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Theodore Gracyk
Thats how our music could teach what the meaning of American
democracy is.3 Or, as Marsalis says at the start of Episode One, jazz is an
improvised art that demands group negotiation, where that negotia-
tion is the art.4 The Burns/Ward history is constructed to reveal the
musics progressive embodiment of this social ideal of democratic
negotiation. The music, when artistically successful, is our conrmation
that the ideal can be realized in practice.
As expressed by Marsalis, the democracy thesis seems a variant of
Bruno Nettls idea that the organization of music expresses a cultures
relevant central values in abstracted forms.5 More to the point, it
echoes Kathleen Higginss modication of Nettl. Higgins proposes that
while some music reects existing social patterns, other music insinu-
ates a model of future or improved social relationships within a society.
Higgins offers jazz as music that insinuates an improved America. She
points to Coltranes soloing in A Love Supreme as an example of a
more respectful role for African-Americans in American life, a role in
which the individual voices of African-Americans are heard and valued
and to which the larger community makes appropriate adjustments.6 I
propose that the Burns/Ward history is organized to reveal the musics
progress toward embodiment of just such an ideal.
The democracy thesis is an extremely bold one, for Burns and Ward
seem to mean that jazz is Americas principal artistic mode for reecting
on what it is to be an American. I want to explore the complications
that arise when the project identies no progress in jazz after the 1960s
while also arguing that jazz is not dead. As I have already intimated, the
premises that support the latter argument are at cross-purposes with
the democracy thesis.
II
There is a standing distinction between two types of history: chronol-
ogy and narrative. A chronology traces a temporal succession, and Jazz
would be notable for its scope and insight even if it were merely a string
of chronologies. A narrative is more ambitious than a chronology.
Burns and Ward construct a narrative. They need a genuine narrative to
support their strong thesis of jazz as Americas greatest cultural achieve-
ment in a sense that does not make it mere happenstance that jazz is an
American art and that it is music of considerable aesthetic merit.
As with a literary narrative, a historical narrative structures its
chronology in anticipation of some development that will arise from
176 Philosophy and Literature
backs him up: There was an empathy among those ve people where
they could think as one . . . they were free to go anywhere they wanted
to, and they knew everyone would follow.11
But why locate the pinnacle of jazz evolution with Miles Davis and
this quintet? Why not Duke Ellington? Like Armstrong, Ellington would
not abandon the masses. He wanted to be popular and he liked it when
the audience danced. And the narrative repeatedly emphasizes that
dancing and any attempt to cater to the squares must be taken as
evidence of a compromise of art.
The attainment of genuine art status comes with bebop (particularly
in late-night jam sessions, after the squares have gone home), two
decades before the narrative nds its closure in the perfect democratic
interplay of the great Miles Davis Quintet. Complications arise to delay
that closure. Bebops cult of the soloist is at odds with democratic
interplay. Dope arrives on the scene. Cool jazz appears in California
and art status is temporarily debased by its popularity with the white
college crowd; America is misled as Dave Brubeck appears on the cover
of Time magazine before Duke Ellington earns a cover story with his
appearance at the 1956 Newport Festival.12 The narrative culminates in
Episode Ten by reaching closure on the democracy thesis (not with
bebops attainment of art status). But the lm does not end, and the
organization of the narrative strongly parallels Arthur Dantos account
of arts progressive history in his celebrated analysis of the end of art.
Recall that Danto allows that there is no contradiction is saying that
painting has its own history after playing a central role in bringing
about the end of art. Painting realized arts essence and we now nd
ourselves living after the end of art history. In the aftermath of that
realization we live with a radical pluralism that makes it impossible to
continue with any linear narrative that traces further stages of progress
toward the essence of art.13 Humanity still has a need for art (if only as
decoration and entertainment) and while painting may have its own
local history, that narrative should not be confused with the narrative
that culminates in paintings completion of the project of pictorial
representation.
While Burns and Ward posit an end of jazz history, jazz continues to
be made after the end of jazz history. This continuation after the end of
jazz history replicates Dantos insight that many arts continue after the
end of art. But once the end of art was on the horizon (that is, once
photography and cinema signaled the end of its progressive history),
the artworld urgently required a new theory of art to justify the activities
178 Philosophy and Literature
of visual artists in an age that had no need of their services with respect
to mimetic representation. The artworld coped by embracing the
expression theory of art. While there is genuine progressive improve-
ment in artistic mimesis, Danto argues that post-historical visual art will
carry no historical signicance. For expression allows for change
(different styles emerge) but not development. In deleting representa-
tion from the denition of art, expression theory demands a revised
structure for understanding the history of art. Narrative is supplanted
by chronology. Burns and Ward construct a parallel account of jazz.
What central problem provides the internal direction for their
narrative?14 It must involve the democracy thesis. How does that thesis
receive its ultimate realization with the Miles Davis Quintet of the mid-
1960s, so that the music played by Davis in the last decade of his life
must be post-historical jazz? Considerable attention is paid to the late
careers and deaths of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, so it is no
accident that neither the book nor the lm acknowledges that Davis
made music from 1980 until his death in 1991. A mere chronology
could allow that jazz got tired, wore itself out, or lost ground to its
competitors in a ckle world of shifting tastes. But in treating the Davis
quintet as the culmination of jazz history, the narrative is constructed to
highlight the problem of Miles Davis. And that problem is that his
inuential defection to fusion helped to kill jazz when it was already
emaciated by numerous defections to the avant-garde, so that jazz after
the fusion years is jazz atrophied.
Just as we live with painters and paintings after the end of art, the
Burns/Ward narrative must explain the status of jazz after it (and with
it, American high culture?) reaches its proper end. The history that
culminates with the Miles Davis Quintet of the mid-1960s is the project
of America nding itself in jazz. If so, then after this music there is no
internal direction for further American art or American musical history.
Jazz may live on, but there is no further evolution of jazz as an American
cultural achievement. Just as post-historical visual art was explained by
the doctrine that artists express feelings, we nd that Burns and Ward
explain the continued relevance of jazz by appealing to expression
theory.
The shift to expression theory marks the abandonment of any
historical narrative, allowing Burns and Ward to answer Miles Daviss
opinion that jazz died before 1970.15 Jazz just kind of died, Branford
Marsalis agrees. It just . . . went away for a while.16 Joshua Redman
testies to the traditions continuing life, Jazz is as alive and as well . . .
Theodore Gracyk 179
and creative as its ever been. But the days of evolution and linear
progress may be over.17 Redman does not say those words in the lm.
Instead, Jazz offers his summary of the future of jazz: there are original
artists out here who have something original to say, who are expressing
their original feelings and original experiences as human beings today.
And as long as that continues, jazz will be ne.18
Paired with Stanley Crouchs dismissal of popular music, Redmans
comments constitute the lms summation of the health of jazz. It
seems that jazz is alive because there are many original artists within
jazz who are important for their ability to express their original
feelings. But surely there is nothing distinctive about jazz here, for the
same can be said about both serious composers and a fair number of
popular artists outside jazz. This defense has absolutely nothing to do
with the purported essence of jazz, the democratic spirit. Worse yet, any
normal understanding of the expression theory subordinates group
cooperation and negotiation to individual expression.19 Given the
history of jazz presented in the lm, this sudden appeal to expression
theory leaves the patient looking none too healthy. Or, like painting
after the end of art history, jazz continues without a history. Narrative
history is supplanted by chronology.
III
In order to position the Miles Davis Quintet of the 1960s as the
culmination of jazz history, Burns and Ward must discredit two rival jazz
movements. Although both the avant-garde and the electronic hybrid
of fusion might appear to constitute progress in the evolution of jazz,
Burns and Ward systematically dismiss both movements as non-
progressive mutations. The avant-garde movement was too radical and
too close to absolute music. Fusion took jazz backwards toward mere
entertainment.
Consider the free jazz of Ornette Colemans quartet of 195860.
Sympathetic descriptions portray it as improvisational music in which
each player individualizes the music while simultaneously responding
to the free choices of the other musicians. Given the ideal of American
democracy at the heart of the Burns/Ward history, Colemans quartet
has some claim to the mantle of achievement assigned to the Miles
Davis quintet. Yet Ornette Coleman is one of only three musicians in
the ten episodes of Jazz to receive extended overt scorn and abuse from
other jazz musicians. The narration emphasizes that most bebop
180 Philosophy and Literature
IV
The irony here is that the picture of democracy that emerges is that
of the New England town-hall meeting, a democracy in which every
participant listens to every other participant. I can only respect the
choices of my neighbor because I so intimately know my neighbor. This
is not the democracy of hundreds of millions of participants. Fusion
cannot be jazz because the players cannot hear one another and so the
players lack the proper empathy to negotiate their individual decisions.
It also appears that the ideal of American democracy is a meritocracy,
suspicious of the mob and thus more sympathetic to Platos Republic
than to James Madisons pragmatic solution to competing factions in
the tenth Federalist Paper.
Jazzs antipathy to democracy emerges most strongly within a very
182 Philosophy and Literature
1. Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, Jazz: A History of Americas Music (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 2000); hereafter abbreviated J:HAM. In contrast, Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns is
hereafter abbreviated Jazz. The ten episodes of Jazz correspond to the ten chapters of the
book, but each incorporates material that the other lacks.
186 Philosophy and Literature
2. Wynton Marsalis, Jazz, Episode 10. The same passage by Marsalis is the concluding
passage of the book; J:HAM, p. 460. See his words in context at Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns
Page. Public Broadcasting System. Access date 21 September 2001. Wynton Marsalis
interview, p. 27 <http://www.pbs.org/jazz/about/about_transcripts.htm>; hereafter ab-
breviated www.pbs.
3. Wynton Marsalis, Jazz, Episode 10 (my transcription). Cornel West takes this idea to
an extreme in holding that jazz designates not a type of music but rather a mode of
being in the world, characteristic of black life, for which the music is a metaphor.
Cornel West, Race Matters (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), p. 150.
4. Wynton Marsalis, Jazz, Episode 1 (my transcription). Taken literally, this description
excludes the tremendous body of solo piano work from counting as proper jazz.
5. Bruno Nettl, The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-Nine Issues and Concepts (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1983), p. 60.
6. Kathleen Marie Higgins, The Music of Our Lives (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1991), pp. 17780.
7. John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Putnams, 1934; rpt. 1958), p. 36.
8. Arthur Danto, The End of Art, in The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 81115.
9. Arthur Danto, The End of Art: A Philosophical Defense, History and Theory 37.4
(1998): 127. See also Nol Carroll, The End of Art? History and Theory 37.4 (1998): 1729.
10. Gary Giddens, Jazz, Episode 9 (my transcription).
11. Joshua Redman and Michael Cuscuna, Jazz, Episode 9. Redmans comments
appear in the book; J:HAM, p. 437. As in the lm, Cuscuna is then quoted (but saying
something else) in order to seal the argument that Daviss quintet was superior to
Ornette Colemans free jazz: This was the real free jazz ( J:HAM, p. 437).
12. J:HAM, p. 380.
13. Arthur Danto, After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1996).
14. Danto, The End of Art: A Philosophical Defense, p. 139.
15. J:HAM, p. 448.
16. Branford Marsalis, Jazz, Episode 10. In the interview Marsalis blames fusion for this
death, whereas Davis claimed that fusion was necessary because jazz had died. See
Branford Marsalis interview, www.pbs, p. 10.
17. Joshua Redman, www.pbs, p. 4.
18. Joshua Redman, Jazz, Episode 10. See also Redman interview, www.pbs, p. 5.
19. Danto explicitly links the expression theory with individuality, where expression
theory serves as a justication for abandonment of the larger, progressive project.
Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art, p. 104.
20. Albert Murray, Jazz, Episode 9. Portions of the interview are transcribed and
reproduced in the book; J:HAM, p. 343.
Theodore Gracyk 187
21. Wynton Marsalis interview, www.pbs, p. 24.
22. Herbie Hancock, Jazz, Episode 10 (my transcription). The book marshals a full
page of insults against Daviss fusion period; J:HAM, p. 448.
23. Branford Marsalis makes some interesting points about Daviss fusion years. He
argues that there was insufcient money to regard it as going for the bucks, and Daviss
true reason to abandon jazz was to be the undisputed leader of the bad boys,
something no longer possible in jazz. Branford Marsalis interview, www.pbs, p. 30.
24. Stanley Crouch, Jazz, Episode 10 (my transcription).
25. Branford Marsalis interview, www.pbs, p. 10.
26. Douglas Crimp, On the Museums Ruins (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993). See also
Keith Moxey, The Practice of Persuasion (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 1045.
27. Crimp, p. 303. One of the primary signs of an institutionalization of jazz is the very
documentary that we are discussing. I do not subscribe to Adornos position that musics
political signicance depends on its social isolation. See Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophy
of Modern Music, trans. Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster (New York: Seabury
Press, 1973), e.g., pp. 9, 115.
28. J:HAM, pp. 33738, 35859.
29. Roger Scruton, The Aesthetics of Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp.
35557.
30. Louis Armstrong, Jazz, Episode 2 (my transcription).
31. Branford Marsalis, Say It Loud! Black Music in America, VH1 Television/Rhino
Entertainment, Episode 1 (Keep on Pushin: Politics and Protest), aired on VH1 Television,
7 October 2001 (my transcription).
32. See Jacqui Malone, Jazz Music in Motion: Dancers and Big Bands, in The Jazz
Cadence of American Culture, ed. Robert G. OMeally (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1998), pp. 27897. Malone argues that beginning in 1944 new tax laws inuenced
club owners to ban dancing.
33. R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), pp.
30911.
34. See G. L. Hagberg, Art as Language: Wittgenstein, Meaning, and Aesthetic Theory
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995).
35. Quoted in J:HAM, p. 370.
36. J:HAM, p. 116.
37. For the argument that ideology distorts all recent histories of jazz, see Scott
Deveaux, Constructing the Jazz Tradition, in OMeally, pp. 483512.
38. R. A. Sharpe, Music and Humanism: An Essay in the Aesthetics of Music (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 200. For Sharpes full account of this ideology and
reasons to regard it as a distortion of history, see chapter 7, pp. 179208.