Jazz & Culture Vol. 1, 2018 PDF

ARTICLES
A Resistant Previousness (Back to Living Again)

Fred Moten
“We Don’t Want to Be Jazz-Jazz”: Afro-Modernism,

Jazz, and Brass Band Music in Benin
Sarah Politz
This Ain’t a Hate Thing: Jeanne Lee and the

Subversion of the Jazz Standard
Eric Lewis
“The Ace of His Race”: Paul Whiteman’s Early

Critical Reception in the Black Press
JAZZ & Culture

Christopher Wells
ORAL HISTORY
Rich Theory: Mandino Reinhardt on Jazz Manouche
in Alsace
Interviewed by Siv Lie
POETRY
“Everything Old Is New,” “J-572 (431) I,” and
“Composition No. 152”
Chiyuma Elliot
REVIEWS Volume 1 2018
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Jazz and Culture (print ISSN: 2578-4765 and online: 2578-4773) is published annually in the Jazz and Culture is an annual publication devoted to publishing cutting-edge research on jazz
spring by the University of Illinois Press, 1325 S. Oak Street, Champaign, IL 61820–6903 (www from multiple perspectives. Founded on the principle that both scholars and musicians offer
.press.uillinois.edu), for the Jazz Studies Department at the University of Pittsburgh. invaluable contributions, the journal juxtaposes groundbreaking work by researchers alongside
oral histories and articles written by master artists in the field. All methodological approaches
© 2018 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois are welcome, including ethnomusicology, music theory, and critical and cultural studies. The
journal particularly encourages work relating to jazz’s international scope.
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Editor-In-Chief
Dr. Michael C. Heller, University of Pittsburgh
Editorial Board
Dean Larry E. Davis, University of Pittsburgh
Dr. Dwight Andrews, Emory University
Mr. Herb Boyd, Author/Journalist, City College of New York
Dr. Kent Engelhardt, Youngstown State University
Dr. Gary Fienberg, The College of New Jersey
Dr. Farah Jasmine Griffin, Columbia University
Mr. Mike Hennessey, Freelance Writer and Producer
Dr. Vijay Iyer, Harvard University
Dr. Travis A. Jackson, University of Chicago
Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley, UCLA
Dr. George E. Lewis, Columbia University
Dr. Portia K. Maultsby, Indiana University
Dr. Ingrid Monson, Harvard University
Mr. Lester Monts, University of Michigan
Mr. Dave Pistolesi, University of Pittsburgh (retired)
Dr. Guthrie Ramsey, University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Robert Sacre, University of Liege
Mr. Ed Sarath, University of Michigan This publication is made possible through generous gifts from the
Erroll Garner-Martha Glaser Foundation, the University of Pittsburgh Year of Diversity, and
University of Pittsburgh Jazz Studies Program Assistant through ongoing support of Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh.
Frank Hammond Jr.
University of Pittsburgh Jazz Studies Core Faculty
Michael C. Heller
Aaron J. Johnson
In Memoriam
Geri Allen (1957–2017)

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JAZZ
VOLUME 1 • 2018
& culture
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
1 Welcome to Jazz and Culture: Revival and Elegy

Michael C. Heller
ARTICLES
6 A Resistant Previousness (Back to Living Again)

Fred Moten
12 “We Don’t Want to Be Jazz-Jazz”: Afro-Modernism, Jazz,

and Brass Band Music in Benin
Sarah Politz
49 This Ain’t a Hate Thing: Jeanne Lee and the Subversion of the Jazz
Standard
Eric Lewis
77 “The Ace of His Race”: Paul Whiteman’s Early Critical Reception in

the Black Press
Christopher Wells
ORAL HISTORY
104 Rich Theory: Mandino Reinhardt on Jazz Manouche in Alsace

POETRY
122 “Everything Old Is New,” “J-572 (431) I,” and “Composition No. 152”
Chiyuma Elliott

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REVIEWS
125 Rhythms of Race: Cuban Musicians and the Making of Latino New York
City and Miami, 1940–1960, by Christina Abreu
Sarah Town
129 Flyboy 2:The Greg Tate Reader, by Greg Tate

Tamar Sella
133 Message to Our Folks:The Art Ensemble of Chicago, by Paul Steinbeck

Adam Zanolini
135 Erroll Garner: No One Can Hear You Read, dir. by Atticus Brady
William Bares
140 Contributors to This Issue

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Note from the Editor
Welcome to Jazz and Culture:

Revival and Elegy
Michael C. Heller
One of the glories of the blues is its ability to evoke multiple emotions simultaneously.
Like the “pendular” blue thirds and sevenths that we teach to beginning improvisers,
a great blues performance is not quite major nor minor, neither naïvely joyous nor
hopelessly sorrowful. Rather, it sits somewhere in-between, a bittersweetness, a both/
and. It’s not so much that the music vacillates between emotional poles (pendular
has never really been quite the right word), and it definitely isn’t a triumphant or
teleological resolution (a perseverance that washes away sadness, for instance). Instead,
the blues impulse lies in a subtle ability to sit with multiple emotions simultaneously.
To feel love at the same time that you feel pain. Humor at the same time that you
feel desperation. Solidarity at the same time that you feel solitude.
This multiplicity conveys a little bit of what I feel in writing this introduction,
a bittersweet introduction to a publication that is both old and new.
◊ ◊ ◊
Let’s begin with the joyous: welcome to Jazz and Culture. The journal you
hold in your hands (or view on your screen) represents a celebration and a rebirth.
It is the resurrection of a publication with twenty-five years of history, and as such
it has enormous shoes to fill.
In 1993, the Music Department at the University of Pittsburgh published the
first issue of a periodical called the International Jazz Archives Journal (IJAJ). The
journal was created—like so many efforts promoting jazz at Pitt—through the tireless
initiative of Professor Nathan Davis. Professor Davis joined the university in 1969,
hired as part of a vibrant wave of African American studies scholarship sweeping
Jazz & Culture Volume 1 2018

© 2018 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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2 Note from the Editor Michael C. Heller
across American universities in the late 1960s. Despite being the lone jazz presence
on a faculty almost entirely made up of Western classical specialists, Davis single-
handedly developed a series of strikingly ambitious projects over a forty-year career.
In 1971, he launched the annual Pitt Jazz Seminar and Concert, which brought in
internationally renowned artists not only to perform but also to give lectures and
discuss their work. Later that decade, he founded the Sonny Rollins International
Jazz Archive (now the Pitt Jazz Collection), a repository to preserve material from the
annual seminar, as well as other manuscripts and materials. In 1974, he established an
International Jazz Hall of Fame, and he later convinced the university to showcase it
in the heavily trafficked lobby of its student union. The room remains there today,
complete with bronze plaques and a towering exhibit case filled with instruments
and artifacts.
All of these initiatives were created with a remarkable level of institutional
savvy. Davis cultivated a devoted roster of stakeholders, ranging from university
administrators, private funders, journalists, writers, and many, many musicians.
Concurrent to all of this, Davis offered a jazz history course that was consistently
one of the top enrolled classes at Pitt, combined undergraduate musicians with art-
ists from throughout the Pittsburgh region in his student big band, and mentored
several generations of graduate students working on jazz topics (including the great
pianist Geri Allen). Perhaps his crowning achievement took place in the late 2000s,
when the music department launched a doctoral program in jazz studies, the nation’s
only PhD program combining jazz performance and historical scholarship.
And, of course, in the midst of this dense web of activities, he also launched
the predecessor to this journal. He established the IJAJ with the goal of publishing
contributions by both musicians and cutting-edge researchers. As Davis wrote in the
introductory editorial of the first issue:
The idea of an International Jazz Archives Journal, conceived and administered
by active Jazz musicians who are both performers, lecturers, and research schol-
ars, is overwhelming. Regardless of the size of the task, it is an idea whose time
has come.1
The publication took its name not from an overt concern with archives but as
the publication arm of Pitt’s aforementioned International Jazz Archive. A number
of the pieces published in the early issues were transcriptions of lectures presented by
musicians as a part of the annual Pitt Jazz Seminar and Concert. Davis’s commitment
to showcasing jazz’s global influence would be another major theme. Assembling a
board of editors from Pittsburgh, Belgium, Ghana, and beyond, the journal regularly
featured articles chronicling jazz traditions from all corners of the globe (these pieces
were often printed in languages other than English, as well). Other contributions
were remarkably eclectic; it was not unusual to find full orchestral scores, poetry,

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Note from the Editor Michael C. Heller 3
research articles, short critical pieces, book or record reviews, autobiographical ru-
minations, or other types of writings. Where other academic journals might feature
three or four articles, the first issue of the IJAJ featured sixteen pieces of all lengths
and formats. Much of the printing, editing, and reproduction was done in-house
on the Music Department’s printers (some faculty members recall the smell of toner
wafting through the halls as the printers ran for days at a time). With no publisher
involved, distribution was handled through the mail, and the journal was available
to anyone who wished to purchase it at the low price of $15 per issue.
The IJAJ would go on to publish a total of twelve issues between 1993 and
2012, appearing somewhat erratically every few years. It ceased publication only
when Davis retired in 2013, a departure that led to a full-scale restructuring of the
jazz studies program. The process would culminate in the hiring of Geri Allen as the
new director of jazz studies in 2014. A year later, the department expanded its core
jazz faculty from one—where it had sat since Davis’s arrival—to three, hiring Aaron
Johnson and myself as new faculty members. Part of the goal behind these hires was
to maintain and expand upon the many initiatives that Davis had started, including
this publication.
In reviving the journal, we have taken several steps to update it for the cur-
rent landscape of jazz studies. The most conspicuous is, of course, the name change.
Since we wish to reflect a wide range of cutting-edge jazz scholarship (not merely the
archival or the international, though we continue to welcome such topics), a more
broad title seemed appropriate. By partnering with the University of Illinois Press,
the journal will enjoy wider distribution and will now be available in both print and
online editions. Not only will new issues appear, but all back issues of the IJAJ will
be uploaded and made available online for the first time. We have also implemented
a more rigorous double-blind peer-review process for scholarly articles in the journal,
ensuring that the research will be at the forefront of current scholarship.
At the same time, we have chosen to maintain many elements of the journal’s
legacy—both to honor Davis’s vision and because they continue to fill crucial gaps
in the landscape of jazz studies. The journal will continue to showcase jazz’s position
as an international art form. This theme is exemplified in this debut issue by Sarah
Politz’s meticulous research on brass band traditions in Benin, Siv Lie’s ethnographic
work on jazz manouche in France, and Sarah Town’s review of a recent book on
musical interactions between Cuba and the United States. Since the old journal
foregrounded the words and ideas of working musicians, we will include regular oral
histories and/or articles written by prominent artists, beginning here with Lie’s oral
history of guitarist Mandino Reinhardt. Finally, we will continue to feature works of
poetry in each issue in an effort to highlight the ways in which the music interacts
with other art forms. For our first issue, we feature several pieces by poet Chiyuma
Elliott, whose work draws upon jazz influences at both thematic and structural levels.

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4 Note from the Editor Michael C. Heller
Finally, we plan for the journal to maintain its dedication to exploring the
social, philosophical, and political resonances within the history of jazz music. We
begin with this issue’s opening article, a keynote talk by poet and theorist Fred
Moten, delivered at a recent conference about the role of experimental black arts in
the current political climate. Political themes, including issues related to gender and
race, come up in other pieces as well, including Eric Lewis’s examination of aesthetic
agency in the work of Jeanne Lee, and Christopher Wells’s close look at the recep-
tion of Paul Whiteman in the black press of the 1920s and 1930s. Our reviewers also
explore work on the subject, including Tamar Sella’s look at a compilation by the
author Greg Tate, Adam Zanolini’s take on a study of the Art Ensemble of Chicago,
and William Bares’s evaluation of a documentary about pianist Erroll Garner. In
all of these capacities, the journal seeks to maintain and develop the rich tradition
launched by the IJAJ so many decades ago.
◊ ◊ ◊
We conclude this introduction on a more somber note. Last summer, jazz lost
one of the greatest pianists the music has ever known. Geri Allen (June 12, 1957, to
June 27, 2017) was an incredible force, both on the bandstand and off. As Pitt’s direc-
tor of jazz studies, she was also the single most important supporter of this journal. At
the time of her passing, we had just finished selecting the pieces slated for inclusion
in this debut issue. In future issues, we plan on publishing more extended tributes
to Allen and her musical legacy.
If it wasn’t for Professor Allen, this relaunch never would have happened. She
joined the faculty at Pitt at the beginning of 2014, relocating her family from New
Jersey to become part of the Pittsburgh community. Though her tenure only lasted
three-and-a-half years before her untimely passing, the amount she was able to ac-
complish was simply astounding. In her very first semester, she organized a virtual
conference about pianist Mary Lou Williams. A few months later, she helped the
university acquire the massive manuscript archive of the legendary Pittsburgh-born
pianist Erroll Garner, developing a close and ongoing relationship with the Erroll
Garner Jazz Project (an organization that helped to support this relaunch). She de-
veloped strong ties with local organizations like the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and
the August Wilson Center and curated an exhibit at the Carnegie Museum about
Garner and photographer Teenie Harris. Allen helped organize a groundbreaking
residency with composer George Lewis, including a telematic concert connecting
musicians in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and the University of California, Irvine. She
programmed three incredible editions of the annual Pitt Jazz Seminar and Concert
and laid the groundwork for the 2017 edition as well (which was converted to a tribute
to her after her passing). Finally, she made tremendous steps toward resurrecting the

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Note from the Editor Michael C. Heller 5
editorial board for this journal, ensuring that the publication would relaunch this
year.
While many tributes have been written about Professor Allen’s musical prowess,
I had the unique privilege of working with her as a colleague, mentor, and fellow
educator. While her musical contributions will always come first, this perspective
allowed me to see another, less-public side of this incredible individual. Here, I’ll
make just two observations.
The first is that Geri was one of the most dedicated teachers I’ve ever witnessed.
Nearly every meeting I ever had with her began with a discussion about our stu-
dents. She was constantly seeking ways to get them more support, more guidance,
more instruction: “How is Irene doing? Is there any way we can get more support
for Billy and John? Have you met with Ben recently—how’s his research coming
along?” One of our undergraduates described how soon after he applied to Pitt, he
received a personal phone call from Geri asking about his musical goals and aspira-
tions (imagine being a seventeen-year-old high schooler and getting such a call!).
But a lot of her other work happened behind the scenes, in ways that the students
never even knew. And most meetings with Geri would close with her concern for
me as a junior colleague, “And how are YOU doing? Are things going OK? How’s
your family?” Coming from a giant of her stature, this level of care was so profoundly
inspiring. She didn’t just provide a model for how to make incredible music; she
provided a model for how to live.
My second observation is that Geri had a remarkable ability to see what you
were capable of before you saw it yourself. In doing so, she constantly brought out
the best in her colleagues, bandmates, and students. She would issue you a challenge
and then allow you the space and freedom to find the solution—a solution that she
always knew you were capable of. This made her a powerful leader in multiple settings.
She would put her faith in you, and then you would try your absolute damnedest
to not let her down.
This journal is an example of this amazing leadership. Geri set the table by
recontacting the board, but soon after I arrived, she asked if I would be willing to
serve as editor. I was initially nervous at the prospect, I won’t lie. I was a new faculty
member and young researcher, and it would be my first time in such a position. But
Geri trusted me more than I trusted myself. I’m proud of the result, which brought
skills out of me that I never knew were there. And I have done my damnedest not
to let her down in this either.
This debut issue is dedicated to her memory.
Notes
1. Nathan Davis, “Editorial,” International Jazz Archives Journal 1, no. 1 (1993): 1.

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A Resistant Previousness
(Back to Living Again)
Fred Moten
Editor’s Note: The following is a keynote lecture delivered at a conference titled “The
Sound of Resistance,” which took place at Columbia University on June 1, 2017.
Cosponsored by the Vision Festival and the Columbia Center for Jazz Studies, the
conference confronted the relationship between improvised music and social justice
movements, focusing on five themes:
1. The role of radical art in modern resistance movements

2. Musical responses to and resonances of Black Lives Matter
3. Improvised music’s long tradition of protest
4. International networks of artistic activism
5. Waging peace and cultivating shared humanity
Professor Moten’s talk is presented here with minimal alteration. A full video of the
day’s proceedings is available at https://youtu.be/cl7qi_HD1DQ.
◊ ◊ ◊
All I have are some questions, and I hope what I say can be heard like that. If it can’t be,
that’s my fault. I’ve learned so much from Ingrid Monson, and I’m thinking especially of
her book, Saying Something, and the way it makes it so clear that the cats who were really
saying something were always asking something. We listen to them and to one another;
ask questions. We don’t interrogate one another but ask questions with one another until
one and another fade into the scene that sent them looking in the first place. I’m writing
this to fade into that displacement, and even the declarative statements are questions,
which are meant to contribute to the making of the music. That’s all. That’s all I am.


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A Resistant Previousness Fred Moten 7
That’s all I got. There’s nothing to tell you other than I’m here to ask some questions with
you because that’s where we’re coming from, isn’t it? Isn’t that what we are—an open field
of caring, careful questioning?
◊ ◊ ◊
Musical Epigraphs
“I’m Gonna Live the Life I Sing About in My Song,” performed by Mahalia Jackson
(https://open.spotify.com/track/4UXdl9tJRwFvCOYdfAc8oV)1
“I Like to Live the Love,” performed by B. B. King

(https://open.spotify.com/track/3tshHHkRIslLCXS1CYMkkO)2
Maybe I won’t be so embarrassed today—though the embarrassment will have always

been a lot less than the honor—if instead of calling this a keynote we call it a call.
But we must remember that the fundamental truth of any call is that it is, and must
be, a response. And we also must recall that the call’s primary responsibility and
function is to leave time and space for, while also making necessary and possible, a
response, considering that the fundamental truth of any response is that it is, and
must be, a call. So, I’m gonna keep this short and, hopefully, sweet. Besides, can
there really be a keynote in, or even regarding, creative music? Shouldn’t the fate
of the keynote be its disappearance—not because it’s some tonal origin we need to
disavow but, rather, because it’s a derivation we can only claim by folding it into the
general embrace of the generative duress. Hopefully, this will ascend into an open
market, an unrestricted economy, of fours. No, it always already has.
For me, the music this conference proceeds from and precedes (as well as
the music of this conference itself, which has truly been what Dave Holland calls
a “conference of the birds,” which is the highest compliment I can give to all the
speakers who have gone before me, at speeds I can’t possibly match), is generative
duress, a métissage of message and massage, informative feel informing feel with the
force of the more than merely formal. Something is preserved in and by this pres-
sure—this bending and twisting and folding and rubbing—but, against the grain of
normative topology, what is preserved is not a place but displacement, a placelessness
that rejects both the comforts and brutalities of home, and homeland, by walking
gently on the earth and away from the world, in recognition of the intensity of our
every step and grasp and glance. The music is the already given upheaval of taking
care. This isn’t about culture so much as small, organic cultivation. It’s like we take
care of the songs that take care of us by changing them—just as they care for us in
changing us. Maybe it’s weirdly anthropomorphic to talk about songs as having these
capacities of care, but I tend to think that our capacity to care is something that is,

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8 A Resistant Previousness Fred Moten
in the end, way more than human. Anyway, Marvin Gaye, in a song called “Life Is
for Learning,” from an album called In Our Lifetime, once said, “Hey, did you know
some songs can corrupt your flesh to dust / The only songs that you should live are
songs that you can trust.” Are we gonna live the life we sing about in our song, like
Mahalia Jackson? Can we like to live the love we sing about in our song, like B. B.
King? Can we get back to living again?
These are questions concerning the turns of resistance. In asking them, I’m
trying to study and emulate the example of William Parker. I am particularly inter-
ested in, and very thankful for, the way he keeps turning back to Curtis Mayfield.
I want to take that (re)turn again with Mr. Parker so there’s a song I want you to
listen to, a song I’ve been listening to more than any other over the last twenty years.
It’s on Curtis Mayfield’s album, New World Order, from 1996—the one he recorded
flat on his back, singing two- and three-word phrases at a time, after the accident
that left him in a wheelchair and unable to play guitar. It’s called “Back to Living
Again.” I guess working on it was supposed to be a way for me to work through my
optimism disorder, which might seem inseparable from a nostalgia disorder. But
there’s something in it that probes, deeply, folding and unfolding flesh subject to
corruption, renewing that deep tissue Toni Morrison tells us Baby Suggs tells us to
love, whose monstrosity, whose miraculous ability to show, Hortense Spillers tells us
we must claim. Barely able to move, Mayfield moves us by way of a musical offering
of physical, or even occupational, therapy. Stop and listen, now, so you can see what
I mean: https://open.spotify.com/track/47G06GEnF4Ujd1lYCs0Eqd.3
“Go ’head, Mayfield.” And he did. And he does. “If there’s something bad you
don’t want to see / Keep on walking, and let it be,” he sings, while lying on his back.
Is he lying while lying on his back? Is he saying the proper response to the terribly,
and terror-driven, unbeautiful is to ignore it? What’s it mean for one barely able to
move to speak to us of movement in this way? If “keep on walking” means walk
away, perhaps it does so in resistance to the opposition of flight and fight, thereby
indexing a modality of response that is not primitive but advanced precisely in its
having anticipated where brutality touches down. We claim one monstrosity in
walking away from another. Deeper still, we are not the ones who walk away, even
as in Ursula K. Le Guin’s brilliant rendition of the refusal of all that has been given
insofar as it has all been taken from someone. When we walk away we walk away
from what wasn’t given; we even walk away from being ones—from the individu-
ation that is the core of the world’s disaster. Mayfield wasn’t one to walk away, but
Mayfield could go ’head.
New World Order was, they say, Mayfield’s last album, and because of that—and
because, they say, Mayfield passed away in 1999—you might sense that “Back to
Living Again” has something that can’t help but be called a kind of late workishness
to it. But if this is so, Mayfield’s song remains the same in being inseparable from

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his long-running insurgency. Some people want to say that late work reveals an
involuntary subordination of (innovative) virtuosity due to an erosion of technique
compensated for by a lyricism so highly concentrated as to approach aberrance. But
what if such aberrance sounds out an expansion of capacity? In that case, what’s at
stake is not compensation and the equivalence it implies, but a displacement that
moves by way of loss and augmentation. Mayfield turns out to be both more and less
than himself precisely insofar as what the music reveals is the mutual aid in which
he was involved. Someone was taking care of him while he was taking care of us. He
had backup. Somebody had his back while he was flat on it, as something more was
both allowed and required by a deficit it couldn’t match and couldn’t but exceed—a
kind of melancholic cooperation ensues when you can’t sustain a phrase, or a note,
either with your voice or with your hands, which were responsible for the playing
of what he called his real voice, his guitar. But there was sustenance in abundance
all along and up ahead. Indeed, one of the themes of this song—and “theme” here
indexes both its structure and its content—is that help is, somehow, simultaneously
here (as a mysterious, all-but-hidden presence) and on the way. Aretha’s serial arrival
is as surrep(e)titious as it is unmistakable—the slightest of timbral hints in the chorus
explode, in the end, into full-fledged queenliness, and she is giving us something we
can feel.
◊ ◊ ◊
I know the Vision Festival and this conference were planned, at least in part,
with the current political conjuncture in mind. It might even be fair to say that we
are gathered here in response to that conjuncture and in remembrance of what we’d
like to believe were happier days. But when we look back at the history of our ongo-
ing revolution we recognize that it’s also a history of the ideological, philosophical,
political, military, and carceral repression of the fact, as well as the feel, of its creative
force; just as when we look back at the last decade, we need to deal with the fact
that we’ve allowed others and ourselves to feel good about something we had only
the most tenuous right to feel good about. In celebrating the music, and in trying
to access once again its social energy, we must recall that it precedes, in its resistance,
every administration, and administration itself. Hardt and Negri would say, in this
regard, that resistance is prior to power, favoring Marx’s recognition that workplace
discipline responds to worker insurgency over Foucault’s refusal of the binary, linear
arrangement in which after follows before at an infinitesimal but unbridgeable dis-
tance. What we might say, having immersed ourselves in the music that infuses us,
and which continually prepares us to be open to “both/and” and wary of “either/
or,” is that resistance is both before and after power.
It’s not that the current monster is not a monster. It’s just that the current
monster is not exceptional. And even the question of his exception fades when we

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10 A Resistant Previousness Fred Moten
remember that he presides over a monstrosity that is all but completely irreducible
to him, as its own unexceptional antagonisms toward him shows. So that when we
decry the endangerment or denial of privileges in this monstrosity, we are obliged to
recognize that they come at the expense of the earth and of the vast majority of our
earthly companions. Our optimal condition would entail the chance truthfully to say
that while we study monstrosity, we ain’t studying the monster. This isn’t a call or an
excuse for quietism, or a cessation of movement, or a suspension of resistance. It is,
rather, an imperative to make our music louder and our movement more emphatic.
To live the life, and love, we sing about in our song, and to like it, is to engage in
what Khalil El’Zabar calls the “renaissance of the resistance,” following what W. E.
B. Du Bois calls “a renaissance of ethics,”4 but with this proviso: that if renaissance
means rebirth, which implies a birth, a moment of natality, that, itself, implies, or
at least suggests, some corollary moment of fatality, then we should appeal to it as if
life were detachable from both the natal and the fatal occasion. Recognition of our
capacity to do so comes to us by way of Nathaniel Mackey’s description of a sound-
induced image, or a visionary sound, he calls the “sexual cut.” This is what he sees
and hears:
A rickety bridge (sometimes a rickety boat) arching finer than a hair to touch
down on the sands at, say, Abidjan. Listening to Burning Spear the other night,
for example, I drifted off to where it seemed I was being towed into an aban-
doned harbor. I wasn’t exactly a boat but I felt my anchorlessness as a lack, as an
inured, eventually visible pit up from which I floated, looking down on what
debris looking into it left. By that time, though, I turned out to be a snake hiss-
ing, “You did it, you did it,” rattling and weeping waterless tears. Some such
flight (an insistent previousness evading each and every natal occasion) comes
close to what I mean by “cut.”5
What if the resistance that is before and after power has neither beginning nor
end? What if its insistent previousness were matched by a persistent subsequence?
Then resistance wouldn’t be about the current monster; it wouldn’t, in any case,
be directed toward him but toward monstrosity, whose double but asymmetrical
operation bears the absolute necessity of a preferential option for the miraculous
over the venal. In this regard, we are obliged, finally, to exceed even the bounds of
protest. The dispersal of the monstrosity we claim, over against the eradication of the
monstrosity we must abjure, veers from protest toward the general and generative
strike. The precedence of our resistance, given in our survival, given in living on, is
indexed in that sense of return that Mayfield offers.
But any sense of nostalgia that “back” would appear to sanction is disrupted
by the term “again,” whose superfluity, also merely apparent, turns out to bespeak
accompaniment, like some innumerably recessive Paul Gonsalves chorus propelled

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through the seams of diminuendo and crescendo by a blue and undercommon riff.
Again indicates a migrant curve, a countertopological swerve, an absolute refusal to
settle in and for the murderous consistencies of the administered world. Regarding
the general strike, Du Bois teaches us that we did it before, and under conditions
that made it far more unlikely then than it would be today. Let’s do it again, as
Curtis Mayfield would say; get back to living again and again and again, as Curtis
Mayfield would say. Let’s plan, as Curtis Mayfield and William Parker would say, to
stay believers. Let’s go ’head. Let’s keep walking. Let’s keep moving, even if it seems
we’re barely able to, in a general embrace of the spirit and the flesh of the general
strike, that generative duress, where we study how to refuse what has been refused.
Notes
1. Mahalia Jackson, “I’m Gonna Live the Life I Sing About in My Song” on The Essential
Mahalia Jackson, Columbia 512902 (2004), CD.
2. B. B. King, “I Like to Live the Love” on To Know You Is to Love You, ABC Records
ABCX-794 (1973), LP.
3. Curtis Mayfield, “Back to Living Again” on New World Order, Warner Brothers 9 46348–2
(1996), CD.
4. Kahil El’Zabar Ritual Trio, Renaissance of the Resistance, recorded November 29–30, 1993,
Delmark DE-466 (1994), CD; W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Renaissance of Ethics,” 1890, box
3, folder 57, W. E. B. Du Bois Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Yale University.
5. Nathaniel Mackey, Bedouin Hornbook, Callaloo Fiction Series 2 (Lexington: University
Press of Kentucky, 1986), 2:34.
Works Cited
Du Bois W. E. B. “The Renaissance of Ethics,” 1890. Box 3, folder 57. W. E. B. Du Bois Collec-
tion. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
El’Zabar, Kahil. Renaissance of the Resistance. Recorded November 29–30, 1993. Delmark DE-
466, CD (1994).
Jackson, Mahalia. The Essential Mahalia Jackson. Compilation. Columbia 512902, CD (2004).
King, B. B. To Know You Is to Love You. ABC Records ABCX-794, LP (1973).
Mackey, Nathaniel. Bedouin Hornbook. Callaloo Fiction Series 2. Lexington: University Press of
Kentucky, 1986.
Mayfield, Curtis. New World Order. Warner Brothers 9 46348–2, CD (1996).

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“We Don’t Want to Be Jazz-Jazz”:
Afro-Modernism, Jazz, and Brass
Band Music in Benin
Sarah Politz
Since the 1990s, brass bands from the Republic of Benin have been navigating a com-
plex relationship to the listening communities and cultural capital of Afro-diasporic
styles such as jazz. As their careers have developed, ensembles like the Gangbe and
Eyo’nle Brass Bands have been faced with the challenge of negotiating simultane-
ously for the status of their country’s cultural and musical heritage, for commercial
exposure in international markets, and for their own aesthetic agency as individuals
and as a group. Jazz, as style, creative practice, and professional network, has been
an important part of these negotiations, alongside equal emphases on Benin’s vodun
traditional musics and West African popular musics like Afrobeat. Solidifying their
jazz credentials does several different kinds of work for these ensembles. Most im-
portantly, it gives them a model for an Afro-modernism that valorizes their project of
developing Benin’s musical traditions on the same level with a music like jazz, along
with its accumulated cultural capital. Access to Afro-modernism is important, because
it offers musicians a way to advance and professionalize their craft while remaining
connected to Beninois traditions of music-making and their associated local identi-
ties. This Afro-modernism operates at the level of musicians’ practice—arranging,
composing, recording, and performing—as it represents a practical set of tools,
especially harmonic tools, that are compatible with Beninois melodies and rhythms.
It also works at the level of reception, where international audiences consciously or
unconsciously compare Benin’s brass band musicians to other iconic black artists,
many of them jazz masters. Over time, groups like Gangbe and Eyo’nle learn to
anticipate and capitalize on these expectations.


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“We Don’t Want to Be Jazz-Jazz” Sarah Politz 13
Operating under the sign of jazz also presents challenges of representation to

these brass bands as they seek to maintain aspects of their cultural difference and to
foreground Benin’s musical heritage. In a Beninois context, “jazz” belongs to the realm
of musique moderne, a category with locally inflected colonial and postindependence
histories of genre that describes all musics with foreign, non-African influence, rang-
ing from jazz to reggae, salsa, rock, and gospel. Indeed, some of the Gangbe and
Eyo’nle musicians have been intentional in pointing out that, while they and their
bandmates may have jazz training and sometimes operate in jazz networks, they do
not accept the label of “jazzman.” Band members frequently express this sentiment
with the phrase “on ne veut pas être jazz-jazz” (“we don’t want to be jazz-jazz”), a
reference to the category’s hegemonic pull. To them, jazz is still foreign, American,
and not fully their own, even if they would like to be included in that network while
maintaining their individuality. They are careful that, if they accept jazz as a label, it
is to the extent that it serves their creative and professional objectives and does not
erase their cultural particularity as African or as Beninois.
In showing how Gangbe’s and Eyo’nle’s projects participate in modern jazz
networks, I seek to open up the purview of jazz scholars to creative communities
outside of the United States, especially to those tied to the music’s West African
heritage. Studies of jazz in Africa have been limited to a few well-known examples
like Ghana, Ethiopia, and South Africa.1 Jazz musicians and critics sometimes think
that “African jazz” is a misnomer, since in Africa “jazz” can be used to describe any
musical group that incorporates foreign influence into its sound. But with this at-
titude often comes the assumption that African musicians, with a few exceptions,
have not attained the level of mastery necessary to participate in virtuosic styles like
bebop, which has become the universal measure of acceptability in conservatory jazz
programs. I have found that many musicians in Benin are particularly aware of this
bias and incorporate modern jazz harmony, bebop language, and a self-conscious blues
sensibility into their musical products in an effort to speak directly to an international
jazz audience and out of a desire to be perceived as “authentic” by that cosmopolitan
community. Beninois musicians’ negotiation of these audience expectations, and their
maintenance of key aspects of stylistic difference based in their own traditions, makes
their music a particularly illuminating case study for international jazz studies.
I begin with a focus on the role of jazz in Gangbe’s aesthetic and stylistic choices
during its early career in the 1990s and 2000s, particularly through the perspective of
arranger and trumpeter Sam “Jomion” Gnonlonfoun. Next, I provide some historical
context for concepts of moderne and traditionel in Benin in the colonial period and
through the musical “modernization” process that began in the 1970s with musicians
like Sagbohan Danialou, Yedenou Adjahoui, and Orchestre Poly-Rythmo, along with
the first Beninois brass bands, formed out of military police and church ensembles.

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14 “We Don’t Want to Be Jazz-Jazz” Sarah Politz
Returning to Gangbe, I examine how its production company, Contre-jour, marketed

the group in the world music market and the effects this had on the band’s musical
development and later internal divisions. I take a close look at a track from the band’s
2006 album Whendo, Sam Gnonlonfoun’s arrangement of “Segala,” a popular song
in the rhythm known as zenli de Oueme, which he juxtaposes with the Ellington-era
blues “Night Train.” Gnonlonfoun’s approach to jazz was primarily as a technical tool
for creating modern arrangements of traditional Beninois melodies, although it was
also an important component of Gangbe’s marketing. I go on to compare Gangbe’s
uses of jazz to those of the Eyo’nle Brass Band, which has deployed the sounds of
New Orleans trad-jazz while maintaining the typical fanfare2 bass and snare drum
in its percussion section. Eyo’nle’s original composition “Cargos Blues” reveals the
group’s differing relationship to jazz as a way of making its music accessible to its
target audiences in Europe while constructing an explicit narrative that places the
group within the Afro-modern diaspora. I suggest that over time, both Gangbe and
Eyo’nle learned how to use the sign and the practice of jazz to expand their profes-
sional networks and to add to their music’s signifying potential and cultural value
as a way of arguing musically for their inclusion in the global order as Afro-modern
artists.
Scholars have developed the concept of Afro-modernism in the context of
African American music in several ways. Many emphasize its characteristics as a so-
cial phenomenon over any specific aesthetic or stylistic qualities. For Jeffrey Magee,
Afro-modernism’s social context rests deeply in the constitution of African American
experience in the twentieth century, particularly in migrations from south to north
and in the hybrids of down home and cosmopolitan culture that resulted from Afri-
can American musicians’ project of adapting to urban life in the north, particularly
through the lens of the jazz or “bop” blues.3 In her discussion of the sociopolitical
significance of bebop, Cynthia Nielsen sees Afro-modernism as a process of con-
necting the continuity of African American expression to aspects of the social and
political environment of the mid-twentieth century, as well as a tool for resisting the
commodification of black music and the influence of capitalism more generally.4
Both Magee and Nielsen point back to the work of Guthrie Ramsey, who
uses “the concept of Afro-modernism to identify African American responses to the
experience of modernity,” which he associates with patterns of migration, changing
urban cultures, and the “conflicting discourses on art’s role in social change” that
surrounded the cultural environment of African America in the 1940s.5 Importantly
for my project, Ramsey uses the concept of Afro-modernism to point to musicians’
and intellectuals’ self-conscious moves to situate themselves within history, “com-
menting on the past and the future musically.”6 Ramsey also notes the tendency of
Afro-modern musical forms to collapse the usual generic distinctions between the
categories of “art” and “folk,” while teasing and pushing back against notions of the
“popular,”7 which has specific resonances for the case of musical genres in Benin, as

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I explore below. Drawing crucially on the work of Houston Baker, Ramsey points
to another important characteristic of Afro-modernism, the maintenance of a care-
ful hybridity demonstrating both “formal mastery” and fluency in “African musical
forms.”8
Ramsey’s invocation of Baker’s Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance9 is pro-
ductive for my purposes. While Baker does not use the term Afro-modernism, he
operates in closely adjacent territory through his framing of practices of consciously
centering and incorporating African and African American cultural forms in what
he calls “renaissancism.” He defines this practice primarily as a discursive strategy,
“a resonantly and continuously productive set of tactics, strategies, and syllables.”10
Baker refers, of course, to the Harlem Renaissance, but also beyond it to other similar
movements in other places and times. Baker’s iteration of this expansive renaissancism,
passed through the filter of Ramsey’s Afro-modernism, captures most closely my use
of the concept of Afro-modernism in my analysis of Gangbe’s and Eyo’nle’s music:
I see their aesthetic and professional choices, including those relating to their use of
African traditional materials and their invocations of jazz and other transnational
musics, as discursive strategies designed to achieve specific goals and move in spe-
cific ways through terrains and structures of power and control. As I show, some of
these structures—especially surrounding the definitions of musical genre that Benin
inherited from French colonialism and the control structures of the world music
industry in Europe and North America—could seem to preclude the musicians’
use of jazz as a tool for effecting real decolonial or anti-imperial change. However,
in line with Baker, I see their goals as much more practical in nature and designed
precisely for the power structures at hand, to accomplish something achievable within
them rather than escaping them or tearing them down. For Beninois musicians, this
means maintaining an ongoing, improvised relationship with the sign and practice
of jazz, both as a marker of their bid for membership in a community of diasporic
modernism and as a troubling indication of the hegemonic forces with which such
membership is inevitably intertwined.
If for Ramsey the concept of Afro-modernism describes “the responses of Af-
rican Americans to modernity,” I see Afro-modernism as a set of discursive strategies
that continental Africans and their descendants deploy in response to modernization,
decolonization, and globalization. In this framework, Beninois musicians’ relation-
ship to jazz and the blues is inverted; where for African Americans in the 1940s the
blues was the source of “down-home” authenticity and connection to southern roots
and African heritage, for Beninois musicians the blues is a foreign, distant ancestor,
beloved but formed through a set of problematic alliances.
Some might see, in the Afro-modernist discursive strategies of Beninois musi-
cians, similarities to ideas of Afropolitanism that have gained popularity in the past
decade in African studies; recent examples include the work of American ethnomu-
sicologist Ryan Skinner11 on popular music in Bamako, Mali, and in the scholarship

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of Cameroonian historian and political theorist Achille Mbembe, writing in French.12

In Mbembe’s conception, Afropolitanism is defined by a relational understanding of
identity, an awareness of “the presence of the elsewhere in the here and vice versa,”
that encompasses both spatial and temporal distance.13 Mbembe refers to this distance,
this difference, as “interval” (intervalle), a gap in both space and time.14 I argue that
Afropolitanism’s self-conscious “relativization of roots” and “capacity to recognize
oneself in the other,” as Mbembe writes,15 demonstrate a desire to situate a culturally
grounded self within a history that is humanist and culturally relative. This desire
expresses a family relationship to the goals of both Guthrie Ramsey’s Afro-modernism
and Houston Baker’s expansive, tactical “renaissancism.”
Afropolitanism has entered academic discourse relatively late in its short life
and exists in many forms and definitions. I find the Nigerian poet and literary scholar
Chielozona Eze’s discussion helpful in parsing the implications of these various
strands, and particularly his definition of an “Afropolitan” as “a human being on
the African continent or of African descent who has realized that her identity can
no longer be explained in purist, essentialist, and oppositional terms, or by refer-
ence only to Africa. Afropolitans claim that they are no longer just X as opposed
to Y; rather they are A and B and X.”16 In my experience, this accurately describes
the aesthetic of Gangbe’s and Eyo’nle’s musical work and way of being in the world,
particularly in their openness to the usefulness of all cultural tools, including African,
Afro-diasporic, and Euro-American materials, regardless of their provenance, but
with a deep sensitivity to their symbolic attachments, as they construct their “field
of meaningful sounds,” to use Baker’s phrase.17
However, for several reasons, I prefer Afro-modernism to Afropolitanism as
a framework for understanding the work of Benin’s jazz and brass band musicians.
My uneasiness with Afropolitanism, following Eze and others, derives from the
term’s persistent associations, at least at present, with a limited social class position
linked to the privilege and mobility of cultural elites moving back and forth between
European and North American metropoles and African metropolises. For many
scholars, Afropolitanism is a well-intentioned revision of the problematic concept of
cosmopolitanism as too invested in universality and insufficiently grounded in Afri-
can particularity. Yet Afropolitanism, too, has tended to fall closely into the colonial
typologies of cultural purity and contamination that underpin the mobility and elite
social class of Afropolitan individuals. Is this elite access to other cultures a neces-
sary component of Afropolitanism or merely an inflection in its short etymological
history?
Afropolitanism is evolving as an analytical term and remains unstable. While
they do define their creative outlook based on the combinatory “A and B and X” that
Eze offers, brass band musicians in Benin, like many musicians in Africa, do not gen-
erally fit the Afropolitan class profile in terms of elite education, family background,
financial means, or access to cultural capital, which makes me wary of characterizing

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them in this way. They would not conceive of themselves as “vernacular cosmo-
politans” or “working-class cosmopolitans,” because these formulations foreground
the language of social class and estrange them from their investment in la musique
moderne. Moreover, because their language focuses so closely on concepts of musical
“modernity” and the “modern,” I argue that the concept of Afro-modernity more
accurately applies to Gangbe’s and Eyo’nle’s creative projects, although its academic
heritage is more African American than African.
Benin’s Jazz and Brass Band Musicians
The musicians in Gangbe and Eyo’nle Brass Bands are based in Cotonou and Porto
Novo, Benin’s twin capitals, situated an hour apart via zemi-jahn motorcycle taxi
on the southern coast, one the economic center and the other the seat of govern-
ment. The musicians I worked with belong to a “community of practice,” which is
distinct from that of pop and rock musicians in Cotonou in a number of ways. They
have a significant amount of musical training, on brass instruments, concert band
percussion, and in music theory and solfege, received from relatives in military or
police orchestras or from their own participation in church-centered brass bands or
fanfares. Several have engaged in short- or long-term study of jazz improvisation,
composition, and music theory at institutions in France, Canada, or other parts of
West Africa, such as Niger and Cote d’Ivoire. They speak fluent French and, depend-
ing on where they grew up, several local languages, including Fon, Gun, Yoruba,
Adja, and/or Mahi. Intellectual and philosophical debate is a favorite activity, which
meant that over time my questions joined in broader intellectual conversations that
the musicians were already engaged in among themselves.
Most of these musicians grew up in Christian communities, participating in
music at one of several independent African churches such as Celestial Christianity or
Cherubim and Seraphim. A few grew up in vodun communities and later converted
to Christianity. In pursuit of the projects in the genre they describe as tradi-moderne
music, many of these musicians have undertaken systematic research into traditional
vodun religious music, the source of contemporary rhythmic styles employed in
independent churches and brass bands. Their aspirations are mostly international,
as in Benin audiences are appreciative but small, and engagements are low paying.
The format of the African brass band—a widely known and popular instrumenta-
tion within the global music industry—provides the most abundant opportunities
for travel, with groups like Gangbe and Eyo’nle making regular appearances on the
European summer festival circuit.
The genesis of the Gangbe Brass Band took place in an environment of diasporic
encounter. In 1993, three years after the opening of Benin’s economy18 and the year
of the inaugural Fête de Vodun at Ouidah,19 the Rebirth Brass Band of New Orleans
made a visit to Cotonou and offered a master class at the American Cultural Center.

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The group encountered a young group of musicians who called themselves the Sigale
Brass Band, friends who had met playing together in the Cherubim and Seraphim
church fanfare Imole Christi in Cotonou. They would later become the Gangbe Brass
Band. Among them were trumpeter and arranger Sam Gnonlonfoun and his brother
Jean on lead percussion, the trombone and baritone horn player James Vodounnon,
saxophonist and bandleader Alfred Quenum, and trumpeter Athanase Dehoumon.
Benoit Avihoue and Joseph Houessou filled out the percussion section on bass drum
and snare drum, and Aristide Agondanou and Willy Benni joined the trumpets.
While Quenum led the band, Gnonlonfoun was the musical director. He had
already been playing with the group Black Santiago for about four years before joining
Gangbe and had the most experience in jazz among the group’s members. After many
years spent playing in the fanfare Imole Christi, Gnonlonfoun began studying with
the trumpeter Ignace de Souza (1937–87) in the 1980s. De Souza, Black Santiago’s
founder, had a collection of Louis Armstrong cassettes that he had been learning by
ear after meeting Armstrong in Ghana in 1956, and he shared them with the young
Gnonlonfoun, who fell in love with Armstrong’s improvisations on harmonically
nuanced pieces like “Georgia on My Mind,” “Moon River,” and “What a Wonderful
World.” When de Souza passed away in the late 1980s, Gnonlonfoun was invited
to join Black Santiago on trumpet, while the drummer Baola Agonglo became the
group’s musical director. As Gnonlonfoun recounted, it was in working with Black
Santiago and transcribing Armstrong’s solos that he began to understand how to
move from one tonality to another, and, moreover, that this harmonic flexibility
might be the tool he needed to create modern arrangements of traditional Beninois
song styles:
When I joined [Black Santiago], I was listening to a lot of music, Louis Arm-
strong and fanfares too. I saw that there were notes that I didn’t understand. It’s
not do, it’s not re, but it’s in-between do and re; what note is that? And I started
curiously, curiously. . . . That’s when I understood that jazz could really help
me. You know, our music, [Abomean zenli singer] Alekpehanhou, his way of
singing, those notes, it’s thanks to jazz that I could decipher [déchiffrer] those
notes. . . . The way the traditional singers change scales, like Alekpehanhou
and [Porto Novian masse gohoun singer Yedenou] Adjahoui. That’s what was ex-
ported to the United States [with slavery]. And the Americans worked on it and
developed jazz. And I said, wow. When I started to copy their pieces, with the
real notes [in fixed pitches], I said, there. I started to learn how to write parts,
and I said, that’s the thing.20
During Gangbe’s early years as Sigale Brass Band, the musicians mostly saw
each other when they came together to back established stars like Sagbohan Danialou,
Stan Tohon, and Gnonnas Pedro. Some still held day jobs, like Dehoumon, who
worked for the railroad. When the Sigale members played for Rebirth at a master

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class during their stay in Cotonou, the Rebirth musicians were impressed with Si-
gale’s covers of funk and Afrobeat tunes and their jazz arrangements of popular songs
from Benin. The New Orleanians made one suggestion, however: that the group
exchange their military-style bass drum and snare drum—staples of Beninois funeral
fanfare ensembles and brass bands across the world—for local percussion like the
clay kpezin, commonly used in styles like zenli and masse gohoun, to give the group
a uniquely “Beninois” sound. In other words, a strong impetus for Gangbe’s move to
emphasize Beninois particularity came from the African diaspora in America. Even
more specifically, it came from New Orleans, a city, it bears mentioning, with its
own history of Afro-diasporic connections (to Cuba, Haiti, and Africa) and a unique
relationship with identity marketing. This began Gangbe’s long journey of joining
Beninois traditions, both colonial and precolonial, with those of the African diaspora
and the wider musical world, while allowing each to maintain its individuality.
Gangbe’s members began the project of researching local rhythms to present
to the international market in the brass band format. To them, the concept of a
brass band was different from a fanfare, which only played locally for funerals and
other functions. A brass band, on the other hand, was headed for the international
market. Gangbe’s first task was to distinguish itself from the locally oriented fanfares
by producing more advanced arrangements and introducing more jazz improvisation.
James Vodounnon, who now plays sousaphone, recalled:
So at the beginning, the goal was to distinguish ourselves from the funeral
fanfares. Because there was a lot of that . . . from the Garde d’Honneur de la
Gendarmerie, of which [trombonist Martial’s] dad was the head at one time.
So there were fanfares like that, shows for weddings, funerals, celebratory oc-
casions. So we really wanted to set ourselves apart from that, not to look like a
wedding band. And we started out playing instruments like them, snare drum
and bass drum, but it wasn’t the same style. We already wanted to play a little
like the real brass bands that did covers [reprises]. . . . We had things like that,
funk covers . . . jazz standards. It’s things like that that we covered, but in our
way. So over the course of years, we said, we can already start to work on songs
from chez nous. So we started introducing [Beninois] popular songs.21
Dehoumon explained that, on their first two albums, Gangbe members were
particularly concerned about their reception with the local audience in Benin, so
they recorded more populaire songs that are well known,22 for example “Alladanou”
and “Ajaka” on Togbé (2001) and “Segala” on Whendo (2004), the latter of which I
analyze below. Why populaire? Dehoumon said, “To convince [the local audience]
that starting with what exists, we could show something which had never existed.”
Gangbe’s early emphasis on popular songs is similar to a jazz musician starting a set
with a standard, to set the table, to establish aesthetic ground rules and credentials in
the tradition before offering any original songs. On its more recent albums, like Assiko!

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(2010) and Go Slow to Lagos (2015), the group has recorded more “compositions,” or
original songs for which they have written the melodies, lyrics, and arrangements.
Dehoumon’s comment reveals much about the group’s approach to its tradi-moderne
aesthetic, in which it balances originality and interests in jazz—la musique moderne,
generally speaking—with popular songs (chansons populaires) and styles from Benin’s
musical traditions. Some historical background is necessary to understand the local
genealogies of these musical genre and style terms.
Histories of Style and Genre in Benin
Definitions of musical genre in southern Benin in the 1990s and 2000s—populaire,

traditionel, sacré, and moderne—grew out of the country’s pluralist cultural envi-
ronment, with its complex divisions of religion, ethnicity, and social class. Many of
these divisions were inherited from colonialism and missionization in the first half
of the twentieth century and further inflected by Marxism in the 1970s and ’80s and
economic liberalism since the 1990s. Genre categories among musicians in southern
Benin revolve mostly around the binary categories of traditionel and moderne, which
appear to fall neatly into colonial systems of social control based on class.
The French divided the Dahomeans,23 through religion and education, into
social classes that had not existed before colonization: the evolué and the indigène.
Teachers and administrators encouraged the elites to see themselves as separate from
the “native” population, occupying a privileged place at the vanguard of Africa’s
cultural evolution. Thus the population was divided by language, by education, by
religious worship, by socialization, and by music and dance as well. By keeping the
categories of European and African, elite and vernacular, rigidly separate, the admin-
istration throughout the French colonies sought to control the colonized populations
and prevent them from obtaining the numbers or the information necessary to orga-
nize resistance. The effects this had on the development of music were profound but
would take some time to become apparent. The colonial regime worked in a tense
partnership with the Catholic church to provide the civilizing education so neces-
sary to creating modern subjects, requiring them to leave behind a negative social
class stigma attached to practicing vodun and speaking local languages. A dominant
ideology in French colonization centered around the constructed purity of African
traditional cultures, following from France’s romantic vision of its own provinces’
pure regional heritages.24 Cultures should remain separate and untainted, according
to early French colonial ideology; it was assumed that French culture was superior
and offered Africans a chance to modernize. The research of colonial ethnographers
also affected policy in the colonies, particularly in its role in promoting a particular
version of a constructed African cultural authenticity.25
Some Dahomeans found recourse in the creation of independent African
churches beginning in the 1920s, which recentered traditional musical and liturgical

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practices along with a focus on healing, material prosperity, and individual revelation.
Revolts and the beginnings of an active leftist nationalist movement during the 1930s
were cut short by the outbreak of World War II, when Dahomey supported France
against the Nazis.26 After the war, France shifted its colonial policy to a phase of
so-called development, although Dahomey remained underdeveloped compared to
colonies with greater natural resources and continued to advocate for its indepen-
dence. Dahomey became independent in 1960.
Independence gave people in Dahomey-Benin an opportunity to reenvision
their relationships to traditions of music and spirituality and to the wider world.
The development of the musique moderne scene took place in Cotonou and Porto
Novo after independence, when it was mostly focused on sounds from outside of
Benin, from the Americas and other parts of Africa. The modernisation of traditional
repertoires like kaka, tchinkoume, masse gohoun, and “sato” by musicians like Sag-
bohan Danialou, Yedenou Adjahoui, and Orchestre Poly-Rythmo starting in the
mid-1970s gave them opportunities to re-create, reimagine, and curate their coun-
try’s history and culture, especially around the representation of vodun practice and
performance. These processes had intense political resonances in the second half of
the twentieth century due to heightened suppression of religious practice under the
Marxist-Leninist administration from 1974–90 and the renewed interest in traditional
practices as heritage commodities in the postsocialist period after 1990.
It was, ironically, the communist administration of General Kerekou that was
responsible for laying the groundwork for the Beninois brass band tradition. When he
took power in 1972, the new government invested heavily in the Orchestre National
de la Gendarmerie (which recorded as les Volcans de la Capitale) in Porto Novo. The
administration originally requested a military fanfare, but when the gendarmes learned
that the Volcans could play la musique moderne, modern guitar and horn-based dance
music, they bought the group a whole new set of equipment. The conductor, flut-
ist, and trombonist Henri Ahouandjinou (1943–2005), who trained in the Certificat
d’Aptitude Professionel vocational music program in France, was the first director
of the gendarmerie orchestra, beginning around 1972.27 Later, when the gendarmerie
needed brass players in the 1980s, le père Ahouandjinou began recruiting his sons,
training some eight of them on trombone, trumpet, and baritone horn and in music
theory. These brass players later formed the core of several of the most prominent of
Benin’s jazz and brass bands in the 1990s and 2000s: Gangbe Brass Band (Magloire
and Martial), Eyo’nle Brass Band (Rock, Jean, and Chretien), and Viviola (Aaron,
Jeremie, Magloire, and Didier, formerly known as Togni Music Concept).
Martial, the eldest son, considers the gendarmerie to have been Benin’s first
fanfare, or brass band, followed soon after by a wave of new bands in Porto Novo’s
religious institutions. These groups appeared first in the Protestant church Atinkame,
then in the Celeste church at their Porto Novian paroisse mère (mother parish), and
finally in the Cherubim and Seraphim church, with the fanfare Imole Christi. This

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last group was the band that later trained many of Gangbe’s past and present mem-
bers, such as trumpeter Sam Gnonlonfoun, sousaphonist James Vodounnon, and
saxophonist Lucien Gbaguidi, in the 1980s. These bands shared the responsibilities
of playing for the wide variety of weddings, funerals, and baptisms that took place,
playing a combination of hymns and popular songs. Since the 1970s, these traditional
fanfares have become ubiquitous throughout southern Benin on any given weekend,
and it is difficult to spend time in any city or village without hearing the fanfares
processing along any major route, calling listeners out of their homes to join in.
When Benin’s economy opened in 1990 and the country transitioned to democracy,
this created the opening for some of these brass bands to market themselves and
their tradi-moderne projects internationally.
Defining Genre: The Makings of the Tradi-Moderne
Musicians’ concepts of le traditionel or la tradition, when referring to performance

practices, are discursively stable, perhaps even rigid, when compared to the diversity
of practices that these terms cover. Such genres are defined at the most fundamental
level by their instrumentation, usually hun—typically a lead hundaxo and two small
support drums, hunvi—gan (bells), and assan (rattles), and certain styles of vocal
delivery, especially praise singing, social commentary, pentatonicism, and nasal tonal
quality executed in the poetic, proverbial registers of the Fon, Gun, Yoruba, Mina,
or Mahi language.28 Yet the primary marker of differences between genres remains
performance context, over and above any particular formal characteristics. The perfor-
mance of traditional repertoires usually takes place in a ceremonial context, whether
for vodun rituals or for life ceremonies such as baptisms, weddings, and funerals.
It may be recorded and broadcast on television or radio, but it is seldom presented
in a concert setting.
The category of traditionel music is usually separated into the sacré and the
populaire, although many genres once performed in the sacré contexts of royal
courts, secret societies, or vodun temples have, over the course of the twentieth
century, moved into the populaire realm of funerals and other celebrations. Such
crossover genres include kaka for the zangbeto masked spirits in Porto Novo, agbehun
for the egungun masks in Ouidah (elsewhere known as gbon), and agbotchebou for
the vodun spirit Sakpata in Abomey.29 These sacré-traditionel repertoires can also
be found in the liturgies of Afro-Christian churches like l’Église de Christianisme
Céleste and les Cherubim et Seraphim, where many of Gangbe’s and Eyo’nle’s mem-
bers learned to play music.30 Here the populaire, the sacré, and even the moderne
coexist, as brass bands and choirs interpret a mix of vodun-derived styles, highlife,
salsa, and gospel.
Musicians challenge generic distinctions when they take vodun styles out of
the temple (sorti du couvent) to populariser, moderniser, or developper them, as innova-

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tors describe various aspects of the process.31 This was a common practice, especially
after the 1970s, when vodun performance was being suppressed by the communist
administration and performers sought out new consumer patrons for support. One
example is the case of kaka, the repertoire for the zangbeto that Sagbohan Danialou
has “modernized.” In this case, Sagbohan engaged in both the popularisation (read:
secularization, brought out of the couvent) and modernisation (adaptation for drum
set, horns, and amplified bass and guitar) of kaka.
Gangbe and Eyo’nle have adapted many sacré styles, including agbotchebou,
agbehun, and kaka, for new instrumentation and sometimes in original compositions.
This is the case with Sam Gnonlonfoun’s arrangement of “Segala” in the style of zenli
de Oueme, a style of the Porto Novian royal court that is now heard ubiquitously at
funerals and popular celebrations. I analyze this song below. The work falls into the
category of tradi-moderne: “feet in the tradition, head in the modern,” as Eyo’nle’s
sousaphonist Rock Ahouandjinou put it.32 There is a lot to say about this formulation.
For starters, in terms of possible resonances with Cartesian body-mind dualism, the
lower body being associated with dance and direct experience and the head with rational
thought, we might take the analysis as an inheritance from European philosophy. But
this is not enough. The feet play an important role in dance for the vodun, where the
steps, and indeed the footwork, of vodunsi initiates convey secret codes and identifying
information about the particular vodun the vodunsi is incarnating. So to have one’s
“feet in the tradition” is to remain rooted in the steps, the codes and the meanings of
these traditions, and the continuity of traditional knowledge. To continue to ground
this interpretation in tradition, Fon cosmology associates the head with se, or destiny,33
and diviners say that se sits on someone’s head, much in the manner of a mask sitting
on the one who wears it, driving or possessing him or her. So to have one’s “head in
the modern” suggests a linking of the modern with a traditional conception of destiny
and deeply grounded identity.34 Tradi-moderne projects thus require musicians to retain
fully embodied independence of limbs, as the feet trace their way through the familiar
steps of tradition and the head reaches out for what is coming next.
In Benin, the category of the populaire is always also necessarily traditionel
and is constructed most prominently not against the classical, as it is in the United
States, but against the reserved repertory of the sacré. La musique populaire du Benin
implies that it is, by default, Afro-traditional. After that there are only two kinds of
musique traditionelle: sacré and populaire. Thus the Beninois category of musique
populaire, here counterintuitively, does not include the works of Angélique Kidjo,
James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Fela Kuti, Ella Fitzgerald, Manu Dibango, Count Basie,
John Coltrane, Bob Marley, Africando, or any other rock, pop, or jazz, as it would
in the typologies of the Anglophone world.35 That would be musique moderne.
The moderne music scene in Benin includes a huge variety of genres, many
falling under the category of variété (variety), including salsa, Congo music, Afrobeat,
highlife, pop, hip-hop, rock, reggae, gospel, and jazz. Anyone engaged in “world

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music” abroad would be considered to be involved in the moderne by default. The

chief marker of the moderne as a genre in Benin is foreign, usually Western, influence,
especially in the form of amplified instruments, the drum set, and horns. Brass bands
might be considered to fall under the umbrella of musique moderne; indeed some
producers in France and Benin have expressed surprise that I would be interested
in studying an “imported music,” although the particular style of brass band music
played in Benin is a style unto itself. In a catch-22, some elite Beninois also expressed
distaste when they learned I was interested in village drumming, traditional singers,
and funeral-style fanfares, explaining to me that these people had no training in
music, were not disciplined in their practice, and were not worthy of study. In this
way, the local consumer class rejects both projects, those which sound too traditionel
and those which sound too moderne.
The performance contexts for la musique moderne are various, including small,
elite clubs and bars in Cotonou’s expat neighborhood of Haie Vive,36 which feature
salsa, reggae, and jazz, and large stadium concerts like those at Stade de l’Amitié
that program pop, gospel, and hip-hop artists (artistes, a category of musician that
signals status in the music business, obtained through making recordings and music
videos, performing at home and abroad, and developing a public celebrity persona).
The Centre Culturel Français, operated on the grounds of the French Embassy in
Cotonou, is one of the biggest patrons of musique moderne in Benin, programming
many Benin artists, as well as African musicians from elsewhere in Francophone
Africa and France, throughout the year. It is common to find traditional popular
or sacred musicians, especially drummers and percussionists, crossing over to the
modern scene or working both sides of the traditional-modern divide.
Understanding these histories of genre in Benin, coming out of colonialism,
Marxism, and neoliberalism, is important for contextualizing Gangbe’s and Eyo’nle’s
navigation of genre distinctions like “jazz” and “world music” in Europe. Because of
Benin’s locally inflected histories of colonialism, followed by independence, com-
munist isolationism, and neoliberal economics, jazz carries particular associations
entangled with the world of musique moderne that create a mixed set of associations
for Beninois musicians, ranging from suspicion of its ties to foreign cultural influ-
ence to the celebration of its links to the African diaspora and its compatibility with
traditional songs, which enable more creative arrangements and stylistic mixing.
Gangbe and Contre-jour
Gangbe entered the European world music scene with the help of the Belgian
production company Contre-jour, led by the veteran producers Michel de Bock
and his wife, Genevieve Bruyndonckx. After Gangbe was invited to play at a
festival in Mali in 1997, the group caught the attention of a French band called
L’Ojo, who recorded a demo for the group in Bamako and brought it to Contre-

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jour.37 When Contre-jour offered to record Gangbe’s first album, the musicians
decided to devote themselves to the group full time; Dehoumon quit his job at the
railroad and started to take management classes. Gangbe also added two virtuosic
improvisers to their group in 1998: trombonist Martial and trumpeter Magloire,
the eldest sons of Henri Ahouandjinou. The pair had just returned to Benin after
spending six years studying jazz at the Centre de Formation et de Promotion
Musicale in Niamey, Niger, a now-lapsed project of the European Development
Fund, where they studied jazz and later taught piano, music theory, and trumpet.
The addition of the Ahouandjinou brothers, combined with Sam Gnonlonfoun’s
adventurous horn and vocal arrangements and his brother Jean’s virtuosity on
lead percussion, made for a particularly potent and mutually complimentary
combination of talents.
Gangbe released their first CD Togbé (Ancestors) in 2001 with Contre-jour.38
Contre-jour sent Daniel Bourin, an engineer who had worked with the renowned
Cameroonian bassist Richard Bona, to Cotonou to record the album. Gangbe’s
most traditionally rooted album, Togbé, is a rich mix of sounds representing differ-
ent aspects of southern Benin’s unique soundscape, with a particular emphasis on
the city of Porto Novo. It is one of the most acoustic sounding and least produced
of Gangbe’s releases. Joy erupts from several of the tracks, especially the Yoruba gbon
rhythms of “Ema Dja” (Thank You) and the kaka track “Biliguede,” a song for the
zangbeto masked spirits that guard Porto Novo at night.39 Other tracks summon
the ancestral traditions of the precolonial kingdoms of Abomey and Porto Novo,
like on “Ajaka,” a zenli song from the Abomean court, and “Alladanou,” which is
an adjogan song taken from the Porto Novian kingdom set against atmospheric
trumpet improvisations and thick horn voicings.
“Gangbe” means the sound/voice/call [gbe] of iron [gan]. Gan (also gankeke,
gankogui) is the iron bell that keeps time in Fon-Adja-Ewe musics. In explaining
the meaning of their name, Gangbé’s members frequently cite the proverb, cited
in the liner notes to Togbé, which says gan jayí mo nɔ gbɛ gbè (the sound/voice
(gbe) of the gan cannot stay silent), referring to the gan’s obligation, once struck,
to resound, to produce gbe—voice or resonance.40
At this point in their career in the early 2000s, Gangbe’s members were looking
to Contre-jour for direction about how to market their album and their live concerts.
Contre-jour is primarily a world music production company and represents several
other popular African artists, including Habib Koite of Mali and Dobet Gnahore of
Cote d’Ivoire. As Martial Ahouandjinou observed more recently:
There was always this problem when we were with [Contre-jour]: Do you want to
be jazz, or do you want to be for the whole audience? They always asked this ques-
tion. . . . If we want to be jazz, they are not the right people for us. So, if we want
to be world music, there they can try to make a path for us. So, as Africans, not

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having, which is to say, in order to have access to the world market, we absolutely
had to go through those who were already in a wide network. To get into this net-
work, it’s not easy.41
So while jazz was the primary school of training for Gangbe musicians like
Martial and Magloire Ahouandjinou and Sam Gnonlonfoun, Contre-jour maintained
that world music audiences and festivals offered the band the most opportunities. This
allowed the band to tour widely and to capitalize on their novelty and difference as
the first African brass band of its kind to travel internationally; however, this move
early on limited the band’s access to the (smaller) jazz market’s prestige, modernist
art music framework, and community of practice, while also placing restrictions on
the band’s creative freedom, as started to become clear later in the 2000s.
Following Gangbe’s 2002 tour, Contre-jour brought them to Belgium to record
their second album, Whendo (Roots).42 Considered by most fans and critics to be
the band’s strongest album, Whendo takes listeners on a musical tour of the West
African coast extending out from Porto Novo, making connections to different styles
of popular music from neighboring countries, with a strong Yoruba influence, and
to New Orleans and the blues as well. But the conditions of the album’s produc-
tion revealed some telling tensions. After observing how audiences had responded
to the band’s performance, Contre-jour requested that the album focus on more
easily danceable beats. In response, Gangbe introduced the calabash in the percus-
sion section to provide a clea—though still acoustic—“four-on-the-floor” beat for
Western listeners. This created conflict with the artistic sensibilities of arranger Sam
Gnonlonfoun, whose adventurous modern jazz arrangements had been the focus
of the first album. He remained committed to keeping a more flexible harmonic
orientation in his arrangements on Whendo, even if the rhythms were more dance
focused and incorporated the calabash, an instrument, he pointed out, that came
from Mali and not Benin.43 Jean Gnonlonfoun noted that on this album he learned
how to alter his lead drum phrases, which repeat characteristic linguistic phrases, so
that they would fit the four-bar hypermeter that the dance rhythm imposed. In these
cases, the semantic meaning of the lead patterns is lost, and he linked the patterns
to the movements of the dancers in the band and in the audience instead.44
The album is beautifully engineered, a masterful balance of Gangbe and
Contre-jour’s competing priorities. Contre-jour chose an “intern,” Renaud Carton,
as sound engineer, who quickly found rapport with the band. “With him, maybe
because they told us he was an intern, we had an easier time communicating with
him,” said Martial Ahouandjinou. “He accepted our ideas. He allowed us to record
live in a garden, so we recorded some pieces like that. . . . With [Renaud], we had
the best recording experience.”45
Whendo is an exciting album to listen to, with a much clearer mix than Togbé.
The presence of Martial and Magloire Ahouandjinou yielded more improvised so-

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los, giving Sam Gnonlonfoun a great deal of flexibility in his arrangements, which
are thickly orchestrated and harmonically adventurous. The trumpeters Willy and
Aristide Agonadou were no longer in the group at this point. The album continues
Togbé’s project of tapping into Porto Novo’s rhythmic traditions, here represented
in the masse gohun of “Yemonoho,” borrowing again from the work of Yedenou
Adjahoui; the djegbe of “Jesu Ohun,” a vocal feature for Crispin; and the awangbahun
of “Gbedji,” which is the characteristic rhythm of the Celeste Church, known as “the
rhythm of (spiritual) battle,” and was reportedly revealed by divine revelation to the
church’s founder Joseph Oshoffa.
But an additional stylistic trend emerges in discussing and listening to the
album with Gangbe’s members. On Whendo, the band starts to place Porto Novo in
broader regional and diasporic contexts, carrying the listener up and down Benin’s
coast to Yoruba cultural rhythms like gbon, ubiquitous in Ouidah but also in Nigeria’s
popular music culture; akpala, the Nigerian highlife that is an ingredient in Afrobeat;
and agbadja, the rhythm of the fishermen in Benin’s western Mono region. The
opening track, “Noubioto,” is in gbon style, Jean Gnonlonfoun’s specialty as a lead
drummer and initiate for the egungun. Akpala tracks include “Johodo” and “Glessi,”
while an Afrobeat tribute track is dedicated to Fela Kuti in the piece “Remember
Fela,” an arrangement of Kuti’s “Colonial Mentality.”
Diasporic signifiers carry the listener across the Atlantic as well. “Oblemou”
sets a popular agbadja song for brass, drawing out the continuities between this style
from the Mono region and pan-African salsa. In a tour de force of cultural signifiers,
“Segala” takes a popular song of the Abomean court describing the triumphs of the
Amazon female warriors over the Yoruba empire of Oyo and places it over Porto
Novo’s own specific style of zenli known as zenli de Oueme. Like a jazz head, the
court song bookends a blues solo section based on the Canadian jazz pianist Oscar
Petersen’s version of the piece “Night Train,”46 which Sam Gnonlonfoun learned
from a German volunteer who briefly led a big band in Cotonou in the 1990s (see
below for analysis).
These expansions in Gangbe’s listening and imagining outline a sonic, rhyth-
mic, and cultural path across Benin’s southern coast and point beyond it, out to the
west and the east, and across the Atlantic. Gangbe clearly locates Whendo’s “roots”
not just in Porto Novo and Abomey’s royal and church styles, but in Yoruba sacred
traditions for the egungun, Yoruba popular traditions like akpala and Afrobeat, and
in the music of the African diaspora, from salsa to the blues, the sounds of ances-
tors long departed. In this album, Gangbe is starting to think about its music, and
to hear it and perform it, not just through local histories, but increasingly through
regional and diasporic connections. These roots move and map both down and deeper
into the past and the diaspora and out rhizomatically, tracing present, intra-African
networks of identity, solidarity, and sound.

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“Segala”
In turning my attention to a close listening of a Gangbe Brass Band piece, I will show
how arranger Sam Gnonlonfoun uses jazz as a tool to modernize a traditional war
song as a blues arrangement. Around two-thirds of the way through Whendo, “Segala”
comes on, and it usually catches listeners’ attention for one of several reasons. Jazz
fans will experience the uncanny effect of the blues head “Night Train” appearing
within the first minute of the track, followed by several choruses of virtuosic trumpet
and trombone solos. The soloists, engaging all the slurs and slides typical of classic
blues expressivity and staying firmly inside the chord changes, constantly play back
and forth with the 12/8 time’s divisions in twos and threes, while the percussion and
tuba hold down a groove that seems to work both ways. “Night Train,” was first
attributed to Duke Ellington’s tenor saxophonist Jimmy Forrest, who recorded it
with the band in 1946 as “Happy Go Lucky Local”47 and later had a number-one
R&B hit with it in 1951.48
“I was studying [the traditional song] ‘Segala,’ and I realized it had a lot in
common with the blues,” said Gnonlonfoun.49 Indeed, the traditional song’s repeated
motif outlining a G-minor triad does seem like it might have some kinship with
blues melodies, but its five-measure phrase structure means that it doesn’t fit over a
twelve-measure form, and it would be difficult to determine where certain key chord
changes should happen. Instead, Gnonlonfoun opts to keep this opening and closing
song section modal, going back and forth between C minor and an overarching G
Dorian sound, as outlined by the tuba and brass parts. For the blues section, it goes
into the related key of B-flat major.
The subject of the blues evokes much discussion among Gangbe’s members,
who relate it to the African diaspora, and to the mixing of African cultures as peoples
have come into conflict and moved from one place to another. For example, sousa-
phonist James Vodounnon said:
There is already this connection. Even in music in general, like the blues, there
is music like that sung by the vodunsi [vodun initiates] in Africa. So it already
comes with a tonality and with scales approximately like that. Even outside the
case of Benin and Gangbe, when you go, for example, in Mali and Niger and all
of that, all of the music of the north, those countries, that’s the blues. And there
are connections between the music of Mali and all that and the music of Benin.
At the origin, that was already it. There were already ethnic wars in Africa, one
population against the neighboring population. And with that, there was al-
ready a melange between the different African countries.50
For Vodounnon, a large part of Gangbe’s mission is representing all of Benin,

indeed being an example for all of Africa. He went on to relate his idea of the blues
to ancestors from the past in diaspora, or in the next world spiritually:

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Figure 1. “Segala.” See https://www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/jac/media/vol_1_2018 for a full transcription of
solos and the akonhun body percussion section of “Segala.”

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Figure 1: Continued

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We have songs of distress. And these songs are necessarily to cry for the an-
cestors who are gone. . . . They are ritual songs. We sing for those who are
departed and can no longer come back, for a parent who we have lost forever.
There are songs like that that are really ritual songs, and when you sing them,
you immediately think of your parents and grandparents, of these stories of
slavery.
Beninois listeners are likely to recognize the song Sam Gnonlonfoun chose to
open and close his arrangement. It is addressed to a messenger named Segala, mean-
ing “my destiny,” and chronicles a particular moment in Benin’s precolonial history,
around the mid-nineteenth century, when the Danxomean empire was expanding
and conquering Yoruba-Oyo villages to the east, like Ketu, Cana, and Abeokuta.
Many of those Yoruba captives were sold in the slave trade, which was still active with
Cuba and Brazil, the last countries to abolish slavery. The song’s setting of victorious
return gives the song a nationalist tone when transposed into the context of Benin’s
brass bands addressing international markets in 2006.
Lead: Segala ma do we wé (x2) Segala, I will send you to tell the
others.
Kpoli gala ma do we we, ba yi hwé ééé I will send you with a message and I
will go back.
All: Segala, Segala ma do we wé (x2) Segala, I will send you to tell the
others.
Lead: Ahwan é gbà ketu, bo gbà kana The battle vanquished Ketu and Cana.
All: É kpo tó ɖe vo à! There is no other region that will resist
us.
Lead: É gba ketu, bo gbà kana If we have won Ketou and Cana,
All: É kpo tó ɖe vo à! There is no one left.
Abeokutà we gni tó e kpo e (x2) All that remains is Abeokuta,
Bo mi na gba, ba yi houè é Which we will vanquish, and go back
home.
Segala, Segala ma do we wé Segala, I will send you to tell the
others.51
Although the traditional song could be paired with many different styles, 52
aficionado Beninois listeners will recognize Sam Gnonlonfoun’s choice of groove,
known as zenli de Oueme or zenli weme, a style originating in the royal court of Porto
Novo (Xogbonu in the Gun language). This style has become popular for funerals and
celebrations throughout the Oueme Valley, named for the river that flows through
it. During Danxome’s conquests in the region, the style came to Porto Novo from
Abomey, the capital of the Danxomean empire, where the original version of zenli
is practiced. It marks a particular ethnic identity for Gun and Yoruba-descended
people in southeastern Benin. This includes Gnonlonfoun’s family, who are ethnically

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Toffin, a Yoruba-descended people who have inhabited the region to the northeast
of Cotonou (now the neighborhood of Sainte Cecile) since the seventeenth century,
before it was urbanized. Gnonlonfoun (born in 1970) grew up listening to zenli oueme
at celebrations and funerals in his neighborhood, often lasting for a week at a time.
Ambulatory groups playing diverse genres of percussion and brass music, ranging
from zenli oueme to masse gohoun, kaka, and adja, would go from house to house
playing for tips, as I observed myself at the funeral for Gnonlonfoun’s stepmother
in Sainte Cecile in September 2014. At times, the groups encounter one another and
continue playing their different styles simultaneously, creating a joyful, competitive
chaos.
As Gnonlonfoun explained, “All of these [traditional] musics came through
the royal court. It’s later that everyone could play it. It’s when Benin started to be
modern that things changed. You have money, or you don’t have money, you don’t
care. People work, and they eat, so there is a party every day. And it’s for these cel-
ebrations that we play this type of music.”53 Gnonlonfoun’s comment about Benin’s
move toward the “modern,” and the associated opening of wider access to royal
genres, reflects changes that came with the interruption of royal hierarchies and
lineages with colonial occupation, breaking down material divisions between com-
moners and royalty. The Marxist administration further emphasized this rhetoric of
class equality beginning in the 1970s, taking on communist ideology as a mark of
modernity, although the government suppressed religious celebrations, purportedly
in order to preserve resources. It was not until the late 1980s and the weakening of
the administration’s enforcement of religious and economic control that such celebra-
tions became ubiquitous again.
Zenli oueme is characterized by three interlocking bell (gan) patterns, the assan
shaker, the support drum alekele, and the lead clay drum kpezin. It sometimes includes
the bass gourd gota as it does in Abomey, but in Porto Novo this is often replaced
by a large lead drum like the kpawhle, resembling the Ewe atsimevu. A typical zenli
weme groove might sound like this, according to Porto Novian singer Anice Pepe:54
Gangbe’s zenli oueme preserves the three bell patterns, the highest pitched and
most audible being the primary pattern. The second and third bells are lower in the mix,
panned to the left front and right rear respectively. There is no assan shaker in the blues
section. The alekele support drum pattern has been altered in a way that emphasizes
the four-feel of each measure and assigns the more subtle six-feel to the tuba, clarify-
ing the four-bar hypermeter of the blues form. Sam’s brother Jean Gnonlonfoun’s lead
drum stylings are in full force on the kpezin, weaving in and out of the available space
as he interacts with the solo and horn background lines. This is, all in all, a rendition
of zenli weme that keeps its identity intact and remains recognizable for local Beninois
listeners, especially those from the Oueme region, while giving just a small concession
to make it work with “Night Train” and to provide European listeners with a more
accessible four-feel, as Contre-jour had requested.

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Figure 2: Zenli de Oueme Rhythm
Figure 3: Gangbe’s Zenli de Oueme Rhythm
For Gangbe on “Segala,” jazz performs multiple roles—as a creative catalyst

opening up the traditional song form to new possibilities and as a bridge to Western
jazz listeners, giving them a way in to experience Gangbe’s music. The complexity of
the arrangement on “Segala”—particularly in the intricate intertextual references it
sets up with zenli weme, the world of Ellington and the blues, and Benin’s national-
ist imaginaries—is exemplary of Gangbe’s Afro-modernist vision on Whendo, which
offers up the group’s tradi-moderne project as a rich bundle of signifiers that takes
the tradition to another level.
Art and Economy
After European and American tours supporting Whendo in 2006, Gangbe faced some
significant challenges in defending its musical identity. The post-2008 economic crisis
threw into question many of the consumption practices on which Western capitalism
depends, including those that underpinned the world music boom in Europe and
North America going back to the 1980s and ’90s. By 2008, Gangbe was beset by

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internal divisions, largely between one group of members who felt the group should
be planning for the future financially and another that believed aesthetic freedom
was more important. Eventually, Sam and Jean Gnonlonfoun left the group, along
with their brother, trumpeter Mathieu, who had come with the group on tour. Eric
Yovogan joined the group on trumpet, while a rotating cast of lead drummers filled
Jean’s role at different times.
When Gangbe went into the studio in Vidolée, Belgium, to record its third
album, Assiko! (Now’s the Time),55 Contre-jour was determined to make a product
that would sell to the widest market possible. The company chose a sound engineer
with a rock and pop background, and while he allowed the group to record its
arrangements as the group liked, he removed the bell parts on many tracks in post-
production, believing there was “too much information” for a Western audience.
Martial Ahouandjinou said of the experience:
They sent us a rocker who knew nothing about jazz. As soon as we played some-
thing, he started to act like an arranger. We play something, and he tells us, no,
it’s wrong, when he’s hardly heard the thing, because it’s not what he’s used to
hearing. So when it’s outside of his habits, he says it’s wrong. . . . He took out
all the bell parts on the album, and this when Gangbe is characterized by the
bell! . . . They wanted a product to sell, and they needed their hands free to
transform the product how they wanted. . . . They needed to have arguments to
sell the product in the way they thought it would work.56
Assiko! is a very different album from Whendo. Without the bell patterns on
many of the tracks, the highlife and Afrobeat tracks like “Nikki,” “Se,” “Beautiful
Africa,” and “Rakia” begin to resemble each other in feel. With the absence of Jean
Gnonlonfoun, the gbon talking drum parts no longer animate the breaks with rhyth-
mic energy and chatter. The removal of these key rhythmic components reveals just
how important they are to determining the identity, origin, and distinctive charac-
teristics of each style. The effect is one of particularity subsumed by the superficiality
of genre. Where Whendo imagined Gangbe’s “roots” in Porto Novo within a rich,
regional network of specific, linked, cultural identities along the West African coast
and its diasporas, Assiko! concedes the plurality of these identities to the simplifying
exigencies of the world music market in a time of scarcity.
While Assiko! did not do well as an album, Gangbe has kept the stronger
compositions in its live set rotation, in many cases returning them to their original
arrangements including the bell parts. They have also introduced more improvised
horn solos in the live versions, which are limited to short passages from Martial and
Magloire on the album, like on “Rakia” and “Yonnatche.” Those pieces that have
outlived Assiko!’s short shelf life to earn more permanent spots in the live set have
been those that have kept their distinctive qualities; for example, on “Sofada,” which
Gangbe still performs frequently, percussionist Benoit Avihoue tries his hand at play-

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ing gbon, the only track on the album with the instrument. Other more long-lived
compositions feature the vocal improvisations of Crispin Kpitiki, such as on the a
cappella track “Memeton” and “Yonnatche,” an older, elaborate Afrobeat arrange-
ment of Sam Gnonlonfoun’s that the group rearranged for its 2015 album as “Les
Vrais Amis.” “Miwa” has also survived to be performed live; its distinctive rhythm,
known as kpanou gbe (sometimes called gangbe), is played for family ceremonies by
senior women in Porto Novo households on plates perforated with iron rings, which
Gangbe iterates on bells and cymbals. Here is at least one example of the “sound of
iron”—gangbe—that was not removed from the album.
With Assiko! finished and over budget and the recession worsening in Europe,
Contre-jour recommended that Gangbe stop touring for two years to recuperate costs.
In 2013, Gangbe booked its own tour of Nigeria, Cape Verde, and France; became
the subjects of acclaimed filmmaker Arnaud Robert’s documentary Gangbe!;57 and, in
2014, decided to part ways with Contre-jour entirely. Even before the recession and
Contre-jour’s decision to cut Gangbe’s touring schedule, some members like Martial
Ahouandjinou had been frustrated with the company’s control over the band’s music,
but he didn’t feel he could speak up because he felt they needed Contre-jour’s network.
When the company started complaining about the band’s performance, that it had
gotten away from its roots, he was surprised because Contre-jour had been the ones
making the modifications and suggestions. This ultimately contributed to Martial’s
decision to leave the company, and the rest of the group followed soon after. As he
related:
We met a black American in Chicago. When we played, we played at Hot
House in Chicago. When we finished playing, he approached us. . . . He said,
“Guys, where you are, it is not easy for someone who has black skin to be there
without a white hand. So always try to keep this white hand with you, other-
wise, you will know music very well, but you will always stay in your corner
and play for your people over there.” So having understood this advice . . . we
saw what we wanted to defend, but for fear of being dropped [renvoyé] from the
company, we shut up.
I remember one discussion, when we had finished an evening, people really
reacted, they applauded, they bought a lot of CDs. But [Contre-jour] thought
that we hadn’t played well. . . . I said, let me tell you that we had a product here
before you started marketing it. And this product traveled before you took us
on. So you shouldn’t be transforming this product. . . . And the group thought
I spoke up and this would cause us to be dropped, or that they would be preju-
diced against our group now. So a lot of my colleagues didn’t follow me [at
first].
As William James said, “Every truth is a deferred error.” . . . I agree with him
because I already saw how this can trap me. . . . They were right when they said
that we had changed and modified the music to the point where no one recog-
nized it anymore on the albums. I pulled back. I only did what they told me.

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And at the end, I was one of the people who stood up and said we should leave
the company.58
Martial’s evocative figure of the “white hand” necessary for success in the music
business speaks to beliefs held broadly among musicians in Benin and realities in
histories of power and music production across the world. Ultimately, Gangbe found
that it needed Contre-jour to break into the world music market at first, but after
some time, the group had learned enough that it was ready to take more control of
the creative work.
L’Afrique Dans les Oreilles and Go Slow to Lagos
The next phase of Gangbe’s career, and the phase that I observed the most closely
as I joined the group on tour in 2014, was marked by several significant changes
in business strategy. To begin with, the group entered into an agreement with the
small French nonprofit organization L’Afrique Dans les Oreilles (Africa in Your
Ears), founded in Lyon in 2010 by Sylvain Dartoy, to organize its 2014 summer
tour. The organization’s stated mission is “the promotion of African cultures and
their resonances, in street art, concerts, and youth audiences,” through “atypical,
pluridisciplinary creations: music, dance, street shows, theater, stories, puppets.”59 The
agreement with Gangbe rested on open book accounting and Dartoy’s self-professed
“militant” strategies as an advocate for education about African music and culture.60
It helped that Dartoy is a musician himself, a guitarist and kora player who plays in
the area with three Burkinabe musicians. Dartoy is a vocal member in the activist
“Zone Franche” network in France, whose mission is to promote the free circulation
of musicians across international borders. The network seeks to do this particularly
through the easing of artist visa regulations, which the organization describes as “the
minimum condition for developing inter-cultural dialogue” in its “World Music
Charter.”61 Further aspects of the mission include supporting the enforcement of
UNESCO cultural policy and special support for live music and audience interac-
tion, new artists, and lesser-known cultures and traditions.
Dartoy’s approach to booking Gangbe’s 2014 tour turned away from large world
music festivals to focus on street festivals in provincial France where Gangbe could
present both in ambulatoire, or marching format, and in concert format on stage.
This gave the group an opportunity to interact closely with community residents,
share meals, and occasionally talk about the music. The pay was significantly lower
than what Contre-jour had negotiated for Gangbe’s larger tours, but Gangbe kept
a greater proportion of the proceeds and made education and interaction a priority.
For Gangbe’s European tours in 2016 and 2017, Dartoy began booking the group
at large, straight-ahead jazz festivals outside the world music circuit, particularly in
Italy, where the group has found a growing following.

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Gangbe also set out in 2014 to record another album, this one self-produced,
and on their own terms. In Go Slow to Lagos, released in 2015 and distributed by
Buda Musique, the band returns to its artistic roots in a tribute to the music of Fela
Kuti.62 Stylistically, the album foregrounds several Afrobeat and juju tracks, such
as “Yoruba,” which uses a political text from the Nigerian musician and playwright
Hubert Ogunde, and “Les Vrais Amis,” a rearrangement of “Yonnatche” from 2005’s
Whendo. Both songs speak about the lack of solidarity between brothers from the
same culture and implore the group’s compatriots to act fairly and wisely in their
dealings with one another.
Apart from these Afrobeat tracks, the album is, rhythmically and culturally
speaking, much more about the road to Lagos—its sights, sounds, and various ob-
stacles— than it is about Fela’s legacy or a Lagosian sense of place. Gangbe exposes the
listener to a greater variety of traditional popular rhythms from southeast Benin than
in previous albums, reflecting the changing soundscape of sacred rhythms that have
been increasingly modernized in Benin since the 1990s. There is the zangbeto’s63 kaka
on “Akwe” (Money); djegbe on “Ashe,” a call for young people to thank and respect
their elders; and agbotchebou, the rhythm for the vodun Sakpata, on “Assidida” (The
Wedding). Gangbe also rearranges previous compositions in “Kpagbe,” 2005’s “Miwa”
in kpanougbe rhythm, and “Le Petit Souris,” which was the group’s zenli hit as “Ajaka”
from 2001. Between are the typical elezo and highlife tunes that have become the group’s
staples, with “Muziki” and “Biouwa.” Trumpeter Magloire Ahouandjinou’s departure
from the group, to form his own project Viviola, is noticeable, as he leaves his brother
Martial (on “Akoue,” “Miziki,” and “Fie Mi Djeyi”) to cover most of the solos, while a
guest keyboardist, Frenchman Jean-Phillipe Rykiel (on “Vrais Amis” and “Kpagbe”),
and saxophonists Lucien Gbaguidi (tenor) and the newcomer Ebenezer Akloe (soprano)
are pressed into service. Compared to Assiko!, Go Slow to Lagos makes many more op-
portunities for improvisation, taking full advantage of the group’s selection of Afrobeat,
salsa, and blues arrangements, many of them the work of Martial Ahouandjinou.
In focusing the album on the “go slow” (a ubiquitous West African expression
for “traffic jam”) on the road to Lagos, Gangbe highlights a short section of the West
African coastline with exceptional cultural richness and a long history of European
and intra-African contestation. This road is only about one hundred kilometers long,
but crosses several major historical, national, and cultural boundaries, including those
between French and British ex-colonies; between Fon, Gun, and Yoruba cultures, each
with their own histories of conflict going back at least to the nineteenth-century wars
with their neighbors in Oyo; and between Protestant, Catholic, vodun, and Muslim
communities on both sides of the border. There are shared histories, too, such as that
of Methodist missionization and the many independent African churches generated
from its roots. These differences and connections spill out in the sounds of each local-
ity’s rhythms and musical practices, in the djegbe, elezo, zenli, and agbotchebou of

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each family, shrine, and church. These are the sounds Gangbe knows and the styles
the group plays best. It represents a reclaiming of the group’s creative agency and a
return to the local roots and legendary figures of the group’s craft, situated solidly on
this stretch of road leaving Porto Novo for Lagos.
Eyo’nle Brass Band
While Gangbe was transitioning to new management and preparing Go Slow to La-
gos in 2014, another ensemble in Benin was starting to make its move. The Eyo’nle
Brass Band,64 founded in 1998 in Porto Novo by trumpeter Mathieu Ahouandjinou
(younger brother of Martial and Magloire), began as a fanfare that played locally for
funerals and gradually expanded to become a project that emphasized traditional
rhythms, which the band’s members felt that young people were neglecting in their
preferences for foreign music. Like Gangbe’s Sam Gnonlonfoun, Mathieu also ad-
mired Louis Armstrong, but he preferred the collective improvisations of his 1920s
Hot Five recordings to the nuanced popular ballads of the 1960s that Gnonlonfoun
spent time transcribing.65 Ahouandjinou’s listening preferences mirror something
of New Orleans neoclassicism seen in artists like Wynton Marsalis and Terence
Blanchard, its own kind of latter-day, tactical “renaissancism,” to return to Houston
Baker’s term. In this way, Eyo’nle productively expands the “discursive field” of
“national possibilities”66 and offers a different vision of how notions of the national
and the local in Benin can interact with folk genres from other cultures.
Eyo’nle’s aesthetic strategies return the group to the folk traditions of the
group’s home in Porto Novo, as well as a more interculturally conceived “folk”
that extends even to provincializing the culture of the group’s former colonizers.
Through a collaboration with the established French gypsy-folk band Les Ogres de
Barback, Eyo’nle began traveling to Europe in 2008 and in 2014 joined Les Ogres
on its twentieth-anniversary tour. After many years of performing together, the two
groups developed a common repertoire that drew from both Beninois and French
folk traditions and the wide ranging, multi-instrumental expertise of both ensembles’
members. In 2014, Eyo’nle released its first album, Africa Night, which the group
recorded in one day at a studio in Paris. I followed Eyo’nle in 2015 during the brass
band festival the group hosts yearly in Porto Novo and briefly during a 2016 tour in
France.
Because of the group’s close collaboration with Les Ogres, Eyo’nle took a
different path from Gangbe. Eyo’nle applied for residency in France to support
longer tours beyond the validity of a usual artist visa. The group’s members spend
approximately nine to ten months of the year on the road in Europe and two to
three months at home in Benin. The 2014 tour with Les Ogres set the group up
with an expansive network of venues and local promoters that the group utilizes
to self-manage booking each year. Unlike Gangbe, Eyo’nle has never worked with

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a production company or a manager from outside the group. Sousaphonist Rock

Ahouandjinou (Mathieu’s brother) is in charge of the band’s booking and logistical
arrangements. Eyo’nle works extremely hard, often playing several weeks of one-night
engagements stretching from France to Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland, with
long drives in-between. The group’s connections with festivals and promoters are
close, personal, and longstanding.
Musically, Eyo’nle is a very different ensemble from Gangbe. Aside from musi-
cal director and arranger Mathieu Ahouandjinou’s preference for New Orleans trad-
jazz and blues over bebop, one of the major differences between Eyo’nle’s sound and
Gangbe’s is in Eyo’nle’s continued use of bass drum and snare drum, as in a Beninois
funeral fanfare or a New Orleans brass band. Recall that Gangbe committed to using
African percussion, using eclectic kits of adapted kpezin drums, along with calabash,
bell, and hi-hat. So while Gangbe and Eyo’nle share an impulse to “relativize” their
roots, as Mbembe puts it, to place them in self-conscious historical context, they locate
those roots in different communities and practices, and at different levels of locality
and nationality. Eyo’nle’s bass drum player Bonito Assogbah does occasionally play
kpawhle and gbon talking drum, but more often the group grounds the diverse local
rhythms in its repertoire entirely through the subtleties of Chretien Ahouandjinou’s
snare drum grooves, which must capture the interlocking patterns of up to six different
drum parts on different parts of the snare drum. The result is something resembling
an undulating New Orleans second-line groove, sputtering and kicking, starting and
restarting, never the same from one moment to the next. For the 2016 tour, Eyo’nle
added calabash to the group with the young percussionist Laurence Ahouandjinou,
the daughter of Gangbe trumpeter Magloire. Rock Ahouandjinou maintained that
Eyo’nle’s music is “more traditional” and “more authentic” than Gangbe’s,67 because
of its links to the funeral tradition of fanfare bands in Benin—ironically, the sounds
from which Gangbe members originally wanted to distance themselves.
Where Gangbe took on the project of creating a national representation of
Benin’s music traditions abroad, Eyo’nle took the liberty of representing itself and the
hyperlocal traditions the group knows from Porto Novo and the surrounding area.
Mathieu Ahouandjinou suggested that at the beginning this was because the group
did not have the money to travel around Benin to research other regions (or Gangbe’s
ethnically diverse membership).68 But now, further along in the group’s career, playing
masse gohoun and other rhythms on snare and bass drum has come to represent a
choice to focus on a local, Porto Novian identity over a national Beninois one, creat-
ing hyperspecific, local-to-local fusions with the folk traditions of New Orleans and
France. This includes the rhythms of Gun, Toffinou, and Nago-Yoruba cultures, as well
as modernized forms as they are performed at celebrations and in the Celeste church.
Like its localized focus on New Orleans trad-jazz and other folk genres, Eyo’nle also
keeps its Afro-traditional points of reference close to the source. I offer a brief analysis
of the group’s piece “Cargos Blues” as an example of the approach.

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Empreinte du Père: “Cargos Blues”
The specifically Porto Novian cultural context comes across particularly strongly on
Eyo’nle’s 2015 album Empreinte du Père, an homage to the Ahouandjinou brothers’
father Henri, the national gendarmerie orchestra director who passed away in 2006.
The album is distributed on the world music label Irfan but was self-produced by
Eyo’nle and recorded in one day in Cotonou with no overdubs. Empreinte du Père’s
sixteen tracks are filled with the sounds of Porto Novo’s fanfares, churches, and
popular rhythms. There are the rhythms of the Celeste church on “Caiman Blues”
(Caiman was Henri’s nickname), “Kpedo Na Hounto,” and “Miwa Yisse,” particularly
the rhythm ahwangbahun (war rhythm), which was revealed to the church’s founder
Samuel Oshoffa by divine revelation. The track “Oklounon” (Lord God) is a Celeste
liturgical song setting the biblical story of Elijah praying for rain.69 There are also sev-
eral kaka tracks, including “Haladja” and the Yedenou Adjahoui song “Assevi,” which
recall close associations with the Toffinou people in the Oueme valley surrounding
Porto Novo.70 Other rhythms like agban and efe come specifically from the Torri and
Toffinou villages surrounding Porto Novo, for example the renowned drum-making
town of Adjarra. There are the usual highlife, djegbe, and elezo tracks, including “Do
Re Mi,” a manifesto for making the economics of a musician’s life work.
While Empreinte du Père reveals a deep commitment to the local sounds of
Eyo’nle’s corner of Benin, the album also shows where the group has traveled, tracing
its eclectic trajectories through sound, the signs of connections, relationships, tactics,
projects. There are covers of two popular French songs on the album, “Le Temps ne
Fait Rien a l’Affaire” by George Brassens and “Le Poinçonneur de Lilas” by Serge
Gainsbourg, the latter in Benin’s traditional Adja rhythm migan. The band tips its
hat to Fela Kuti, too, in the group’s version of his song “Water Get No Enemy” and
to French companions Les Ogres in the ska-highlife mashup, “Ces Tonnes des Gens.”
The fifth track on Empreinte du Père is “Cargos Blues,” a deep masse gohun
track sung by lead vocalist and trombonist Jean Ahouandjinou. The title of “Cargos
Blues” is a reference to the cargos, the motorbikes heavily laden with plastic jugs of
low-quality gasoil that crisscross the coast of Benin to and from Nigeria, suggesting
connections with the circuitous trade routes of the West African coast, past and
present. The track brings to the fore the band’s self-conscious representation of its
place in the musical African diaspora. A twelve-bar blues, the song plays on European
audiences’ expectations of African and African American performance styles, all over
a slow, 12/8 masse gohun groove. The vocal is delivered in French in Jean Ahouan-
djinou’s powerful, gravelly timbre. Behind Jean, the backup vocals in Gun overlay
sacred and secular African and African American traditions in a gospel-inflected
chorus, bringing back reminders of God’s faithfulness in the midst of hardship and
suggesting that this spiritual connection was and is an important part of the blues’s
core characteristics.

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Lead (French): Le blues à l’origine The blues at the beginning

était chanté comme ceci, écoutez: Were sung like this, listen:
Backup (Gun): Je te ke mi gbon Even if they talk about me left and
adousii gbon amion me, right,
mile kpoto messiya si awa me We are in the arms of the Lord God.
Lead: Nos ailleurs deportés étaient Others of us deported left
partis
avec ceci comme cela With this or that
Backup: Je te ke mi gbon adousii gbon Even if they talk about me left and
right,
amion me, mile kpoto messiya si We are in the arms of the Lord God.
awa me
Lead: Le blues a suivi des The blues went through
transformations, est transformations, is
chanté comme ce que vous connaissez Sung as you know it today
aujourd’hui
right,
awa me
Lead: Dans les plantations de cacao, On cocoa, coffee, and sugar cane
du café, et du canne a sucre. plantations
right,
awa me
Lead: Le blues, le blues, le blues The blues, the blues, the blues.
[Trumpet and trombone solos]
Lead: Le blues transmet l’histoire The blues transmit the story of the
du passé, past,
Les vieux le chantaient. The old people used to sing it.
right,
awa me
Lead: Ça s’appellait le blues chez nous That was called the blues chez nous
C’est masse, c’est gogohun. It’s masse, it’s gogohun.
right,
awa me
Lead: Le blues, ah oui, j’aime le blues. The blues, oh yes, I love the blues.71

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There are two slightly different takes on the same story going on in this song,
one in French and one in Gun. The French lyrics bring Eyo’nle’s diasporic vision,
including connections to specific Beninois rhythmic styles like masse and gogohun,
into the public sphere and are accessible to Francophone audiences in Europe and in
the diaspora. The Gun lyrics keep part of the message hidden from these audiences,
particularly its sacred aspect. Each time the backup singers repeat the line, “Je te ke
mi gbon adoussi gbon amion me,” Jean Ahouandjinou picks it up and weaves it into
his improvised response, leading into the next line of text in French. In doing this,
he brings his blues lyricism together with the gospel chorus, showing their unity, the
presence of African spirituality in the history of the blues.
Eyo’nle places its blues lyricism over the Porto Novian rhythm of masse gohun.
This style was created by the beloved singer Yedenou Adjahoui (1930–95) in the 1970s,
based on the ceremonial court style of djegbe. Djegbe originally used only two bells
and the shekere to accompany vocalists, but Adjahoui added the small alekele drums
and borrowed the lead drum kpezin from the style of zenli to create masse gohun.
Today there are many traditional ensembles devoted exclusively to masse gohun,
whose slow and dignified triple feel is popular for life ceremonies like funerals and
weddings.
Eyo’nle represent its version of masse gohun using reduced instrumentation:
a bell, a snare drum, and a bass drum, keeping the military-style instrumentation
common in Benin’s fanfares. The snare drummer Chretien Ahouandjinou plays a
triplet pattern, alternating between the rim and the head of the drum, while the
bass drummer Bonito Assogbah plays the role of the lead drummer, improvising
periodically behind the vocalist and using his left hand to manipulate the timbre of
the drum. Here is Eyo’nle’s basic masse groove.
Eyo’nle’s bass and snare drum instrumentation here requires the group to strip
masse gohoun down to the absolute basics, leaving aside the kpezin, the alekele, and
two lower drums. This contrasts with Gangbe’s zenli weme groove on “Segala” under
the blues form, which made only minor concessions to the swing feel.
That Eyo’nle would point to masse gohun as an antecedent or analog form of
the blues is provocative.72 Eyo’nle’s internationalized version of masse is dramatically
Figure 4: Masse Gohoun Rhythm

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Figure 5: Eyo’nle’s Masse Gohoun Rhythm
reduced compared to its present-day expression in ensembles in Benin. Masse as

such did not exist during the slave trade prior to its creation and popularization by
Adjahoui in the 1970s, except in royal court predecessors like djegbe. But part of the
argument that Eyo’nle lays out in the lyrics to “Cargos Blues” is that “le blues a suivi
des transformations”; that is, it went through changes in the course of its diasporic
journey, just as music in Africa has over time. In this sense, masse gohun is a lot like
the blues, not only in its formal properties and slow triplet feel, but in its relation-
ship to a pragmatic spirituality and the music’s ability to invoke this religious power,
whether through Christianity or vodun, to overcome the worst of circumstances.
The blues and masse gohun are all about transformations, the ongoing moderniza-
tion (within a Beninois historical context) of traditions and changing bad situations
for the better. Eyo’nle sees the blues as an example of what Beninois music can do
as well, if it can adapt to changing conditions and make use of the strength of its
traditions. Explicitly invoking blues references also allows the group to argue for its
membership in the Afro-modernity of the diaspora. But even as Eyo’nle searches for
common musical ground, the group protects certain traditional religious aspects
of its presentation for African listeners in coming in and out of the local language.
“Cargos Blues” keeps spiritual experience, and African tradition, protected in the
Gun-language background vocals. Thus Eyo’nle makes a bid for membership in
an expansive, diasporic Afro-modernity, while defending important aspects of this
Africanness from any potentially homogenizing effects of this modernization.
Conclusion
The value of jazz as an example of musique moderne has been constructed in Be-
nin in a particular way that comes out of French colonial binaries of moderne and
traditionel based in ideologies of cultural purity and authenticity. In spite of com-
munist control, postindependence musicians in the 1970s began to work on these
ideologies to “modernize” traditional styles, adapting them for Western instruments
and bringing them out of court and vodun worship contexts and into the sphere of
the populaire. It was during this period that the first brass bands formed with the
military police and church ensembles, such as those of independent African churches
like the Church of Celestial Christianity and the Cherubim and Seraphim. With the
opening of Benin’s economy in the 1990s and the country’s increasing cultural and
religious pluralization, brass bands sought out new international audiences for the

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marketing of Benin’s cultural heritage by deploying a strategic Afro-modernism and

self-consciously relativizing their roots in many different ways.
Throughout the two groups’ careers, Gangbe and Eyo’nle have deployed the
sign and the practice of jazz, along with highly symbolic traditional musics, as tools to
add to their music’s signifying potential and cultural value as a response to the social
conditions and power structures of modernity and globalization. In addition to the
usefulness of jazz harmony and arrangements for adapting traditional Beninois music
for brass bands, the bands also use jazz to argue musically for their membership in
Afro-diasporic and jazz networks. In songs like “Segala” and “Cargos Blues,” the bands
make the argument for their inclusion in the fellowship of “Great Black Music,” as the
members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians named their
geneology.73 Jazz has played into Gangbe’s and Eyo’nle’s creative process in different
ways, whether as a tool for adapting and harmonizing traditional songs or as a language
to communicate with audiences and weave diasporic narratives. Demonstrating just
a few of the diverse approaches that are possible within Afro-modernism, Gangbe
and Eyo’nle have taken diverging approaches to their curation of Beninois traditions:
Gangbe emphasizes local percussion instruments like the kpezin and the gbon to rep-
resent Benin’s cultural diversity as a nation, while Eyo’nle uses the fanfare’s typical bass
and snare drum instrumentation to create versions of specific Porto Novian rhythms
from church and popular contexts. In their music, both Gangbe and Eyo’nle reach
across gaps in space and time, across complex traditional and diasporic histories, to
strategically situate their projects within an Afro-modernist framework that sets them
up to accomplish their professional and artistic goals in response to their experiences
with changing conditions of modernity and globalization.
Notes
1. Steven Feld, Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra: Five Musical Years in Ghana (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2012); Kay Shelemay, “Traveling Music: Mulatu Astatke and the
Genesis of Ethiopian Jazz,” in Jazz Worlds/World Jazz, ed. Philip Bohlman and Goffredo
Plastino (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016); Carol Muller, Musical Echoes:
South African Women Thinking in Jazz (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011);
Gwen Ansell, Soweto Blues: Jazz, Popular Music, and Politics in South Africa (New York:
Continuum, 2005); and Christopher Ballantine, Marabi Nights: Jazz, “Race,” and Society
in Early Apartheid South Africa, 2nd ed. (Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZu-
lu-Natal Press, 2012).
2. Fanfare is the French term most closely meaning “brass band,” although in Benin, it refers
more precisely to the local ensembles that play for life ceremonies such as funerals, wed-
dings, and baptisms. I discuss these distinctions further in what follows.
3. Jeffrey Magee, “Kind of Blue: Miles Davis, Afro-Modernism, and the Blues,” Jazz Perspec-
tives 1, no. 1 (2007): 5–27.
4. Cynthia Nielsen, “Strategic Afro-Modernism, Dynamic Hybridity, and Bebop’s Sociopo-
litical Significance,” in Music and Law, ed. Mathieu Deflem (Bingley, England: Emerald,
2013).

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5. Guthrie Ramsey, Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2003), 97, 98.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 107.
8. Ibid., 117.
9. Houston Baker, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1987).
10. Ibid., 91–92.
11. Ryan Skinner, Bamako Sounds: The Afropolitan Ethics of Malian Music (Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press, 2015).
12. Achille Mbembe, Sortir de La Grande Nuit: Essai sur L’Afrique Decolonisée (Paris: Décou-
verte, 2010).
13. Ibid., 229.
14. Ibid., 226.
15. Ibid., 229.
16. Chielozona Eze, “Rethinking African Culture and Identity: The Afropolitan Model,”
Journal of African Cultural Studies 26, no. 2 (2014): 240.
17. Baker, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, 71.
18. The country was previously known as the People’s Republic of Benin, a Marxist-Leninist
state aligned primarily with China, from 1975–90.
19. This celebration of Benin’s vodun heritage, now performed annually each January, attracts
visitors from across the African diaspora, particularly religious practitioners in vodun and
orisa traditions.
20. Sam Gnonlonfoun, telephone interview, June 28, 2017.
21. James Vodounnon, interview, Angers, France, June 5, 2014.
22. Athanase Dehoumon, interview, Angers, France, June 5, 2014.
23. The French colony (and after 1960, the independent state) was known as Dahomey until
1975, when it was renamed the People’s Republic of Benin. In 1990, it became the Repub-
lic of Benin, the name by which it is currently known.
24. Alain Corbin, “Paris-Province,” in Les Lieux de Memoire, vol. 3, ed. Pierre Nora (Paris:
Gallimard, 1997).
25. James E. Genova, Colonial Ambivalence, Cultural Authenticity, and the Limitations of
Mimicry in French-Ruled West Africa, 1914–1956 (New York: Peter Lang, 2004).
26. Amouzouvi, Hippolyte, La Religion Comme Business en Afrique: Le Cas du Benin (Paris:
L’Harmattan, 2014).
27. Martial Ahouandjinou, telephone interview, November 22, 2015.
28. Aaron Ahouandjinou, personal communication, Porto Novo, Benin, June 29, 2010.
29. Sagbohan Danialou, interview, Porto Novo, Benin, January 13, 2015.
30. Sam Gnonlonfoun, interview, New York City, July 23, 2014.
31. Athanase Dehoumon, interview, Angers, France, June 5, 2014.
32. Rock Ahouandjinou, interview, Porto Novo, Benin, March 1, 2015.
33. As in the name “Segala,” meaning “my destiny.”

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34. See Maupoil for a detailed discussion of the four Fon terms employed for “soul” as un-
derstood by the bokonon, experts in Fa divination: ye (that which leaves the body when a
person dies and, if he or she has lived well, becomes kuvito, or egungun in Yoruba); wesagu
(something like a “conscience,” which reports a person’s good and bad deeds to Mawu when
he or she dies); lido (the reflection of god, Mawu, in a person, which returns to Mawu when
he or she dies); and se (which stays with a person even when he or she transitions into a new
spiritual state, a destiny that is unchanged even by death). Bernard Maupoil, La Geomancie
à L’Ancienne Côte des Esclaves (Paris: Institut d’Ethnologie, 1936), 378–82.
35. See Bode Omojola, Popular Music in Western Nigeria: Theme, Style, and Patronage System
(Ibadan, Nigeria: IFRA, 2006).
36. Francesgbe for “highlife.”
37. The demo was later released locally as the album Gangbe (1999).
38. Gangbe Brass Band, Togbé, Contre-jour CJ 0009 (2001), CD.
39. “Biliguede” is a secret track that comes on after the last song, “Guigonon,” at the end of
Togbé.
40. Sam Gnonlonfoun, personal communication, New York City, July 2016.
41. Martial Ahouandjinou, interview, Houdelaincourt, France, June 15, 2014.
42. Gangbe Brass Band, Whendo, Contre-jour/World Village 468050 (2006).
43. Sam Gnonlonfoun, telephone interview, October 5, 2016.
44. Jean Gnonlonfoun, interview, Brussels, Belgium, June 24, 2014.
46. Oscar Peterson, Night Train, recorded December 15–16, 1962, Verve V6–8538 (1963).
47. Duke Ellington, Happy Go Lucky Local, recorded November 25, 1946, Musicraft 461
(1946).
48. David Rosenthal points to Jimmy Forrest as an exemplar of a period in the 1950s when
jazz, particularly hard bop and soul jazz, remained connected to popular music and Afri-
can American culture and neighborhoods, which makes a fruitful comparison to Benin’s
definitions of musique populaire. David H. Rosenthal, “Jazz in the Ghetto: 1950–70,”
Popular Music 7, no. 1 (1988): 51–56.
50. James Vodounnon, interview, Plaisir, France, June 10, 2010.
51. Translation by Chams Linkpon and the author, 2011.
52. For example, I heard Gangbe perform “Segala” live with a reggae groove in France in June
2014, when several of the ensemble’s members, including Jean and Sam Gnonlonfoun,
had left the group.
54. Les Homonymes “Zenli,” directed by Apollinaire Agoinon (Cotonou, Benin: ORTB, 2012),
documentary film.
55. Gangbe Brass Band, Assiko!, Contre-jour 021 (2010).
57. The documentary was released in 2015 and is available for download on Vimeo or stream-
ing on Amazon.
59. Lafriquedanslesoreilles.com, accessed 2016.

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60. Sylvain Dartoy, personal communication, Lyon, France, June 26, 2014.
61. See http://www.zonefranche.com/en/charter-of-world-music.
62. Gangbe Brass Band, Go Slow to Lagos, Buda Musique 4734804 (2015).
63. The zangbeto are the “guardians of the night” in Porto Novo, a secret society of raffia-
masked figures who police the nocturnal activities of the city.
64. Eyo’nle’s name means “rejoice on earth” in Yoruba. Rock Ahouandjinou (interview, Porto
Novo, March 5, 2015) explained that brass instruments are frequently played for occasions
of mourning in Benin, as is the case in the fanfare tradition, and that Eyo’nle wanted to
change this association by showing that brass instruments could also express joy.
65. Mathieu Ahouandjinou, interview, Porto Novo, March 6, 2015.
66. Baker, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, 86.
67. Rock Ahouandjinou, interview, Porto Novo, Benin, March 1, 2015.
68. Mathieu Ahounandjinou, interview, Porto Novo, Benin, March 5, 2015.
69. See 1 Kings 18:41–19:8.
70. Rock Ahouandjinou, interview, France, August 6, 2016.
71. Gun translated by Rock Ahouandjinou, January 12, 2017. French translated by the author,
2017.
72. Gerard Kubik’s exhaustive study of the roots of the blues in Africa argues that many tradi-
tions throughout sub-Saharan Africa share close relationships with the blues, positing a
point of origin in Senegambia. Gerard Kubik, Africa and the Blues (Jackson: University of
Mississippi Press, 1999).
73. George Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
Works Cited
Agoinon, Apollinaire. Les Homonymes “Zenli.” Cotonou, Benin: ORTB, 2012. Documentary
film.
Amouzouvi, Hippolyte. La Religion Comme Business en Afrique: Le Cas du Benin. Paris:
L’Harmattan, 2014.
Ansell, Gwen. Soweto Blues: Jazz, Popular Music, and Politics in South Africa. New York: Con-
tinuum, 2005.
Baker, Houston. Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1987.
Ballantine, Christopher. Marabi Nights: Jazz, “Race,” and Society in Early Apartheid South Africa.
2nd ed. Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2012.
Corbin, Alain. “Paris-Province.” In Les Lieux de Memoire, vol. 3, edited by Pierre Nora. Paris:
Gallimard, 1997.
Eze, Chielozona. “Rethinking African Culture and Identity: The Afropolitan Model,” Journal of
African Cultural Studies 26, no. 2 (2014): 234–47.
Feld, Steven. Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra: Five Musical Years in Ghana. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2012.
Genova, James E. Colonial Ambivalence, Cultural Authenticity, and the Limitations of Mimicry in
French-Ruled West Africa, 1914–1956. New York: Peter Lang, 2004.
Kubik, Gerard. Africa and the Blues. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1999.

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JAC_01.indd 47 7/2/18 12:40 PM
Lewis, George. A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Magee, Jeffrey. “Kind of Blue: Miles Davis, Afro-Modernism, and the Blues,” Jazz Perspectives 1,
no. 1 (2007): 5–27.
Maupoil, Bernard. La Geomancie à L’Ancienne Côte des Esclaves. Paris: Institut d’Ethnologie, 1943.
Mbembe, Achille. Sortir de la Grande Nuit: Essai sur l’Afrique Decolonisée. Paris: Découverte,
2010.
Muller, Carol Ann. Musical Echoes: South African Women Thinking in Jazz. Durham, NC: Duke
Nielsen, Cynthia. “Strategic Afro-Modernism, Dynamic Hybridity, and Bebop’s Sociopolitical
Significance.” In Music and Law, edited by Mathieu Deflem. Bingley, England: Emerald,
2013.
Omojola, Bode. Popular Music in Western Nigeria: Theme, Style, and Patronage System. Ibadan,
Nigeria: IFRA, 2006.
Ramsey, Guthrie. Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2003.
Rosenthal, David H. “Jazz in the Ghetto: 1950–70,” Popular Music 7, no. 1 (1988): 51–56.
Shelemay, Kay Kaufman. “Traveling Music: Mulatu Astatke and the Genesis of Ethiopian Jazz.”
In Jazz Worlds/World Jazz, edited by Philip Bohlman and Goffredo Plastino, 239–57. Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Skinner, Ryan. Bamako Sounds: The Afropolitan Ethics of Malian Music. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 2015.
Discography
Ellington, Duke. Happy Go Lucky Local. Recorded November 25, 1946. Musicraft 461 (1946).
Eyo’nle Brass Band. Africa Night. Irfan (2014).
———. Empreinte du Père. Irfan EY0002 (2015).
Gangbe Brass Band. Assiko! Contre-jour CJ 021 (2010).
———. Gangbe. Self-produced (1999).
———. Go Slow to Lagos. Buda Musique 4734804 (2015).
———. Togbé. Contre-jour CJ 0009 (2001).
———. Whendo. Contre-jour/World Village 468050 (2006).
Peterson, Oscar. Night Train. Recorded December 15–16, 1962. Verve V6–8538 (1963).

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This Ain’t a Hate Thing:
Jeanne Lee and the Subversion
of the Jazz Standard
Eric Lewis
If black women reject others’ definition of them, they must then

define or redefine their own being and provide their own theories of
being or ontologies.
—Duchess Harris, “The Kennedy Commission to the Combahee
Collective”
Jazz standards with lyrics, written overwhelmingly by men, often reveal male construc-
tions of female identity, even if sometimes seemingly from the narrative position of
a woman. They therefore form a culturally important and influential way in which
women have been defined by others, usually by men. Adding the facts that many
jazz standards (though by no means all) were written by white men and were often
(though by no means always) sung by black women, and the complex interplay of
subjectivities that the jazz standard embraces—from composition through perfor-
mance, recording, and reception—takes on a more problematic, and potentially
pernicious, nature.
While such songs often impose upon black women singers identities that they
may find inappropriate, foreign, or worse still demeaning, racist, and misogynist,
performance of standards also opens a possibility of subverting these externally im-
posed identities in subtle or overt ways.1 To choose not to sing a particular standard
because of the depiction of women it might paint is one form of responding to the
repertoire—that is outright rejection of it (a move, for example, Abbey Lincoln
made at one point in her career). Another might be to alter lyrics or sing a standard


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50 This Ain’t a Hate Thing Eric Lewis
in a fashion that offers commentary on its narrative that may subvert its surface
message. Song selection and order in a concert or recording might also subvert the
meaning of individual songs. Picking up on Duchess Harris’s point, I want to argue
that throughout her too-short career, Jeanne Lee engaged in acts of reclamation of
her identity—itself part of a greater project undertaken by creative black women.
Namely, I argue that any antiessentialist theory of racial identity (and female identity)
requires antiessentialist theorizing concerning black women.2
I should add that my notion of a standard is, well, a nonstandard one. I am
concerned with renditions of songs with lyrics that have a history of performance
by a variety of singers—in that sense popular songs—such that a given performance
can naturally be heard against a backdrop of others, and where there is a culturally
dominant identity construction that the song historically promotes.
When Jeanne Lee died in Mexico at the age of sixty-one in 2000, her medical
insurer unwilling to pay for a hopeful treatment for the cancer that took her life, her
status in the worlds of jazz and experimental music should have been secure. While
she was the leader of only two recordings—Conspiracy on Seeds Records and Natural
Affinities on Owl Records—her discography is longer than many realize.3 It includes
some ninety-odd recordings, with many luminaries of the jazz worlds, particularly
(but not exclusively) those associated with the jazz avant-garde. She is found on a
number of seminal albums, but still suffers from woeful underrecognition. When
asking even quite knowledgeable jazz fans what they think of Jeanne Lee, the majority
response is one of ignorance, while those who do know of her often respond with
“I love her!” While some of her relative obscurity can be attributed to the fact that
many of her recordings are on minor labels (a large number of them on her second
husband Gunter Hampel’s label Birth), far more pernicious causes are also at play.
As a black women vocalist best known for her work in free jazz settings, her
contributions have often been overlooked, and sometimes consciously ignored.4 Though
she performed at a time when much jazz experimentation involved playing with tim-
bre, bringing instrumental sounds closer to those of the human voice, and consciously
conceiving of collective improvisation as a species of collective dialogue, it is ironic
that Jeanne Lee, who developed a remarkable vocal improvising practice, is to a great
extent written out of the history of this period.5 Her first recording with Ran Blake in
1961, to be discussed in detail below, received scant attention in North America, even
though it was released on the major label RCA. There are very few articles or reviews
in the jazz/music press that focus on Jeanne Lee, and she was never afforded the op-
portunity to be the sole leader of a recording session by any of the major jazz labels.
The world of critics, and to the lesser extent her fellow musicians, seemingly
did not know what to make of Lee’s vocal innovations, as unorthodox as they were.
Yet such “alien” music did not yield a similar erasure from history when it was is-
sued from black male revolutionaries such as Cecil Taylor or many others who Lee

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This Ain’t a Hate Thing Eric Lewis 51
herself recorded and performed with, such as Antony Braxton or Marion Brown.
Lee sung standards in a manner that did not fit the mold of a female torch singer,
and she vocalized in avant-garde settings in a manner that did not bear the obvious
sonic hallmarks of the dominant style of late 1960s and 1970s free jazz, which was
high energy and high dynamics.6 Lee’s vocals are often constructed out of small sonic
gestures—she is almost never a screamer or shouter (although both effects were in
her repertoire).7
Some scholarly work has already been done concerning Lee’s acts of identity
construction, by Eric Porter in his 2006 article “Jeanne Lee’s Voice,” and by the
present author.8 Alas, this more or less exhausts the scholarly attention Lee has
received.9 Here I will begin to consider her acts of redefinition—the ways in which
she altered the ontologies of womanhood presented in standards.10 This is the first
stage of a larger project, which considers Jeanne Lee’s underrecognized corpus as an
ongoing critique of, and engagement with, identity formation, carried out in various
ways and in various media. And so this article forms the beginning of an extended
argument that Lee’s craft can be fruitfully seen as a subtle merging of the social and
the aesthetic. The ontological project of identity recuperation is found at those very
moments where her aesthetic is most powerfully present, and the artistic tropes
that she develops—her distinctive musical hallmarks—are in service of this social
function. I will suggest ways of “hearing” identity under construction, hearing the
contestation of received identities of black womanhood in Lee’s early performances
of jazz standards. Such ways of hearing can and should be fruitfully employed in
listening to her entire corpus.
In what follows I will discuss Jeanne Lee, and sometimes Jeanne Lee and Ran
Blake, but I will not primarily focus on Ran Blake’s piano playing.11 The identity issues
I will focus on primarily concern gender and do not directly engage with more inter-
sectional issues surrounding race and other locations in a multidimensional identity
space. A fuller account of these issues will need to be enriched by embedding such an
analysis into a properly historicized intersectional account of the complex interplay
between concerns of gender and racial equality that black women in general, and
black women artists in particular, undertook during the 1960s. This is particularly
pressing when dealing with Lee, since, as I have argued, she played a role in the
early articulation of what is sometimes (if problematically) called black feminism,
particularly through her articulation and critique of gender relations within the black
community.12 However, any critique of gender identity undertaken by Lee via her
standards singing (and gender is of course the most obvious identity such standards
attempt to, well, make standard) is of course a critique made from the perspective
of a black woman and so is informed by such a subjectivity.
Jeanne Lee’s discography is sometimes framed in terms of three periods: an early
period of singing standards, exclusively with her longtime friend and collaborator

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Ran Blake; a long middle period of overt experimentalism, often in ensembles led
by her then husband Gunter Hampel, although also in ensembles by many other
leading avant-gardists; and a late return to standards, sometimes with Blake, but
most prominently with Mal Waldron.13 While there is some superficial truth to this
division, it plays too closely to a standard “full circle” biographical narrative; the
young musician begins with the tradition, moves on to an experimental phase (often
couched as a rejection of the tradition), and then, in a late mature period, returns to
her roots, older, wiser, and less wild. This, I think, is a misleading characterization
of Lee, and such narratives almost always entail an oversimplification of a complex
set of relationships to tradition and experimentation (issues discussed so trenchantly
by George Lewis in his study of the Association for the Advancement of Creative
Musicians), which jazz musicians embody.14
Here, I want to suggest that Lee’s early period of standard singing is already
subversive, already probing at both the musical terrain and the social messages behind
the standards tradition. And while Lee’s late period is best known for her wonder-
ful and stately renditions of standards with Mal Waldron (who, of course, was also
Billie Holiday’s last accompanist), she also continued to perform in contexts that
code much more directly as experimental. I will therefore consider chronologically
a series of performances by Lee and Blake, spanning from 1961 through 1966. This
is appropriate since I argue that Lee’s performances of standards during this period
can be consistently seen as part of the ontological project of identity reclamation
discussed above. Additionally it is in 1967 that Lee begins to record in settings that
sonically code as more experimental, so an understanding of her earlier performance
practice is necessary in order to make proper sense of her so-called turn to the avant-
garde.15 The subversive nature of her standards singing can therefore be seen as part
and parcel of her more sonically experimental singing, to which she turned to later
in her career.
◊ ◊ ◊
Jeanne Lee and Ran Blake started playing together as students at Bard. The pair
entered, and actually won, the famous Apollo Theatre Amateur Night competition
in 1961. This led to a recording opportunity late that year, which produced the RCA
Victor album The Newest Sound Around.16 Table 1 presents the tracks on this album, as
well as additional tracks recorded but not initially released. It also includes prominent
other earlier recordings of these songs, versions that listeners to Lee and Blake might
have been aware of and so could inform their reception of Lee and Blake’s renditions.
Consider, first, Lee and Blake’s rendition of “Laura.” The music was composed
for the 1944 film of the same name, with lyrics added the next year by Johnny Mercer.
The song was a major hit, with numerous versions recorded in 1945 and regularly
thereafter (including instrumental versions by the likes of Charlie Parker, Erroll

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Table 1: Tracks from Jeanne Lee with R an Blake,
The Newest Sound Around.
Track
Number Title Composer(s) Prominent Earlier Recordings
1 “Laura” D. Raskin and J. Mercer Frank Sinatra, 1957
(1944–45)
2 “Blue Monk” T. Monk (1954), lyrics by A. Lincoln, 1961
A. Lincoln (1961)
3 “Where Flamin- J. B. Brooks, H. Courland- Helen Merrill (1956), P. Lee
goes Fly” er, and E. Peale (1956) (1956), D. Staton (1959),
C. Connor (1960)
4 “Season in the T. Wolf and F. Landesman Jackie Cain and Roy Kral
Sun” (1956) (1961)
5 “Summertime” G. Gershwin and D. Hay- E. Fitzgerald and L. Arm-
ward (1934) strong (1957); there are
more than 26,000 known
recordings.
6 “Lover Man” J. Davis, R. Ramirez and J. B. Holiday (1944), S.
Sherman (1941) Vaughan (1954, 1957), B.
Dearie (1957), J. London
(1957)
7 “Evil Blues” (“Evil Traditional (note, this J. White (1946)
Hearted Man”) is not the song “Evil
Blues” sung by D.
Washington)
8 “Sometimes I Feel Traditional L. Armstrong (1958), Odetta
Like a Mother- (1960)
less Child”
9 “When Sunny J. Segal and M. Fisher J. Mathis (1956), N. Cole
Gets Blue” (1956) (1957), J. Christy (1957),
D. Staton (1958), C. Con-
nor (1959), A. O’Day
(1961)
10 “Love Isn’t Every- P. McGovern (1956) P. McGovern (1956)
thing”
Additional Tracks Not Originally Released:
1 “Vanguard” R. Blake (1961)
(here purely
instrumental,
although J. Lee
would later
write lyrics)
2 “Left Alone” B. Holiday and M. Wal- A. Lincoln (1961)
dron (1959)
3 “He’s Got the Traditional (Here J. Lee sings M. Ander-
Whole World son’s 1958 lyrics)
in His Hands”
4 “Straight Ahead” A. Lincoln and M. Wal- A. Lincoln (1961)
dron (1961)

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Garner, and Billy Strayhorn). The song, like the movie, concerns a man’s love for a
mysterious woman, once thought to be dead, but discovered to be alive. Yet it is a
love which, in either case, may be impossible to act upon. Most recorded versions
are quite lush. One of the most popular recordings was by Frank Sinatra in 1957.17
His rendition—while artful, and with orchestration that clearly borders on program
music (the plucked string footsteps, for example)—is clearly sung to a woman of
mystery, perhaps absent but very real (even if only a memory). This creates a tension
with the lyrics’ final line, “she’s only a dream,” upon which the song, in Sinatra’s
version, resolves harmonically. The original, by contrast, consists of oscillating minor
tonalities with an ambiguous key signature.
Compare this with Lee and Blake’s recording.18 Blake opens with tone clusters
of adjacent pitches suggesting a global atonality. The lyric is sung very slowly, which
is characteristic of their approach to standards, and is pitched a major sixth lower
than Sinatra’s version. As the performance progresses, Lee and Blake increasingly
deviate from the melody and harmony of the song. Lee lengthens her line to great
effect (a technique she would continue to use throughout her career). For example,
she lengthens “recall” in “that you can never quite recall,” as well as “seem,” and
the final “dream.” These lengthened words are sung with little if any vibrato, which
adds to the sense of time slowing down or being absent entirely. By the time Lee’s
lengthened sung words resolve into wordless vocals, the original melody and harmonic
structure have been left behind. As Lee sings for the second time the line “those eyes,
how familiar they seem,” the familiarity of these eyes, apparent in the first chorus,
has been radically called into question, as has the identity of Laura.
Lee and Blake have effected a transformation of Laura into a dream image via
their increasingly improvisational performance of the song’s melody and harmony.
Just as in a dream, images that begin familiar can become strange in such a way that
the transformation itself is left unclear: “I dreamed of my house, but it was not my
house.” This is what happens to Laura via the meticulous incremental deviations that
Lee and Blake effect to the song structure itself. In Lee and Blake’s version, the fact
that Laura is a dream seems to be literally true, and the dream-like status of Laura is
brought about not just via their harmonic and melodic improvisations, but via the
way they approach the song in the time domain. When Lee returns to sing the final
half chorus, time is stretched out, elastic and nonlinear. The performance threatens to
grind to a halt altogether, ending on the sung word “dream,” paired with a sustained
low pedal tone from Blake (which together fail to resolve the song harmonically),
as if time has now totally stopped. One is perhaps trapped in the dream, a thought
that captures nicely one aspect of the psychology of the film, and, at another level of
analysis altogether, suggests the all-consuming fantasy that men may have of women
who they fictionalize, creating images and identities for them in their head.19 (Is
this perhaps one function of the jazz standard?) The narrator of the song in Lee and

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Blake’s version is trapped in his(?) dream construction of Laura, perhaps having lost
sight of her reality, perhaps not wanting to approach her as a real person. Sinatra is
missing an absent Laura; Lee and Blake have created an imaginary person, who now
comes to haunt her creator in dream time, in a dream world, where things are not
what they seem, where the familiar is displaced, and resolution is often denied.20
Lee and Blake’s ability to transform the expressive and narrative content of
standards manifests itself repeatedly, and in many ways. Consider next their version
of “Evil Blues,” which is actually “Evil Hearted Man,” a song popularized by Josh
White on a 1949 Mercury ten-inch LP entitled Strange Fruit.21 The song also goes
by the title “Evil Hearted Me.” One cannot but note that the original comes from
an album titled after Billie Holiday’s most famous song. On the original Lee/Blake
album, the track also appears immediately after Lee and Blake’s recording of “Lover
Man,” another song Holiday made her own. “Lover Man” asks where one’s lover is,
from the perspective, one assumes, of a woman narrator. In “Lover Man” the woman
is in bed, dreaming (again!) of her lover. “Evil Blues” may explain why she needs to
sing the lyric “lover man where can you be?”!
Lee changes the gender of the protagonist in “Evil Blues” to a woman. The
lyrics she sings, closely following those of Josh White are as follows:
Woke up this morning, feeling mighty bad
Baby said good morning, how it made me mad.
Because I’m eeeeevil, eeeeeeeeeeeeee-downright evil,
Evil as a gaaaal caaaaaaaaaan be.
Made me some breakfast, brought it to my bed,
Took a sip of coffee, threw the cup at his head,
Cus’ I’m eeeeevil, eeeeeeeeeeeeee-downright evil,
Evil as a gaaaal caaaaaaaaaan be.
(Piano solo with bass accompaniment)
(Vocalized/scat improvisation—much closer to “traditional” scat than her other
free vocalizations)
(Seamlessly returns to lyrics)
Aaaaaa—well I don’t care it he leaves me flat,
I got forty-seven others if it comes to that.
Cus’ I’m eeeevil, eeeeeeeee-downright evil,
Evil as a gaaaaaaaaaaaal can beeeeeeeeeee.
It is worth comparing this with the related song “Evil Gal Blues,” as sung in
1943 by Dinah Washington, with music by Leonard Feather and words by Lionel
Hampton.22
I’m an evil gal; don’t you bother with me
Yes, I’m an evil gal; don’t you bother with me

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I’ll empty your pockets and fill you with misery

I’ve got men to the left, men to the right
Men every day and men every night
I’ve got so many men, mmm, I don’t know what to do
So I’m tellin’ you, daddy, I ain’t no good to you
I’ve got men in the east, men in the west
But my man here in Harlem always loves me the best
I’m an evil gal and I need an evil man
But I’m down in the dumps since I lost him to Uncle Sam
If you want to be happy, don’t hang around with me
Mmm, I said if you wanna be happy, don’t hang around with me
’Cause I’m an evil gal and I want to set you free
In Washington’s version, she is evil because she will steal her man’s money
and give him trouble—the sort of trouble than men often accuse women of in blues
songs. She wants money and will mess around (she has so many men). But, tellingly,
in a verse often not listed with the lyrics but sung by Washington, she states: “I need
an evil man, but I’m down in the dumps since I lost him to Uncle Sam.” The evil
woman is actually pining for her man in the army, and she “needs” an evil man to . . .
well to what? Handle and control her? Obtain money for her by who knows what
means? This lyric fights against attempts to undermine its meaning.23 Of course there
is a long tradition of scholarship concerning the relationship of women blues artists
to racialized heteronormative depictions of women and the often subtle means of
subverting these meanings, of creating alternative ontologies.24 It may well be the
case that there are ways of hearing Washington’s performance as also engaging in a
critique of the depiction of women the lyric suggests.
In opposition to Washington’s evil woman in “Evil Gal Blues,” whose identity
is both crafted by, and speaks to, the fears of men, Lee’s change of the gender of the
protagonist in “Evil Blues” presents a very different “evil woman.” She is being served
by her man, and she is angry and violent, but she is very much autonomous and in full
control of her agency. Unlike Washington’s pining for her lost man, Lee is indifferent
to whether her man stays or leaves, for she, like Washington, has many men. While
we may not approve of throwing coffee cups at anyone, here the woman is not on
the receiving end of violence, but is doling it out. And, of course, the song, with the
gender switch, begs to have one ask what misdeed has caused her evil mood. Is this a
response to a wrong by her man, perhaps abuse, or is she just simply evil? And if the
latter, is it not already a political statement to allow a women to simply be evil, and
not have it explained away as a cover for some weakness, say sadness for a lost love?25
Lee’s evil woman, unlike that of Washington, seems to foreshadow those attitudes
toward black women that Abbey Lincoln would go on to bemoan and critique in her
famous 1966 article, “Who Will Revere the Black Woman?” Lincoln’s engagement

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with the repeated trope of the “evil black woman” concludes with her stating that
“maybe if our women get evil enough and angry enough, they’ll be moved to some
action that will bring our men to their senses.”26
A similar effect, based on the gender of the protagonist of a song, and the
expressiveness employed, can be read from Lee’s rendition of “When Sunny Gets
Blue.” This song was made popular by Nat King Cole in 1957.27 In Cole’s version,
with lush string arrangements, the mood suggested is one where Sunny’s melancholic
state is natural, almost fetching. Sunny is in need of protection. There is little sense
of her sadness, or empathy toward her. It is a story told by an external male observer
of Sunny, in effect a voyeur. Lee’s version seems to be sung from Sunny’s perspective,
expressing her pain and sadness, through close coordination of the lyric with the
performance style. Interestingly, Sarah Vaughan recorded this song the following year
and changed the gender to a man. Lee does not do this, for she tends to keep songs
that concern women’s pain and suffering to be about women. What she often does
is effect a change in the perspective and relationship of the song to this pain and
suffering. Where Vaughan’s decision can be seen either as an attempt to maintain
heteronormativity (it is sung about the opposite gender) and/or as a refusal to accept
the woman’s pain, Lee, as is her wont, does not bury or avoid women’s suffering.
Instead, she personalizes it and often takes it from what was a male perspective to
that of her own.
Lee’s penchant to both sing about love from a female perspective, and to stress
its varied characteristics, emerges again on the very last tune of the album. It is a
rather obscure tune, “Love Isn’t Everything,” written and sung by Patty McGovern
on her 1956 Atlantic recording Wednesday’s Child.28 In the liner notes to this album,
Thomas Talbert states that this song is “slightly vitriolic”—and that is all! The lyric
is as follows:
Love isn’t everything
Not what the poets sing
That all else but loving is vain
Love doesn’t make you think
Love isn’t water to drink
Love isn’t slumbering
Or shelter from cold or from rain
Love isn’t rich men’s gold
Nor bread when the heart has grown old
Love doesn’t fix [Lee: make] your breakfast
Love doesn’t change your bed
Love doesn’t take the thoughts from books
And put ’em in your head.

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Can’t put the smell in Spring

Or paint all the leaves in the Fall
But for lack of Love
I’m dying, that’s all
Against a backdrop of the songs that precede it on Lee/Blake’s album, it is

not a stretch to read the final lines as sung by Lee as either sarcastic or as truthful,
but recognizing the limitations and functions of love, without a overly Panglossian
male viewpoint of what love should mean to a woman. The references to dreams,
breakfast in bed, money, the cold and rain, pick out so precisely motifs in the previ-
ous songs on this album that it is almost impossible not to think that this song was
very intentionally chosen and placed last. Again, Lee does not reject love itself—she
often sings of it and its importance—but she rejects its sole importance to women, as
if nothing else matters to them. To employ a trope very much alive at the time, Lee
is engaged in an act of self-determination concerning what love is for her, or could
or should be, and how, when, and if she wishes to pursue it. Agency with respect to
love is at the fore here.29
Lee questions male constructions of what love is, or should be, for women, yet
does not deny its desirability. With this in mind, the many songs she sings concerning
loneliness, abandonment, and the lack of true love take on more subtle meanings
than those often attributed to such lyrical tropes. In Lee’s hands, such songs do not
obviously code as women bemoaning that which they need or desire above all else
(love does not put food on the table!), or that which completes them, or that which
they need for protection, but as songs concerning what is of course an important
human desire. Lee sings for those who wish for love, once love is configured within
gender relations that are equitable and just.30
Let me try to demonstrate this by considering a series of songs on the theme of
loneliness/lack of love, coupled with songs on women’s love/sexual labor, all of which
Lee sung during this early period of her career. We know of four additional tracks
that were recorded for The Newest Sound Around, yet not released on the original is-
sue.31 One of these is the Billie Holiday composition (which Holiday never recorded)
“Left Alone.” It was first recorded with Holiday’s lyrics in 1961 by Abbey Lincoln on
her Candid recording Straight Ahead.32 Lincoln’s recording is accompanied by Mal
Waldron, who wrote the music and first recorded the tune instrumentally. This is
another place where we see the influence of Lincoln on Lee (a topic worth pursuing
in greater detail), since The Newest Sound Around session also includes recordings of
“Blue Monk,” “Left Alone,” and “Straight Ahead,” all found on Lincoln’s Straight
Ahead album that was released earlier in the year.
The lyrics of “Left Alone” are as follows:
Where’s the love that’s made to fill my heart?
Where’s the one from whom I’ll never part?

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First they hurt me, then desert me

[and] I’m left alone, all alone
Where’s the place from which I’ll never roam
Where’s the house that I can call my home
[There’s no house that I can call my home
There’s no place from which I’ll never roam—Lincoln version]
Town or city, it’s a pity
[’Cus] I’m left alone, all alone
Seek and find they always say
But up to now it’s not that way
Maybe fate has let him pass me by
Or perhaps we’ll meet before I die
Hearts will open, but until then
I’m left alone, all alone
The narrator is hurt and deserted by a lover, yet she still seeks a love where
hearts will both be mutually open. This search for authentic love is spatialized; it is
a journey to find a true place or home. Displacement, as a trope for the condition of
those in inequitable relationships, is perhaps also modeled musically by the various
displacements and refusal to return home (harmonically) that Blake often effects in
these recordings. This evocation of the search for love as a spatial seeking, a journey,
now gives multiple meanings to Lee’s recording of Lincoln’s “Straight Ahead”:
Straight ahead the road keeps winding
Narrow, wet and dimly lit
Vainly looking for a crossroad
Where a weary soul can sit
Lost and needing some direction
Dodging ruts along the way
Bumpy road confuse a body
Lead a trusting soul astray.
For some this road is smooth and easy
Traveling high without a care
But if you got to use the back-roads
Straight ahead can lead nowhere.
[so] On this road you got a problem
Getting where you want to go
Speed limits almost down to nothing
Straight ahead but awful slow
For some this road is smooth and easy
Traveling high without a care
But if you got to use the back-roads
Straight ahead can lead nowhere

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On this road you got a problem

Getting where you want to go
Speed limits almost down to nothing
Straight ahead but awful slowwwwwww
This song—whose most obvious interpretation concerns topics such as the great
migration, the underground railroad, and more generally how race makes certain
journeys less direct and more difficult than they could or should be—can also now
be read as concerning the seeking of love, how it is fraught with dangers and is often
pursued indirectly.
These themes are picked up in performances recently unearthed from a 1963
performance from Fulda, Germany, which was recorded for local radio.33 Spatial-
ization of the search for love, its difficulty as a journey, and a foregrounding of the
plight of those in pain from lost love are all found in Lee and Blake’s performance of
“Where Do You Go?” Written by Alec Wilder and Arnold Sundgaard, it was recorded
in 1959 by Frank Sinatra on his album titled No One Cares, which Sinatra himself
described as a collection of suicide songs.34 This song is very much like “Straight
Ahead,” with a more obvious focus on love. Stripped of the rich string arrangements
found in the Sinatra version, and sung a cappella, Lee’s version, stark and plaintive,
sounds almost like a eulogy to one who did not find any place to go.35
The gender identities performed in Sinatra’s version are clear, a man concerned
for a woman, with instrumental support following the narrative of the song. The
trope here is a familiar one, male concern for a woman depicted as vulnerable, in
need of (male) protection, lacking agency of her own. Lee’s performance troubles
these identities and undermines the identity binary implicit in the song (lost woman/
concerned man). Is Lee both the watcher and the watched, or has gender simply been
inverted? The taut, sorrowful performance enacts the positionality of the woman in
the song. Lee sings alone, without accompaniment, her harmonically unstable rendi-
tion failing to find a home, failing to return to where it began. Male concern for a
“lost” woman is now, in Lee’s performance, tinged with overtones of implied violence,
suffering, and fear, with no clear answer to the question the song asks, “where will
you go?” The unstable identity of the song’s narrator in Lee’s performance suggests
multiple identities for both Lee and the implied female protagonist of the song. This
instability, our inability to clearly peg a gender to the song’s protagonist, opens up
conceptual space for questioning more generally the stability of both female and,
more specifically, black female, identity. In Sinatra’s version, we may feel sorry for
the woman, but her subjectivity is absent. Lee’s act of destabilization forces us to
consider this absent subjectivity, which both appears and disappears as we consider
whether or not Lee is singing from the perspective of this woman. To wrench control
of female identity from the male songwriters is not easy. It may leave one with no
place to go, with no other female identities to call upon.

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These themes are also amplified by Lee and Blake’s performance, at this same
concert, of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Women,” with lyrics written by Margo Guryan
in 1962.36 These lyrics were recorded that same year by Chris Connor on her album
Free Spirits,37 which now sounds like a narration of the condition of the woman ad-
dressed in “Where Will You Go?”
Lonely in the night she wonders
Who can she tell of her heartache?
They that listen do not care
They don’t share heartache
She is a lonely woman
No one to cry to at all
Once she wore a smile of gladness
Now on that smile there are teardrops
They that know her don’t care
Wouldn’t wear teardrops
They left the lonely woman
To wander alone through the darkness
Once she loved a man
Don’t bother to imagine how she loved him
You’d never guess at all
She never told the secret of her sorrow
And yet there was someone who knew
He had eyes that saw her sorrow
He heard the sound of her sadness
When he called her no one came
But the same sadness; he calls the lonely woman
But never again will she hear him.
It would be easy to slip into thinking simply that Lee is fixated by lost love and
yearning for love, that she does fit, or at least perform, a male-constructed identity of
a woman who, above all else, seeks love and without it is incomplete. Yet, as I have
already suggested, Lee problematizes such an easy read (as does Blake’s accompani-
ment). It is far from clear that the “Lonely Woman” here is merely seeking a lost
love; this performance, particularly against the backdrop of Lee and Blake’s history
of standards performances, suggests asking why this woman is lonely, how and why
is she lacking love, and what might have been done to her or by her. And these
questions, even if no single answer is given by the performance, have us consider the
agency and history of the lonely woman. We are asked to delve more deeply into her
identity than to simply note that she is lonely and assume she merely lacks love.
Lee’s performance of “One Mint Julep,” also part of this radio performance,
further problematizes easy reads of the relationship of women to love as found in

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these songs. This popular rhythm and blues song was written, both music and words,
by Rudy Toombs and first recorded by the Clovers in 1951.38 It was popularized by
Ray Charles in 1961 as an instrumental and is commonly framed as paradigmatic
of the male “all I did was sneak a kiss, and now I am married” drinking song trope.
Here are the lyrics as sung by the Clovers:
One early morning, as I was walking
I met a woman, we started talking
I took her home to get a few nips
But all I had was a mint julep
One mint julep was the cause of it all
I don’t remember just how it started
I only know that we should have parted
I stole a kiss, and then another
I didn’t mean to take it further
The lights were burning low, there in the parlor
When through the kitchen door, up popped her father
He said, “I saw you when you kissed my daughter
Gotta wed her right now, or face a slaughter!”
I didn’t know just what I was doing
I had to marry or face ruin
A mint julep, a mint julep
Now, I don’t want to bore you with my troubles
But from now on I’ll be thinking double
I’m through with flirting and drinking whiskey
I got six extra children from a-getting frisky
In 1962, Sarah Vaughan recorded this song and changed the gender of the
narrator to a woman.39 This is surely significant, and Lee follows Vaughan. Both
therefore transform the song so that it is from the woman’s perspective, but the sense
in which such a transformation subverts the song’s original message must be decided.
The changes they each make to the lyrics are important. Consider the alterations
they make in the first two verses:
Sarah Vaughan’s lyrics
One early morning, as I was walking

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I met a man
Went in a tavern, to get a few nips
But all I had was
But all I know is
We stole a kiss, and then another
I didn’t mean to
One mint julep was the cause of it all . . .
Jeanne Lee’s lyrics
One early morning, when I was walking
I met a man, and started talking
I took him home, to get a few nips
And all I had was a mint julep
But all I know that we should have parted
I stole a kiss, and then another
He didn’t mean to take it further
One mint julep was the cause of it all . . .
Vaughan changes the location of the encounter to a tavern (a public and less
sexualized place than a home), and it is ambiguous who made the invitation. The
kiss they stole was mutual, although she did not mean it (presumably because of her
drunken state). And so the tale told is a familiar one, booze creates a “loose woman,”
but consent is still seemingly given, or is at least ambiguous: “We stole the kiss, but
I did not mean it.” In the last verse, Vaughan departs from the written lyric by sug-
gesting that in the future she should simply be given flowers, not whiskey, suggesting
both a more male construction of female identity and more heteronormative court-
ship rituals.40
Lee’s version returns the tryst to a home not a tavern, but this makes the gender
change of the narrator that much more subversive, for she took him home. The drink
she consumes leads her to steal a kiss, again asserting sexual authority and agency. He
did not mean to take it further, implying that she did (even if aided by the julep).
The song’s sexual politics is now radically different from the original, as well as from
Vaughan’s version.41 In Lee’s version, a woman takes a man home, asserts her sexual
agency (aided by alcohol), and finds herself in an unwanted marriage (with children),
since acts of female sexual liberation need to be normalized within the context of a
marriage, here by the woman’s father.42 Now the “right” of women to flirt—which
the last verse questions, and which Vaughan did not sing—makes sense. Women’s
sexual autonomy is not to be allowed, and, as the narrative structure of the song

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makes clear, one result of this is to deny women agency in their sexual partners, and,
by extension, life partners. Where the “thinking double” that Sarah Vaughan does
seems to be between choosing to drink or to be showered with roses and tulips, Lee’s
mental dilemma concerns asserting her sexuality and its ramifications.
And so is it any surprise that women, denied sexual autonomy and agency,
may end up lonely women? Left alone, not because she has rejected love, or even
heteronormative love, but because she is left outside of a truly gender-equal loving
relationship. The subservient role women are expected to play in love and courtship,
and the ramifications for attempting to undermine these expectations, which include
false beliefs as to the role of love in the construction of female identities, results in a
failure to find true egalitarian love; it results in being left alone. Gone is the woman
who needs a man’s love to be whole, who needs a man to save her and shelter her, who
is the passive recipient of male sexual desire, whose sole goal (as a women) is to find
love. Gone, therefore, is the construction of a women’s identity that is so standard
in the jazz standard as composed and written. It is replaced by a woman who can
be evil, who does not deny the importance of love but can seek it out on her own
terms, and is perhaps spurned because of this. She does not want to be lonely and
realizes that lack of love can be a hardship and source of sorrow. Its importance is
not denied, but love is not everything. Is the lonely woman of the song a response
to—and a result of—that mint julep-aided tryst? The result of women asserting
sexual autonomy, finding themselves in a loveless relationship, lonely? Perhaps.
There exists a small amount of video footage of Lee and Blake from this pe-
riod. Consider a television performance shot in a Paris studio in 1963 of the opening
song from West Side Story, “Something’s Coming.” The musical had premiered on
Broadway in 1957 and became famous in the film of 1961.43 This song, widely inter-
preted as personifying the hope and expectation of love of the protagonist, was also
recorded in 1962 by the Oscar Peterson Trio, in an equally upbeat, swinging, exuberant
style.44 Lee and Blake totally invert this feeling. We move from infinite possibilities,
happy expectation, and the thought of love to come and a better future (themes that
recur in West Side Story), to a far more ambiguous and ambivalent questioning of
what may be coming and the possibilities of future love. Does Lee really expect this
change to come soon? Is the change wholly to be desired? Is she looking forward to
it whole heartedly? The ambiguity in their presentation of the lyric and music (with
hesitant tempos, atonal clusters, half-stated thematics, and other displacements) is
readily heard, and perhaps also seen in Lee’s bodily comportment. The semantic
center of this song is totally displaced, from that of expected/desired love, to—well
to what? A lack of assuredness about the future? A questioning of the desirability
of love under present conditions? The likelihood of equalitarian love being found?
Or a more general pessimism of things to come? It is hard to imagine a standard
with a more optimistic theme and feel being more radically transformed, from the
original’s expectation of romance to come, to the air of alienation that permeates

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Lee’s performance.45 Lee’s vocal performance and bodily comportment suggest her
own alienation from the surface meaning of this song and so suggest a more global
sense of alienation from the courtship rituals the song relishes. Dare I say there is a
hint of danger in Lee’s presentation of what might be coming?46
In 1966 in Stockholm, Lee and Blake were to record one more album of stan-
dards, but it was not released in any form until 1995.47 It picks up the themes here
addressed, and, I think, amplifies a number of them, discussing women’s work in
relationships and what is called emotional labor.48 Again the performances subvert
the original meaning of many of the standards, some of which now include pieces
from the rock tradition.
Lee and Blake perform three songs closely associated with the Beatles: “A Taste
of Honey,” “Ticket to Ride,” and “A Hard Day’s Night.” They begin with the Beatles’s
“Ticket to Ride.” Lee and Blake constantly undermine the forward movement/tempo
of the song. Lee sings two scat choruses, and then the song grinds suddenly to a halt,
as if that ticket to ride is not going anywhere. It is worth considering the original
lyrics to this song:
I think I’m gonna be sad,
I think it’s today, yeah.
The girl that’s driving me mad
Is going away.
She’s got a ticket to ride, . . .
I don’t know why she’s riding so high,
She ought to think twice,
She ought to do right by me.
Before she gets to saying goodbye,
She ought to think twice,
She ought to do right by me.
While the song has a very cheery upbeat musical accompaniment, the lyric is
less so and has a perhaps ominous message to the “girl” seeking her freedom from a
relationship: that she ought to think twice and do right by her man, that she does
not care, that she is heartless. “Ticket to Ride” is a rock version of the “cold-hearted
women” blues of an earlier era, but keeps the stereotype intact. Lee changes the
narrative voice to that of a woman, whose man is fleeing. By doing this, the song
develops a narrative structure that would be closely revisited three years later by Lee
in her performance of “My Angel.”49 It is significant that Lee does not sing the B
section lyric (here in italics), but scats through it, as if she refuses to acknowledge the
implied threat behind this verse. This silence or occluding of lyrics whose content
Lee may find too offensive to sing, is, of course, a way of drawing attention to this
fact in a discrete, yet powerful, way.50 As I have argued elsewhere, the strategic use
of silence—which, itself, is and has been historically used as a racist and misogynist

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tool—to fight such externally imposed identities is characteristic of black musical

experimentalism, particularly during the 1960s. Here may be an early, if oblique, use
of this powerful musical/political trope.51
There is, I think, a perhaps significant example of the use of silence to speak
loudly on this very recording session. Blake performs “The Girl from Ipanema,” but
purely instrumentally. The lyric, with its sexualization of the girl and the invocation
of male privilege by a man who cannot understand why she will not look at him while
he ogles her, is hardly a story of egalitarian courtship rituals! What is significant is that
by 1966 there is already a tradition of women singers changing the lyric to “The Boy
from Ipanema” (for example, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, and The Supremes), often
with other lyrical changes. Is it a stretch to claim that Lee, by not singing any lyric, is
making a “statement” that she (and Blake) will have nothing of this kind of reverse
objectification? She simply sits this one out, but her silence here is deafening. In a sense
Lee performs this by most pointedly not performing it. While the gender reversals the
song receives at the hands of Peggy Lee, Fitzgerald, and others is surely a subversion,
and surely part of an act of reclamation of identity to assert female sexual autonomy
and determination, Lee’s silence speaks, I think, of a related but different reclamation
project, one that does not so much expand male sexual privilege to allow for female
sexuality but one that wishes to reconfigure gender dynamics more thoroughly.
It can hardly be a coincidence that Lee and Blake also take on the Beatles’s “A
Hard Day’s Night,” a song also performed by Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee (who
also recorded “A Taste of Honey,” popularized by the Beatles and also recorded at
this session by Lee and Blake). Peggy Lee’s 1965 recording of “A Hard Day’s Night”
features a rocky western swing feel.52 That same year Fitzgerald recorded it live in
Berlin (where she also records “The Boy from Ipanema”), and, quite frankly, does
not seem comfortable with the song, having a very static trio comp behind her.53
“A Hard Day’s Night” concerns a man coming home, tired, for he works all
day to buy his homebound woman the things she wants, who in return offers him
ready sex at the end of the day—she will “give [him] everything!” Heteronormative
relations here are presented as business arrangements: male work labor exchanged
for a women’s sexual labor. (Strange how almost all the commentary on this song
concerns deciphering the opening chord.)54 The heteronormativity and misogyny
of the original is located most prominently in the last line of each of the two verses:
Verse One
But when I get home to you, I find the things that you do
Will make me feel alright
Verse Two
So why on earth should I moan, cause when I get you alone
You know I feel OK

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It is these final lines that focus only on the man’s feelings of satisfaction due
to his woman’s actions and make clear that the theme of the song, for all its bouncy
rhythm and driving beat, is one of male dominance over an at-home lover.
Lee and Blake radically problematize this read, crafting a far different relation-
ship at play in the song. In the Beatles’ version, while John Lennon sings of being
tired, the tempo and accompaniment suggests reckless abandon, endless energy,
and passionate sex. In contrast, Lee sounds tired. Her version foregrounds the fact
that women do work—real work in the world—and yet are perhaps still expected
to play a certain sexual role in relationships, a theme to recur in “Blasé” three years
later. Feminists would later take up the issues of sexual labor, and emotional labor,
yet this is a rather early critique of these issues.55
It is in Lee and Blake’s modifications to these last lines of the verse that these
changes are most readily heard. During the final line of the first verse, Blake radically
disrupts the regular rhythmic vamp he has been playing, suggesting perhaps that
upon returning home not all is actually all right. The second time the verse is sung,
Blake again disrupts the rhythm (as he does the third time it is played), while Lee
changes the lyric to “so why I mention I’m home, cause when I get you alone, its
gonna be OK,” moving the emphasis from herself (I feel OK) to the situation itself
(its gonna be OK), while at the same time singing the line with the slightest hint of
a chortle in her voice, again throwing into question the veracity of the lyric.
At the same time that Blake is disrupting the rhythm, he also changes his
vamp from following the implied D- and C-major chords of the Beatles’s version to
a D- and C-minor (with added extended dissonances), thereby adding additional
tension and general creepiness to these final lines of the verse. What is a happy release
and transition into the bridge in the Beatles’s version is a disquieting and ominous
transition in Lee and Blake’s performance. The fourth and final time the verse is
sung, Blake plays a sequence of ascending chords straight out of a horror movie
where “that door” is about to be opened. We are very far from that happy-go-lucky
world that the Beatles evoke. Lee and Blake’s collective approach to the lyric and
music strongly suggests looking more carefully at sexual relations within the home,
that issues of women’s labor—sexual, emotional and physical—need addressing and
made public, to be taken out of the home and into the realm of public discourse.
Their performance makes clear that male assumptions of a happy home might not
reflect the woman’s perspective and that what is essentially a contractual exchange
of work for sex is far more ominous and dangerous than it is fair and equalitarian.
◊ ◊ ◊
In toto, Lee and Blake create counternarratives to the prevalent models of black
female identity and heteronormative love that jazz standards construct. They often
rely on tropes of imagination and dreaming to foreground the distance separating

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the reality of such identities and relationships from what they should or could be.
Tropes of searching and of loss, and related displacements, stand in for the need
to construct, to find, new identities. Reality and dream worlds collide and have
indistinct boundaries: Laura’s ambiguous existence and tenuous love; the unfound
true love of “Left Alone”; the hard and indirect journey of “Straight Ahead”; the
search for a home in “Where Do You Go”; the wandering “Lonely Woman”; the
ambiguity of what looms in “Something’s Coming”; the ambivalent return home in
“A Hard Day’s Night.” All of these pieces place true love, and identities of one’s own
choosing, just out of reach, yet still to be sought out. Yes, Jeanne Lee holds love in
esteem (Who does not?) and recognizes its transformative potential. Yet love based
on equality and the freedom to construct one’s own identity is the basis from which
love can discharge its transformative potentials. This love is not “standard,” nor is it
the love described in standards. And so Lee’s experimentation with the love trope as
found in standards is part and parcel of her later more vocally experimental work,
yet it is no less revolutionary in the early period I have discussed here.
It then seems fitting to end with a consideration of Lee and Blake’s recording of
“You Stepped Out of a Dream,” an oft-recorded standard, written in 1940 by Nacio
Herb Brown and Gus Kahn.56 Previously sung by both men and women, two prominent
recordings are by Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan. Both sing the song spritely, as if
to a real flesh-and-blood lover who is just too good to be true. In personal correspon-
dence, Ran Blake states that their model was Chris Connor, who recorded the song
in 1956.57 While Connor’s performance is slower and more languid then others, one
still has the strong sense that she is singing to a lover. But Lee and Blake’s performance
really sounds like it is about an imaginary lover, a possible lover. When Lee sings, “You
are too beautiful to be what you seem,” this is no expression just of the extreme beauty
of one’s lover, but a pointed questioning of whether the lover really is what they seem
to be. This is most obviously noted by comparing Lee and Blake’s approach to the
lyric the first time it is sung, as compared to the second, where the increased tension
and dissonance have us question the authenticity of the lover’s identity, as if Lee and
Blake are saying, “If love appears too good to be true, it may well be.” Here they are
simultaneously reimagining the jazz standard, models of love, and identities, crafting
the project that Duchess Harris so succinctly stated in the quotation at the beginning
of this article: “If black women reject others’ definition of them, they must then define
or redefine their own being and provide their own theories of being or ontologies.” Lee
and Blake show that such an identity reclamation project is a possibility but still not
yet a reality.
Acknowledgments
Professor Lisa Barg read an early version of this article and offered both encourage-
ment and careful criticism. I would like to thank the anonymous readers whose kind

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and thoughtful comments led to numerous improvements to this article. I would

like to offer special thanks to Professor Michael Heller, whose numerous comments,
meticulous editing, and general enthusiasm made completing this article a pleasure.
Eric Porter generously made available to me archival material concerning Jeanne
Lee that he had collected. I believe I first saw Geri Allen perform in the early 1980s
with Oliver Lake’s ensemble Jump Up. Soon I was to have the pleasure of seeing
her perform many times, in many different ensembles, the unifying thread being
the clarity of her musical thoughts, her massive chops, and her obviously huge ears.
It also went noted by my younger self how often she was the only woman on the
bandstand. Musing over this state of affairs, at first as a fan and very amateur musi-
cian, later as a scholar of jazz and related music, led to my present research, and, I
hope, has helped shape the ways in which I navigate the numerous musical com-
munities I find myself part of. Professor Allen’s untimely passing came as a shock, I
can honestly say that my work on Jeanne Lee would not have ever started without
her example. I offer this piece in her memory; if it contains any intelligence, swing,
clarity, or poetry, that is due to her example.
Notes
1. The importance of the performance of popular songs for black women’s efforts to wrest
control of their own identities and air gender-, race-, and class-driven complaints is made
clear by Angela Y. Davis in her important study, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. For
example, Davis states, “In the context of the consolidation of industrial capitalism, the
sphere of personal love and domestic life in mainstream American culture came to be in-
creasingly idealized as the arena in which happiness was to be sought. This held a special
significance for women, since love and domesticity were supposed to constitute the outer-
most limits of their lives. Full membership in the public community was the exclusive do-
main of men. Therefore, European-American popular songs have to be interpreted within
this context and as contributing to patriarchal hegemony” (9–10). The focus of standards
on love therefore makes them an ideal arena to both expose and confront patriarchy. Lee
is, in this sense, part of a lineage that goes back at least to Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith,
yet her acts of identity construction take place against a different social and political back-
drop. Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (New York: Pantheon Books,
1998).
2. This article is in keeping with work done by scholars such as Linda Williams and those
found in Eileen M. Hayes and Linda F. Williams, eds., Black Women and Music: More
Than the Blues (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2007) or more recent concerns
with intersectionality and black women jazz singers in the work of Jacqueline Castledine,
such as “Gender, Jazz, and Justice in Postwar Freedom Movements,” in Freedom Rights:
New Perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement, ed., Danielle L. McGuire (Lexington:
University of Kentucky Press, 2011), 223–45. It follows upon the pioneering work of Farah
Jasmine Griffin, from whom I have drawn inspiration concerning, among other things,
black singing voices as a site for the production of meaning and the way in which the for-
mal—that is musical—features of the voice can bear as much meaning as the words sung.
See Farah Jasmine Griffin, If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday
(New York: Free Press, 2001) and “When Malindy Sings: A Meditation on Black Wom-
en’s Vocality,” in Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies ed. Robert G. O’Meally,
Brent Hayes Edwards, Farah Jasmine Griffin (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2004). It
is also very much in the spirit of Eric Porter’s chapter on Abbey Lincoln in his book What

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Is This Thing Called Jazz? (Berkley: University of California Press, 2002). As I will note
below, I also draw on Daphne A. Brooks’s more recent studies of a near contemporary
of Jeanne Lee, Nina Simone, as well as her work on Zora Neale Hurston. See Daphne
A. Brooks, “Nina Simone’s Triple Play,” Callaloo 34, no. 1, (Winter 2011): 176–97 and
Daphne A. Brooks, “‘Sister Can You Line it Out?’: Zora Neale Hurston and the Sound of
Womanhood,” Amerikastudien/American Studies 55, no. 4 (2010): 617–627.
3. Jeanne Lee, Conspiracy, recorded Spring 1974, Earthform Records 814 (1975), LP
and Jeanne Lee, Natural Affinities, recorded January and July 1992, Owl Records 4
OWL070CD (1992), CD.
4. Perhaps the most flagrant and irresponsible example of this would be Richard Williams’s
lengthy liner notes to the Archie Shepp 1969 album Blasé. This album contains five tracks,
one instrumental, “Touareg,” and four songs, all sung by Jeanne Lee. Lee’s contributions
to what is commonly thought to be a seminal album of the era are reduced to two clauses
in these notes. Most astonishingly, the title track “Blasé,” a searing performance by Lee of
one of her songs/poems, which directly confronts misogyny particularly within the black
community, is completely ignored in these notes. Every other track is discussed. See Archie
Shepp, Blasé, recorded August 16, 1969, Affinity AFF7 (1970), LP.
5. A fuller analysis of Lee’s whole oeuvre (which the author is presently undertaking) will re-
veal that Lee’s genre hopping—what Daphne A. Brooks calls in reference to Nina Simone
“generic moves”—are part and parcel of Lee’s concerted effort to break free from both
externally imposed gender and racial identities and externally imposed creative opportu-
nities afforded to black woman artists. Lee would endorse, I think, the following quote
from Nina Simone: “It’s always been my aim to stay outside any category. That’s my free-
dom,” which Daphne Brooks elegantly presents as evidence of Nina Simone’s “ability to
mix and match musical forms as a way to break free of the racial and gender circumscrip-
tions placed upon her in popular music culture.” Brooks, “Nina Simone’s Triple Play,”
176.
6. Another reason for Lee’s relative invisibility in the cannon of free jazz is the historical re-
jection of standards by many first- and second-wave free jazz musicians. The Association
for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, in its founding papers, was committed to the
development of “original music,” while vanguardists like Bill Dixon and others also re-
jected playing standards. While the rejection of standards by the avant-garde is clearly re-
lated to the desire to compose new and original music, some of this early hostility toward
standards can also be seen as in accord with Amiri Baraka’s critique of playing standards
as capitulation to middle-brow aesthetics and white control over jazz and related African
American forms of artistic expression. However, the rejection of the standard was not
universal, even among those sympathetic with the views of Baraka. This includes Archie
Shepp, whose career-long practice of revisiting standards form part of his exploration of
black musical practices. Given the fact that by 1967 standards formed only a small part of
Lee’s performance practice, one suspects that other causes are at play in her relative invis-
ibility. Perhaps another factor was that the originals she performed tended to be poems by
white Fluxus authors, such as Robert Lax, and as part of European ensembles outside of
the mainstream African American free jazz community.
7. Yet again, her vocal stylings do not totally explain her lack of recognition. The early en-
sembles of Braxton, like the Creative Construction Company, also did not often fit the
mold of high-energy jazz. While this contributed to their relative lack of popularity, it did
not relegate them to the status of “who is that?”
8. Eric Porter, “Jeanne Lee’s Voice,” Critical Studies in Improvisation 2, no. 1; Eric Lewis,
“Blasé de Jeanne Lee et le politique de l’identité,” Textual 60 (2010): 53–72.
9. A full investigation of Jeanne Lee’s creative output and its relationship to identity will
need to come to terms with the wide range of this output (from jazz standards to sound

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poetry); her work with Fluxus artists and John Cage; her collaborations with dancers and
choreographers such as Mickey Davidson; her little-known children’s book on the history
of jazz, Jam! The Story of Jazz Music (New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 1990); and her
work in developing arts-based curricula for the New York City public school system. This
range of activities suggests a perhaps revealing comparison with Zora Neale Hurston,
since they both pursued interests in theater aesthetics, black music, dance, and ethnog-
raphy. See Brooks “Sister,” 617–27 for a lucid discussion of how Hurston’s wide interests
contributed to her engagement with constructions of black womanhood.
10. A recent short piece on Jeanne Lee, which recognizes her radical approach to standards
singing, can be found (in Italian) in Luigu Onori and Diana Torti, “Ultrasuoni, Jeanne
Lee, arte in movimento,” Il Manifesto, August 26, 2017, Alias (weekly insert).
11. Although it will often be clear how his accompaniment (which is in fact far more than
that) serves a crucial role in problematizing the standard and its usual received meanings.
12. E. Lewis, “Blasé.”
13. This impression is supported by the fact that the recordings somewhat readily available
by Lee leap from her first recording with Ran Blake in 1961 to her first recording with
Gunter Hampel in 1968, which bears many sonic hallmarks of experimental singing.
14. George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2008).
15. As a matter of fact, Jeanne Lee performed in settings with widely differing aesthetics from
that of jazz standards before 1967. As one example, there exists a recording of Lee with
the sound-art/poet Jackson Mac Low from September 1966; Jackson Mac Low, Poetry &
Music, Autographics Cassettes, New Wilderness Foundation 7705A (1966).
16. Jeanne Lee with Ran Blake, The Newest Sound Around, recorded November to December
1961, RCA Victor, LSP-2500 (1962), LP. Additional tracks found on The Newest Sound
Around, Solar Records 4, 4569913 (2012), CD.
17. Frank Sinatra with Gordon Jenkins and His Orchestra, Where Are You?, Capitol Records
W-855, (1957), LP, accessed via Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/track/5xU4JpJr9LsYIZ
6RCtOgQk?si=UVod33NDROeogzDqWjHCuw.
18. Accessed via Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/track/6cBiZVEpEpZa745SCxcnn5.
19. Lee’s many reconfigurations of the role and function of love as found in standards, many
of which will be discussed below, are in keeping with Angela Davis’s claim that “the repre-
sentations of love and sexuality in women’s blues often blatantly contradicted mainstream
ideological assumptions regarding women and being in love. They also challenged the
notion that women’s ‘place’ was in the domestic sphere. Such notions were based on the
social realities of middle-class white women’s lives, but were incongruously applied to all
women, regardless of race or class” (Davis, Blues, 11). Lee is engaged in exposing these
contradictions, particularly in the context of standards, where the “mainstream ideologi-
cal assumptions regarding women” are literally written into the song.
20. It is worth noting that while the film’s plot revolves around Laura, Laura herself lacks
much agency. Things are done for her and to her, but little by her—she is a male con-
struction of a passive women. Lee and Blake foreground the fiction—the dream—in this
ontology.
21. Josh White, Strange Fruit, Mercury MLP 7042 (1949), LP. Lee and Blake’s “Evil Blues,”
accessed via Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/track/5HV6YgzVlRix0ZPLS4CAuw.
22. Dinah Washington, Homeward Bound/Evil Gal Blues, recorded December 29, 1943, Key-
note Recordings 2–605 (1944), 78 RPM. Also recorded by Etta Jones in 1944 with Barney
Bigard; Etta Jones with Barney Bigard and His Orchestra, Long Journey/Evil Gal Blues,
recorded December 29, 1944, Black & White-10 (1945).

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23. See also the 1961 recording by Ann Richards, on her first ATCO recording after separat-
ing from Stan Kenton, where she adds many lyrics that serve to destabilize the narrative.
Ann Richards, Ann, Man!, ATCO Records 33–136 (1961).
24. See, for example, Hazel Carby, “‘It Jus Be’s Dat Way Sometime’: The Sexual Politics of
Women’s Blues,” Radical America 20, no. 4 (1986): 9–24; Davis, Blues; Tammy Kernodle,
“Having Her Say: The Blues as the Black Women’s Lament,” in Women’s Voices Across Mu-
sical Worlds, ed. Jane Bernstein (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004), 213–31.
25. For example, in the film Laura, there are men who are both evil and good, while Laura is
not allowed much agency at all.
26. Abbey Lincoln, “Who Will Revere the Black Woman?” Negro Digest (September 1966):
16–20. Lee’s “Evil Blues” is therefore in many ways a performative foreshadowing of views
such as the following, expressed by Archie Shepp in “An Artist Speaks Bluntly,” Down
Beat, December 16, 1965, 11. Shepp states: “Don’t you ever wonder just what my collective
rage will—as it surely must—be like, when it is—as it inevitably will be—unleashed?”
Black women such as Lee had little access to public forums such as Down Beat for the
expression of their concerns, their possible “rage.” And so Lee throws coffee cups in songs,
obliquely hinting at her, and other women’s, disquietude. Perhaps not coincidentally, Lee
was to perform her most blunt and direct expression of her rage, “Blasé,” as part of an
ensemble led by Shepp in 1969.
27. Nat King Cole, Love Is the Thing, recorded December 1956, Capitol Records W-824
(1957).
28. Patty McGovern, Wednesday’s Child, Atlantic 1245 (1956).
29. Lee often sings of the power of love as a transformative force, yet such views are equally
balanced by her continual, forceful, and in many ways revolutionary critique of the man-
ner in which love often manifests itself in heteronormative relationships. This point is
made perhaps most pointedly in her 1969 performance of “Blasé.” The importance of love
to Lee’s worldview is therefore closer to that of bell hooks then that of any generic valo-
rization of love absent a critique of gender relations and the ways in which the complex
identities of individuals can make love both ambiguous and problematic.
30. Again, those familiar primarily with Lee’s later songs that appear to valorize love (and
those who might therefore assume that Lee has a simplistic view about the power of love)
must view these later “pro-love” songs against a backdrop of many years of performing
love standards in a manner that offers a pointed critique of love and its white male con-
struction.
31. Available on Jeanne Lee with Ran Blake, The Newest Sound Around, Solar Records 4,
4569913 (2012), CD.
32. Abbey Lincoln, Straight Ahead, recorded February 22, 1961, Candid CJS 9015 (1961), LP.
33. These tracks can be found on the 2012 release of The Newest Sound Around. This includes
“Sermonette,” (accessed via Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/track/4EDFOFvu2pD5kAECpf
EHga?si=4-), “Round About,” (https://open.spotify.com/track/2CbYsEtGRDX7z8VhiB4TBf
?si=ccGIZx4BQlqu4WImfq-StA), “Where Do You Go?” (accessed via Spotify but mistitled as
“Where Will You Be?”, https://open.spotify.com/track/1AgwDcIkw3uit6IpqEhZ3h), and “The
Outcast” (accessed via Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/track/5KWME98SVXeIh0kohk06Bi).
These tracks were recorded April 20, 1963.
34. Frank Sinatra, No One Cares, Capitol Records SW1221 (1959), LP, accessed via Spotify,
https://open.spotify.com/track/2FO7zXFzZiWxDaltEybUh2.
35. It is worth also considering the recording by Chris Connor with Maynard Ferguson of
1961, where they also recorded “Something’s Coming,” (discussed further below), since
in private correspondence with the author, Ran Blake confirms that Chris Connor was

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an influence. Maynard Ferguson and Chris Connor, Two’s Company, Roulette SR 52068
(1961), LP.
36. Accessed via Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/track/2MQoRFBzVz4Pf2JI4VMtWh.
37. Chris Connor, Free Spirits, Atlantic SD 8061 (1962), LP.
38. Released 1952 as a single, The Clovers, One Mint Julep/Middle of the Night, Atlantic 963
(1952), 78 RPM.
39. Originally released on Sarah Vaughan, One Mint Julip/Mama (He Treats Your Daughter
Mean), Roulette R-4413 (1962), 45 RPM.
40. Vaughan substitutes “just buy me roses, or tulips” for “I’m through with flirting and
drinking whiskey.”
41. A fuller analysis of Vaughan’s version would have to come to grips with her highly ex-
pressive performance and how this might suggest alternative meanings, particularly the
manner in which she radically alters the phrasing of the song, employing enjambment to
perhaps unsettle the surface meaning of the lyric. She also employs highly colored vocal
timbres suggesting a distance between her and the song’s meaning.
42. Compare with Bessie Smith’s “Money Blues” and “Young Woman’s Blues,” concerning
which Davis comments that, “glimpses of women who assert their sexual equality with
men recur again and again in the work of the classic blues singers.” (Davis, Blues, 22).
43. “Ran Blake et Jeanne Lee ‘Something’s coming,’” recorded August 10, 1963, accessed Nov
16, 2017, http://www.ina.fr/video/I09247618/ran-blake-et-jeanne-lee-something-s-coming
-video.html. Footage originally produced by the Office national de radiodiffusion télévi-
sion française.
44. Others to have recorded the piece by 1963 include Fran Warren, Cal Tjader, Stan Kenton,
Ann Richards, and, most notably, Chris Connor with Maynard Ferguson, who also desta-
bilize the global optimism of the original.
45. Lee is here doing something close to what Daphne Brooks has argued Nina Simone
undertook with respect to her “interpretative deformations of Brechtian text that para-
doxically generate an alienation effect; her work dares audiences to see and hear ‘America’
differently and on a different frequency” (Brooks, “Sister,” 182). Lee has us hear the con-
struction of America implicit in West Side Story differently and in particular its construc-
tion of, and roles for, women of color.
46. Ran Blake’s multiple harmonic displacements in this performance undermine the stability
of what is coming musically as well as narratively. Our expectations of harmonic closure
are toyed with, and so the whole harmonic development of the song, the unfolding of its
large-scale structure, becomes uncertain, which is, of course, a way of making the future
uncertain. This double-voiced message of expectations, of the fact that love, while desirable,
is often fraught with danger and hardship, carries over to another performance of the piece
“All About Ronnie” at the Antibes Jazz Festival in 1963. Originally recorded by Stan Kenton
with Chris Connor, this song of a woman’s admiration of a lover is transformed into a far
more ambivalent commentary on the relationship by Lee and Blake. Lee’s vocal line flirts
with atonality, while Blake sounds dirge-like block chords. The tension between the lyric
and the music (including the vocal intonations) is palpable, again throwing into question
standard constructions of love and women’s attitudes toward love. “Duo Jeanne Lee Ran
Blake ‘All about Ronnie,’” recorded January 1, 1963, accessed November 16, 2017, http://
www.ina.fr/video/I06349871/duo-jeanne-lee-ran-blake-all-about-ronnie-video.html.
47. Ran Blake and Jeanne Lee, In Stockholm 1966 “Free Standards,” recorded November 8,
1966, Columbia COL 481383 2 (1995), CD.
48. This term was brought into prominence in A. R. Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Com-
mercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983) and A. R.

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Hochschild, The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003).
49. As found on Archie Shepp, Blasé, recorded August 16, 1969, BYG Records 529.318, Actuel
18 (1969), LP.
50. While the implied threat to the woman as found in the original lyric is nullified by Lee’s
change of gender of the protagonist, Lee may well have wished to distance herself from
the implied threat to men that singing this lyric would therefore have suggested. This is in
keeping with her refusal to sing any lyric to “The Girl from Ipanema,” discussed below.
51. See Eric Lewis, “What is ‘Great Black Music’? The Social Aesthetics of the AACM in
Paris,” in Improvisation and Social Aesthetics, ed., Georgina Born, Eric Lewis, Will Straw
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 135–59.
52. Peggy Lee, Pass Me By, Capitol Records ST 2320 (1965).
53. Ella Fitzgerald, Ella in Hamburg, recorded March 26, 1965, Verve Records v-4069 (1965).
54. For example, see Jason I. Brown, “Mathematics, Physics and A Hard Day’s Night,” Octo-
ber 2004, retrieved November 8, 2008, http://www.mscs.dal.ca/~brown/n-oct04-hard
dayjib.pdf; Walter Everett, The Beatles as Musicians: The Quarry Men Through Rubber Soul
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Chris Hook, “The ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ Chord—
Rock’s Holy Grail,” Everything2, May 2, 2005; Alan W. Pollack, “Notes on ‘A Hard Day’s
Night,’” Soundscapes.info, http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/
ahdn.shtml; Eliot Van Buskirk, “How Math Unraveled the ‘Hard Day’s Night’ Mystery,”
Wired, October 31, 2008.
55. See above note 48. For a philosophically sophisticated take on emotional labor, see Sandra
Lee Bartky, “Feeding Egos and Tending Wounds: Deference and Disaffection in Women’s
Emotional Labor,” in Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppres-
sion (New York: Routledge, 1990), 99–119. The literature on sexual labor is vast. A classic
and early collection of feminist writing on this topic is Laura Lederer, ed., Take Back the
Night: Women on Pornography (New York: W. Morrow, 1980).
56. Accessed via Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/track/6XYq6OQyvl0YdezRl1EfWW.
57. Chris Connor, He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, Atlantic Records SD 1240 (1956).
Bibliography
Bartky, Sandra Lee. “Feeding Egos and Tending Wounds: Deference and Disaffection in Wom-
en’s Emotional Labor.” In Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of
Oppression, 99–119. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Brooks, Daphne A. “Nina Simone’s Triple Play.” Callaloo 34, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 176–97.
———. “‘Sister Can You Line It Out?’: Zora Neale Hurston and the Sound of Womanhood.”
Amerikastudien/American Studies 55, no. 4 (2010): 617–27.
Brown, Jason I. “Mathematics, Physics and A Hard Day’s Night.” Canadian Mathematics Society
Notes 36, no. 6 (2004): 4–8.
Carby, Hazel. “‘It Jus Be’s Dat Way Sometime’: The Sexual Politics of Women’s Blues.” Radical
America 20, no. 4 (1986): 9–24.
Castledine, Jacqueline. “Gender, Jazz, and Justice in Postwar Freedom Movements.” In Freedom
Rights: New Perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement, edited by Danielle L. McGuire,
223–45. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2011.
Davis, Angela Y. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998.
Everett, Walter. The Beatles as Musicians: The Quarry Men Through Rubber Soul. Oxford: Oxford

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Griffin, Farah Jasmine. If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday. New York:
Free Press, 2001.
———. “When Malindy Sings: A Meditation on Black Women’s Vocality.” In Uptown Conver-
sation: The New Jazz Studies, edited by Robert G. O’Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, and
Farah Jasmine Griffin, 102–25. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
Harris, Duchess. “From The Kennedy Commission to the Combahee Collective.” In Sisters in the
Struggle, edited by B. Collier-Thomas and V. P. Franklin, 273–98. New York: NYU Press,
2001.
Hayes, Elleen M., and Linda F. Williams, eds. Black Women and Music: More than the Blues.
Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1983.
Hochschild, Arlie Russel. The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
Hook, Chris. “The ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ Chord—Rock’s Holy Grail.” Everything2, May 2, 2005.
https://everything2.com/title/The+%2522A+Hard+Day%2527s+Night%2522+Chord+-+
Rock%2527s+Holy+Grail.
Kernodle, Tammy. “Having Her Say: The Blues as the Black Women’s Lament.” In Women’s
Voices Across Musical Worlds, edited by Jane Bernstein, 213–31. Boston: Northeastern Uni-
versity Press, 2004.
Lederer, Laura, ed. Take Back the Night: Woman on Pornography. New York: W. Morrow, 1980.
Lee, Jeanne. Jam! The Story of Jazz Music. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 1990.
Lewis, Eric. “Blasé de Jeanne Lee et le politique de l’identité.” Textual 60 (2010): 53–72.
———. “What is ‘Great Black Music’? The Social Aesthetics of the AACM in Paris.” In Improvi-
sation and Social Aesthetics, edited by Georgina Born, Eric Lewis, and Will Straw, 135–59.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017.
Lewis, George E. A Power Stronger Than Itself. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Lincoln, Abbey. “Who Will Revere the Black Woman?” Negro Digest (Sept. 1966): 16–20.
Onori, Luigu, and Diana Torti. “Ultrasuoni, Jeanne Lee, arte in movimento.” Il Manifesto, Au-
gust 26, 2017, Alias (weekly insert).
Pollack, Alan W. “Notes on ‘A Hard Day’s Night.’” Soundscapes.info. Accessed Sept. 5, 2017.
http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/ahdn.shtml.
Porter, Eric. “Jeanne Lee’s Voice.” Critical Studies in Improvisation 2, no. 1 (2006): http://www
.criticalimprov.com/article/view/53/185.
———. What Is This Thing Called Jazz? Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Shepp, Archie. “An Artist Speaks Bluntly.” Down Beat, December 16, 1965.
Van Buskirk, Eliot. “How Math Unraveled the ‘Hard Day’s Night’ Mystery.” Wired, October 31,
2008. https://www.wired.com/2008/10/how-a-professor/.
Williams, Richard. Liner notes to Archie Shepp, Blasé. Affinity AFF7 (1970).
Discography
Blake, Ran, and Jeanne Lee. In Stockholm 1966 “Free Standards.” Recorded November 8, 1966.
Columbia COL 481383 2, CD (1995).
The Clovers. One Mint Julep/Middle of the Night. Atlantic 963, 78 RPM 10-inch single (1952).
Cole, Nat King. Love Is the Thing. Recorded December 1956. Capitol Records W-824, LP (1957).

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Connor, Chris. Free Spirits. Atlantic SD 8061, LP (1962).

———. He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not. Atlantic Records SD 1240, LP (1956).
Ferguson, Maynard, and Chris Connor. Two’s Company. Roulette SR 52068, LP (1961).
Ella Fitzgerald. Ella in Hamburg. Recorded March 26, 1965. Verve Records v-4069, LP (1965).
Jones, Etta, with Barney Bigard and His Orchestra. Long Journey/Evil Gal Blues. Recorded De-
cember 29, 1944. Black & White-10, 10-inch 78 RPM (1945).
Lee, Jeanne. Conspiracy. Recorded Spring 1974. Earthform Records 814, LP (1975).
———. Natural Affinities. Recorded January and July 1992. Owl Records 4 OWL070CD, CD
(1992).
Lee, Jeanne, with Ran Blake. The Newest Sound Around. Recorded November to December 1961.
RCA Victor LSP-2500, LP (1962).
———. The Newest Sound Around. Solar Records 4 4569913, CD (2012).
Lee, Peggy. Pass Me By. Capitol Records ST 2320, LP (1965).
Lincoln, Abbey. Straight Ahead. Recorded February 22, 1961. Candid CJS 9015, LP (1961).
Low, Jackson Mac. Poetry & Music. Autographics Cassettes, New Wilderness Foundation 7705A,
cassette (1966).
McGovern, Patty. Wednesday’s Child. Atlantic 1245, LP (1956).
Richards, Ann. Ann, Man! ATCO Records 33–136, LP (1961).
Shepp, Archie. Blasé. Recorded August 16, 1969. BYG Records 529.318, Actuel 1 LP (1969).
———. Blasé. Affinity AFF7, LP (1970).
Sinatra, Frank. No One Cares. Capitol Records SW1221, LP (1959).
Sinatra, Frank, with Gordon Jenkins and His Orchestra. Where Are You? Capitol Records W-855,
LP (1957).
Sextet with Dinah Washington. Homeward Bound/Evil Gal Blues. Recorded December 29, 1943.
Keynote Recordings 2–605 78 RPM (1944).
Vaughan, Sarah. One Mint Julep/Mama (He Treats Your Daughter Mean). Roulette R-4413, 45
RPM 7-inch single (1962).
White, Josh. Strange Fruit. Mercury MLP 7042, LP (1949).

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“The Ace of His Race”:
Paul Whiteman’s Early Critical
Reception in the Black Press
Christopher J.Wells
On August 28, 1932, Paul Whiteman made his first visit to Harlem’s famed Savoy
Ballroom to see the Teddy Hill Orchestra. Whiteman, a special guest of the Savoy’s
management, also served as guest conductor with Hill’s band, which was all African
American. According to a report from the New York Amsterdam News, Whiteman
“kept the audience in a continual uproar with his baton-wielding and comedy di-
recting. Paul was besieged by autograph hunters and acquiesced to his demand by
signing no less than 500 assorted papers, menus, cards, and matchboxes.”1 That Paul
Whiteman—a white bandleader whose moniker the “King of Jazz” would ultimately
cement his place in jazz and popular music history as an iconic example of appropria-
tion—would receive such an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response from the Savoy
Ballroom’s audience may seem striking given dominant assumptions regarding both
the Savoy and Whiteman. As the most commercially successful bandleader in the
United States during the 1920s, and as a musician who openly embraced the term
“jazz,” Whiteman plays a prominent and often controversial role in histories of jazz
and of American popular music. As a white bandleader, his outsized level of profes-
sional success relative to black musicians, his association with heavily orchestrated
“sweet” music, and his own last name—“White-man”—have made him a lightning
rod for debates regarding the role of race in jazz historiography.2 Whiteman has
become, in effect, an open signifier for whiteness in jazz and popular music onto
which a range of advocacy positions may be written.
Whiteman’s role as a focal point for such discussions is not a recent phenom-
enon nor is it something only retrospectively mapped onto his career. Rather, for
nearly as long as Whiteman’s name has been part of public discourse, his identity


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78 “The Ace of His Race” Christopher J. Wells
has informed a range of positions about race, aesthetics, cultural appropriation, and
cultural ownership. In the 1920s and 1930s, one crucial site for such discussions of
Whiteman is the discourse within African American newspapers, now commonly
referred to collectively as “the black press.” Recently, a range of scholars from di-
verse disciplines, catalyzed in large part by the digital availability of historical black
newspapers in text-searchable databases, have returned to critical examinations of
the black press.3 In particular, scholars have made concerted attempts to excavate the
political content present in such ostensibly “frivolous” or “sensationalist” newspaper
sections, such as those focused on entertainment and gossip.4 While many jazz stud-
ies scholars have utilized the black press as a resource before now, these new digital
research tools and the scholarship they have prompted offer new pathways to consider
the black press as a critical site of reception study and jazz historiography. With the
closer scrutiny facilitated by increased access, we are increasingly seeing that John
Gennari’s framing of early jazz criticism by black authors—as principally consisting
of advocacy work on behalf of black musicians—is insufficient in capturing the nu-
ances present across music and entertainment writing in black newspapers.5
This article explores discussions of Whiteman in African American newspapers
during the 1920s and early 1930s to highlight the range of opinions black writers held
regarding Whiteman’s music, his commercial success, and the symbolic importance
of his performances for black audiences. Within the black press, Whiteman’s identity
and his music served as a significant point of conversation. Varied reactions to and
perspectives on Whiteman offer an important vantage point into a broader discursive
shift related to jazz, race, and musical aesthetics. This shift challenges received—or
perhaps assumed—wisdom both about the Whiteman band and about how African
Americans viewed him.
The “King of Jazz” and Jazz Historiography
In terms of both record sales and public attention, Whiteman was a dominant
figure in the popular music landscape of the 1920s and early 1930s.6 John Howland
has described the innovative paradigm of symphonic jazz the Whiteman orchestra
developed as “a stylistically heterogeneous idiom that referenced jazz, syncopated
popular musics, African-American musics, musical theater, the nineteenth-century
classical repertory, and the ‘light’ popular classics.”7 Whiteman’s eclectic blend of
largely urban musical paradigms helped introduce these idioms to a mass audience
that extended far beyond the major cities of the United States.8 Stylistically, his or-
chestra’s innovations undoubtedly influenced both white and black bandleaders. Mark
Tucker, Felix Cox, and Jeffrey Magee have shown that Duke Ellington and Fletcher
Henderson both admired Whiteman and his music, an admiration that aligned
strongly—both culturally and aesthetically—with their own status as members of

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“The Ace of His Race” Christopher J. Wells 79
the black middle class.9 Furthermore, as Ryan Bañagale has argued, Whiteman ar-
ranger Ferde Grofé’s practice of modifying stock arrangements in unique, innovative
ways preceded Henderson arranger Don Redman’s important contributions to the
practice of “stock doctoring.” Thanks in large part to Grofé’s innovative work, the
Whiteman band’s sound during the early 1920s struck an appealing balance between
innovation and stability.10
Though Whiteman was one of a number of bandleaders—both black and
white—who experimented with heavily orchestrated syncopated popular music, his
particular “stroke of genius,” as Elijah Wald argues, was to embrace the term “jazz”
rather than to shun it.11 According to Wald, Whiteman saw past the term’s negative
associations and envisioned its ability to become a moniker associated with respect-
able, and highly lucrative, popular music. Mario Dunkel further argues that during
the 1920s, Whiteman came to occupy a “hegemonic role as the figurehead of jazz,”
wherein the story of the music’s ascendance to respectability was itself tied to White-
man’s personal biography.12 Whiteman’s centrality in this narrative also bolstered the
idea that white composers and musicians more broadly were principally responsible
for jazz’s development and progress.
Ironically, it is precisely this embrace of the term “jazz” that has also led to White-
man’s enshrinement as both a musical pretender and an iconic example of cultural
appropriation. Indeed, Whiteman biographer Don Rayno attributes anti-Whiteman
backlash principally to this “King of Jazz” moniker. Rayno writes that “modern day
critics have often used Whiteman’s ‘King of Jazz’ title as the focal point for derogatory
critiques on the bandleader and his music. But Whiteman never claimed the title
in any serious sense, it was simply an advertising device.”13 Echoing and expanding
Rayno’s analysis, Howland traces this “critical downfall of Whiteman” back to efforts
in the 1930s by largely white circles of jazz critics, fans, and record collectors to make
firm distinctions between popular novelty compositions and larger orchestrated works
produced by white musicians versus the ostensibly more authentic jazz produced by
African American musicians.14 As early as the 1930s, white authors including Pan-
nassié, Hammond, Feather, and Stearns argued for a jazz canon principally focused
on African American innovators while also forwarding an arguably overdetermined,
racialized “hot style” aesthetic.15 While ostensibly supportive of African American musi-
cians and their music-making, these efforts also fetishized black music and musicians,
constructing a problematically monolithic paradigm where blackness was effectively
coterminous with “hot” music as the only genuine form of jazz. Jeffrey Magee has
argued that such a dichotomization between real jazz and fake jazz “diminishes the
achievements of white and black musicians alike.”16 To add to Magee’s argument, I
would argue that dichotomizations of real and false jazz also pave over the varied tastes
of African American audiences as well as the significant resonances of symphonic and
sweet idioms within black middle-class ideologies and aesthetics.

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Negotiating this highly charged and ideologically loaded landscape, Howland

affirms the value of a more narrow, Afrocentric framing of jazz and its canon while
still revealing how this paradigm has limited our ability to engage productively with
Whiteman and his music. This framing creates, for Howland, a space to consider
Whiteman’s music and its merits without being saddled by the question of whether
it is “real jazz” in the post-1930s sense by identifying this as a discursive formation
largely anachronistic to the 1920s. Howland describes the term “jazz” in the 1920s
as a term employed by journalists “as both an adjective and verb to imply a sense
of mildly irreverent interbreeding of white and black, high and low, and culturally
profane and sacred musics.”17 Following Howland, it is not my purpose in this essay to
assess whether Whiteman’s music constituted “real” or “false” jazz. Yet understanding
changes in the usage of the term “jazz” is critical on several points. First, that African
American audiences’ taste, especially black middle-class audiences, encompassed a
broad range of musical idioms including forms of sweet and symphonic popular
music that would be subsequently marginalized and branded “white” in the jazz
canon. Second, that the term “jazz” is associated with Whiteman and his music—
both at the time and in subsequent periods—is critical to understanding the nature
of his position within jazz historiography. Third, that the discursive shifts in African
American newspapers during the early and mid-1930s—visible in Whiteman’s black
press reception—reflect an increasingly Afrocentric framing of jazz at the time, a
shift that has been more commonly ascribed to circles of white critics.
While Howland’s insights into Whiteman’s reception and legacy are crucial,
his framing of Whiteman’s reception focuses principally on discourses in jazz studies
itself, as he offers that “even some modern-day critics are less concerned with proper
assessments of Whiteman’s legacy than with demarcating a firm division between
canonic jazz figures and popular music.”18 While his reception within jazz studies
is of course important, Whiteman’s legacy as a figure in American popular music
is equally significant. Within discourse on popular music, Whiteman has come to
serve as a prominent figure in what we might call a “canon” of white appropriators
that includes Benny Goodman, Elvis, the Beatles, Vanilla Ice, Eminem, Macklemore,
and Iggy Azalea, among others. Greg Tate—who himself begins his list of such a
lineage of white appropriation with Paul Whiteman—has theorized this canon of
appropriators as a well-oiled system wherein white stakeholders and audiences at-
tracted to black cultural forms persistently seek credible white facsimiles. Tate frames
this as “the American music industry’s never-ending quest for a white artist who can
competently perform a black musical impersonation.”19 This consistently results, as
Stephan Pennington has argued, in the absorption of black musical forms into white
cultural spaces and the subsequent erasure of black innovators, and it occurs whether
or not successful white artists explicitly foreground and promote black innovation
and ownership.20

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Responding to Whiteman’s ostensible downfall in both jazz studies and

popular music studies, some writing on Whiteman carries a note of apologism or
otherwise situates the work as an explicitly reparative project. A strong example
is the following from Rayno: “Many who do recall Whiteman’s remarkable career
choose to invoke his name in denigration. Indeed, for some decades, it has been
quite in fashion for music critics and writers to knock Whiteman, or, at best,
dismiss him as a mere footnote in the history of popular music. It was not always
so.”21 Rayno explicitly aligns his project with Richard Sudhalter’s 2001 book Lost
Chords. Sudhalter explains the maligning and erasure of white jazz musicians as an
unfortunate byproduct of “the rage for ‘multi-culturalism’ in the arts.” Sudhalter
argues that “applied to jazz history, such thinking has spawned a view of early white
efforts as musically insignificant and—particularly in the 1920s and ’30s—vastly
overpublicized.”22 Without explicitly using the term “reverse-racism,” this language
certainly fits into the rhetoric of rejecting so-called political correctness and treats
the ostensible maligning of white jazz musicians as a tragic consequence of well-
intentioned social activism. The 1990s and early 2000s saw a surge in projects seek-
ing to rewrite a number of “forgotten” white jazz musicians into the mainstream
of jazz historical narrative. Musicologist Steven Lewis has astutely linked a surge
in such projects—specifically the work of James Lincoln Collier, Sudhalter, and
Gene Lees—to an emergent discourse in the 1990s of reverse-racism and a backlash
against race-based affirmative action policies.23 Lees, for example, answered his crit-
ics by both acknowledging a long history of antiblack racism in the United States
yet still arguing for an antiwhite bias in jazz history attributable to the fact that
“some blacks have retaliatory feelings towards whites.” In a fairly glaring dismissal,
Lees claims that truly great black musicians adopted a postracial perspective while
“there has long been anti-white sentiment among certain jazz musicians. They, for
the most part, have been the lesser ones.”24 Lees’s perspective exemplifies how these
authors situated themselves as antiracist while they framed their work as an objective
correction to scholarship ostensibly tainted by Afrocentrism, political correctness,
or any political movement driven by the desire to advance the interests of African
Americans or the attention paid to African American cultural innovators while
marginalizing white musicians.
Given Whiteman’s complex historiography, and his symbolic importance as
a successful white musician with a place, however controversial, in the jazz canon,
I wish to emphasize that in presenting Whiteman’s complex, nuanced reception,
and especially its more positive aspects, I do not seek to participate in some kind of
apologist reclamation for white jazz musicians maligned, ostensibly unfairly, by the
so-called political correctness of an Afrocentric framing of jazz history. Rather, I aim
to highlight Whiteman’s reception among black writers and black audiences in hopes
that our understanding of him, including well-justified critique, can be grounded

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more robustly in what African Americans actually said about him at the time. Such
a framing offers critical nuance to a dominant jazz historical narrative that, while
often commendably focused on centering African American contributions, too often
flattens black musical taste into a monolithic construct; imagined, idealized black
listeners are forced to serve fetishized articulations of race and authenticity. Several
scholars—Howland, Magee, and Dunkel chief among them—have already placed
Whiteman’s connection with and influence on black musicians within broader assess-
ments of racial uplift and New Negro discourse. What I hope to add in this article
is another lens (via black newspapers) into the range of meanings Whiteman and
his music held for a broader black audience both through his performances in black
spaces and his reception by black writers and critics.
“The Joy Supreme”: Whiteman’s Band in Black Spaces
Whiteman made several notable appearances in predominantly African American

venues during the 1920s and early 1930s. Newspaper coverage of these appearances
suggests that Whiteman was broadly appreciated by African American concertgoers
and dance hall patrons. Perhaps more importantly, reports on these appearances dem-
onstrate the tremendous symbolic capital Whiteman’s name afforded black ballroom
and concert spaces. In November 1924, the Whiteman band performed at Harlem’s
Manhattan Casino in an annual benefit gala for the Urban League. In a report by
Binga Dismond, when Whiteman’s participation was first announced to the event’s
entertainment committee, the meeting erupted in “a paroxysm of applause.” As
Dismond explained: “Mr. Whiteman holds an enviable place among the leaders of
popular dance orchestras the world over. To bill a Paul Whiteman orchestra with a
musical show instantly makes the attraction one of the golden dozen. Many a house
party has been a success because the thoughtful hostess owned Paul Whiteman rec-
ords. But the joy supreme is to dance to the tune of a dreamy waltz or snappy jazz
when Paul Whiteman himself leads forth his knights of syncopation.”25 In addition,
an advertisement for the event in the Chicago Defender offers two significant pieces
of information. First, it bills the appearance as the Whiteman band’s first Harlem
appearance. Second, and perhaps more strikingly, Whiteman, the “King of Jazz,” does
not receive top billing. That spot was reserved for Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, the
African American duo responsible for the 1921 Broadway smash hit Shuffle Along. At
this event, Sissle and Blake performed with cast members from their current show,
The Chocolate Dandies.
Also significant is that both Whiteman’s band and Sissle and Blake’s productions
owed the bulk of their success to “downtown” audiences of middle- and upper-class
whites, which makes this appeal to potential black patrons in the Baltimore Afro-
American, all the more interesting: “The Urban League, a welfare organization, has

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Figure 1. Advertisement, Chicago Defender, November 8, 1924, A8.
done much to improve social and industrial conditions in Harlem as it has throughout
the country. It is an institution that is financed largely by public support. In the past
a large percentage of this support has been derived from white people, who have
generously contributed. An occasion such as the monster benefit concert and dance
on November 14 offers an excellent opportunity to public spirited citizens to lend
their support to an organization that merits it.”26
The story goes on to list those Harlem citizens who had already purchased
box seats. While I am not suggesting that in offering access to a Sissle and Blake/
Paul Whiteman double bill the event organizers were necessarily indulging the sort
of class-based racial false consciousness Malcolm X details in his autobiography,
there does appear to be a message here in line with the racial uplift-oriented tone
of black middle- and upper-class community organizing of the time: if you want a
community with the sorts of entertainments white people are afforded, you must
give in the ways white patrons give.27 Such a perspective aligns with Kevin Gaines’s
description of black middle-class ideology in the 1920s as “a public doctrine of self-
help and altruism” tied deeply to broader discourses of racial uplift.28
In January 1926, Whiteman and his orchestra performed at Virginia’s Hampton
Institute—an African American university—at the behest of its Musical Arts Society, a
student-run arts presenting organization. At the time, the Hampton Institute’s School
of Music was run by noted African American composer R. Nathaniel Dett, also one
of the founders of the National Association of Negro Musicians.29 Bordered by two
brutal stories about lynchings, a short yet poignant report appeared in the Baltimore
Afro-American: “Three thousand persons of both races heard Paul Whiteman and his
band at the Ogden Hall Monday. There were no separate seating arrangements.”30

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Additional stories about this event allude to controversy surrounding issues of seating,
and anyone reading the story would have certainly understood the significance; it was
common practice for “mixed” southern audiences to be segregated such that black
patrons were permitted either only in the balcony or in one half of a theater with a
physical barrier marking the “line” separating white from black audience members.
Whiteman’s visit was, therefore, paired with an insistence upon dignity and parity
for southeastern Virginia’s African American concertgoers.31
That attending Whiteman performances would align with notions of black
dignity is in keeping with the central role of social functions in shaping African
American class identity during the 1920s. Sociologist Benjamin Bowser has theo-
rized that there have been multiple, distinct formations of “black middle-classness”
that have been shaped by distinct sociohistorical conditions. Bowser defines black
middle-classness in the early and mid-twentieth century as principally focused on
social and cultural activities. African Americans attained middle class identities by
emphasizing, in Bowser’s words, “image, aspiration, values, and moral pretense”
as vehicles for racial uplift given the impossibility of, or material danger associated
with, direct advocacy for economic or political power.32 The lack of opportunity for
economic and political advancement, Bowser argues, amplified “noneconomic and
social bases as criteria for distinction and division in black communities.”33 Not tied
firmly to one’s economic circumstances, African American upward mobility mani-
fested itself in the 1920s through New Negro ideology, which came through a form
of assimilation that Magee describes as “a cultural mastery demonstrating African
Americans could make a contribution to the cultural mainstream.”34 Where Magee
refers to musicians, the concept certainly applies to African American listeners as
well, and we can interpret an appreciation of Whiteman’s aesthetic as one avenue of
demonstrating mainstream cultural mastery.
Black middle-class affinity for Whiteman, and the cultural mastery it demon-
strated, speaks to African American participation in a broader move toward “middle-
brow” entertainment. Middlebrow culture was an emergent movement in the 1920s,
for which Whiteman’s music and his mode of presentation were uniquely well-
suited.35 Joan Rubin has argued that middlebrow aesthetics were tied fundamentally
to Victorian genteel values rearticulated within the emergent marketplace for popular
culture.36 The fact that middlebrow-ness lived in the intersections between “high”
culture and popular culture made it particularly significant for African Americans,
especially given that cultural fluency and success in commerce were both markers of
the upward mobility racial uplift discourse expected of the New Negro.37 Howland
has argued that African American symphonic composers—including composers of
symphonic jazz—both before and after Whiteman’s work in the 1920s exemplified the
expression of dignity, discipline, and professionalism associated with racial uplift.38
That African American audiences would enthusiastically embrace the middlebrow

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music and aesthetics offered by Whiteman suggests not only an aspiration for par-
ity with white audiences but also that Whiteman’s middlebrow paradigm may have
been legible to black audiences within an existing tradition of African American
symphonic music.39
Whiteman’s occasional but highly notable appearances at predominantly black
venues continued into the 1930s, when he established a relationship with the Savoy
Ballroom and its owner Moe Gale. In addition to his 1932 guest appearance with
Teddy Hill’s orchestra, discussed in this article’s introduction, he served as a judge for
multiple amateur talent shows at the Savoy and booked two of its Lindy Hop dance
teams to perform downtown with his own band at the Biltmore Hotel.40 This col-
laboration would ultimately lead to a major event on September 16, 1933: Whiteman’s
own orchestra played the Savoy Ballroom. According to reports, the performance
also included Whiteman’s cadre of roughly thirty stage performers.41 The Philadelphia
Tribune reported that major black celebrities including Paul Robeson, Ethel Waters,
Cab Calloway, and Duke Ellington would be on hand for Whiteman’s performance
as part of a welcoming committee.42
The ability to secure a band with the national stature of Whiteman’s bolstered
the Savoy’s reputation as a significant venue on par with New York’s top segregated
ballrooms. The Chicago Defender credited Buchanan’s “initiative and business acu-
men” for the Savoy’s success at landing Whiteman.43 The Defender further praised the
Figure 2. Advertisement, New York Amsterdam News, September 13, 1933, 7.

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event as a significant accomplishment for African Americans and, though the Savoy
was an interracial venue, the Defender framed Whiteman’s Savoy appearance as the
bandleader’s “first and only appearance exclusively for our people.”44 The Baltimore
Afro-American framed the performance as well in line with the Savoy’s regular practice
of securing top bands, praising the ballroom’s African American manager Charles
Buchanan for having “secured every orchestra of national reputation for his dance
lovers.”45 The orchestras listed as having appeared at the Savoy include not only
major African American bands, including Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and
Cab Calloway, but also major white orchestras such as the bands of Guy Lombardo,
Rudy Vallee, and Isham Jones.46
The presence of white orchestras associated with “sweet” popular music was
actually well in line with the tastes of the Savoy’s African American patrons. In ad-
dition, reliance on musical recordings has skewed our perspective on many African
American dance bands’ musical range. Many black orchestras played sweet music
very well, but they were simultaneously frozen out of venues featuring sweet music
and encouraged to record so-called “hot” jazz. Andrew Berish has argued that this
circumstance maintained a racialized connection between sweet music and white-
ness.47 In fact, many black bandleaders were themselves from middle-class back-
grounds and held the same middlebrow musical preferences as middle-class audience
members both black and white.48 Indeed, there is much evidence to suggest that the
Savoy Ballroom’s audience enjoyed sweet music as much as they did hot jazz. White
bandleader Guy Lombardo broke the Savoy’s attendance record in 1932, and the
Savoy’s most iconic house bandleader Chick Webb was praised in multiple African
American newspapers for being an excellent sweet band.49 Offering a broad range
of music, and indeed offering music specifically associated with ostensibly “white”
tastes and venues, is consistent with the Savoy’s own messaging about its mission and
its product. Specifically, since its opening, the Savoy had billed itself as a venue that
would “fill a long-felt want and supply that something lacking elsewhere,” offering
black Harlemites experiences and ambiance on par with elite, segregated downtown
ballrooms such as the Roseland.50 In addition, since its opening, the Savoy had adver-
tised bands by tying them to Whiteman, Vincent Lopez, and other broadly popular
white performers. A 1927 advertisement for Fess Williams’s Royal Flush Orchestra,
an African American band and Savoy Ballroom mainstay in the late 1920s, bills the
band as “the same orchestra that has created a sensation with such famous men as
Paul Whiteman, Al Jolson, Irving Berlin, Vincent Lopez, and Ben Bernie.”51 Thus,
while the Savoy’s patrons likely enjoyed the Whiteman band’s performance on an
aesthetic level, the symbolic capital of featuring the man broadly billed as the “King
of Jazz” was of crucial significance as well. In each of Whiteman’s appearances in
predominantly black venues, his presence performing for African American audiences
was portrayed as a sign of racial progress. Whiteman and his style of music were clearly

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popular with black audiences, but the excitement surrounding his appearances also
offered highly potent symbolism suggesting the African American public’s gradual
advancement toward parity with white concertgoers and dance hall patrons.
“He Plays or Imitates Our Real Jazz Masters Quite Well”: Whiteman’s
Shifting Reception and Emergent Discourses of Cultural Appropriation
Just as Whiteman’s appearances highlight popular music’s role within shifting dis-
courses surrounding race and musical aesthetics, discussions of Whiteman in black
newspapers also highlight diverse and changing perspectives on the relationship
between jazz and blackness. Perhaps Whiteman’s most interesting black critic in
the 1920s was Dave Peyton, who penned the regular column “The Musical Bunch”
for the Chicago Defender. Peyton’s column ran from 1925–29, and its target audi-
ence was working black musicians aspiring to improve their professional prospects.
Peyton’s advice thus emphasized music that, in his view, was economically lucra-
tive and that was also aligned with the dignity and social advancement in line
with the paper’s broader orientation toward racial uplift.52 Peyton himself was an
influential Chicago bandleader and impresario during the 1920s, who conducted
the pit orchestra at Chicago’s Regal Theatre, one of the city’s two most popular
African American movie houses.53 As such, he was intimately familiar with a range
of middlebrow symphonic and theatrical popular music as well as the landscape of
available opportunities for black musicians.54 Reporting on Whiteman’s lucrative
signing with Columbia Records in 1928, Peyton’s comments about the bandleader
were positively glowing:
To know Paul Whiteman is to understand at last the phenomenon of American
jazz. Whiteman did not invent jazz—he specifically disclaims this—but he was
the first to write an orchestral score for jazz, and from its inception some ten
years ago right to the present he has been its acknowledged chief exponent all
over the world.
To know Whiteman is to understand why. Never was there a clearer vision
of what it’s all about, never did anyone believe more intelligently in his work,
never was there a pleasanter combination of modesty and humor in a music
master of his superlative rank. Whiteman is pure American, like his art.55
Peyton favored a style of performance he termed “polite syncopation,” which featured

well-organized, heavily arranged music performed by a band of literate musicians
well-versed in the classical idiom. He cited Whiteman, Vincent Lopez, and other
white artists alongside black bandleaders such as Fletcher Henderson, Sam Wood-
ing, and Erskine Tate as his favorite exponents of the style.56 Peyton described his
preference for this paradigm: “I love to hear it when the melody is dominant at all

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times, garnished with theoretic harmonic figures and founded on pure basic musical
principles.”57
As Peyton explicitly praised Whiteman’s band, he also challenged the notion
that Whiteman’s work was original or innovative. Rather, he situated Whiteman’s
aesthetic within a larger tradition he credited to African American orchestra leaders. In
Peyton’s narrative, Whiteman’s band was excellent but not novel, fitting squarely into
a tradition of elegant, disciplined presentation of rhythmically syncopated popular
music initiated by James Reese Europe’s Clef Club Orchestra in the 1910s.58 Peyton
explicitly disputed H. L. Menken’s claim that Paul Whiteman’s orchestra was the
first to elevate jazz to a form of serious music, arguing that in “Rhapsody in Blue,”
Whiteman and George Gershwin had merely “exploited” a theme commonly known
among black musicians and “colored it with theoretical phrases.” Peyton further
argued that Europe had not only invented the style of popular syncopated music
for which Whiteman received credit but that Whiteman and other white bandlead-
ers owed their success to the vacuum created by Europe’s early death. “If fate had
not taken this great musician away when he was just beginning his career,” Peyton
wrote, “there would be no Lopezes and Whitemans today.” He concluded his critique
claiming that the problem for African American musicians was one of opportunity
and public exposure rather than talent or style. He argued that the only reason W.
C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” did not enjoy the same prestige as Gershwin’s opus was
that “no Paul Whiteman has taken it, played it and popularized it: hence it remains
on the shelf.”59 Here, Peyton suggests that at least some African American musicians
had already adopted a historiographic perspective similar to one later advanced by
Howland: that black composers before 1920 had “prefigured” and “foreshadowed”
Whiteman’s symphonic jazz idiom.60 Thus, where Dunkel argues that Whiteman
owed much of his success to “his successful investment in the power of his music’s
perceived whiteness,” Peyton’s critique suggests black audiences well-versed in the
musical contributions of Europe, Vodery, and Cook may have seen Whiteman more
as a publicly visible white exponent of a fundamentally African American symphonic
jazz tradition.61
While Peyton identifies the race privilege enjoyed by Whiteman’s band and
the outsized levels of fame, recognition, and financial compensation Whiteman’s race
afforded him, he also emphasizes in another column that Whiteman, as an individual,
was gracious toward and supportive of black musicians. Whiteman, according to
Peyton, was quick to acknowledge his African American colleagues, their contribu-
tions to music, and at times their superiority to his own orchestra. Peyton points out
that Whiteman frequented Duke Ellington’s performances at the Hollywood Inn in
1927 and affirms the significance of Whiteman’s endorsement, offering that “when
Paul Whiteman recognizes another orchestra’s superiority, they must be very good.”62

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Peyton even uses Whiteman’s recordings as a benchmark for the style to which he
felt black orchestras should aspire. As he wrote in 1929:
We want to play jazz music in a colorful way, void of blatant, discordant effects.
I have two records now of the St. Louis Blues, one by our orchestra and one
by Whiteman. You can almost see four or five of our musicians blasting away,
blowing any old kind of a note and getting all sorts of freakish, weird tones, and
in the Whiteman record you appreciate the colorful modulations, the melodic
predominance and the artistic orchestration. The latter’s record of Handy’s St.
Louis Blues has sold into the millions. So let our orchestra leaders wake up and
insist on recording real music and get away from the old style of “play as you
like it.”63
Though Peyton’s thinking reflects dominant strains of aesthetic discourse among

black artistic, political, and philosophical leaders during the 1920s, the late 1920s and
early 1930s brought a marked shift in how black newspaper writers talked about the
intersections of race and musical style. Writing in 1960, Chadwick Hansen argues
that Peyton clearly preferred sweet music to hot jazz, and that his writing regarding
Whiteman and African American bandleaders, such as Fletcher Henderson and Fess
Williams, simply reflects his own and the Defender’s aesthetic preference.64
Peyton’s view was, however, more nuanced and more strongly driven by a
combination of concerns for both economic and cultural uplift. Peyton’s argument
was not that so-called “hot” jazz was fundamentally inferior. Rather, he argued—per-
haps incorrectly—that it was a passing trend whose time had faded, and that black
musicians capable only of playing in that style were vastly limiting their professional
opportunities. Peyton argued, rather for black musicians to develop a “versatile mu-
sicianship” through which they could not only satisfy the racialized expectations
placed upon black popular musicians but also exceed them and, in so doing, gain
access to more lucrative professional opportunities playing arranged popular music
in large bands. Peyton’s own role leading a Chicago theater orchestra helps explain
this position. As Howland notes, Peyton and his chief Chicago competitor Tate were
part of a generation of orchestra leaders who subscribed to the New Negro ideologi-
cal affinity for discipline and musical literacy while also embracing the merits of
improvisation and stylistically “hot” performance practices.65
Peyton’s critique of Whiteman was in sharp contrast to W. C. Handy’s, who
took Whiteman to task for the artificiality with which he blended jazz rhythms
with superficial modern novelties. Handy, by contrast, felt his own paradigm for the
symphonic elevation of blues music was far more in line with an authentic mode of
organic forward progress that retained greater spiritual and aesthetic fidelity to the
folk source material.66 Handy’s collaborator Abbe Niles was more direct and more
vicious in his own critiques of Whiteman, whom he chastised for feminizing, and

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effectively neutering, the vitality of African American music-making.67 It would be

useful to consider this relationship between blackness and masculinity as a significant
marker of difference between “Whitemanesque” symphonic jazz and the paradigm
advanced by Will Marion Cook and later Duke Ellington and James P. Johnson,
which Howland has described, via Magee, as “Afrological vernacular modernism.”68
In advancing a more “Afrological” paradigm, Niles’s critique anticipates the relation-
ship between jazz, purity, anticommercialism, and black masculinity that would drive
the very jazz discourse in the 1930s Howland identifies as having caused Whiteman’s
critical downfall.
While frustrated black musicians could not achieve the prominence or fi-
nancial success of Whiteman’s band, black newspaper columnists still credited the
bandleader for acknowledging black innovation both past and present. A passage
in Whiteman’s 1926 autobiography, titled Jazz and penned collaboratively with
Mary Margaret McBride, particularly drew the black press’s attention. The book
contains the following passage, later quoted in a Pittsburgh Courier story entitled
“Another Jazz Music Theory”: “Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in
chains. It came with the first batch of African slaves. In their frightened hearts lay
silent the remembered rhythms of the jungle chants and drums. Barbarous and
joyful and throbbing. Later, long years later, when they had become happy in
this country, their hearts let out a little of this strange ancestral music—if it was
music. In ‘Jazz’ we hear the sophisticated version of this throbbing thing.”69 Here,
though, while Whiteman does trace jazz’s origins to African Americans and African
music, he also engages a number of primitivist, exoticizing tropes that are both
distressing and, sadly, fairly ubiquitous in contemporaneous anthropological and
folkloric discourse regarding Africanisms. Indeed, even Whiteman’s evocation of
a time when African Americans “became happy in this country” exemplifies his-
torian Karl Hagstrom Miller’s argument that the tropes of minstrelsy and folklore
are more closely aligned as modes of relating to and establishing closeness with
black people and black culture than scholars, both then and now, are comfortable
acknowledging.70
Nevertheless, Harlem Renaissance poet and activist Alice Dunbar Nelson,
herself in a period of flux between embracing popular culture and preserving a sense
of cultural dignity, took positive note of Whiteman’s position in her own Pittsburgh
Courier column.71
Paul Whiteman says that “Jazz Came to America 300 years ago in chains.” The
fact that he does not deny the ultimate African origin of the mooted [sic] music
of the age shows that Whiteman is at least not only honest with himself, but
with his public. And that is refreshing. It might naturally have been expected
that in his book “Jazz,” like so many of his race and contemporaries, feeling the

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bigness of his theme, he might have given credit for its origin to some high,
proud, pure white source—just as all that is popular is usually accredited to a
bleached origin. Quite refreshing. I shall buy another Whiteman record.72
That Nelson would find Whiteman’s primitivist framing “refreshing” must be read
in the context of a period when African American authors often adopted an auto-
exoticizing stance toward Africa and where the idea that jazz was a music of African
American origin was far from a universally accepted position.73 Furthermore, as
Dunkel points out, Whiteman’s views on jazz as a raw material to be refined by clas-
sically trained composers was well in line with dominant strains in African American
public discourse during the 1910s and 1920s.74
As a part of this shift toward a more African American-centered framing of
jazz, writers in black newspapers after 1930 made stronger attempts to highlight dif-
ferences between Whiteman’s band and popular black orchestras, often implicitly
or explicitly positioning the latter as superior. In 1931, the Chicago Defender’s Rob
Roy wrote of Fletcher Henderson’s band that “Fletcher’s Orchestra handles its jazz
somewhat on the order of Paul Whiteman excepting it carries a little more of the
racial flavor than does the tooting of Whiteman’s crew.”75 When black newspapers
began eschewing Whiteman’s aesthetic in the early 1930s, the composer most fre-
quently cited as having surpassed the white bandleader was Duke Ellington. In
1930, the Philadelphia Tribune declared Ellington to be Whiteman’s equal in a story
entitled “Negro Is Rightful Exponent of Jazz.”76 In 1931, the Chicago Defender’s Clif-
ford McKay argued that jazz was going through a “reversal,” as audiences rejected
Whiteman’s attempt “to place it in the realm of the classics.” Noting that Ellington’s
band more than doubled Whiteman’s returns on a recent tour of Chicago theaters,
McKay argued: “The Duke gives it to them hot and dirty and they cry for more. . . .
Bands formerly using the symphony idea in jazz are turning with the tide of ‘hot’
music. Fourteen managers from big white bands were spotted with pencils in hand
picking modulations from Duke’s music at the Savoy ballroom last Wednesday. It
was Race musicians who popularized jazz and it took men of a darker hue to reclaim
it.”77 This vivid image of white managers furiously transcribing Ellington’s harmonic
idiosyncrasies reflects a more explicit turn toward acknowledging the dynamics of
what we would today identify as cultural appropriation.
While not employing the term appropriation explicitly, multiple African Ameri-
can columnists decried Whiteman and other white artists’ theft of black cultural
forms in sharp, unambiguous rhetoric. According to a Chicago Defender report,
Bishop William J. Wall of Chicago proclaimed in an Easter Sunday sermon that
“the most priceless heritage in the literature and expression of religion and life are
the spirituals and the crude theology accompanying them. But we have sold them to
Paul Whiteman, Amos ‘n’ Andy, radio jazz mongrels, who are now making money

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out of them.”78 J. A. Rogers of the New York Amsterdam News pointed out a double
standard between black artists who were forced to reproduce racialized stereotypes
versus white artists free to appropriate at will:
While white men like Lew Dockstader, Al Jolson, and Paul Whiteman have
made fortunes imitating Negroes, and while most of the talking humor of white
comedians in America and Europe is Negro-American in origin, the fact is that
the greater part of any white audience will regard as an intrusion the so-called
taking of white themes by Negro artists. Almost all Negro singers are wanted by
whites to be confined to the singing of spirituals. That is to say, the whites wish
the Negro to “stay in his place.” Some of this is, of course, prompted by genuine
liking for the Negro and what he has to offer, but the most of it is regarded pret-
ty much in the same way as the domestic who, instead of staying in his place,
seats himself at the table with his master and his guests.79
An essay in the Philadelphia Tribune prophesized that when a genuine history of jazz
was one day written, it would include “the Negro bands whose frenzied improvisations
took the Barbary Coast by storm, inspired Paul Whiteman, Ted Lewis, and countless
other white skinned imitators.”80 Selmour C. Jordan offered similar sentiments in a
Pittsburgh Courier story, arguing:
Our music will save us was the declaration. It is original—it is the only real
American music. We turned loose our jazz. Our white brothers tore the sacred-
ness from our spirituals. Then with jubilation we saw ourselves acclaimed. . . .
But we failed to reckon with a subtle hand—less these few things abound in
glory, Paul Whiteman was proclaimed by the white press the “King of Jazz”—
Kate Smith, “Queen of the Blues”—Bee Palmer, “Originator of the Shimmy”
and our own celebrities shunted off the air, driven from the ballrooms and ho-
tels . . . we find ourselves in musical discard.81
In a Chicago Defender essay broadly and explicitly decrying white theft of and profit
from black musical and theatrical innovation, Chappy Gardner aggressively derided
Whiteman: “Paul Whiteman says he is the King of Jazz. Maybe he means he plays
or imitates our real jazz masters quite well. But until he writes a St. Louis’ Blues like
Handy we are laughing at him. Probably he will some day aspire to the honors in
this line held by the late J. Reese Europe, Tim Bryn, Scott Joplin, Tom Turpin, ‘Jack
the Baer,’ [sic] and ‘New Orleans.’”82
Gardner’s tone is far more aggressive, though the content of his argument fun-
damentally aligns with points made by Peyton years earlier—that Whiteman imitates
a style made famous by African American performers, most notably Europe. What
is perhaps different is that Gardner takes a more expansive and arguably inclusive
perspective on black musical innovation including not only arrangers such as Europe,
Handy, and Joplin but also the mass of unnamed musical innovators who might fall
under the broad banner of “New Orleans.”

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Whiteman also figured as a point of reference in multiple screeds against ap-

propriation penned by noted choral director Eva Jessye, also a radio reviewer for the
Baltimore Afro-American. Listing an array of injustices in the commercial entertainment
industry, Jessye noted that “black folks originated ‘ragtime’ syncopation, jazz—yet Paul
Whiteman, Guy Lombardo, Ben Bernie, Wayne King . . . are given preeminence.”83
She further described Mildred Bailey, Paul Whiteman’s longtime singer, as a “white
imitator of colored folks singing.”84 Jessye’s classical training and roots in the racial
uplift ideology of her alma mater Western University made her especially sensitive to
concerns of race pride, and she discouraged black performers from settling for being
mere facsimiles of successful whites.85 She particularly abhorred the trend of giving
black performers “sepia” nicknames that referenced successful whites including White-
man. As she wrote in 1934: “This Sepia silliness is becoming disgusting. At every turn,
we see frenzied efforts to ape some white singer, performer and ride to fame in their
reflected glory instead of building a name, personality, and following of our own.
Can we not win favor without the assistance of a white man’s name? Theaters, dance
halls, advertise ‘Sepia Mae West,’ ‘Sepia Bing Crosby,’ ‘Sepia Sally Rand,’ ‘Sepia Paul
Whiteman.’ Have we no pride? Is nothing we have fine unless it copies or resembles
the ofay?”86 Here, Jessye’s perspective echoes the atmosphere of the early 1930s by
entreating black performers to own their identities proudly and without reservation.
These perspectives reflect multiple broader shifts in thought during this time
period. First, there was among black elites an emerging aesthetic acceptance of jazz
and other black vernacular musics as valuable forms of expression in and of themselves
rather than as primitive raw material to be elevated through symphonic compositional
processes. This shift has much to do with a generational difference between Harlem
Renaissance thinkers such as W. E. B. DuBois and Alain Locke and younger Harlem
leaders such as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, who more explicitly em-
braced blues and jazz as more authentic black musical idioms than, for example, the
concert spiritual or folk symphony.87 Second, the Great Depression’s onset quickly
brought a more explicitly activist rhetoric in black communities’ activism surrounding
issues of racism and structural inequality, and here we may be seeing early seeds of
the intersection between sharper racial advocacy and popular culture discourse that
would drive the growth in black newspaper circulation later in the decade.88
“My Friends among the Colored People of America”:

Whiteman’s Collaboration with Black Musicians
Even as they criticized Whiteman’s outsized success relative to top black artists, black
critics acknowledged his efforts to employ black musicians behind the scenes, as well
as other work to promote the music of African American artists. In fact, association
with Whiteman became a significant point of prestige for African American artists.
A 1930 Pittsburgh Courier story on the band McKinney’s Cotton Pickers noted that

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bandleader Don Redman “has reached the very pinnacle of fame in the field of dance
music” and, as a crucial piece of evidence, that “he makes special arrangements for
Paul Whiteman and others of equal fame.”89 Ralph Matthews credited Whiteman’s
band with broadly popularizing black composer J. Rosamond Johnson’s song “Mis-
sissippi River.”90 In another article, the Courier noted that Whiteman, together with
Al Jolson, featured African American performers in their Kraft Cheese-sponsored
program for the National Broadcasting System. The performers reportedly raved
about the good treatment they received and one proudly showed the reporter her
script with autographs from Whiteman, Jolson, and Deems Taylor.91
Particularly noteworthy was Whiteman’s relationship with African American
composer William Grant Still. The black press’s extensive coverage of Whiteman’s
1930 film “King of Jazz” made particular note of Still’s involvement. Advertisements
in various papers tell us that Whiteman’s “King of Jazz” was screened in African
American theaters in multiple cities: the Pearl Theatre in Philadelphia, the New
Douglas Theatre in New York, and the Attucks and Regal Theatres in Norfolk. The
Norfolk Journal and Guide emphasized the film’s massive budget (especially its use of
Technicolor) and raved that “the most beautiful girls, the most gorgeous costumes,
and the most lavish sets are presented as tableaux of loveliness never before even con-
ceived.”92 Several black newspapers reported on Whiteman’s lucrative contract for the
film with Universal, which reportedly included a baseline guarantee of half a million
dollars. Of particular interest, however, was Still’s attachment to the project, which
prompted a biographic profile in the Norfolk Journal and Guide. Under the headline
“He Arranges Paul Whiteman’s Own Music for Films,” the story emphasized Still’s
own accomplishments as an award-winning classical composer with an international
reputation. It also makes clear that Still deserves credit for “the many novel twists
for which the [Whiteman] orchestra is internationally known.” The author, Ruby
Berkeley Goodwin, explicitly implores readers to hear the black creativity driving
the ostensibly all-white band: “When next you are enjoying the syncopation tunes
of Whiteman’s orchestra, know that a Negro boy is responsible for the many tanta-
lizing twists that make Whiteman’s jazz—super jazz.”93 Through entreating readers
thus, Goodwin renders audible the black musical labor behind visibly white music-
making. He suggests to African American audiences that even when filtered through
the white bodies of Whiteman and his musicians, black readers will still be hearing
“their music” presented and celebrated on the silver screen. In a Philadelphia Tribune
write-up, Charlie Johnson noted that “‘Bill’ Still, a race musician from Mississippi,
is so talented as an arranger that he was contracted to direct his arrangements played
by Paul Whiteman while on the ‘Old Gold Hour.’ Pretty nice, eh?”94
The black press took further note of Still and Whiteman’s relationship in the
summer of 1933, when Whiteman programmed several of Still’s symphonic works on
major concerts. Most notably, Whiteman directed both his own band and the New York
Philharmonic in an August 1933 concert at the City College of New York’s Lewisohn

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Stadium before a crowd of roughly fourteen thousand. The concert reportedly included
the third movement, “Land of Superstition,” from Still’s composition “Africa.”95 White-
man had also programmed the work earlier in the year for a concert at Carnegie Hall.96
Here again, Whiteman’s programming of Still’s compositions affirmed his admiration
for African American composers and arrangers. A Chicago Defender story, reporting on
Whiteman’s programming of Still’s work claimed, “It is well known that the acclaimed
jazz man [Whiteman] has only the deepest respect for the ability of the Race musician
in the field of music which he most assuredly created.”97
In late 1931, multiple black newspapers ran a photograph of Duke Ellington
and Paul Whiteman sitting side by side and smiling. The Norfolk New Journal and
Guide ran the photo under the headline “Two Genial Maestros of Jazz” and reported
that Ellington was handing Whiteman his manuscript for “Creole Rhapsody,” a work
Whiteman had commissioned from Ellington.98 Others emphasized both Ellington’s
friendship with Whiteman and the high esteem in which top white bandleaders held
him. The Baltimore Afro-American’s Malcolm Fulcher made note that “Ted Husing,
Rudy Vallee, and Paul Whiteman never fail to pen Duke Ellington a Xmas card or
drop in for New Year’s cocktails.”99 Columnists also focused on Ellington’s earnings
and his ability to draw crowds. A 1935 Courier story emphasized that Ellington had
outdrawn the Whiteman band in Europe and that “as jazz king, he has superseded
Paul Whiteman.”100 The previous year, Cleveland Call and Post editor William O.
Walker cited Ellington’s financial success as an example for African American busi-
nessmen. Walker indicated that Ellington was able to achieve success by matching
the effort of, or even surpassing, his white competitors: “Suppose Duke Ellington had
followed the model of most of our business men. Do you think he’d be earning over
$50,000 yearly? No, he realized he must be as good if not better than Rudy Vallee
or Paul Whiteman. He met their competition, either by creating something new or
doing the same numbers just as rhythmically. Today, the Negro business group is
trailing because he is giving less, is doing less and cannot see nearly as far ahead as his
competitors. If our actors and musicians can do it, why can’t our business men?”101
Here, Walker positions Ellington as an exemplary “Race Man” by emphasizing El-
lington’s work ethic as well as his ability to offer something both distinctive and of
comparable or superior quality to what his best white peers could offer.
There was, however, one notable controversy involving Whiteman’s supposed
exploitation of black talent, which also offers evidence that Whiteman was cognizant
of, and invested in, his reception in black newspapers. In 1927, the Chicago Defender
relayed accounts from several singers arguing Whiteman had worked to thwart Florence
Mills’s advancement in Europe. In response to the controversy, Whiteman penned a
letter to the Chicago Defender, offering that “I am not concerned about what my friends
among the Colored people of America will think of this calumny. They know that I
have always thrown what influence I have in the stage and music world toward securing,
for any artist, full appreciation and opportunity irrespective of race . . . I have never

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presumed to claim credit for my efforts to secure for Colored artists an opportunity
in which they can be judged upon an artistic basis alone.”102 Whiteman’s “race-blind”
rhetoric here may sound anachronistic to artists and academics familiar with critical
race theorists’ critiques of such positions, but such an ostensibly merit-based approach
to opportunity held significant appeal for African American musicians and critics at
the time.103
When in 1932 the Courier’s Floyd Snelson initiated a newspaper contest to
determine which black bandleader was “the King of Jazz Rhythm,” he actively solic-
ited Whiteman’s vote. Whiteman demurred, claiming that he was not comfortable
choosing favorites among his friends and collaborators but that he was watching the
contest with great interest. In thanking Whiteman for his reply, Snelson expressed
his hope that Whiteman “continue to hold the spotlight of attention for many
seasons to come as being the ace of his race in the orchestra field.”104 In context,
Snelson’s language invites a close reading. He is holding a contest to determine “the
King of Jazz Rhythm,” a moniker quite close to the “King of Jazz” title Whiteman
had claimed for a decade and during a period when black newspaper writers were
increasingly highlighting the unique characteristics black musicians and black musi-
cians alone could bring to the playing of jazz. Perhaps Snelson was turning the idea
of racial provincialization and hypervisibility back on white bandleaders, offering
that Whiteman may well have been the best among his people—the “ace of his race,”
perhaps—but certainly not the true “King of Jazz.”
Conclusion
Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, Paul Whiteman was many things in the black
press. For some, he was, in a deeply DuBoisian sense, an example of what black
musicians could—and even should—be able to achieve if given fair opportunity.
For others, he was a symbol of systemic racism as his outsized professional success
underscored the oppressive constraints under which similarly gifted or even superior
black musicians labored. He was a friendly ally of those same black musicians and
was celebrated for doing what he could to provide them opportunities and associa-
tion with his name, and his band was a source of cultural capital for musicians such
as William Grant Still and Duke Ellington. Finally, while not universally the case,
his music was deeply and genuinely admired by a number of black musicians, intel-
lectuals, critics, and audiences from a range of class backgrounds. Where Howland’s
astute analysis of Whiteman’s critical reception focuses largely on white jazz writers,
Whiteman’s black newspaper reception reveals the black press as another potent venue
in which explicit resistance to jazz’s absorption as a form of white culture was swift
and forceful. At the same time, black critics such as Peyton offer strikingly different
visions of blackness and black aesthetics from those offered by white jazz critics only
a few short years later. This is in part because black middle-class interest in sweet

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music remains underdiscussed, just as black middle-class enthusiasm for smooth jazz
decades later remains similarly downplayed.105 However, critical reception in the early
1930s suggests that black authors were not wholly separated from the emergent con-
solidation of blackness as a racialized “hot” aesthetic, as Whiteman and other white
bandleaders became a foil against which authentic black innovation could be judged.
None of this, however, should assuage nor soften any critique leveled at
Whiteman or other white musicians who have benefitted unfairly from racist
systems that deny black musicians the ability to benefit from their own cultural
production. Put bluntly, Paul Whiteman does not need to be redeemed nor ex-
onerated. That said, it is equally important to avoid conscripting black voices of
the past to serve a narrative that paves over the complex heterogeneity of black
musical taste and the broad range of perspectives regarding Whiteman’s music and
his relationship to black musicians and black communities. Furthermore, where
numerous scholars studying Whiteman ask that we frame him within his own time
rather than apply more contemporary perspectives on race and cultural ownership,
it is clear from sources in contemporaneous black newspapers that discussions
of appropriation and of race privilege were absolutely part of the discourse of
Whiteman’s time. African American newspapers as a resource offer us a critical
lens through which to glimpse vigorous debate and heterogeneous points of view.
In confronting the perspectives contained therein, scholars can continue moving
toward a jazz history that consistently centers the lived experiences of black audi-
ences. Rather than seeking to articulate a single “black perspective,” it is critical
that we treat black musical tastes and preferences with the same room for diversity
and disagreement that other listeners are afforded.
Notes
1. “‘King of Jazz’ Visits the Savoy,” New York Amsterdam News, August 31, 1932, 8.
2. In Ken Burns’s documentary Jazz, a commentator makes this very point, that Whiteman’s
own name “White-man” when paired with the “King of Jazz” moniker, “is driving many
blacks crazy at the time and since because it’s all too obvious.” In Ken Burns, dir., Jazz,
vol. 2, (Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2000), DVD.
3. Of particular note is the Black Press Research Collective founded by Kim Gallon, which is
“an interdisciplinary group of scholars committed to generating digital scholarship about
the historical and contemporary role of black newspapers in Africa and the African Dias-
poras.” “About,” Black Press Research Collective, accessed July 4, 2017, http://blackpress
researchcollective.org/about/.
4. Amoaba Gooden, “Visual Representations of Feminine Beauty in the Black Press: 1915–
1950,” Journal of Pan African Studies 4, no. 4 (June 2011): 81–96; Kim Gallon, “Silences
Kept: The Absence of Gender and Sexuality in Black Press Historiography,” History Com-
pass 10, no. 2 (2012): 207–18.
5. John Gennari, Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics (Chicago, University of Chicago
Press, 2006), 104–5.
6. Elijah Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock & Roll: An Alternative History of American
Popular Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 78.

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7. John Howland, “Between the Muses and the Masses: Symphonic Jazz, ‘Glorified’ Enter-
tainment, and the Rise of the American Musical Middlebrow, 1920–1944,” (PhD diss.,
Stanford University, 2002), 2.
8. Howland, “Between the Muses,” 3.
9. Mark Tucker, Ellington: The Early Years (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 151,
166, 168; Jeffrey Magee, Fletcher Henderson: The Uncrowned King of Swing (New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 2005), 28; Felix Cox, “Duke Ellington as Composer: Two Pieces for
Paul Whiteman,” Jazz Perspectives 6, no. 1–2 (2012): 59. Cox’s argument, that Ellington
adopted Whiteman’s “symphonic jazz” model cites and follows John Howland, Ellington
Uptown: Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, and the Birth of Concert Jazz (Ann Arbor: Uni-
versity of Michigan Press, 2009), 149–50, 157–59.
10. Ryan Bañagale, Arranging Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue and the Creation of an American
Icon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 35.
11. Wald, How the Beatles, 74.
12. Mario Dunkel, “W. C. Handy, Abbe Niles, and Autobiographical Positioning in the
Whiteman Era,” Popular Music and Society 38, no. 2 (2015): 122–23.
13. Don Rayno, Paul Whiteman: Pioneer of American Music, 1890–1930 (Lanham, MD: Scare-
crow Press, 2003), 94.
15. Bruce Boyd Raeburn, New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009); Gennari, Blowin’ Hot and Cool.
16. Magee, Fletcher Henderson, 28.
18. Howland, Ellington Uptown, 145.
19. Greg Tate, “Nigs R Us, or How Blackfolk Became Fetish Objects,” in Everything but
the Burden: What White People Are Taking from Black Culture, ed. Greg Tate (New York:
Broadway Books, 2003), 3–4.
20. Stephan Pennington, “From Adele to Iggy Azalea: Phases of Appropriation and the Case
of African American Music” (paper, annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology,
Austin, TX, December 2015). Cited with the author’s permission.
21. Rayno, Paul Whiteman, xxiii.
22. Richard Sudhalter, Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2001), xvi.
23. Steven Lewis, “‘Black Xenophobia,’ ‘Reverse Racism,’ and the Neoclassicist Jazz Canon
in the 1990s,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for American Music,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada, March 2017. Cited with the author’s permission.
24. Gene Lees, “Introduction to the Da Capo Edition,” in Cats of Any Color: Jazz, Black and
White (New York: Da Capo, 2001), xvi.
25. Binga Dismond, “Paul Whiteman to Play at Urban League Ball,” Chicago Defender, No-
vember 8, 1924, A8.
26. “Paul Whiteman and Chocolate Dandies at Urban League,” Baltimore Afro-American,
November 14, 1924, 14.
27. Here I refer to the “self-delusion” X identifies among African Americans inflating their
social status relative to their occupation during his time in Boston. Malcolm X with Alex
Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X as Told to Alex Haley (1964; repr. New York: Bal-
lantine Books, 1995), 42–43. Whiteman appeared again in Harlem, and again alongside
Sissle and Blake, the following year at the Manhattan Casino. The Amsterdam News

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described the Whiteman band as an “unusual attraction.” “Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra

among Attractions at Theatre Boys’ Frolic,” New York Amsterdam News, June 3, 1925, 5.
28. Kevin Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth
Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 218.
29. “Musical Society Presents Paul Whiteman Jan. 4,” New Journal and Guide, December 19,
1925, 7.
30. “Fla. Stages First Lynching of Year,” Baltimore Afro-American, January 16, 1926, 1.
31. The allusion to controversy and debate surrounding subscriptions and seating arrange-
ments in the New Journal and Guide article cited above (note 29) suggest that the impetus
for integrated seating came from the community itself. While it is certainly possible
Whiteman himself could have insisted upon it, I have found no evidence of this.
32. Benjamin P. Bowser, The Black Middle Class: Social Mobility and Vulnerability (Boulder,
CO: Lynne Reinner, 2007), 54–55.
33. Ibid., 59.
34. Magee, Fletcher Henderson, 29.
35. Dunkel, “Autobiographical Positioning,” 123–25; Wald, How the Beatles, 79.
36. Joan Rubin, The Making of Middlebrow Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Caro-
lina Press, 1992), 13.
37. Rubin, Making of Middlebrow Culture, 14. The situating of middlebrow culture in the
intersection of high and popular culture is Rubin’s point; the connection with racial uplift
discourse is mine.
39. In discussing Ellington’s and James P. Johnson’s concert works, Howland argues that
“the aesthetic heart of this middle-culture repertory of concert-style arrangements and
compositions lies in the overlapping relations between symphonic jazz, popular entertain-
ment, and American class hierarchy discourses” and that “there were important African
American precedents and parallels to these predominantly white musical trends.” How-
land, “‘The Blues Gets Glorified’: Harlem Entertainment, Negro Nuances, and Black
Symphonic Jazz,” Musical Quarterly 90, no. 3/4, (Fall/Winter 2007): 319.
40. Aileen Eckstein, “Wave Lengths,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 28, 1933, A6; R. Vincent
[Roi] Ottley, “Are You Listenin’?,” New York Amsterdam News, November 2, 1932, 16.
41. While it is unclear from the available accounts precisely what sorts of performers, beyond
musicians, appeared, Howland, in his dissertation, has extensively discussed Whiteman’s
multiple modes of performance including symphonic jazz, sweet jazz, and vaudeville-style
entertainment. While language indicating “entertainers” and “performers” in the available
accounts make likely this was a more elaborate variety performance, it is difficult to say
for certain.
42. “Paul Whiteman to Play at Savoy,” Philadelphia Tribune, September 14, 1933, 12.
43. “New York Savoy Has Played All the Country’s Great Orchestras,” September 23, 1933, 5.
44. Ibid.
45. “On the Air,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 23, 1933, 21.
46. Ibid.
47. Andrew Berish, Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams: Place, Mobility, and Race in Jazz of
the 1930s and ’40s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 34; Elijah Wald, “Louis
Armstrong Loves Guy Lombardo,” in Jazz/Not Jazz: The Music and Its Boundaries, ed.
David Ake, Charles Hiroshi Garrett, and Daniel Goldmark (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 2012), 38.

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48. Wald, “Armstrong Loves Lombardo,” 38.

49. Wald, “Armstrong Loves Lombardo,” 36; Christopher J. Wells, “‘Go Harlem!’: Chick
Webb and His Dancing Audience during the Great Depression” (PhD diss., University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2014), 78–79.
50. “New Savoy Throws Open Its Doors to Public in March,” New York Amsterdam News,
February 24, 1926, 5. Cited in Christopher J. Wells, “‘And I Make My Own’: Class Per-
formance, Black Urban Identity, and Depression-Era Harlem’s Physical Culture,” in The
Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity, ed. Anthony Shay and Barbara Sellars Young
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 31.
51. Advertisement, New York Amsterdam News, January 26, 1927, 13.
52. Lawrence Schenbeck, “Music, Gender, and ‘Uplift’ in the ‘Chicago Defender,’ 1927–
1937,” Musical Quarterly 81, no. 3 (Autumn 1997): 349.
53. Howland, Uptown Conversation, 31.
54. Barry Kernfeld, “Peyton, Dave,” American National Biography Online, February 2000,
accessed May 25, 2017.
55. Dave Peyton, “The Musical Bunch,” Chicago Defender, May 19, 1929, 6. This quotation’s
first paragraph also appears in Chadwick Hansen, “Social Influences on Jazz Style: Chi-
cago 1920–30,” American Quarterly 12, no. 4 (Winter 1960): 499.
56. Dave Peyton, “The Musical Bunch,” Chicago Defender, August 7, 1926, 6.
57. Ibid.
58. For more on Europe, the Clef Club, and its ideology and business practices, see David
Gilbert, “Clef Club Inc.: James Reese Europe and New York’s Musical Marketplace,”
Journal of Popular Music Studies 24, no. 4 (December 2012): 430–456.
59. Dave Peyton, “The Musical Bunch,” Chicago Defender, July 30, 1927, 6.
60. John Howland, “‘The Blues Gets Glorified,’” 329. Howland ascribes this specifically to
Will Marion Cook where Peyton credits James Reese Europe.
61. Dunkel, “The Stories of Jazz: Performing America through Its Musical History” (PhD
diss., Technische Universität Dortmund, 2014), 85.
62. Dave Peyton, “The Musical Bunch,” Chicago Defender, August 27, 1927, 6.
63. Dave Peyton, “The Musical Bunch,” Chicago Defender, March 9, 1929, 6.
64. Hansen, “Social Influences on Jazz Style,” 495–96.
66. Dunkel, “Autobiographical Positioning,” 137.
67. Ibid., 132–33.
68. Howland, “The Blues Gets Glorified,” 361.
69. Whiteman, Jazz, cited in “Another Jazz Music Theory,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 1,
1926, 9.
70. Karl Hagstrom Miller, Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim
Crow (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 5–6.
71. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 225.
72. Alice Dunbar Nelson, “Une Femme Dit: Crisp, Bright Opinions of Current Happenings
from a Woman’s Point of View,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 3, 1926, 7.
73. Mario Dunkel, “Marshall Winslow Stearns and the Politics of Jazz Historiography,”
American Music 30, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 473–74.
74. Dunkel, “The Stories of Jazz,” 65.

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75. Rob Roy, “Fletcher Henderson’s Band in Chicago,” Chicago Defender, November 2, 1932, 5.
76. “Negro Is Rightful Exponent of Jazz,” Philadelphia Tribune, July 10, 1930, 7.
77. The Scribe [Clifford W. McKay, pseud.] “Going Backstage with the Scribe” Chicago De-
fender, April 4, 1931, 5.
78. William J. Wall, quoted in C. Ellicott Freeman Jr., “All Leaders Crucified Says Bishop
Wall,” Baltimore Afro-American, April 11, 1931, 18.
79. J. A. Rogers, “Jean Toomer,” New York Amsterdam News, January 2, 1929, 16.
80. “Duke Ellington’s Trip Abroad Answers European’s [sic] Plea for Best in Jazz,” Philadel-
phia Tribune, June 15, 1933, 11.
81. Selmour C. Jordan, “Negro, Like Others, Must Dedicate Himself to the Task of Rebuild-
ing America in Year ’34,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 27, 1934, 19.
82. Chappy Gardner, “Calls White Performers ‘Great Imitators,’” Chicago Defender, Septem-
ber 9, 1933, 10.
83. Eva Jessye, “Radio Review,” Baltimore Afro-American, November 11, 1933, 19.
84. Eva Jessye, “Back of the Radio,” Baltimore Afro-American, July 8, 1933, 9.
85. Helen Walker-Hill, “Western University at Quindaro, Kansas (1865–1943) and Its Legacy
of Pioneering Musical Women,” Black Music Research Journal 26, no. 1 (Spring 2006):
21–23.
86. Eva Jessye, “Radio Review,” Baltimore Afro-American, March 24, 1934, 8.
87. Samuel Floyd Jr., “Music in the Harlem Renaissance: An Overview,” in Black Music in the
Harlem Renaissance: A Collection of Essays, ed. Samuel Floyd Jr. (Knoxville: University of
Tennessee Press, 1993), 5–9.
88. Andrew Buni, Robert L. Vann of the Pittsburgh Courier: Politics and Black Journalism
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1974), 257.
89. “McKinney’s Cotton Pickers Coming to Pittsburgh,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 5, 1930, 6.
90. Ralph Matthews, “Looking at the Stars,” Baltimore Afro-American, October 29, 1932, 10.
91. “Race Stars on Jolson Program,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 17, 1934, A8. This may have
been a version of “The Emperor Jones,” featuring the John Henry Choir under the direc-
tion of Charles Henry Wood according to a Roi Ottley column, which claims the choir
appeared on the radio with Jolson and Whiteman “quite recently.” Roi Ottley, “This Hec-
tic Harlem,” New York Amsterdam News, April 21, 1934, 9.
92. “Paul Whiteman in ‘Jazz King’ Opens Week at Attucks,” New Journal and Guide, Septem-
ber 6, 1930, p. 5; “Local Theatres,” New Journal and Guide, July 29, 1933, 13.
93. Ruby Berkeley Goodwin, “He Arranges Paul Whiteman’s Own Music for Films: A Short
Account of William Grant Still’s Remarkably Successful Career as a Composer and Musi-
cian,” New Journal and Guide, April 5, 1930, 11.
94. Charlie Johnson, “Jazzmania,” Philadelphia Tribune, October 22, 1931, 6.
95. Eva Jessye, “Harlem Moves Down Town,” Baltimore Afro-American, August 19, 1933, 18.
96. Aileen Eckstein, “Wave Lengths,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 29, 1933, A6.
97. “Paul Whiteman to Honor Race,” Chicago Defender December 9, 1933, 5.
98. “Two Genial Maestros of Jazz,” New Journal and Guide, August 15, 1931, 4.
99. Malcolm B. Fulcher, “Believe Me,” Baltimore Afro-American, October 15, 1932, 3.
100. “Duke Ellington, Who Graces Savoy This Friday, Once Outdrew Paul Whiteman,” Pitts-
burgh Courier, March 30, 1935, A9.
101. William O. Walker, “Down the Big Road,” Cleveland Call and Post, September 8, 1934, 4.

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102. Paul Whiteman, letter reprinted as “Paul Whiteman Refutes Statement of Actresses,” Chi-
cago Defender, November 19, 1927, 3.
103. Rachel Alicia Griffin, for example, identifies “the omnipresence of racism” and the con-
cept of “colorblindness as impractical” as two fundamental tenets of critical race theory.
Rachel Alicia Griffin, “The Disgrace of Commodification and Shameful Convenience: A
Critical Race Critique of the NBA,” Journal of Black Studies 43, no. 2 (March 2012): 164.
104. Floyd G. Snelson, “The Duke Leading in Last Lap,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 24,
1932, A1.
105. Charles D. Carson, “‘Bridging the Gap’: Creed Taylor, Grover Washington Jr., and the
Crossover Roots of Smooth Jazz,” Black Music Research Journal 28, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 1–15.
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Howland, John. “Between the Muses and the Masses: Symphonic Jazz, ‘Glorified’ Entertain-
ment, and the Rise of the American Middlebrow, 1920–1944.” PhD diss., Stanford Uni-
versity, 2002.
———. “‘The Blues Gets Glorified’: Harlem Entertainment, Negro Nuances, and Black Sym-
phonic Jazz.” Musical Quarterly 90, no. 3/4, (Fall/Winter 2007): 319–70.
———. Ellington Uptown: Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, and the Birth of Concert Jazz. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009.
Lewis, Steven. “‘Black Xenophobia,’ ‘Reverse Racism,’ and the Neoclassicist Jazz Canon in the
1990s.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for American Music, Mon-
treal, Quebec, Canada, March 2017.
Magee, Jeffrey. Fletcher Henderson: The Uncrowned King of Swing. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2005.
Miller, Karl Hagstrom. Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
Pennington, Stephan. “From Adele to Iggy Azalea: Phases of Appropriation and the Case of Afri-
can American Music.” Paper read at the annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicol-
ogy, Austin, TX, December 2015.
Rayno, Don. Paul Whiteman: Pioneer of American Music, 1890–1930. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow
Press, 2003.
Rubin, Joan. The Making of Middlebrow Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1992.
Schenbeck, Lawrence. “Music, Gender, and ‘Uplift’ in the ‘Chicago Defender,’ 1927–1937.” Musi-
cal Quarterly 81, no. 3 (Autumn 1997): 344–70.
Sudhalter, Richard. Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz. New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 2001.
Tate, Greg. “Nigs R Us, or How Blackfolk Became Fetish Objects.” In Everything but the Burden:
What White People Are Taking from Black Culture, edited by Greg Tate, 1–14. New York:
Broadway Books, 2003.
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Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
———. “Louis Armstrong Loves Guy Lombardo.” In Jazz/Not Jazz: The Music and Its Boundar-
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Walker-Hill, Helen. “Western University at Quindaro, Kansas (1865–1943) and Its Legacy of Pio-
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———. “‘Go Harlem!’: Chick Webb and His Dancing Audience during the Great Depression.”
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Oral History
Rich Theory: Mandino Reinhardt

on Jazz Manouche in Alsace
Mandino Reinhardt (b. 1956) is one of France’s greatest living players of jazz ma-
nouche, a genre based primarily on the work of guitarist Django Reinhardt (1910–53).1
Like Django, Mandino is a member of the Manouche subgroup of Romanies (also
known pejoratively as “Gypsies”), a population known especially for its musical
talent but otherwise the object of much racial discrimination.2 In what follows,
Mandino describes how jazz manouche became a cultural practice and emblem of
identity among Alsatian Manouches thanks in large part to his own performance,
teaching, and mentoring. Starting in the 1970s, he and other Manouches began play-
ing jazz manouche, quickly adopting it as both a community practice and a means
of income. Mandino was hired by a local pro-Manouche nonprofit organization,
L’Association pour la Promotion des Populations d’Origine Nomade d’Alsace (AP-
PONA), to instruct young Manouches on guitar, guiding a generation of professional
and semiprofessional musicians and helping to establish Alsace as France’s “cradle”
of jazz manouche. Mandino also achieved international success with his ensembles
Sweet Chorus and Note Manouche alongside his cousin Marcel Loeffler, a renowned
jazz accordionist.3
In recent years, a number of studies have foregrounded the stories of jazz mu-
sicians and communities otherwise marginalized in or excluded from U.S.-centric
narratives in jazz histories, focusing on important sites outside the United States where
jazz has developed both in place-specific ways and as part of transnational musical
networks.4 Although Django is sometimes portrayed in traditional jazz histories as an
influential guitarist, the practice of jazz manouche and its links to Manouche com-
munities usually go unmentioned. This oral history contributes to a dual restitution


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Oral History Siv Lie 105
in contemporary jazz historiography: that of the importance of Alsatian jazz practice

to French and global jazz practices and that of the socioeconomically marginalized,
yet incessantly romanticized, ethnic group of Manouches. Mandino’s story offers a
unique perspective on how jazz performance articulates racial and ethnic politics in
France and in Europe more broadly.
This oral history was conducted in French at Mandino’s home in Strasbourg,
France, on April 15, 2014. I have translated it into English and edited some portions
for readability. For reasons of semantic clarity, I retain the French Tsigane, since it is
not directly translatable in English as either Romani or Gypsy. Although Tsigane is an
exonym, it is not considered nearly as pejorative as Gypsy and is still used widely in
academic and activist discourses in France. Many Manouches also refer to themselves
as Sinté or Sinti, another subgroup of Romanies to whom Manouches are closely
related (or virtually synonymous with, according to most of my interlocutors). Gadjé
is a Romani term used to refer to non-Manouche people (noun masculine singular
Gadjo and noun feminine singular Gadji). Romanes is a term used by Romanies of
various subgroups to refer to the Romani language.
◊ ◊ ◊
Siv Lie: To begin, I’d like to ask you about your history, how you began to play.
Mandino Reinhardt: I have some very old memories that go back to my child-
hood—family parties, communions—where music was always present, especially
with my grandparents. My grandfather was a violinist and my uncles were guitarists
and violinists. My father, he played a little violin and a little guitar. I always had
musical instruments in my house, especially guitars, and violins from time to time.
I’ll say that it was totally natural that one day I started to play, because my brother
Sony started playing a little before me. It was around the age of twelve or thirteen,
I think, when I started to pick out a few notes, a few chords. There was a chaplain,
one [who worked specifically] for Gypsies, named Marcel Daval who lived in the
heart of the neighborhood where I grew up. I was about fifteen when, one day, the
sons of Piton Reinhardt, a cousin of Django, came to Marcel Daval’s house. They
played amazingly well, and I decided right there that I wanted to do that, that it
pleased me. I had a guitar in my house, so I went home, I remember, and started to
play. I was determined, firmly determined. So at fifteen years old, I stopped going to
school [laughs], and I said, “I want to do this.” That was at the same time that I also
got my [antique trading] business off the ground, everything you see here [he laughs
and points to the musical instruments in his living room], among other things. And
I learned with someone who came to the Manouches, but who wasn’t Manouche,
who was named Joe Nizard. He knew this music very well. With him I evolved pret-
ty well and learned a lot of things. But he would tell me, “Learn by yourself, form
your own opinion.” He showed me some things on the guitar neck, but very little.
Among other things, he would tell me, “Play the way you are, listen to Django, lis-
ten to other guitarists, do your work yourself.”

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106 Oral History Siv Lie
Something that’s very important at the heart of Manouche families is that chil-
dren are not obligated to play. Still, at the heart of families and communities, music
has an important place, I’d even say a primordial one. The youth today who listen to
music that I don’t like [laughs] recognize themselves in [jazz manouche] all the same.
When they want to show a good side [of their ethnicity], they’ll put on Django or
certain other famous musicians above all to make themselves known among a non-
Manouche public.
SL: OK, so even though they listen to a lot of things—
MR: —yes, a lot of things that aren’t so beautiful to listen to sometimes. [Laughs.] But
that’s the way it is.
SL: So you were very influenced by Joe [Nizard] and Piton Reinhardt’s sons.
MR: They are the ones who made it click for me. Of course I was already familiar with
Django because my grandfather played a few [of his] tunes, but very little. You
also have to know that before [the 1970s], the elders didn’t play much jazz. When
Tsiganes came to France, the musicians played tunes that they heard from here and
there, and they interpreted them in their own style, but maybe always in a sort of
clever way. Musicians who were hired to play at weddings or private parties had to
be good, so they always played a little better [than others]. In the general history of
music, there have been people like Liszt or Paganini who contacted Tsiganes. Some
people even told ridiculous stories, like, “Oh yes, [the Gypsy] plays well because he
signed a pact with the Devil, but that doesn’t shock us because he hangs out with
Gypsies,” among others. These are things we heard. So music has a very, very impor-
tant place, like I said, among Tsigane families.
SL: Yes, of course. So you said that before, people didn’t really play jazz. Do you re-
member when that became something really important for your community?
MR: Yes, but first it was Django who kind of revolutionized things, who became the
emblematic figure for nearly all Tsiganes because he is the most famous Tsigane in
the world.5 He made connections between many genres of music including French
popular music and bal-musette,6 as well as classical music. Django was a very, very
open person, [open to] American jazz of course. But you can also hear a very Tsi-
gane way of playing, a very personal way of interpreting jazz that became his style.
Beyond that, you have to know that for the Manouche community, [this style] of
music was played a lot in Paris, but very little in the French provinces [during and
just after Django’s time]. Manouche musicians continued to play, but not necessar-
ily jazz. They played old waltzes, old marches, things like that. But it was especially
with the advent of a German group led by [Sinto violinist and vocalist] Schnuck-
enack Reinhardt in the 1970s that this music came back.7 With that, it was really a
kind of explosion among Manouche families in France, almost everywhere. Alsace
was maybe one of the first regions where a number of important [jazz manouche]
musicians were trained, and then groups, recordings, CDs, records. I’ll say that the
renewal of Django’s music, in the 1970s, was thanks to Schnuckenack Reinhardt.
SL: So you were young when [Schnuckenack’s group, Musik Deutscher Zigeuner] came
to France.

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MR: Yes, I was fourteen or fifteen. [Schnuckenack] was also an explosion on a European
level. He recorded a lot, had a lot of gigs, a lot of concerts everywhere. He came to
Strasbourg, to Paris. So it’s thanks to him that a lot of people play this music today.
It’s thanks to him that people rediscovered Django, that we really know Django in
his music. You say to yourself: “Wow, what a genius!” [Laughs.]
SL: When Schnuckenack came on the scene, did everyone start learning this music in-
stead of old waltzes and all that?
MR: The new generation, people my age who are now a little over fifty years old, started
doing that because we became interested all of a sudden. We liked it right away, and
then we discovered Django’s work. We said, “Wow, in twenty years he made eight
hundred recordings! I don’t know how many compositions he made. [Sigh.] [These
were] absolutely magnificent works. One of the first times he tried to record with
the Quintette du Hot Club de France, [the record producer] said, “I refuse to record
this because it will never work.” [Laughs.] And history proved otherwise, apparently.
SL: What were the first groups you performed with?
MR: When I was seventeen, some people came to ask if I wanted to play in a group, so
these first ensembles played in cafés in Strasbourg. We gigged in trios, in quartets,
sometimes as duos. We schlepped around the cafés in Strasbourg, sometimes with a
huge double bass, and it was difficult but it worked well. We saw that the public was
enthusiastic about this music. Then while I was still seventeen, a clarinetist asked if I
wanted to join a group for an evening. It was me, the clarinetist, my brother [Sony,
on guitar], a double bassist, and a drummer, and we did our first concert in [the
Strasbourg neighborhood] Le Meinau. That was a very important step. We did a few
concerts like that.
[At this time,] I continued my education in order to evolve, always with Django’s
music. I tried to copy his solos in a very laborious manner because I used LPs. I had
to lift the turntable arm every time [I wanted to relisten to a passage] until the day
I was able to buy myself a little cassette player. Then things became a lot simpler. I
played [the famous Django tune] “Minor Swing” I don’t know how many hundreds
of times. At night, I went to sleep with “Minor Swing” twenty times in a loop, so
that I could have it in my ear. You have to use your ear, especially your ear. You can
look at other guitarists to see what’s happening technically on the guitar neck. But
above all, it’s the ear.
SL: Of course, and that starts when you’re little.
MR: Yes, when you are immersed in a familial musical environment, that helps a lot. It
helps with tempo, with chords, with intonation.
SL: Yes. When you started to learn and really work on music, did you use notation?
MR: Oh, no no no no! Today, I still don’t know how. I know the names of chords, the
way a lot of Manouche musicians know the names of chords, but not all of them,
never all. [Manouches] don’t know exactly what an eighth note is, or a sixteenth
note. We learn the way Django did, when he dictated to his clarinetist Gérard
Lévêcque a score he wanted to play, a violin section, a clarinet section. He would
say, “I want this or that chord.” He’d play the parts on his guitar, and Gérard
Lévêcque would notate.

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SL: Good thing he did that! I actually know the guitarist who has the original scores,
Jean-Marie Pallen.
MR: Ooh! You’ve seen them? Wow!
SL: He has all of them, and even recomposed Django’s [unfinished] symphony. It’s a
goldmine.
MR: Oh yes, I’m sure.
SL: So that’s a subject I’m really interested in, learning with the ear. Is solfège ever a
part of this in your teaching?
MR: Well, when someone is learning, I think that the decision always comes from
[whether or not that person is] interested. A person decides to learn that. But there
have been schools, including the [nonprofit organization] APPONA school, which
was the first school for learning music with Manouche families. We realized that
music was beginning to disappear and no longer have an important place [in Ma-
nouche families]. So Marcel Daval, the chaplain for Gypsies, founded an organiza-
tion that defended culture, among other things, and addressed all the problems
that Manouche families faced. A music school was created in 1978, and I was the
first employee of the organization. They told me, “OK, you’re going to teach the
youth how to play.” [I wondered] “How am I going to do that?! I don’t know how!”
[Laughs.] I said to myself, “OK, I’m going to draw a guitar neck, with frets,” but it
was too complicated! I abandoned that very quickly, and all of a sudden I had suc-
cess! There were a dozen kids or more, and I said, “Look at what I’m doing. Open
your ears.” I would place their fingers at first, but the kids figured it out. They want-
ed to learn such and such music by Django, or what I knew how to do at this time,
and we evolved like that. It was by following the enthusiasm of the child[ren] who
came to my home for lessons that [my method] progressed fairly quickly. The school
had a lot of success and the kids learned very, very quickly. They were capable of ac-
companying those who were much more experienced. They were capable of making
melodies. There are of course a lot of stages to pass through, and some [students]
dropped out. Others became well-known and managed things well.
[This] pedagogy, it’s more based on listening, on the aural, on imitation, also see-
ing how another person does [it]. But we don’t give precise [instructions], saying,
“It’s this or that name, it’s this or that note. Open your ears and look at how I do it
without slowing down, what the positioning is.” I don’t say it that way, I don’t ana-
lyze. It has to be natural. The desire to make music has to come. You can’t force any-
body! If he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t want to.8 The way of placing the left hand on
the guitar neck, or of taking the pick in the right hand, that has to come naturally.
SL: So you don’t explain—
MR: —you don’t explain—
SL: —you don’t say—
MR: —you don’t explain, or say, “Look at the position I’m in.” He sees it! And after,
he’ll correct it himself. There are [also] Manouche pianists, and they learn by them-
selves. There’s nothing very academic [about it]. The style always comes by itself,
I mean naturally. The hands will arrange themselves, maybe if [the student] gives
a little more time. There are good pianists, good violinists, good guitarists [among

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Manouches]. [But] they’re not obligated. I don’t reject the theoretical aspect of
music, because in my own way, I do it. I know how to explain things about music
theory. Maybe not with the vocabulary adequate to conservatories.
SL: Yes, but all the same, it’s a very rich theory, just not in the same terms.
MR: Voilà. After all, Django’s history, with many other musicians, proved to us that you
can make music otherwise. What’s more, something I have to insist is that I know
Marie-Claude Ségard well, who was the director of the Conservatory of Strasbourg.
I had the chance to meet her during a film shooting, and since I had invited her to
some concerts, she asked me to come to the conservatory to teach what I do. I was
not very much at ease with that. I said, “But I can’t! I’m intimidated.” She said, “I
want you to teach my teachers how you make music.” I wasn’t too thrilled, but she
persuaded me. She said, “Yes, yes, I want you to teach them simplicity, [ . . .] and
the pleasures of playing.” So I found myself multiple times at the conservatory with
some important musicians, but I saw that they were completely ignorant of this way
of playing. And the truth was revealed when I explained how you place the fingers
like that, and this is a chord you can replace with that, with that, with that. Fortu-
nately, I knew the names of certain chords, [but] I was nearly a beginner.
SL: It’s a difficult thing to do with people who don’t have this way of playing.
MR: Yes, and then, what really made them ask questions was the ear. You can manage
to listen to something and reproduce it, or to recognize rhythmic positions, without
theory, without anything. At its beginning, music was not written. Music was in
birdsong, in the rustling of a tree. Tempos [he knocks on the table], drum [parts],
were not written. You have it in your ear, that’s how it is. It’s another way of making
music than on paper. [Written music is] good, I’m not saying otherwise.
SL: Yes. And I think that this way of learning to make music is well-respected by many
other jazz musicians, certainly those I know in the United States who learned [writ-
ten] notes and solfège and all that, and who now say, “That prevented me a little
from listening because I was too dependent on sheets.”
MR: Me, I love classical music, but I remember the first time I listened to classical mu-
sic, I was disappointed by the musicians because I saw that they were fixed behind
their sheets, and that they didn’t live their music well. I saw that they were too ob-
sessed with what they were playing from the sheet, but they didn’t feel it. I had the
impression that these were some automatons behind a page. Well, that’s the impres-
sion I had. I’m not neglecting this visual aspect of the sheet, [since] the music was
written on it. But at a certain point, you have to let yourself go in order to feel a
piece, to live it better, because music lives!
SL: Absolutely, you can’t forget that! So at the beginning of your school, where exactly
did you teach?
MR: It was in Neuhof [in Strasbourg]. It was not far from the place you know, the
Django Reinhardt Center [L’Espace Culturel Django Reinhardt].9
SL: And it was only with Manouche boys at first?
MR: Yes. At the beginning, it was exclusively reserved for the Polygone neighborhood,
in Neuhof, only for the Manouche population.10 That was the main objective, to
renew interest from the [Manouche] youth, but very quickly we opened up to

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non-Manouches. The school grew [over time]. There was a person who taught
piano, Madame Hème, with whom I had a long history.11 I worked with her for
over ten years, and it was very good. As it happens, a lot of Manouche girls came
[to the school] and said, “I want to learn that [tune]. I don’t want to learn this or
this or this, it’s that that interests me.” So Madame Hème had to learn that tune, to
procure sheet music. She taught [written] notes, but she realized very quickly that
many Manouche girls play by ear. I had many opportunities to work with her. We
performed with the piano and guitar classes together, and that worked well. From
time to time, we had to give concerts for the city of Strasbourg, where other schools
were represented, but not many kids played [from those schools]. Yet when we were
present, all the kids played, and it worked. It worked well! [Laughs.]
SL: So at first, one of the reasons why you started the school was because music was not
being transmitted [within families]. What happened, exactly? Why was there this
lack [of transmission]?
MR: Well to begin with, we were in a rough neighborhood where there was a lot of
unemployment and where Manouche families faced a lot of difficulties. There was
also a little revolution, I mean technologically, with modernity, these things, [and]
also with the advent of other musics. Music [performance] began to disappear.
[However,] there were a lot of things that were positive: people got into the music
that Schnuckenack Reinhardt brought back to them again, and some groups were
born. I was part of this generation. [But] Marcel Daval was concerned, saying, “We
need to reintegrate music into the families, and we have to interest the youth.” Voilà.
So after that, there was no problem, because there was enthusiasm right away. Then
[there was] the [nationwide] trend of Django that came back in the 1990s, with
films, festivals, and lots of things.12 Now we’re kind of at the end of this, the trend
is passing, but for those who have learned this music, it’s fine. As it happens, that
[wave of interest] has allowed a lot of people who didn’t know this music to learn
it. Lots of people came from diverse horizons of different musics, like country or
rock and roll, who were directed toward this acoustic guitar music because Django
played [it] a lot. He is very well-known as an acoustic guitarist, but we also know
that he played electric guitar at the end of his life.
SL: Yes, yes, and if he had lived longer, he would have still played electric.
MR: Certainly, certainly. Django’s evolution was permanent. [His music] was different
every time. When he recorded, when he played concerts, he rarely played the same
solo. Today, I’ll say it: nobody has Django’s creativity. It was the reason he was such
a genius. Throughout his career, he challenged himself to play differently each time.
It was phenomenal.
SL: Of course. It was an inspiration for young artists to not really reproduce everything
that Django did, but to have this artistic spirit to create something.
MR: I’m going to stop you there. You see that still, to reproduce is important. To
reproduce works of Bach well, that’s even older than Django. And it’s that [im-
pulse] that learning is made of. All the famous guitarists I know in Alsace, who are
numerous, went through learning Django note by note. And after, some of them
found other musical doors. But it’s important because first, you listen to a solo on

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“Minor Swing,” or on other tunes, “Manoir de mes Rêves” or “I’ll See You in My
Dreams.” You hear that Django brings something out naturally without studying
it, without preparing it. You say, “Wow!” It’s phenomenal. You want to do it the
way he does it, with his intensity, the sounds, the finesse, the different tones. He
rarely plays on the beat. He plays either ahead or a little behind.
SL: And it’s on purpose.
MR: Of course, he was a master of tempo.
SL: And of course, yes, you have to reproduce, because [musical ability] comes from
somewhere. It comes from a lot of work.
MR: Yes, yes. There’s another thing I want to shed some light on in relation to that, but
perhaps you’ve heard it. Gadjé, I mean, non-Manouches, who listen to us on stage
or elsewhere, say, “Yes, but it’s normal for you [Manouches], you have a gift.” Me, I
stop them, [because] it’s not true! There aren’t any gifts! There is work. I remember
when I was starting to learn guitar, I played eight to ten hours a day. As soon as I
could play guitar, I played [for that long]. I listened, I became inspired, I watched, I
listened to a lot of records. No no, it’s work. It’s not innate. Maybe some people are
privileged in families where music is important. And with that, I want to say that
with this current social period, I think that [music] has an importance. There have
been a lot of [different] groups, a lot of people in this geographical corner of France.
A lot of musicians outside of Manouches say that it’s here where real music happens.
What I mean is, maybe, with the current social phenomena, we show that we can
do something well, and music is our thing.
SL: So with the history of the rebirth of this music [in your community], people felt more
motivated to play it. Did that also come from a need to prove oneself in some way?
MR: Yes, I think. Yes, that’s what I was trying to say.
SL: Yes, but to Gadjé like that?
MR: Yes yes yes yes yes. I’ll say that above all, [when] you discover this music, you
sense its root in Django’s music. That’s first of all why we play it. But then, when
you’re onstage, you feel something happening in the communication with others,
with Gadjé. I know that when I still played onstage, for me it was very, very im-
portant to build this bridge, to say, “We’re not just what you read about in the
news briefs. OK? Come find us after the concert and we’ll talk. After all, we’re like
you.” That was kind of my approach, which was very important. I then had the
opportunity to participate in a film directed by Tony Gatlif called Swing.13 I play
[a couple roles] in the film both as a musician and as an antique trader, which is
my other passion. So this film allowed us to play a lot of concerts. With my cous-
in, [guitarist] Tchavolo Schmitt, I wrote a lot of the music for this film. I remem-
ber that in some of the theaters that showed the film, after the screenings, there
were concerts with talks. It was an opportunity for me to showcase [Manouches],
to say, “In this film, you’ve seen a little about the difficulties Manouches face: illit-
eracy, rejection, racism, voilà. But come find us. We’ll chat warmly with you, and
we’ll be very happy to meet you, too.” It’s a vector. You bring music somewhere,
you make people hear musical notes, and people assemble. No matter where, it’s a
totally natural phenomenon.

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SL: Yes, of course. But that was one of APPONA’s approaches at the beginning, to link
the social with the cultural, and to use music to attract the public.
MR: Yes, that was an approach. But the first approach, still, APPONA’s first concern,
was to reintegrate music within Manouche families. First, the familial recognition of
music, its belonging. And after, to share it.
SL: OK, so first, for yourselves.
MR: To reintegrate it, yes. It’s like personal care. At first, I made music for me, for my
pleasure. A kid who does music, if you let him choose [to do it], he’ll do it for his
pleasure above all. Then he’ll share it, he’ll give it. It’s natural.
SL: You have to have that at the beginning, and then you can do other things. [Your
wife] Stella told me that you were the first Manouche person to speak out, to get
onstage and to say, while you were there to play music, “You have to come meet us,”
and all that. So I’m wondering, why were you the first, and why didn’t that really
happen before?
MR: Oh, maybe I was the first to do it here [in Strasbourg]. I don’t know. I think it
was a little before [the filming of ] Swing when I had already started to speak a little
with the public. But Manouches don’t have much self-confidence, even onstage. I
remember that often, at the beginning when I did concerts, I barely dared to intro-
duce the musicians. Despite everything, there was a musical link with others, the
non-Tsiganes, but otherwise we were behind our instruments. We communicated,
we made plenty of notes come out of our guitars or our violins, but that was it. A
[Manouche] person could hardly introduce his friend [laughs], so I was the one who
had to do it. I remember that at the beginning, it wasn’t me who did it—it was my
friend who was a Gadjo, with whom I played with my brother. He did it instead
because I was too shy. [Speaking] was something that came later. But I’ll say that in
becoming aware of all these negative views that society had toward us, with the re-
lease of Swing, I really became conscious. And maybe it was then that I freed myself
up in relation to speaking. I spoke more easily.
SL: Great. There were also others who started to speak out, right?
MR: Yes yes, there were other people, especially thanks to APPONA. These are people
whom you’ve certainly met: Rosino [Hoffman], Engé [Helmstetter]. There are
others who speak easily. But maybe this problem of speaking more easily is also a
problem related to schooling, for people who haven’t gone to school.14 I didn’t go to
school, but [schooling allows one] to acquire a maturity. You know where you’re go-
ing and what you want, and you also have more ease in communicating with others.
This is an important point today, I find, in Manouche society. We should find our
way more, open ourselves up more, communicate more.
SL: It’s very important.
MR: It’s very important. We can’t forget that we are a people, I mean the Manouches of
France or the Manouches in general. We haven’t gone to school much, our language
isn’t written, and there are a lot of things being forgotten. Certain words in our
language have disappeared. My grandparents are no longer here, and they were the
ones who still had the entire vocabulary. Today, it’s disappearing. It’s a language that’s
becoming impoverished.

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SL: Yes, and like with any oral language, there is always this risk when you live within a
dominant culture where there are other written languages that you have to know.
MR: I always draw a parallel with the Jewish people, who are kind of all over the world,
a bit like us. But the history of the Jewish people is much older. At the beginning of
the transmission [of knowledge] among Jewish people, it was only oral. Then came
writing. . . . [In contrast,] our fault is that our language is going to disappear. It’s
certain. One day, nobody will speak Manouche anymore because we don’t write it
down. But our history also shows that [our language] saved us in a lot of cases, espe-
cially during the war and other difficult situations.
SL: Yes, and I’ve heard a lot of things about the Manouche language, like how many
people don’t want to share it. . . . I understand that I don’t have the right to speak it,
because it’s not something you can do if you’re not Manouche.
MR: Yes, you can see it this way, but not necessarily. It’s true that we’re skeptical of
teaching the language to somebody who isn’t Manouche. That’s for sure, because we
have, I don’t know, a paranoia. [Laughs.] But we’ve also been ridiculed by certain
writers, people like [ethnographer] Marie-Paul Dollé.15 There are plenty of others
who have written nonsense about us. But language remains something very confi-
dential. But you can prove yourself to Manouche people, like [anthropologist] Pat-
rick Williams [did].16 He’s not Manouche, but he knows the language well! He was
close to families and still is. I sort of taught Joe Nizard, and he remembers it well.
But it’s hard for Manouches to teach it to others.
SL: OK. So if you trust someone—
MR: —yes, it’s a question of huge, huge trust, that’s for sure. But it’s not just that. The
person who’s learning also has to understand the finer points of this population, its
behavior. That’s also important.
SL: Of course, that you don’t just learn the language without all the other aspects of
culture.
MR: Voilà. And when I say behavior, I mean that another aspect of the Manouche
population is that you don’t just do what you want in your attitude. You don’t say
just anything. You don’t bring up certain subjects with just anyone. There is also
always a question of modesty. You don’t talk about sex, for example, in front of chil-
dren or certain people like the elderly. That remains something very private. That is
part of good conduct. . . . So when I speak about trust in relation to language, it’s not
just about trust. You have to know how to behave, to really grasp what a Manouche
person is at the core. . . . Someone who understands this is [the non-Manouche
music historian] Alain Antonietto, who [understood that] music is a very important
element [of Manouche culture]. He always defended this music, always corrected
the nonsense [that people said about it].17 That’s also why he doesn’t agree with
everyone. He’s very concentrated on details. But he was always there [among Ma-
nouches]. He was there before, he was there during, and he is still there now.
SL: Yes, and that means a lot. Related to language and also to music, another thing that
interests me is song. I’ve had the opportunity to sing your [Manouche-language
jazz] songs with the choir [that you and your wife founded for Manouche women
and their allies in Neuhof, Le C(h)œur des Femmes].18 It really shocked me to be

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able to do this, given that there is this skepticism about sharing language. And yet,
there is this coming together of Manouches and non-Manouches, who sing and
share it with the public. I find it pretty rare to have this kind of collaboration, to be
able to sing in Manouche.
MR: Well, to situate how Manouches came to sing onstage, we owe it to Schnuckenack
Reinhardt [for inspiring us]. But there exist some recordings where you can hear
Django singing with his wife.
SL: Oh really?!
MR: Yes, with his wife and [singer] Jean Sablon.
SL: Oh, right!
MR: You know which one I’m talking about? I don’t remember the title.19 You hear
them, but it’s a private recording that Jean Sablon made. Maybe Django would
have [become a singer] one day. So yes, it was Schnuckenack Reinhardt in the 1970s
who brought song [to Manouche communities], and it’s great. It’s absolutely great,
right? Song [came to] exist at the heart of families. There have always been women
and men who sang, but never onstage. So as a result [of Schnuckenack], there were
certain musicians who decided to write songs. I think that’s a plus, and I think [our]
language works well with song. And speaking of the C(h)œur des Femmes, to sing
just as many Manouche songs as American or French songs, I think it’s really great
to be able to share this with the world, to understand their meaning. And there,
there you realize the importance of lyrics. [My lyrics,] very often, are about our el-
ders, transmission, rejection, justice. We speak about these things.
SL: OK. Subjects that are—
MR: —important! That are contemporary.
SL: And of course, it’s important that these [subjects] are tied to music.
MR: Oh yes, it’s very strong!
SL: So that’s a way in which you can really present the language in a context that is very
meaningful, that’s not just speech.
MR: Of course, of course. Do you have the translation of what you’ve been singing in
Manouche?
SL: In fact, I was going to ask you, because I can figure out a few things, but not all the
lyrics.
MR: Oh yes, OK. In the song “Mer Djina” (We know), I speak about the elders, about
what they’ve transmitted to us.20 They aren’t around anymore. [The song is about]
how we must be careful [in light of certain] things about today’s society.
SL: OK. Also, when we started to sing “Digo O Dives” (We see the day)21—
MR: —is that so? You’ve started it?
SL: Yes!
MR: Oh, that’s great!
SL: [The choir director,] Anne [Huber], has worked on it a bit with us. [The other Ma-
nouche singers] translated the lyrics for us.
MR: Voilà! So “Mer Djina” speaks mainly about the transmission from the elders who
are no longer here today, that people should not forget. “Digo O Dives” is a little
more contemporary. It’s more a reflection on contemporary society. Let’s be careful,

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defend ourselves, you have to be vigilant about the terrible things in society in rela-
tion to who you are. It’s reclaiming a justice.
SL: OK. So with these lyrics, when you released them on recordings, was that some-
thing you wanted everyone to understand? Because since it’s in Manouche, most of
the public won’t understand it.
MR: But I never worried about everyone understanding it. I’ve translated it more than
once. There are a lot of people who have asked me for a translation, and I give it
away very easily. I give it away very easily because it’s my turn to address the Ma-
nouche population, but others, of course, should also understand what it is. The
first goal is still for Manouches to be aware [of the song’s meaning], but others
should understand, too, of course.
SL: Of course. But when [Musik Deutscher Zigeuner guitarist and singer] Häns’che
Weiss released the song [“Lass Maro Tschatschepen”],22 there was a big controversy
[because he provided a translation of the Romanes lyrics], right? Not everyone was
on board with that. So, given what you’ve just said, I’m wondering, why was that
such a problem?
MR: Yes. There are laws that exist with us that are kind of like the equivalent of the
kris for Hungarian Tsiganes.23 You shouldn’t mix too much [with outsiders], you
shouldn’t give too much information. These laws exist more in Germany than
among us in France. So there are still things that stay with us in relation to that.
My grandfather was still very steeped in these laws. If someone makes a very serious
error, he is banished. He’s excluded. . . . These are things that are still around, sort
of. But things are democratizing more and more. Not everything is good. I mean,
a population has to evolve. If we stay in the nineteenth century, that’s not going to
work. Today, we can’t do that anymore. There are evolutions that are natural, that
are good for a population, and others that are not.
SL: Of course, people have to adapt. So now you can do translations without negative
consequences?
MR: Yes, yes. [It depends on] the maturity of a person, and then, if [he or she] has good
sense. I don’t think it’s crazy to say that.
SL: Yes. So when did you write the lyrics to “Mer Djina”?
MR: Ah! These lyrics—listen, this is a tune I composed at first without lyrics. I had the
chance to record it a number of times, but each time differently. It’s a tune I wrote
for my grandfather—but I didn’t know it. And when I wrote these lyrics, it came to
me naturally to write about things that speak of our elders.
SL: So if you didn’t know [what it was about] when you wrote it, how did you know
after?
MR: I remembered! It’s a very old composition that I had had for a very long time be-
fore I was able to record it. [That was] on my first phonographic recording made by
APPONA. It was called Gypsy Swing from Alsace.
SL: Yes yes, I saw the video on YouTube with [your ensemble] Sweet Chorus.
MR: Oh yeah? [Laughs.]
SL: That was the first time I heard it. So did you write the lyrics specifically for the
choir?

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MR: No no! In fact, this tune has been recorded for a CD. Unfortunately, this CD was
released [only] in Canada. It was resold in France to someone, and this person never
released the CD.
SL: That’s too bad. . . . To come back to your school, we were talking about how at first
it was only for Manouche boys, and then there were some girls who became inter-
ested in playing instruments. I’m interested in that because I understand that there
are not many Manouche girls who take up instruments. So I want to know, how did
that happen? Did it continue?
MR: [Laughs.] So, right now I teach only two girls, but who aren’t Manouche. I have a
young girl, and I have a woman of a certain age, who is almost as old as me [laughs]
who comes to take lessons with me. No, just to respond to your question in a more
precise way, there are very few Manouche women who play guitar or another instru-
ment. My grandmother played guitar and sang. I knew another woman who played
violin and sang. But very few women play. You also have to know that with daily
concerns, the [Manouche] woman, unfortunately, doesn’t have too much time. She
has to take care of the kids. That’s mainly her role, like in many French families
from a certain era. The woman took care of the family, raised the kids, did house-
hold chores. Today, that’s changed a lot in French and European society. You see a
lot more women who play in philharmonic orchestras, among others, but the larger
percentage remains men. So I don’t know if it’s a form of sexism. I don’t know.
SL: [These roles are] traditional for Manouches, of course. I’ve heard from two sides, in
fact. There’s daily life for communities who maintain these traditions. It’s a little differ-
ent for those who have left the community, who aren’t always surrounded by family.
MR: But I would really like for young girls, Manouches and others, to come [take les-
sons]. I ask for that.
SL: Are there any girls who have said they’re interested in that?
MR: No. Unfortunately, sometimes when certain girls want to play music, and when
they have a fiancé, the fiancé doesn’t like it. He’ll say, “Stay behind. No, you
shouldn’t do that.” That’s also a reality. But I think that in other French societies,
there are still a lot of guys who are also like that. [Laughs.]
SL: Yes, that’s not unique to Manouches! It’s great, though, for the Manouche women
of [this] neighborhood to have the chance to sing [in the choir].
MR: There’s been great progress with the C(h)œur des Femmes. There are quite a few
Manouches in it. They take pleasure in it; they sing well. There is a meeting, a mix-
ing with other populations, other women, [such as] women who work in the social
sector. It’s very rich.
SL: Yes, and it’s something that I like a lot, and that really gives women a chance to sing
in a group when they wouldn’t have that opportunity otherwise.
MR: Of course. And when we do small concerts, I’m very happy, very proud, since I’m
sort of at the initiative of this project with Stella. I already knew Anne, so I asked
her to come give singing lessons. We had done some concerts together before then.
Now there is more of a demand for Manouche songs.
SL: Can you tell me more about your ensembles, like Sweet Chorus and Note Ma-
nouche?

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MR: Yes. There was Sweet Chorus and Note Manouche, but afterward I worked under
my own name with a violinist from Paris. With [accordionist] Marcel [Loeffler] I
did a number of things. The last CD [I made], in the title it was Le Swing du Lu-
thier. That was just under my name.
SL: And why the names “Sweet Chorus” and “Note Manouche”?
MR: So Sweet Chorus was created by [guitarist] Patrick Andresz, who came to see me
one day, though I didn’t [already] know him. He asked if I wanted to participate
in two or three gigs, then some tours, and very quickly there was a proposition to
record an LP. After that there was another, and then that became Sweet Chorus.
And Note Manouche was after some tours in Italy by some Italian producers. They
asked me, “What do you call this ensemble?” At the time, I played with Marcel, my
brother, and then Tchavolo [Schmitt] who was also part of the group that was re-
corded live, near Rome. Then I decided that this would be called Notti Manouche.
That means “Manouche nights,” because they were often long nights. [Laughs.] And
then that became Note Manouche.
SL: OK. I’m going to ask you a question: there is something that I’ve heard a lot in my
interviews with other musicians. They tell me that you can hear, in a person’s guitar
or violin playing, whether that person is Manouche or not.
MR: That’s a very pointed question.
SL: In your opinion, is that the case?
MR: A lot of Manouche musicians say that, actually, that you can hear when it’s a
Gadjo playing or that you can hear that it’s not a Manouche playing. And you could
ask, “Is it necessary to be Manouche to play Django’s music?” Me, I say no. I say no,
but you have to be well immersed in this music, though not the way of life. What’s
happened over the last ten or fifteen years is that non-Manouches have thought
that you have to live [in a supposedly Manouche way]. That you have to have a
mustache [shaped like] a circumflex, wear a hat, be a little disheveled, and live à la
Manouche, vagabond, like that. It’s totally crazy. And there are many who have been
duped. They thought that they had to be like that, to copy the lifestyle. It’s a cliché,
an awful cliché. I don’t live in a caravan [laughs], and I’m [still] free. This thing
about freedom, I think it’s important. But no, I don’t think—no, there are some
very, very good musicians who play this music and who are not Manouche. It has to
be recognized.
SL: But is there a specifically Manouche way of playing?
MR: I don’t know. Maybe at a certain moment, in certain specific cases, I’ll say that it’s
true. I’ll say, “Merde, that’s no joke! He can’t be anything but Manouche, the way
he plays.” For certain situations, for certain styles of guitar playing, I’ll say, “Merde,
that’s a Manouche,” and I’m mistaken. I got it wrong. I think that the evolution
today is that people want to do better than Django. So in order to be a very good
musician, do you necessarily have to play faster in order to be better than Django?
I’ll say no, of course. Django proved to us that sometimes, in playing three or four
notes, it was amazing, or sometimes, in playing a burst of notes, or some fantastic
arpeggios, it was magnificent. But it was always done with a good musical sense. To-
day, . . . everyone plays fast, very fast. It’s nothing more than that. So that’s too bad.

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SL: It’s a competition among musicians.

MR: Voilà. It’s become a competition on the neck of the guitar. And the person who
plays the fastest is the best. But music is not that.
SL: But that’s the way things are now, and still, you’re not the first person to tell me this.
MR: Yes, but what I mean is, you listen to Django, to one of his choruses, and you say,
“Wow! What magnificent form! What sensitivity! What intelligence to have put
these two notes in this place!” With his two fingers, he invented a new technique
on the guitar neck, due to his handicap.24 When you hear him play fast, you say to
yourself, “Oh wow! What is that?” Effectively, he had to place [his fingers] there,
and not elsewhere. That makes the difference. So [the music] has taken a direction
that is no longer right, that has been deformed. In the minds of many, it’s become
only about the visual onstage. It’s really too bad. It’s no longer about the music, it’s
about speed.
◊ ◊ ◊
SL: Are there people who [falsely] claim to be Manouche?
MR: There are a lot! A lot! Take someone like [the non-Manouche guitarist] Romane.
At first, he played a lot with ambiguity. So Romane has done a lot for the pedagogy
of this music, very well, but at first he really played with this ambiguity, you see?
Manouche, not Manouche, the stage name “Romane,” you see, with its Manouche
insinuation. As a result, he’s been chastised, and not even by Manouches! Not even
by Manouches! Because non-Manouches said, “You have to stop appropriating.
You are an appropriator.” You see? Yes, there are others! But maybe not at the same
level. . . . Sometimes guys like that, who do that, it’s stupid. Stay who you are! I’ve
met a lot of people like that, and I say, “It’s not important. You’re not Manouche.”
[But] it doesn’t do anything.
SL: You say that [directly] to them?
MR: Yes, I say it to them.
SL: Have you had students like that?
MR: No no no. These are people I’ve had the chance to meet in major venues, in France
or elsewhere.
◊ ◊ ◊
SL:Since you started teaching, has your pedagogical approach changed? Is it necessary
to adapt it to different people?
MR: No no no. I think that my pedagogy has matured a bit over time. But it’s funda-
mentally the same. At the beginning, when I asked myself questions, drawing the
neck of the guitar on a sheet of paper, by the end of my second lesson, I quickly
realized that this accomplishes nothing. I thought, “How did I learn music?” Then
I progressed in my way of working with youth. It’s always the same. I mean, if the
person who is with me wants to learn, I can give some things, but it’s up to him to
do the work, not me! I can show everything—[on] a slowed-down solo, [I might
say,] “Use this finger instead of that one.” I can explain everything, but one has to
do the work. It’s always [about] desire and passion. That’s out of my control!

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SL: Do you have students who don’t practice?

MR: Oh no. I always say, “Working with me is not enough. You have to work afterward
and not think of that as a constraint.” If it’s a constraint, it’s poorly conceived. You
have to be inhabited by passion.
Notes
1. Reinhardt is a common surname among Manouches and Sinti (a Romani subgroup close-
ly related to Manouches) in Western Europe. Although Django Reinhardt has familial
origins in Alsace, Mandino Reinhardt has not divulged to me any traceable kinship with
him. To avoid confusion among Reinhardts, I refer to each by their given name.
2. Romanies, also known generally as Roma, comprise an ethnic group with northwest
Indian ancestry that migrated westward beginning around the year AD 1000. Romanies
now live throughout the world but are most prevalent in Europe. Many Romanies face
widespread racial prejudice, including the denial of access to employment, healthcare, ed-
ucation, housing, and other rights of European citizens. Manouches have lived in France
since the eighteenth century or earlier and many have long been subject to mobility-
restricting French laws rooted in anti-Romani racism.
3. Sweet Chorus, founded by rhythm guitarist Patrick Andresz and also known as Mandino
Reinhardt and Sweet Chorus, released its eponymous first album in 1984, followed by
Californian Wine in 1986. Sweet Chorus continued to perform intermittently through
the late 1990s. Note Manouche released two albums, Gypsy Swing from Alsace in 1994 and
Note Manouche in 1999.
4. David Ake, Jazz Cultures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); E. Taylor Atkins,
ed., Jazz Planet (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003); Paul F. Berliner, Thinking in
Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Philip
V. Bohlman and Goffredo Plastino, Jazz Worlds/World Jazz (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 2016); Steven Feld, Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra: Five Musical Years in Ghana
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012); Nicholas Gebhardt, “When Jazz Was Foreign:
Rethinking Jazz History,” Jazzforschung/Jazz Research 44 (2012): 185–97; Jerome Harris, “Jazz
on the Global Stage,” in The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective (New York: Routledge,
2003), 101–35; and Carol Ann Muller and Sathima Bea Benjamin, Musical Echoes: South
African Women Thinking in Jazz (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).
5. Mandino’s usage of Tsigane here refers to Manouches specifically, since he knows that
other Romanies have achieved similar degrees of fame as Django.
6. Bal-musette was a style of popular dance music that developed in Paris in the early twen-
tieth century and featured the accordion as its main instrument.
7. The group to which Mandino refers is Musik Deutscher Zigeuner (German Gypsy Mu-
sic), a collective frequently led by Schnuckenack, that released a series of eight albums
during the late 1960s and 1970s.
8. Here and elsewhere, Mandino uses masculine pronouns to refer to jazz manouche learners. I
attribute this largely to the fact that among Manouches, instrumental jazz manouche is per-
formed almost exclusively by male-identifying players. For Manouche women, instrumental
performance is typically discouraged, if not proscribed in some communities. Manouche
women sometimes engage in vocal performance, though certain communities require that
a woman be accompanied instrumentally by at least one close male relative. Even among
non-Manouches, the jazz manouche scene is overwhelmingly male dominated.
9. Neuhof is a socioeconomically marginalized neighborhood in the south of Strasbourg,
home to a number of low-income immigrant families and their descendants, as well as
large proportions of Manouche people. L’Espace Culturel Django Reinhardt is a munici-
pally funded cultural center that opened in 2010 and promotes arts education in Neuhof.

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10. Until very recently, the Polygone was an impoverished neighborhood within Neuhof that
originally comprised military barracks squatted by homeless Romanies following World
War II. Over the past few years, the municipal government has funded housing projects
to replace the structures its residents lived in and to provide services such as in-home
running water and waste removal. The Polygone remains predominantly inhabited by
Manouches.
11. According to a retrospective of the APPONA music school, “In 1987, a piano school was
created, led by Agnès Hème and open exclusively to children and to young tziganes. Ini-
tially attended only by young girls, it is now mixed [gender]. Young girls’ access to music
education was, in itself, a little revolution. If they did not become professional pianists,
they acquired the fundamentals of a musicality that often led them to singing, to dance,
[and] to storytelling.” “Bilan de l’Ecole de Musique de l’APPONA 1978–1998,” (internal
document, private APPONA archive, n.d.), 2.
12. The France-based trend to which Mandino refers includes the proliferation of a jazz
manouche industry, with a number of Manouche and non-Manouche performers es-
tablishing commercially viable careers; the popularization of jazz manouche festivals,
some of which continue to the present day; and the releases of several Django- and jazz
manouche-themed films in France and abroad, among them Woody Allen’s Sweet and
Lowdown (1999) and Etienne Comar’s recent semifictional biopic, Django (2017). Woody
Allen, dir., Sweet and Lowdown (1999; Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures Home Entertain-
ment, 2000), DVD; Etienne Comar, dir., Django (Paris: Pathé, 2017).
13. See Tony Gatlif, dir., Swing (2002; Paris: Editions Montparnasse, 2003), DVD.
14. Schooling in France is compulsory until age sixteen. According to Stella Funaro, Man-
dino’s wife and a literacy educator for low-income residents in Neuhof, Manouche youth
have a tendency to drop out of school as soon as it is legally permissible, sometimes with
the approbation of their families.
15. Marie-Paul Dollé, Les Tsiganes Manouches (Sand, France: self-published, 1980).
16. See Patrick Williams, Gypsy World: The Silence of the Living and the Voices of the Dead,
trans. Catherine Tihanyi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
17. See Alain Antonietto and François Billard. Django Reinhardt: Rythmes Futurs (Paris: Fa-
yard, 2004).
18. “Le C(h)œur des Femmes” is a French pun indicating “choir (chœur) of women” and
“heart (cœur) of women.”
19. The tune was “Blue Drag” by Josef Myrow. The recording under discussion is available on
Django Reinhardt, Django Reinhardt—Intégrale Volume 4: Magic Strings 1935, recording
date unknown, Frémeaux et Associés FA304 (1996), 2 CDs.
20. “Mer Djina” has been recorded under the title “Souvenir” (Memory) in versions with lyr-
ics (Mandino Reinhardt, Le Swing du Luthier, self-produced [2008], CD) and without, as
performed by Mandino’s ensemble Note Manouche (Gypsy Swing from Alsace, Materiali
Sonori MASO90056, [1994], CD; Note Manouche, Djaz 714–2 [1999], CD).
21. “Digo O Dives” is available on Mandino Reinhardt, Digo O Dives, Le Chant du Monde
2741226 (2006), CD.
22. This recording is available on Häns’che Weiss Quintett, Fünf Jahre Musik Deutscher
Zigeuner, Intercord 160.088 (1977), LP.
23. The kris is a traditional court of justice among certain Vlach Romani groups.
24. At the age of eighteen, Django survived a caravan fire that severely burned parts of his
right leg and left arm. This experience left him with very limited use of his left ring and
pinky fingers. Contrary to popular belief, the fingers themselves were not burned, but

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rather the outside of the left hand, leading to tendon damage that permanently contorted
his ring and pinky fingers. Although Django relied primarily on his left thumb, index,
and middle fingers to play guitar, he was also able to use the other fingers to a certain
extent. For more information, see Charles Delaunay, Django Mon Frère (Paris: Le Terrain
Vague, 1961); Benjamin Marx Givan, The Music of Django Reinhardt (Ann Arbor: Univer-
sity of Michigan Press, 2010); Alexander Schmitz and Peter Maier, Django Reinhardt: sein
Leben, seine Musifv seine Schallplatten (Buchendorf, Germany: Oreos Verlag, 1985).
Works Cited
Ake, David. Jazz Cultures. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Allen, W., dir. Sweet and Lowdown. 1999; Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment,
2000. DVD.
Antonietto, Alain, and François Billard. Django Reinhardt: Rythmes Futurs. Paris: Fayard, 2004.
Atkins, E. Taylor, ed. Jazz Planet. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003.
Berliner, Paul F. Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation. Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1994.
“Bilan de l’Ecole de Musique de l’APPONA 1978 − 1998.” Internal document. Private APPONA
archive, n.d.
Bohlman, Philip V., and Goffredo Plastino. Jazz Worlds/World Jazz. Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 2016.
Comar, Etienne, dir. Django. Paris: Pathé, 2017.
Delaunay, Charles. Django Mon Frère. Paris: Le Terrain Vague, 1961.
Dollé, Marie-Paul. Les Tsiganes Manouches. Sand, France: self-published, 1980.
Feld, Steven. Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra: Five Musical Years in Ghana. Durham, NC: Duke
Gatlif, Tony, dir. Swing. 2002; Paris: Editions Montparnasse, 2003. DVD.
Gebhardt, Nicholas. “When Jazz Was Foreign: Rethinking Jazz History.” Jazzforschung/Jazz Re-
search 44 (2012): 185–97.
Givan, Benjamin Marx. The Music of Django Reinhardt. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2010.
Harris, Jerome. “Jazz on the Global Stage.” In The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective, edited
by Ingrid T. Monson, 101–35. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Muller, Carol Ann, and Sathima Bea Benjamin. Musical Echoes: South African Women Thinking
in Jazz. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
Schmitz, Alexander, and Peter Maier. Django Reinhardt: sein Leben, seine Musifv seine Schallplat-
ten. Buchendorf, Germany: Oreos Verlag, 1985.
Williams, Patrick. Gypsy World: The Silence of the Living and the Voices of the Dead. Translated by
Catherine Tihanyi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

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Poetry
Everything Old Is New

1.
Once upon a time, the world turned in its sleep with canny precision, or maybe
it never slept—so one learned by example and noticed things (temperature,
velocity); one noticed snow-smears on a coat, along with other small signs of
winter, and they massed together, red berries, fissures, postmarks, and love
seeped into my right glove despite the elastic, and melted along my wrist but
still seemed aloof, and I was always almost late, the breath streaming out of me
like smoke, and yes it’s a bell tower up there, and yes it’s a really big bell, but
mother, why is there never any music?
2a.
There is never any music because the piano means to sleep.
Because it slept, I believed it was all a setup.
I believed three other things—may I tell you?
It precluded certain movements of the hands.
They leafed through the pages of magazines,
folding down corners, wanting certain hollows;
once upon a time under a table,
they traced figure eights on my thigh.
Maybe they will be changed into birds?
And gather on the deck,
greedily eating sunflowers and millet,


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Poetry Chiyuma Elliott 123
playing at augury? May I tell you

what they said one cold afternoon,
when everyone else predicted inches of snow?
How tinny and lovely were their voices
as they clustered in certain registers?
The piano dreamed it up:
ten years of wandering, ten years of war.
So maybe this pain will be useful.
2b.
Perhaps it will be a transformation. Think of the sky, and how yesterday it wasn’t
that color; think of the absence of clouds, and how one might yoke an eye to a
description, even a whole body: owl, grey, pallas.
Back when you were merely lovely, you’d call me names I cannot decently re-
peat.
2c.
Someone ought to say that my voice is stitched to yours, and why. Alas, it’s
1940, and I am my grandmother again, cataloging ships and their contents in
San Diego Harbor, getting them ready to embark. I am now a master of col-
umns and legibility. This is what I do with my hands.
J-572 (431) I
In the original, we were reputed
to feed on sand.
The sky was our street,
we were called a tassel.
We were the emblems of border guards
and coopers. You beheld time in me,
and predicted native plant cover
and the labyrinth made of wax
where the wings drowned out thought
we were manipulated like cattle we huddled together
for warmth the sky had lights in the original
and cloverleaf interchanges
we were manipulated with rosewater we genuflected
in winter the sky had lanes it ended
this way: headstones, pine trees, chimes.

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124 Poetry Chiyuma Elliott
Composition No. 152

Maybe the song is a fluke,
or maybe it means a dramatic view
or it drinks from the lake, and tells something
truetrue
during certain harvest festivals the pattern can be found inside
geodes and tendons
during certain harvest festivals the pattern can be found inside
June sun and April wind—
or maybe it means I will be
as the sky is blue
to you
“Everything Old Is New” borrows its structure from Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert,
its maxim from Ovid (“Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to
you”), and its animating question from Carl Phillips’s “As from a Quiver of Arrows.”
“J-572 (431) I” and “Composition 152” are part of a series of ekphrastic poems based
on Anthony Braxton compositions, as recorded in collaboration with Andrew Cyrille
and Peter Niklas Wilson.
Chiyuma Elliott

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Reviews
Rhythms of Race: Cuban Musicians and the Making of Latino New York City and
Miami, 1940–1960. By Christina Abreu. Chapel Hill: University of North Caro-
lina Press, 2015.
In Louis Pérez’s evocative phrasing, the United States and Cuba have long enjoyed
“ties of singular intimacy.”1 Among the evidence of these ties are shared musical
traditions, including the work of those Cuban musicians who have animated the
nightlife of New York City, the nation, and the hemisphere over the past century.
From this northern springboard, Cuban entertainers have shaped their industries and
had broad cultural impact. In her first monograph, Christina Abreu examines the
work and experiences of U.S.-based Cuban musicians and performers in the mid-
twentieth century, considering the ways in which prevailing discourses about race
and ethnicity shaped their careers and how they in turn impacted those discourses.
In particular, she focuses on the different opportunities afforded and choices made by
black and white musicians and the ways in which Cuban popular music and dance
came to represent Latino/a culture and community.2 Jazz historians will recognize
the years that are the focus of Abreu’s study as a period of important innovations in
the genre. Here we have the inside scoop on some of the Cuban musicians—often
omitted from mainstream narratives—who played a crucial part in that revolution.
Abreu centers her study on the Cuban artists and communities of New York
City and Miami, with the goal of scrutinizing and destabilizing “a certain kind of
Cuban and Cuban American exceptionalism, symbolized as whiteness, upward mobil-
ity, and political conservatism.” Instead, she proposes “an exceptionalism of another
sort,” in which, through music and discourse, Cubans “shaped the development of a
collective cultural consciousness of Latinidad” (19). Rather than carrying out detailed
analysis of particular performances, Abreu relies on the documents of Cuban social
clubs, archival interviews with musicians, and newspaper accounts, announcements,
and reviews of relevant performances and events. Her examination of the context
surrounding Cuban popular dance music in New York City during World War II
and the postwar era thus complements recent work by Juliet McMains, Alexandra
Vázquez, David García, and others in deepening our understanding of the environ-
ments in which that music thrived and in giving voice to the community itself.3
Further, it adds to a developing literature on Latinx communities in New York City.4
Abreu begins by highlighting some of the ways in which ideas about race
shaped musicians’ artistic choices, reception, and opportunities. Chapter 1 compares


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126 Reviews
the careers of Xavier Cugat, Marco Rizo, and Mario Bauzá, finding that, in general,
white musicians like Cugat and Rizo had greater access to higher-paying opportunities
and distribution networks than their black counterparts. They also tended to market
a “nonblack” (27) image of Cubanness and perform “watered-down” (38) versions
of Afro-Cuban culture. By contrast, as Bauzá’s career demonstrates, black musicians
often experienced less mobility and found themselves constrained to performing in
venues that served Latinos/as and people of color. Bauzá turned this limitation into
a strength, as the extensive and deep connections he developed with black American
musicians in Harlem ultimately paved the way for some of the most exciting musical
partnerships of twentieth-century jazz history.
Next, Abreu turns to the Cuban social club scene of 1940s New York City,
focusing in particular on the Ateneo Cubano de Nueva York and El Club Cubano
Inter-Americano. Chapter 2 investigates the ways in which each club negotiated
issues of race and the relationships each forged with the city’s many active Cuban
musicians. For example, the Ateneo Cubano hired black musicians for its events,
yet largely excluded blacks from membership and activities. By contrast, El Club
Cubano Inter-Americano fostered a diverse membership, including Afro-Cubans and
non-Cuban Latinos, and counted several musicians as members, including Alberto
Socorrás, Marcelino Guerra, and Arsenio Rodríguez. Rodríguez in particular formed
a close collaboration with the club, receiving a discounted membership in exchange
for performances and even performing for free on occasion. Chapter 3 continues the
discussion of Cuban social clubs in New York City, introducing additional groups like
La Sociedad Maceo y Martí and exploring the ways in which these societies helped
maintain close ties between New York’s expat community and the island. These
included not only organizing patriotic commemorations and paying close attention
to Cuban politics but also hosting and entertaining visiting tour groups from home.
The book shifts its focus from Cuban social clubs to the Spanish language
press in chapter 4. Abreu argues for the importance of the newspaper La Prensa in
particular as “an ethnic institution that shaped ideas and practices related to (Afro-)
Cubanness and Hispanidad by way of its annual musical popularity contests and
fundraising festivals” (111–12). The changing rules of its annual musical popularity
contest and festival reflected the evolving perspectives of the Latino/a community and
their transnational listening habits. Meanwhile, the festival itself grew in importance
both in the United States—as a showing of current popular Latino taste—and in
Cuba and other parts of Latin America. In this chapter, Abreu begins to highlight
the usefulness of World War II-era Pan-Americanism as a frame for understanding
the resonances and tensions between Cuban and Latino/a cultural production and
identities.5
In chapter 5, Abreu takes up the mass media, examining the real and televised
lives of Cuban American icon Desi Arnaz Jr. and comparing his work with that of

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Reviews 127
other Cuban artists. The contrasts—and occasional ironies—drawn here are stark.
Arnaz, a white Cuban from the eastern city of Santiago, where his father was once
mayor, emigrated with his father to Miami in the politically motivated exodus that
followed the overthrow of Cuban president Gerardo Machado. While Arnaz Sr. once
banned the lively congas de comparsa from the streets of Santiago, decades later in
the United States, Arnaz Jr. and his television alter ego Ricky Ricardo came to be
known precisely for his “conga bit” (160). By contrast, Afro-Cuban Frank Grillo,
a.k.a. “Machito,” resisted calls by his audiences for conga lines, explaining that
he had too much respect for the drums and their religious significance to simply
“[bang] away” on them for public approval (156). Meanwhile, Miguelito Valdés’s story
provides important nuance to the black and white narrative Abreu has constructed
thus far. Born to a Mayan Mexican mother and a Spanish father and raised in the
Havana neighborhood of Jesús María, his racially ambiguous appearance, cultural
authenticity, and musicianship allowed him to move between contexts with relative
ease, garnering widespread admiration.
As Abreu explains, the thematic prominence of New York City through much
of the monograph is the result of the relative availability of archival material. In
Chapter 6, however, we finally move to Cuban Miami—as it existed before the
Cuban revolution of 1959. Its small population in the first decades of the twentieth
century was comprised largely of tobacco workers from other parts of Florida as well
as later arrivals who fled Cuba following Machado’s ouster. Waves of seasonal work-
ers and vacationers also contributed to local economic and cultural development.
With few homegrown heroes, Miami’s Cuban music scene was largely reliant on
New York-based acts who made frequent visits. Later generations of local bands were
often founded or populated by musicians exiting the New York scene. Abreu briefly
explores the consequences of the Jim Crow South on the growth and movements of
the Cuban community in the region. She particularly highlights the experiences of
Machito and his band, who were often divided along color lines and housed in dif-
ferent hotels when they traveled there on tour. Meanwhile, in her brief discussion of
Miami’s Cuban social club scene, we discover parallels with the patriotic celebrations,
beauty pageants, and other events of New York City. Yet despite the importance of
race throughout the monograph and in shaping the membership and activities of
New York’s clubs, here Abreu only mentions Miami clubs’ preference for “decent
people” (207).
Rhythms of Race fills in chronological and thematic gaps in the cultural his-
tory of Cubans in the United States, particularly with respect to the role of popular
music in sustaining a sense of unity within the colonia cubana (Cuban community)
and forging a collective sense of identity in the broader Latino/a community. Abreu
rightly insists on a degree of nuance in her exploration of race in this context. She
points out, for example, that despite how Cuban musicians may have adapted to new

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128 Reviews
forms of racial discourse and racism in the United States, these discourses did not
“[meet] with empty vessels” (10). Instead, Cubans also imported their own percep-
tions and practices related to race and race discrimination from home. Despite these
subtleties, however, the overall narrative largely reflects a black/white binary. With
the exception of Miguelito Valdés, who is uniquely able to transcend this binary,
Abreu’s characters are depicted as being caught within it, navigating it to the best
of their abilities. Within the field of Latino studies, the assertion of Afro-Latino/a
identities is an important contribution; however, within the black/white dichotomy
of U.S. race relations, the ambiguity and malleability of all Latino/a identities are
equally worth exploring. And Cuban musicians did just this. More detailed atten-
tion to individual navigations, alliances, and their ramifications might have yielded
a different kind of structure and narrative.
Abreu is not a music scholar, yet musicians and their artistic production are her
primary subject matter. From this perspective, Afro-Cuban composer, percussion-
ist, and entertainer Luciano “Chano” Pozo is notably absent from her discussion of
midcentury racialized performances of Cuban popular genres. Though he likely left
little in the way of a paper trail during his short time in New York City, his iconic
role in introducing performative Afro-Cuban esotericism to a broad public, along
with his close friendship with Miguelito Valdés and artistic collaborations with Mario
Bauzá, Machito, Arsenio Rodríguez, and of course Dizzy Gillespie, warrants more
than the brief mention of his name in a list of participants at an event hosted by El
Club Cubano Inter-Americano (101). Desi Arnaz Jr., on the other hand, is featured
at some length, in both the real-life and made-for-television versions of his character.
While the bulk of Abreu’s study relies rigorously on archival documentation, in the
case of Arnaz, she deviates from that approach to treat his television persona as an
object of study. This departure in turn allows for evocative discussions of the work of
U.S.-based Cuban entertainers and of shifting attitudes in and about Cuban Miami.
Yet it also—especially when considered in contrast to Pozo’s absence—seems to raise
questions both of methodology and narrative balance.
In all, Abreu’s contribution shines a unique and important light on aspects
of Cuban American history as yet underrepresented in scholarly literature. Her his-
tory of U.S.-based Cuban performers active in the mid-twentieth century further
contributes to related histories, such as those pertaining to the development of
bebop and Latin jazz, emerging discourses of Latinidad, and local and international
perspectives on World War II-era Pan-Americanism. Her subtle and clear outlining
of historical facts and their mediation through music, press, television, and the big
screen lay bare many of the tensions and contradictions that shaped the era. Thus
Rhythms of Race is an engaging and worthwhile read for scholarly and lay audiences
interested in race, jazz, and popular music and twentieth-century Latinx histories.
Sarah Town

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Reviews 129
Notes
1. Louis A. Pérez, The United States and Cuba: Ties of Singular Intimacy (Athens: University
of Georgia Press, 2003).
2. My review follows Abreu’s preference for Latino/a, which she uses alongside Hispano/a to
“refer to all persons living in the United States whose origins can be traced to Spain and
the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America and the Caribbean” (13–14). She bases
her choice of terminology on the terms most prevalent in her own archival research and
adopts Gabriel Haslip-Viera’s reasoning for her decision. See Gabriel Haslip-Viera, “The
Evolution of the Latina/o Community in New York City: Early Seventeenth Century
to the Present,” in Latinos in New York: Communities in Transition, 2nd ed., ed. Sherrie
Baver, Angelo Falcón, and Gabriel Haslip-Viera (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2017), 42n1.
3. See David F. García, Arsenio Rodríguez and the Transnational Flows of Latin Popular Music
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006); Alexandra Vázquez, Listening in Detail:
Performances of Cuban Music (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013); and Juliet
McMains, Spinning Mambo into Salsa: Caribbean Dance in Global Commerce (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2015).
4. See, for example, Juan Flores, ed., Puerto Rican Arrival in New York: Narratives of the
Migration, 1920–1950, 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Pub, 2005); Robert C.
Smith, Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2006); Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, A Tale of Two Cities: Santo Domingo and
New York After 1950 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); and Baver et al.,
Latinos in New York.
5. Abreu defines Pan-Americanism as “moments of inter-American cooperation that were
supported and encouraged, separately and occasionally simultaneously, at the governmen-
tal, institutional, and local levels” (5).
Flyboy 2: The Greg Tate Reader. By Greg Tate. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2016.
Flyboy 2: The Greg Tate Reader is a monumental collection of selected works from the
last twenty-five years of Greg Tate’s writing on black arts in America. Sequel to Flyboy
in the Buttermilk (1992), Flyboy 2 includes sixty-six pieces—eulogies, tributes, talks,
reviews, interviews, and manifestos—published between 1990 and 2015. Many of
the pieces come from Tate’s former writing home, the Village Voice, a handful from
Vibe, and the rest from a variety of magazines and newspapers, edited books, and
university lectures. A couple, to the excitement of extreme Tate fans, are unpublished
manuscripts. The compellingly curated and organized collection unveils Tate’s rich
referential writing, and his loving and “lust”ing (1) criticism, about a broad cross
section of artists from different generations and mediums—music, visual art, dance,
film, comedy, literature. These artists emerge collectively through Tate’s singular prism
to dynamically define “Black Cognition—the way Black people ‘think,’ mentally,
emotionally, physically, cryptically, how those ways of thinking and being inform
our artistic choices” (1). In the collection as a whole, Tate constructs a textured image

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Reviews 129
Notes
1. Louis A. Pérez, The United States and Cuba: Ties of Singular Intimacy (Athens: University
of Georgia Press, 2003).
2. My review follows Abreu’s preference for Latino/a, which she uses alongside Hispano/a to
“refer to all persons living in the United States whose origins can be traced to Spain and
the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America and the Caribbean” (13–14). She bases
her choice of terminology on the terms most prevalent in her own archival research and
adopts Gabriel Haslip-Viera’s reasoning for her decision. See Gabriel Haslip-Viera, “The
Evolution of the Latina/o Community in New York City: Early Seventeenth Century
to the Present,” in Latinos in New York: Communities in Transition, 2nd ed., ed. Sherrie
Baver, Angelo Falcón, and Gabriel Haslip-Viera (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2017), 42n1.
3. See David F. García, Arsenio Rodríguez and the Transnational Flows of Latin Popular Music
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006); Alexandra Vázquez, Listening in Detail:
Performances of Cuban Music (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013); and Juliet
McMains, Spinning Mambo into Salsa: Caribbean Dance in Global Commerce (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2015).
4. See, for example, Juan Flores, ed., Puerto Rican Arrival in New York: Narratives of the
Migration, 1920–1950, 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Pub, 2005); Robert C.
Smith, Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2006); Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, A Tale of Two Cities: Santo Domingo and
New York After 1950 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); and Baver et al.,
Latinos in New York.
5. Abreu defines Pan-Americanism as “moments of inter-American cooperation that were
supported and encouraged, separately and occasionally simultaneously, at the governmen-
tal, institutional, and local levels” (5).
Flyboy 2: The Greg Tate Reader. By Greg Tate. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2016.
Flyboy 2: The Greg Tate Reader is a monumental collection of selected works from the
last twenty-five years of Greg Tate’s writing on black arts in America. Sequel to Flyboy
in the Buttermilk (1992), Flyboy 2 includes sixty-six pieces—eulogies, tributes, talks,
reviews, interviews, and manifestos—published between 1990 and 2015. Many of
the pieces come from Tate’s former writing home, the Village Voice, a handful from
Vibe, and the rest from a variety of magazines and newspapers, edited books, and
university lectures. A couple, to the excitement of extreme Tate fans, are unpublished
manuscripts. The compellingly curated and organized collection unveils Tate’s rich
referential writing, and his loving and “lust”ing (1) criticism, about a broad cross
section of artists from different generations and mediums—music, visual art, dance,
film, comedy, literature. These artists emerge collectively through Tate’s singular prism
to dynamically define “Black Cognition—the way Black people ‘think,’ mentally,
emotionally, physically, cryptically, how those ways of thinking and being inform
our artistic choices” (1). In the collection as a whole, Tate constructs a textured image

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130 Reviews
of black arts in the last twenty-five years that simultaneously articulates the often-
unutterable profundity of works of art and provides in-depth critiques of antiblack
racism and white power within and around fields of cultural production in the
turn-of-the-century United States.
The collection is organized not chronologically but thematically, in five sections.
“The Black Male Show,” with twenty-four pieces that span almost half the book’s
length, is the first and meatiest section. It is predominated by musicians, many from
jazz and the avant-garde (e.g., Wayne Shorter, Butch Morris, John Coltrane, Lester
Bowie), but also from hip-hop, rock, pop, and beyond. The section also includes
visual artists, dancers, a piece on Amiri Baraka, and two on Richard Pryor. This sets
the pace for the rest of the book, as the individual pieces combine to produce a hi-res
image of black arts and U.S. social politics. Together, the pieces portray what emerge
as central tenets of black expressive work and life, including spirituality in multiple
forms, improvisation, the blues, a deep commitment to groove, and representations
of radical imagined futures. At the same time, Tate elucidates the particularities
and power dynamics of the different industries in question: the formative influence
of black music on the core structures of what is called American music (114), the
staunchly antipopulist Eurocentricness of the visual arts (113), the legacies of black-
face minstrelsy in musical theater (265), and the white supremacist beauty standards
of Hollywood (271). Throughout the pieces, Tate provides the various contexts for
cultural production, with keen portrayals of local and international histories. The
reader learns of black art’s connection to the American wars (Vietnam, Iraq, On
Drugs), to black ex-pat life in Paris, and to differences between urban and rural life
in America, as well as to interrelated global phenomena, like the Cuban revolution
and Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Tate’s writing stands out especially in the number of eulogies for deceased
legends, which not only take stock of their life’s work, issues, contributions and
legacies, but also act as tender parting words both to the artists and to their griev-
ing audiences (see, especially, the piece on Gil Scott-Heron, which culminates with
Tate’s prose and Scott-Heron’s poetry intertwined [149–52]). Similarly, a number of
interviews included in this section reveal insights of reflection directly from the art-
ists themselves, which it seems Tate has a unique ability to precipitate. In a number
of cases, Tate challenges artists to answer tough questions that other interviewers
might not dare to ask (see, especially, Ice Cube on a controversial line from his 1990
album AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted [91–102] and Wynton Marsalis on his disdain for
hip-hop [102–9]).
The second section, “She Laughing Mean and Impressive Too,” includes four-
teen pieces on female musicians, visual artists, a writer, and a curator. If musicians take
center stage in “The Black Male Show,” here it is the visual artists. These artists, Tate
demonstrates, have taken up the daunting challenge of engaging with visual repre-

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sentation of America’s “national obsession” (193) with race. The works reviewed range
from Kara Walker’s cameo silhouettes to Deborah Grant’s “festooned cut-up[s]” and
“infinitude of cross-mapped ideograms,” (223) to museum director Thelma Golden’s
“curatorial process” (229). This second section is framed by the brilliant introduc-
tory piece “Born to Dyke: I Love My Sister Laughing and Then Again When She’s
Looking Mean, Queer, and Impressive,” in which Tate—through a writerly collage
of a fleeting review of vocalist Helga Davis’s performance at a “girl party” (170) in a
Manhattan warehouse, conversations with “three card-carrying Black feminist friends”
(172), and his own personal introspection—untangles concepts of feminism (includ-
ing the failures of white feminism), antioppression, and lesbianism and how these
intersect with race and class mobility. In the mammoth piece “All the Things You
Could Be by Now if James Brown Was a Feminist,” Tate takes up these distinctions
once again and repurposes the energies of a supermacho Brown, positioned as not a
feminist but as “a liberator of Black women” (186), to four female musicians: Betty
Davis, Chaka Kahn, Grace Jones, and Meshell Ndegeocello. Tate crowns these four
artists “the hardest-working women in showbiz” (192) and describes how, in differ-
ent and distinct ways, they were subjected to, resisted, and subverted the male (and
white, straight, and cisgender) gaze in their artistic work.
The final three sections are shorter and divided among different forms of media.
The third, “Hello Darknuss My Old Meme,” is reserved for music and addresses the
circulation of blackness in the exploitative and disenfranchising white capitalist music
industry of the United States. Hip-hop, Tate’s home genre, is the centerpiece of this
section, with pieces on Outkast, the Wu-Tang Clan, Eminem, and two overarching
reflections on the genre as a whole, written at different points in time. In 1993, Tate
asks, “What is hip-hop?” and gives an abundant surge of referential answers in verse,
such as, “Unlike Sigourney Weaver’s nemesis alien, hip-hop is not the other man’s rape
fantasy of the Black sex machine gone berserk” (240), and “Hip-hop is very Ralph
Ellison, who once said that the blues is like running a razor blade along an open sore”
(242). In 2004, Tate marks hip-hop’s thirtieth anniversary and celebrates, bemoans,
and prods the “heaven and hell of New World African ingenuity and that trick of
the devil known as global hypercapitalism” (246). Bob Dylan and Eminem appear
as opposing forces in their relationships to black music industries and vernaculars.
Tate claims that Dylan’s “impact on a couple of generations of visionary Black bards
has rarely been given its propers” (243) and shows that Eminem’s commercial suc-
cess is a testament to the fact that “the powers that be are more skeered of the Black
Guerilla Family’s militant wing speaking to family about revolution through this
cable televised hip-hop medium than the angriest” white rapper alive (255–56).
With only five pieces, section 4, “Screenings,” is the shortest in the collec-
tion. In it, Tate and his interviewees accentuate the power, pitfalls, and breadth of
performance of black characters and lives in theater and film. Through a review of

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Spike Lee’s Bamboozled (2000), Tate tackles the history of minstrelsy and blackface
performance, both in Lee’s work specifically and in the American performance-scape
(i.e., film, musical theatre, vaudeville) more generally (265–69). Against this backdrop,
Tate weaves a thread between the hard ethnographic realism of John Singleton’s Baby
Boy (2001) and the “science fiction”al (272) manifestation of supremely glamorous
characters in blaxploitation, a genre he paints as unparalleled in having “attempted to
foreground beauty as the ultimate narrative hook” (271). Tate highlights the central-
ity of representations of bodies on screen to narrative and cinematic flow, whether
“unsettling” (275) in their realism or “transcendent” through the “ineffable power of
Black faces, figures, and fashions in motion” (270).
Section 5, “Race, Sex, Politricks, and Belles Lettres,” reveals Tate writing about
his own métier and includes some of the most critical tones and scathing reviews of
the collection (see, especially, his accounts of Caryl Phillips’s [288–90] and Randall
Kennedy’s [296–99] respective books). In these critiques, along with their laudatory
counterparts (Clarence Major, Jeffery Renard Allen, and the empathetic ambiva-
lence on Zadie Smith’s debut novel), in addition to providing analyses of particular
works, Tate also argues for the ferocious potential of the written word in fictional,
nonfictional, narrative, and performative modes. Tate aspires to find the writers
who not only put forth a bold argument but also pursue it with nuance, wit, style,
compassion, unsparing critique, introspection, and honesty. For those who admire
Tate’s own writing, there is a particular joy in reading this section, which provides
insight into the author’s own orientations and methods.
The collection’s organization invites the observation of the disproportionality
of women to men. This is true especially in the field of music, although not at all
in visual art. Tate offers his own critique of the imbalance in music when he writes,
“Defining a free Black woman though—if I may be so bold—in music at least, re-
quires more imagination than defining a free Black man because to the world a dead
Black man can still be sexy. A dead Black woman tho’? Hmm not so much” (187;
italics added). Here Tate suggests that in a music industry that capitalizes on the
circulation of black bodies, the public’s imagination allows for the success of black
women, unlike men, when and only when they are available for live consumption.
More insight from Tate into the disparity between genders also comes in a critique
of colorism embedded in his review of Azealia Banks’s 2012 album Fantasea, in which
he differentiates between Banks and what he names the “charge-of-the-light-bright
brigade moment in race music and American pop kulcha” (179). Despite the nu-
meric imbalance, immense value lies in the ample intersectional feminist and queer
critiques that permeate each page of this collection, regardless of the identity of the
subject (see the challenges to, for example, Ice Cube, Richard Pryor, the Wu-Tang
Clan, Miles Davis, and Pablo Picasso).

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Much more than can be included in a review “OOZE[S]” (189) out of the
pages of this collection, and a wide range of readers should pick it up to experience
for themselves the wealth of layers that makes it an indispensable book on Ameri-
can culture. Tate’s prodigious knowledge, broad vision, and deep compassion seep
through the sharp critiques that slice into the core of America. His writing bursts
with densely packed references, attention to sound and texture, and signifying play
to produce distinctive prose and poetry that are gripping, nuanced, and expansive.
Tate’s embeddedness in community generates not only the text of interviews but
also the descriptions of their settings, and allows for reviews of not only albums and
books, but also rallies, protests, and parties. It also opens up into collective forms of
criticism, as Tate repeatedly cites friends, colleagues, and even fellow concertgoers
(George Clinton and Vernon Reid offer innumerable insight throughout the collec-
tion). Readers from many different contexts will find this collection pertinent: lovers
of music, art, dance, film, comedy, and literature; cultural and critical race theorists;
and scholars and writers in the fields of American and African American studies. This
collection certainly ought to be of interest to scholars from across disciplines in music
departments as a central text about aesthetics and social issues surrounding music in
the United States of the present moment. Scholars of jazz-related topics both past
and present especially have much to draw from this collection, which locates jazz
within the broader landscape of black arts in America.
Tamar Sella
Message to Our Folks: The Art Ensemble of Chicago. By Paul Steinbeck. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2017.
Message to Our Folks is a well-researched, detailed study of one of the most fascinating
groups of Black musicians in the history of creative music. Steinbeck’s history and
biography are rich and insightful for scholars interested in the origins of the Associa-
tion for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), great Black music, and
the Chicago scene in the mid-twentieth century. The Art Ensemble’s complicated
origin story also intersects with many other characters of interest such as Eddie Harris,
Andrew Hill, and Jack DeJohnette. Collectively, these biographies offer a window
into the larger historical and political conditions that underlay the development of
the Black arts movement.
The tale of the Art Ensemble’s journey to France and around Europe from
1969 to 1971 is worth the price of the book on its own. The stunning triumph and
legendary success the group enjoyed on this trip are illuminated in their most telling

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Much more than can be included in a review “OOZE[S]” (189) out of the
pages of this collection, and a wide range of readers should pick it up to experience
for themselves the wealth of layers that makes it an indispensable book on Ameri-
can culture. Tate’s prodigious knowledge, broad vision, and deep compassion seep
through the sharp critiques that slice into the core of America. His writing bursts
with densely packed references, attention to sound and texture, and signifying play
to produce distinctive prose and poetry that are gripping, nuanced, and expansive.
Tate’s embeddedness in community generates not only the text of interviews but
also the descriptions of their settings, and allows for reviews of not only albums and
books, but also rallies, protests, and parties. It also opens up into collective forms of
criticism, as Tate repeatedly cites friends, colleagues, and even fellow concertgoers
(George Clinton and Vernon Reid offer innumerable insight throughout the collec-
tion). Readers from many different contexts will find this collection pertinent: lovers
of music, art, dance, film, comedy, and literature; cultural and critical race theorists;
and scholars and writers in the fields of American and African American studies. This
collection certainly ought to be of interest to scholars from across disciplines in music
departments as a central text about aesthetics and social issues surrounding music in
the United States of the present moment. Scholars of jazz-related topics both past
and present especially have much to draw from this collection, which locates jazz
within the broader landscape of black arts in America.
Tamar Sella
Message to Our Folks: The Art Ensemble of Chicago. By Paul Steinbeck. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2017.
Message to Our Folks is a well-researched, detailed study of one of the most fascinating
groups of Black musicians in the history of creative music. Steinbeck’s history and
biography are rich and insightful for scholars interested in the origins of the Associa-
tion for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), great Black music, and
the Chicago scene in the mid-twentieth century. The Art Ensemble’s complicated
origin story also intersects with many other characters of interest such as Eddie Harris,
Andrew Hill, and Jack DeJohnette. Collectively, these biographies offer a window
into the larger historical and political conditions that underlay the development of
the Black arts movement.
The tale of the Art Ensemble’s journey to France and around Europe from
1969 to 1971 is worth the price of the book on its own. The stunning triumph and
legendary success the group enjoyed on this trip are illuminated in their most telling

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134 Reviews
details, and Steinbeck provides a fascinating account of the Paris scene at that time.
The account of how the group managed to survive will be of interest not only to
scholars but also to working musicians wondering how such a successful European
tour might be repeated (and why it may no longer be possible). Steinbeck argues
that the perception of the Art Ensemble as essentially political activists was an effect
of the exoticization of Black Americans that was common in France at that time.
Although that perception played a role in the group’s success in France, it was also a
serious problem. The political implications of the Art Ensemble’s performances were
beyond their control, sometimes increasing their appeal and attracting audiences,
other times distracting from the richness of their performances, and ultimately figur-
ing greatly in their decision to return to the United States in 1971.
Steinbeck’s book has an innovative structure that intersperses chapters of his-
tory, biography, and cultural analysis with chapters of musical analysis. In chapters
4, 7, and 9, Steinbeck analyzes three recordings: A Jackson in Your House, Live at
Mandel Hall, and Live at the Jazz Showcase, respectively. These analysis chapters
distinguish Steinbeck’s work from other historical studies, such as George Lewis’s A
Power Stronger Than Itself, and they provide a substantial new contribution to the
literature. Steinbeck’s dexterous use of Western musical notation—to encapsulate
music that often stretches the limits of that system—is supplemented by thick de-
scription of each recording, allowing nonmusic-reading scholars and laypeople to
engage with the discussions without difficulty.
In these chapters, we are not only introduced to the social and aesthetic con-
texts that situate these recordings, but we also gain insight into the way the musi-
cians thought about their music. The analyses are further enriched by Steinbeck’s
interviews with the musicians themselves (for example, Don Moye’s recollections
about the concert at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall in 1972). The book
contains some of the unique terms and concepts they used to talk about their com-
positions—for instance, the concept of the intensity structure—and it discusses the
way they incorporated flexibility and space into the plans for their highly ordered
yet also highly improvised performances.
Steinbeck analyzes the Art Ensemble’s work in terms of dual layers of musical
and theatrical meaning. For instance, at one point his analysis of A Jackson in Your
House moves from musical analysis to analysis of a character who emerges in the
vocal, revealing telling stories of the ensemble members’ sometimes-traumatic time
in the military. This allows Steinbeck to dispel the notion, prevalent in French music
journalism, that the group’s work was anything as simplistic as antiwar propaganda.
Steinbeck offers some of the most penetrating critical analysis of the Art Ensemble’s
overall aesthetic—particularly its elements of parody and subversive play—when he
argues that the group’s shocking irrationality constituted a complex and unconven-
tional modality that draws attention to the unreasonable nature of the American
power structure.

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Steinbeck also attempts to answer a question that has long-fascinated scholars

not only of the Art Ensemble but also about their parent organization, the AACM:
how can one account for their longevity? He points out that the Art Ensemble is
uniquely long-lived among AACM ensembles, and he argues that the reason may be
found in the group’s scrupulously egalitarian brand of cooperative economics married
to its commitment to individual autonomy. The book also emphasizes the importance
of the band’s ethos of self-determination, exemplified by their corporation AECO.
The Art Ensemble was characterized by intermedia presentations—drawing
from a vast reservoir of musical styles, countless instruments, and theatrical, poetic,
and visual elements. This book traces the origins of this bewildering diversity of cre-
ative and performative material that dazzled audiences, from Joseph Jarman’s poetic
and theatrical proclivities, to Malachi Favors’ innovative use of little instruments, to
the repertoire not only of compositions but also of styles of music, which the group
rehearsed consistently in preparation to deploy them in improvisation at any mo-
ment.
And this panoply of performance styles represents the inclusiveness and di-
versity invoked by the Art Ensemble’s motto “Great Black Music: Ancient to the
Future.” This terminological act of self-determination incorporates and integrates the
boundless creativity that spans Africa and her diaspora, which the Art Ensemble so
vividly exemplifies. Steinbeck’s Message to Our Folks is an excellent work that deepens
our understanding of a unique and outstanding group of musicians.
Adam Zanolini
Erroll Garner: No One Can Hear You Read. Directed by Atticus Brady. New York:
First Run Features, 2013.
Erroll Garner is enjoying something of a renaissance these days. The questionable

omission of the pianist in Ken Burns’s nineteen-hour film series Jazz (2001)—a move
that brought down a hail of invective from Garner fans, including Garner’s longtime
manager Martha Glaser—is slowly being set to rights. A steady stream of audio and
video documentation of Garner’s piano mastery has more recently been made avail-
able to the public: DVDs of footage recorded in 1963–64 by the BBC (Erroll Garner,
In Performance, 2002) and in Belgium and Sweden (Jazz Icons: Erroll Garner Live
in ’63 & ’64, 2009); a reissue of the legendary Concert By the Sea (2015), containing
interviews and eleven previously unreleased tracks; and a brand-new Garner album,
Ready Take One (2016), which includes six previously unreleased Garner originals.
If Burns’s defense that Garner was not a “seminal innovator” seems untenable in
light of these new reminders of Garner’s originality and influence, it is worth asking
whether the slow development of Garner scholarship is at least partially to blame for

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Steinbeck also attempts to answer a question that has long-fascinated scholars

not only of the Art Ensemble but also about their parent organization, the AACM:
how can one account for their longevity? He points out that the Art Ensemble is
uniquely long-lived among AACM ensembles, and he argues that the reason may be
found in the group’s scrupulously egalitarian brand of cooperative economics married
to its commitment to individual autonomy. The book also emphasizes the importance
of the band’s ethos of self-determination, exemplified by their corporation AECO.
The Art Ensemble was characterized by intermedia presentations—drawing
from a vast reservoir of musical styles, countless instruments, and theatrical, poetic,
and visual elements. This book traces the origins of this bewildering diversity of cre-
ative and performative material that dazzled audiences, from Joseph Jarman’s poetic
and theatrical proclivities, to Malachi Favors’ innovative use of little instruments, to
the repertoire not only of compositions but also of styles of music, which the group
rehearsed consistently in preparation to deploy them in improvisation at any mo-
ment.
And this panoply of performance styles represents the inclusiveness and di-
versity invoked by the Art Ensemble’s motto “Great Black Music: Ancient to the
Future.” This terminological act of self-determination incorporates and integrates the
boundless creativity that spans Africa and her diaspora, which the Art Ensemble so
vividly exemplifies. Steinbeck’s Message to Our Folks is an excellent work that deepens
our understanding of a unique and outstanding group of musicians.
Adam Zanolini
Erroll Garner: No One Can Hear You Read. Directed by Atticus Brady. New York:
First Run Features, 2013.
Erroll Garner is enjoying something of a renaissance these days. The questionable

omission of the pianist in Ken Burns’s nineteen-hour film series Jazz (2001)—a move
that brought down a hail of invective from Garner fans, including Garner’s longtime
manager Martha Glaser—is slowly being set to rights. A steady stream of audio and
video documentation of Garner’s piano mastery has more recently been made avail-
able to the public: DVDs of footage recorded in 1963–64 by the BBC (Erroll Garner,
In Performance, 2002) and in Belgium and Sweden (Jazz Icons: Erroll Garner Live
in ’63 & ’64, 2009); a reissue of the legendary Concert By the Sea (2015), containing
interviews and eleven previously unreleased tracks; and a brand-new Garner album,
Ready Take One (2016), which includes six previously unreleased Garner originals.
If Burns’s defense that Garner was not a “seminal innovator” seems untenable in
light of these new reminders of Garner’s originality and influence, it is worth asking
whether the slow development of Garner scholarship is at least partially to blame for

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136 Reviews
a continued mystification of his legacy. The only full-length book on Garner is James
Doran’s The Most Happy Piano, released as the third volume in the Studies in Jazz
series by Scarecrow Press and the Institute for Jazz Studies in 1985. While it contains
valuable oral history, chronology, and discography, it provides no critical commen-
tary of its own, recapitulating a pattern that Garner himself set in motion when he
professed not to be able to read music and declared his musical virtuosity to be a gift
from God. Garner’s champions have seemed rather too willing to take such claims
at face value, as if rendered speechless by Garner’s ability to record song after song
in one take, to play virtually any piece of music—popular, jazz, or classical—by ear
in any key, to divide the left and right hands into startlingly independent roles, and
to produce definitive arrangements seemingly on the fly. The stammering character
of the critical writing on Garner owes much to these miraculous impressions left by
Garner’s playing. As Ray Brown states in Doran’s book, it is “something that cannot
be explained . . . something that belongs to the ear” (38).
Enter the 2013 documentary directed and produced by Atticus Brady, Erroll
Garner: No One Can Hear You Read (a favorite phrase of Garner’s). This award-
winning film continues the tradition of championing Garner’s pianism by deferring
to the champions of Garner’s pianism. Glowing reminiscences by Ahmad Jamal,
Steve Allen, Dick Hyman, and Woody Allen place this film squarely within the
filmic tradition of jazz hagiography. In the director’s interview supplied with the
DVD, Brady, himself a pianist, admits that the film grew out of his surprise that no
one had made a film about Garner. Garner’s bassist, Ernest McCarty, expresses the
film’s central concern that “Erroll is becoming extinct.” In its attempt to enshrine
Garner as one of the true jazz greats, the film provides ample evidence, in the form
of testimony after testimony, for the claim that Garner possessed singular musical
gifts—in spite of, or perhaps because of, his supposed inability to read music. As
Steve Allen notes in the film, Garner was his “favorite pianist. As soon as I heard
him, I loved him. It’s like saying what made you think that Mount Everest was so
tall . . . it just was. It’s that simple.” And later: “Some of us who [play piano] for a
living know that what he did was impossible, but he did it.” Interspersed with such
claims are more intimate accounts supplied by Garner’s former bandmate McCarty,
his longtime producer George Avakian, journalist John Murph, and oral historian Jim
Doran. Garner’s sister Ruth Garner Moore supplies welcome historical information,
although a more complete picture of Garner’s childhood is provided by Moore and
other Garner siblings in The Most Happy Piano. A brief interview with daughter Kim
Garner produces the film’s most interesting angle, hinting at the conflict between
Erroll Garner the consummate professional and Garner the private individual who
thus far has received scant attention in the Garner literature.
The film’s upbeat pacing reinforces the hagiographic portrait; complexities are
occasionally brought to the fore but never linger, presenting an optimistic tone that

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is in keeping with the musical persona portrayed by the musical selections, film clips,
and subject matter. Most of the interview material is directed toward explicating the
full range of Garner’s style, described at one point as a collection of techniques that
evolved over time, but also one that remained anchored to big band music. This is
a strength of the film. Dick Hyman’s demonstration of the big band influence in
Garner’s playing—left hand guitar-like rhythm propelling the right hand alternation
of horn soli and solo flights—is especially vivid. In describing Garner’s manner in
the recording studio, Avakian provides insight into another hallmark of the Garner
style: playful and often rhapsodic intros that left audiences, bandmates, and producers
in suspense as to what tune was coming next (and in what key). Doran took pains
to explain the origins of Garner’s best-known original, “Misty,” and demonstrated
the romantic arpeggios that have been imitated by countless cocktail pianists but
whose poignancy has never been matched. By the time Ahmad Jamal calls Garner
the “complete musician” near the end of the film—using Garner’s ability to make
audiences cry, laugh, and think to argue for the pianist’s true artistry—we have heard
enough to believe him.
Yet however strongly this tribute to the range of Garner’s influence flies in
the face of Burns’s claim that Garner was not a seminal innovator, its focus on
Garner’s uniqueness also confirms a broader point clearly intuited by Burns: it has
proven difficult to place Garner, the jazz musician, in the context of jazz history. That
Garner’s “happy” piano sound seemed out of place next to the grittier sounds of
modern jazz contemporaries is a significant issue that is raised but never resolved in
the film. Ten minutes in, Steve Allen has already made the point when he declared
that Garner has “nothing to do with the lineage of jazz.” The jazz piano greats with
whom a direct comparison might have been made loom as the film’s unmentioned
foils. We are left to infer that Garner’s seemingly easy grace fits uneasily aside the
styles of the institutionalized Bud Powell, the drug-addicted Bill Evans, the chroni-
cally depressed Thelonious Monk, or the partially blind Art Tatum. Politics are left
out of the film entirely, leaving one with the impression that Garner’s story does not
entirely mesh with those of jazz musicians who were more visibly associated with the
ongoing struggle for civil rights, such as Max Roach, Miles Davis, John Coltrane,
or Charles Mingus. Garner, the Pittsburgh native, was also not the product of the
canonic jazz locales highlighted in Ken Burns’s film: New Orleans, Kansas City,
Chicago, Los Angeles, New York (though, significantly, Brady’s acknowledgment of
Pittsburgh as a jazz center—with its nods to natives Billy Strayhorn, Ahmad Jamal
and Mary Lou Williams—redresses this slight). Finally, his style is difficult to place
vis-á-vis the modernist bebop paradigm whose stories of stylistic rarefaction and linear
progressions of technique offer little to descriptions of the Garner style. Note that
Garner is not alone here; as David Ake has shown in his book Jazz Cultures (2002),
popular post-Swing Era artists like Louis Jordan have also faced a more difficult road

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to canonization. Garner would therefore seem useful to new jazz studies’ attempts
to forge a more inclusive jazz canon (see David Ake, Charles Hiroshi Garrett, and
Daniel Ira Goldmark’s collection Jazz/Not Jazz [2012] and George Lipsitz’s “Songs
of the Unsung: The Darby Hicks History of Jazz” [2004]).
From this perspective, one could say that the film’s strongest contribution
to rethinking the canon lies in the conjecture that Garner belongs to a tradition of
concert-hall jazz established in the 1950s and 1960s by Dave Brubeck and George
Shearing. Certainly Garner’s career triumphs—the bestselling Concert by the Sea (1955)
and an appearance at Carnegie Hall aided by the interest of legendary impresario
Sol Hurok—owe in large part to a carefully constructed stage persona and the ambi-
tious management style of Martha Glaser. However, perhaps a better fit for Garner
would be the pantheon of African American crossover successes, including piano
icons Ramsey Lewis and Les McCann, whose music was popular among whites but
resonated deeply with African American audiences. Given jazz scholarship’s recent
turn away from tales of individual virtuosity and toward descriptions of the ways
jazz sounds out community, Garner’s legacy deserves a revision. The physicality of
Garner’s playing—the gut-wrenching push-and-pull between right and left hands,
the grunting that related obliquely to melodic and/or rhythmic elements, the sly
grins and well-timed gestures that accompanied the musical cues—betrays, perhaps,
a more profoundly blues-based aesthetic than even the athletic playing of Garner’s
lauded blues-oriented jazz contemporary, Oscar Peterson. When combined with his
dramatic uses of quotation, repetition, changing textures, and dynamics, Garner’s
performances embodied what African American composer Olly Wilson has termed
the “heterogeneous sound ideal” that remains a constant in African American music.
The down-home and eventful aspects of Garner’s style (evident on, say, “Mambo Er-
roll” or “Penthouse Serenade” from Erroll Garner, In Performance) place him centrally
within the spectrum of African and African American style described at length by
writers such as Amiri Baraka in Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1963)
and Albert Murray in Stomping the Blues (1976) or by music scholars such as Guthrie
Ramsey in Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip Hop (2003) and Travis Jack-
son in Blowin’ the Blues Away: Performance and Meaning on the New York Jazz Scene
(2012).
The service provided by the film is therefore clear and valuable, but also lim-
ited; what the world of Garnerania needs now is not another paean to Garner’s
uniqueness, nor his worldwide popularity, nor indeed his continued influence. A
much more valuable contribution would be to show how Garner’s music embodies
soulful characteristics rooted in the unique resiliency demanded of African American
musicians of his era. Guthrie Ramsey’s The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz
History, and the Challenge of Bebop (2013), Robin D. G. Kelley’s Thelonious Monk:
The Life and Times of an American Original (2009), and Gabriel Solis’s Monk’s Music:

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Thelonious Monk and Jazz History in the Making (2008), among others, have paved
the way for this kind of research, as has the donation of the Garner Manuscripts
Archive (compiled by Martha Glaser) to the University of Pittsburgh in 2014. In
sum, access to a breadth of new media offers tantalizing new possibilities to present
Garner, finally, as a meticulous, tireless, and profoundly circumspect author of his
own musical persona. As the proverbial saying goes, genius is the infinite capacity
for taking pains. If Garner is in part the spritely musical genius described in No
One Can Hear You Read, greater attention to the productive pains that suffuse his
work—personal, racial, and musical—might offer a more promising solution to the
problem of anchoring Garner concretely to the history of jazz, particularly as “race
music” played by a “blues people.”
William Bares

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Contributors to This Issue
William Baresis an associate professor of music and director of jazz studies at the
University of North Carolina, Ashville. He previously taught at Harvard, Brown,
Berklee, and the New England Conservatory. Bares is an active member of Ashe-
ville’s musical community. He coordinated “Ecomusicologies 2014: Dialogues”—a
conference/festival that took place in Asheville in October 2014—and hosts the
weekly Sunday Jazz Showcase at Asheville’s Isis Music Hall. His newest album, You
Held the Light, I Found the Sign was released in October 2016, and his book, Jazz
and the European Dream: An Eternal Triangle, is forthcoming from Routledge Press.
Chiyuma Elliottis an assistant professor of African American studies at the Univer-
sity of California, Berkeley. A former Stegner Fellow, Chiyuma’s poems have appeared
in the African American Review, Callaloo, the Notre Dame Review, the PN Review,
and other journals. She has received fellowships from the American Philosophical
Society, Cave Canem, the James Irvine Foundation, and the Vermont Studio Center.
She is the author of two books: California Winter League (2015) and Vigil (2017).
Eric Lewisis a professor of philosophy at McGill University and the director of the
McGill Institute of the Public Life of Arts and Ideas. He also sits on the management
committee of the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. His
research focuses on the philosophy of jazz and improvised music, adaptive creative
technologies, and new media art. Most recently he was the coeditor of Improvisation
and Social Aesthetics (Duke). He has completed a book manuscript on the ontology
of improvised music (Intents and Purposes) and is presently writing a book on Jeanne


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Contributors 141
Lee. He is an active improviser on brass and runs numerous community-facing

cultural projects for youth.
Siv B. Lieis an assistant professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland
School of Music. Her research in ethnomusicology and linguistic anthropology ex-
amines the cultural politics of expressive practices and minority rights with a focus
on how Romani (“Gypsy”) populations use music and language to serve their own
social, political, and economic interests. Through ethnographic, performance-based,
and archival research methods, her work takes an interdisciplinary approach to how
expressive practices intersect with power dynamics among majority and minority
groups. Siv is also cofounder and principal coordinator of the Initiative for Romani
Music at New York University.
Fred Motenteaches and conducts research in black studies, performance studies,
poetics, and critical theory. He is author of consent not to be a single being, In the
Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, Hughson’s Tavern, B. Jenkins, The
Feel Trio, The Little Edges, The Service Porch; coauthor, with Stefano Harney, of The
Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study and A Poetics of the Undercommons;
and coauthor, with Wu Tsang, of Who Touched Me? Moten works in the Department
of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.
Sarah Politzis a visiting assistant professor of ethnomusicology at Williams Col-
lege. Her work focuses on popular music in Africa and the diaspora, including brass
band music, jazz, and traditional religious practices in Benin. She completed her
PhD at Harvard University in ethnomusicology, master’s degree in ethnomusicology
from Wesleyan University, and bachelor’s degrees in jazz studies and English from
Oberlin College. She is preparing a book project tentatively titled Gangbe: Resonance
and Cultural Economy in Benin’s Jazz and Brass Bands. She performs actively on
trombone in and around Boston.
Tamar Sellais a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at Harvard University. She is
broadly interested in the social politics of aesthetics, specifically of vocal music, in
both the United States and Israel/Palestine. Her work in the United States focuses
on vocalists in the New York jazz scene and connections between vocal aesthetics and
politics of gender, race, and sexuality. Her work in Israel focuses on Mizrahi vocal mu-
sic and national discourse. Her thesis is on the relation between Yemeni-Jewish music
and Mizrahi consciousness and activism in contemporary Israel/Palestine. Tamar is
from Israel, and she received her BA from the University of California, Berkeley.
Sarah Towndefended her dissertation, “Timbeando en Nueva York: Cuban Dance
Culture in Havana and New York City,” in spring 2017 at Princeton University.
Her research examines the histories, aesthetics, and circulation of Cuban timba and

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142 Contributors
casino, specifically, and Cuban dance cultures more generally. Sarah has presented
papers before AMS, SEM, and LASA and has received awards for her research and
writing. Sarah has an article forthcoming on the role of social dance in the Cuban
revolution as seen in documentary film and another in progress on the rhythmic and
compositional experimentations of New York-based timba musicians.
Christopher J. Wells is an assistant professor of musicology at Arizona State
University’s Herberger Institute School of Music. His PhD dissertation on drummer/
bandleader Chick Webb and swing music in Harlem during the Great Depression
received the Society for American Music’s Wiley Housewright Dissertation Award
and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Glen Haydon Award for an
Outstanding Dissertation in Musicology. A social jazz dancer for over a decade,
Dr. Wells is currently writing a book about the history of jazz music’s ever-shifting
relationship with popular dance.
Adam Zanoliniis an ethnomusicologist, multi-instrumentalist, and arts admin-
istrator based in Chicago. He received his PhD from the Graduate Center of the
City University of New York in 2016. He is the executive director of Elastic Arts
Foundation in Chicago and former associate director of Arts for Art and presenter
of the annual Vision Festival of avant-jazz in New York City. He is also cofounder of
the Participatory Music Coalition and a member of the Association for the Advance-
ment of Creative Musicians.

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ARTICLES

A Resistant Previousness (Back to Living Again)

“We Don’t Want to Be Jazz-Jazz”: Afro-Modernism,

This Ain’t a Hate Thing: Jeanne Lee and the

“The Ace of His Race”: Paul Whiteman’s Early

JAZZ & Culture

REVIEWS Volume 1 2018

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1 Welcome to Jazz and Culture: Revival and Elegy

6 A Resistant Previousness (Back to Living Again)

12 “We Don’t Want to Be Jazz-Jazz”: Afro-Modernism, Jazz,

77 “The Ace of His Race”: Paul Whiteman’s Early Critical Reception in

104 Rich Theory: Mandino Reinhardt on Jazz Manouche in Alsace

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129 Flyboy 2:The Greg Tate Reader, by Greg Tate

133 Message to Our Folks:The Art Ensemble of Chicago, by Paul Steinbeck

140 Contributors to This Issue

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Welcome to Jazz and Culture:

Jazz & Culture Volume 1 2018

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1. The role of radical art in modern resistance movements

Jazz & Culture Volume 1 2018

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“I Like to Live the Love,” performed by B. B. King

Maybe I won’t be so embarrassed today—though the embarrassment will have always

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Jazz & Culture Volume 1 2018

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Operating under the sign of jazz also presents challenges of representation to

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Returning to Gangbe, I examine how its production company, Contre-jour, marketed

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of Cameroonian historian and political theorist Achille Mbembe, writing in French.12

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Benin’s Jazz and Brass Band Musicians

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Histories of Style and Genre in Benin

Definitions of musical genre in southern Benin in the 1990s and 2000s—populaire,

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Defining Genre: The Makings of the Tradi-Moderne

Musicians’ concepts of le traditionel or la tradition, when referring to performance

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music” abroad would be considered to be involved in the moderne by default. The

Gangbe and Contre-jour

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