Jazz, Abstraction and Primitivism

Chris Johnson

It appears as a contradiction that jazz is not usually considered modern art. Certainly its loca-

tion in American urban capitals links the music to Roland Barthes’ observation that “abstraction is

alive” regarding the architecture of New York City. Barthes juxtaposes the City to a Mondrian, who,

himself was inspired by African American music in such paintings as “Victory Boogie Woogie”

(1944). The “intellection” that Barthes finds, Mondrian and other modern artists sought in the ex-

pressions of other cultures. Picasso saw in the idea of an African Grebo mask (see image 1), the

manner in which the two dimensional plane is broken by facial features that jut out into space, a

novel way to conceptualize sculpture, and, created his sheet metal and wire “Guitar” (1912) (see

image 2) to bring this African aesthetic to western Europe. One aesthetic component of jazz in

particular and African American music in general, by way of example, is the adoption of the mecha-

nized into the music, via sound and lyrics, creating an aura that reflects the machine. Duke Elling-

ton’s “Take the ‘A’ Train” (1939), composed by Billy Strayhorn, became the signature piece for the

orchestra and fused an urban reference with a black music form. Blues vocalist Robert Johnson

made train references in the lyrics of “Love in Vain” (1937) among other songs in his repertoire.

This paper interrogates the position of African American music as a form within the canon

of American creativity and views abstraction and primitivism as an artistic and social response.

Scholars have attested to modern and postmodern aspects in black popular music performance.

Keith Harris in “‘Untitled’: D’Angelo and the Visualization of the Black Male Body” (1998) critiques

the visual terrain of this music video that famously features the artist singing a love song nude, from

the waist up. (see image 3) The video presents “discursive trajectories” that frame “the body in ab-

stract, objectified codes of beauty.” In "’Feenin’: Posthuman Voices in Contemporary Black Popular

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Music" (2002) Alexander Weheliye describes the use of the “vocoder” and how rap music lyrics in-

clude technological consumer items of the time, the cell phone, in Missy Elliott’s “Beep Me 911”

(1998) and the pager, in Destiny’s Child’s “Bug-a-Boo” (1999). Philip Maysles in “Dubbing the Na-

tion” (2002) states that “dub submerges the reggae rhythm and lyric into abstraction, creating a non-

verbal site for the learning and consolidation of ‘dread’ awareness.”

In the 1940s the tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon started to play harmonically, in a spacial

sense, in effect leaving behind traditional ideas of thematic linear soloing, as in the piece “Bikini”

(1947). He was not alone in this approach. Abstraction by the 1960s rendered the music more chal-

lenging to listen to. Eventually in the hands of players such as Eric Dolphy in the piece “GW”

(1961) , Albert Ayler in the album “Spirits” (1961) Rahsaan Roland Kirk in “I Talk With the Spirits”

(1964) (see image 4) and in John Coltrane’s album “Ascension” (1965) music became total abstrac-

tion. The larger question that I wish to address is the value of the hierarchy of modernism for the

African American arts, as the arts of the diaspora inspired modernism itself and yet evolved at a dis-

tance from the mainstream.

Antecedents

I have for some time thought about and attempted to trace the idea of abstraction in jazz. In

the following I want to point to a series of specific musical examples, among countless choices of

experimentation, that are markers on the path towards the use of abstraction. To begin, and using as

a resource the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz, Martin Williams, who selected and wrote an-

notations for the music in the 1997 edition, includes, for example, “Weather Bird,” a King Oliver

composition played by Louis Armstrong on cornet and Earl Hines on piano, recorded in Chicago in

1928.1 In the third section of the piece Hines plays a substitute chord. The halting and dissonant

sound of an altered chord within a conventional harmonic structure immediately catches the ear.

This is not abstraction or atonality as the pianist here is interested in adding variety and interest by

using a different voicing. Although early twentieth century jazz is known for being more “inside”

than “outside” so this moment is noteworthy.2 Another early jazz example is “Struttin’ with Some

Barbecue” a Lil Armstrong composition recorded in 1927 in Chicago by Louis Armstrong and His

Hot Five. Strutin’ features the polyphonic group playing of the front-line cornet, clarinet and trom-

bone in traditional New Orleans jazz style. Polyphonic improvisation over a rhythm section was one

of the innovations of jazz. Its many-voiced sound is “inside” and a reference to African roots. Stru-

tin’ too includes an example of a Reggae-like skank, a straight strum on the two and the four of the

measure, that may be the earliest example of this rhythm technique that would become the hallmark

of Reggae music.

The jazz style of Bebop, a revolutionary response to the big band swing era by African

American musicians, most notably Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, used dissonance as well.

There is a famous video performance of the piece “Hot House” by Parker and Gillespie in 1952 on

the Sunday television program Stage Entrance, hosted by white newspaper columnist Earl Wilson.

The melody of “Hot House” includes diminished scale constructions throughout, musically consid-

ered dissonant, creating, in part, the evolutionary sound of this new jazz style.3 Another unique

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1 The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz annotations, by Martin Williams. The Smithsonian In-

stitution. 1997.

2 Scott DeVeaux (Autumn, 1999). "'Nice Work if You Can Get It'- Thelonious Monk and Popular

Song", p.178, Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 19, No. 2, New Perspectives on Thelonious Monk.

3 “Augmented and diminished intervals are also considered dissonant” Benward & Saker (2003).

Music: In Theory and Practice, Vol. I, p.92. Seventh Edition.

moment in media presentations of African American performance was the broadcast in 1964 of the

Miles Davis quintet on The Steve Allen Show, a Tonight Show-styled broadcast from Los Angeles.

At the end of the show Allen introduces Miles Davis as the group launches into “No Blues” with

members Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass and Tony Williams on drums. The innova-

tions for this group are on a number of fronts. This blues form piece is performed using a modal

approach which too sounds dissonant but clearly follows sets of rules. African American composer

George Russell is credited with first articulating the modal approach to improvisation. Miles Davis

became known as a anti-performer himself, critiquing the music business and white America by way

of his presence. The members of the group, dressed in dark business-like suites suggest a profes-

sionalism that demarcates them from black performers in rhythm and blues, no bright colors here.

Their visual solemnity though is in striking contrast to the sound of the music, which here is entic-

ing but certainly only understood by the initiated.

My definition of abstraction is the creative extension of an artistic genre into a realm of

complexity, or simplification, that appears to have less form or a new form in comparison to its

original reference point. Thus Dub is a simplification, a meditation, on Reggae, Free Jazz and Modal

Jazz are the extensions of the traditional form, Hip Hop is an abstraction of African American

rhythm and blues. Definitions of abstraction in the visual arts refer to the idea of the nonrepresen-

tational, the abandonment of realism. In music the term can suggest atonality and performance with

no form. I realize that I am comparing the evolution of a early twentieth century visual art genre,

modern art abstraction, with a musical approach, that is, abstraction in African American music. The

issue is that generally only the visual art genre is given credit for the practice. Together modern art

and jazz are the two most important artistic creations of the early twentieth century. It is curious

that they are demarcated in the face of this similar root. I am also suggesting that we cannot con-

sider the Afro Modern without including music, and dance.4

Briefly, as a reference to dance is the work of Jean-Léon Destiné. A native of Haiti, Destiné

joined the Katherine Dunham troupe in 1946. He also received in 1944 a Rockefeller scholarship to

study journalism and graphics at Howard University in Washington D.C. and Columbia University in

New York. His own group performed at Jacob’s Pillow as early as 1951. He became a guest artist

with Alvin Ailey in 1960. With roots in Haitian folklore, his choreography was an adaptation and

expansion of cultural themes. Dramatic and visually modern are his Spider Dance and Yoruba

Bakas, based on an African legend of men who are part animal.5 (see images 5 & 6)

To return to music, in north America, in the African American music of the mid to late

twentieth century, abstraction became both a response to earlier forms and a path to new expres-

sion. By the 1960s abstract or avant-garde performance in jazz became associated with “modernist”

thinking for example in Ornette Coleman’s album “The Shape of Jazz to Come” (1959), with the

civil rights movement, John Coltrane’s piece “Alabama” (1963), and the spiritual, Albert Ayler’s al-

bum “Spiritual Unity” (1964). Jamaican artists beginning in the 1960s created improvised instrumen-

tal music that constituted a unique approach compared to jazz. The work of the Skatalites, the al-

bum “Ska Authentic” (1964) and in the next decade Burning Spear, the album “Marcus Garvey”

(1976) similarly presented themes with a political message. The music included improvisation but

with an extended form. The music influenced the arts across genres. Annie Paul in Caribbean Cul-

ture (2007) describes how poet Kamau Brathwaite absorbed musical themes that reflected Caribbean

culture. “He perfected his craft on jazz sounds, sharpening his ears, his voice, his sense of time,

rhythm, pacing and abstraction . . . . These new chords lead him back home to calypso, reggae and

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4 Lynne Emery describes the African American innovation of tap as modern in Black Dance in the

United States. 1972. p. 351.

5 Univiversity of Michigan Musical Society. Program. “Jean-Léon Destiné and his Haitian Dance

Company.” 1964.

Caribbean folk music.” In Resistance through Rituals (1993) Stuart Hall, ed., Dick Hebdige writes

regarding the message of the Wailers and Count Ossie and the Mystic Revelation of Ras-Tafari that

“linguistic patterns become musical patterns; both merge with the metabolism until sound becomes

abstract, meaning non-specific.” Further, Clive Walker in Dubwise (2005) presents the career of Ja-

maican alto saxophonist Joe Harriot, in England, and his evolution towards free jazz. Harriot’s

groundbreaking album “Abstract” (1962) “integrated an indigenous Caribbean folk form into an

avant-garde jazz framework.”

Within the Hip Hop era, technology made possible the device of sampling. Sampling pro-

duced early on, within the genre of rap, music for which there was literally too much to hear. In the

opening of Public Enemy’s 1990 rap song “Fight the Power,” over a dozen samples are layered in

less than a minute. Included are the song lyric phrase, and song title, “pump me up” recorded back-

wards from Trouble Funk, 1982. There are a series of single snare drum strokes and a saxophone

line recorded by Bradford Marsalis, Even musical phrases are sectioned off such as Clyde Stubble-

field’s solo from “Funky Drummer” from which only the first two eighth notes are heard. James

Brown is also heard grunting, from his “Hot Pants” (1971). Mark Katz writes in Capturing Sound

that the effect of the layered samples is “exhilarating . . . one cleary cannot take it all in at once.”6

Primitivism’s Disconnect

A hierarchical view of culture has over time had an effect on how the west has valued people’s

practices. As a force, modernism’s primitive bent, beginning at the turn of the last century, began to

value the art of tribal cultures as containing elements equally expressive yet unusual to Europe.

Primitivism sought an alternative aesthetic, although as an artistic evolutionary path turned few of

its discoveries into lasting concepts. Cubism borrowed from the industrial, and there was little be-

6 Capturing Sound. How Technology has Changed Music. Mark Katz. 2004. pp. 151-152.

yond the adoption of the trope of the tribal.7 The lament here is that non-western cultures have

been continually misconstrued. Houston Baker writes that one possible strategy for defining mod-

ernism is as the “primitive structural underpinnings of a putatively civilized mankind.”8 Baker’s

comment I believe rightly presents a modernist commitment to the primitive that becomes evident

in the early twentieth century. Primitivism is the west’s fantasy. What I will call the “disconnect” of

primitivism is that contiguous, changing, improvisatory ideas are presented as representative, fixed

notions. William Francis Allen wrote down hymns that he heard African Americans sing and pub-

lished them in “Slave Songs of the United States” (1867). An oral song form instantly became set on

paper. The spiritual was born, and, possibly it ended. There are many variations to the songs that

African Americans were singing at the time. Allen’s set may have had the reality of instigating the

disappearance of an ultimately variable form. Over time spirituals became widespread, and,

standardized.9 In the visual arts, Pablo Picasso’s “Bust of a Woman” (1909) (see image 7) mimics

the sculptural aspects of African and Oceanic art. Our conception of the primitive mask is limited,

in truth, to the arbitrary collecting and whims of art dealers in Paris at the turn of the last century.

The application of the form has shown little variation.10 (see image 8) In jazz, with the recording

of musicians and their creative flights, beginning in the early twentieth century, the copied, repeated

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7 “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern. v. 1. William Stanley

Rubin. Museum of Modern Art. 1984. This important late twentieth-century show is critiqued in

Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art: a Documentary History. Jack D. Flam. 2003.

8 Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Houston Baker. 1989. p. 5.

9 Slave Songs of the United States. William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, Lucy McKim Garri-

son. 1867.

10 A life of Picasso. John Richardson. 2007. p. 451. See also Women in Dada : Essays on Sex, Gen-

der, and Identity. Naomi Sawelson-Gorse. 1998. Marcel Janco. "Invitation to a Dada Evening." 1916.

charcoal on paper, 73x55 cm. Kunsthaus Zurich.

note-for-note, and “sampled” solo became common. This is actually contrary to the spirit of the

form. There are more Charlie Parker’s in this world, referring to the famous alto saxophone innova-

tor, than Mr. Parker could have ever imagined. In jazz it is an affront to take someone else’s ideas,

although in the name of commerce the practice has in-effect prevailed. The reference that I am

making here is dependent on technology, in the ability to duplicate, and, on markets, with buyers’

willingness to view, possess, or listen to the duplications. The separation, the disconnection, is that

these folk forms, not part of a largely white consumer society, become so. The concept of primitiv-

ism is by nature a presentation of accessibility and consumption. Primitivism sought the unattain-

able.

Conclusions

European art used primitivism as a means towards abstraction. Europeans found new paths via

the expressions of the ethnic arts of the south Pacific and Africa. Primitivism justified and caused

abstraction. Because the aesthetic of abstraction is native to the arts of Africa and thence the dias-

pora, the black arts of the Atlantic have always included abstract elements. Is black art primitive?

No, not in this emulative sense, because its the source. Black art is primal in the way that artists tap

an African root. Ellington in the 1920s was not primitive music. The music utilized African Ameri-

can references to create a compelling, sensuous, danceable style, but this was created not borrowed.

Thus the abstract elements in black music were always there and surface as endpoints of an art

form, suggesting epitome and mastery.

1. Grebo Mask. Ivory Coast. Painted wood and fiber. 25 inches. Formerly collection of

Pablo Picasso.

from “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art. The Museum of Modern Art. 1984.

2. Guitar. by Pablo Picasso. 1912. Sheet metal and wire. 30 inches. The Museum of Mod-

ern Art. New York.

from “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art. The Museum of Modern Art. 1984.

3. "’Untitled’: D'Angelo and the Visualization of the Black Male Body." Keith Harris. 2004. Wide

Angle. vol. 21. no. 4. pp. 62-83.

4. Rahsaan Roland Kirk, circa 1965

5. “The Spider Dance.” Jean-Léon Destiné Company. [1955?]

6. “Yoruba Bakas” Jean-Léon Destiné Company. [1955?]

7. Pablo Picasso’s “Bust of a Woman” (1909) A life of Picasso. John Richardson. 2007. p. 451.

8. Marcel Janco. "Invitation to a Dada Evening." 1916. charcoal on paper, 73x55 cm. Kunsthaus Zu-

rich Women in Dada : Essays on Sex, Gender, and Identity. Naomi Sawelson-Gorse. 1998.