Gerard, a white musician whose previous books have been about how
to play jazz, turns to a consideration of who is doing the playing.
Is jazz a specifically African-American music? If so, what does
that mean? Can white musicians play the music with any
authenticity? These questions have been debated since jazz was
first recognized as a musical genre, and recent histories of the
music and arguments over its origins and evolution have been
fraught with the tensions that racial issues in America always
bring. In that respect, this volume is a refreshing change from
recent polemics. It is written by a jazz musician who is openly
ambivalent and by his own admission "unable to decide whether jazz
belongs to anyone who has the talent to play it" or whether it is a
black institution. Gerard's ambivalence manifests itself fruitfully
in his unwillingness to accept cant and sloppy reasoning from
either side of the argument. He is capable of deflating the
pretensions and inaccuracies of such critics as James Lincoln
Collier and Stanley Crouch with an admirable evenhandedness. The
book consists of eight interlocking essays (although sometimes the
connections are a bit hard to perceive) in which he considers such
issues as the degree of African influence in jazz and the ways in
which the jazz community constitutes itself. Although the thread of
his argument is occasionally obscured by the book's structure, this
is an intelligent discussion of a loaded issue. Not surprisingly,
Gerard comes down in the middle of this debate, but he does so with
integrity and thoughtfulness, making the middle look like the only
logical place to be. (Kirkus Reviews)
Is jazz a universal idiom or is it an African-American art form?
Although whites have been playing jazz almost since it first
developed, the history of jazz has been forged by a series of
African-American artists whose styles caught the interest of their
musical generation--masters such as Louis Armstrong, Duke
Ellington, John Coltrane, and Charlie Parker. Whether or not white
musicians deserve their secondary status in jazz history, one thing
is clear: developments in jazz have been a result of black people's
search for a meaningful identity as Americans and members of the
African diaspora. Blacks are not alone in being deeply affected by
these shifts in African-American racial attitudes and cultural
strategies. Historically in closer contact with blacks than nearly
any other group of white Americans, white jazz musicians have also
felt these shifts. More importantly, their careers and musical
interests have been deeply affected by them. The author, an active
participant in the jazz world as composer, performer, and author of
several books on jazz and Latin music, hopes that this book will
encourage jazz lovers to take a rhetoric-free look at the charged
issue of race as has affected the world of jazz.
A work about the formulation of identity in the face of racial
difference, the book considers topics such as the promotion of
black Southern culture and inner-city styles like rhythm and blues
and rap as a means of achieving black racial solidarity. It
discusses the body of music fostered by an identification to
Africa, the conversion of black jazz musicians to Islam and other
Eastern religions, and the impact of a jazz community united by
heroin use. White jazz musicians who identify with black culture in
an unsettling form by speaking black dialect and calling themselves
African-American is examined, as is the assimilation of jazz into
the wider American culture.
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