Armstrong potentially served
as the ultimate Cold War strategy.

As jazzs venerable statesman, Armstrongs

constructed image and his good time swing are positioned as the keys to successful
diplomacy further implying that jazz had become the most effective tactical tool on the
part of the American government to win the hearts and minds of the foreign youth.62

59

Belair, Jr., United States has Secret Sonic WeaponJazz, 12.

Belair, Jr., United States has Secret Sonic WeaponJazz, 12.
61
Belair, Jr., United States has Secret Sonic WeaponJazz, 12.
62
Belair states the previously unexplained question of Europeans and notes their
former frustrations concerning their lack of access to American jazz. Belair states that,
what many thoughtful Europeans (could not) understand is why the United States
Government with all the money it spends on so-called propaganda to promote democracy
143
60

Alongside the planned strategic deployment of Armstrong, the U.S. government

sponsored a variety of overseas cultural programming, ranging from radio shows, concerts
and plays that worked to present, American achievement rather than American failure.63
The urgency behind the multi-media efforts stemmed from the critical nature of the Sovietsponsored publications that indicted the U.S. government over its treatment of AfricanAmericans abroad and in the popular presses in India, Mexico, Greece, Haiti, and Great
Britain.64 Eager to secure a space on the foreign stage for black artists, Powell pushed for
mainstream and internationally known musicians such as Armstrong and Gillespie. As two
of jazzs most popular and recognizable faces they were a logical choice to initiate the
Goodwill Tours for the U.S. State Department. In a biography on the life of Dizzy
Gillespie, Alyn Shipton commented on the political implications behind choice of Gillespie
as a goodwill ambassador, stating that the idea was simple the image conveyed by a
multiracial big band under a black leader was substantially more positive than the reality in
many parts of the United States.65 Symbolically, Louis Armstrong was an ideal choice for
the role of a jazz ambassador.

Affectionately known as Pops for his paternalistic

influence over younger musicians and the history and development of jazz, Armstrong was
one of the genres most widely beloved figures due to his considerable talent and amiable
stage personality. Named one of the brightest lights of 1956, the Pittsburgh Courier
exalted Armstrongs abilities as an ambassador given the easy manner in which he won

does not use more of it to subsidize the continental travels of jazz bands and the best
exponents of the music. Belair, Jr., United States has Secret Sonic WeaponJazz, 12.
63
Gac, Jazz Strategy, 2-3.
64
Gac, Jazz Strategy, 2-3.
65
Shipton, Groovin' High, 280.
144

friends for Uncle Sam overseas.66 As an endurable symbol spanning from the Jazz Age of
the 1920s, his good-time music and frequently donned wide grin was instantly likeable and
strategically provided a suitable counter to the claims of racism and civil unrest put forth by
Communists abroad.

Ambassador Satch and the Influence of the Foreign Stage

Armstrongs political capital was realized in the 1950s by the American
government for an assortment of matters of both international and domestic importance.
Unofficially sanctioned by the government before the official start of the Goodwill Tours,
Armstrong had visited the Gold Coast of Africa in May 1956 as part of Edward R.
Murrows film, Satchmo the Great, greeting crowds of thousands and receiving an
outpouring of press and public enthusiasm from the foreign public.67 Performing for
President-elect Kwame Nkrumah, the tour situated the musician as a representative of the
broader American designs to sponsor black artists as propagandists of a pro-American
ideology that promoted a racialized solidarity between Africans and African-Americans.68
Observing Armstrongs visit, journalist Horace Cayton weighed in on the political
significance of the concerts citing the oft romanticized depiction of internationalism
amongst the worldwide black public, yet witnessing its actualized power as a developing
political consciousness amongst non-white oppressed peoples. Citing the deep symbolic
meaning resulting from the deep bonds of mutual sympathy between American and
66

Penny Von Eschen, Exploding Cold War Racial Ideology, in Cold War
Constructions: The Political Culture of United States Imperialism, 1945-1966, edited by
Christian Appy (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000), 126.
67
Scream We Want Satchmo as the Saga of Armstrong Hits Ghana, The
Chicago Defender, March 16, 1957, 8.
145

African Negroes, Cayton extends Satchmos influence towards a global diasporic context,
constructing connective bonds of cross-cultural heritage through the experience of jazz, and
consciously recognizing the foreign stage as a site of productive diasporic convergence.69
Cayton stated that, the hundreds of thousands of Africans were not only cheering Louis
Armstrong as an artist and musician, or as an American. They were cheering Louis
Armstrong as the representative of 15 million American Negroes.70

With strength in

numbers, Armstrongs acquisition of a foreign audience certified the political capital of

jazz from an international perspective.
Alongside this political currency, however, Armstrongs capital was discreetly
challenged by the FBI after the State Department received a letter in 1956 from Paris,
revealing that the Congress of Scholars of the Negro World, an organization sponsored by
the leftist Presence Africaine, issued invitations to black writers and artists, including
Louis Armstrong for a cultural review and summit of the black world.71 The classified
monitoring of Armstrong became a more publically engaged matter as the artist became
more outspoken on the current affairs of African-Americans.

By 1957, Armstrongs

political capital was drastically subverted as the artist issued forth a number of
controversial statements against the segregated social policies of the U.S. state and federal
government. On September 19, 1957, while performing a concert in Grand Folks, N.D.,
Armstrong announced his plans to back out of his ambassadorial duties because of the

68

Ghana Born! The Daily Defender, March 6, 1957, 4.

Von Eschen, Exploding Cold War Racial Ideology, 126-127.
70
Von Eschen, Exploding Cold War Racial Ideology, 127.
71
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Louis Armstrong, excerpted, Freedom of
Information Privacy Act http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/armstrong.htm (accessed 25
September 2007).
146
69

way they are treating my people in the south.72 Defiantly, Armstrong continued by stating
that the government can go to hell, calling President Eisenhower two-faced, with no
guts, for allowing Jim Crow and the rhetoric and practices of Arkansas Governor Orville
Faubus to run the country.73 Armstrongs condemnation of Eisenhower and Faubus
continued the following week, presenting an analysis that critiqued the handling of the
black students involved in the landmark desegregation case in Little Rock, Arkansas,
stating, my peoplethe Negroesare not looking for anythingwe just want a square
shake. But when I see on television and read about a crowd in Arkansas spitting and
cursing at a little colored girlI think I have a right to get soreand say something about
it.74 Armstrongs sharpest vitriol was saved for Faubus, declaring the segregationist an
uneducated plowboy, in response to the Governors continual protest over the admission
of black students in previously segregated schools in Little Rock Arkansas.75
Armstrongs critique came in the midst of a concerted effort by the AfricanAmerican press to address segregation and the role black artists should play to challenge
and counter their minstrelized surroundings. Singling out Armstrong due to his augmented
level of celebrity, George E. Pitts wrote an article in the Pittsburgh Courier, entitled,
Segregated Audiences Should be Abolished, promoting a code of social responsibility

72

Federal Bureau of Investigation, Louis Armstrong, excerpted, Freedom of

Information Privacy Act http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/armstrong.htm (accessed 25
September 2007).
73
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Louis Armstrong, excerpted, Freedom of
Information Privacy Act http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/armstrong.htm (accessed 25
September 2007).
74
Satch Blast Echoed by Top Performers: Nixes Tour, Ras Ike and Faubus
Chicago Defender, September 28, 1957.
75
Satchmo Tells Off Ike, Pittsburgh Courier 48, no. 39, September 28, 1957.
147

amongst artists, managers, and fans to reject in the total rejection of Jim Crow standards.76
Ingrid Monson also cited the pressures placed on black artists by the black press, stating
that the jazz press of the forties published many indignant articles and editorials about
continuing Jim Crow policies in the music business that illustrate the development of a prointegration discourse in the jazz world that mobilized the ideas of democracy, equality, and
protest on its behalf.77
Armstrongs outrage over racial injustice deviated from the traditionally
accommodating nature of his public image. And subsequent to his time on the foreign
stage, his views began to reflect a stronger commitment towards the public critique of
American race relations. Recognizing the agency of his worldwide celebrity from the
success of his Gold Coast tour, Armstrong cancelled his federally funded Goodwill Tour as
part of his newly shaped, internationally inspired public politics that brought into question
larger issues of citizenship and national identity for African-Americans. Armstrongs
critique continued, implying passionately that the people over there ask me whats wrong
with my country. What am I supposed to say?78 Adding to his public disillusionment and
feelings of racially subjugated political displacement, Armstrong added, its getting so bad
a colored man hasnt got any country.79 According to insiders at the Chicago Defender,
Governor Faubus reportedly responded to Armstrongs critique, stating that Ike proved his
lack of greatness when he allowed himself to become disturbed over criticism by Louis

76

George E. Pitts, Segregated Audiences Should Be Abolished! Pittsburgh

Courier 48, no. 9, March 2, 1957.
77
Monson, Freedom Sounds, 31.
78
Monson, Freedom Sounds, 3.
79
Von Eschen, Race Against Empire, 180.
148

Armstrong.80 Armstrongs influence, however, became widely noted as other black artists
began to voice their politicized concerns. In the Daily Defender, Lena Horne claimed I,
too would decline to appear in Russia if I were asked by the government because I would
fear embarrassing questions by the press, especially the Soviet press.81 Eartha Kitt also
declared that Armstrong is absolutely right, calling President Eisenhower a man without
a soul and stating that all the purpose of this whole country is being lost under racial
segregation.82 Furthermore, Jackie Robinson congratulated Armstrong for his critique,
commenting on Armstrongs influence and declaring that this is a feeling that is becoming
rampant among Negroes.83
By the 1950s, a generation of bop musicians had largely disregarded Armstrongs
innovative talent, commercial fame, and staggering musical legacy and had written off the
artist as a relic of the minstrel show. In his autobiography, Miles Davis situated Armstrong
with some of the images of black people that I would fight against all through my career,
including Buckwheat, Beulah, Rochester, and other archetypal figures re-imagined in the
pop culture minstrelsy of the 1950s.84 Davis summed up his perspective, claiming I loved
Satchmo, but I couldnt stand all that grinning he did. James Baldwins Sonnys Blues
also described the sentiment of this perspective with the title character referring to the style
and aesthetics of Armstrong as old-time, down home crap. Given this socially and
80
81

Al Monroe, So They Say, The Chicago Defender, September 6, 1958, 20.

Back Stachmos Blasts at Ike, Gov. Faubus, Daily Defender, September 24,

1957, 18.
82

Back Stachmos Blasts at Ike, Gov. Faubus, Daily Defender, September 24,

1957, 18.
83

Back Stachmos Blasts at Ike, Gov. Faubus, Daily Defender, September 24,

1957, 18.
84

Miles Davis, Miles the Autobiography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 96.
149

artistically irrelevant label, Armstrongs defiant critique displayed his willingness to step
outside of the minstrelized realm as African-Americans publically engaged in what would
become landmarks in civil rights history.

Langston Hughes questioned this cultural

dynamic that automatically situated the old-time Armstrong within the minstrel milieu of
the Cold War era, asking, why, Id like to know, must we be so quick to build up
ecclesiastical, untouchable heroes in the fad manner, and destroy everyone else who
doesnt fit at the moment?85 Hughes continues, stating I dont discount Louis Armstrong
because Miles Davis is here, and I cannot destroy Satchel Paige just because Bob Gibson is
here.86 From the enormous pressures brought on by the black press, the questions of the
world community, and his responsibility as an ambassador to faithfully represent the ideals
of American society, Armstrong issued forth a perspective that dropped the minstrel grin he
had maintained for decades, unmasking a counter-minstrel identity that propelled a
character independent of racist cultural assumptions and stereotype.
Alongside Armstrongs assessments, other artists began to publically voice an
analysis of American social policy, particularly when brought forth for examination under
the gaze of the international community. Dizzy Gillespie, another premier choice for the
Goodwill Tours, reflected the tension stating, I sortve like the idea of representing
America, but I wasnt going to apologize for the racist policies of AmericaI know what
theyve done to us and Im not going to make any excuses.87 Granting the artist an
85

Langston Hughes, Booker T. Pro and Con, The Chicago Defender, May 8,

1965, 8.

86

Langston Hughes, Booker T. Pro and Con, The Chicago Defender, May 8,

1965, 8.

87

Von Eschen, Race Against Empire, 170. Gillespies perspective, however,

eventually presented a more moderate take on the situation, offering a perspective that fell
in line with the presented mission of the State Department. Gillespie states, They (foreign
150

audience and opportunity to express their domestic discontent, the foreign stage provided a
space of exposure that brought into question the minstrelized restrictions that marginalized
the political, social, and cultural capital of African-Americans experienced within the
borders of the United States. Allowing for a non-minstrelized critique of race relations, the
international character constructed within jazz influenced the public, artistic and political
discourse of the artists, employing a direct and publically transnational critique of
American race-based social policy.
Bridging from this example, the musical works of artists such as Art Blakey and
Dizzy Gillespie reflected a broad yet affixed relationship to the Diasporasonically
operating alongside the broadly defined context of a Pan-Africanist philosophical discourse
that began to make its way to the black press during the initial stages of the Cold War.88
Initially traveling to Africa to pursue personal studies in the Islamic faith, Blakey
developed works that comprised of an internationalized influence, reconstructing the
musical and ideological makeup of jazz to incorporate distinctively Africanized elements
and Islamic philosophical tenets within its sonic and visual registry.89 In her study of

audiences) could see it wasnt as intense because we had white boys and I was the leader of
the band. That was strange to them because theyd heard about blacks being lynched and
burned, and here I come with half whites and blacks and a girl playing in the band. And
everybody seemed to be getting along fine. So I dont try to hide anything. I said,
yeahwe have our problems but were still working on it. Im the leader of this band,
and those white guys are working for me. Thats a helluva thing. Gac, Jazz Strategy,
12.
88
Monson declares, it is clear that members of the New York jazz community of
the 1940s demonstrated awareness of both the anticolonialist internationalism of Robeson
and DuBois, as well as the more cultural and spiritual pan-Africanism and pan-Asianism of
Islam. Monson, Art Blakeys African Diaspora, 335.
89
Reflecting on his interest in Islam, Blakey stated that, Islam brought the black
man what he was looking for, an escape like some found in drugs or drinking: a way of
living and thinking he could choose freely. This is the reason we adopted this new religion
151

Blakeys works, Ingrid Monson reflected on Blakeys post-bop musical sensibilities of the
1950s, as pieces such as Message from Kenya, Ritual, and Orgy in Rhythm, featured
elaborately African rhythmic variations within the compositions.90 Monson states, like
West African master drummers, who lead from the lowest pitched instrument, Blakey
introduces riff patterns on low toms that cut the texture established by the accompanying
percussionists in order to tell a story about the Ijaw people and invoke the notion of
African and ritual.91 Transitioning towards a more individualized artistic field, Blakeys
jazz exemplified the complete musical shift from dance oriented swing towards the smaller
combo dynamics of the bop sound, characterized primarily by faster tempos, chordal-based
harmonic structures (rather than the melodies of swing) and an ardent emphasis on
improvisation. As improvisation emblematizes the sound, this post-bop genre inevitably
took on a more personalized expressive feel. And as Blakeys musical conversion reflected
what Monson referred to as the African diasporic rhythmic conceptions emblematic of
post-bop, Blakey becomes a realization of the foreign stage, developing an
internationalized counter-minstrel narrative in his music that focused on reconstructing the
traditional minstrel narrative that exposed African culture from a subjugated and racist
perspective.92
in such numbers. It was for us, above all, a way of rebelling. Monson, Art Blakeys
African Diaspora, 337.
90
Monson states, Blakeys playing on these recordings shows a more than passing
awareness of African and Afro-Cuban means of rhythmic variation and musical
development, and their timing suggests Blakeys active knowledge of independence events
in Ghana. Although Monson cites Blakeys overall de-politicized of his own works,
Monson declares that his works are important in understanding how African diasporic
rhythmic conceptions contributed to the shaping of an expanded idea of the jazz rhythm
section. Monson, Art Blakeys African Diaspora, 337.
91
Monson, Art Blakeys African Diaspora, 339.
92
Monson, Art Blakeys African Diaspora, 337.
152

In addition, Dizzy Gillespie, who had developed an interest in Cuban music in the
late thirties, began to fully explore the cultural and sonic amalgamation of Afro-Cuban jazz
by the late 1940s. Also known as Cubop, a style employing the standard and 6/8
rhythmic patterns of Latin music with the harmonies and melodic timbre of the bop sound,
Gillespie collaborated with Cuban composer and percussionist Luciano Chano Pozo with
pieces such as Manteca which took on various musical incarnations as a short piece and
full length suite, eventually becoming the musical centerpiece for an anti-segregation chant,
Ill never go back to Georgia by 1957.93 Adding a politicized context to the piece,
Gillespies ventures within Afro-Cuban style illustrated the rising trend of internationalism
amongst black creative intellectuals who globally explored separate aesthetic threads to
sonically convey the expressions of bop in an alternate musical context. Commenting on
his concert work for members of the African Academy of Arts and Research with
American jazz and Cuban players, Gillespie stated that, Charlie Parker and I found the
connections between Afro-Cuban and African music and discovered the identity of our
music with theirs. Those concerts should definitely have been recorded, because we had a
ball discovering our identity.94

The Subversive Content of Jazz and the Cold War Climate

Armstrongs internationally inspired counter-minstrel critique offered a glimpse of
the developing discourse of the politically conscious global jazz icon of the Cold War era.
Armstrongs public critique, however, also solidified the just cause of the American
government to monitor the artistic and political expressions of a number of black artists in
93

Shipton, Groovin' High 291-292.

153

both the national and international public eye. As Erenberg stated, over and over during
the late 1940s and early 1950s, jazz musicians found their names splayed across the
headlines of the daily newspaper, the gossip column, the jazz press. Erenberg further
posited on the tension of the era, stating that, if swing represented the rebirth of dreams,
the post-war jazz world seemed stuck in a never-ending public nightmare.95 The activities
of Cab Calloway and Lena Horne were monitored by the government in large part due to
their personal associations with Communist or one-time Communist affiliated activists
such as Benjamin Davis, A. Phillip Randolph and Paul Robeson. In a 1946 document
entitled Foreign Inspired Agitation Among the American Negroes in the Chicago Field
Division, the F.B.I. noted Calloway and Hornes participation in CP sponsored
fundraisers, including a scheduled performance that celebrated Negro History Week.96
Calloway, noted for his sexually suggestive performances and direct references to drug use
with his 1933 hit, Reefer Man, was a prototypical target as the suspicion of illegal drugs,
miscegenation, and Communist activity gave a probable cause to the covert monitoring of
black artists.97 From the 1940s-1950s Calloways movements were tracked by the F.B.I.,
and although a 1955 memo declared no evidence of CP membership, activity, or

94

Monson, Art Blakeys African Diaspora,332.

Erenberg, Swingin the Dream, 241.
96
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Cab Calloway, excerpted, Freedom of
Information Privacy Act http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/cabcalloway.htm (accessed 25
September 2007).
97
In his analysis, Erenberg states that, in order to understand the public concern
with the subversive impact of modern jazz, we need to examine the unraveling of the swing
synthesis in bitterness and recrimination during the tension-filled post-war years.
Erenberg posits that governmental monitoring of jazz artists stemmed internally from the
economic and cultural weaknesses of the dance band industry, and the splintering of a
united front amongst critics, allowing for an attack on moral and political grounds.
However, Erenbergs thesis concentrates on how the music industry found itself caught up
154
95

sympathy, the letter justified its monitoring due to the musicians expression of interest
in racial equality and universal brotherhood.98
Originally recording as a jazz pianist, Nat King Cole pierced the walls of
superstardom in the 1940s and 1950s as a vocalist entering the households of millions of
Americans, black and white, through radio, record, and eventually television.

An

international superstar as well, Cole toured Europe, Latin America, and the Far East in the
early 1950s becoming arguably the most visible black icon of the period (Burns, p. 392).
Seen in part as a reaction to his celebrity as well as the lasting anger over the landmark
Brown v. Board decision, Cole was physically attacked by white supremacists that
overtook the stage at an April concert in Birmingham Alabama in 1956.99 Publically
brushing off the event, Cole was later criticized by black leaders such as Thurgood
Marshall for not vehemently, and publically denouncing his attack.100

Howard King

Cameron of the Daily Defender also stated that the attack easily could have been
avoided, claiming that when a man of Mr. Coles fame and fortune lends credence to the

in the anti-Communist attacks on subversive New Deal radicalism in American

entertainment. Erenberg, Swingin the Dream, 241-242.
98
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Cab Calloway, excerpted, Freedom of
Information Privacy Act http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/cabcalloway.htm (accessed 25
September 2007).
99

Federal Bureau of Investigation, Nat King Cole, excerpted, Freedom of

Information Privacy Act http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/natkingcole.htm (accessed 25
September 2007).
100
Cole was quoted as saying, Man, I love show businessbut I dont want to die
for it. Burns and Ward, Jazz; A History of Americas Music, 392. The attack also entered
the public debate. In a letter to the editor of the Daily Defender, a reader stated, Nat King
Cole is what I call a man. When he was attacked, he did not run to the NAACP. While
Rev. King is safe in Harlem, Nat Cole is singing in the SouthIn the South, you fear the
crackers and you outnumber them 6 to 1. The yellow streak leaves you when you come
North to New York state. Why Convict Cole? Daily Defender, May 2, 1956, 11.
155

unlawful philosophy of the segregationists.101 Coming off a period of heightened racial

tension in the South, including the recorded lynchings of eight black men in 1955, the
signing of the Southern Manifesto by senators and congressmen accusing the Supreme
Court of a clear abuse of judicial power in the legal promotion of civil rights, and the
reported enrollment of nearly 500,000 men and women to the White Citizens Councils of
America, the attack on Cole was symptomatic of the augmented displays of racial turmoil
circulating in the American South.102 The incident, however, led to Coles eventual refusal
to play in the Jim Crow south, influencing other black artists to exercise the agency of their
celebrity in the midst of racist and minstrelized opposition.
Due to his worldwide exposure, Coles professional and personal activities were
closely monitored by the F.B.I. as early as 1945, after it appeared that Cole was a member
of the Communist Party and the Communist Political Association during that period.
Although the file indicated that Cole may have dropped out of the CP movement since
that period, the F.B.I. continued to monitor Coles suspected CP affiliation due to his
membership to the Music Division of the Southern California Chapter of Arts, Sciences,
and Professions Councilan organization identified as a Communist front by the
Congressional Committee on Un-American Activities.103 In addition, a letter to F.B.I.
Director James Edgar Hoover from a classified author in Reseda, California implored
Hoover to elaborate on the F.B.I.s knowledge of the subject, stating, For many years now
my father has been telling me that Nat King Cole, is a Communist and that he is no good

101

Howard King Cameron, Cole Abetted Jim Crow, Daily Defender, May 7,

1956, 11.

102

Burns and Ward, Jazz; A History of Americas Music, 392.

156

and a disgrace to his country.104 Although the specific reasons for this accusation remain
unclear, the letter was received as his celebrity became even more politicized as he took the
stage on August 23, 1956 as a moderate voice in the developing storm of racial politics at
the Republican National Convention. A natural choice due to his augmented celebrity,
Cole became even more visible in the public eye as the first African-American to be
featured on his own radio and television program. The shows were quickly cancelled due
to a lack of sponsorship; however, his breaking of the unofficial color boundary in
television was significant for the overall cause of civil rights domestically and abroad,
bringing forth a visible, globally renowned black icon to the mainstream.
The careful scrutiny placed upon jazz artists with youthful and worldwide appeal
extended outside of the classified realm of the FBI. As the State Department embarked on
its missions of propaganda with the Goodwill Tours, the halls of government sparred
continuously over the strategy. Led by opposition from Representative John Rooney (NY)
and Senator Allen Ellender (LA), various government officials questioned the legitimacy of
these tours and condemned the American art as subversive as the very foreign governments
America was trying to reach with the tours.105

Von Eschen adds, for Rooney and

Ellender, to have bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie representing the nation portended the
end of the world as they knew it.106 Additionally, Barry Goldwater offered a stern critique
103

Federal Bureau of Investigation, Nat King Cole, excerpted, Freedom of

Information Privacy Act http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/natkingcole.htm (accessed 25
September 2007).
104
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Nat King Cole, excerpted, Freedom of
Information Privacy Act http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/natkingcole.htm (accessed 25
September 2007).
105
See the files from the House of Representatives 84th Congress, 2nd session, Part
2, 1956 found in Von Eschen, Satcmo Blows Up the World, 40-41.
106
Von Eschen, Race Against Empire, 165.
157

of the tours in a letter to the Assistant Secretary of State, Robert Hill, focusing on the
decision to send Gillespie in lieu of a white childrens musical troupe from his home state
of Tucson, Arizona. Goldwater penned:
This particular item has reference to the recent tour of a Negro band leader, Dizzy
Gillespie, which apparently involved an expenditure by the Federal Government of
the outrageous sum of $100,839Without any intention of criticizing you, I am
wondering just what there is about a program of this type which would more
properly fulfill the Government objectives in the area of cultural assistance to
foreign countries as opposed to the excellent presentation offered by a group of
young boys who have joined together for the purpose of contributing to the musical
life of our country, and who have indicated a willingness to share these
accomplishments with peoples abroad.107
These views had circulated in the halls of government for some time.108 In 1949, George
Dondero illustrated a widespread attack on Trotskyism, post-modern scholarship, socialist
subversion, and of course, modern and avant-garde art as his records warned of the sinister
conspiracy conceived in the black heart of Russia.109 In a letter from 1956, Dondero
penned:

107

032 Tucson Kids Band/4-1957; General Records of the Department of State,

Record Group 59; National Archives at College Park (College Park, MD).
108
Richard M. Fried points to 1938 as the pivotal year for Anti-Communist
sentiment in the U.S. government. Citing FDRs unsuccessful court-packing plan and the
down strikes of 1937, conservatives were angered and the Democratic ranks began to split
in Congress. Fried points out that that these events as well as the recession of 1937-1938
engaged a conservative coalition in congress and the unofficial union of Republicans and
some Southern Democrats to block liberal measures in the government. As the New Deal
came to a close the Special House Committee on Un-American Activities and other
programs began to study and monitor political and artistic expressions of radicalism and by
May 1938, Texas Congressman won the authority to investigate subversive and unAmerican propaganda. Fried later cites Dies as an influence on Senator McCarthy who
would pioneer in the methods of defamation and self-promotion, that would characterize
the McCarthy era. Richard M. Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 47.
109
Highlighted in Jane De Hart Mathews piece, and found directly in the
Congressional Records, 81st Congress, Session 1, 1949. However, the tours carried on as
planned partially by the support of Hubert H. Humphrey who attacked the cowardice of
158

Frankly, I do not understand some of the statements made by the President

regarding to Museum of Modern Art. Modern art is a term that is nauseating to me.
We are in complete accord in our thinking regarding this subject and its connection
with communism. No one is attempting to stifle self expression, but we are
attempting to protect and preserve legitimate art as we have always known it in the
United States.110
By the early 1950s, artists from across the jazz community, as diverse as Duke
Ellington, Frank Sinatra, and Charlie Parker were accused publically of having Communist
ties during the age of McCarthyism and fervent anti-Communist sentiment.111 With some
musicians, both black and white labeled as Fellow Travelers of the party and with many
testifying before the House of Un-American Activities, conservative groups targeted jazz
artists and the anointed cultural elite of Hollywood and New York as potential threats of
subversion or propaganda under the laws of the United States.112 In effect, there were
legitimate associative relations to be scrutinized between the CP and various jazz
musicians, particularly those who carried party cards over the decades in order to
strengthen their union ties, or in the case of Dizzy Gillespie who carried one because it
was directly associated with my work.113 Ideologically speaking, the ties publically
strengthened in the wake of WWII as musicians such as Charlie Parker and Gillespie
his governmental peers in censoring alternative dialogue concerning American foreign and
domestic policy. Mathews, "Art and Politics in Cold War America," 771.
110
Found in, Mathews, "Art and Politics in Cold War America, 775-78.
111
Erenberg, Swingin the Dream, 241.
112
Erenberg cites the numerous occasions where jazz artists testified before the
HUAC, claiming that the first inkling of trouble came in 1947 when Down Beat
announced that a congressional subcommittee planned to subpoena certain well known
musicians and singers for being Communists, citing the subsequent hearings of Sinatra,
Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman. Erenberg also cites the numerous arrests of jazz artists
during the time of the HUAC hearings, notably Billie Holidays arrest for heroin
possession in 1949. Commenting on the political fervor of the era in relation to the
governments crack-down on jazz, Holiday recalled, it was called The United States of
America versus Billie Holiday. And thats just the way it felt. Erenberg, Swingin the
Dream, 241-246.
159

became very much interested in the social order, leading to these long conversations
about it (Communism), and music.114
Transfixed by the myopic societal terms put into place through McCarthys
reincarnated Red Scare, the expressed nationalism of the mainstream public called into
question the agency, influence, and artistic content of jazz artists with both youth and world
wide appeal. As jazz gained its footing on the foreign stage while drawing out a specified
public discourse that vocally rallied against traditional minstrelized constraints and
government sanctioned racial injustice, factions of the government drew stronger ties
between jazz, Communism, and its potentially subversive impact on the public.115
Uncovering this subversive setting and context within the art and community of jazzfrom
allegations of illegal drug use, illicit sex, interracial interaction, and possible Communist
tiesthe American government formalized its opposition to the production of modern
black art through its various governmental controls. Within this conflation of artistic
expression and radical politics, the 1950s milieu of minstrelsy is identified through overtly
political terms as this reincarnation of the Red Scare under McCarthy and Hoover
113

Erenberg, Swingin the Dream, 226.

Erenberg, Swingin the Dream, 226.
115
Among the supporters, however, of the government sponsored trips were notable
politicians such as Rep. Frank Thompson, Jr. (D-NJ), Sen. Javits, Senators Hubert
Humphrey (D-Minn.), Rep. John Brademas (D-Ind.), and Senator Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.).
In a 1955 article penned by Frank Thompson entitled, Are the Communists Right in
Calling Us Cultural Barbarians? Thompson states: if we have no respect for our own best
cultural efforts, if we show no concern as a people and as a nation for our own
contemporary culture and our living artists, then the peoples of other countries are hardly to
blame if they ignore and are indifferent to the cultural contributions which we have to give
the world. We have only ourselves to blame, for they take their cue from our own Federal
Government. In this situation, the communist parties in various countries and the USSR
find it extremely easy to spread their lies that we are gum-chewing, insensitive,
materialistic barbarians. Frank Thompson, Are the Communists Right in Calling Us
Cultural Barbarians? Music Journal (July-August 1955) 5.
160
114

marginalizes the expressive qualities and overall production of black artists and those
connected to the communities of African-American artists. Taking notice of the public
indictments was the jazz press, as Down Beat Magazine quipped that, the real threat to
music today is not a red scareits a head scare.116 The submission to these societal
anxieties though the use of conspicuous controls such as governmental monitoring and
congressional debates uncovers the ethereal qualities of this re-configured milieu of
minstrelsy. Generating a discourse of fear over the subversive persuasion of foreignbased political ideology and artistic radicalism indicative of the European modernist
tradition, the conspicuous controls placed to monitor and inhibit jazzs influence were put
into motion as a result of the art forms emergent transnationalism and general calls
towards cultural plurality on a global scale.

116

Erenberg, Swingin the Dream, 245.

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Chapter 4: Miles Runs the Voodoo Down; The Transitional Cultural Politics of
Black Power Ideology, the Free Period, and the Post-Minstrel Jazz Identity.
The Modern Artist in the Post-Modern Scene
On July 2nd, 1964, Leonard Feather wrote a piece for Down Beat Magazine entitled,
Miles and the Fifties, and proclaimed jazzs top selling artist as a particularly suitable
symbol for the decade.1 Feather, a British born critic and part time pianist set out to
provide a historical context for the vanguard musical happenings of the 1960s by
specifically detailing the groundwork laid by Davis in the previous decade. From his
arrival in the bop scene of New York in 1945, to his collaborations with classical arranger
Gil Evans by the late 1950s, the article provided a concise overview of Daviss career
highlights, deliberately omitting details concerning his highly publicized vitriolic temper in
favor of a piece that solidified his musical achievements and historically set place in the
jazz scene.

Focusing on the artists innovations with improvisational technique and

composition, Feathers piece solidified Daviss legacy as the primary musical and stylistic
trendsetter of the more commercially mindful, sonically subdued, and mainstream
accessible format of 1950s jazz. Written in the midst of a 1960s scene dominated by the
cacophonous political and artistic strivings of black public intellectuals this chronological
designation of Davis secured his public omission from the cultural happenings of the postmodern scene.
As the jazz of the 1960s began to outwardly speak towards a perspective of Black
Power, the work and endeavors of Miles Davis is commonly investigated from a cursory

Leonard Feather, Miles and the Fifties, Down Beat Magazine 31, July 2, 1964,

45.
162

position outside of the emergent music of free jazz and the revolutionary sentiment
seemingly embedded within the music. The purpose of this chapter will unfold to reveal
the significance of Daviss musical and social influence in the 1960s as his public history,
cultural endeavors, and sonic innovations drafted a defining narrative of Black Power.
Clarifying Daviss influence is not an attempt to subordinate the impact of the free jazz as
younger musicians such as Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane emerged as the primary
leaders of the sonic and ideological movement. However, an analysis of the cultural work
of Davis in the late 1950s and 1960s establishes a standard for both the creative discourses
and cultural identity of Black Power and provides a functional basis for the sonic templates
explored by artists of the free period.
Though Davis navigated through a variety of musical genres over the course of his
career, Feathers article specifically focused on his general influence within cool jazz, a
branch stylistically defined by Davis but popularized by a number of white musicians who
ushered the distinct genre into the dorm rooms and New York City lofts of white
Americans in the 1950s.2

Defined within this hipster mold, Feathers focus was to

Cool Jazz is often described as the ability to play certain sounds in a less
rhythmically syncopated manner, in contrast to the hot sounds also popular (particularly
with whites) at the time. A musical movement dominantly associated with white
musicians, Davis straddled the lines between cool jazz and the post-bop jazz of black
Americans including hot jazz, influencing, critiquing, and dictating the aesthetics of the
various genres through his unique compositions and improvisational techniques. Ina
discussion of the racial context of the genres, Davis states: A lot of white musicians like
Stan Getz, Chet Baker, and Dave Brubeckwho had been influenced by my records
were recording all over the place. Now they were calling the kind of music they were
playing cool jazz. I guess it was supposed to be some kind of alternative to bebop, or
black music, or hot jazz, which in white peoples minds, meant black. But it was the
same old story, black shit was being ripped off all over again. Davis, Miles, 141.
163

locate Daviss innovations as distinctly modern,3 and artistically successive of the bop
eraa musical era that defined the small band, highly improvised sonic landscape of the
1940s.4 Although Davis was quick to mention the influences for his innovations, Feather
isolated Davis and proclaimed his artistry as the pivotal force in the establishment of a
modernized response to the popular forms of jazz from the late 1940s and early 1950s.5
Feather states:
The trumpeter through the years had developed a style based largely
on some aspects of his 1949-50 work. It involved a more frequent
employment of mutes, substitution for the fuller-sounding
flugelhorn for trumpet, a wispy and ethereal tone, sensitive use of
pauses, and a generally lyrical sound and underplayed approach.
The characteristic phrases of bebop, though never totally rejected,
were dispensed with in many of the solos. 6
Whereas Duke Ellingtons successive innovations were due to his harmonic
reinterpretations of rhythm, Feather categorized Daviss lyrical developments as a
revision of melodic forms, utilizing muted horns and modal concepts to produce a
3

This term is applied given the exchanges during the interview. In one instance,
Davis offers to Feather, Clark Terry was my main influence. I used to follow him
around. Feather responds, Terry was modern all along, wasnt he? In another, Feather
states, I guess these modern ideas were developing all over the place then. How did it
reach the point where the whole bop thing became a fad? How and where did you decide
to go from there? Feather, Miles and the Fifties, 46-47.
4
Specifically, through the assorted works of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud
Powell, Thelonious Monk, among other notables, including Davis.
5
Feather expands this concept in the article with an interview section, and Daviss
slight disagreement over approach foreshadows my argument over the gradual shift in
musical innovation:
Feather: There are a lot of people who were probably playing flatted fifths, and
other things Diz and Bird were identified with, even before Diz and Bird became famous.
Davis: Certain clichs and half-steps they used to playfrom the sixth to the flatted fifth.
Feather: Wouldnt you say musicians in general were looking for something new to do?
Davis: No, I think it just happened. Feather: You probably didnt play any style but your
own, did you? You didnt start out playing like Roy (Eldridge), did you? Davis: I started
out playing like anybody I could play like. Feather, Miles and the Fifties, 46.
164

sensitive, sedated, and underplayed melodic effect.7 Commenting on the pressing

need for modal scales in jazz composition, Davis summarized by 1958 that:
The music has gotten thick, guys give me tunes and theyre full of chords. I cant
play themI think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional
string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic
variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do
with them.8
Daviss technique presented jazzs most liberating innovation since Ellington,
signaling the end of an over-reliance on harmony, and presenting a workable approach
towards expanding the melodic virtuosity explored in 1940s bop with the addition of
modal scales. By exploring the modalities previously diagramed in his 1958 album
Milestones, Daviss sound by the mid to late 1950s was identified though a strict melodic
discipline, juxtaposing foundational blues characteristics, post-bop sensibilities, and
classically theorized notation, thus updating the field through a progressive approach to
scalular analysis, and providing the basis for a number of the sonic templates explored by
various free jazz musicians in the decades to come. Contemplating the complexities of
this theoretical approach to music, Davis told his friend, composer George Russell that
if Bird was alive, this would kill him.9 Through a reinstatement of previously arcane
6

Feather, Miles and the Fifties, 48.

Davis comments that his 1959 album, Kind of Blue came out of the modal thing I
started on Milestones. This time I added some other kind of sound I remembered from
being back in Arkansas, when we were walking home from church and they were playing
these bad gospels. So that kind of felling came back to me and I started remembering what
the music sounded like and felt like. That feeling is what I was trying to get close to. That
feeling had got in my creative blood, my imagination, and I had forgotten it was there.
Davis, Miles, 234.
8
Eric Nisenson, Open Sky: Sonny Rollins and his World of Improvisation (New
York: Da Capo Press, 2000), 142.
9
Fred Kaplan, Kind of Blue: Why the Best Selling Jazz Album is So Great,
http://www.slate.com/id/2225336 (accessed 17 August 2009).
7

165

scalular modes into modern jazz, Daviss innovations, combined with the use of the horn
mute worked to recalculate the sonic possibilities of jazz melody by essentially calming
the field in order to establish a new sonic paradigm for popular jazz in the 1950s to
follow. When you go this way, Davis further commented, you can go forever, thus
foreshadowing the musical approach of the jazz to come in the 1960s.10 The Feather
quote identifies this technical approach and the innovative techniques employed by Davis
to achieve this distinct sound. Ultimately, however, Feathers analysis worked to
historically categorize Davis through his musical explorations as the sensitive nature of
his music represented the safe, mainstream oriented, modernist musical directions of the
1950s.11
Thematically, the article also emphasized how the perceived aesthetics of Davis
and his music outlined the revitalized and commercially viable setting of the 1950s jazz
scene.12 As cool jazz became the underground music of choice amongst the young
intellectual elite of the nation, its popularity was due in part to its stylistic departures
from the frenetic musicality expressed in the sound and style of the 1940s bop era.

10

Fred Kaplan, Kind of Blue: Why the Best Selling Jazz Album is So Great,
http://www.slate.com/id/2225336 (accessed 17 August 2009).
11
In his autobiography, Davis consistently presents a personalized counternarrative to this sensitive musical approach, juxtaposing the aesthetic beauty of his art with
the rage he felt concerning race relations and the discernment of his music on the art of
white audiences. In 1955 Davis recalls an exchange with a affluent white festival organizer
who made the mistake of referring to Davis as, the boy who played so beautifully. When
asked his name, Davis sharply replied, fuck you, and I aint no fucking boy! My name is
Miles Davis, and youd better remember that if you ever want to talk to me. Davis, Miles,
191.
12
The Chicago Defender also categorized Davis as the most artistically and
commercially viable artist in jazz, citing his affiliations with Broadcast music and the
licensing of the public performance of his compositions as evidence of business savvy
and overall position in the forefront of serious contemporary composers and musicians
166

Following Daviss iconic leadfrom his firmly pressed Brooks Brothers suits and
consistent employment of the latest jazz-inflected lingoFeather highlights Davis as the
personal and artistic embodiment of symbolic cool, epitomizing though his sound and
individual style a personification of the genres moniker.13 And through this
representational analysis, critics and audiences alike began to discern his public visage as
the seminal figure in the campaign of modern, authentic African-American music within
the scene of the 1950s. Feather concludes his analysis, stating:
There will be no analysis here of the Miles Davis temperament. Too much has
already been written, at the expense of discussions of musical facts and factors.
Davis in short, represents restlessness and querulous doubt rather than riot and open
rebellion, just as the lyricism of his solos, whether against a multitextured Gil
Evans carpet of sounds or a quietly responsive rhythm section, is transmitted
through a muted ball of fire more often than by an open horn. Both as a human
being and as a musician, Miles in many ways was the symbol of the fifties, the
decade of our discontent.14
In a manner similar to Duke Ellington in the 1930s, Daviss consistent display of
modernized style and artistic innovation represented the changing course of music as well
as the changing face of the black public creative intellectual. With numerous references
to his light sound, his integrated bands, as well as the constant reiteration of the
clichs of bop, Feather places Daviss innovations and persona within a fixed,
chronologically specific context, instrumental to his era yet sonically static in the context
of jazz in 1964. Categorically, Davis remained the iconic symbol of the ultra-hip jazz
who use jazz music as an idiom. Credit Miles Davis with Shaping Modern Jazz Fad,
The Chicago Defender, March 21, 1959, 18.
13
Davis was routinely awarded prizes for his fashion sense, including the Fashion
Personality of the Monty of May, by Gentlemens Quarterly. Said GQ, consistently
declared the most popular trumpeter of our day, Miles Davis is perhaps also the best
dressed man in the jazz world. Miles Davis Named Fashion Personality, Chicago Daily
Defender, May 8, 1961, 16.
167

modernist in a decade of musical and social discontent. However, this distinction was
cast from a conspicuously post-modern era of artistic creativity and black political
discourse.
In the very same July 2, 1964 issue of Down Beat Magazine, Don Heckman wrote
an accompanying piece entitled, Ornette and the Sixties, that featured the young
saxophonist Ornette Coleman and his emergent brand of sonically progressive, postmodern music.15 Like Davis, Coleman was a musician schooled in a traditionally blues
14

Feather, Miles and the Fifties, 51.

Although this term is not applied specifically to Coleman in this article, it is
implied through the articles thesis which distinguishes Coleman from his musical
predecessors and from the constant references to modern jazz and a modern era in
which artists such as Davis modernized bebop in the previous decade and era of musical
exploration. Offering insight over the use of these themes of modernism and post
modernism, bell hooks cites the common categorization of these terms in the context of
African-American history, stating that, during the Sixties, black power movements were
influenced by perspectives that could be easily labeled modernist, yet adds that, despite
the fact that black power ideology reflected a modernist sensibility, these elements were
soon rendered irrelevant as militant protest was stifled by a powerful repressive
postmodern state. hookss focus is to claim a sense of African-American control in the
general discussion concerning postmodernism, specifying the common perception that, as
a discursive practice it is dominated primarily by the voices of white male intellectuals
and/or academic elites who speak to and about one another with coded familiarity.
Therefore in the quote above, the powerful repressive postmodern state, were the forces
of white domination that have consistently worked to silence the rebellious and radical
forces presented by African-Americans. Critically focusing on themes of otherness and
difference, hooks theoretical platform introduces postmodernism in a context of black
identity, and declares the pressing need for a new postmodernist definition and Radical
postmodernist practice, that should incorporate the voices of displaced, marginalized,
exploited, and oppressed black people. Within this redefined rubric of postmodernist
tradition, jazz is theorized as a projection of a crucial voice from the oppressed black
people, dealing with typical postmodern themes of criticism, valorization, and formal
rejections of prior themes and traditions. And fitting this conception of the black
postmodern Colemans anti-jazz marks a significant example as does Davis, who makes
his own case stating, well, Ive changed music five or six times, so I guess thats what
done. Quotes taken from bell hooks, Postmodern Blackness in Colonial Discourse and
Post-Colonial Theory: a Reader, by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1994) p. 422-423. Davis quote taken from Davis, Miles, p.
381.
168
15

technique juxtaposed with the foundational harmonic components of bop and swing music,
who eventually chartered out a distinct musical plane by the 1960s. Ensuring his place on
the New York scene on the eve of the 1960s with his presciently titled landmark albums
Something Else and The Shape of Jazz to Come, Coleman became widely heralded
throughout the decade as the progenitor of the emergent free jazz movement by a number
of critics and musicians alike. In the Heckman piece, Colemans artistry is detailed
systematicallyeschewing a debate over the notated interpretations of the music and
stylistic presentation of its musicians in favor of arguing that Colemans music was a
refraction of the previous decades mainstream oriented modernist musical approach.
Thus, the focus of Heckmans piece is to classify Coleman as a reinvention of jazz through
the jazz artistrelevant to the distinctly political times and serving as a sonic narrator for
the socially and artistically fluctuating era. Heckman states:
It is perhaps a truism to suggest that an artist reflects his society, but surely there
was a rare social and artistic unanimity in the feelings of anticipation and ferment
that characterized the opening days of the decade. When John F. Kennedy said,
Let us go out to all the world that the torch has been passed to a new generation,
the echoes rang with shattering authority in the world of jazz. Undoubtedly the
single most influential jazz figure in this respect was saxophonist Ornette
Coleman.16
The Heckman feature relies on similar devices to that of the Feather article,
identifying Coleman as a sonic avatar that symbolized his younger generations seemingly
restless focus on artistic and societal issues.

The Heckman article also illustrates the

artistry of Coleman as not only symptomatic to the radicalism of the times, but as a solution
to the lingering musical parameters, quandaries, and indeed clichs, of the prior era. The
two articles, however, present a sharp theoretical contrast between the two artists that

169

extends past the basic dissimilarities of subject and decade. Theoretically distinguishing
the two articles is the method in which societal issues are addressed in relation to the
artistic components of the music.

In Feathers account, Daviss pursuit of detailing

musical facts and factors opts to dispel the potential impact of riot and rebellion so
present in the Heckman piece, relegating Daviss artistry and legendary vitriolic
temperament as negligible, muted factors in an analysis of his cultural influence.17
Feathers account also leads the reader towards the overwhelming summation that the
discontent of the 1950s pertains exclusively to Daviss own restless search for musical
solutions rather than through the documented, consistent, and unabashedly critical analysis
of race, racism, and artistry in jazz and American culture expressed freely and publically by
Davis at the height of his popularity. And in addition to Daviss structural revisions that
worked to establish the melodic template for much of the hard bop and free jazz
expressions of the 1960s, his uncompromisingly critical and highly publicized evaluation
of music and American culture helped set the standard for the creative discourse and
physical identity of the Black Power era of the 1960s.
By the 1960s, Miles Davis, the seasoned veteran of the jazz scene, now in his early
forties, and by far the genres most commercially successful musician found himself
artistically and socially relegated to the role of an outsiderdeemed by an array of critics
and his younger musical peers as an extraneous and often negligible force in the scope of

16

60.

17

Don Heckman, Ornette and the Sixties, Down Beat Magazine 31, July 2, 1964,

Ashley Kahn argues against this position specifically: What was controversial
to white audiences carried positive significance in the black community. For a black man
of Miless stature to adopt an intransigent, uncompromising public posture was uncommon
in the 1950s. His quiet but determined sense of self in a society bristling with racial
170

the post-modern, politically charged jazz scene of the 1960s.18 Conversely, Heckmans
depiction of Coleman solidified his position as a relevant force, merging his vanguard
artistic sensibilities with the general ethos, rhetoric, and activism displayed in the
nationalist agenda of the Black Power Movement.

Heckman also comments on the

associate players of Colemans generation:

Jazzmen were concerned withfreedomand the increased militancy of the civil
rights movement was reflected by a growing aggressiveness in the music of many
of the younger Negro jazz players.19
Heckmans article posits Coleman and his generational musical peers as politicized
forces germane to the present civil rights agenda, sonically illustrating the concerns of
racial freedom and equality through an expression of militancy, power, and nationalistic
ideals in their music.20 And as a result of this classification, the artistry and public visage
of Miles Davis was cast in a staunchly apolitical manner as the articles categorize the
artist as an obsolete force in the context of the post-modern politically charged era of the
1960s.
The 1960s were defined transitionally in the cultural history of jazz as the
musically progressive free period presented the most publically blatant connection
between music and politics in the genres history. Analyzing the genre, Ted Gioia hints
tension offered fellow African-Americans an example. Ashley Kahn, Kind of Blue: The
Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece (New York: Da Capo Press, 2001), 59-60.
18
As the free and avant-garde jazz scene gained in popularity an assortment of
artists, including pianist Cecil Taylor, openly mocked Daviss artistic contributions, stating
bluntly, he (Davis) plays alright, for a millionaire. Davis, Miles, 251.
19
Heckman, Ornette and the Sixties, 59.
20
Detailing the trend of this perspective, Scott Saul explains the explorations of a
soul aesthetic in jazz as more militant, concluding that musics designs to explore
black pride and black identity and challenge the assumptions, powers, and minstrelized
constraints of a white dominated society. Scott Saul, Freedom Is, Freedom Aint: Jazz
and the Making of the Sixties (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 9.
171

again at this popular paradigm of established musical protest, assembling jazzs tenable
association with the ethos espoused through the radical politics of black literary and
activist figures exclusively in the 1960s. Gioias examination signals this symbiotic
engagement, stating:
It is impossible to comprehend the free jazz movement of these same years
without understanding how it fed on (the) powerful cultural shift in American
society. Its practitioners advocated much more than freedom from harmonic
structures or compositional formsalthough that too was an essential part of their
vision of jazz. Many of them saw their music as inherently political. They saw
that they could, indeed must, choose between participating in the existing
structuresin society, in the entertainment industry in the jazz worldor
rebelling against them. The aesthetic could no longer be isolated from these
cultural currents.21
The attention paid to the politicized markings of this cultural shift were due to the critical
perception of jazz in the 1950s, as Davis and other musicians employing post-bop
clichs were categorized by a marketable, socially palatable, and racially sanitized
sound that seemingly deflected the ever-present demand for social, political, and racial
change in the African-American community. Alongside the momentum of the free jazz
movement, Gioia, along with Feather and Heckman presciently identify this transitional
shift in jazz history, as the explosive musical identity of Coleman and others translated
the newly bold, vocalized, and assertive tactics of liberation expressed through the
publically revolutionary ethos of the Civil Rights era. These analyses come towards a
logical conclusion, presenting a marked shift that transitioned jazz into an overtly
politicized art form, converged within the radical oratory, literary, and sonic realm of the
1960s.

21

Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 338.
172

However, embedded in the language that describes this transition is a notion of

unexpected, abrupt change. From Heckmans citations of the new concerns of
jazzmen in the 1960s, in concert with Gioias analysis of jazz advocating a state of
rebellion, a crisis is described where jazz artists became compelled to represent the
radical politics and cultural currents indicative of their era. In other words, the
inevitable reaction of the post-modern free jazz artist was to signify a distinction against
the norms and boundaries presented in the artistic works of the previous decade. This
sharp transition, however, is more accurately defined as a gradual shift, instituted in the
artistic conscious in large part by the very artist deemed irrelevant in this post-modern
environmentMiles Davis. In his analysis of Black Power Studies, Peniel E. Joseph
makes a similar claim concerning the debates over the transitioning cultural politics of
the era. Placing the study of Black Power, within the broader context of American and
African American history at the local, national, and international level, Joseph concludes
that, Black Power is too often portrayed as a temporary eruption that existed outside the
confines of American history, further claiming that this summation, is as unfortunate as
it is ill considered.22 Arguing against the commonplace assertions of the movements
spontaneous and temporary outbreak, Joseph provides a context for the transitional role
of Davis in the era of black power and free jazz. As the iconic and sonic legatee of Duke
Ellington, Davis remains the primary conduit for the transformations explored in 1960s
jazz. Evidenced by his unwavering commitment to progressive music and his adoption of
an empowered racialized identity, Daviss work guided his own attempts to destroy the
22

Peniel E. Joseph, Historians and the Black Power Movement, OAH Magazine
of History, Vol. 22 (July 2008): 8-9.
173

minstrelized boundaries presented to him in the artistic and social climate of post-war
America.
Indeed, an historical account of Miles Davis contradicts the dominant discursive
assertions made in these primary and secondary analyses. Along with his numerous sonic
innovations that continued to be utilized throughout the 1960s, Davis served as the most
publically viable embodiment of the post-minstrel, nationalistic identity inherent of the
era of Black Power ideology. This is not to suggest that Davis was the sole proprietor of
this representation, as an array of artists contributed to the numerous public displays of
this politicized, creative identity. However, this assertion does recognize his prevalent
influence, setting the stage for a number of his generational peers and former sidemen to
validly contribute to the display of nationalist ideals within this burgeoning, post WW2
jazz identity.
Essentially, Davis served as a key representation of these ideals, remaining
outside the field of free jazz, yet integrally linked to the musical characterizations of
Black Power sentiments championed in the scene. This chapter, therefore, locates
Daviss work as the emergent example of this new jazz identity, charting how Davis
existed as a physical, intellectual, and creative manifestation of this identity through his
relevant vanguard artistry, outspoken personal style and nature, and persistently public
critique of hegemonic social controls within the music industry and American
mainstream culture. In citing Daviss cultural and artistic importance in the 1960s, the
music of the post-modern period is clarified as well the various nationalist-based traits
that comprise of the post-minstrel identity of the era. This chapter will also chart those
effected by this influence and will identify the gradual shift in jazz that formalized its
174

association to the post-minstrel, black power ideologies of the 1960s. Alongside a

number of his generational post-bop peers, Davis served as an efficient witness to the
jazz scene, as well as African-American social politics, and mainstream public culture.
From this vantage point, Davis and his peers presented an uncompromising stance against
racism and the minstrelized identities that dictated the scope, depth, and range of AfricanAmerican cultural production. And from this position, Davis forged the most public
example of musical and cultural influence within the genre, contributing to the more
overtly political identities of various musicians of the era yet maintaining an artistic and
social persona that sonically and culturally projected the aesthetic, masculine agency of
black power.
As mentioned, this chapter situates Davis as the most notable legatee of Ellington,
whereas in spite of their mutual eschewing of ostensible politics, their cultural output
retained a distinct societal resonance that projected a discernable politicized narrative
from both their artistic endeavors and meditations on art and culture. The focus of this
dissertation follows this discourseanalyzing the politicized framework in which jazz
and its artists are inexorably linked to promote an argument that jazz and the music,
performance, and discourse surrounding it is an inherent and unflinchingly political
discursive practice amongst African-Americans, creating a discernable intellectual sphere
for creative intellectuals to project definitive public displays of radicalism against their
minstrelized surroundings. The initial pages of this chapter brings these concepts into
focus as a line of demarcation was inevitably drawn by the dominant scholarship on jazz
to reason how fluctuations in the music, in chronological correspondence with the era,
represented the new political directions and changing social politics of blacks in the
175

1960s. This chapter, however, adjusts this common notion, suggesting instead that the
overtly political expressions within jazz during the civil rights period was the result of its
own storied influence, detailing the gradual shift from Marxism to Black Nationalism,
bop to free and a counter-minstrel identity to a post-minstrel jazz identity.
Finally, this chapter will situate how jazz entered and engaged in this publically
politicized era, deconstructing its minstrelized boundaries and Marxist associations
towards an art form that often reflected the broader tenants of a racially empowered,
nationalist based agenda. In doing so, this chapter will argue that the artists producing
and effected by the various strands of the emergent free jazz and post-bop movements
represented the summation of the central dictum of jazz, established in 1935 by Duke
Ellingtonto consistently revise its sonic format for the purpose of maintaining a
relevant social, cultural, and political functionality. Thus, this chapter posits that the jazz
of the 1960s reflected this socially revisionist effort, creating a politicized narrative
within the art that refracts the dominant discourse that omits the influence of Davis and
others from the so-called modern period. Indeed, the point of definition in this revision
remains Davis; however, close attention will also be paid to his broad influence, as his
sonic influence chartered a tenable course for black public creative intellectuals in the
1960s. In describing these complex associations, this chapter will introduce the transition
from the post-Harlem creative intellectual to the post-minstrel creative black thinker that
emerged in the period to combat the pervasive racist logic and discourse of minstrelsy

176

utilizing various creative, musically centered outlets to provide a functional discourse to

counter the politics of racism.23

Gradual Shifts in Black Politics and the Culture of Minstrelsy

The gradual shift towards a more overtly politicized music gained momentum
alongside the increasingly public efforts of militant factions within the Civil Rights
Movement. The conspicuously political stamp placed upon jazz came in spite of the public
re-evaluation of Marxist-associated thought and Communist activity amongst black public
intellectuals in the 1950s and 1960s. By the mid 1950s, the Communist party was left for
dead after the debilitating effects of McCarthyism and decades of party infighting amongst
the ranks.24 The nationalist aspirations of black public intellectuals, publically present
since the early days of Garvey, further weakened the partys communal influence as the
growing mistrust of a color-blind party and a color-blind revolution, strengthened the
nationalist-based Black Power ideology that re-asserted its social agenda as a result of the
power vacuum produced from the pressures of the McCarthy era.25 Ideologically, the
rhetorical influence of Marxism and the activism of Communist politics dissipated amongst
African-American intellectuals, bringing into question the temerity of the partys
unfulfilled declarations of Self-Determination, the Negro Nation, and the Negro

23

See Chapter one, footnote number four for a description of Lotts analysis of
minstrelsys racist logic. See Lott, , Love and Theft, 36.
24
Hutchinson states, the Communist Party was now an outcast in America, left
alone to feed on its own isolation with enemies too powerful to strike out at. Hutchinson,
Blacks and Reds, 215.
25
Hutchinson, Blacks and Reds, 215.
177

Question.26 Through alienating tactics that shunned black leaders outside of the party and
adhering only to civil rights struggles which were led by those who agreed with us on
foreign policy, the nationalist, race-based political aspirations of African-Americans found
a new radical voice outside of the party and within the wide net cast by the Civil Rights
Movement.27
In the wake of the numerous social atrocities experienced during the struggle for
Civil Rights in the 1950s and 1960s, the Communist Partywhich had championed its
historic connection to African-Americans through its mutual struggles in Scottsboro, its
support in anti-lynching reform, and the decisive claim of being the party of the Negro
people,lost its footing amongst African-Americans due to its inability to engage with
the emergent brand of radical, racialized politics resulting from the Cold War period.28
26

During the age of Jim Crow and Cold War sponsored societal controls, moderate
African-Americans publicized their progress in the cause of equality outside of the political
rubric of Communism, and in spite of the violent, segregated racial climate of the 1950s.
With the highly publicized, landmark victories ranging from Brown v. Board in 1954, the
Alabama bus boycotts of 1956, and the widespread acts of civil disobedience in face of
segregation, the channel of democracy became an increasingly viable option for radical,
progressive racial change in America. Alongside the victories, however, came violent
backlash to these democratic reforms. The opposition to African-American progress was
an attempt to protect the prosperity and social dominance in the segregated nation. The
vocalized, political adamancy of segregationists clearly signified the fervent nationalism
that protected the hegemonic social controls of white prosperity, power, and influence.
However, it was also this branch of obtained nationalism that assisted in the creation of
alternative, non-conformist, and radically intellectual black progressive protest in the postWW2 era.
27
Hutchinson, Blacks and Reds, 232.
28
From the moderate integrationist practices of the NAACP, to the youth-driven
empowerment strategies of SNCC, to the overt militancy of the Nation of Islam and the
Black Panthers, the focus of black unity and domestic racial politics obscured the message
and influence of Communists, as the alternative political sphere offered through
Communist affiliation and Marxist centered thought began to disappear in the advent of a
Black Nationalist ideological agenda. Along similar lines, James Smethurst argues: Some
intellectuals who had left or been expelled from the CPUSAlike Harold Cruse, were
veterans of the cultural wing of the Communist Left had become more or less hostile to the
178

Amongst black intellectuals still tied to the Communist Party, in party fighting continued as
longstanding black Communist Cyril Briggs issued massive critiques against the partys
attack of Black Nationalism and its accusation of ideologically feed(ing) the white
chauvinism of the bourgeois, capitalist masses of 1960s American culture. Incidentally,
former black Communist and Marxist-associated intellectuals played a significant role in
the construction of a Black Nationalist ideology.29 Briggss critique of the bourgeoisie
Negros of the NAACP situated the group as token integrationists, thus accrediting the
growing proclamations espoused through Black Nationalism, with its advocacy of black
self-assertionevoking the fear and hatred of the white ruling class.30 Presciently, Briggs
observed, the veritable mushrooming of Negro nationalist groups, but was unable to
bridge the classist ideologies and foreign agenda of Communism with the publically
paramount domestic concerns of race and social agency, indicative of Black Nationalism.31
The break from Communism signified the growing ideological crisis that permeated
the discursive field of black public intellectuals in the 1960s. Defined by the pressing
urgency of immediate societal empowerment, this crisis unfolded to the public from the
diverse and often conflicting ideological strategies engaged in the pursuit of black freedom.
Old Leftthough in many cases, such as Cruses, this hostility was not entirely public until
the Black Power Movement had clearly begun to emerge. James Smethurst, The Rise of
Black Arts, in Left of the Color Line: Race, Radicalism, and Twentieth-Century Literature
of the United States, edited by Bill V. Mullen and James Smethurst (Chapel Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 265.
29
Hutchinson, Blacks and Reds, 237.
30
Hutchinson, Blacks and Reds, 238. Maurice Issermans chapter Toward a New
Left, details the transition from strict Marxist politics towards a broad, progressive Left,
particularly among the nations youth involved in the anti-war movement and the civil
rights movement. See Maurice Isserman, If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old Left
and the Birth of the New Left (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987),
171-220.
31
Hutchinson, Blacks and Reds, 237.
179

An influence on the architects of Black Power, Harold Cruses critical 1968 analysis The
Crisis of the Negro Intellectual provided the seminal voice against Communist involvement
in African-American communities.

In a restructured era of black intellectual public

discourse, slowly divorcing from the enforced marginalities presented through

McCarthyism, yet still in consideration of Marxist-inspired thought, Cruses work served as
the intellectual antithesis to Black ideological strategies ingrained in Marxism, placing an
argument against Communist and Socialist activity, specifically in broad relations with
African-American societal, cultural, artistic, and identity politics. Marking claims of
corruption, specifically in its designation of a racialized platform to propel its political
agenda, Cruse was among a number of former notable Communist black intellectuals
(Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison included) who became enormously critical of the
allegedly seductive intellectual hold and ideological monopoly presented through the
rhetoric and practice of Marxism. Cruse proclaims the native American social dynamic,
of African-Americans, and positions Marxism as a foreign misinterpretation of the
American Negros social role, further declaring a reorganization of capitalism through
black nationalistic channels as an advantageous maneuver for African-Americans.32 Cruse
surmises, it is on this score that the American Marxists have, for over 40 years, misled,
disoriented, and retarded Negro intellectuals.33 Cruses critique on Communism cites
precedence from the historical failures in African-American communities since before
the Depression, but also clearly denotes the urgency amongst black public intellectuals of
the 1960s to finalize their renouncement of Marxist politics in order to ensure the path of

32
33

Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 262.

Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 262.
180

ethnic democratization of the American society to capitalize on the unique

developments of American Capitalism, now available to African-Americans.34
Cruses analysis represents a strand of thought eventually freed from the perceived
dogma of Marxismdiscursively outlining a path towards the inner dialectic of black
power ideology, Cruses analysis defines black power for the masses, representing the
dynamic sense of urgency and anger expressed by black radicals invested in black social
freedom.

Its delivery and discernment through conflicting, a-historic, and often

contradictory means, potentially represents the gamut of human emotion and allows for the
formation of an inner dialectic, forging an intellectual and expressionistic space free from
Marxist dogma and engaged with broader notions of social, cultural, political, and
aesthetic freedom afforded through nationalist-based Black Power ideology.

Cruses

analysis astutely points to the crisis as a pressing ideological concern amongst black
public intellectuals of the era. His political and cultural concerns though, give credence to
the gradual shifts in black politics as his former Communist association positions his
analysis as a bridge between pre and post generations, channeling his definitions of Black
Power ideology from a historically fluid perspective.
Echoing this sentiment, Black Arts Movement public intellectual Larry Neal
conceptualized the new space afforded by this transition, envisioning an idyllic sphere
outside of a specifically Marxist domain and structured by the very social and cultural
freedoms espoused through black power. Neal comments:
34

Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 188. Cruse adds: Pro-nationalist
Negro trends must reject Marxist-Communism, and vice versa, because the latter, being
theoretically opposed to independent black political power on internationalist premises,
must seek to control nationalist trends by directing them into integrationist channels. This
has been historically demonstrated. Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 263.
181

About 1962, many young blacks began to seek another direction, one that they
believed would more militantly set about achieving true freedom for black people.
These were primarily urban youth who had recognized the need for action, but
were decidedly alienated from the movement in the South. Some had been
involved with the radical white left where, in the process of reading Marx and
Lenin, they came to realize that despite the importance of these theoreticians to
late nineteenth and early twentieth century revolutionary thought, they were still
confronted with the necessity of developing their own theories of social change.
As a result of this observation, they found themselves squeezed between the pallid
liberalism of the integrationists and the pseudo-jargon of the white left.
Therefore, they had to turn inward on their most immediate historical experiences
in order to construct a meaningful concept of social change.35
Within this new space, Neal offers a platform of Black Power ideology and presents this
ideological format as a solution to the limitations of Marxist oriented thought amongst
black public intellectuals. What Neals analysis imagines, in line with the popularized
utopian sentiments of black power, was a space that incorporated the autonomous
political and economic strategies indicative of Black Nationalismbut ultimately, a
space that celebrated and projected the aesthetics of African-American cultural tradition.
Cruse identified this black radicalism as part of what the Negros allies feared most of
all, prophetically offering that the political and cultural failures of Marxist ideology
would awake this sleeping, dream-walking black giant.36 As the cultivated nationalist
ideologies of Black Power fed from the failures of Marxist thought, this proposed sphere
functioned as a safe space, fostering and projecting the gamut of anger and desperation
experienced by African-Americans in the minstrelized climate of American society.
Within these spaces, Neal also offers a platform free from the minstrelized,
Euro-Western sensibility, that, as Useni Eugene Perkins remarked, has enslaved,
oppressed, and niggerized black people since the merciless slave ships first began
35

Larry Neal, New Space: The Growth of Black Consciousness in the Sixties, in
Black Seventies, edited by Floyd B. Barbour, (Boston: Porter Sargent Pub., 1970), 15.
182

shanghaiing our ancestors from Africa to America.37 Indeed, crucial to the formation of
these spaces was the challenge and responsibility of converging radical, authentic black
art within the discursive template of Black Power ideology. Perkins remarks that, the
Black Arts Movement cannot afford to isolate itself from the Black Revolution, quoting
Neal that black radical art is the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power
concept.38 Cruses work also offers an assertive analysis of minstrelsys numerous
effects on African-American culture, angled primarily through a critique of the Marxist
centered politics and historic failures of the superficial Negro creative intelligentsia, to
resourcefully counter the cultural, political, and economic oppression experienced by
blacks in a racist American environment.39 Drawing upon jazz as a perfect symbol of
the Negro creative artists cultural denial, degradation, exclusion, exploitation and
acceptance of white paternalism, Cruse cites how the process of minstrelsy operated
systematically, presenting white control of cultural and creative power patterns of black
art under an overall minstrelized system, established to the supreme detriment of
blacks.40

36

Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 184.

Neal, New Space, 87. Perkins is a poet, playwright, public activist with the
Black Arts Movement.
38
Neal, New Space, 87.
39
Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 104. Cruse indictment also includes a
reference to the film Porgy and Bess and its popularity amongst African-Americans as an
example of working-class Negroes lin(ing) up at the box offices to see this colorful film
stereotype of their people. Cruse concludes that, this whole episode revealed some
glaring facts to substantiate my claim that the Negro creative intellectuals does not even
approach possession of a positive literary and cultural critiqueeither of his own art, or
that other art created for him by whites. (P. 102) Cruse eventually declares that Porgy is
surely the most contradictory cultural symbol ever created in the Western world. Cruse,
The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 103
40
Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 103-104.
183
37

Cruse establishes minstrelsy as a template for these cultural and political power
patterns and cites the failures of leadership amongst black public intellectuals from the
1920s to the mid sixties to expose this minstrelized paradigm and the various works of
white cultural critics such as Gilbert Seldes for their marginalizing racial assertions.41
Cruse cites these failures, stating that they (the black intelligentsia,) are not aware that
for critics like Seldes, the Negroes were the anti-intellectual, uninhibited, unsophisticated,
intuitive children of jazz music who functioned with aesthetic emotions rather than with
the disciplined mind of white jazzmen.42 Cruse concludes by summarizing the
complete limitations offered to black public intellectuals within the encompassing realm
of minstrelsy, charging that younger generations must first clear the way to cultural
revolution by a critical assault on the methods and ideology, presented by the mediators
of minstrelsy, from white cultural critics, ineffectual black leaders and Marxist-oriented
old guard Negro intellectual elites.43 Cruse states, Thus every Negro artist, writer,
dramatist, poet, composer, musician, et al, comes under the guillotine of this cultural
judgment. Cruse concludes, what this judgment really means is that the Negro is
artistically, creatively, and culturally inferior; and therefore, all the established social
power wielded by the white cultural elite will be used to keep the Negro creative artist in
his place.44 Evidenced from these statements, the works of Neal, Cruse, and Perkins
present the platform and new space of Black Power ideology as a solution to
41

Cruse draws mainly upon Seldes analysis of Amos n Andy, claiming that
Seldes, critiques of American art forms damned the Negro with faint praise, condemning
him forever to the back alleys of American culture. Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro
Intellectual, 97.
42
Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 104.
43
Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 99-102.
44
Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 105.
184

minstrelsy, creating, a functional esthetic that expresses the total black experience, and
serving as a total rejection of the supposed Marxist buttressing of a minstrelized
American culture.

Free Jazz and the Gradual Deconstruction of the Minstrel Milieu

By the late 1950s, Daviss sonic experiments with modal scales became a marker
of what avant garde saxophonist Anthony Braxton would refer to as restructuralism
within jazz, reflecting both the urgency towards employing melodic innovation and the
general dissatisfaction felt by jazz musicians with the artistic practice of bop.45 Although
characterized as an uninhibited style of music, known specifically for its frenetic
rhythmic pace and complex improvisations, the compositional emphasis of bop
(regardless of genre, be it bebop, hard bop, etc) still commonly relied on the ridged

45

Restructuralism as term is used here from the perspective of saxophonist and

composer Anthony Braxton whos restructuralist or radical modernist articulated, as
Robert Radano explains, the expressions that vigorously exerted an intellectual
vanguardism. This term operates as a reaction to current trends and displays of art without
regard to genre, emerging and re-emerging in order to restructure an artistic environment.
Ronald M. Radano, New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxtons Cultural Critique
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), 74.
Historically, many of
restructuralists came of age during the bebop movement of New York in the 1940s which
was built primarily upon the concepts of the Kansas City jazz movement by scaling down
the traditional orchestra into smaller units and instituting individual improvisation as the
primary method of musical composition. The movement was established by the various
environmental dynamics of the re-emerged New York scene. Ross Russell, Jazz Style in
Kansas City and the Southwest (New York: Da Capo Press, 1973), 196. And according to
Scott and Rutkoff, World War II had cleared the way for fundamental change in music
and race relations. Bebops determination to take jazz back from white swing bands and to
secure full credit and reward coincided with other African-American efforts to end
American apartheid. The music also signified the era of individual musical artistry and
the radicalized environment of New York proved to be conducive to the rapid, chromatic,
and highly improvised sounds of the modern jazz musicians. By the 1950s and 1960s,
Braxton applied this term principally toColeman, but also to Braxtons earlier
185

harmonic structures explored in Swing that relegated the soloist to both a chord-based
arrangement and the prearranged melodic lead or head as the starting points of
improvisation.46 Frustrated by this cumbersome harmonic structure, Daviss modal style
popularized the playing of songs without chord changes in the traditional sense,
employing scalular (thus, melodic) modes that issued forth a tonal field for
improvisation.47 In other words, the use of modes allowed for a strong tonal center to
each musical piece, granting musicians an ability to improvise in a predetermined key
without the usual structural resolution and harmonic boundaries found in the chromatic
harmonies of bop.
The music of Ornette Coleman relied on the compositional foundations provided
through modal techniques, developing a harmelodic approach to reorganize the jazz
field so densely structured in traditional chordal harmony. Colemans harmelodic music,
like the modal approach of Davis, generally worked with a stated key and tonal center,
but was characterized by an ability to musically function over different tonal centers at

favoritesPaul Desmondwho recast jazzinto a new racially confused dialogic. Scott

and Rutkoff, New York Modern, 260-261. .
46
The past radical innovations found in post WWII bebop jazz specifically
expressed the desire amongst black artists to combat minstrelsy by refuting the claims of
African-American creative inferiority, as well as the assertions that black artistic and
intellectual culture had simply imitated white expression. As Ronald Radano states, the
most creative, the most spiritually enlightened musicians, regardless of genre or idiom,
devised the most inventive (musical) phrasing. They were the true innovators or, once
again, the restructuralists. Radano, New Musical Figurations 18
47
Due in part to the individualized and persistently innovative musicality of the
genre, bebop itself was subject to a variety of adaptations. Eric Porter in his essay entitled,
Dizzy Atmosphere: The Challenge of Bebop, adds a societal context to the apparent
problems of bebop. Despite the social and creative freedoms that bebop promised, many
African-American musicians eventually concluded it had become symbolic of the creative
and social restrictions facing them. By the end of the 1940s bebop represented both
challenges to and the constraints of jazz as an art form and commodity. Eric Porter,
186

anytime during a piece. Eschewing a piano, guitar, or other traditional chord-based

instruments that laid down the harmony of a song, Colemans music was formatted over
the improvisations of the soloist, bassist, and drummer. With harmelodics, chords were
introduced by the musical tonic but not actually played, as improvisational melodies from
non-chordal instruments provided the total tonal and sonic structures of a piece.48 As
Colemans radical approach engaged the jazz scene, Bassist Ron Carter remarked on the
significance of Colemans emergence, applying a musical and societal perspective to his
arrival.
Whenever there has been a major change in jazz, theres been a major change in
everything else afterward. Its incredible how it happens. Freedom music to me
represents the younger musicians getting tired of the establishment. The
establishment to me is chord progressions and a thirty-two bar form.49 The student
radicals are like the freedom jazz players who want to bypass most of the present
standards for playing a tuneIn 1959, when Ornette Coleman hit New York, he
predicted the social changes musically.50
Colemans arrival and the advent of free jazz was widely heralded as the most significant
event in music since the emergence of bebop nearly two decades before. Jazz historian Bill
Cole commented on the importance of his arrival, but also of the divisive quality of his
emergent musical influence. Cole states:
There were, especially during the early part of the 1960s, two camps of jazz lovers
developing simultaneously. One camp was submerged in the hard bop of the
1950s. The other had just as much love for that tradition but was also vanguarding
the music represented by Ornette Coleman and his followers.51
Dizzy Atmosphere: The Challenge of Bebop, American Music 17, no. 4 (Winter, 1999):
438.
48
The tonic is the first note of a musical scale.
49
These are the central components of bebop and bop music.
50
Robert K. McMichael, We InsistFreedom Now!: Black Moral Authority,
Jazz, and the Changeable Shape of Whiteness, American Music 16, no. 4 (Winter, 1998):
397.
51
Bill Cole, John Coltrane (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2001), 7.
187

Colemans opposition consisted mainly of his seasoned peers who viewed his
music as the antithesis of bop, lacking proper structure, tonal musicality, and overall
form.52 Jon Hendricks was quick to point out his appreciation for Colemans character,
for whom I have the utmost respect, but was also vehement in his disdain for critics who
viewed Colemans artistry as the prophetic link to bebop progenitor Charlie Parker.
Hendricks declares that to call Ornette Coleman an extension of Bird (Parker), to me is
charlatanism of the rankest order.53 Others felt even more strongly about Colemans
music and did not share Hendrickss approval of Colemans overall intentions. David Ake
states:
Colemans music of this time quickly staked out the first serious battleground in
jazz since the bebop-versus-swing debates fifteen years earlier. Litweiler,
describing the reaction of bop progenitor Max Roach to a live performance of the
group at the Five Spot, writes that the drummer punched Ornette in the mouth,
and later showed up in front of Colemans apartment threatening further physical
violence.54
Colemans supporters however, were quite vocal in their praise of his vanguard work.
Russian critic, Valerie Mysovsky deemed that, Ornette Colemanis surely the most
prominent figure among the new jazz men.55 Other musicians, such as John Lewis, a
former sideman of Charlie Parker, voiced his approval of Coleman and stated that his work
was the only really new thing in jazz since the innovations in the mid forties.56

52

In 1961, music critic John Tynan amongst many others called the trend of free
jazz a demonstration of anti-jazz.
53
Leonard Feather, Blindfold Test, Down Beat Magazine, April 9, 1964.
54
David Ake, Re-Masculating Jazz: Ornette Coleman, "Lonely Woman," and the
New York Jazz Scene in the Late 1950s, American Music, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Spring, 1998):
26
55
D. Morgenstern and M. Williams, The October Revolution; Two Views of the
Avant Garde in Action, Down Beat Magazine, November 19, 1964, 15.
56
Ake, Re-Masculating Jazz, 26.
188

Colemans musical language ushered a new standard of playing and improvisation

for many musicians and his musical theories helped to restructure the more traditional
forms of chord and scale progressions. Colemans music was essentially a poly-hybrid, in
that it was rooted in the concepts of rhythm and blues but was ultimately transformed by a
personal eclecticismwhich instituted a multiphonic, polyrhythmic, and often atonal
approachreplacing the typical 12 and 32 bar, AABA musical progressions of bop with a
free method to improvisation and composition.57 Colemans theory of harmelodics
helped to create this new found musical language, and saw this complex style as the
apparent solution to the problems of music.58 Radano states:
Coleman rejected tonality, creating an order based on line and rhythm, an order that
seemed curiously consistent with the dominant musical elements of the AfricanAmerican heritage, elements free jazz musicians would fully exploit.59
This exploitation led to the immediate racialization of his artistry. McMichael
states that, jazz audiences couldnt hearColemanwithout thinking about racial
subjectivity.60 Dean Robinson extends this notion by stating that black artists of the
period, such as Coleman, attempted to capture a very elusive entity: black culture.61
Colemans response to these associations is varied. Valerie Wilmer offers that when he
first came to New York, Ornette Coleman was adopted by some of the leading artistic
57

An interesting footnote is that Jackson Pollacks abstract painting, White Light,

graces the cover of Colemans Free Jazz album.
58
To further clarify, harmelodic theory was the musical writing of unison passages
that do not transpose with different instruments. Basically, it is a musical occurrence where
various instruments play in the same pitch but in different keys and each instrument in an
ensemble plays both the rhythm and melody, thus blurring the traditional lines and opening
up the space for personal improvisation.
59
Radano, New Musical Figurations, 74.
60
McMichael, We InsistFreedom Now! 403.
61
Dean Robinson, Black Nationalism in American Politics and Thought
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 86.
189

figures as one of their own, a situation he neither invited nor encouraged, yet one which he
did not reject.62 Coleman himself viewed his artistic identity as a perception and one
which was not fully determined by his own devices.
I really havent had the facilities and opportunities to do what I do as good as I can
do itI still have that black jazz image, Im an entertainer whos supposed to
exist on a certain level, and thats it.63
The artistry of John Coltrane during the early era of free jazz was also associated
with the aesthetics of the militant protest tradition by musicians and critics alike.64
Coltranes racialization notably took shape with pieces such as Alabama which instantly
gained notoriety due to the politicized implications linked to the composition.
Horrifying televised scenes of white racist violence against black demonstrators
resonated with jazz performances likeJohn Coltranes November 1963 live
recording of Alabama. LeRoi Joness (now Amiri Baraka) liner notes associated
Alabama with the bombings two months earlier of the Sixteenth Street Baptist
Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four young girls, and Bill Coles
study of Coltrane claims that the melody of Alabama echoes the rhythmic
inflections of a speech given by Dr. Martin Luther King.65
A particularly telling account of Coltranes racialization came in the form of a 1964
review of Coltranes Live at Birdland album from Bill Mathieu.
If white critics can stand in any relation at all to Negro jazz of this caliber (it is not
obvious that we can) then that relation must be humble, but it also may be
malcontent. The dignity that propels Coltranes music is dignity beyond the

62

Valerie Wilmer, As Serious As Your Life: The Story of the New Jazz (New York:
Allison & Busby, 1977), 73.
63
Wilmer, As Serious As Your Life, 71.
64
Frank Kofsky was instrumental in applying the politics of militancy to Coltrane
and free jazz in general. In an interview with Coltrane, he asked, Some musicians have
said that theres a relationship between some of Malcolms ideas and the music, especially
the new music. Do you think theres anything in that? Frank Kofsky, John Coltrane: An
Interview (1970), in The John Coltrane Companion edited by Carl Woideck (New York:
Schirmer Books, 1998), 132
65
McMichael, We InsistFreedom Now! 403.
190

immediate grasp of the average man, especially the average white man, whose idea
of dignity is born in relative peace.66
With Mathieu channeling Carl Van Vechtens language of racial ideology, Mathieu
inadvertently positions Coltrane in a minstrelized setting, racially defining the scope and
relevancy of his music. Valerie Wilmer also frames this perspective within the context of
Coleman and his inadvertent associations with minstrelsy.
This kind of situation is all too familiar to an artist of Colemans stature. No longer
forced to serve white society directly, he must nonetheless continue in the role of
minstrel, making himself available to all kinds of humiliation in the process, in
order to be allowed to work. In Colemans case, his gentle manner and humble
nature endear him to the entrepreneurs, who see the mantle of militancy hanging
uneasily on his shoulders.67
As the musicians of the 1960s gave a revolutionary sonic voice to militant and
radical forms of African-American popular consciousness the applications of minstrelsy
remained difficult to shake. Sonny Rollins commented that, later on, John Coltrane and I
were called the angry tenors. We were not angry, but we had strong views about American
society.68 Although Davis routinely placed the notion of race into his discussions, his
unflinchingly objective musical perspective allowed him to become a relevant tool in the
struggles against the lasting concepts of minstrelsy. In many ways, Miles Davis was the
toughest critic of the free jazz genre. Harmonically opposed to many of the styles, Davis
routinely questioned not only the stylistic differences but further challenged the notion of
the free jazz restructuralist.
I liked Ornette and Don (Cherry) as people, and I thought Ornette was playing more
than Don was. But I didnt see or hear anything in their playing that was all that
66

Bill Mathieu, Coltrane Live at Birdland, Down Beat Magazine, April 9, 1964.
Wilmer, As Serious As Your Life, 73.
68
Nisenson, Open Sky, 28.
191
67

revolutionary, and I said so. Trane was therewatching and listening, but he
didnt say nothing like I did. A whole lot of the younger players and critics jumped
down my throat after I put down Ornette, called me old fashioned and shit. But I
didnt like what they were playing.69
Davis extended his criticisms to other members of the free jazz movement notably in a
Down Beat Magazine Blindfold Test, conducted by Leonard Feather. Upon hearing
pianist Cecil Taylor, Davis states verbatim, Take it off!..In the first place, I hear some
Charlie Parker clichs(that) dont even fit. Is this what the critics are digging? Them
critics better stop having coffee. If there aint nothing to listen to, they might as well admit
it.70 Davis also criticized the works of Eric Dolphy, who was considered by many to be
one of the premier saxophonists of his generation. Davis states, thats got to be Eric
Dolphynobody else sounds that bad! I think hes ridiculous.71
Davis was also quick to mention the minstrelized subjugation of the new art form
and pointed out how the integrationist subculture played an equal part in the propaganda
and racialization of the new music.
It just looked to me like he (Cherry) was playing a lot of notes and looking real
serious, and people went for that because people will go for anything they dont
understand if its got enough hype. They want to be hip, want always to be in on
the new thing so they dont look unhip. White people are especially like that,
particularly when a black person is doing something they dont understand. They
dont want to have to admit that a black person they dont understand. They dont
want to have to admit that a black person could be doing something that they
dont know about. Or that he could be maybe a little moreor a whole lot
moreintelligent than them. They cant stand to admit that kind of shit to
themselves, so they run around talking about how great it is until the next new
thing comes alongThats what I thought was happening when Ornette hit
town.72
69

Davis, Miles, 250-251.

Down Beat Magazine, June 1964, 31.
71
Down Beat Magazine, June 1964, 31.
72
Davis, Miles, 251. This particular sentiment of Davis is expressed by Baldwin
in a 1962 Esquire article, also found in McMichael: Well, the Negro is not happy in his
place, and white people are not happy in their place, eithertwo very intimately related
192
70

Davis extends this concept even further with his assessment of white critics and their role
of popularizing free jazz during the early to mid sixties.
I think some of the pushing of the free thing among a lot of the white music critics
was intentional, because a lot of them thought that people like me were just getting
too popular and too powerful in the music industry. They had to find a way to clip
my wings. They loved the melodic, lyrical thing we were doing in Kind of Blue
(1959), but the popularity of it and the influence we got from doing it scared
them.73
The views of Davis were partially centered on his refusal to cater to mainstream
codes. In a variety of ways, Davis symbolized the essence of the black militant in the early
to mid sixties and communicated their doctrine through his scorn for racist police action,
his public exclamations concerning racism, and his own temperament which fell upon any
victim, black or white. Daviss stance however, was focused was on his personal refusal to
avoid (uncle) tomming and importantly, too avoid the clich and fraudulence of being
hip for the sake of the audience.
White people have certain things they expect from Negro musiciansjust like
theyve got labels for the whole Negro race. It goes clear back to the slavery
days. That was when Uncle Tomming got started because white people
demanded it. Every little black child grew up seeing that getting along with white
people meant grinning and acting like clowns. It helped white people to feel easy
about what they had done and were doing, to Negroes, and thats carried right on
over to now. You bring it down to musicians, they want you to not only play your
instrument, but to entertain them, too, with grinning and dancingI aint saying I
think all Negroes are the salt of the earth. Its plenty of Negroes I cant stand too.

factsbut the unhappiness of white people seems never to rattle and resound more fiercely
than in their pleasure mills. The world that mainly frequents white nightclubs seems
afflicted with a strange uncertainty as to whether or nor they are really having funthey
keep peeking at each other in order to find out. Ones aware, in an eerie way, that there are
barriers which must not be crossed, and that by these invisible barriers everyone is
mesmerized. McMichael, We InsistFreedom Now! 376.
73
Davis, Miles, 271-272
193

Especially those that act like they think white people want them to. They bug me
worse than Uncle Toms.74
The Post-Minstrel Identity and Miles Davis
As the dominant model of American expressive art, minstrelsy has provided the
conceptual materials for the continual social construction of race, and an actualized
method for measuring and determining cultural identity.75 This assertion is based upon
the historical draw of cultural fascination that has cyclically created and maintained the
subjugated categories of blackness, and indeed, whiteness for generations to follow.
Minstrelsy therefore gains its power as an historical arbiter of cultural and racial
identitythus broadly evidencing this dissertations claims of the perpetual minstrelized
environment that black public intellectuals continually confronted in their cultural works
and endeavors.
However, the lasting effects of minstrelsy and its racist logic form an
oppositional hybridity that on one hand maintains these relegated categories of race and

74

Alex Haley, Miles Davis: a Candid Conversation with the Jazz World's Premier
Iconoclast, Playboy, September 1962, 3.
75
This statement is potentially problematic, however it is supported by scholars
such as Lott who testifies that blackface was the most visible part of a process by which
black practices were appropriated and regulated. Lott also offers a number of examples of
how the minstrel show circulated throughout American culture but more importantly states
how both blacks and whites became forever linked to the pervasive system of minstrelsy.
Black performance itself, first of all, was precisely performative, a cultural invention,
not some precious essence installed in black bodies; and for better or worse it was often a
product of self-commodification, a way of getting along in a constricted world. Black
people, that is to say, not only exercised a certain amount of control over such practices but
perforce sometimes developed them in tandem with white spectators. Moreover, practices
taken as black were occasionally interracial creations whose commodification on white
stages attested only to whites greater access to public distribution (and profit). At the
same time, of course, there is no question that the white commodification of black bodies
structured all of this activity, or that cultural forms of the black dispossessed in the United
194

culture while conversely structuring the basis for the counter-minstrel narratives and
racially progressive politics expressed in the works and endeavors of black public
intellectuals.76 In correspondence with the DuBoisian method of doubleconsciousness, this duality of African-American identity is composed of both the
unreconciled strivings presented through American racism and the efforts to confront
racism through cultural work.77 Existing as the determining factor of the AfricanAmerican public identity, minstrelsys dual, converse logic functions oppositionally,
and by the 1960s as the struggle for black civil rights increased, so did the advent of a
more militant, anti-minstrel black public identity.
By the early to mid 1960s, the musical art of African-Americans was broadly
cited as the art of confrontation by William Scott and Peter Rutkoff, reflecting the
lingering presence of minstrelsys oppositional hybridity and the racially progressive yet
tumultuous times. Scott and Rutkoff suggest that the radical artistry found in New York
thrived on New Yorks disorder and confusion, further claiming that, in the 1960s,
New Yorks artists reclaimed the radicalism of modern art and rekindled the flame of
New York Modern.78 Cultural historian Robert McMichael furthers this notion by
associating the new artistry presented in free jazz with the changes in the countrys
moral balance, and signifies that the modern (contemporary) innovations of jazz directly
States have been appropriated and circulated as stand-ins for a supposedly national folk
tradition. Lott, Love and Theft, 39-40.
76
Lott, Love and Theft, 36.
77
The DuBois theory of double-consciousnessIt is a peculiar sensation, this
double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at ones self through the eyes of others,
of measuring one soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.
One ever feels his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two
unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body. W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls
of Black Folk (New York: Bantam Books, 1989), 3-4.
195

accorded with the various events of the Civil Rights Movement. McMichael strongly
suggests the inevitability of the rising avant-garde, radical, and nationalist jazz artist
due in part to the rising integrationist subcultures which would allow for black
creativity to grow. McMichael, however, also hints that amidst this socially progressive
subculture, black art and jazz specifically, was still primarily funded, critiqued and
dictated through white patronage and thus subject to the parameters of minstrelsy.79
The integrationist subcultures of jazz clubs and other social spaces housed various
kinds of cross-racial interaction between audience members and musicians,
creating potentially important sites of resistance to racism. But because race
relations in mainstream society had remained relatively unchanged since
Reconstruction, and because these jazz subcultures of integration did not exist as
a vacuum, sealed off from any influence by larger social forces, much of the
cross-racial interaction in the jazz scenes still reverberated with long-standing
elements of racism, especially primitivism.80
As McMichael states, the tenets of minstrelsy created a need, yet ironically fostered the
progressive scene and remained a relevant factor for black artists to contend against (or
concede to) in order to maintain their artistry.81 Issuing jazz in these radical terms,
McMichaels analysis, as well as Scott and Rutkoffs present black artistry as the product

78

Scott and Rutkoff, New York Modern, 366-367.

The key word in this statement is of course, primarily, as black musicians such
as Bill Dixon formed groups such as the United Nations Jazz Society in order to
incorporate a black voice in the education, organization, and marketing of jazz music.
Dixon also helped to create the Jazz Composers Guild in 1964, and various groups such as
the Black Artists Group the Detroit Creative Musicians Association and the Chicago based
Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians came about throughout the latter
half of the 1960s. Jazz music, however, was still primarily funded and therefore
controlled by whites as record companies, producers, and club owners were predominately
Caucasian. Gioia, The History of Jazz, 354.
80
McMichael, We InsistFreedom Now! 378.
81
Although it is implied that minstrelsy remained problematic for the jazz artist in
the early to mid 1960s, it should be taken into consideration the conflicted intimacy
(Lott) that many black artists and political figures experienced while dealing with racially
patronizing white audiences. This assumption gives a new prospective into the
196
79

of minstrelsy, yet ultimately as a progressive component for the continuous struggle for
black freedom.
This progressive component was a direct opponent of the minstrelized
environment and is symbolized through the jazz aesthetic, as dictated by William J.
Harris. Harris illustrates the jazz aesthetic through his interpretation of the poetics of
Amiri Baraka and compares Barakas poetic artistry to the music of John Coltrane,
casting the two artists as part of the same Black Nationalist and artistic ideal. Harris
states that, Barakas art and aesthetic grow out of one, the one that is intensely ethnic
and hostile to the white world.82 The liberating sonic lexis exalted in jazz from the
1930s to the 1950s possessed a broad political resonance as its musicians produced art in
collective response to the cultural, social, expressionist oppression routinely presented by
the dominant conformist, racially segregated ideologies of mainstream American society.
During this period, this jazz identity functioned as a responsive challenge yet remained
enclosed within the encompassing realm of minstrelsy, consisting of an array of artists
following Ellingtons creative influence who offered libratory artistic innovations to
encompassing power of minstrelsy and its direct effect on the African-American artistic
and political community.
82
Harris continues with an assertion that, for Baraka, Coltrane epitomizes the jazz
aesthetic process: he is the destroyer of Western forms. Harris further states:
From jazz (Baraka) learned how to reject, invert, and transform what the white
avant-garde had taught himHe is consciously transforming white forms into black ones,
consciously choosing a method that grows out of a black tradition, because for him, finally,
avant-garde forms were not enough. Despite a strong identification with the bohemian
poets, he had to face the realities of being black in America, and in America simply adding
the adjective black transforms a conceptConsequently, Baraka felt obliged to turn the
ideas and the forms of avant-garde art into black art. The jazz aesthetic of Baraka and
Coltrane as expressed by William Harris is therefore an aggressive response to minstrelsy
and serves as a rejection as well as a mutilation, destruction, and invasion, of
dominant white mainstream culture. William J. Harris, The Poetry and Poetics of Amiri
Baraka: The Jazz Aesthetic (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986), 14.
197

effectively challenge the minstrelized surroundings of the prevailing scene. This scene is
defined broadly as the whole of white, segregated American music industry and
mainstream cultureprincipled by a democratic and capitalist ideology that enforced
racialized social controls through the oppressive tactics and expressive means of
minstrelsy. And in response to the minstrelized climate of this scene, the displays of
expressionism supplied through jazz provided an alternative functional discourse for the
social, cultural, and ultimately political leanings of African-American creative
intellectuals.
Entering the 1960s, the identity of jazz also corresponded effectively with the
tactics of liberation expressed by revolutionaries of the era. However, this identity made
its distinction by eventually piercing and functioning outside the structural domain and
systematic efforts of minstrelsy. As Ellingtons 1935 piece emerged as a point of
definition in response to his minstrelized surroundings, the jazz identity by the 1960s
served as an expansion of this defining marker, gradually emerging outside of the
oppressive qualities of this encompassing realm, in large part due to the diligent sonic,
social, and ultimately political endeavors and standards established by creative
intellectuals from its prior periods. From hard-bop to free jazz, the music of this period
materialized from the minstrel shows disseminated sphere and became supported
structurally by the vibrant, revolutionary coterminous efforts of black public intellectuals
active in the fields of literature and the Civil Rights Movement.
In its original state the jazz identity was defined by its reactionary, responsive
measures signifying a counter-minstrel sensibility in its production of culture. By the
1960s and due to the efforts and innovations of the past decades, the jazz identity
198

gradually shifted towards a post-minstrel sensibilityan identity that represented an

individual emergence from minstrelsys shadow, recognizing its hegemonic legacy, but
ultimately representing a self-defined ideology, post-modern in its scope and
categorically removed from the determining functions of minstrelsy. In recent
scholarship, this terminology is most often categorized from a chronological perspective,
describing the descendant subjects still engaged within the racialized boundaries and
stereotyped identities of the minstrel show.83 Additionally, the post-minstrel identity is
also depicted to categorize modern racialized strategies of white agency, and how that
power is reflected, coded, and enacted after the overt racist displays of the minstrel show
have disintegrated from the public eye.84 For the purpose of this study, the post-minstrel
sensibility enacted in black creative public intellectuals by the 1960s existed as a realized
ideal of Black Power ideology, reversing dominant cultural constructions of a
minstrelized culture through a specific articulation racial politics unconcerned with the
protocols, restraints, and boundaries of minstrelsy.
By 1962 in an article entitled the, Jazz World Figures Split over Jim Crow, the
Chicago Defender evidenced a discourse that engaged in the terms of this post-minstrel
identity, declaring its existence by locating separate factions within the jazz scene in a

83

Thomas Riis work historicizes minstrelsy, referring to post-minstrel figures like

Aunt Jemima. See Thomas L. Riis, Concert Singers, Prima Donnas, and Entertainers:
The Changing Status of Black Women Vocalists in Nineteenth-Century America, edited
by Michael Saffle, James R Heintze, Music And Culture In America, 1861-1918 (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998), 73.
84
David Roedigers examination of the imperialist gaze, correlates with this postminstrel perspective, as the gaze expresses both racism and privilege, reflecting and
reinforcing how classes within the imperialist powers see both the colonized and each
other. See, David Roedigger, Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002), 48.
199

manner that echoed the context of the Feather and Heckman pieces. Pointing directly to
the legacy of the minstrel show with its defining terminology, the article states:
Crow JimCrow CrowJim Jim. And like whats happening? If all this sounds
confusing, it is. Jazz itself is confusing, and the current state of affairs isnt helping
one bit. The first two words in the first sentence is the name used to describe a
form of reverse segregation. Many prominent Negro jazz musicians feel that racial
prejudice exists in a field that belongs to the Negro. Therefore, whites are
intruders. Crow Crow was created to identify Negro musicians who refuse to
subscribe to Crow Jim, and its opposite is Jim Jim.85
With the article specifying such out-standing artists as Charlie Mingus, Max Roach, Mary
Lou Williams, Art Blakey, and Horace Silver as symbols of a new breed of angry
musicians, the article points to the sound of nationalism in their works as sonic and
aesthetic repudiations of the outlining racial prejudices that permeated the jazz field. The
agency of these select musicians also cited in the article also outlines how black jazz artists
began to invert the standard minstrelized hierarchy in their refusal to hire white musicians.
The article cites powerful impresario George Wein, who ceded, its murder today for
white players, concluding that, Negro clubs just wont play them.86 The article also
locates Louis Armstrong outside of this paradigm in order to clarify the identity of the postminstrel faction, explaining that, to most of the cats, a great star such as Louis Armstrong
is considered an Uncle Tom, citing his refusal to hop on the freedom train, as laid out by
these select musicians.87
Dissenting from this faction, Miles Davis vowed to hire his players on talent
only, situating himself in a political middle ground according to the terms laid out in the

10.

85

Jazz World Figures Split over Jim Crow, Chicago Defender, October 20, 1962,

86

Jazz World Figures Split over Jim Crow, Chicago Defender, October 20, 1962,

10.
200

piece.88 The neutrality attributed to Daviss perspective mirrors the context of the original
Feather piece that omits the record of his publically discordant relationship with his white
audience in order to emphasize the innovative quality of his music. Davis, however, was
cited numerous times in various media outlets giving voice to the angry, post-minstrel
sensibility that further clarified the terms of this discursive identity. Commenting on this
label, Davis presented his thoughts by the late 1950s:
Around this time, peoplewhite peoplestarted saying that I was always angry,
that I was racist, or some silly shit like that. Now, Ive been racist toward
nobody, but that dont mean Im going to take shit from a person just because hes
white. I didnt grin or shuffle and didnt walk around with my finger up my ass
begging for no handout thinking I was inferior to whites. I was living in America,
too, and I was going to try and get everything that was coming to me.89
Aggressively condemning both the popular theatrics that relegated black performers to
stereotypical representations and the submissive nature of African-American artists who
acquiesced to these designs, Daviss early-developed, post-minstrel sensibility sets the true
terms of this identity and publically foreshadows the identity politics espoused by black
creative intellectuals in the era of Black Power.90
Refusing to be marginalized on the basis of race, Daviss post-minstrel identity
draws from his pursuit of musical innovation but is clarified through his ability to reverse
hegemonic categories of race traditionally rooted within the jazz scene. In a 1959 Chicago

10.
10.

87

Jazz World Figures Split over Jim Crow, Chicago Defender, October 20, 1962,

88

Jazz World Figures Split over Jim Crow, Chicago Defender, October 20, 1962,

89

Davis, Miles, 240.

Picking up on the political atmosphere of jazz in the early 1960s the Chicago
Daily Defender wrote, jazz was spiked with politics at Carnegie Hall, N.Y., last Friday
night spotlighting a Davis Concert that was a fund-raising affair for the African
Research Foundation and the dissidents included a number of extreme Negro nationalists
201
90

Defender article, Davis made international news, by creating, quite a stir in London
when the critics and the British public expressed a coolness to his coolness to them.91
Commenting on his post-minstrel identity, Davis attributes his behavior to the lessons
learned from his past experiences:
I felt that I didnt have to take their stupid bullshit any longer. This feeling was
deep down in my mind and wasnt something that I knew I was feeling or thinking
about. I had a lot of anger in me about things that had happened to me in the last
four years; I didnt trust hardly anyone, so I think that had something to do with my
attitude. When we would go places to play, I was just cold to the motherfuckers;
pay me and Ill play. I wasnt about to kiss anybodys ass and do that grinning shit
for nobody.92
Labeled as cold and just plain rude, by his refusal to acknowledge the audience, Davis
reverses the traditional visualizations of black artists and artistry customary of a
minstrelized setting in an effort to repel and dismantle it as a standard of entertainment
protocols for black artists.93 With Davis quite often referred to as a villain, Daviss
public demeanor was a visible solution to minstrelsys grip on black culture and black
cultural practices, issuing a public visage that rejected the assumptions of racialized
deference on the part of the black artist.94
who paraded outside the hall. Max Roach, Miles Davis Bias Feud, Chicago Daily
Defender (Daily Edition), May 29, 1961, 17.
91
Dolores Calvin, Miles Davis Makes International News, Chicago Daily
Defender, November 30, 1960, 22.
92
Davis, Miles, 180.
93
Dolores Calvin, Miles Davis Makes International News, Chicago Daily
Defender, November 30, 1960, 22. Additional sources: Whats with Moody Miles
Davis, Chicago Daily Defender (Daily Edition), August 16, 1962, 17.
94
Bob Hunter, Trumpeter Miles, Man of Many Moods, Chicago Daily Defender
(Daily Edition), January 28, 1963, 16. In 1959, Davis gained a villainous reputation and
public notoriety due to his arrest for felonious assault and disorderly conduct after
allegedly grappling with a policeman outside the Birdland Jazz Emporium on Broadway.
Miles Jailed for Disturbance, Chicago Daily Defender (Daily Edition), August 27, 1959,
3. Further coverage found in Miles Davis Labors to Regain Right to Work Credits in
New York, Chicago Daily Defender, September 2, 1959, 18. Davis reflected on the arrest
202

Importantly, Daviss post-minstrel identity is still deeply concerned with matters of

race. His identity stems from his racialized classification in a segregated society, however,
his post-minstrel sensibilities materialize in his successful attempts to redefine the margins
of black artistry, theatricality, and behavior within a realm that absolutely negates the
defining posers of minstrelsy. Additionally, these sensibilities are constructed as part of the
discursive practice of Black Power. While publically critical of white racism, Daviss postminstrel, Black Power infused identity emerges in his inversion of the white authoritative
power designed to marginalize his artistry.
Presenting his own self-portrait in the current issue of Esquire magazine, Mr.
Davis describes his mainspring as, White folks. White people are responsible for
my success. They make it so hard for you that a long time ago I got mad and made
up my mind to be two, three times as good at whatever I decided to do. If I was
white, I probably wouldnt have had the drive.95
Recalling his powerful influence, Daviss drummer Tony Williams evidences the political
components central to public character of Davis. Associating Davis with the most notable
black leaders of the Post WW2 era, Williams reflections give insight on the role black
creative public intellectuals played in the public discernment of Black Power and the
origins of the post-minstrel identity in artists such as Miles Davis:
In the fifties, Miles and Max Roach were speaking like men, acting like men. I saw
them and said, thats the life I want to live. Miles showed you how to carry
yourself. He inspired people to think beyond what they thought they were capable
as an opportunity to speak out against white racism. Davis states, I look up on the wall
and see they were advertising voyages for officers to take to Germany, like a tour. And this
is about fourteen years after the war. And theyre going there to learn police shittheyll
probably teach them how to be meaner and shit, do to niggers over here what the Nazis did
to the Jews over there. I couldnt believe that shit in there and theyre supposed to be
protecting us. I aint done nothing but help a woman friend of mine get a cab and she
happened to be white and the white boy who was the policeman didnt like seeing a nigger
doing that. Davis, Miles, 239.
95
Miles Davis Thanks Whites for Success, Chicago Defender, February 17,
1962, 1.
203

of. The time Im talking about, from 1957 on, this is before the Civil Rights
Movement of the sixties, before anyone knew about King or Muhammad Ali or
Malcolm X. Miles was the person people of my generation looked to for those
things. So when the sixties came, I didnt need anybody to tell me, we shall
overcome. I was already living it.96
Conclusion: The Post-Minstrel Identity in the Post-Modern Scene
By 1970, Miles Davis had finally released the album Jack Johnson, a work of
modal based, free-form compositions and melodic riffs previously charted in his live
work from the mid to late 1960s. The album was a soundtrack to the documentary film
about the late boxers life. In the liner notes, Davis, an amateur boxer who idolized
fighters such as Johnson and middleweight legend Sugar Ray Robinson stated simply that
Johnson portrayed freedom, continuing that he was a fast living man, he liked
womenlots of them and most of them whiteHis flamboyance was more than obvious.
And no doubt Mighty Whitey felt no black man should have all this.97 The admiration
that Davis had for Johnsons grandiosity was not based solely on his considerable boxing
prowess. Jack Johnson was a symbol of not only excellence in his craft, but of an
essential, unrestricted manhood and masculine agency that challenged dominant culture
by explicitly refuting racist social, professional, and indeed, legal controls. Most
importantly, Johnson was a pragmatic rejection of a previously unquestionable AfricanAmerican cultural realitya seemingly unlynchable African-American, or as perceived,

96

See Greg Tate, Preface to a One-Hundred-and-Eighty Volume Patricide Note:

Yet Another Few Thousand Words on the Death of Miles Davis and the Problem of the
Black Male Genius, in Black Popular Culture, a project by Michele Wallace and edited by
Gina Dent (Seattle: Bay Press, 1992).
97

Miles Davis, A Tribute to Jack Johnson, CD, Columbia, 1970.

204

an unlynchable niggerand a man who on the public surface, controlled his often
dangerous, uncertain, and indeed, minstrelized environment.
This representative ideological template of self-defined, counter-hegemonic,
masculine empowerment was crucial to the public identity of Davis. Appropriating this
image, Daviss post-minstrel identity was a gendered identity that physically enabled Davis
to challenge the dominant racist cultural assumptions defined within the order of
minstrelsy.98

The temperament that Leonard Feather casually avoided consisted of

Daviss public displays of pugilistic and uncompromising discourse, portrayed on stage,

through the media, and in his documented personal life. Daviss unlynchable identity was
drawn from the affluence of his upper-middle class roots, his refusal to cater to minstrel
stereotypes and his disdain for African-American performance identities mired with
minstrelized characterizations. Davis explains:
As much as I love Dizzy and loved Louis Satchmo Armstrong, I always hated
the way they used to laugh and grin for the audiences. I know why they did itto
make money and because they were entertainers as well as trumpet players. They
had families to feed. Plus they both liked acting the clown; its just the way
Dizzy and Satch were. I dont have nothing against them doing it if they want to.
But I didnt like it and didnt have to like it. I come from a different social and
class background than both of them, and Im from the Midwest, while both of
them are from the South. So we look at white people a little differently.99
Drawing a clear line of demarcation, Davis establishes his post-minstrel sensibilities
based upon segregated and non-segregated geographical roots, and acknowledges the
differences presented in his minstrel milieu and those faced by Armstrong and Gillespie.
Daviss milieu of minstrelsy, structured by the rhetoric and emerging influence of Black
98

Herman Grays analysis cites black jazz men such as Davis who not only
challenged whiteness but exiled it to the (cultural) margins of blacknessi.e., in their
hands blackness was a powerful symbol of the masculine. Herman Gray, Black
Masculinity and Visual Culture, Callaloo 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 401.
205

Power allows for this concession, granting Davis unlynchable agency, as opposed to the
oppressive, Jim Crow sanctioned realities experienced by Armstrong and Gillespie, and
in spite of the potential of critics and audiences observing him, as an arrogant little
nigger.100
Daviss conception of freedom is based on his self-defined alternative to observe,
critique, and interact with whites a little differently, reaping the benefits of class
perceptions and status to de-marginalize minstrelsys attempt to define his identity.
Davis proclaims his post-minstrel identity through his admission of the pervasive
qualities of minstrelized tropes in the formation of black performance characterization.
Yet the agency displayed through Daviss decision to actively dismiss minstrelsys hold
on his identity situates the artist as an early, qualified example of this perspective. Davis
continues:
Also I was younger than them and didnt have to go through the shit they had to
go through to get accepted in the music industry. They had already opened up a
whole lot of doors for people like me to go through, and I felt that I could be
about just playing my hornthe only thing I wanted to do. I didnt look at
myself as an entertainer like they both did. I wasnt going to do it just so that
some non-playing, racist, white motherfucker could write some nice things about
me. Naw, I wasnt going to sell out my principles for them. I wanted to be
accepted as a good musician and that didnt call for no grinning, but just being
able to play the horn good. And thats what I did then and now. Critics can take
that or leave it.101
Locating his identity as a display against racism and artistic marginalization Davis
effectively asserted his post-minstrel identity through the dichotomy of his public
99

Davis, Miles, 83.

Davis, Miles, 83. This milieu and identity is shared by other members of his bop
generation. Davis states, Max (Roach) and (Thelonious) Monk felt like that, and J. J. and
Bud Powell too. So thats what brought us close together, this attitude about ourselves and
our music. We were getting reputations at this time. Davis, Miles, 83.
101
Davis, Miles, 83.
206
100

character. Defiantly self-defined, Daviss unlynchable character is a physical as well as a

rhetorical presence. On one hand, embracing the taboos of black masculinity as central
constructions of his character and articulating a cool masculinity, based upon misogyny,
drug use, the threat of violence, and nihilism and priding his own public construction as
both a criminal hustler and potentially menacing physical threat.102 On the other hand,
Daviss defiantly self-defined unlynchable character also embraced beauty and sonic
tranquility, artistically displaying aesthetic merit through his cultural works and in effect,
his public persona. This dichotomy, in association with his uncompromised commitment
towards destroying minstrelized tropes envisions Davis within the new space afforded
by Black Power ideology and fueled by a post-minstrel identity. Publically displaying a
rejection of minstrelized tropes, Daviss overt, self-defined representation, like Ellington,
recuperates and communicates politics in a regard that does not necessitate specific
political involvement or direction. However, his vocalized hostility towards cultural,
social, racial, and artistic marginalization documents the attempts to construct a postminstrel identity in both the emergent field of free jazz and the surrounding spheres of
black creative public intellectuals.

102

Davis described this identity as part of a performative act. Davis comments on

his foray into acting as a pimp and a dope dealer, stating, when I did that role, someone
asked me how I felt acting and I told them, youre acting all the time when youre black.
And its true. Black people are acting out roles every day in this country just to keep
getting by. If white people really knew what was on most black peoples minds it would
scare them to death. Blacks dont have the power to say these things, so they put on masks
and do great acting jobs just to get through the fucking day. Davis, Miles, 375.
Coincidentally, Davis however, admitted to working as a pimp and a hustler many times in
his real life throughout his autobiography.
207

Conclusion
This dissertation intervenes with jazz scholarship by designating advancements in
musical composition as tangible indicators of black intellectual history, thus charting the
progress of ideas in music alongside the developing currents of anti-racist activism to
observe how jazz served as praxis for these larger ideas of racial freedom. By the 1930s,
jazz became a practical application of anti-racist expression, and the complex process by
which the innovations in the field stand as the material, tangible proof of the progressive
efforts of black creative public intellectuals to deconstruct minstrelized confines convey the
alternative, radical efforts of African-Americans to articulate progressive political narrative
in art.

Via jazz, African Americans produced a means to effectively navigate a

minstrelized culture, although with jazz operating as a politicized tool of the Left, or the
government, this dissertation has exposed the ways in which this politicization process has
also serviced the racist parameters of minstrelsy. Unraveling these complex histories, this
dissertations ultimate goal has been to display how jazz produces an accessible musical
language, and to illustrate the various ways in which this narrative has been decoded by the
musicians and non-musical activists of black freedom.
This project has primarily been invested in understanding a broader reading of
minstrelsy in the 20th century. The process in which this dissertation imagines and maps
minstrelsy as a pervasive societal force is by no means the only available option for its
discussion in jazz and African-American history. Strong examples certainly remain of
traditional minstrel tropes in jazz, particularly in the history of facial makeup and the
darkening or lightening of ones face to appease traditional minstrel stereotypes. Framing
208

minstrelsy outside of its purely historical rendering helps to uncover the vital importance of
understanding black art as a political tool and ideological device. Thus, this project argues
for the power of minstrelsy, framing it as the central discursive indicator of racial
discernment in American popular and social culture,
Each chapter problematizes minstrelsy by the determining historical context of the
differing decadesconceptualizing minstrelsy as an encompassing system of thought that
addresses how cultural conceptions are drawn from the racial practices and racialized
ideologies of a particular era. In more specific terms, minstrelsy exists in the historical
scope of this project as an oppressive domain that shapes and permeates the dominant
discourse of race. Hailing from its roots of blackface theater, this dissertation posits
minstrelsy as a lasting consequence of the minstrel show; a 20th century permutation that
defines how African-Americans are culturally interpreted in the public eye.

This

dissertation acknowledges the risk of capaciousness in this definition of minstrelsy.

However, this dissertation recognizes the voluminous nature of minstrelsy as its crucial
condition and locates its shifting instability throughout the differing decades as the defining
quality of minstrelsys separate milieus.

Therefore, this dissertation argues for an

understanding of minstrelsy outside of its traditional conceptions that are funneled through
the logic of blackface performance and buffoonish stereotype. Minstrelsy, in the historical
scope of this dissertation is the oppressive effect of its blackface roots, circulating the
American racial discourse in the 20th century as a permanent racialized stamp affixed to not
only the production of black art but the general public perception of the African-American
populous. This dissertations claims of a minstrelized culture are understood to incorporate

209

racial bias as a result of longstanding pejorative views initially created through blackface
minstrel theater.
This comprehensive, ubiquitous definition draws from its blackface roots, but
accounts for African-Americans experiencing minstrelsys effect outside the visual history
of 19th century minstrel theater. It also accounts for African-Americans experiencing
minstrelsys consequential affects outside of 20th century examples of black stereotype
including Beulah, Buckwheat, Amos and Andy, among others. In essence, tracing all of
the examples of jazz artists donning the minstrel mask throughout the years is not the
crucial intervention of this dissertation. Rather, this dissertations examples envision black
musicians and creative intellectuals reacting to minstrelsy and living and producing within
this oppressive domain. Minstrelsy remains a fixture of not only popular culture depictions
of African-Americans, but a fixture of the American discourse in its discernment of race.
African-Americans feel, interpret, and experience minstrelsys effects outside of a direct
viewing of blackface as their art is immediately racialized as a result of Americas
permanent racialized discourse.
The counter-minstrel narrative and identity offered avenues of participation for
creative and intellectual pursuits without the concession of minstrelized regulations. The
counter-minstrel narrative emerged in the musical language, and specified the moments
when compositional innovation reconfigured the parameters placed upon black creative art
by the racialized confines of minstrelsy. The counter-minstrel identity emerged as a result
of the narratives influence, and engaged the possibility of imagining ones self as an

210

active, viable agent of the counter-minstrel narratives progressive objectives.1 The postminstrel identity is the sequential outcome of counter-minstrel activity and the politics of
Black Power, negating he grip of minstrelsys pejorative classifications in counterhegemonic display of intellectual, artistic, and personal agency.
The various chapters of this dissertation have attempted to uncover a deeper
understanding of the artistic and political communities of black creative intellectuals and
those concerned with the political, social, and artistic affairs of African-Americans. The
goals of this project have been to illustrate, analyze, and clarify the musical language that
provided an alternate voice for the anti-racist endeavors of the Left and examine the
applications of political ideology to the compositional and ideological framework of jazz
music. In a discussion of jazz, there remains an intrinsic political stamp to the sound as
both racialized and radically intellectual, in the same spirit in which much of AfricanAmerican literature has been filtered and interpreted. This dissertation argues that jazz has
fulfilled a similar role within black culture with music providing s a deeper avenue for
analysis, allowing for an examination of the aesthetic and coded, yet ultimately tangible
and accessible qualities of intellectual expression.

This identity works in partial theoretical correlation with the Cornel West quote
from Race Matters that locates the black jazz artist as a literal embodiment of an idyllic,
distinctly modern, and progressively social and ideological intellectual character. West
states, I use the term jazz here not so much as a term for a musical art form, as a mode of
being in the world, an improvisational mode of protean, fluid, and flexible dispositions
toward reality suspicious of either/or viewpoints, dogmatic pronouncements, or
supremacist ideologies. To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and
energize world-weary people into forms of organization with accountable leadership that
promote critical exchange and broad reflection. The interplay of individuality and unity is
not one of uniformity and unanimity imposed from above but rather a conflict among
diverse groupings that reach a dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism.
Cornel West, Race Matters (New York: Vintage, 1994), 150.
211

Understanding the ways in which music produces political resonance, how musical
text provides a narrative for African-American identity and how the discourse of jazz
performance coincides with the political history of African-Americans exposes the jazz
artist as witnesses, historians, and interpreters of American culture. Furthermore, this
projects goal has been to gain a thorough understanding of the surrounding intellectual
climate that supplied, fostered, and challenged the art, innovation, and radicalism of the
music and its musicians. It is my interest in this intellectual climate that fuels the very
basic hypothesis behind this dissertation. A hypothesis which states that jazz has been
created in large part by the leftist radicalism of black public intellectuals and that this leftist
radicalism could only survive and progress through the specific artistry of jazz music.

212

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