Darius Milhaud The Evolution of the Jazz Band and Music of the Negroes of North America

L'volution du jazz-band et la musique des ngres d'Amrique du nord, from Le courrier musical 25/9 (May 1923): 163-64. Translated by Bryan R. Simms

n 1918 the jazz band arrived from New York at the Casino de Paris, brought to us by Gaby Deslys and Mr. Pilcer. Here I won't dwell on the shock, the sudden awakening that this rhythmic style produced on us, with sounds that until then had never been brought together and now all at once were put before us. In it we heard the importance of syncopation in its rhythms and melodies, situated on a bedrock of dull regularity that was as basic as circulating blood, as a heart beat or its pulsations; we heard an emphasis on percussion in which all the percussion instruments--their names known from our orchestration manuals--were simplified and made into a single complex instrument. When Mr. Buddy, the "drummer" of the Syncopated Orchestra, played a percussion solo, we heard a structured piece, rhythmically balanced, with an unbelievable variety of expression coming from the many different sounds of the percussion family, all members of which he played at once. We heard a new instrumental technique: the piano played with the dryness and percision of a drum or banjo; the saxophone was brought back; the trombone, using glissandos to give it the most contemporary means of expression, plays the sweetest melodies, as does the trumpet. Both instruments often use mute, portamento, vibrato from the slide or valves, and flutter tonguing. We heard the clarinet in the high register with attacks so aggressive, a tone so powerful, such slides and shaking of notes as to baffle our best players. The banjo appeared, with a dry and nervous sound, more resonant than the harp or the pizzicati of a string quartet. We heard the very unusual playing of the violin, harsh and shrill, using the widest vibrato and the slowest glissandos. The power of jazz comes from a novelty of technique that extends to all of its elements. In rhythm there is an exploration of resources resulting from the constant use of syncopation, opening up in this music a realm of expression with the simplest means that does not need a rich or varied orches-

tration. In 1920-21 you just had to hear Jean Winer on piano and Vance Lowry on saxophone or banjo at the Bar Gaya, on the Rue Duphot, to absorb the music of jazz, played in a complete, integral, and pure way with a minimum of means. In orchestration, the use of the various instruments enumerated above and the concentration of their special techniques allow for a variety of unusual expression. To form an accurate opinion of it one must of course hear a serious jazz band--made up of solid musicians who work together regularly, just like our good string quartets--that plays from orchestrations of high value, as are those of Irving Berlin. There have been mediocre jazz bands who have left erroneous and false impressions. Their balance was incorrect and their instrumental technique was poor; often the percussion was entrusted to instrumentalists without taste who, thinking that they were enriching their part, used "false" elements such as auto horns, sirens, Klaxons, etc. It is truly extraordinary how many of these odd instruments quickly lost fashion, demoted to museum pieces, even in the case of the water whistle, with its pretty sound midway between a whistle and a human voice. But listen to a serious jazz band, like that of Billy Arnold or Paul Whiteman. Nothing is left to chance; everything is balanced out with care, with proportion and equilibrium typical of the playing of a musician who knows precisely the capabilities of each instrument. Then go and hear a soire given by Billy Arnold's band at the casinos in Cannes or Deauville. Sometimes he will have four saxophones, sometimes a violin, clarinet, trumpet, and trombone, then again an infinite variety of instrumental combinations which blend one after the other with the piano and percussion, each with their own sense, logic, sonority, and distinctive expression. Since jazz was first heard here, it has undergone an extensive evolution. In place of its cataract of sound has come a remarkable improvement in melodiousness: this happened during the period of the "blues." This

has a simple melody supported by a very clear and restrained rhythm; the percussion is hardly heard, being more and more subdued. Then the almost mechanical style of Paul Whiteman at the Palais Royal in New York, with its steely brilliance, was supplanted by the jazz heard at the Hotel Brunswick in Boston--quiet, sensitive, almost impalpable. The North Americans have discoverd in jazz the expression of an art form that is quite their own. Their main jazz bands achieve a perfection in playing that is the equal of our symphony orchestras, such as our Conservatory orchestra, our organizations such as the Socit Moderne d'Instruments Vent, or the Capet Quartet, our most famous one. These bands possess sonorous and rhythmic materials that are absolutely new and appropriate to them, but how do they use them? Until now they have done so only for dancing. Music written for jazz band still consists only of ragtimes, fox trots, shimmies, etc. They have erred in transcribing celebrated works--the prayer in Tosca, Peer Gynt, Gretchaninov's Berceuse--for jazz orchestra, using their melodies for dancing. This was a lapse in taste, comparable to the use of auto horns as percussion instruments, etc. These wonderful orchestras need a concert repertory. When Billy Arnold's jazz band played at Jean Winer's concert on 6 December 1921 at the Salle des Agriculteurs, it was entirely proper to present these admirable musicians in a "concert" setting. But they should have music other than their dance pieces; they need a chamber music written to capitalize on the sonorities of their orchestra. The influece of these American dances has led here to the "Rag-Time du Paquebot" in Erik Satie's Parade and George Auric's Adieu New-York. In such works we have a portrait of ragtime or foxtrot through the symphony orchestra [Auric's Adieu New-York is for piano]. In Igor Stravinsky's Piano Rag Music we have a piano piece that uses the rhythmic elements of the rag, interpreted as a concert work. Jean Winer, in his Sonatine syncope has given us a piece of chamber music that takes its diverse styles from jazz but uses them in the form of a sonata. We have a ways to go. We still need to give jazz bands pieces of instrumental chamber music

including concerted sonatas written for the instruments used in jazz. Harmony has been the element slowest to deveop, given the exclusive use of dance music in the jazz band repertory. But it is following the same course as has contemporary harmony. Successions of seventh and ninth chords, which were so astonishing in 1900, are now used commonly in the most fashionable new dances (in "Ivy" by Jones and Jimmy Johnson, for example). No doubt in years to come polytonal and atonal harmonies will be customary in the dances that follow from the shimmies of 1920. Already, we hear simultaneous major and minor forms of a common triad (as in Zez Confrey's "Kitten On the Keys"). In the United States there is an entire series of texts on jazz--methods for trombone (showing the main glissandos to be used and how to play them), for saxophone, for clarinet (with all the new jazz techniques). In New York there is a school, the Winn School of Popular Music, that has published three methods (How to Play Popular Music, How to Play Rag-Time, How to Play Jazz and Blues) that are of much technical interest and show how all the special effects of this type of music can be learned in a logical and complete way. These manuals are valuable not only for technical study and performing works of jazz music, but also for learning the basics of improvisation and composing so as to give this music its special character, including chappes, passing dissonance, broken chords, arpeggios, trills, embellishments, ornaments, variations, improvisations played ad libitum within the different instrumental parts when strict rhythm cannot be altered. In addition to mechanized music, whose machinelike precision is achieved by a a clean style and by the utterly unique performances of the American jazz orchestras, there exists a music that comes from the same source but which has evolved in a very different way amid the Negroes of North America. Plainly, the origins of jazz music are to be sought among the Negroes. The primitive African element reamins firmly rooted among blacks in the United States, and here is seen the source of that formidable rhythmic power, that expressive melody, which comes from a lyricism that only oppressed races can produce. The first pieces of Negro music to be published were the

"Negro spirituals," slave hymns of popular and very ancient origin. They have been collected and written down by [Henry] Burleigh. The emotion contained in these hymns is not very different from that heard in the melodies of "blues," whose form comes from [W. C.] Handy. Listen to the "St. Louis Blues," or "Aunt Hagard Children's Blues." There is the same tenderness, the same sadness, the same faith as expressed by slaves in their spirituals when they compare their lot to that of the Jews, captives of the Egyptians, who call with all their soul to Moses to save them ("Go Down Moses!"). In addition to their dance music, in which improvisation gives a life and expressivity that is only found among blacks, they use jazz in the theater in a very happy way! There are operettas with a delightful musicality, such as Shufle Along by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blak, or Liza by Maceo Pinkard, in which singers, choristers, and dancers are accompanied by a jazz orchestra. In Liza the orchestra is made up of a flute, clarinet, two trumpets, trombone, percussion for one player, piano, string quartet (in which the viola is replaced by a saxophone), and string bass. Even now among the Negroes the ethnic element is intact. In [white] American jazz, everything is done to a tee, nothing is unprepared. But among the blacks improvisation plays a larger role, and what a formidable musical resource it is, what power of imagination it takes to do it without fault. From the technical point of view a greater ease is found among them. Each instrument continues along it own melodic line and improvises according to the harmonic framework that underlies the work. We are constantly in the presence of a play of lines, often achieving a baffling complexity in which major and minor triads are used simultaneously and quarter tones arise by blending glissandos and vibrato (achieved with the trombone slide, pronounced vibration of the valves of the trumpet, or slight shifting of the finger on the violin string). The quarter tone has a uniquely expressive character and relates to diatonic harmony just as does chromaticism when used in passing motions within a diatonic scale. It has no relevance to the system of quarter tones curently used in central Europe, which is based on a division of degrees

of the twelve-tone scale and which relates instead to atonal harmony. In the music of the Negroes we thus depart from the purity and mundane character of music that we so often encounter in [white] American jazz. With the Negroes the dance preserves a wild African character. In its instense and persistent rhythms and melodies there arises a sense of tragedy and despair. In a little dance hall in New York, like the Capitol uptown on Lennox Avenue near 140th Street, it is not rare to hear a Negress sing the same melody for more than an hour, a melody often poignant and as pure in design as any beautiful classical recitative, accompanied by a jazz made from a collection of melodies constantly repeated. Its variations have the breadth of a symphony. We are far from the elegant dancing of Broadway, which we hear in Paris at the Hotel Claridge! There, we approach the very source of this music, as profound in humanity as music can be and which can stir the soul as deeply as any universally recognized masterpiece of music.