The Performance of Authenticity: The Makings of Jazz and the Self in Autobiography 9781793624390, 1793624399

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The Performance of Authenticity

The Performance of Authenticity The Makings of Jazz and the Self in Autobiography Teófilo Espada-Brignoni

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2022 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Parts of chapters 1, 2, and 3 were previously published in Jazz Perspectives and are used with permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.tandfonline.com/. Espada-Brignoni, Teófilo. 2017. “Complexity and Ambivalence: The Ethics of Jazz in Sidney Bechet’s and Warren Dodd’s Autobiographies.” Jazz Perspectives 10(2–3), 243–261. https://www. tandfonline.com/toc/rjaz20/current. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-7936-2438-3 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-7936-2440-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-7936-2439-0 (electronic) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Acknowledgments vii Introduction

1

Chapter 1: Subjectivation, Music, and Autobiography



Chapter 2: Storying Jazz: Bechet, Dodds, Collins, and Foster Chapter 3: An Ethics of Authenticity Chapter 4: Being a Jazz Man



33



47



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Chapter 5: “Growing into the Music” Chapter 6: Wise Old-Timers

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85



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Chapter 7: Stylizing the Self: The Mechanic and the Domestic



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Conclusion

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References

137

Index

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About the Author



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Acknowledgments

This book would never have been possible without the combination of ephemeral and ongoing support of countless individuals. My list-making skills, as well as my ability to find the right words to express my gratitude to so many wonderful human beings, are limited, and is exacerbated by the exercise of writing in my second language. But I hope the lack of craft will not be confused with a lack of care. The sinuous paths of my personal and academic growth have been filled by the caring and affirming encouragement of many. If I ever embark on another project of a similar nature, I can only apologize in advance. This book would not have been possible without the support and love of my partner, Arelys Uriarte. You have a special place in my heart, and I am forever grateful for your encouragement and belief in me. I lack the words to describe how much I owe to my mother, Carmen R. Brignoni, for everything from allowing me to use my grandfather’s old house to work in solitude during my dissertation to offering support in times of tough decisions. Most of my projects, particularly when I was a student and during the first years of my professional career, would have turned to dust or printed pages going nowhere without their support. During my years as a student, I met so many amazing individuals for whom I have a lot of affection and respect. I must thank Frances Ruiz-Alfaro, a dear friend, colleague, confidant, and co-author. For probably fifteen years, even before I earned my bachelor’s, Frances has played an important role as someone with whom I can discuss the ideas, perspectives, and questions that I have been integrating in paper after paper before submitting them to professors, conferences, and publications. She read the research that constitutes this book even before some of it became part of my doctoral dissertation. For the book, Frances carefully read some of the chapters and provided invaluable vii

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feedback. I have had the immense pleasure of collaborating with Frances on several projects, and I look forward to working together again. During my undergraduate and graduate studies, some of us became brothers in arms. Juan Pablo Delgado is a great friend and partner in crime with whom I have discussed different versions of the theoretical perspectives that inform this book. Juan also read several versions of some of the chapters in this book, and our discussions proved useful to refine and improve my ideas. I’m also extremely grateful for the friendship and sense of brotherhood of Ismael Castillo, with whom I had in-depth conversations about theory, method, and music. Ismael is not only a great psychologist but also an amazing musician, and I am honored every time we get to play music together. I also must express my gratitude to one of my oldest friends and one of the best musicians I know, Ernesto Busigó. During my high school years, I made many wonderful friends with whom I continued to play for many years. Edwin León, Eduardo Perales, Raulo Colón, Mario Donate, Adrian Zayas, and many others, the music we made together stays with me to this day. When I moved to Ohio to teach psychology at Antioch College (from 2018 to 2021), I met many wonderful human beings and storytellers. I spent countless hours with great musicians and friends with whom I have enjoyed playing jazz, rock, blues, folk, and bluegrass, or wonderful conversations. My special thanks to Tucki Bailey, Carl Schumacher, Jeanne Ulrich, Tim Beach, Jason McClean, Kenny, Mark, Dave, Robert, and Wally. My thanks to those with whom I played or have allowed me to join their jam sessions. You made my life and my narratives more interesting. I miss all of you and I hope to visit you. I owe much of my academic and scholarly growth to my mentor, former boss, and one of the most incredible coffee partners ever: Nydza Correa de Jesús. Nydza is one of the most brilliant social psychologists I have ever met and a genuinely transdisciplinary researcher. I must also express my gratitude to Dolores Miranda and Amaryllis Muñoz, who were part of my dissertation committee and provided invaluable feedback on the first stages of this research while I was a doctoral student at the University of Puerto Rico, as well as Otomie Vale Nieves who played an important role as part of the committee of my master’s thesis. During my years there, where I earned all my degrees, I also met amazing professors such as Heidi Figueroa Sarriera, Ruth Nina Estrella, María Elisa Santana, and Antonio Díaz Royo. They introduced me to critical approaches and perspectives, and they sparked my interest in historical approaches to the study of subjectivity and the complex relationship between culture and subjectivity. I am also grateful to the professors and students in the Psychology program at the University of Puerto Rico. Despite the strangeness of its existence, I hope this book makes you proud.

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During the past years, I have received much support from so many good friends and I am always grateful for the times we get to talk Cristina Parés and Gustavo Pabón, you have been special to me for many years; I look forward to our coffee gatherings and conversations. My sincere thanks to Ángel Gonález, Mitchlery Cardona, Zoeli Ayala, Waldo Morales, Miguel Morales, and Liza Meléndez, with whom I have shared many wonderful moments. To all my friends and teachers growing up, even if your name is not here, know that you are valued. In the end, these pages would not have been possible without the lights you shined on the roads we had to walk together. At Antioch, I met some brilliant minds with whom I shared the deepest sense of camaraderie and collegiality. My special thanks to Jennifer Grubbs, Dean Snyder, and Sean Payne. I am so grateful for our conversations, collaborations, and sense of collegiality. I am also grateful to Kim Landsbergen, Mary Ann Davis, and Kevin McGruder. I also owe much gratitude to Kevin Mulhall, Scott Sanders, and Sandy Coulter, who made the Antioch Library a beautiful and inspiring space for research and engaging dialogue. Many special thanks to J.P. Robinson and Mila Cooper, who were invaluable during my time at Antioch. Your support and friendship are always appreciated. Now that I have found myself back in Puerto Rice, know that you have a friend here and I will do my best to return how at home you made me feel while I lived in Ohio. Throughout my academic and professional journey, I have also met so many wonderful friends who have shown their support in one way or another. Fidelis Nwachukwu, thank you for being such an amazing friend to a homesick professor. Prasanna Honnavar, thank you for many wonderful conversations. Kevin Pawlak, I cannot thank you enough for being a friend and for the times we spent together. I miss all of you and the time we spent together. My life has also been influenced by those who have helped me grow musically. While I am not a full-time musician, my music teachers are always in my mind. Pedro Jiménez, my first music teacher, taught me to play saxophone and flute and impressed upon me the value of working on the quality of your tone. I am also grateful to Wilfredo Corps, who gave me valuable lessons in the after-hours programs at the Escuela Libre de Música in Caguas (Puerto Rico). Later, under the guidance of Luis Rosa, I learned how to play jazz, improvise, and appreciate many jazz musicians’ contributions. Perhaps no one encouraged me more to follow a path in music than these teachers. While that did not materialize in the way I dreamed when I was a teenager, thanks to them, music has always been an essential part of my life. During my school years, I also made lasting friendships with friends who, despite the different paths we have followed, have found ways to care for each other. Unsurprisingly, music is one of the threads that has united us or brought us together at one point or another—friends such as Pedro Dávila,

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Víctor Dávila, Ángel Cruz, Brenda Piñero, and all those who life occasionally seems to reunite for spontaneous moments of joy and memory. I am also extremely grateful to individuals whose name I have forgotten or will never know. Some of the ideas presented here are also the product of conversations and questions from co-panelists, researchers, and students at conferences, symposia, and similar events. I am also grateful to those who have reviewed my previous publications, both those in psychology and those about jazz and music. While we say much about reviewers and their ability to make us question our career choices, some of them become a part of our conscience or superego, driving us to improve our work. Everyone at Lexington who has been involved in the different stages of this project also has a special place. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, they have been extremely gracious, supportive, and patient. I’m particularly indebted to my editor, Courtney Morales. The omissions and errors in this book are the sole responsibility of the author. My reviewers, collaborators, and friends share none of the blame for whatever aspects of the book fail to meet the reader’s standards. We can chalk it up to researching early jazz autobiography while being a social psychologist from Puerto Rico who listens to too much Charlie Parker and Miguel Zenón, enjoys playing the role of a “historian” at conferences, and has a pet peeve against the excessive and unnecessary qualification of experience and action as “authentic.”

Introduction

In 1912, in the middle of April, a group of musicians played their last songs on a cold Atlantic Ocean night. As the R.M.S. Titanic sank, taking the lives of many, these musicians kept playing to a traumatized multitude desperately trying to survive (Turner 2011). We may never know why they kept playing. Music and human motivation are equally enigmatic, making the motivation to play music, especially under such harsh circumstances, exponentially more difficult to grasp. Perhaps they accepted their fate and surrendered to an untimely death; played for pleasure as a way of living the last minutes of their life triumphantly; or, driven by a strong work ethic, refused to let their tragic circumstances ebb their sense of duty. The tragic story of these musicians, captured by Steven Turner (2011) in his book The Band That Played On, reveals the complex—albeit unknown, in the case of the Titanic—subjectivities, meanings, and ethics, among other extramusical elements embedded in the quasi-magical art of sound and silence. The last melodies of the Titanic’s musicians made their way into musicians’ and music lovers’ conversations. Tragedies change the emotional order of things in societies that seem predisposed to find hierarchies for everything they name. After reaching New York, survivors eagerly told reporters how these musicians had played while the ship sank (Turner 2011). It is not surprising that Warren “Baby” Dodds ([1959] 2002, 42), a jazz drummer from New Orleans, would reference the Titanic’s musicians to communicate something about the ethics of jazz to the readers of his autobiography. Dodds stylizes his craft with the Titanic as a metaphor to convey something about his music and sense of self. However, underlying Dodds’s comparison between the musicians on the Titanic and jazz musicians playing in a dangerous venue, which was not uncommon for his generation, is an ethical theme—a theme recapitulated by jazz musicians tasked with the textual performance of giving an account of their lives and their place in the most American art form. Human activities, careers, pastimes, and the objects we buy to infuse spaces (our homes, our offices) with an aura of ourselves and others—with our identities or what we want to project to relatives, friends, strangers, or clients—are not self-contained phenomena that exist as independent pieces 1

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Introduction

of life. All the things one person does can hardly be described as an entirely coherent whole driven by one principle, motivation, or essence. We might even say we go to work partly as a way of self-subsidizing the few desires we can afford. However, each activity we engage in, whatever the reason, is embedded in a complex web of historical, social, cultural, and psychological meaning-making processes. Sitting at home, with a group of musicians or a device with the ability to reproduce the music played by others, is a way of engaging and interacting with sounds that carry a rich past, lyrics that reproduce or problematize ideologies, melodies and rhythms embedded in cultural traditions, all filtered through the listener’s subjective, yet socialized, perspective. Socialization is a complex non-linear process by which individuals become who they are through participating in complex dynamics of identification and reacting to the multiple positions they are called to adopt (Butler 1997; Pichón-Rivière 1985, 49; Berger and Luckmann 1967). Our relationship with jazz is always a mediated experience in which we bring to life the complex history of the ways jazz impacted the world and the world reacted to jazz. In a way consistent with social experiments, Whitney Balliett (1966) confesses his estimation of Louis Armstrong’s records was quite negative until he read Jazzmen, the 1939 volume edited by Frederic Ramsey and Charles Edward Smith. According to jazz scholars (Gennari 2006, chapter 3) and Balliett himself, Jazzmen is considered a work of non-fiction crammed with myths and embellishments. Balliett’s admission reveals a fundamental aspect of our relationship not only to jazz but to the world: the intersubjective and socio-psychological dynamics that shape our relationship to music. Furthermore, Jazzmen located “the holy grail of jazz authenticity in New Orleans street parades, south-side Chicago salons, and Harlem rent parties” (Gennari 2006, 123). The book played an important role in the discursive construction of jazz within the frameworks of authenticity (Ekins 2012). As Richard Ekins writes, “Following the publication of Jazzmen, the chase was on to locate and record for the first time the New Orleans musicians that Bunk and others spoken of as being the important pioneers of jazz” (2012, 33). An essay in Jazzmen about early New Orleans jazz relied heavily on Bunk Johnson’s account of New Orleans (Marquis 2005). Johnson helped to establish Bolden as a mythical figure in the history of jazz, trying to pass himself off as older in order to establish his connection to Bolden as his own authenticity in the jazz world (Marquis 2005, 4–6). The book also establishes early jazz as the embodiment of a racial otherness in the United States that exists outside the parameters of Western music. In their essay in Jazzmen, William Russell and Stephen W. Smith write,

Introduction

3

The young New Orleans aspirant, having no teacher to show him the supposed limitations of his instrument, went ahead by himself and frequently hit upon new paths and opened up undreamed-of possibilities. [. . .] The freedom of the New Orleans musician from any restraining tradition and supervision enabled him to develop on most of the instruments not only new technical resources but an appropriate and unique jazz style. (1939, 10)

In a way, we see a textual formulation of an archetype of authenticity embedded, reproducing, and promoting essentialist visions for jazz. The greatest paradox is that our evaluation of authenticity is facilitated by someone else’s actual or perceived intervention, whether that someone is with us when we claim to witness something authentic, or whether they are like an old magazine for coin collectors. In music, as Ronald Radano suggests, “The whole, authentic truth of black music becomes but a lie, a social narrative that ascribes difference in order to repress subtexts fundamentally resonant in black and white” (2003, 12). Russell and Smith stress this by reifying whiteness through music as a quality that is inherently different from anyone who is not white: “In all cultures except that of Europe, where for a century improvisation has been a lost art, creative performance is a requisite” (1939, 10). Qualifying certain sounds, melodies, and practices as racial, cultural, and authentic might reproduce a long history of essentialist conceptions about race that operates partly by appeals to locate the potential transcendent origins of social products. It also reinforces the myth that race, ethnicity, and culture are the world of the other, while imagining whiteness as a modern, neutral standard against which everyone else can be measured. On the other hand, there is a strange beauty here as well, for in some cases, our models of what is authentic come from our social world. What is telling and fascinating is how the boundaries between what we call truth and fiction are blurred in how we interpret the world, and how they might complement and mediate each other in how we make sense of our lives. In her analysis of the work of John Lomax, who played a key role in the constitution of what was considered authentic folk music in the United States, Regina Bendix writes that he “was aware that he had entered the backstage domain of professional inauthenticity, and he thus experienced, paradoxically, authenticity among those making a living by staging authenticity” (1997, 148). Authenticity, then, is a performance that, like any performance that attempts to be taken as sincere, erases its craft, giving cultural products a special and perhaps nostalgic aura. Our experience of the world we live in is always mediated. No living being has direct access to the energies that make up our physical world. Psychology and physics meet in the study of music. Both sciences, in an almost nihilistic way, but ultimately beautiful way, say that what we call sound is nothing

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Introduction

but the strange way in which our physiology and our brains translate numerous physical stimuli into information that we sometimes call music (Tan, Pfordresher, and Harré 2018, chapter 3). Moreover, for us as humans, it is not enough to be able to perceive or create music. Our experience of music is embedded in the discourses that surround it and shape how we understand it. In the social sciences, Michel Foucault remains one of the major influences in the study of discourses and the relationship between how we make sense of the world and how we act on it. His works problematized how we understand knowledge, practices, and ethics (Foucault 1972, 1979, 1984). His ideas have been used in the social sciences and the humanities to study the multiple ways in which members of a culture assign meaning to social practices and how what we accept as knowledge plays a role in how we conduct ourselves as we guide others. MAKING SENSE OF JAZZ, MAKING SENSE OF AMERICA Since its emergence, jazz has been at the center of the historical, social, cultural, and psychological debates of life in the United States and worldwide (Ogren 1989, 3; Hersch 2007). Even cognitive neuroscience has looked at what supposedly makes the brains of jazz musicians exceptional when compared to their more classically trained counterparts (Gioia 2016). These studies tackle and provide complementary accounts of the history of jazz musicians, their struggles with capitalism and racism, and the infrastructure that allowed some to turn their music into careers. Despite the many scholarly volumes written about jazz, the personal narratives of jazz musicians have, until recently, received less attention. Jazz autobiographies are cited in many studies for the information they provide about the genre’s past. Sometimes they provide an interesting contrast to an accurate account of the history of the music. Even the multiple voices accompanying these autobiographies through prefaces, interchapters, and footnotes question the accuracy of what is said by the musicians whose names appear on the book covers. Several authors have analyzed jazz autobiographies as an integral part of their scholarly books, chapters, and articles. Daniel Stein’s book Music Is My Life: Louis Armstrong, Autobiography, and American Jazz (2012) offers a full-length study of Louis Armstrong’s autobiographies and other personal documents, presenting a thorough and inspiring analysis that sheds light on the narrative aspects of the jazz life from a critical and post-structuralist perspective. Krin Gabbard’s Better Git It in Your Soul (2016) also includes a marvelous analysis of Charles Mingus’ and Sidney Bechet’s autobiographies. Gabbard also edited a fascinating collection titled Representing Jazz (1995),

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which contains several essays that analyze how jazz has been portrayed in different media. Scholars of jazz, then, have increasingly paid attention to the role of how representations of jazz constitute our relationship to the music. More recently, Reva Marin’s Outside and Inside: Race and Identity in White Jazz Autobiography (2020) pays close attention to how white jazz musicians and their collaborators have navigated the public representations of jazz in a deeply divided and racialized society. In his book From Behind the Veil, Robert B. Stepto (1991) studies the complex politics and performances of authenticity in African American narrative. He even classifies the narratives of former slaves by how their stories are authenticated. Authenticity is a curious ubiquitous concept that has complex implications in our world (Trilling 1972; Barker and Taylor 2007). It implies the existence of an underlying yet paradoxically vulnerable essence that deserves to be preserved. However, notions about “preserving” cultural productions or kinds of beings reside in power dynamics. While we usually think of power as oppressive—and it undoubtedly can be oppressive in many of its modalities—Foucault (1979) and scholars inspired by him (Lemke 2019; Ehlers 2012; Butler 1997; Besley and Peters 2007) have proposed a conception of power as productive. Furthermore, power operates and is embedded in social dynamics at other organizational levels, not only legal or political forms of power. Authenticity is thus a socially constructed performance used to negotiate the value of objects, cultural products, and people. It is used strategically by individuals, groups, or cultures who favor particular iterations or forms. It is also a way of seeing the world. In his sociologically inclined book, Dave Van Ronk (2006) problematizes how looking at the world through naïve notions of authenticity can constrain what individuals allow themselves to consider good music based only on pre-made commitments. As Stepto (1991) notes, African American narrators were initially subjected to and later subverted the authentication dynamics that reproduced, reinforced, and created race rituals. Such dynamics, however, were somewhat silently held in place and reconfigured under notions of authenticity (Radano 2003; Hersch 2007), which gave narrators the ability to position themselves as symbolic figures of authority, at the expense of defining cultural, ethnic, and racial heritage in essentialist terms. Furthermore, they provided a textual context that influenced what white jazz autobiographers had to navigate to claim authenticity within racial and essentialist perspectives (Marin 2020). As Holly E. Farrington claims, “jazz autobiography reveals much about the wider implications and repercussions of the jazz life” (2006, 375). Jazz autobiography, just like jazz criticism, plays a vital role in mediating how people perceive and engage with the music (Gennari 2006). As Richard Ekins (2012) notes, during the 1930s, a period of popular swing music that saw the

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Introduction

emergence of jazz criticism, New Orleans jazz was increasingly associated with authenticity. Notions and terms associated with authenticity became an essential factor that mediated the relationship between music, supporters, and audiences. Psychologists sometimes rely on metaphors that allow them to emphasize certain aspects of their subjects. The computer and the scientist are widely used metaphors by cognitive and developmental psychologists (Nelson 2007), while some social psychologists use others, such as that of the naïve psychologist (Försterling 2001). For the purposes of this book, we can loosely think of another possible metaphor, that of the sociolinguist. This is beautifully suggested in Louis Armstrong’s Swing That Music when he writes, I may mention here that there are more than four hundred words used among swing musicians that no one else would understand. They have a language of their own, and I don’t think anything could show better how closely they have worked together and how much they feel that they are apart from “regular” musicians and have a world of their own that they believe in and that most people have not understood. ([1936] 1993, 77–78)

The use of the third person allows the narrator to position himself as an observer even though he mentions his contribution to the language of jazz in the same paragraph. Jelly Roll Morton expresses a similar sentiment in Mister Jelly Roll. According to Morton, “A lot of people have a wrong conception of jazz. Somehow it got into the dictionary that jazz was considered a lot of blatant noises and discordant tones, something that would be even harmful to the ears” (Lomax [1950] 2001, 64). Each narrator lives jazz and adopts a social scientific position that allows them to construct jazz musicians as members of a closely knit community who share special bonds among themselves, which might not be found elsewhere. As historians and scholars of jazz have noted (Harlos 1995), jazz musicians and autobiographers are critical of the terms used to describe their music. However, this also extends to the ways they construct and perform discourses of authenticity. These discourses provide a framework for interpreting and analyzing the relationships between subject’s positions, music, personal history, and authority. In a way, this book is another form of calculated improvisation, just like some of the musical performances we call improvisations. Against the background of constructionist and qualitative social psychology and Foucault’s conceptual framework (at least the one he proposes in his last works), I weave in some contributions from sociology, history, and literary theory to say something about the autobiographies of jazz musicians. My hope is to

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provide and additional perspective on jazz autobiography grounded on social psychology and the contributions jazz scholarship. STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK This book is divided into seven chapters, plus an introduction and conclusion. Most of the chapters are organized through Foucault’s (1990) framework in his study of subjectivation. While the materials analyzed are virtually the same (with analysis from related texts in some chapters), each chapter looks at a different aspect of jazz musicians’ autobiographies. In every chapter, I complement my analysis with the work of scholars who have studied the historical, social, and literary aspects of jazz or discourses about jazz. In the first chapter, I present the theoretical framework that informs my research. I explain how I use the work of Michel Foucault and the ideas of authors who work from complementary perspectives. I integrate Foucault’s ideas with literary theory, sociology, jazz studies, and other sources in order to make sense of the ways notions of authenticity are deeply rooted in our conception of jazz. This leads me to some considerations from authors who have analyzed notions of authenticity in jazz and other types of music. As a social psychologist, I incorporate the work of authors who, in one way or another, resonate with my own. My intention is not to generate theory within literary theory, historiography, or jazz scholarship, but to combine different and affiliated research lines to explore jazz narratives as an intersubjective and psychosocial phenomenon. In the second chapter, I provide some background about the autobiographies of jazz musicians, drawing on on the work of jazz scholars and historians. I intend to highlight some critical issues in jazz history as they relate to New Orleans jazz musicians’ autobiographies. For readers interested in general jazz history, I recommend Ted Gioia’s (1997) The History of Jazz and Burton Peretti’s (1994) The Creation of Jazz. Both are invaluable sources. I have also found John Gennari’s (2006) Blowin’ Hot and Cool and Kathy Ogren’s (1989) The Jazz Revolution incredibly useful, particularly for researchers who look more at the discourses surrounding jazz than at studying the music’s past. Readers will also find other books and articles quoted throughout this study that can complement their journey. From chapters three through seven, I analyze the autobiographies of New Orleans jazz musicians. While I focus mainly on four texts, which I believe are complementary accounts of jazz life, I integrate other narratives to a lesser degree. One of the texts I do not emphasize as much as I originally intended is Danny Barker’s ([1986] 2016) A Life in Jazz, a text that reads differently from the other autobiographies I analyze. I still reference Barker, but I thought it

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Introduction

best to explore the complexity of his narratives in a future project. Perhaps because he was born seventeen years after Pops Foster and eleven years after Baby Dodds, his position on many of the issues they discuss is that of a detached observer. For example, while most jazz autobiographers praise or criticize specific figures, such as Jelly Roll Morton, Buddy Bolden, or Bunk Johnson, Barker adopts a sociologically nuanced perspective that merits a careful examination beyond the scope of this book. Jelly Roll Morton’s autobiography is also excluded from the present study for producing a kind of autobiographical pact (Lejeune 1989) different from the other musicians. Unlike Armstrong’s autobiography, for example, Morton’s book is presented as the outcome of an oral history project and a biography (Lomax 2001). In chapter three, I analyze notions about authenticity in jazz and how they make up the music’s ethical substance. As we shall see, musicians construct jazz as music that relies on hard work and knowledge of the fundamentals of jazz to promote spontaneity and creativity. These general rules are supported by the notions of selfhood that are explored in chapter four. In that chapter, I analyze the mode of subjection, which includes the categories of identity to which jazz rules apply. Musicians construct a sense of self that promotes and reinforces collectivism. Furthermore, jazz autobiographers use their texts as opportunities to determine who might qualify as authentic members of the world of jazz. In the fifth chapter, I analyze the autobiographies by looking at what Foucault called elaboration. The notion of elaboration allows us to analyze the implicit developmental model a community uses to determine the processes through which someone becomes a member of that community, according to the categories of identity described in chapter four. In the sixth chapter, I analyze the teleology of jazz, using Foucault’s notion of teleology to describe the implicit stages of jazz musicians. In general terms, autobiographers establish complementary roles for both young and older musicians. Furthermore, they envision the future of jazz as an extension of themselves and their community. In the seventh chapter, I look at the general frames and metaphors New Orleans jazz autobiographers used to make sense of jazz and communicate something about their music to their readers. They use terms about gender and modernity in strategic ways to both promote and defend jazz. SOME CLARIFICATIONS Throughout this book, I will use such terms as “texts,” “personal documents,” “narratives,” and “autobiography” interchangeably. I do this mostly to avoid excessive repetition of a single word, though I also acknowledge the limits of my ability to explore all the debates concerning the types of texts I analyze

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throughout the book, as my scholarly training is not in the area of autobiography and literary genres. I agree with such authors as Marlene Kadar (1992) and James Olney (1980) in their problematization of the term “autobiography” and how attempts to define it obscure and erase the diversity of forms that telling one’s story can take. Simultaneously, the socio-psychological and financial potential of the word “autobiography” allows the discursive event of narrating and constructing these jazz lives. In psychology, there is already a tradition of research on autobiography. The most extensive tradition is probably that of psychobiography. In this project, my use of that research is limited. Psychobiography is conducted, for the most part, by psychologists who study the mind or personality of an individual in depth. Their works are rich and inspiring, but their goals are different from mine. Some social psychologists have analyzed autobiographies and other personal documents in their work from constructionist and discursive perspectives by analyzing how narrators construct their sense of self and the cultural patterns they reproduce or problematize (Hollway and Jefferson 2006; Gergen and Gergen 1993; Widdicombe 1993). Their works are convergent with the analysis of such scholars as Amiri Baraka ([1963] 2002), Ronald Radano (2003), and Charles Hersch (2007), who analyze music as a historical and political phenomenon embedded in social practies and discourses. The integration of these perspectives and fields, I would argue, allows us to begin to grasp the complexities of jazz in the United States within the context of social and psychological changes within Black communities making sense and producing change in the United States. Furthermore, qualitative research, such as research conducted through semi-structured interviews, is nothing short of analyzing retrospective or autobiographical statements usually focused on a limited number of topics. In a way, an autobiography is then an interview that someone else transcribed.

Chapter 1

Subjectivation, Music, and Autobiography

Human beings, their societies, the multiple ways they exist with others, and how they make sense of the world are fascinating phenomena.1 We are perhaps one of the few creatures on this planet, if not the only one, who collectively and sometimes deliberately changes the ontological and epistemological status of the in-group and the out-group. Cultures, communities, groups, dyads, and individuals promote and reject, with varying scrutiny, ways of thinking and interacting with ourselves, others, objects, territories, institutions, ideas, and the concepts available to describe pieces of ourselves. These ways of thinking about the multiple realms of our existence also interact with the kinds of subjects they construct, who engage in multiple ways with the categories about themselves and their relations to others. Likewise, these categories are not static or merely imposed upon us from outside by utterly external influences. We bring them to life in our own ways while negotiating their meanings and uses. The complex processes through which we make sense of our existence and what we consider the meaningful realms of our lives cannot be found solely in external social forces, and neither can they be reduced to the superficies of the psychology or biology of individuals. As Judith Butler writes in Giving an Account of Oneself, “the norms by which I recognize another or, indeed, myself are not mine alone. They function to the extent they are social” (2005, 24). Furthermore, Maynes, Pierce, and Laslett argue that “lives are lived at the intersection of individual and social dynamics” (2008, 43). We are the outcome of multiple recursive, changing, contradicting, and evolving combinations of experiences that are woven in several directions at the same time. The autobiographers I study in this book articulate narratives about the self and its relationship to the world in ways that are convergent with the spirit of the quotes above. 11

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In what seems to be a combination of observation, humor, social analysis, and criticism, Danny Barker writes the following about the dynamics at Animule Hall: “The Animule Hall was a notorious joint. It was nicknamed the Animule because the patrons behaved like animals of the jungle once they entered” ([1986] 2016, 13). He then describes Joe Baggers, the manager of the Animule Hall, and his role as gatekeeper: When a young man or woman of the neighborhood made their debut at the Animule Ball it was like a coming-out party—like being presented to society. [. . .] As the candidate walked up the stairs and paid the admission the friends stood on the outside, looking on with great intent for about ten or twenty minutes. That was ample time to be viewed by Mr. Joe Baggers. After twenty minutes had passed there was a general feeling of relief if the candidate was not kicked out. [. . .] When a candidate was accepted and not chased by Joe Baggers it was considered an honor [. . .]. You had reached maturity. ([1986] 2016, 15)

This excerpt showcases a humorous social analysis of one of the places in New Orleans that featured blues. The use of language related to a debutante ball to describe the successful entry to a world of working-class music and dance seems to sneer at both rites of passage. At the same time, it highlights the power dynamics and intersubjective aspect of belonging to the world of blues and jazz. From a nominalistic perspective, the history and experience of jazz is the history of emerging and changing social categories about life, identity, bonds, and the boundaries constructed by modernity. Financial and political asymmetries are somewhat correlated with how socially privileged discourses function in our society. Through these discourses, society imposes identities on groups or individuals who are said to have or lack the qualities we have defined as vital in our world. However, we are not passive beings who contentedly or defeatedly accept the attributes society bestows upon us. We engage in multiple ways with the positions that others wish us to accept or offer to us as alternatives to explain our thoughts and actions. Personal narratives such as autobiographies provide a window or, as Bruss writes, a “sample” of the autobiographer’s “epistemology” and “personal skill” (1976, 13) that allows us access to the ways communities position themselves in relation to other discourses and attribute meanings to the essential aspects of their experience. In this chapter, I provide an outline of the explanatory framework I have been using throughout my research to study the autobiographies of jazz musicians associated with New Orleans. In the next chapter, I will examine the conditions that made jazz autobiography possible. For the most part, my approach is transdisciplinary, and, while initially trained as a

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social-community psychologist, I look at personal documents from the perspectives of several disciplines. The work of literary scholars, philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, and scholars of jazz has influenced the pages that follow. My research is grounded mostly in a reinterpretation of the concepts Michel Foucault developed in his last works, and it considers how we can use those concepts to study the experience of jazz through personal documents. ON FOUCAULT, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, AND MUSIC Michel Foucault’s works are often grouped into three different stages, a classification he also used to summarize the general perspective and approach of his writings (Hacking 2002; Veyne 2010; Lemke 2019). As he said in one interview, Three domains of genealogy are possible. First, a historical ontology of ourselves in relation to truth through which we constitute ourselves as subjects of knowledge; second, a historical ontology of ourselves in relation to a field of power through which we constitute ourselves as subjects acting on others; third, a historical ontology in relation to ethics through which we constitute ourselves as moral agents. (Foucault 1984, 351)

In general terms, these are the possible objects of genealogical inquiry. While his second stage is the one that is usually described as “genealogical,” Foucault’s investigations as a whole are considered genealogical and are not mutually exclusive (Huijer 1999; Macmillan 2011; Lemke 2019). As Martin Saar (2002) notes, Foucault’s use of the term “genealogy” has several connotations. Saar identifies three functions of genealogy: “a mode of writing history or historical method; [. . .] a mode of evaluation, i.e., as critique; [. . .] a textual practice of style” (2002, 232). One of the critical issues of the first level of genealogy is the analysis of continuities and discontinuities in the past to understand the complex contingencies that made the present possible (Saar 2002; Foucault, 1984). In the social sciences, Foucault’s concepts have inspired the study of social phenomena in a way that acknowledges them as the outcome of complex historical processes. The present study, for example, is not genealogical in itself, but I approach the autobiographies of these musicians as part of a singular moment in the history of the United States and analyze a specific group of narratives under the premise that biographers from other decades and genres will construct their own kinds of narrative somewhat at odds with those of older musicians. In other words, the underlying philosophy of this project is genealogical, but my scope is limited to how musicians associated with New

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Orleans and traditional jazz constructed themselves through autobiographies published in the 1950s and after. One implication of Foucault’s genealogical perspective in the context of jazz autobiography refers to how the discourses these musicians constructed could be revised, adapted, problematized, or dismissed by the next generation of musicians and their audiences. These changes relate to transformations in American society, African American culture, and the textual and social landscape that provided or constrained metaphors and ways of thinking about the self. At the risk of oversimplifying, think of Dodd’s fashioning of himself as a musician on the Titanic to convey the risks of playing music in certain locations. We can compare his account to the attitudes and actions of such musicians as Charles Mingus and Miles Davis. Reading Max Gordon’s (1980, chapter 14) account of Mingus and Davis at the Village Vanguard gives the impression that, more than string players on a sinking ship, they would have adopted the attitude of the pilot who might ban a passenger from flying on their plane. Social constraints, associated with editorial decisions and the complicated politics of authentication (Stepto 1991; Stein 2012; Marin 2020), are important dimensions that mediated the production of these texts. As Stein notes, “It is safe to say that the ghostwriter and editors of Swing That Music sought to make Armstrong palatable for the mostly white swing audience through various references to popular discourses and images of the American South” (2012, 82). Published originally in 1936, Swing That Music claims to be “the first history of swing music, and the men who made it, to be published in the English language” ([1936] 1993, 117). But earlier, he positively describes books about jazz written by Hugues Panassié and Robert Goffin (published in Europe) by saying, “Both of these books are carefully written and will be very interesting to anyone who wants to study modern music” (Armstrong [1936] 1993, 104). While Swing That Music does position itself in an important location regarding the landscape of discourses about jazz in the 1930s, its relationship to other books about jazz is not nearly as adversarial with jazz writers and critics as we will see in Bechet’s Treat It Gentle. In his genealogies, Foucault developed, promoted, and redefined concepts that allow us to study elements of human experience. Foucault’s (1990) notion of subjectivation, which he developed in his last works, serves in this book as a lens through which to study the autobiographies of jazz musicians and to consider how they constructed notions about the self, community, music, and their relations to others, through notions of authenticity that allowed them to establish discursive dynamics that promoted ways of being a jazz musician. In a way, Foucault’s concept of subjectivation allows researchers in the social sciences and the humanities to study subjectivity from other perspectives (May 1993; Huijer 1999; Besley and Peters 2007). May even

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describes Foucault’s last works as “approaches to the formation of subjectivity in earlier cultures” (1993, 121). In 2004, Ian Hacking published a stimulating article in which he describes the work of Foucault and that of Erving Goffman as complementary, meaning that each was analyzing different levels of similar social institutions. Furthermore, their accounts, albeit different, do not contradict each other (Hacking, 2004). Complementary relations among theoretical perspectives do not mean that the accounts are in full accord with each other; while I agree with many of the ideas posited by the authors I reference throughout this chapter, I disagree with some of their claims. However, the nature of these disagreements is mostly a matter of interpretation of the sources they used in their research, as well as a reflection of the specificity of my own research. Moreover, in the following pages, I offer my reinterpretation of Foucault’s work on subjectivation as a way to study personal narratives from a social psychological perspective. Foucault’s work can complement the scholarly study of autobiography and music in three distinct but closely related ways. First, as Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (2010) note in their extensive review of scholarship on autobiography and related genres, Foucault’s work and his analysis of discourse and technologies of the self proves useful in the critical analysis of autobiographical documents. From this perspective, personal documents are not narratives constructed and organized by individuals looking back at their past; rather, they are events that reproduce, construct, and respond to existing social dynamics from their social position. Scholars researching music have also incorporated Foucault’s work or allied critical perspectives to analyze jazz as a social and political phenomenon. According to Ajay Heble (2000), post-structuralist thinking, a category often used to classify Foucault’s work, originally paid little attention to jazz. This situation has changed and several of the scholars I cite throughout this book study jazz and the discourses that surround it from post-structuralists perspectives. Postcolonial perspectives (Heble 2000), critical race theory (Dixson and Bloome 2007), gender studies (Provost 2017; Pellegrinelli 2008), literary studies (Stein 2012), and Marxism (Kofsky 1998) have inspired critical analysis of many aspects of jazz. Furthermore, authors including Bernard Gendron (1993) have used Foucault’s notion of discursive formation to analyze changes in jazz aesthetics during the so-called Dixieland revival of the 1940s. Nadine Ehlers (2012) and Saidiya V. Hartman (1997) are also convergent with the study of jazz autobiography, for they analyze, from critical perspectives, how conceptions about race are intertwined with power. Both understand power as a social, political, and subjective phenomenon that cannot be reduced to the repressive hypothesis (Ehlers 2012; Hartman 1997). From these perspectives, notions about jazz and racial or ethnic identity can

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be understood as a set of frameworks that the majority and minorities contest and use to make individuals. Second, Foucault’s genealogical approach converges with some of the scholarship on autobiography. The structure of Elizabeth W. Bruss’s book  Autobiographical Acts (1976) parallels Foucault’s genealogical perspective of breaks and formations in which discursive practices are embedded and made possible. Throughout her book, Bruss (1976) charts the changing conceptions of the self, from the seventeenth century to the twentieth, and considers how they provide the framework for the production of autobiography. Other authors have also noted how the study of autobiographical documents has transformed over time from traditional ideas about a self-contained individual who gives a retrospective account of their life to post-structuralist conceptions of the self as a complex phenomenon at the intersection of multiple discursive relations (Fichtelberg, 1998). Music, like autobiography, is embedded in discourses and practices that make it possible and regulate its practice. The word “autobiography” is itself grounded in Western notions about the self and the possibility and desirability of giving an accurate representation of one’s past (Kadar 1992; Smith and Watson 2010). Similarly, several cultures have no word for what Westerners call music because the execution of musical instruments and the use of the human voice to carry a tune mean very little outside specific practices (Baraka [1963] 2002; Turino 2008). Musical phenomena and the discourses and practices associated with the arts of sound are a fertile object of study for genealogically oriented research. As Ronald Radano writes, “We cannot assume ‘music’ to possess a consistent ontology somehow detached from the social forces that shaped it” (2003, 41). In How Music Expresses Ideas, Sidney Finkelstein (1970) problematizes the idea that music is a pure and abstract art form that bears no resemblance to the world or to other art forms. He argues that changes in what we call classical music “have corresponded to changes in European society from the 15th through the 19th centuries” (Finkelstein 1970, 1). Furthermore, musical practices tend to be embedded in ways of understanding the relationships between the roles of performers, audiences, their societies, and political action (Mattern 1998). Music, then, is a form of a universal language that transcends more worldly ways of expressing ideas (Finkelstein 1970; Storr 1993). Its nature and beauty emerge from its local relationship to the geographies in which it is born, as well as its ability to be reinterpreted and imagined in other horizons. In the field of jazz history, many authors have identified changes in the vocabulary used by musicians, journalists, critics, supporters, and detractors to classify and define the genre. For example, John Gennari (2006) traces the history of jazz criticism and identifies key issues shaping the

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discourses used to make sense of jazz. Definitions of jazz are intimately tied to the ever-changing definitions and contradictions of the United States itself (Gennari 2006; Ogren 1989). This supports genealogical inquiries into how jazz musicians constructed themselves and the terms they used to make sense of their personal and collective lives, along with the social dynamics they produced, reproduced, and resisted. Finally, various authors have, albeit in different ways, highlighted or developed perspectives on Foucault’s work as a core perspective to understand human subjectivity (May 1993; Butler 1997; Besley and Peters 2007). In a way, many scholarly works on autobiography are studies of different aspects of subjectivity. Furthermore, there is a long history of social-scientific research that carefully analyzes personal documents. Many well-known psychologists (William James, Gordon Allport), psychoanalysts (Sigmund Freud), and sociologists (Erving Goffman, Norman Denzin) have used personal narratives as sources to study subjectivity and its relation to social forces. From a Marxist perspective, but proposing an analysis that is commensurable with a genealogical account of jazz and personal narratives, Frank Kofsky writes the following about the successive changes in the history of jazz: In each case, a given kind of music yielded to a newer one that was its dialectical opposite, destroying the superficial aspects of the older style so that the more profound values they once had expressed might live again in a new form. These successive artistic revolutions—or more specifically, the qualities, attitudes, worldviews, and so on, that they transmit from one group of performers to their successors—are the essence of the jazz tradition. (1998, 136)

The autobiographies of jazz musicians are the complex outcome of a community of musicians who construct a musical practice through which they collectively project and interact with the world. SUBJECTIVATION Foucault’s last works are sometimes misleadingly described as books about ethics that promote a more positive appraisal of humanity than his earlier books. While some see his use of the word “ethics” as indicating a concern with individual freedom, “Foucault’s concept of ethics does not point to individual self-designs, but to a collective way of living” (Lemke 2019, 315). According to Paul Veyne (2010), Foucault’s word choices to describe his projects and construct his main concepts were sometimes misleading. Some read Foucault’s use of words such as “ethics” or “morality” through their own understanding of such terms. As Kenneth J. Gergen (1992) notes,

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Westerners’ conceptions of morality are rooted in individualism. Such a worldview probably influenced the reception of Foucault’s ideas. At the same time, the ambiguity of these terms allows new possibilities for researchers in the social sciences and the humanities. When Foucault talks and writes about ethics, then, he is not constructing an ethical model for others to follow but instead developing a conceptual framework to understand how individuals make sense of themselves and the practices of self-formation attached to their notions of the self. From this perspective, the analysis of jazz autobiography from a Foucauldian perspective is, first and foremost, an inquiry into the ways these musicians defined themselves and their relations to others and the world they lived in. Social, cross-cultural, and cultural research in psychology has paid much attention in the past several decades to the differences between individualism and collectivism as a fundamental dimension that shapes how we view the world and behave (Triandis 2001; Ross and Nisbett 1991). Individualistic cultures “are characterized by an emphasis on personal goals, interests, and preferences” (Ross and Nisbett 1991, 181). Furthermore, their sense of self is “autonomous and independent from their in-groups” (Triandis 2001, 909). Of course, this does not mean that people from individualistic cultures are autonomous; rather, that is how they tend to perceive themselves, which in turn influences how they will formulate an ethics or narrative about themselves. On the other hand, collectivistic cultures “are characterized by an emphasis on family and community-based relations and values” (Ross and Nisbett 1991, 181). The development of the self as well as the narratives individuals construct about their lives are also grounded on the goals and ethics of their groups and communities. Individualism and collectivism then can give rise to or arise from different conceptions about the self and the role of others in one’s growth. In a country such as the United States, individualism and collectivism are inherited through patterns of socialization depending on one’s cultural heritage. While mainstream North American culture leans toward individualism, there are pockets of collectivism where such patterns of interaction are transmitted across generations (Ross and Nisbett 1991). These ideas will be useful in the next chapters for discussing notions about subjectivation and how they are taken. The concept of subjectivation is somewhat complex and ambiguous because it attempts to consider the complexity and ambiguity of the human experience as both subjective and social. According to Andreas Oberprantacher and Andrei Siclodi, What becomes literally manifest as “subjectivation” is most notably the tension between the promising “idea” of autonomous subjectivity on the one hand and

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the discouraging “reality” of heteronomous subjection on the other—two opposites that are amalgamated into a unique and confusing term. (2016, 1)

If we accept the world as complex and human experience as the outcome of multiple forces, some of our concepts, at least the ones naming the most abstract processes of our objects, will likewise be complex and ambiguous. As Sandra Mitchell writes, “the world is indeed complex; so, too, should be our representations and analyses of it” (2009, 11). From a theoretical and methodological perspective, we can think of Foucault’s notion of subjectivation as one of the many kinds of what we have come to call discourse analysis. “Discourse” and “discourse analysis” are umbrella terms that encompass various approaches to the study of different forms of utterances (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002; Howarth 2000). In The Archeology of Knowledge, Foucault (1972) defined discourse as the group of statements that constructed particular objects and the general frames for what can be said about them. Discourses are made possible, and sometimes are regulated, by institutions that society considers legitimate (Foucault 1971; Veyne 2010; Lemke 2019). Other discourses and practices, like the ones I am interested in, go beyond the scope of interdictions of society at large and our legal system (Foucault 1990; Veyne 2010; Frank 1998). The notion of subjectivation then provides a way of analyzing these practices and understandings of the self, which exist at the borders of institutionalized forms of power, without conceiving of the subject as an autonomous, self-contained entity. They are taken by some as practices of freedom because the government or other institutions do not regulate them; yet, just like other forms of power, they produce kinds of individuals by promoting and constraining possible practices and identifications. There is no subjectivation outside dyads, groups, communities, or other levels or forms of social arrangement or interaction. Subjectivation is always associated with the existence of categories of individuals, which will always be social because they cannot exist outside of relations to others (Pichón-Rivière 1985). The introduction to The Use of Pleasure (1990) is, on a much smaller scale, the equivalent of what Foucault endeavored in The Archeology of Knowledge (1972). In Archeology, he deployed a rich conceptual architecture outlining his thought and the possibilities for a genealogical and critical account of what we take for granted as knowledge. In The Use of Pleasure, Foucault describes the study of subjectivation as “a history of the way in which individuals are urged to constitute themselves as subjects of moral conduct” (1990, 29), which would deal with ways of knowing and acting upon the self. Since my focus is on how musicians from New Orleans constructed the general frames through which to understand the jazz life, I will not rely so much on the language of ethics and morality that Foucault used.

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These autobiographies’ concerns are still ethical, but I will write from a constructionist perspective and privilege concepts related to the production of meaning and subject positions within discourses. Foucault used four interrelated concepts to analyze the components of subjectivation: ethical substance, mode of subjection, elaboration, and telos. Foucault defined “ethical substance” as “the way in which the individual has to constitute this or that part of himself as the prime material of his moral conduct” (1990, 26). These are the behaviors that in a particular culture or group are relevant or problematized in the context of “ethical judgment” (Foucault 1984, 353). We can think of the ethical substance as the general way in which individuals evaluate the essential elements of their actions and subjectivity. One of the essential notions used by the musicians I discuss throughout this book is that of authenticity. Their definitions of authenticity qualify some practices and presentations of the self as appropriate and other forms of playing or motivation as inappropriate. Authenticity is a contested and complex term that ties our performances to notions of truth. As E. Patrick Johnson suggests, “there are ways in which authenticating discourse enables marginalized people to counter oppressive representations of themselves” (2003, 3). Authenticity is also a moralizing concept that allows a group to continually constitute itself and determine the possible behaviors between members of a category and out-group dynamics (Johnson 2003; Radano 2003; Hersch 2007). However, in its relationship to possible ways of framing our actions, authenticity is a double-edged sword, for it partly relies on and might reproduce notions about otherness held by majority groups. As Regina Bendix writes, “The central inclusion of authenticity into definitional practices is [. . .] an invitation to exclusionary politics” (1997, 98). By relying on the same ontological assumptions to qualify human experience, acts of appropriation can fall into the trap of the same dynamics of oppression. The works of authors such as Bendix (1997) and Radano (2003) highlight the intricacies and complexities of notions of authenticity and how they reproduce racist dynamics by creating associations between authenticity, race, primitivism, fear, and nostalgia toward non-urban forms of living. In their analysis of how John Lomax marketed and exploited Leadbelly, Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor (2007) pay attention to how Leadbelly’s music was marketed using notions and images that audiences would associate with an aura of authenticity. They write, “Much of Leadbelly’s appeal, not to mention his fortune and fame, both when he was alive and after his death, derived from a racist view that the most authentic black culture was also the most primitive” (Barker and Taylor 2007, 22). In her account of the institutionalization of notions of authenticity through notions of folklore, Bendix accounts for “different lenses of Othering” (1997, 126) that were at play in

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the desire to collect and preserve what were thought to be the salient qualities of the populations in the United States outside of the mainstream. Even when reproducing racist stereotypes might not be a narrator’s intention, some of the force of notions of authenticity comes from an essentialism that can be racist, especially when the terms are used to mediate the relationship between minority groups and majority groups. The use of notions of authenticity and its performance can sometimes unknowingly reinforce uneven power dynamics, even when the objective is the opposite. In Foucault’s work, “mode of subjection” is defined as “the way in which the individual establishes his relation to the rule and recognizes himself as obliged to put it into practice” (1990, 27) or “the way in which people are invited or incited to recognize their moral obligations” (1984, 353). Different practices, such as those problematized or taken into account by an ethical substance, are associated with the kinds of subject one imagines oneself to be (Foucault 1990). While the mode of subjection can be analyzed in several ways, I am specifically interested in its relationship to categories and notions used to understand the self. In the history of jazz, certain rhythms and harmonies are associated with specific ways of understanding and presenting the self. For example, bebop changes the role of the melody, appropriate harmonies, and patterns for soloing, and involves different attitudes and ways of interacting with the audience. There are both continuities and discontinuities in how New Orleans jazz and bebop musicians understood themselves as members of a musical tradition. Jazz’s mode of subjection is grounded in a collectivistic sense of self as well as the development of a frame that allowed jazz musicians to define the qualities of musicians, their relationships to the world, and the qualities of the audience. It is an affirmation of their categories of identity through notions of authenticity by which they affirm and assert their power, requiring potential insiders to understand themselves through the eyes of African American musicians. Reva Marin’s (2020) analysis of white jazz musicians’ strategies of authentication shows the complex and paradoxical dynamics of essentialist notions about authenticity, race, and jazz, and the need for white autobiographers to justify their membership to jazz by claiming to have legitimate connections with Black musicians. Foucault defines “elaboration” as the “ethical work [. . .] that one performs on oneself, not only in order to bring one’s conduct into compliance with a given rule, but to attempt to transform oneself into the ethical subject of one’s behavior” (1990, 27). In other words, how is a subject supposed to regulate their own conduct in order to grow into a category of being? While Foucault defined elaboration mostly in terms of individuals who see themselves as their own masters, for lessons were taken voluntarily even when they had teachers, New Orleans jazz musicians’ sense of “elaboration” incorporates

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a consideration of the broader social conditions over which individuals and oppressed groups have little control. On the other hand, the notion of telos is related to stages in one’s life (Foucault 1990). This concept is used to analyze how the practices and categories being problematized by the other units of subjectivation are embedded in the stages of life (Foucault 1990). In broader terms, the so-called stages of human development that we take for granted are social constructions that specify different modalities of being for individuals throughout their lifespan (Ariès 1962; Nelson 2007). The same applies to the social categories or identities that we construct for ourselves and others. In their self-concepts and interactions with others, New Orleans musicians assumed a more or less linear and progressive process of developing musical subjects, which corresponded more to mastery of their craft than to biological growth. The intersubjective and collective experience of jazz is also performed through statements that indicate the dialogical relationship between the musicians and their music in ways that turn jazz into an entity and subject of elaboration and telos. Dodds ([1959] 2002) and Armstrong ([1954] 1986) recognize the place of the riverboats in their developments as musicians. In Satchmo, Armstrong writes that playing on the Sidney was “a great advancement in my musical career” ([1954] 1986, 181). In Swing That Music, he places the same riverboats at the center of the development of jazz by writing, “When New Orleans began to go red hot like this, jazz began to spread, little by little, onto the big excursion boats that used to play the Mississippi River ports” ([1936] 1993, 16). The music is not only a collection of sounds they helped develop; it is an extension of their sense of self, with its own identity and stages of development. There is a fifth concept that more or less traverses the units described above, but can be treated separately for the insights it provides about how individuals and groups self-constitute their existence. In The Use of Pleasure, Foucault used the notion of stylization to analyze “a few general traits that served as a framework” for sexual behaviors (1990, 36). In other words, in different societies, there are specific fields of experience from which individuals draw out or fill aspects of their lives relevant to them. While some authors emphasize the creative and liberating power of stylization, for it is more or less associated with practices of “freedom” (Besley and Peters 2007; Mascaretti 2019), these practices and choices cannot be reduced to spontaneous individual inventions; they instead refer to the cultural resources from which individuals draw materials to fashion aspects of their lives (Veyne 2010; Foucault 2001b). I would also argue that stylization is revealed through the metaphors and similes used to explain an activity. The stylization of other musicians as relatives is used as a metaphor to explain both the behaviors and the emotional

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attachments of members of a musical ensemble. The way New Orleans musicians treated each other did not come from manuals about musicianship but from models of interaction of family life, from which they borrowed aspects to build and create bonds among themselves. Stylizations are embedded in the subjectivities, experiences, and games of power opened up by other fields of experience. Sports, for example, provided bebop musicians with a way of self-representation that was probably not readily available for early New Orleans jazz musicians (Early 1993). Each of these concepts allows us to study, in depth, different aspects and effects of how collective formations create meaning about themselves, the world, and others. As Saar suggests, genealogical projects try to “reveal ontological effects” (2002, 237). These autobiographies reveal the general frames these musicians used to understand their experience and how they co-created ways of seeing and acting in the world. By refusing the identities and histories that their society imposed on them and rooting their music and subjectivity in their culture, they paved the way for other possible ways of interacting with the world and themselves. SUBJECTIVATION AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY Foucault’s conceptual matrix was developed and refined during his study of prescriptive texts. Modern autobiographies are not quite like the texts Foucault analyzed in The Use of Pleasure; however, like the documents he analyzed, they are documents about living. Instead of being manuals in the art of existence, the autobiographies of these musicians construct a retrospective account of their lives. Such narrative reflections engage in multiple ways with the main themes that gave meaning to the world in which they lived. Many contemporary scholars of autobiography stress the social nature of autobiographical narratives. Furthermore, some authors, such as William E. Paden (1988), Huck Gutman (1988), and Arthur Frank (1998), have explored different forms of personal narratives using Foucault’s insights. Personal documents, including but not reduced to autobiographies, are simultaneously modes of constructing the self and of representing it. From a discursive perspective, they embody the generic and stylistic conventions of a time and place and the historical conditions that make subjectivity and identity possible. From a contractual perspective, Philippe Lejeune (1989) argues that autobiographies create a pact and request to be taken, at least in our societies, as a more or less truthful account of the narrator’s life. Moreover, as Martin Huijer writes, “in expressing truths about what I do or think [. . .], “I’ constitutes a certain relation to myself’ (1999, 67). Such so-called truths about the self are, of course, fiction and fantasy (Lejeune 1989; Eakin 1988;

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Kadar 1992), which does not make them less real. Lejeune (1989) already argued that people seem to have a draft of their autobiography, but we also have schemas from which we infer biographies of others (Goffman 1986). Our societies and cultures provide us with the general frameworks from which to construct our stories and imagine others’ lives. Self-invention is always a collective effort, for it is related to the categories of being that are imposed upon us, the ones we choose, the identities we resist, and the multiplicity of selves we adopt throughout our existence. In his last works, Foucault (2001a) analyzed how writing about oneself in Greco-Roman culture was a fundamental practice in the discipline of the self. As Paden (1988) notes, diaries and other forms of “personal” writing in the past have been associated in different moments with practices of selfobservation and self-knowledge guided by imperatives on how to live one’s life. Rousseau’s Confessions, which frequently figures in the analysis of the history of modern autobiographical practices, is a text that “reveals and celebrates the atomistic, autonomous self” (Gutman 1988, 100). The invention of the autonomous self, still a prized notion in our world, is embedded in the ways we fashion who we are, narrate our lives, and give advice to others. According to Paul John Eakin, “autobiography is better understood as a ceaseless process of identity formation in which new versions of the past evolve to meet the constantly changing requirements of the self in each successive present” (1988, 36). We could also argue that autobiographies are born through a process of negotiation between individuals who write stories about themselves and the groups and communities of which they are members. As Eakin later writes in Living Autobiographically, “we do not invent our identities out of whole cloth. Instead, we draw on the resources of the cultures we inhabit to shape them” (2008, 22). Autobiographies are not so much about the individual, but about the collective formations that produce such individuals and deem it relevant or necessary to tell certain stories. As William H. Kenney argues, Louis Armstrong’s autobiography Satchmo is more than “individual introspection”; it is “a group biography in which the self is enmeshed in family and neighborhood” (1991, 51). The form of what we call autobiographies is also a product of historical conventions and the value our society places on the narration of specific individuals and experiences (Bruss 1976). As James Olney (1980) argues, they are elusive documents whose boundaries are often blurred by how individuals perform narratives of their past. From a socio-psychological perspective, the nature of these documents is less relevant than the conditions that make them possible and the notions of self they construct. Historical accuracy and generic conventions might yield less than meaning. The way autobiographers draw connections with their personal and historical past also provides insight into the complex relationship between broader traditions and discourses and

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personal life, as well as the individualistic and collectivistic trends that influence their views of the world. I suggested above the relationship between cultural orientation (collectivism and individualism) and ethnicity, as outlined in social and cross-cultural research. These dimensions, then, will play a role in how Black autobiographers assemble textual performances of their life through autobiography. As Roger Rosenblatt writes, White autobiographers whose lives have progressed within a linear conception of history, that is, who have advanced in step with the advancement of their understanding of reality, find a stopping point and “end” their lives at it. But black autobiographers whose lives have progressed within a cyclical conception of history find no stopping point on the circle essentially different from any other point. (1980, 179)

This reveals a collectivistic cosmovision in which someone’s life, or their legacy, extends over time, but it is also dependent on their communities. Jazz autobiographies, at least the ones discussed in this book, fit Rosenblatt’s description quite well. Sidney Bechet’s Treat It Gentle might be the most explicit in its cyclical conception of time, but similar patterns are found in other autobiographies. SUBJECTIVATION AND PEOPLE OF COLOR IN THE UNITED STATES The notion of subjectivation has been used for the most part to analyze discourses or practices of individuals who, in general terms, are recognized as convergent with the groups who are conceived as members of the same category as the “producers” or “authenticators” of legitimate discourse. These groups and individuals are not the sources of discourse, but their experience, behaviors, and speech are considered in general terms to be, if not the norm, then the scale against which other practices are measured. They are only producers inasmuch as they are products of the knowledge and social dynamics that make sense of their existence and allow them to behave and think of themselves as such. While we might have different sentiments about these kinds of individuals, the “colonizer” and the “colonized” are both products and producers of these categories, which support asymmetrical dynamics between those groups. The dynamics of colonization and oppression can partly change on some levels while remaining the same on other levels by negotiating categories about the self. The increased visibility of voices that are otherwise ignored can challenge the apparent stability of literary genres

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and the rituals of performing the self. As Stepto (1991) suggests, the evolution of African American letters cannot be neatly classified within the same genres used to analyze the work of white authors because their writing goes beyond the parameters and disciplinary conventions of the white canon. Graham Burchell (1991), citing the work of Paul Veyne and Vaclav Havel, suggests that we must consider the intricate relationship between subjectivity and politics when power is exercised in ways that are at odds with how subjects define themselves. As Robert B. Stepto (1991) and Nadine Ehlers (2012) argue, important critical lines of social and literary inquiry have paid limited attention to definitions of the social, the community, and the self that address the layers of social and psychological processes of minority groups living in racist societies. The experience of people of color in the United States cannot be reduced or translated into the sociological, psychoanalytical, or psychological explanations of “single-self-conscious” individuals who can easily imagine having bonds with the “leaders” of a society. As W. E. B. Du Bois writes, double consciousness entails a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” ([1903] 1994, 2). The social and psychological status that Du Bois describes is quite different from the kinds of subjects Foucault envisioned when he used the notion of subjectivation. However, Foucault (1990) knew well that the texts he analyzed were written by and for individuals of a certain status in their societies. The autobiographies of jazz musicians, then, belong to another level of subjectivation, one in which a collective is not asked to identify with those in power but rather for its members to recognize themselves as a social and racial other, and to fashion their sense of self not only through the discourses provided by society at large but also through meanings and practices embedded in their cultural past. Du Bois’s double consciousness is not quite the generalized other that George Herbert Mead (1934) studied. Mead’s other is convergent, and its imagined or actual feedback influences the self, while Du Bois’s other is grounded in the imagined or actual feedback of an asymmetrically divergent other who is recognized by society as a producer of discourse. Just like Du Bois, jazz musicians including Bechet, Dodds, Armstrong, Collins, and Foster knew that the world of the United States, with the social dynamics and values it held, was not wholly theirs. They also shared a rich cultural history and values that were not found in white culture. The autobiographies of jazz musicians are a textual performance of “mixed contacts” (Goffman 1986, 12) in which an individual, stigmatized by society, engages in social interactions and dynamics with those who might be prejudiced toward them. Their narratives are much more than that, but this possibility lurks within the potential encounters with members of other communities in the United States. Our sense of self is intrinsically intersubjective

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(Pichón-Rivière 1985; Steele 2010; Ehlers 2012), and racial dynamics in the United States are embedded in a discursive framework that polices the potential subjectivities and behaviors according to someone’s skin color and inferred dispositions (Ehlers 2012). In her discussion of the possibility of a Black person “passing” as white, Nadine Ehlers writes, The very possibility of passing is only ever tenuous or provisional as it relies on those around the individual recognizing and validating the performance of white subjectivity. It is the reader, rather than the passer, who at one and the same time enables the performance of race executed in the pass and constitutes the performance. (2012, 62–63)

However, the same expectations are imposed by both majority individuals and members of one’s own community when such interactions are, for one reason or another, mediated by categories of self that place individuals in racial or ethnic categories. It might be worth asking if these discursive imperatives have a similar role as the stereotype threat in one’s behavior and mental state. As Claude M. Steele writes, I believe stereotype threat is a standard predicament of life. It springs from intersubjectivity—the fact that as members of society we have a pretty good idea of what other members of our society think about lots of things, including the major groups and identities in society. (2010, 5)

These stereotype threats influence how we experience certain situations of mixed contacts (Steele 2010; Spencer, Logel, and Davies 2016), which can play a role in how we narrate ourselves in certain circumstances. In our everyday life and in virtually any social interaction, we expect that our performances are taken not as a performance, but as sincere (Goffman 1986; Goffman 1959). Both racial concepts and notions about authenticity introduce additional layers in the fundamentally intersubjective processes of our lives, where an interlocutor—one with a potentially asymmetrical status in the same world we live in—has been given, through discourse and through our social institutions, the authority to qualify performances as authentic or not. As if they revealed deep “truths” about ourselves. Many of the musicians who made up the early cohort of New Orleans jazz were born only a couple of decades after after the abolition of slavery. By no means did the legal end of slavery represent a complete break with modes of subjection grounded in the racialization of human beings. At the same time, as Saidiya V. Hartman (1997) argues, slavery was based not solely on the grounds of conceiving the other merely as property but also on complex and paradoxical discourses about “the ways that the recognition of humanity

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and individuality” (5) of slaves was constructed; these discourses were the object and vehicle for slaves’ subjugation. The discourses of “freedom” that emerged after the abolition of slavery relied, as some discourses still do today, on the construction of race as an essence and on productive mechanisms of creating subjects that continue to reproduce ways of controlling Black bodies (Hartman 1997). But most of the authors I have quoted throughout this chapter argue, power, in our societies, is rarely an all-encompassing phenomenon puppeteering resigned shells of flesh and bone. AUTHENTICITY AND MICRO-GOVERNMENTALITIES One of the consequences of the ideas discussed above is the possibility of studying levels of power that operate parallel to and below the overt prescriptions made by larger social forces. Acts of oppression can seldom be comprehensive. Power, in most societies, is not concerned with every aspect of individuals’ lives. Furthermore, power exists in the presence of a multiplicity of possible behaviors or ways of being, some of which are regulated while others are ignored (Foucault 1990; Lemke 2019; May 1993). These spaces at the periphery of power’s sight allow for the configuration of resistance and the emergence of lower-level forms of governability with corresponding codes and forms of subjection. These micro-governmentalities are also ways in which otherwise oppressed groups assert their power by establishing possible definitions and dynamics within and between insiders and outsiders. Foucault (2007) used the notion of governmentality to describe and analyze the complex web of somewhat complementary practices and knowledge that construct humans as a population and as objects of intervention. If governmentality works by producing subjects as a kind of reality that must be studied and managed, perhaps micro-governmentalities emerge through the dual processes of desubjectivation and subjectivation. In this case, a community uses criteria that are relevant to a group of practices as a way of establishing the contours of potential subjects of that community and subjecting individuals to its norms. I am not suggesting that this concept of microgovernmentality perfectly parallels what Foucault called governmentality. My goal is instead to stress how the social life and organization of otherized groups in a society can produce its own layer of power (both repressive and productive) over its members. The other aspects of governmentality, such as the history of administrative practices in the Western world (Foucault 2007), are not yet relevant to the level of organization I am studying. Perhaps we can say that in the same way that governmentalities imply and produce potential subjectivities, micro-governmentalities, in turn, create micro-subjectivations. Micro-subjectivations are not just an extension or a

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consequence of power/knowledge relations trickling down from politico-legal power to other levels of social organization. At the same time, they are not just forms of resistance that oppose governmentality and the possible subjectivities promoted and internalized by members of the majority or the elite. Moreover, they cannot be reduced to the original and free constructions of one’s subjectivity. In one way or another, they are all of the above, at least to a degree. Danny Barker’s ([1986] 2016) description of Animule Hall, discussed at the beginning of this chapter, is a short tale that places social dynamics and power in the form of micro-governmentalities at the center of the locations where early jazz was played. Furthermore, the successful completion of the rite of passage he describes is embedded in the hierarchical and emotional life of the debutantes and their friends. Drawing on the work of Kevin Hetherington, Charles Hersch notes that while the locations associated with early jazz in New Orleans had the potential to allow and encourage practices that “transgress traditional boundaries,” by acting as sites of resistance, they “enact their own systems of power” (2007, 51). In this sense, jazz autobiography also works as narration of some of the power dynamics these musicians navigated, reinforced, and perhaps established. We see some resentment toward the earlier generation of jazz autobiographers in Barker’s A Life in Jazz. Barker describes what young musicians experienced in the following terms: This strict period was trying on a young musician who was just beginning, because there were so many youngsters grabbing up musical instruments. One of the bitter experiences you had to tolerate in silence was that the old veterans saw to it that a youngster did not get a big head, or that his reputation did not exceed his ability. (Barker [1986] 2016, 36)

The process of becoming a jazz musician thus entails a complex set of cultural and power dynamics, some aimed at constructing, enforcing, and reproducing the emerging jazz culture. The notion of authenticity is political, as are the practices it supports (Umbach and Humphrey 2018). In jazz, and perhaps in other forms of artistic expression, there are remarkable power negotiations through acts of authentication. Power through authenticity in the autobiographies of early jazz musicians, however, bears the scars of otherness through the pervasive hierarchical organization of sounds imagined in the racialized landscape of the United States. As Radano (2003) analyzes, notions of authenticity, as promoted in the nineteenth century by Sir Walter Scott, gave the public ways to codify the asymmetric relationships among different groups using essentialist notions about human groups that produced and reinforced otherness.

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It is a vulnerable and ambiguous game of power in which someone’s perceived vulnerability allows them to control certain narratives about the self and dynamics among individuals. Likewise, financial success is guaranteed not for the artists but for those who control the broader infrastructure that gives access to commercial domains and sites of performance. In a conversation with Jean-Pierre Barou and Michelle Perrot, Foucault asserts that in systems of surveillance, compared to previous and more expansive systems of power, “There is no need for arms, physical violence, material constraints. Just a gaze. An inspecting gaze, a gaze which each individual under its weight will end by interiorizing to the point that he is his own overseer” (Foucault 1980a, 155). Of course, power dynamics are also productive, and the emotional bonds musicians develop with each other also allow them to enact this surveillance, which, in the context of a live performance, might be a key factor in the coordination of individual instrumentalists playing together. At the same time, oppressed groups can also reproduce or borrow images that stem from some of the same dynamics of society at large, albeit in different ways, seeing as those discourses still make up some elements of their culture. Sarah Provost (2017), for example, analyzes how gender dynamics in the jazz community, in general terms, are not so different from those of American society at large. In their autobiographies, New Orleans jazz musicians borrow, reinterpret, or engage with certain ideas from American society. Sometimes, what they “borrow” is in the function of what they can communicate. Dodds ([1959] 2002), for example, did not need to reference the Titanic in his description of what playing at a jazz club entails, yet, in using such a story as a metaphor, he communicates to his readers the ethical nature of performing jazz. Perhaps one of the significant themes that unite the narratives of the jazz community in the twentieth century is authenticity. Authenticity is a strange construct that is associated with placing value on objects in the context of art history and museums (Trilling 1972). Regarding the significance of the term to discourses on human beings, Trilling adds, “its provenance is the museum, where persons expert in such matters test whether objects of art are what they appear to be or are claimed to be, and therefore worth the price that is asked for them” (1972, 93). During Western modernity, the term was increasingly used to qualify individuals and how they must relate to themselves and society (Trilling 1972; Guignon 2004). For the first generation of jazz musicians, authenticity is embedded in micro-games of truth that establish appropriate bonds between members of a tradition and what are considered legitimate musical practices. It allows them to have power over others, define the contours of the in-group, and make sense of and strengthen their sense of self and collective will. As Arthur Frank writes, “power operates by convincing us of the selves we want and need to

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become, in order to be ‘true’ to ourselves” (1998, 333). Moreover, as Trilling brilliantly ironizes, “if one is true to one’s own self for the purpose of avoiding falsehood to others, is one being truly true to one’s own self?” (1972, 9). Notions of authenticity or acts of authentication do not exist outside of power, subjectivation, and intersubjectivity. From a Foucauldian perspective, power is not so much negative but productive (Lemke 2019; Butler 1997). This view of power problematizes the notion of authenticity as a quality that exists in the world or inside subjects and can be ascertained by some. Authenticity, then, is being produced and performed strategically to problematize or create hierarchies and different kinds of relationships among individuals. Trilling writes, “The concerted effort of a culture or of a segment of a culture to achieve authenticity generates its own conventions, its generalities, its commonplaces, its maxims” (1972, 105). It is potentially a double-edged sword, especially when oppressed groups rely on notions of authenticity to give meaning to their practice. It is used collectively to authenticate certain practices and behaviors, as well as to determine those authorized to partake in them and how to integrate others. At the same time, it can reproduce broader social and political dynamics that identify individuals with narrow categories of being and expect everyone who might fit that category to behave as an authentic representative of whatever identity they embody in social interaction. My goal is not to dismiss New Orleans musicians for using notions of authenticity but to understand how they constructed a sense of self through this multifaced concept. At times, to keep some semblance of objectivity, this reflection sounds more normative than I would have liked. Moreover, while I do my best to understand how and why they could have relied on notions of authenticity, I must admit that I am biased against using the term for the way it places us in relations of power, although there is no social life outside power dynamics (Foucault 1979; Butler 1997). According to Guignon (2004), there are two elements in our modern sense of authenticity: introspection and meditation in the expression of the true self. However, in early jazz, it seems to involve the expression of the true self and of the self linked to the musicians’ cultural heritage. There is less emphasis on introspection and meditation because it already occurs in the other aspects of authenticity, and, rather than individualistic introspection, it is the active recognition and reading of oneself as a member of a tradition. Authenticity is nothing less than a complex performance that simultaneously negotiates the subject’s identities, positions, and the nature and value of their performances and craft. The autobiographies of New Orleans musicians rely on the language of authenticity to assert their narrative, social, and, to a lesser degree, commercial power; collectively, this represents the collection of musical practices we have come to call jazz. These autobiographies

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complement each other, much like musicians playing in a band, weaving in and out of the themes they share and inventing a way of life that emphasizes their values. Their autobiographies not only show pockets of, dare we say, freedom that they found and created through musical practices; they invite us to a collectivistic cosmovision. NOTE 1. Parts of this chapter were previously published in Jazz Perspectives and used with permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.tandfonline.com/. EspadaBrignoni, Teófilo. 2017. “Complexity and Ambivalence: The Ethics of Jazz in Sidney Bechet’s and Warren Dodd’s Autobiographies.” Jazz Perspectives 10(2–3) 243–261. https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjaz20/current.

Chapter 2

Storying Jazz: Bechet, Dodds, Collins, and Foster

In a letter to Dempsey Travis, jazz musician Franz Jackson gave statements about his career and expressed gratitude for Travis’s help (Jackson, n.d. a).1 Statements about one’s life are tellable when they are a novelty or play a role in a specific story (Popkin 1993). In a world like ours, then, the advancement of a musician’s career, or the opportunity to secure a job, depends in part on what they or others can say about their lives. In another letter, Jackson tells his interlocutor that maybe he should write an autobiography on account of many others doing the same (Jackson, n.d. b). Jackson never published an autobiography, yet accounts of his life in correspondence, newspapers, and promotional materials (“You don’t have to go to New Orleans,” n.d.) positioned him as a representative of authentic, traditional jazz. Jazz fans were assured there was no need to travel to New Orleans to listen to traditional jazz, for Franz Jackson was playing at the Red Arrow in Stickney, Illinois (“They’re playing real jazz,” n.d.; “You don’t have to go to New Orleans,” n.d.). As William Kenney writes, Musicians like Art Hodes, Punch Miller, Bud Jacobson, Milt Hinton, and Franz Jackson would follow the musical paths traced by the Jazz Age greats and would explore their own jazz strategies, but they would enjoy few of the supporting economic, political, and social conditions which had made jazz the central cultural experience of the 1920s. (1993, 147)

While the material conditions that allowed musicians in Chicago to thrive during the 1920s changed, the music was associated with an aesthetic of authenticity. Furthermore, notions about the music might have preceded the musicians who traveled from New Orleans to cities in the North, creating associations between sounds and space that reflected positively on those identified with the birthplace of jazz. As Ted Gioia writes, “One of the supreme 33

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ironies of the history of New Orleans jazz is that so much of it took place in Chicago” (1997, 45). Autobiographical statements are not an exception in jazz, and they cannot be reduced only to published autobiographies. As Daniel Stein analyzes, interviews as well as the titles of songs and albums together form a complex “web of autobiographical significances” (Stein 2012, 15). These statements contribute much to the oceans of ink that play a role in and mediate how we perceive jazz. As Frederick Garber writes, All of these aspects of jazz, its ideologies, discourses, politics, emerge from the conditions we read at the center of jazz, the conditions that define where the power and privilege lie. We have put at the center of jazz what finally has to be seen as a circumstance of being, a way of being in the world. (1995, 79–80)

Rituals and performances that allow musicians to wield autobiographical statements, perhaps inadvertently, can slightly shift the power dynamics of jazz in American society. The story of Bessie Smith’s death was altered and exaggerated in a way that allowed producer John Hammond to exploit her death to sell more records (Kofsky 1998; Gennari 2006). On the other hand, as Daniel Stein argues, Armstrong’s second autobiography “reaffirms the autobiographer’s narrative authority about his life” (2012, 95) by revising the stories others had written about him (Stein 2012). In this chapter, I’m interested in providing background on the history of jazz as it pertains to the autobiographies of the first jazz musicians, drawing on the work of historians and scholars of jazz. In the second half of the chapter, I explore some of the issues related to the autobiographies I study in this book. As a social psychologist, I am concerned not purely with the historical or literary, but with the subjective and intersubjective frameworks revealed through the musicians’ narrative performances. Narratives always exist in a context with which they interact in complex ways. JAZZ’S PAST The early history of jazz is a somewhat hazy story filled with myths and hyperbolic accounts of individuals’ lives. At the same time, it is an incomplete history that focuses mainly on the contributions of men. The contributions of women to early jazz were invisibilized by those writing the first accounts of the early years of the music (Provost 2017; Pellegrinelli 2008), including the autobiographers, whose accounts of female collaborators are, for the most part, an appreciation of their abilities in comparison to male instrumentalists.

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Jazz is known and celebrated as an American art form mainly created by African Americans in the South of the United States, particularly New Orleans. The specific origins of the music and how it came to be what we associate today with the label “jazz” are the object of debate and research. Most scholars agree that, like rhythmically complex music from the Caribbean, some of jazz’s main qualities, particularly its complex rhythms, are grounded in patterns of West African music that slaves used (Gioia 1997; Stearns 1970; Brothers 2006). Jazz was also influenced by the musical practices and demands of audience members from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, some who lived in New Orleans and others who passed through via its port (Horne 2019). Jazz also incorporates aspects of European music, although its influence is not direct, but a reinterpretation of techniques and principles (Collier 1978; Gioia 1997; Brothers 2006). Western instruments, such as pianos, trumpets, and violins, acquired a new life in jazz when they were used by musicians who created timbres and melodies with them that cannot be reduced to Western musical practices (Collier 1978). Early in the nineteenth century, New Orleans had several opera houses, giving the city a musical advantage over many cities in the North (Berry 2018). New Orleans also had a rich tradition of brass bands that played in parades (Gioia 1997) and at events as diverse as dances and funerals (Ogren 1989). Jazz autobiographers and historians also highlight competitions held among bands where the winner would be declared by the audiences’ reaction to the music (Dodds [1959] 2002; Peretti 1994). The riverboats that toured the Mississippi also played a role in the dissemination of jazz, but unlike what some of the myths of the time might suggest, they were not the only way, or even the main way, in which jazz moved from New Orleans to other cities (Kenney 2005; Collier 1978). Among the many places where jazz was played in its early days, the location most closely associated with the origins of the music is New Orleans’s red-light district. Its presence in the public imagination of the music is so pervasive that jazz autobiographers cannot avoid addressing the relationship between the music and the district, also known as “Storyville” (Gioia 1997; Ogren 1989). The red-light district existed from 1897 to 1917, when it was closed by the United States Navy, and, while it provided some jobs for musicians, it would be historically inaccurate to say that it gave birth to jazz (Gioia 1997; Ogren 1989;). Perhaps one of the most interesting comments comes from Bechet’s ([1960] 2002) autobiography, in which he strategically employs notions about gender relations to explain the associations between sex and jazz. These ideas will be discussed in chapter 7. Ragtime and jazz were originally strengthened and spread by cities with a vibrant nightlife, a multiplicity of venues and events that integrated music, and networks within the entertainment industry (Peretti 1994; Ogren 1989;

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Schuller 1986). As Ogren writes, “the musical traditions and institutions of New Orleans were important not simply because musical performances were available to many residents, but also because they provided employment, some private music instruction, and inspiration to the earliest ragtime and jazz musicians” (1989, 22). It is important to note that the music that came to be called jazz, while predominantly from New Orleans, was also emerging in African American communities in other cities during that time (Collier 1978; Peretti 1994). Some autobiographers, such as Willie “The Lion” Smith ([1964] 1978), emphasize that some of the same influences and conditions that made jazz possible in New Orleans were also present in New York. One of the immediate predecessors of jazz, along with other important influences such as the blues and the musical traditions of African American churches, is ragtime. Ragtime is a syncopated genre of music that, according to Kathy Ogren, “was first heard by the general public in the 1890s at exhibitions and in saloons and dance halls” (1989, 14). However, the parentage between jazz and ragtime is not so clear. The word “ragtime” was also used to describe syncopated music played on the piano (Gioia 1997). According to Ted Gioia (1997), when Jelly Roll Morton, a self-proclaimed inventor of jazz, gave interviews, he provided confusing explanations of what was ragtime and what was jazz. Terry Teachout (2010) mentions that the first jazz musicians and their audiences sometimes referred to their music as ragtime. Today, one of the most famous figures in the history of early jazz is Buddy Bolden. Bolden died without knowing that his name would carry so much weight in the history and myths of the music (Marquis 2005). There is no consensus on how to qualify Bolden’s music, but it seems that he might have been a transitional figure between ragtime and jazz (Stearns 1970; Teachout 2010). Bolden was born in 1877 and was probably exposed to music early in his life (Marquis 2005). He learned to play the cornet, and by 1900 he had a more or less established band that played in New Orleans (Marquis 2005). In 1907, after several incidents, he was committed to a mental institution, where he spent the rest of his life (Marquis 2005). Another important figure in the early days of jazz was Jelly Roll Morton. Born in New Orleans in 1890, Morton is known for his music and for claiming to be the inventor of jazz (Gioia 1997). Between 1914 and 1915, Morton played in important cabarets in Chicago (Kenney 1993). Morton went back to Chicago in 1923, where there was much demand for jazz in African American communities after the Great Migration (Collier 1974; Kenney 1993); as Ted Gioia writes, “Between the years 1916 and 1919, a half-million African Americans left the South for more tolerant communities in the North, with almost one million more following in their wake in the 1920s” (1997, 45). During the 1920s, improvements in recording technology and the radio helped propagate jazz (Ogren 1989). Chicago and New York, among many

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other cities across the United States, became important centers in the development of jazz, and news about musicians sometimes preceded their travels (Gioia 1997; Chilton 1987). These cities gave musicians opportunities to travel and to earn an income through music. The 1920s were also a period of much creativity and experimentation in jazz that paved the way for swing and the big bands (Harrison 2000; Stearns, 1970). As Marshall Stearns writes, Generally speaking, swing music was the answer to the American—and very human—love of bigness, for the formula of the big Harlem bands [. . .] was adopted. At the same time, there was a real demand. With the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, jazz was brought out of the speak-easy. (1970, 198)

In a way, swing and big bands displaced New Orleans-style performers, even though the roots of the music were associated with New Orleans (Marquis 2005). What is interesting, particularly for jazz autobiography, is the New Orleans jazz revival of the 1940s, which coincided with the birth of the faster-paced and increasingly complex bebop. The 1940s saw a renewed interest in the origins of jazz (Chilton 1987), which also sparked an interest in what musicians had to say about their music. As Daniel Stein writes, “In the decades after the Second World War, traditional forms of New Orleans and Dixieland jazz were embraced by many fans and critics as a countermovement to the radically new sounds of bebop” (2012, 91). This allowed New Orleans musicians to go back to the nightclubs and highlight the contributions and lives of musicians who had received little attention in the past (Peretti 1994; Bechet [1960] 2002). Because the revival was taking place during a time when big bands were still popular, yet bebop musicians were crafting a new music and aesthetics, musicians representing different jazz styles had the opportunity to play in some of the same spaces and even the same events. Since our emotional attachments to genres apparently lead us to see artists partly as extensions of our own subjectivity (Pichón-Rivière 1985), audiences quickly sided with modernists or traditionalists depending on their aesthetic preference. As John Chilton writes, “Despite reports in the music magazines that traditional musicians hated modernists, and vice versa, players from supposedly rival camps often socialized together” (1987, 212). This, of course, does not mean that conflicts among them did not exist (Chilton 1985, 1987). But it is possible that some of their conflicts were exacerbated by the critics’ and audiences’ representations of their music (Gennari 2006). Another important factor to consider is the complex cultural heritage of musicians of color in New Orleans. While Bolden was African American, Morton was Creole (Gioia 1997; Peretti 1994). Creoles of color made

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important contributions to jazz in its early days (Collier 1978). The dynamic between African Americans and Creoles of color in New Orleans was quite complex (Marquis 2005). Furthermore, according to some authors, the classification of someone as “Creole” was apparently not completely straightforward (McCusker 2012; Gushee 2005). According to Lester Sullivan (2000), the term “Creole” was already in use by the end of the eighteenth century to describe “a Louisiana-born descendant of colonial ancestors regardless of whether the ancestors were African, European, or both” (2000, 73). Creole musicians of color had more opportunities and higher-paying jobs than did African Americans, and they also had access to musical education when African Americans did not (Peretti 1994; Gioia 1997; Sullivan 2000). However, in 1896, Plessy v. Ferguson established that individuals with African heritage were legally Black, erasing cultural and linguistic differences among people of color (Ehlers 2012; McCusker 2012). While they originally enjoyed more privileges than African American musicians, after Plessy v. Ferguson, Creole musicians had to collaborate with African American bands and incorporate their sounds in their own bands to be able to play music (Marquis 2005; McCusker 2012). And, according to McCusker, While the old divisions between the downtown Creole bands and the uptown gut-bucket bands continued, by 1918 they had become irrelevant because Creoles born in the mid-1880s and after—like Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Jimmie Noone, and the members of the Original Creole Orchestra— fully embraced jazz as their music. (2012, 129)

As we shall see later, there were complex dynamics between African American and Creole musicians. However, it is telling that Sidney Bechet, a Creole musician of color, used an African American tale in his autobiography that he passed off as the story of his grandfather. As Krin Gabbard writes, “Bechet appropriated the story of Omar from a figure in African American folklore known as Bras-Coupé” (2016, 137). Bechet’s “appropriation” of Bras-Coupé’s story speaks volumes about the intersubjective nature of the self and human narratives. The story of Squire, a slave whose arm was amputated after being shot by a “deputized officer,” but who still managed to escape, was publicized by those seeking to capture him but also by abolitionists (Wagner 2019). According to Bryan Wagner, “Among abolitionists on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, Bras-Coupé became a romantic hero and tragic symbol of the wrongs of slavery” (2019, 152). Wagner argues that, Bras-Coupé places Bechet in an important role in how he creates a history of jazz. He writes,

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Bechet pushes jazz to a place where it can no longer be plotted on straight lines with beginnings, middles, and ends. For Bechet, the music expresses an experience of history that refuses the consolation of progress, a feeling that pools instead in feet and stomachs, that suspends time’s animation by decomposing its development into longing, waiting, and worry. (2019, 160)

Thus, the Bras-Coupé story allows Bechet to construct a collectivistic and mystical narrative of jazz that posits a historical heritage and emotional depth to jazz musicians. Bechet’s use of Bras-Coupé’s story might be related to the construction of a sense of self that challenged some of the social dynamics under which he grew up. As Thomas Brothers writes, Bechet “came to blues as a young teenage rebel who bucked the Creole system and began hanging out with uptown musicians” (2006, 67). Nicholas Gebhardt complements what has been discussed above by pointing out the political implications of Bechet’s use of Bras-Coupé in his book. According to Gebhardt, “The purpose of this account is to emphasize the fragility of the musical act and affirm the basis of the slaves’ collective capacity for psychic survival and creative action” (2001, 39). THE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES In the United States, discourses about music by African Americans emerged in the context of white supremacy and the assumption that the melodies, rhythms, and harmonies that did not conform to European musical standards were inferior and came from racial differences (Radano 2003). Furthermore, as Regina Bendix writes in her analysis of discourses about folk music in Nazi Germany, “The desire for racial purity is linked to searches for the authentic” (1997, 163). Ironically, one of the consequences of essentialist formulations of musical products in modernity, particularly when reactions against African American music changed over time, was that it “would give to blacks a remarkable gift, inadvertent as it was, and one they proceeded to employ in casting a viable place in America” (Radano 2003, 115). The underlying structure of the discourses used to oppress African Americans would provide the background that allowed jazz autobiographers to negotiate public meanings of their music. In Black Music, White Business, Frank Kofsky (1998) stresses the importance of a social and Marxist analysis of the subjective experience of the music created by jazz musicians of different generations. The first cohort of jazz musicians grew up at a time when music (as well as other artistic expressions) was thought of as a tool “employed to promote integration”

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(Kofsky 1998, 122). The depression of the 1930s meant that many white Americans were deprived of their lifestyle, narrowing the gap between them and people of color (Kofsky 1998; Chilton 1985). Yet, as Frank Kofsky and Gerald Horne suggest, the industries and agencies that thrived in preparation for World War II, as well as during the war, discriminated against African Americans (Horne 2019; Kofsky 1998). Jazz autobiographies make up a complex interwoven, multilayered, and paradoxical collage that tunes in authors, editors, ghostwriters, and readers to some of the meaning-making processes of the music. The narratives themselves play a curious role in the negotiation of meanings, authority, and positions of individuals in the epistemologies and taxonomies of jazz. They also constitute a textual support for the “moral victory” (Radano 2003, 104) that jazz represents in American society. Autobiographies, like most forms of personal narrative, provide insight into the complex political, social, and psychological processes that we sometimes study or invisibilize through concepts such as identity. As Karlis Racevskis writes, “identity is what is naturally given and is therefore considered as a possession, yet it is also that which possesses the individual” (1987, 21). The story we construct about ourselves is assembled with the resources we acquire throughout our lives via our experiences and socialization. Furthermore, it is interwoven with the way we understand certain practices and the cultural patterns that have shaped our minds. As James Lincoln Collier writes when he describes the participatory aspects of jazz, “This social element comes into jazz through its African heritage” (1978, 6). The discourses and general rules for relations among jazz musicians came from their families and later through interactions with other musicians. It is possible, then, that both family life and bands were, perhaps unconsciously, modeled after one another. According to Burton Peretti, The family band was perhaps at the heart of the Louisiana plantation tenants’ musical life. Family relations brought children into the bands, and the band as an institution reinforced both the communal warmth and the strict cohesiveness supplied by families. (1994, 17)

Socio-psychological revisions of Freudian psychoanalysis provide some interesting explanatory possibilities for what is described above and how it relates to subjectivation. As Enrique Pichón-Rivière (1985) analyzes in his reinterpretation of Freudian psychoanalysis from a more social perspective, bonds are bidirectional, and different levels of human experience shape how we interact with and understand meaningful others with whom we have other roles. African Americans in the United States inherited a sense of self that was grounded in collectivism; in the previous chapter, I cited Kenney in his

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depiction of the autobiographies of jazz musicians as “group biographies” (1991, 51). Subjectivation is thus articulated in the individual through the personal and emotional processes that we associate with the roles we occupy in our world. These autobiographies, then, acquire some of their themes and stylizations from the larger patterns of their narrators’ culture, as well as the micro-governmentalities and micro-subjectivations that accompanied the discourses they constructed to make sense of their lives. Emotional bonds are an important aspect of how we make sense of the world. In a previous work, Frances Ruiz-Alfaro and I integrated the work of Enrique Pichón-Rivière and Michel Foucault to propose that bonds can be considered an integral element of discourses since one of the features of discourse is the definition of its objects and the relationships between them. This dialectical approach understands the subject-object interaction as complex processes that include dynamic and complex dimensions. (Espada-Brignoni and Ruiz-Alfaro 2017, 55)

These bonds are transmitted from one generation to the next through socialization, along with general ideas about our potential roles in society and the possibilities of resistance (Espada-Brignoni and Ruiz-Alfaro 2021). In the introduction to Black Autobiography in America, Stephen Butterfield (1974) reflects on George Orwell’s vision of humanity in 1984, which he contrasts with the history of African Americans in the United States. Butterfield then writes: In black autobiography, the wounds on the human face heal to defiant scars; the eyes take on the glint of pride and awareness; the mouth sets in determination; the humanity blooms under the pressure of the boot into a fierce, tough flower, whose blossom tells us that until people are altogether emptied of every quality which distinguishes them from mere implements, there will always be a limit to how many times the foot can strike before it is left behind by a bloody stump. (1974, 1)

The beauty, tragedy, and analytical strength of Butterfield’s statement exceeds pre-Foucaultian understanding of power, which is for the most part grounded in the idea that power operates by oppressing, harnessing, or channeling individuals and collectivities that to some degree are asked to see themselves in the face or the gestures of the tyrant. The autobiographies of jazz musicians, particularly Bechet’s Treat It Gentle, embody the spirit of Butterfield’s quote—in Bechet’s case, through the use of Bras-Coupé as one of his ancestors.

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Du Bois, anticipating by many decades social and psychological theories about identity and race, identified three possible positions for oppressed groups in American society. These positions play a role in the narratives that these autobiographers construct as members of an oppressed group in the United States but also as members of a community and a tradition. When sticks and stones and beasts form the sole environment of a people, their attitude is largely one of determined opposition to and conquest of natural forces. But when to earth and brute is added an environment of men and ideas, then the attitudes of the imprisoned group may take three main forms—a feeling of revolt and revenge; an attempt to adjust all thought and action to the will of the greater group; or, finally, a determined effort at self-realization and self-development despite environing opinion. (Du Bois [1903] 1994, 28)

While these forms are probably not mutually exclusive, and each might be expressed to different degrees, jazz autobiography tends toward a collective experience of self-realization that blends the past, the present, the future, the personal, and the communal. JAZZ AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND AUTHENTICATION Jazz autobiographies emerged through complex processes of authentication, some of which reproduce dynamics similar to those established with the first slave narratives. In his study of African American autobiography, Robert B. Stepto (1991) notes that many of the first narratives by African Americans were surrounded and accompanied by texts written by white editors or collaborators and/or by supporting documents that served to “authenticate” the text. Stepto’s analysis of Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk is illuminating in the context of jazz autobiography. According to Stepto, Du Bois “strives energetically toward autobiography and yet, in a sense, bursts beyond it” (1991, 62). He then adds, “Du Bois not only assumes the responsibilities for authenticating his voice and tale, but also advances a new scientific standard for what constitutes authenticating evidence” (Stepto 1991, 63). These ideas resonate with those who problematize the category “autobiography,” yet Black narrators see the boundaries between autobiography and text— which we would attribute to specific disciplines such as history, sociology, or psychology—as more artificial than their White counterparts do. Their underlying epistemology is one that sees beyond the categories and generic boundaries of Western individualism and its expansion of Cartesian dualisms. Following Stepto, Kenney (1991) considers Louis Armstrong’s Swing That Music as an eclectic narrative for the multiplicity of voices inside the book.

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Jazz autobiographies are certainly eclectic. Even the cover art “warns” the reader that the book was produced with someone else’s collaboration. These collaborations intervene in multiple ways, from supporting documents to footnotes to chapters between chapters. While their elective nature is one of the factors that facilitated the existence of these books, in a way, the collaborative elements also work as authenticating narratives. According to Stepto (1991), authenticating narratives have an extra-textual “goal.” Here, they serve to “authenticate” and communicate the parameters by which jazz (the extra-textual correlate) must be known. The autobiographies by Bechet, Dodds, Collins, and Foster are complementary accounts of the jazz life. All of the books were published in collaboration with individuals who taped the musicians talking retrospectively about their lives. Furthermore, they were all published after their deaths. The authors, who were not only associated with their New Orleans origins but also seen as representatives of New Orleans jazz, lived through the same period. Foster was born earlier than the other autobiographers and passed away one decade after his colleagues. Dodds’s and Bechet’s books were originally published shortly after their deaths in 1959 and 1960, respectively, and they are historically and thematically closer to each other than most jazz autobiographies. Lee Collins’s autobiography was first published posthumously in 1974, fourteen years after his death. These autobiographies were made possible not only by the revival that generated interest in their music but also by the gradual institutionalization of jazz in the United States (Devlin 2015). As Paul Devlin argues, “jazz autobiographies did not really begin to proliferate until the 1950s, during the height of the Cold War, just as the institutionalization of jazz [. . .] took off” (2015, 144). Furthermore, as Albert E. Stone writes, during the 1960s, African American autobiographies “found their way via paperback into the libraries and classrooms, the drugstores and supermarkets of the nation,” and many “outsold the most popular white autobiographies” (1993, 172). It might be useful to compare these works with another seminal example of early jazz autobiography. Louis Armstrong’s Swing That Music, published during the Swing Era in the 1930s, is aimed at a different audience and readership. The context of Swing That Music shapes the framing of Armstrong’s life story in a manner that is somewhat different from the way in which the context of the 1950s shaped the reception of Dodds’s and Bechet’s books. As William H. Kenney argues, Swing That Music “claims to be Armstrong’s account of how New Orleans jazz transcended its raucous, vulgar origins to become a refined art form in the Swing Era” (1991, 39). In contrast, in the narratives of Dodds and Bechet, New Orleans jazz, particularly its antecedents in the music of slaves, is not only the basis of all jazz but the most authentic, pure, and sublime form of it. Armstrong’s second autobiography,

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Satchmo, published in 1954, seems to have been subjected to more intrusive editing than Bechet’s and Dodds’s, at least on the topic of race. Daniel Stein writes that in Satchmo, “Armstrong’s words were changed in order to tone down his attitude toward matters of race” (2012, 79). Dodds and Bechet, being less famous than Armstrong, were able “to take more chances,” according to Kenney (1991, 56) and later autobiographies, such as that by Danny Barker, could be even more explicit (Kenney, 1991). Autobiographies, as is the case with any human production, are shaped by many hands throughout their manufacturing. But this is also true for individuals who think they write their books in full privacy without the influence of others from the first stroke of a key to the distribution of the completed book. As Philip Lejeune brilliantly writes, “Anyone who decides to write his life story acts as if he were his own ghostwriter” (1989, 188). The fact that autobiographies can be edited by others, particularly when the editors have a disproportionate advantage in the same society as the narrator, does speak to relations of power. But it also speaks to the intersubjective and complex performances of human life. As Goffman (1959, chapter 2) argues, depending on the site and context of a performance, it is not only the individual who contributes to one’s presentation but, in one way or another, a whole “team.” Autobiographies are performances that occur where the personal, community, and the other intersect. As Kenney writes, Louis Armstrong “refused to speak directly about the arts of impression management in the biracial jazz world” in his autobiographies; “he kept his mask as New Orleans jazzman firmly in place” (1991, 52). Kenney here mirrors Goffman’s (1959) notion of performance in a way that allows us to read autobiography beyond the confines of authenticity. It is also through the “mask” of the New Orleans jazzman that Armstrong can convey meaning about jazz to his readers. The word “mask” from this perspective is not the antonym of authenticity, but instead an essential feature of social life and the performative dimensions of the self. Another feature our autobiographers share is the pact that their books promote between text and audience. As Lejeune writes, “The autobiographical pact is the affirmation in the text of this identity, referring back in the final analysis to the name of the author on the cover” (1989, 14). Treat It Gentle, The Baby Dodds Story, The Autobiography of Pops Foster, and Oh, Didn’t He Ramble are marketed explicitly as autobiographies, and they affirm, in different ways, this autobiographical pact. The musician appears on the cover as the author of the book. The use of “as told to” in Collins’s and Dodds’s autobiographies also gives the impression that the editor’s role was limited to transcribing the autobiographers’ tapes into text. The books thus invite audiences to read them as more authentic autobiographies. On the other hand,

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Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and “Inventor of Jazz” features Jelly Roll Morton’s life story as a first-person narrative, but its relationship to readers is different. As Ogren argues, “[Alan] Lomax wrote a biography, of course; he did not assist Morton with an autobiography” (1991, 123). In fact, anyone picking up Mister Jelly Roll in a library or bookstore will see Lomax as the author on the cover of the book. Despite the frequent admonition to “never judge a book by its cover,” the cover is in fact an important element in distinguishing autobiographies from other kinds of narration and in establishing the “autobiographical pact.” Specific titling strategies, such as enclosing “inventor of jazz” in quotation marks, might contribute to readers’ skepticism toward the narrator’s story. Certainly, Morton’s exaggerated and embellished claims about his role in the history of jazz might tip off most readers as to the inauthenticity of those claims. These texts play an important role in the discursive economy scaffolding the discourses that surround Black music in the United States and play a role in making sense of it. As Radano writes, “The logic of modern racial difference not only ascribes blackness but does so by drawing from the legacy of figurations linking race and authenticity” (2003, 21). Jazz musicians had to navigate this background when constructing their narratives. Their accounts, produced in collaborations with editors who served partly as authenticators, are certainly a hybrid, but the same is true of any autobiographical account of the self (Lejeune 1989; Marin 2020). Our sense of self is complex and multilayered, and it is grounded in a multiplicity of influences of varying degrees, some of which, as an effect of the power dynamics that make up our social world, are recognized as the core ingredients of our identity, while others are invisibilized, ignored, or repressed. Jazz autobiographies, then, are intersubjective accounts of the personal and social lives of musicians who engage in a critical analysis of their conditions while reinforcing a sense of community. Their texts, albeit through the authenticating strategies that made them possible, also authenticate the musicians role in the history of jazz, the contributions of African Americans and Creoles of color, and the social and emotional bonds of their communities. They were musicians, narrators, historians, sociologists, and psychologists creating paths toward musical and narrative self-expression. At the same time, they were part of the creation and transmission of ethical codes and discourses that promoted alternative modes of micro-governability and microsubjectivations grounded in collectivistic ideals.

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NOTE 1. Parts of this chapter were previously published in Jazz Perspectives and used with permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.tandfonline.com/. EspadaBrignoni, Teófilo. 2017. “Complexity and Ambivalence: The Ethics of Jazz in Sidney Bechet’s and Warren Dodd’s Autobiographies.” Jazz Perspectives 10(2–3) 243–261. https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjaz20/current.

Chapter 3

An Ethics of Authenticity

In the first chapter, I reviewed Foucault’s definition of ethical substance as the way individuals must shape certain aspects of their lives in accordance with ethical frameworks.1 From a discursive social-psychological perspective, also inspired by Foucault’s work, we can define ethical substance as the general frames used by a group, culture, or community to make sense of their actions. As Sam Binkley writes, “it is in operating on this ethical substance that the subject is both subjected to power, and enacts a practice of subjectification—an active shaping of the self as a subject” (2009, 66). The ethical substance implies the objectification of a kind of self associated with general domains under the consideration of community members, for those are the essential aspects of their actions as related to a particular practice and category of identity. This then allows members of the jazz community to become jazz men through the practice of the notions that give meaning and power to their actions and allow them to qualify others on their own terms. The ethical substance, if we look at the concept from a discursive and governmentality perspective, allows us to analyze the micro-governmentalities of the jazz life. These micro-governmentalities are also forms of resistance. For resistance to be effective, members of a crowd or community must communicate or agree with implicit rules and definitions of who they are and what their goals are (Gerbaudo 2012; Hardt and Negri 2017). Likewise, Sergio Pasquandrea argues in his study of Louis Armstrong’s autobiographies from a discursive perspective, we could analyze “the relationships between Armstrong’s individual voice and the dominant discourses that constrain, empower, or disempower it” (2014, 517). Jazz autobiographers, then, had to deal with racial stereotypes and negative perceptions of their craft, as well as the prejudice in their own communities about being a musician. As Kenneth Prouty writes, “Jazz, in its earliest days, was often viewed in the mainstream press as something that was primal, even savage, in relation to presumably more refined Western forms” (2006, 322). Both critics and promoters relied on a similar discursive formation. For critics, jazz represented 47

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a substantial otherness that endangered society (Ogren 1989), and supporters either ignored the role of Black musicians or celebrated jazz for its otherness when compared to the pressures of modern society (Peretti 1994; Kenney 1993; Gioia 1988). Autobiographers such as Warren “Baby” Dodds adopted a narrative that problematizes these stereotypes by laying out to the reader the ethical system embedded in the practice of jazz. As Christopher Harlos argues, jazz autobiographies allow narrators “the opportunity to deconstruct the label jazz” (1995, 135). Such a deconstructive act extends to the stereotypes associated with the jazz life, yet their strategy still relies on notions about authenticity, which traps the authors in essentialist conceptions of the self that they navigate in complex ways. As Ajay Heble writes, These autobiographies are concerned, at once, with fashioning authentic identities for African-American artists who have been persistently misunderstood and misrepresented by the white cultural mainstream, and with undermining the very assumptions of authenticity to show how, historically, these artists have had to improvise their own identities in order to transgress the socially and intuitionally constituted frameworks that have defined their status. (2000, 96)

While I agree with Heble’s overall statement, I would argue that instead of undermining notions about authenticity, these autobiographies flip the concept and end up promoting a different definition of authenticity. Perhaps, through notions of authenticity, which have had an immense power in the evaluation of popular culture by consumers (Barker and Taylor 2007; Orvell 1989), the autobiographers were able to communicate something about their lives. It is a symbolic strategy that allows them to enforce some power over their music, culture, and the possible frames they can use to define themselves, but it still relies on Western assumptions about the value of cultural products and their assumed relationships with specific identities. In constructing their sense of self as authentic and professional jazz musicians, autobiographers use and promote a discourse of professionalism and hard work embedded in the values they acquired from their caregivers, their cultural heritage, and an ambivalent and strategic conception of musical education and training. Notions about musical training are particularly problematic for jazz autobiographers because they can be interpreted by jazz musicians and the consumers of their books and albums as potential sources of inauthenticity. However, perhaps this is an effect of the need to explain one of the main elements of jazz: improvisation. While improvisation requires a great deal of training, how can musicians, especially those who have elevated the role of improvisation in music (Collier 1983), explain it to non-musicians and even musicians in training? I still remember my own misconceptions

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about improvisation at the age of fourteen—and how lucky I am that there are virtually no records of the dissonant phrases I tried to improvise. Moreover, being dissonant was certainly not the objective, but the outcome of where I was in my musical training at the time. At least today, I can recognize those mistakes are not intentional expressions of creativity, but the product of my too-relaxed musical work ethic and incomplete training. “DO IT WELL OR NOT AT ALL” In his autobiography, Dodds ([1959] 2002) recounts how he and Louis Armstrong played in Fate Marable’s riverboat band from 1918 to 1921. Afterward, he joined Joe Oliver’s band, where his brother, John Dodds, played the clarinet (Dodds [1959] 2002). Dodds recalls both experiences through the context of hard work. However, the desire to play good music and the pleasure it brought mitigated a job’s expected strains. Dodds remembers that he and his bandmates on the riverboats were hard workers. But this ethic was imposed by themselves and not, according to Dodds, by the demands of the job ([1959] 2002, 23). He uses similar terms to describe his time with Joe Oliver’s band, in which, in addition to their strong work ethic, the musicians “had a good time” ([1959] 2002, 42). Whether it is required or not, hard work, a value supposedly transmitted to Dodds by his mother, is an important element in his understanding of music and work. Dodds actively works to construct a view of the early jazz musician as a professional, in a similar way that one might speak about other professions. Such a strategy should not be surprising; as Burton Peretti (1994) suggests, it was in the 1920s, while Dodds was playing in the riverboat, that jazz musicians first began to consider themselves to be part of a specific profession. Following Ingrid Monson’s analysis, Hersch comments that “many musicians and audiences of color emphasize hard work and other ‘Protestant’ values as vehicles for social mobility” (2007, 72). In some cases, this meant a rejection of jazz (Baraka [1963] 2002; Hersch 2007). This perhaps facilitated the public association of jazz with a rejection of Protestant ethics (Hersch 2007; Brothers 2006). Yet jazz musicians construct a narrative epistemology that problematizes the binary oppositions that characterize Western thought. Louis Armstrong embodies this dynamic and even postmodern epistemology in his autobiographies, as Hersch discusses: Though he embodied and described the classic rags-to-riches American success story, he rewrote the tale, inverting some of its values and maxims to spread the carnivalesque philosophy of New Orleans. [. . .] Armstrong’s autobiographies

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show a man who values and practices hard work but who also learns and teaches a carnivalesque philosophy that inverts other “Protestant” values. (2007, 188)

Furthermore, as Gerald Horne writes, “Some of the rigor to which musicians were subjected was ostensibly self-inflicted” (2019, 273–74). Stories and estimates about the number of hours that proficient musicians practiced daily are today the object of trivia among fans and young instrumentalists. George “Pops” Foster’s original attitudes toward music were somewhat different from those expressed by Dodds. Born in 1892 (six years before Dodds), Foster thought that music was a good option for earning extra income, but that it would probably not allow him to earn a living wage (2005, 37). While this recognizes that music was about to become an essential part of his life, his entrance into music probably predates some of the more sophisticated ethical codes that musicians developed in the twenties. He then adds that compared to the other jobs available at the time (such as grave digging or carpentry), musicians “had it easy sitting up on that stand playing music all night” (Foster 2005, 41). If playing music is easy, it is only when compared to grave digging, which cannot be an occupation that brings joy to many, and which probably places much stress on the laborer’s body. Foster remembers, “Your normal playing was eight hours, but that didn’t mean nothin’ if there were customers in the place” (Foster 2005, 42). On the other side of the continuum is Danny Barker, born eleven years after Dodds. As he was half the age of musicians like Sidney Bechet, Dodds, and Lee Collins during the 1920s, his arrival in the jazz world would have been different. On issues such as work, Barker ([1986] 2016) seems to be at the other end of the spectrum. While jazz autobiographers seem to have a socialscientific lens, Barker’s A Life in Jazz seems even more sociological than the other autobiographies, taking the position of a critical observer of the jazz community. He criticizes the attitude of older musicians who told him that he would one day be a good musician, as if they were acting as gatekeepers or had rivalries with younger musicians (Barker [1986] 2016). In his autobiography, Dodds recalls his mother’s expectations for him to become a doctor ([1959] 2002, 1–2). In a footnote, Larry Gara, his collaborator and editor, adds that Dodds once met an old school friend who became a doctor, and they talked about how, as children, both had expressed a desire to become physicians (Dodds [1959] 2002, 2). Dodds’s mother seems to have been an important influence during his childhood, and notions about being a professional might also have played an important role in his imagination of his future self. Lee Collins, after a heartbreaking description of his mother’s death, mentions that his mother asked that if she died, Collins’s father should not let their sons become musicians (1974, 5). Implicit is the idea that music should not have been the appropriate path, or at least not the profession

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parents imagined for their children. However, they describe their parents’ wishes as reasonable. Jazz musicians were probably influenced by some of the notions and wishes their parents had for them, but, instead of applying these dictums to more “respectable” professions, they chose music. When Collins recounts his mothers’ wishes, he writes, “But, sad to say, I had music in my soul” (1974, 5), as if making a kind of apology and explanation that also establishes a relationship between his choices and a sense of an essentialist subjectivity. In contrast to his own emphasis on professionalism, Dodds ([1959] 2002) remembers many musicians in New Orleans who did not care about their appearance or their instruments. He argues that musicians must keep their instruments in good shape, a rule he has lived by (Dodds [1959] 2002, 6). Since an instrument works almost as an extension of the musician, its state speaks to its performer’s professionalism (Dodds [1959] 2002, 6). Dodds explicitly qualifies music as a professional occupation that is distinct from other aspects of everyday life, arguing, “You can be lazy, but be lazy in some other way, not on the instrument you make your bread on.” (Dodds [1959] 2002, 6). This statement is particularly interesting for its illumination of what a micro-subjectivation of jazz might look like. Other fields of human experience are acknowledged and not entirely judged (although telling someone they can be lazy somewhere else is certainly not a compliment). Dodds recognizes the multiple roles of a human being and presents us with an ethics that applies to the portion of someone’s behaviors that relates to making jazz. It is telling that Dodds’s autobiography begins with an anecdote that might seem to illustrate such perspectives: “When I was a youngster my mother taught me a poem which I always remembered” ([1959] 2002, 1). As quoted by Dodds, the poem reads: All you do, do with your might [. . .] Be the labor great or small, Do it well or not at all. (Dodds [1959] 2002, 1)

  In his book, the poem is not credited to any poet. However, the first three lines of the full poem (only the first of those lines is reproduced above) come from a poem by M. A. Stodart. Stodart’s original poem begins, “Work while you work, play while you play.” (1852, 211). The original poem, titled “One Thing at a Time,” makes a sharp distinction between work and play, positioning them as opposite fields of experience. The version Dodds quotes removes this opposition by deleting Stodart’s first lines. In modifying the verse in this way, Dodds shows that his understanding of music as work does not

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contradict its joyful features; work and play can be one and the same at least for those earning a living while playing jazz. Stodart’s poem was printed in a teacher’s manual from 1852. But more recently, it served as an epigraph in a chapter of a religious biography by Dan Brewster (1997). The verses also embody the spirit that can be found on inspirational and religious websites, indicating that Stodart’s dictum still survives. Additionally, the fourth and fifth lines of the poem quoted by Dodds seem to have been part of a popular expression that was in everyday use. I can also remember similar teachings from my mother and grandparents when they wanted to highlight the standards of a specific task including, but not limited to, homework and chores. Some of Stodart’s (1839) other works are embedded in religious discourses. Paralleling this idea, religion also plays a key role in Dodds’s recounting of his childhood narrative. For example, his father was a deacon at a Baptist church who worked at the church’s library, and his mother had high academic expectations for him (Dodds [1959] 2002). This suggests Dodds’s family was immersed in similar types of religious and pedagogical discourses to those reflected in the fragments of the poem he quotes. However, in a gesture common to jazz music, the teachings of these verses are used in a new context. Jazz subverts the dictum of “One Thing at a Time,” since working hard for Dodds is in fact a pleasurable experience, as performing jazz itself requires access to the performer’s emotions. Such autobiographical gestures demonstrate how these musicians understand music within a personal and emotional frame. Although playing music is often pleasurable, it still demands great effort, even when seemingly unnecessary. While it may be acceptable for modern drummers, Dodds’s unflattering depiction of the use of wire brushes could be seen as a function of his strong work ethic. According to Dodds, King Oliver asked him to use wire brushes to play softly. However, Dodds felt that using brushes “seemed lazy” and instead worked harder to play softer without using brushes (Dodds [1959] 2002, 38). Techniques that could be construed as the opposite of hard work are depicted in a negative manner. In this way, Dodds constructs an alternative narrative problematizing how jazz was depicted in the conventional press and by its opponents. Jazz was instead strategically constructed as an honorable trade by individuals who possessed a strong work ethic. Interestingly, in other forms of popular music in the twentieth century, hard work, or admitting that music requires countless hours of practice to improve one’s abilities, was seen as coming too close to inauthenticity (Barker and Taylor 2007). Yet, as shown above, New Orleans jazz musicians such as Warren Dodds constructed a discourse that went beyond the dualistic ontologies of modernity. In a way, their notion of authenticity does acknowledge a degree of performativity. Today, whatever work musicians

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must engage in to become who they are, it belongs to the backstage of their presentations. Hard work is an integral feature of Dodds’s narrative, as is reflected in the quoted passage from Stodart’s poem. But in seeking to define jazz performance as an endeavor in which work and play are integrated, Dodds’s depiction of jazz as hard work might be read, at least in part, as an attempt to problematize dominant discourses and stereotypes about musicians and African Americans in the South. As Burton Peretti notes, “Early jazz has also been paired in lore and legend with the overconsumption of alcohol and other drugs” (1994, 139). Peretti (1994) argues that, while alcohol was part of the urban culture where jazz was performed, most musicians did not rely on drugs, and those who drank or used marijuana did not claim being under its influence was necessary for jazz. Furthermore, other musicians used noble titles in their self-presentations, asserting their authority and respectability. As Ted Gioia writes, “One of the quaint, if puzzling, eccentricities of jazz lay in its apparent obsession with titles of nobility and statesmanship” (1997, 117). Yet, as Collins suggests, such eccentricity partly reveals the drive, competition, and ethic of jazz musicians: “Everybody was trying to be the best, to be the King. But to be the best you had to work hard and to fight for it. And then everybody would be after the top man” (1974, 50). This complex and ambivalent pattern of framing actions beyond “either-or” logic is repeated throughout the other themes discussed in this book. Furthermore, although some, like Bechet, do not address the work as explicitly as Dodds or Collins in their autobiographies, they frame musical knowledge and arrangements in a similar manner. The complementarity of these autobiographical texts precisely lies in how they construct an ethic of jazz in either the same or similar topics through similar standards and frames. It is worth noting that their statements about hard work are quite vague. What is important is that one’s music is done well, or not at all. We will see a similar vagueness with the rest of the topics in this chapter. MUSICAL KNOWLEDGE One of the discourses that surrounded jazz musicians, whether favorably or unfavorably, was their supposed refusal or inability to study musical notation. In some ways, reading music and writing or using arrangements seem to be part of a covert culture within early jazz. In his analysis and critique of the mass appeal and commercialism associated with swing music, Amiri Baraka writes,

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Spontaneous impulse had been replaced by the arranger, and the human element of the music was confined to whatever difficulties individual performers might have reading a score. Philosophically, swing sought to involve the black culture in a platonic social blandness that would erase it forever, replacing it with the socio-cultural compromise of the “jazzed-up” popular song. ([1963] 2002, 181)

The tension in the United States between commercialism and the feared potential of capitalism or mass culture to absorb and erase what had been considered the archetypical features of jazz has been a constant source of debate and worry among musicians, critics, and audiences. Many musicians downplayed their music-reading abilities in their autobiographies as if seeking to conceal a deep and secret desire or sin. However, even when understating their reading abilities, musician-authors often emphasized their knowledge of a seemingly more authentic practice of acquiring and using knowledge in the oral traditions of jazz. This theme continues to be debated by musicians and educators. Ken Prouty writes, “the centrality of oral tradition in jazz remains a powerful cultural theme in the discourse of the music’s pedagogical history, imparting a degree of authenticity and cultural authority” (2006, 321). And as Pasquandrea (2014) argues, although Louis Armstrong knew how to read music, and delights in his reading abilities in his autobiographies, many claimed he did not know how to read music. John Chilton writes that “whereas Bechet was not interested in learning to read music, Louis had an avid desire to develop this skill (he eventually became an accomplished reader)” (1987, 65). The myth of some sort of individual, natural, or authentic powers can be powerful and internalized by performers. Bechet in fact was able to read and write music to a degree, but his resistance to reading music came from fearing “that if he were to learn to read music his powers of improvisation would leave him” (Chilton 1987, 46). Jazz autobiographers emphasize the acquisition of knowledge, arguing that it is necessary for musicians to acquire the fundamental elements of jazz structure and practice. For Dodds, musicians must learn “rudiments,” while for Bechet the “foundations” of the music are critical. Both words are used to stress the need to learn the “substance” and the most basic elements of jazz. However, knowledge acquired must not, in this view, impair a musician’s style or creativity. Both artists argued that those foundations came from New Orleans. According to Bechet, New Orleans jazz provides the “foundations” ([1960] 2002, 118) that made jazz possible and enabled the styles that developed in other cities. But, as Reva Marin analyzes, Bechet’s views of authenticity, as acquired by Bob Wilber, were different and did not associate authentic jazz with New Orleans styles (2020, 53–54). This apparent discrepancy could be the result of the different modes of self-presentation

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and construction and what the authors might have considered appropriate to tell a larger audience or a White student. Knowledge enables musicians to perform jazz, but the nature of that knowledge is critical. Dodds ([1959] 2002) praises Louis Armstrong, Mezz Mezzrow, and Tony Parenti. As leaders of recordings and concerts, they were able to do a good job because they knew the fundamental elements of the New Orleans style. As jazz is a form of art that requires performers to improvise, just knowing melodies or being able to play what was learned is not enough. Bechet, for example, argued that Wooden Joe could only play the songs he learned, failing to evolve and perform in new ways or play new music (Bechet [1960] 2002, 95). Once musicians know a song, it is their responsibility to perform songs in their own style of playing. Dodds speaks to this point, recalling the first time he played with Joe Oliver’s band. Since he already knew the song, he effortlessly infused the band with his musical style (Dodds [1959] 2002, 33). This story of this performance of “Canadian Capers” emphasizes the importance of musicians’ abilities to go beyond the mere knowledge of how to play a song. Dodds’s and Bechet’s understanding of the nature of jazz knowledge problematizes essentialists discourses about early jazz. They construct jazz as an alternative to classical music since it developed through a different kind of apprenticeship, as opposed to formal training in a conservatory or similar institution. Although several musicians came from musical families and some of them had teachers, jazz was also learned by listening to musicians on the streets and in the clubs where it was performed (Ogren 1989; Stein 2012). The object of these modes of teaching was to understand the fundamental aspects of music without impairing the artist’s personal style. Dodds emphasizes the importance of learning from experienced players in acquiring knowledge, writing, “when I began drumming I soon wanted a teacher because I wanted to know what I was doing and how to do it” ([1959] 2002, 7). Although he had several teachers, Dodds suggests he still had to learn many aspects of drumming by himself (Dodds [1959] 2002). In a similar manner, Bechet criticizes most teachers by arguing that they flatten individuality and only teach the way “the way the average person learns” ([1960] 2002, 80) instead of the unique nature of learning jazz. This topic also appears quite early in Foster’s autobiography; he makes the criticism that “the teachers always want to tell you to finger the strings with the tip ends of your fingers. [. . .] It’s the same way with the bow. No guy can teach you how to hold it” ([1971] 2005, 1–2). They don’t completely disregard education, however, and Foster even emphasizes the importance of learning to read music. In their respective discussions of the learning and teaching of jazz in their autobiographies, what they problematize formal teaching methods by suggesting that such approaches harm musicians’ development and creativity.

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As Dodds and Bechet expressed, the learning of jazz is cast as a complex process in which the developing musician is supposed to acquire, through several methods, the fundamental traits of the genre; yet their improvement must also allow the development of individual creativity. This idea is evidenced in other writing on jazz as well. According to John Gennari (2006), Roger Pryor Dodge thought symphonic jazz threatened so-called “hot jazz” by privileging arrangements instead of rhythm and melody. Furthermore, as Richard M. Sudhalter suggests, during the early years of jazz, describing the music as “hot” implied “a coherent blend of improvisation, rhythmic intensity, emotional involvement, and personalization of style and execution” (2000, 149). The scoring of the music was often framed in a similar manner, and both Dodds and Bechet criticized the practice of arranging every detail of a performance. Dodds, for example, recalls a recording session with Louis Armstrong, were they were worried that writing the music “would have made it too mechanical” (Dodds [1959] 2002, 72). In a similar manner, Bechet writes that when music is arranged, “you could almost make a machine play it” ([1960] 2002, 141). Both Dodds and Bechet position arrangements as hurting individual creativity and personal style. Instead of relying on written arrangements, which often depended on the musicians’ sight-reading abilities, jazz musicians were supposed to use their own creativity, both as individuals and as a collective (Bechet [1960] 2002; Dodds [1959] 2002). The use of such arrangements might decrease the space for spontaneity, a feature of jazz that some argue is still preserved on records. Dodds ([1959] 2002), for example, reminisces how, during the recording of “Dippermouth Blues,” he forgot to play his drum solo. Bill Johnson, noting the absence of Dodds’s solo, quickly improvises and shouts, “Play that thing” (Dodds [1959] 2002, 70), which they decided to keep, since the spontaneous nature of jazz had made its way into the recording. As Daniel Stein notes, Louis Armstrong tells a similar story in which a so-called mistake is framed as spontaneous creation that fit the song. In this sense, “spontaneity is not lost through the mechanical recording” (Stein 2012, 63). Ideas such as these support primitivistic notions about jazz, by equating jazz with orality and classical music with literacy (Pasquandrea 2014) and associating primitivism with authenticity (Radano 2003). However, in Bechet’s and Dodds’s framing of jazz within such oral traditions, there is a reinterpretation of such practices through an apparent vindication of a greater sense of authenticity. Their autobiographies frame jazz’s emphasis on orality (and the problematization of literacy that comes with it) in a more positive manner, in defiance of primitivist critical interpretations. In this way, jazz autobiographers go beyond simply commenting on or criticizing dominant discourses. Indeed, they are participating in the construction of what might be

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regarded as the ethics of jazz, problematizing arrangements for being a crucial element of what they understand as the ethics of classical music. These rhetorical strategies serve to position and construct the autobiographers as more authentic jazz musicians, depicting knowledge in an ambivalent manner by accounting for the importance of knowing the fundamental features of jazz, but problematizing rigid ways of knowing that inhibit musicians from developing their own individual style. PERFORMING JAZZ Many of the musicians’ musings about their craft are grounded in accounts of actual jazz performance, which forms another critical component in the creation of an ethics of jazz. For example, in the first chapter of Treat It Gentle, Bechet reproduces conversations in which individuals ask him about jazz, and in particular for his thoughts on the newly emerged form of bebop. He then intimates to the reader that the answer to such questions would not fit in the scope of a casual conversation (justifying the need for a book-length personal response), explaining that there is much he has to tell. In this way, Bechet frames the autobiography as his contribution to a larger conversation about jazz that must take into account the complex and rich past of the music and of people of color in the United States (Bechet [1960] 2002, 1). Early in the autobiography, Bechet asserts his identity as an authority on jazz, an informed speaker on the nature of the music, whose answer surpasses what people might wish to learn during short interpersonal encounters. Furthermore, the reference to bebop within Bechet’s autobiography is embedded in conflicts between traditional jazz and modern jazz performance, a distinction in which he was obviously heavily invested as an active performer with a different conception of a melody different from the one promoted by younger musicians. According to Marshall Stearns, “bop made a practice of featuring variations upon melodies that were never stated” (1970, 229). Stearns continues, “To take the place of the melody, bop evolved a framework of its own, a written or memorized unison chorus in bop style, played at the beginning and at the end of each number” (1970, 229). For Bechet, as described in his writing, this was unthinkable and unacceptable, since in his own particular performance practice in jazz, the melody itself was one of the most essential features of a song, if not the most important. Chilton also describes Bechet’s compositional style in similar terms by describing how the underlying hierarchy of melody over chords in Bechet’s music differed from bebop: “When composing he constructed a melody line, and then, step-by-step, harmonized it, whereas modernists, in order to provide the basis of a new

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tune, often played a series of widely voiced block chords and then extracted notes” (1987, 207–8). Supposedly, Chubby Jackson was once listening to the radio and was not able to recognize a melody Charlie Parker was playing (Haddix 2013). Bechet’s own autobiographical writing clearly articulates his view of the importance of melody. Reflecting an interesting mixture of the recollections of a conversation and his own position within jazz history, Bechet claims, “You take a melody. . . . People can feel a melody . . . as long as there’s melody there’s Jazz, there’s rhythm” ([1960] 2002, 2). Although such a sentiment might be regarded as a generally accepted idea about jazz, this statement is already framed in the context of questions he brought up through anonymous interlocutors. Furthering this argument, in the penultimate chapter of his autobiography, Bechet describes a concert featuring a bebop band an a more traditional ensemble ([1960] 2002, 192). According to Bechet, the audience did not applaud the bebop musicians, but displayed much appreciation when they heard the other band play traditional New Orleans jazz ([1960] 2002, 192). Bechet, who was very critical of the word “jazz,” used the word in this context to construct bebop as an outsider to jazz, a non-authentic form. He also suggests that the New Orleans style, which he positions as the most authentic form of jazz, can move audiences in an emotional manner, whereas bebop supposedly cannot. In so doing, Bechet invokes his position as an authority, based in his own pedigree as a performer, to help establish an ethical groundwork. Dodds similarly writes of the importance of melody above all else in jazz performance. He claims, “the secret of jazz music [is] to carry the melody at all times,” adding that a “melody is supposed to be heard distinctly, carried by one specific instrument” ([1959] 2002, 10). Drummers, such as Dodds himself, were not the ideal leaders for jazz groups, since “a drummer hasn’t got melody [. . .] If he can’t carry the melody he shouldn’t be the leader” ([1959] 2002, 55). Within traditional jazz, each instrument was assigned a specific role. Dodds argues, for example, “The clarinet isn’t supposed to carry melody in a jazz band, it’s supposed to weave in and out” ([1959] 2002, 85). To this, Foster adds, “The bass and the drums are the foundation that the rest of the band works on” ([1971] 2005, 92). It is not uncommon in music for extramusical labors to be divided by the perceived roles of the instrumentalists (Tan, Pfordresher, and Harré 2018; Murnighan and Conlon 1991). For example, in the early days of the music, “the violinist [was] the leader because he calls the tunes and sets the tempo, easier for him to do than for the wind instrument players. Someone else, rather often the bass or guitar player, is the manager” (Gushee 2005, 30). As Holly E. Farrington (2006) writes, Bechet’s autobiography is a mythical narrative, a woven tale of social and personal history. For Bechet, melody

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means a positive framing not only for the literal melody of a song but for the personal, emotional, collective, and even historical experience of the musicians and their communities. In his novel Not Without Laughter, Langston Hughes describes what one of the characters feels when his grandmother sings after reading him a letter from his mother: “And Sandy, as he stood beside his grandmother on the porch, heard a great chorus out of the black past—singing generations of toil-worn Negroes, echoing Hager’s voice as it deepened and grew in volume” ([1930] 2008, 143). Bechet describes his music in a similar manner, as if it were a road connecting individuals throughout generations who, in one way or another, shared a similar circumstance. Through the second chapter of his autobiography, Bechet narrates the story of his grandfather Omar, stylized from the story of Bras-Coupé described in the previous chapter. Bechet describes how slaves used music in their gatherings to express their emotions, then suggests that his own hardships and struggles gave him insight into the challenges of his ancestors, particularly his grandfather ([1960] 2002, 104). These experiences are not exclusive to Bechet; as he claims in the final chapter of his autobiography, good and sincere musicians are all performing “Omar’s song” because all have a connection to a deeper past and to ancestors who are the equivalent of his Omar ([1960] 2002, 202). Thus, both Dodds and Bechet use performance-based narratives in order to establish a general ethical frame, in markedly different yet complementary ways, for they are not mutually exclusive, but different levels of an experience. The association of jazz with notions about authenticity as well as with specific locations also influences how certain decisions are made. Collectivism and authenticity, depending on the position of the observers, can sometimes allow or promote nepotism. Outsiders in need of a job, but aware of the codes of a group or culture, might exploit the scripts of so-called authentic performances for their benefit. As Collins writes, I always was a sucker for trying to help New Orleans musicians. A young man came into the Ship one time and told me he was Joe White, a drummer from New Orleans. I believed him and gave him a job [. . .]. Anyway, Mary found out later that the Joe White who I had hired was not from New Orleans at all. [. . .] He said the reason he lied was that someone told him he was sure to land a job with me if he let on he was from New Orleans. (1974, 79)

Collins, embedded in the same collectivistic ethical substance as Bechet favored those that came from his hometown, or who pretended to be, inadvertently blurring the boundaries of authenticity that he co-constructed.

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“Rag It Up” In New Orleans, accomplished musicians were often considered to be those who could play in more than one genre or style (Ogren 1989). As Ted Gioia describes, one of the features of the bands that played in New Orleans, during the formative years of jazz in the early twentieth century, was the large range of traditional dancing genres they were able to play: “The repertoire of these bands was remarkably varied. In addition to concert and march music, the ensembles also knew a range of quadrilles, polkas, schottisches, mazurkas, two-steps, and other popular dance styles” (Gioia 1997, 33). Jazz autobiographers also mention their ability, sometimes out of need, to play different genres. However, as I previously described, within jazz, simply knowing songs is not enough. Musicians have to translate these songs into their own musical language, and this type of inventiveness and flexibility provides yet another opportunity for autobiographers to propose and enact an ethical frame. According to Bechet, his father would listen to what musicians “were doing to those old traditional songs, how they were making a new spirit from them” ([1960] 2002, 58). In this manner, performing traditional European songs in their own style was framed within the construction of a sense of culture and self, implying a discursive construction of relationships between culture, identity, and the compositional elements of music. According to Dodds, on the riverboats, they “used to make classics into dance tunes” ([1959] 2002, 29). Later, when he moved to Chicago and played with his brother, Dodds recalls that when they performed a song, they “would jazz the numbers and play them in different tempos” ([1959] 2002, 51). Both traditional and contemporary songs could be subjected to such a jazz translation. Bechet remembers, “Rag it up, we used to say. You take any piece, you make it so people can dance to it, pat their feet, move around” ([1960] 2002, 212). As Bechet explains, musicians were expected not only to rag the songs they had already learned, but also to reinterpret new songs. “To rag” implies that jazz musicians have the ethical duty to translate music into the language of jazz. Following this, both Bechet and Dodds argue that musicians must strive to play music in their own style. Dodds remembers how they “never played anything straight, but even old time numbers like Dardanella we played in our own inimitable way” (Dodds [1959] 2002, 51). By performing in their own style, artists thus assert both an ensemble’s identity and the musicians’ sense of self. But versatility is also fundamental in the process of playing with the group. Collins describes Buddy Petit as a versatile player and stresses the importance of the role of the second cornet: “He was a great second cornet player, which in some ways was harder to play than first. You had to have a good ear and be able to improvise and follow the first cornet anywhere he

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went” (1974, 53). Musicians were required to be versatile as individuals but also in their group performances. Collins’s quote reveals the mid-level process in which individuals’ abilities are integrated together. Dodds’s and Bechet’s “rag it up” attitude reveals the psychological complexity of making original music. No musical or artistic work comes from nothing or exists in a vacuum; it stems from and/or against the multiplicity of sources available. Furthermore, as Stein (2012, 103) argues through Dick Hebdige’s notion of versioning, the New Orleans bands played their own versions of existing songs, and in a way, the multiplicity of Armstrong’s autobiographical statements is part of such a versioning impulse. The ethical imperative is, then, to not be constrained by the original version of the song, or even life story, and to perform in an original way. Both Dodds and Bechet reflect this idea in their autobiographical works. “Never Just for the Money” Another field of human life and action negotiated within Bechet’s and Dodds’s autobiographies is the commercial aspect of music. This includes general notions about salaries and the commercialization of music, both of which are constructed in an ambivalent manner. As Lionel Trilling argues, “Money, in short, is the principle of the inauthentic in human existence” (1972, 124). In a way, the need or want for money is constructed as a vulgar desire, even if necessary to buy food and basic sustenance. This seeming ambivalence toward money, at least within artistic trades, is part of a covert culture in which, in order to admit a desire to make money, the individual in question rationalizes money as not being the main motive. Thus both autobiographers actively position economic issues as a secondary concern in comparison to the music. For example, after quoting the poem read to him by his mother, Dodds states, “I always worked to improve my drumming and I never drummed just for the money” ([1959] 2002, 1). Dodds even claims that as a young musician playing with Willie Hightower, he “didn’t even look for any money” ([1959] 2002, 9). Later, playing again with Hightower at a Catholic school on Sundays, he did not expect a financial reward, but the emotional reward of performing music where Kid Ory and his own brother had played (Dodds [1959] 2002, 11). Both as an abstract principle and within a specific band, Dodds stresses that money was not the fundamental motive for his playing. In the third quote, it even seems that performing in the same location as Kid Ory and Johnny Dodds was rewarding enough. Foster echoes this sentiment in a way that also resembles Dodds’s poem: “When we were playing we were having fun; the pay sometimes just made it a little bit sweeter” (Foster [1971] 2005, 65).

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Dodds’s position on money changes once he becomes a mature musician, particularly when issues surrounding compensation seem dishonest. Dodds recounts that he played with Joe Oliver’s band for several years with great camaraderie among the musicians until Oliver changed his style of leadership and became, according to Dodds, less transparent with the royalties they earned ([1959] 2002, 48). Dodds ([1959] 2002) claims that Oliver never showed them the actual checks, and the group disbanded. The lack of financial remuneration when playing with Hightower as dishonest (unlike his experience with Oliver), is not described in the same terms as when he expected a fair salary. The difference between his experiences with Willie Hightower and Joe Oliver was mostly due to Dodds’s later status as an experienced musician. Bechet’s autobiography complements Dodds’s account. He recalls playing in New York jam sessions during the Great Depression, stating, “I wasn’t making much in a money way, but the music was real fine. [. . .] If a man really cares for the music, there’s always some way” ([1960] 2002, 163). Again, money is represented as a secondary aspect of playing music. Nevertheless, Bechet echoes Dodds’s perspective, yet in a more violent fashion, when he feels he is being used. He tells of a conflict between himself and Mezz Mezzrow after recording several discs for French jazz critic Hugues Panassié. Mezzrow owed Bechet money but kept saying that wages were not his responsibility. After Bechet threatened him with a knife, Mezzrow then searched for the money and paid Bechet (Bechet [1960] 2002, 167). Both of Bechet’s stories are set within the context of the Great Depression at the end of the 1930s, which might go some way toward explaining their framing of economics. In another time of need, Collins, who was in the hospital in France, clashed with Mezzrow, who apparently was avoiding paying Collins. Supposedly, Mezzrow “wouldn’t pay if he could get out of it” (Collins 1974, 124). For these autobiographers, even if money is a necessity, it might seem vulgar to play just for money, as Bechet indicates. However, when discrepancies over money stem from trying to take advantage of the professional musician, either disbanding the group or threatening a friend with a knife seemed like reasonable choices. Another potential explanation for Bechet’s neutral evaluation of the knife story is the presentation and assertion of masculinity and aggression, which might have been seen as necessary strategies to secure payment from unscrupulous business owners and forgetful colleagues. Stein (2012) highlights the presence of tensions between commercial success and money being secondary to music in Louis Armstrong’s story as well. In Swing That Music, the narrator structures his life as one of success through the “rags-to-riches” model. However, “Armstrong’s later autobiographical narratives express a strong yearning for his hometown and [. . .] they publicly reject outward manifestations of wealth” (Stein 2012, 72).

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These autobiographers frame money in an ambivalent manner and as a secondary motive for playing music. The music itself is constructed as the main principle. ETHICS OF JAZZ The autobiographies of jazz musicians problematize official discourses and promote understanding the craft of New Orleans jazz within notions of hard work, knowledge, the value of melody, translating classical and popular songs into their own way of making music, and economics. In the autobiographical accounts of the general themes discussed above, New Orleans jazz emerges as a complex musical system that transcends either-or logics and promotes the personalization of music by translating it into the genre and the artists’ personal styles. The sense of underlying ambivalence present in several of these themes reveals a covert culture that highlights numerous contradictions. Likewise, these autobiographies frame jazz within unique African American experiences in the way they problematize the authority of official discourses. These themes, which also reveal what Michel Foucault (1990) called ethical substance, are constructed in a complex and ambivalent way by problematizing the boundaries between work and joy, downplaying their abilities while describing their musical talents, and contradicting typical narratives of the importance of money. Jazz narrators promote an ethics of participation by describing the qualities of those they accepted as part of the jazz world. These definitions reveal a complex construction of the ethical substance of early jazz, in which the actions and life stories of musicians are framed through notions of authenticity. Musical knowledge, arrangements, and money are seen as problematic in their potential to disrupt musicians’ originality. However, at the same time, these are all inescapable aspects of being a jazz musician, and for these reasons, they are constructed in an ambivalent manner. While official discourses often portrayed jazz musicians negatively, jazz autobiographers narrate how jazz, while joyful, is still hard work requiring a strong work ethic. Their retrospective account of jazz’s ethical substance is also quite vague, which allows them to avoid excessive prescription. Perhaps their vagueness, in addition to the lack of tellability of tedious norms and procedures to their audiences, is one of the ways they can construct their music as authentic. The same is true for their contradictory accounts of sight-reading. Excessive work or revision in one’s art, or too much acquired knowledge, is one of the stigmas of inauthenticity (Barker and Taylor 2007). The general frames these musicians used to qualify and make sense of the actions of the members of the jazz community are then associated with the categories of being. Simultaneously,

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those categories play an important role in how individuals constrain and shape their actions (Hacking 2004; Foucault 1979). NOTE 1. Parts of this chapter were previously published in Jazz Perspectives and used with permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.tandfonline.com/. EspadaBrignoni, Teófilo. 2017. “Complexity and Ambivalence: The Ethics of Jazz in Sidney Bechet’s and Warren Dodd’s Autobiographies.” Jazz Perspectives 10(2–3) 243–261. https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjaz20/current.

Chapter 4

Being a Jazz Man

From the framework of subjectivation, ethics are associated with the kinds of subjects whose lives are problematized or, for some reason, are at the center of specific categories of identity, and their boundaries are constructed and negotiated. Elsewhere, I have examined the complementary categories of self and the relationships among them as imagined by Max Gordon, the founder of the Village Vanguard, in his autobiography (Espada-Brignoni 2019). Max Gordon’s (1980) evaluation of hecklers in Live at the Village Vanguard embodies the complex relations between the ethical substance and the mode of subjection. Heckling and disrupting some of the performances at the Vanguard, before the venue became a full-time nightclub, was allowed and considered appropriate when “authentic” (Espada-Brignoni 2019). Heckling itself is not problematized by Gordon except when he believes that the audience’s intentions are insincere (Espada-Brignoni 2019; Gordon 1980). What Foucault then calls the ethical substance implies and is implied by possible kinds of being and their biographies. Furthermore, modes of subjection rely on the power we attribute in our societies to notions of identity and their association with biographies. In a passage that is commensurable with Foucault’s ideas (as Hacking [2004] has already suggested), Goffman writes, The process of personal identification can be seen at work clearly if one takes as a point of reference not a small group but a large impersonal organization, such as a state government. It is now standard organizational practice that a means of positive identification for every individual to be dealt with is officially recorded, that is, a set of marks is used that distinguishes the person so marked from all other individuals. (1986, 57)

These records, Goffman argues, allow the “specialist” to “authenticate” individuals in the same way experts authenticate works of art (1986, 57). If we think of autobiographies as documents that give us access into how different 65

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groups and cultures make up their sense of self (Olney 1993; Bruss 1976) and their relations to others, the autobiographies of jazz musicians allow us to understand the identities and potential categories of musicians and audiences. To complicate things, these narratives emerged in a context that had originally allowed non-musicians to be the authenticators (Ekins 2012). It is through the creation of categories of self that individuals can be recognized by others and by themselves as part of the frameworks that apply to them in a specific circumstance. These categories—which go beyond notions about citizenship and the broad terms used to classify individuals in our political, legal, and medical systems—give life and strengthen micro-subjectivations in the groups and cultures that make up most of our existence. Just like the general producers of our societies, they operate through, between, and within us, who “[become] the principle [of our] own subjection” (Foucault 1979, 203). Notions and rules of authenticity compel us to be who we are supposed to be under the veil and illusion of being who we think we are. The ways we define ourselves also shape how we remember and narrate ourselves. In this chapter, I’m interested in the categories of self and identity associated with the performances of authenticity described in the previous chapter. These notions of selfhood are simultaneously about constraints, possibilities, authority, and policing at the levels in which these narratives might mediate the interactions among different categories of self. In medical ethics, the construction of a physician’s appropriate behaviors is part of the frameworks that outline the roles of colleagues and patients. The construction of these categories also allows a community to define the meaningful roles of others. In a way, as clinicians of nightlife, jazz autobiographers forge potential roles for other musicians and audiences. The French poet Isidore Ducasse beautifully uses the medical metaphor to depict the relationship between writer and reader as the product of a negotiation between roles and complementary perceptions that are historical in nature and change over time. Ducasse, who wrote his masterpiece under the pen name of the Comte de Lautréamont, writes, “A far from tacit convention exists between author and reader, by which the former calls himself the sick one, and accepts the latter as nurse. It is the poet who consoles humanity! The roles are arbitrarily inverted” (Lautréamont [1869] 1996, 305). Certainly, the roles do not have to be mutually exclusive, but the genealogical nature of these relationships and their complementary identities applies to music as well. Our autobiographies, at risk of relying too much on Piagetian and cognitive discursive structures, are not merely miniature or naive scientists; they are historians, sociologists, and griots for those willing to read beyond verifiable extra-textual events. In the autobiographies of early jazz musicians, the main categories of self that seem relevant for self-constitution are being a musician, race, the group,

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and the audience. These notions are not mutually exclusive, and within them, we can find a small, loose taxonomy of individuals. Furthermore, in a way, their narratives also had to deal with the ways New Orleans musicians were being portrayed by modernists. As Stein writes, Beginning with this arrival [of bebop], a series of profound musical changes, along with new social and political messages audiences expected from the music, fundamentally altered the image of the jazz musician, and they threatened to make New Orleans players like Armstrong obsolete. (2012, 230)

Louis Armstrong, who was portrayed by critics and fans as not being politically radical, had to defend himself from accusations of political disengagement (Stein 2012). As Foucault (1990) notes in The Use of Pleasure, the documents he analyzed to study “ethics” in antiquity were those of an ethics designed for and from the perspective of certain men. The autobiographies I’m analyzing similarly provide a retrospective account of a masculine ethics of jazz, which plays a role in how they saw themselves as political beings. While Ajay Heble (2000) discusses the potential of the jazz community to promote justice and equality, Provost (2017) analyzes how male musicians as well as writers erased the contributions of female instrumentalists whose music was depicted as derivative. Jazz autobiography highlights a complexity in the sense of self different from the heavily internal ruminations of individualistic white narrators. Reflecting on Du Bois’s double consciousness, Wilson J. Moses writes, “To reduce oneself to two souls is almost like reducing oneself to two dimensions. The personality of every human being is complex and contradictory” (1993, 274–75). Amiri Baraka identifies in jazz music a thread, a “continuum” ([1963] 2002, 139) of American identity where performers were integrating several musical traditions at the same time with the potential to interpellate a larger population. This in turn appealed to white musicians who sought ways to challenge their own cultural background (Kenney 1993; Baraka [1963] 2002; Marin 2020). In this context, jazz appears almost as an unconscious drive for hybridity in a society and culture still obsessed with essentialist notions of identity. Jazz autobiographers recognize the multiplicity of selfhood in different ways. Charles Mingus’s ([1971] 1991) autobiography is an excellent account, in content and form, of the dynamic and multilayered constitution of the self. Like Mingus, but perhaps more in content than in form, Dodds ([1959] 2002) constructs the self as a complex, multilayered, but not necessarily contradictory entity, by pointing out the coexistence of several discourses in himself. In the previous chapter, we noticed how Dodds beautifully and

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effortlessly rejects the play–work dualism in the qualification of his music. He does the same with the sense of self by accepting contradictory roles and recognizing the sacred and the profane as part of himself. While African American churches, particularly the Sanctified Church, used and incorporated sounds and musical practices that seem to have influenced early jazz musicians, “Baptist and Methodist churches generally considered jazz and its antecedents disrespectable” (Hersch 2007, 93). However, “the Sanctified churches reacted against increasing respectability and decorum in Baptist and Methodist churches [. . .] by emphasizing emotional expression” (Hersch 2007, 93). After describing his father’s tasks as a deacon at his Baptist church, Dodds writes, “If we weren’t gentlemen on the street, we were gentlemen in church” ([1959] 2002, 3). For some musicians, including Louis Armstrong, early forms of jazz could have been consistent with the practices of the Sanctified church (Hersch 2007, 94; Brothers 2006, 8). Others, like Dodds, were forced “to find other ways to assimilate the black music tradition” (Hersch 2007, 94). In Dodds, there is no dissonance, just a mention, in an unadorned way, of two of his selves in relation to the space he occupied. BEING A JAZZ MAN To come into the world is to step into a sea of potential categories that carry different weights, histories, and assumptions. As members of a diverse and complex society, we have an idea not only of the roles we fulfill for those close to us (Du Bois [1903] 1994; Mead 1972; Goffman 1986) but also of the roles we interpret and react with or against as active and creative agents (Hacking 2004; Wetherell 2003). The way that Dodds associates what guides his creative process with his identity and biography in the jazz world is telling. After describing how African Americans were not allowed to take part in classical music, he states, “Being a jazz man, when I hear a symphony, I pick out different things which I feel I can use in jazz” (Dodds [1959] 2002, 3). The quote speaks not only to the versatility and creative power of jazz musicians who are able to use others’ music in their own way but also to his identification of those qualities with being a jazz man. Furthermore, following Thomas Brothers (2006), the roots of this mentality are somewhat associated with the practices of the Sanctified Church. Brothers writes, “Jazz musicians also found in the Sanctified Church an example of how to think about music not in autonomous terms, as a thing in itself, but as sonic dialogue” (2006, 45). The melody becomes a point of departure for a collective dialogue. Dodds and other jazz autobiographers craft the attributes of potential jazz identities. It is an act of self-construction and self-presentation that

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asserts their musical, creative, and narrative power and associates the ethical substance of jazz with their identity as jazz men. Daniel Stein writes, “Jazz autobiographies [. . .] narrate cultural myths and counter-myths at the same time” (2004, 177). Bechet, Dodds, Collins, and Foster provide alternatives to the set stereotypes of what a jazz man can be and the perceptions of musicians and people of color in the United States. On occasion, their narratives seem, in a way, like an attempt to disallow the associations that writers, audiences, their families, and some musicians have made between the life of a musician and what could be interpreted as an excess of hedonism. Furthermore, the contradictions among these autobiographies in how they evaluate others and themselves are telling, for they rely on the same analytical framework while disagreeing about specific facts or how to interpret them. They would be relevant materials for the study of what attribution theorists in social psychology call the “actor–observer bias” and the fundamental attribution error (Ross and Nisbett 2017). Our autobiographers do address the use of alcohol and drugs by musicians; however, they problematize the excessively pathological narrative of early public depictions of jazz (Ogren 1989; Stein 2004; Gennari 2006). Dodds ([1959] 2002), in an ambivalent way, recognizes how his family, influenced by how musicians were seen by society, frowned upon the possibility that he could become a musician. Bechet acknowledges the emotional struggles of some musicians and how some might take refuge in alcohol, yet neither the music nor their identity as jazz men explains their suffering. In the fifth chapter of his autobiography, Bechet spends several paragraphs explaining how “there ain’t nothing bad in the music” ([1960] 2002, 88) and how self-destructive behaviors can only be blamed on the individual, not the music ([1960] 2002, 87). Bechet adopts Goffman’s (1986) perspective, where he admits the multiplicity of selves, biographies, and ways to present oneself but in a way that allows him to attribute what could be construed as the negative aspects of a musician’s life, not to the music, but to being human. We can find similar themes in Langston Hughes’s ([1930] 2008) Not Without Laughter when Harriet Williams hides the music-filled spaces she visited from her grandmother. Foster, aware of the way that bebop musicians such as Charlie Parker were depicted, writes, “Charlie used to drink a lot, but I never saw him take dope” ([1971] 2005, 194). It is telling that narrators might also be unable to recognize or see themselves in the same light in which they might be depicting others. Dodds ([1959] 2002), for example, acknowledges his excessive drinking but, for the most part, claims it had no effect on his playing. Louis Armstrong, however, describes an occasion in which Dodds was inebriated. According to Armstrong, “Everybody who knew Baby [Dodds] knew that when he started drinking the best thing to do was to clear out. That is, if you liked him too much to want to hurt him”

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([1954] 1986, 206). Apparently Dodds had forgotten he had to play with Fate Marable’s band on the riverboats, and the rest of the band “blew like mad to try to hide Dodd’s [sic] blunders” (Armstrong [1954] 1986, 206). Dodds’s behavior annoyed the musicians, the audiences, and the boat’s captain, who even choked him (Armstrong [1954] 1986, 207). Years later, both Dodds and Armstrong were able to “laugh about it” (Armstrong [1954] 1986, 208). Musicians, just like members of any profession, might abuse drugs and alcohol, yet New Orleans autobiographers do not glorify intoxication in the way our popular imagination and even contemporary TV shows draw associations between mind-altering substances and creativity. The point is not so much whether or not these writers are trying to provide a sanitized version of the jazz life but how they position alcohol and drugs at the periphery of their discourse on music and the self, which is consonant with the ethics described in the previous chapter. Furthermore, whether or not they are willing to apply those notions to themselves, they might use them to describe their colleagues. In addition to associations among jazz, drugs, and creativity, jazz musicians and their art were often qualified, in the early decades of the music, through the lens of primitivism, which denied artists a complex inner life. Jazz autobiography claims and explores that interior space in different ways by giving an account of the authors’ individual, collective, and historical sense of self. Even in the story described in the previous paragraph, Armstrong emphasizes the in-group feeling among musicians who tried to help Dodds avoid getting into trouble, especially with the white audience (Armstrong [1954] 1986). They engage in a self-construction that integrates individualistic and collectivistic positions that dramatize, perform, and construct what qualifies them in the realms of authenticity. These discourses are, at least in part, reactions to and reinterpretations of the public personas that musicians had to fashion in the entertainment industry, but in their tales, they integrate the richness of their cultural heritage. In a statement that highlights his individuality and his culture, Dodds minimizes the originality of white musicians such as the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. He mentions that they performed their own interpretations of jazz songs, but remarks, “They never got the real idea of our music” ([1959] 2002, 62). In addition to race, Dodds comments on social class, saying that working-class African Americans were the ones who truly understood the music ([1959] 2002, 62). These evaluations are associated with the apparent inability of upper-class people of color and white musicians to play music collaboratively. There are also historical reasons for the association of jazz with class. As Hersch writes, “during its early days, jazz could be played only in disrespectable places” (2007, 30), the venues frequented by the working class in New Orleans.

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Foster also underscores class when he talks about blues singers from the South, writing that “the good ones came out of those little backwood places like the plantations and cottonfields of Mississippi and from the railroads” ([1971] 2005, 132). They construct a sociology of race and class where what some would call privilege was associated with socioeconomic status and individualistic ideologies. This sociology is, in a way, one piece of the elaboration of frames and languages of narrating and making the self. As Eakin suggests, both language and the self (or perhaps a sense of self) constitute each other (2008, 65–66; 1988, 192). The externalization, institutionalization, and internalization of these statements (Berger and Luckmann 1967) contributes to the construction of realities of those interpellated by the music. Dodds does not deny individualism, for jazz musicians have to be able to stand out. Bechet complements Dodds’s ideas when he writes that “there’s not much else you can do unless you know how to get hold of something inside you that isn’t learned” (Bechet [1960] 2002, 68), referring to internal dimensions beyond the acquisition of the necessary techniques and knowledge to play music. In a way, they re-racialize jazz from a framework that gives them a symbolic authority and status grounded in the premises of authenticity. In jazz autobiographies, as discussed below, the consequences of individualism are problematized by the narrators, some of whom accuse one another of behaving egocentrically. In a way, their books serve as a diagnosis of modernity, particularly the consequences of individualism, and promote more collectivistic ways of understanding the self without completely disregarding the individual. As Taylor comments, following Alexis de Tocqueville’s description of democracy, “the dark side of individualism is a centering on the self, which both flattens and narrows our lives, makes them poorer in meaning, and less concerned with others or society” (2018, 4). Jazz autobiographers found ways to navigate individualism and collectivism, strategically drawing from both orientations without constructing them as complete opposites. Their ontological system is one where tradition and individual creation are not necessarily antagonistic and are even somewhat complementary. Lee Collins, as our other narrators do at times, associates New Orleans with that interiority. While working as a water boy for railroads in Illinois, Collins remembers one day when “a white boy passed by, and he happened to have a cornet with him, so I asked him to let me play it. He gave me the horn, and I begun blowing the blues, just thinking about New Orleans” (1974, 18–19). The associations of jazz and blues with race, class, and place are prevalent here. Stein writes, “Jazz autobiography thus serves as a medium for musicians to transform personal aesthetics to written discourse, not by simple translation of musical principles, but by reconfiguring the artistic, social, and political impulses that also inspire and influence their music” (2004, 181). The way that jazz autobiographers qualify the internal world of

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the jazz musician reproduces and reinterprets modern ideas about authenticity. However, the framework that they develop is strategic. It allows the construction of a taxonomy of musicians according to the intersections of race, gender, and class. These ideas resonate with Hughes’s novel when the narrator explains how an African American couple, able to achieve some economic stability, disliked Black music: “Blues and spirituals Tempy and her husband hated because they were too Negro. [. . .] And rag-time belonged in the Bottoms with the sinners” ([1930] 2008, 171). I have already mentioned how Dodds’s father did not like the idea of him playing jazz because of the extramusical behaviors associated with the music. Our authors grew up in a complex social world that built paths for individuals according to racial and ethnic categories. In some cases, members of a community can internalize or adopt some of those postures and reproduce them (Hacking 2004; Goffman 1986). The use of essentialist notions about identity through notions of authenticity facilitates that process because it relies on the idea that we “discover” who we are rather than admitting the possibility that we could be a creation, a product of our own choices and the narratives that we use to give meaning to our lives (Foucault 1997). While narratives that take the form of the confession rely on the rupture between a previous kind of self and the narrator (Besley and Peters 2007), jazz autobiography assumes the self is a multiplicity, but at the same time an essence. There is no need for a clear-cut rupture with a previous self, because their perspective on what makes a human being does not rely solely on individualism and reaching an ideal adult and mature perspective. Racial categories thus become another source of subjection. Most of the New Orleans autobiographers explicitly deal with racism in their texts (Kenney 1991). The experience of racism allows them, in their narratives, to authenticate jazz in a way that white musicians could not, yet setting a narrative frame that would later interpellate white autobiographers and enable them to find ways to navigate and authenticate their own lives and narratives in relation to African American music and musicians (Marin 2020). One of the challenges and paradoxes for the music and its performers was the ontological attributions about race in the United States that othered Black musicians, and that would later produce a double bind in American society at large. As Charles Hersch writes, “the integrity of American culture was dependent upon ethnic purity” (2007, 5), which facilitated a public discourse that to this day racializes and reifies sound as manifestations of underlying racial differences and essence. A mode of subjection built on notions about race can reinforce a collectivistic narrative that establishes a commensurable experience among African American musicians that white musicians cannot translate in their own lives.

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White musicians, even if able to play similar notes, would not be playing the same music, for they lack the experiences that constitute what would be called in linguistics the “signified.” Several white autobiographers, as Reva Marin analyzes, justified their music by highlighting their relationships to New Orleans musicians. Others, such as Mezz Mezzrow, fashioned aspects of their narratives and lives as if they performed attributes they associated with being Black (Marin 2020). These essentialist lenses—from which, to this day, individuals and groups project to others and themselves what are taken as the scripts of the self—run the risk of constraining collaboration and meaningful dialogue. Furthermore, this invisibilizes the historical, political, social, cultural, and psychological dimensions that make human identity possible. Dodds then creates a version of Saussurean linguistics when he writes that to white people, the blues was not natural ([1959] 2002, 30), as if the sounds had no mutually agreed-upon signified. Dodds proposes a socio-psychological argument in which the singular experiences of African Americans in the United States are interpreted and embedded in ways of knowing that are not commensurable with the cosmovision of white North Americans (Dodds [1959] 2002, 30). What underlies Dodds’s signified is an emotional complexity that oppressors in American society do not share with the oppressed. However, this should not be read in a defeatist light—Dodds is asserting his authority over the music. Bechet complements this in his use of the Bras-Coupé folk story by underscoring the historical processes through which those meanings are acquired. One of the paradoxes of notions about authenticity in a world like ours is the act of selling/performing a product or service for the consumption of others. According to Kenney’s study of jazz in Chicago during the first decades of the twentieth century, “for jazz musicians and their close listeners, and even for some dance band musicians, the ‘real thing’ was always defined by both its resemblance to and differences from commercial dance music” (1993, 61). This is a fine and complex balance that, in the end, is arbitrary and depends on what members of jazz communities negotiate as authentic in the background of not so much “objective” musical principles but their differences from other forms of commercially successful music. Furthermore, notions about the “real thing” and authenticity in modern Western societies are tied to primitivism and exoticism (Van der Grijp 2013), in which one voyeuristically sees and imagines in the other an escape from the tensions of modern life. Debates between revivalists and supporters of more modern forms of jazz in the 1940s played a role in the broader debates about the commercial aspects of jazz, which, in turn, can easily be associated with notions about authenticity in Western society, given the relationship with the possibilities of generating profit. Bernard Gendron writes, “Nothing seemed to offend the

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sensitivities of revivalists more than the enormous commercial success of the swing bands, and the blatant spirit of commercialism with which Down Beat and Metronome happily contributed to this success” (1993, 136–37). For revivalists, adds Gendron, “this was a sure sign of the impurity, corruption, and mediocrity of swing as jazz form” (1993, 137). Showmanship has been the object of interesting debates in jazz and jazz autobiography. An interesting figure here is Buddy Bolden, considered by some as one of the founding fathers of jazz (Gioia 1997; Marquis 2005). One of the ways that musicians could boast their status in the history of jazz was by associating themselves with Bolden. According to Donald M. Marquis, Bunk Johnson “moved his birthdate back about ten years” (2005, 4) to claim that he had played a foundational role in jazz. Lee Collins, in turn, claimed that he “began to get quite a bit of recognition from other musicians as being from the Buddy Bolden and Bunk Johnson school of playing” (1974, 22). According to Bechet, Bolden was a good musician, yet he praises Bolden’s showmanship more than his musicianship. After lauding Bolden as “a hell of a good showman,” Bechet adds that Manuel Perez was a better performer with more “sincere” music ([1960] 2002, 83, emphasis in the original). The notion of sincerity, as Trilling notes, refers to the expectation of a congruence between the internal and the external where the subject is expected to present who they are (1972, 2). One of the paradoxes that emerge from the demand or expectation to qualify individuals within the realms of sincerity and authenticity is that “we play the role of being ourselves” (Trilling 1972, 11), a role which exists through intersubjective encounters in the presence of real or imagined others. The showman or personality then runs the risk of being categorized as inauthentic, even if showmanship by itself is not a problem. Part of the ethical problematization of showmanship comes from its potential contradictions with the collective elements of New Orleans jazz music. While these autobiographers rely on and contribute to the same discursive structure, they do not necessarily classify some of their colleagues as the embodiment of the ethics of jazz. For instance, Foster writes: [Sidney Bechet] and Louis Armstrong were two of a kind—you didn’t make any showing when you played with them. I played with Sidney all of my life and I used to tell him, “Your name is in the lights, man, nobody can hurt you. If you’ve got a good band with you, it makes you better.” But he wouldn’t listen. (Foster [1971] 2005, 103)

Here, Foster relies on the same discursive pattern to criticize Armstrong’s and Bechet’s use of their stardom, which contributed to denying Foster, in this case, an opportunity to “show off.”

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Notions about being a showman are embedded in a delicate discursive balance where the narrators acknowledge, to a degree, the role of showmanship in the entertainment business while problematizing its excess or contents in relation to actual abilities. Excessive and even moderate showmanship can potentially be construed as a trait of inauthentic performers (Barker and Taylor 2007). Yet New Orleans musicians adopted a complex perspective that integrates showmanship. The “pre-history” and early history of jazz was characterized by opportunities which constrained performers to specific, sometimes demeaning roles; in order to be able to make a living, they had to navigate and negotiate codes of showmanship that relied on racialized aesthetics (McCusker 2012; Gushee 2005; Ogren 1989). New Orleans autobiographers redefine showmanship and specify its limits. It is, in a way, an act of resistance (against other discourses and practices in American society), an act of power (in terms of a micro-governmentality of the appropriate behaviors for the jazz community), and an authenticating discourse that warns audiences about the possibility of being struck by inauthentic performers just because of their showmanship. These ideas are also embedded in notions about the collective aspects of jazz and the possible relations between leaders and musicians in a group. SUBJECTION TO THE GROUP Early critics and supporters of jazz emphasized what they perceived as the communal aspects of New Orleans jazz (Gennari 2006). Praise and criticism for bebop, on the other hand, highlighted the individualistic and modernist values that bebop musicians were supposed to embody (Gennari 2006). While listeners and observers could agree at a certain level with such a depiction, it would be a mistake to deny individualism in early jazz and erase collectivism from bebop or other musical genres. As Murnighan and Conlon (1991) argue, classical quartets, for example, are complex ensembles where members rely on mutual feedback. What is notable is the emphasis on “being in the group” that New Orleans musicians highlight in their narratives, along with the emotional bonds among band members. Some notions about being in the group may have emerged from musical collaborations; Murnighan and Conlon (1991) interviewed musicians who felt close with their colleagues. However, in the narratives of our autobiographers, the group is almost an extension of the individual, and the individual is not just a part of the group but is in and through the group. In chapter seven, I discuss how machines and family life provided powerful metaphors for the musicians to stylize their relationships with one another.

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The organization of individuals in a group relies on and requires the coordination of complementing roles and the mutual recognition of one another in a way that allows performers to integrate their actions with the collective product. A performer in a musical ensemble can also play a role in the specific terms in which they understand their contributions to the collective (Murnighan and Conlon 1991; Tan, Pfordresher, and Harré 2018). The autobiographers recognize themselves as part of a unit that requires them to act for one another and for the group. They identify being a musician with a duty toward the collective that is likely grounded not only in the nature of musical activities but also in their collectivistic worldview. Our views about the relationship of our existence with a world of others also make up the expectations we have toward them. Notions about groups and collective organizations are also associated with our perception of racial and ethnic categories. Lee Collins recalls incidents of inclusion by Creole musicians and exclusion by their families, suggesting that they lived through strict social and moral codes and were biased against African Americans (1974, 44). Collins was invited to play downtown with Creole musicians, and his version of the story emphasizes his musical talents—they wanted him to play with them. His girlfriend, however, “made some mistakes” (Collins 1974, 45), such as wearing makeup, crossing her legs, and smoking cigarettes. Collins states the rules and the prejudice of Creoles of color toward African Americans, yet in the event that he narrates, it is his lover who, at the end of the tale, receives the blame for breaking the rules of conduct. In another story, while on tour with Mezz Mezzrow (Collins 1974, 114), he got sick. The story contrasts the “clannish” bond between New Orleans musicians “regardless of troubles” among them (Collins 1974, 114) with non–New Orleans musicians. During the tour, “everyone wanted to be a star instead of backing each other up” (Collins 1974, 115). The story, however, thematizes not only the need for musicians to exist as a group while performing their craft but also how those dynamics are embedded in their social dynamics. After being taken to the hospital, Collins remembers, Mary told me she had called Sidney Bechet, and he said to let him know if she needed anything and that he would come to visit me. Albert Nicholas was out on a tour, but I knew those Creoles would not let me down. As for the guys in Mezz’s band, I didn’t expect them to do anything. (1974, 120)

These anecdotes compare two modes of self-definition in music and life. The first one is a New Orleans mode of the group that highlights and promotes a sense of group or “clan” that supersedes potential conflicts among individuals in favor of social and musical gains (even despite individual and ethnic differences). The second one is a non–New Orleans conception of the group

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in which collective organization and music are too fragile against the sense of individuality of the performers. One of the main aspects of the mode of subjection in early jazz is that “belongingness.” In a sort of memory-thought retrospective study, Dodds writes about the times he heard the band playing without him: the absence of his drums from the music gave him an immense joy and reinforced the feeling of belonging to the group ([1959] 2002, 11). In a way, Dodds’s sense of self, at least as a musician, is inseparable from a collectivistic view of life where the group and the individual need each other on practical, social, and emotional levels. He adopts the position of an observer who is part of the group and gives an account where his sense of self is characterized by interdependence among the musicians in the band. Foster extends and projects these ideas to society at large. While reminiscing about many of the bands that played in New Orleans and other locations in the South, he writes, We had plenty of fun together and there was music everywhere. If the rest of the world was like musicians, this would be a great world. You should see musicians backstage when one band comes back to see another. Jesus, there’s some noise and talk. ([1971] 2005, 17)

Foster’s statement places the interpersonal dynamics among musicians above those of non-musicians. Furthermore, he not-too-subtly tells the reader about a special location (the backstage area) available mostly to musicians that supports the hierarchization of interactions among musicians above ways of organizing with others. Like Dodds, he problematizes the separation of work and play described in the previous chapter but invites the reader to imagine how these bonds, these values, could be applied in other spaces. For these autobiographies, their stories are, as Kenney (1991, 51) suggests, a “group biography” because their culture and sense of self are grounded in their families as well as their culture, the ways they organized as musicians, and their positive evaluation of collectivistic values. Certainly, being part of a group requires members to adopt specific roles. Dodds describes his role as a drummer as the one who provides and adapts a rhythmic background that matches the style of the other performers and their instruments ([1959] 2002, 39). The construction of the group as a collective entity is also present in how Dodds describes potential criticism. When describing a group led by his brother in Chicago, he writes, “Any criticism of the outfit was a criticism of each one of us” ([1959] 2002, 54). Sidney Bechet, on the other hand, does not shy away from criticizing Louis Armstrong for his apparent lack of collaborative performance in the 1940 Decca sessions. The memory of these sessions, which have been discussed in several places,

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provides Bechet an opportunity to qualify how groups should play by comparing the infamous session with how musicians used to play. Bechet remembers how musicians used to have no motivation to outplay their colleagues, as the ensemble worked together in complementary ways that allowed for the emergence of something new that could only be described as the outcome of a dynamic collaboration between musicians. He describes, conducting a socio-psychological analysis, how each member of the band was in the other (Bechet [1960] 2002, 176). Bechet defies individualism and highlights the importance of being motivated by the group ([1960] 2002, 176). Yet there is a sadness in Bechet’s memory of how bands used to collaborate, since he believes individualistic tendencies have been taking over how musicians see themselves and their relationships with fellow bandmates. The beauty and complexity of Bechet’s analysis lies not so much in his depiction of Armstrong, and as we will see below, Bechet was criticized from similar perspectives or by “the grass used to be greener” thinkers despite the poetic, almost spiritual way in which he describes the blurring of boundaries among individuals in a musical ensemble. This also characterizes Bechet’s blurring of the present and the past, which are unified in his account of himself, Black New Orleans culture, and the music. Foster would certainly agree with Bechet’s qualification of musical ensembles, and even with his critique of Louis Armstrong, as shown above when he describes both as “two of a kind” ([1971] 2005, 103). Foster uses the same discourse as the other autobiographers to describe and qualify jazz musicians and ensembles; what changes is the name of the one being criticized. AUTHENTIC AUDIENCES At the beginning of this chapter, I referenced Gordon’s Live at the Village Vanguard (1980) and his asymmetric qualification of behaviors in the club depending on the authenticity he ascribed to patrons. Jazz autobiographers fashion a discourse about their audiences that is grounded in notions of authenticity. This is particularly interesting considering the likelihood that the potential readers of their narratives would like to consider themselves authentic jazz subjects or at least seek their approval. A trope in popular TV shows and perhaps casual conversations among fans is when rock and pop stars always say they love the town where their performance is taking place. Jazz autobiographers might be using a similar gesture, whether intended or unintended, in their depiction of authentic audiences. In a way, they would be performing a reversal of what Gennari (2006, 87) calls “the critic’s pose.” In doing so, they claim authority over the jazz critic and specify the terms on which non-critics can engage with jazz.

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After describing getting offers for tours and the hassles associated with playing in different venues, Collins writes, “No matter where I was playing, the Victory Club or any other place, I always gave my best at all times when there was real jazz fans that listened and understood what we played” (1974, 90). The relationship between musicians and authentic audiences takes the form of a compatibility or almost evolutionary fitness between them. When describing his experience playing at the Red Onion in Chicago, Collins notes the relationship between the manager and the audience. The audience “knew their jazz!” (1974, 63), and the club satisfied the demand by hiring musicians who would quench their thirst for “real” jazz. Authentic audiences, then, are required by the underlying and implicit Saussurean linguistics of the jazz community, to have specific mental representations regarding jazz. This fitness between audiences and performers emerges out of the co-evolution of musicians and listeners who evaluate each other in complex dynamics of power. While playing in Europe, Collins, in an attempt to understand how others signified his music, analyzed Spanish audiences’ reactions to it. In his autobiography, he compares European audiences, particularly in Spain, to North American audiences. In Spain, the audience was effusive, and Collins even witnessed a couple of fights. Their physical and sonic externalizations are taken by Collins as a desirable reaction as he learned that such behaviors were expected in concerts in Spain (Collins 1974, 97–98). From what resembles a sociolinguistic analysis, Collins explains to and informs the reader about the underlying meaning of Spanish audiences’ reaction to his music. His lack of policing the audience’s fights, which are just presented as facts, resembles Gordon’s (1980) qualification of hecklers. Specific behaviors are not the object of a moralizing gaze as long as the bond between performers and audiences is framed as legitimate. Bechet complements Collins’s linguistics when he explains what is needed to understand jazz. Instead of the technical ability to play an instrument, emotional factors are what underlies someone’s ability to comprehend jazz. Bechet argues, for example, that his father was more capable of understanding jazz than many musicians because he loved the music ([1960] 2002, 51). This open-ended and flexible way of qualifying audiences probably allowed New Orleans musicians to strategically classify individuals and groups as possessors of experiences that allow them to understand the underlying meanings of jazz. Jazz scholars have analyzed how young white men, disenchanted with American society, seemed to be attracted to jazz. Kenney writes, “Some rebellious young Chicagoans cultivated a strong sense of cultural alienation from the suburban middle class, turning their experience of South Side jazz and their understanding of racial injustice into a critique of mainstream

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America” (1993, 88). In a way, they elaborated another kind of potential signified when they heard the sounds of Black and Creole jazz musicians, which they probably associated with an alternative to their realities and those of their families. Their reading of jazz was likely influenced by individualistic tendencies to find their own path in American society—a path that, in a way, reproduces some of the deepest tendencies and commitments of North American society at large, under the spell of ideals of autonomy that attempt to quiet the apparently cacophonous influences of their environment. Discussions about authenticity, in the end, value the hierarchization of objects, living beings, and experiences. This double-edged sword might allow the narrators to claim some authority over their music, life, and narratives while simultaneously participating in systems and even creating microstructures that potentially deny them or others alternate ways of fashioning their existence and self. As Gendron notes, the revivalist movement, whatever its racial tastes, was initiated and propagated only by whites with an almost exclusively white audience. The overwhelming tendency of younger black musicians to join the swing movement irritated even the most vociferous supporters of black music among the revivalists. (1993, 148)

To this, Richard Ekins adds, “Overwhelmingly, within the social worlds of revivalist jazz, the concept of authenticity is drawn upon to validate a chosen music, musician, or identity as superior, as the ‘real thing’ as opposed to the inauthentic” (2012, 26). As many scholars of jazz have noted, early jazz musicians sometimes had to perform roles and conduct themselves in ways that reinforced racial stereotypes (Horne 2019; Gushee 2005). While the notion of authenticity gives them a way to control narratives about themselves, it comes from the same symbolic economy that turns identity into hierarchical essentialism. However, as Frank Kofsky writes, “the position of the artist in capitalist society is unique, ambiguous and, above all, perilous in the extreme” (1998, 61). Breaking with identity frames and discourses that would make one unrecognizable to potential consumers could have consequences for an artist’s income. Notions of authenticity can be grounded in racist views and expectations that reinforce associations among jazz, race, and white supremacy. Collins, for example, recalls playing in 1920 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, with one of Jelly Roll Morton’s relatives and a Japanese clarinetist: “The white people didn’t want the Japanese to play with the band, but he wouldn’t leave us, saying that he got more feeling out of the music that we played, and he could really swing” (1974, 29). Jim Crow and authenticity probably reinforced each other by creating expectations of racial segregation and colorism in entertainment that deemed certain sounds to be natural or appropriate for certain

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groups. In this quote, Collins stresses the diversity of the band and makes the Japanese musician justify his belongingness to the group by using the same language that jazz autobiographers use to describe their relationship with the music. He allows the reader to make an inference, and with the information Collins provides, it is very likely that he expects the reader to judge the audience for not being as inclusive as the musicians. However, the other edge of the authenticity sword is the creation of expectations, likely associated with primitivistic discourses (Gioia 1988, chapter 2; Radano 2003, 89), by individuals from certain ethnic or racial groups. These audiences adopt a voyeuristic position and perspective based on their perceived supremacy and the assumption that certain activities should always be paired with a performer’s identity. The narrators’ sense of self adopts a version of collectivism that allows them to construct an image of the jazz life that moves beyond the paradoxes of “leadership versus democracy” (Murnighan and Conlon, 1991) and the individual and the group as separate entities. According to Goncalo and Staw in their analysis of organizational behavior, “although collectivistic values may promote feelings of harmony and cooperation, they may also extinguish the creative spark necessary for innovation” (2006, 97). While this probably applies to many areas in modern life where the offspring of Western modernity embraces dualism, New Orleans jazz musicians drew from their collectivistic culture, which was very likely reinforced in the patterns of mutual support they needed to manage racism and discrimination. The kind of individual who subjects themself to the rules outlined in the previous chapter is a musician who thinks of themself as a member of a tradition and a group. Both memberships reinforce each other and mediate how the individual must navigate the spaces and roles at the intersections of music and the entertainment world. Foucault’s comment on sexuality as a practice of freedom can also apply to jazz’s mode of subjection since, in the end, his ideas concern the problematization of grounding identity in Western notions of truth. He says, I think what the gay movement needs now is much more the art of life than a science or scientific knowledge (or pseudoscientific knowledge) of what sexuality is. Sexuality is a part of our behavior. It’s a part of our world freedom. Sexuality is something that we ourselves create—it is our own creation, and much more than the discovery of a secret side of our desire. (Foucault 1997, 163)

The articulation of positions and identities through notions of authenticity relies on a similar search for a hidden or deep essence that justifies our actions and attempts to create acts of resistance using a similar mode of ontology to the one it is criticizing.

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Furthermore, the discursive construction of jazz selves within frames of authenticity was so powerful that early commentators, white jazz autobiographers, and their collaborators reinforced essentialist notions of race and found ways to construct white jazz musicians that would be consonant with primitivism (Marin 2020). If being a jazz man must be grounded in notions of authenticity, chances are it might evoke, in some levels, “an invitation to exclusionary politics” (Bendix 1997, 98). While it could have served in some interactions and as a way of claiming limited financial reward and public recognition, as well as a way for musicians of color to assert their authority, it fits too well with the larger social and political dynamics of the United States. As Foucault and Butler note in their works, our senses of self, humanity, and identity are grounded in power dynamics that make possible our identification with certain categories of being that are simultaneously productive and constraining. The term “authenticity” usually sparks in our imagination fantasies of freedom and the image of a being that can freely break with the worldly shackles of social life. Yet authenticity can also work as an example of what Karen Horney called the tyranny of the should: The inner dictates, exactly like political tyranny in a police state, operate with a supreme disregard for the person’s own psychic condition [. . .]. One of the frequent shoulds, for instance, is that one should never feel hurt. As an absolute (which is implied in the “never”) anyone would find this extremely hard to achieve. (1950, 67)

I’m under the impression that modes of subjection tied to notions of authenticity, through their paradoxical relationship with power (as might be the case with many categories of identity in modern society), enforce a semi-tyrannical restraint on who we are compelled to be or who we think we want to be. To this day, we—myself included—rely on or struggle with these discourses. What criteria, outside the possibility of a small contribution to the social study of jazz or autobiography, would authorize me to solely study or perform music that others can pair or associate with my accent, the color of my skin, or other demographic factors? Do I have to study or play the music of instruments that are appropriate for a Puerto Rican or a social psychologist? By the same token, do I have the right to deny the possibility that those not raised in Latin American cultures can master and contribute to the sounds we associate with salsa or Latin jazz? Self-servingly and academically, I want the answers to be “no”—and it even seems obvious that the answers should be “no.” However, in the world we live in, these factors allow us, in some cases, to strategically authenticate certain performances and how they are valued and perceived. Yet I can’t shake the impression that, even when it could work in my favor, using racialized discourses to authenticate and value what I do

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works more against me than in my favor, for it tries to invert complex social, cultural, and political dynamics by flipping a coin in the same kind of game.

Chapter 5

“Growing into the Music”

Foucault’s (1990) notion of elaboration is quite useful and convergent with the study of the sense of self in autobiography. Besley and Peters associate Foucault’s notion of “aesthetics of existence” with how individuals modify their lives “through the capacity of choice-making” (2007, 47). Individuals, then, in the practice of their freedom, are free—albeit within the discursive and material boundaries of their culture—to actively nurture themselves to become who they want to be or what they might interpret as their so-called authentic self. The analysis of elaboration allows us to pay attention to the practices and conditions narrators associate with their growth into certain categories of being. In general terms, the question this chapter seeks to answer is, how did jazz autobiographers make sense of and prescribe paths for how a jazz man’s life should unfold? In modern Western autobiographies, particularly the ones written by white men, narrators view themselves as self-contained units in a self-driven and progressively individual path towards becoming an adult (Freccero 1986). From this perspective, elaboration entails the ways in which individuals, in a particular discourse, use their agency to mold who they are. However, as we discussed in previous chapters, our autobiographers’ conception and epistemology is different from that of their white counterparts. Several factors are at play in how they frame their journey through life, including psychological processes associated with Du Bois’s ([1903] 1994) double consciousness; oral and literary traditions of Black communities in the United States (Butterfield 1974; Prouty 2006; Stein 2012); their version of notions of authenticity; and a collectivist perspective that views the self as the outcome of internal, external, and historical forces. The main themes that emerge in the analysis of the musicians’ elaboration are individual and collective progress, learning from others, experience and becoming, and the elaboration of music. These reveal an elaboration grounded in both the personal and the social, a problematization of their conditions, and a will to promote and preserve music as both individual and 85

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collective expression. The sense of collective expression and growth must have been supported partly by their early musical experiences. Many had their first experiences with music as kids by singing vocal quartets or by creating their own instrument to play with other children (Hersch 2007; Brothers 2006). Furthermore, through these themes, narrators promote associations between music and authenticity in ways that will resonate with future forms of popular music where “authentic” is that which is raw and minimally edited (Barker and Taylor 2007). INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE PROGRESS Sidney Bechet tells the story of how he wanted to be and act as a musician, even when he was still a child. In a first comical attempt to follow the musician’s path, Bechet tried to acquire some of the traits of adult musicians. He remembers that, in exchange for music lessons, his mother would allow him to play with George Baquet (Bechet [1960] 2002). Bechet recalls slowly entering the social world of musicians and acquiring the patterns of self-presentation that would qualify him as one. He writes: We’d go into the men’s room and I’d see how they had themselves all wrapped up. Some of them had [. . .] a strong odour-like, something like that iodoform. [. . .] I wanted to be a man so bad: I had to have some disease! (Bechet [1960] 2002, 73)

Afterwards he explored the depths of a bathroom cabinet and settled for the second-best option, acquiring the bandages and odors that would make others think he also carried the smells and scars of manhood (Bechet [1960] 2002). Bechet’s iodoform story suggests he was more than ready to internalize the role of the musician, and not only the positive traits associated with the profession, but also its stigmas. The story is narrated as a funny anecdote in which the young Bechet romanticizes the music and its extramusical elements. He is not endorsing or telling his audience that diseases are essential to a life in jazz. By making the story one about his younger self, he blames associations of jazz with STDs (and at other moments drugs) on men being men and on the ignorance of observers who have a limited understanding of jazz. Bechet’s conception of masculinity, as portrayed in this story, comes from male African American musicians—both masculinity and being a musician are intertwined in his iodoform story. There’s something else about the story that perhaps illuminates the larger discourses about music that Bechet and his colleagues reflect in their books. There seem to be several tensions between the self and the other, and between

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individualistic and collectivistic frameworks. As a whole, there might be some slight contradictions in their narratives, but I would argue they can stem from the specific position the narrator adopts when describing specific events. New Orleans jazz musicians promoted a mostly collectivistic worldview. However, as public figures and entertainers, they were aware of what a mainstream and largely individualistic society expects of artists. These ideas might have, in turn, influenced how they viewed themselves; or, at least, they developed narrative repertoires they could use when appropriate. Our autobiographers emphasize the importance of constant work on oneself in order to become a jazz musician. This progress requires much more than the acquisition of knowledge and implies developing not only the self, but also the groups to which the musician belongs. Being a jazz musician also requires a long-lasting commitment to oneself and to music. Their elaborations are also based on the distinction between beginners and more experienced musicians, and the relationships between them. The former wishes to become like the latter. The desire to become a musician, or a more capable one, is related to individual progress. As in Bechet’s iodoform story, they assume both positions, for they recognize themselves as men who had achieved a certain maturity but also as members of a community who played a role in how others became jazz musicians. In the first pages of his autobiography, Dodds stresses the importance of hard work as a way of growing as a musician ([1959] 2002, 1). This work is one of constant rigorous dedication ([1959] 2002, 8). In his view, becoming a musician requires constant work; it is neither an accident nor an innate talent. Only through this constant work might a musician become an old-timer. Within Dodds’s autobiography, old-timers are knowledgeable musicians who played New Orleans jazz and became the model for younger musicians. The idea of constant practice and work is also explored by Dodds’s autobiographical colleagues in complementary ways. According to Foster, when school was over for the day, “we’d come home, we’d do our homework and practice music” ([1971] 2005, 7). Collins also remembers how a group of teenagers (including himself) organized a “minstrel show,” for which they “practiced [in the] evenings” (1974, 11). He later adds that the times he was not allowed in Funky Butt Hall (for his own safety, due to being too young), he would “leave and go home to practice on my cornet some more” (1974, 15). What is interesting about these statements is the way that they weave early individual and group practice experiences as a thread of their everyday life in New Orleans. While collective and individual practice are fundamental in their narratives, what is telling is how they problematize the role others play in their early musical development. As we shall see in the next section, there is an interesting ambivalence toward teachers.

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Bechet also acknowledges that before leaving New Orleans and moving to other cities, he needed to “grow” into the music. Bechet claims he “stayed on there a while, playing along many great musicianers, growing into the music” ([1960] 2002, 90). This statement is not only about the importance of working on oneself, it also constructs New Orleans as the necessary site for the development of authentic musicians. Furthermore, the idea of “growing into the music” (meaning, of course, traditional jazz and not music in general) defines jazz as a space with its own codes and notions of being in which one becomes. As Bechet says in the beginning of his book, “You got to be in the sun to feel the sun. It’s that way with music too” ([1960] 2002, 2). Music is thus a force and a place defining possible positions for individuals. Both autobiographies reveal their narrators’ desires to become knowledgeable and proficient New Orleans jazz musicians. Individual progress, for both of them, is confined to becoming an expert within the melodic and harmonic boundaries of traditional jazz. For them, playing within other jazz genres, particularly bebop after its emergence in the 1940s, would not be a sign of musical proficiency but a symptom of inappropriate deviation from what they called music. Within traditional jazz, musicians worked on themselves; musicians from the bebop era or their supporters, in addition to developing their own musical style and attitudes, might have understood the relationship between older and younger musicians differently. For example, in his biography of Charlie Parker, one of the most prominent figures of bebop, Chuck Haddix (2013) states that when Parker wanted to play with more experienced musicians, they humiliated him, so Parker decided to become better than them. In contrast, Dodds ([1959] 2002) wanted to play in Joe Oliver’s band, even when the members of the band originally rejected and humiliated Dodds by leaving him alone when playing a song. Working to improve oneself had different motivations in traditional jazz and in bebop, or at least emphasized some aspects more than others. Of course, we cannot reduce their actual motivations to play music only to something like spite toward others, but these stories do provide some insight into what was thought appropriate, or at least significant enough, to be narrated or remembered. While for Dodds, practice was related to the improvement of one’s abilities, Haddix emphasizes Parker’s drive and need for superiority framed in a individualistic perspective. As McLeod suggests, one of the features of jazz seems to be the desire to “stand out” from other musicians (2009, 222). However, being different from other musicians within early jazz might have been understood as the desire to develop their own sound and style of playing. While that trait may be present throughout all jazz genres, it is likely that in bebop, being different from others also implied technical superiority, as if musicians were also in competition with their peers. While these ideas are not conclusive, looking

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at possible differences between the genres of jazz paves the way for further genealogically inspired research. The imperative to improve oneself was also extended to the groups in which these musicians played. Furthermore, part of a musician’s self-improvement occurred within the context of these groups. Dodds remembers how Joe Oliver promoted the use of techniques that would improve their sound. The sound of any musical band, of course, emerges from the blend of individual sounds produced by its members. According to Dodds, musicians were required to do what was necessary not only for a good performance but also for the gradual growth of the group ([1959] 2002, 38). Dodds implies that those who did not work to improve the band would be expelled. This speaks to a collectivistic mindset in which seemingly authoritarian leadership or subjection to the group becomes part of one’s self-concept by internalizing such expectations as an essential dimension of our relationship to others (Triandis 2001, 909). The jazz self is not the fictitious autonomous self of individualistic societies, but the interdependent self who recognizes his or her existence in an embeddedness with meaningful others. Furthermore, in order to play at the level the band required from musicians, they needed to be versatile and have enough experience to adapt to the group’s needs and demands (Dodds [1959] 2002). Some of these demands stemmed from the environment in which early forms of jazz were developed. As Hersch writes, “The need for versatility was heightened by the fact that some jobs, particularly in the District, paid mainly through tips” (2007, 120). It wouldn’t be a bold claim to suggest that the tendency toward versatility— which could have come from a variety of sources including earlier musical practices, finding ways to reinterpret the different musical traditions performers were exposed to or actively sought to incorporate in their practice, and the constraints of material conditions and the need to earn a living—created a culture of musicianship in jazz that was then transmitted to younger generations of musicians. Even if some of the external demands for versatility were removed (such as we can imagine with the new attitude of bebop musicians toward their audiences), it is unlikely that the imperative of some form of versatility would disappear from jazz and popular music. While Dodds mentions the mechanics of how the members of a group worked together, Bechet provides an almost poetical definition of growing as a group: “We used to get together and just play along, learning how to put ourselves together, finding so many things in the music” ([1960] 2002, 77). Foster echoes Bechet when he describes playing New Orleans jazz with Luis Russell’s band in New York by defending the need to rehearse. Foster then goes on to describe the rehearsing schedule for the band, which required every section to work separately on their parts ([1971] 2005, 166). Rigorous individual and group practice, combined with a knowledge of the style of

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the band members, were seen by Foster as positive traits that allowed him to disparage the tone and music of lesser ensembles. The ideas described above are complementary and, in a way, seem to focus on different levels of more or less the same experience. Dodds has little problem with the policing and expulsion of those who did not practice enough, while Bechet addresses the need for musicians to find a way to fit as a group and in order to “discover” music collectively. The phrase “learning how to put ourselves together” (Bechet [1960] 2002, 77) implies that the group is an entity that emerges out of the traits, interactions, and couplings between individuals. Furthermore, Foster seems to imply that New Orleans musicians practiced more than their non–New Orleans counterparts who disparagingly called Russell’s band “the rehearsal band” (Foster 2005, 166). Furthermore, the criteria for musicians at the individual and collective level are more or less the same, for one is an extension and a function of the other. Self-construction or self-fashioning cannot be reduced to an either-or of ideas about freedom and individuality; the elaboration (and subjectivation) of the self in the jazz world (or any world for that matter) is about possibilities and constraints. This includes details about what could be considered the “exercises” they had to practice on a daily basis. Foucault’s (1990) analysis of elaboration was based on his study of prescriptive texts. Yet the concept is still useful for autobiographical narratives, for a narration of what is tellable (Popkin 1993) implies that which is necessary, and perhaps special, about what the narrator has to say. The desire of a life unfolding within the roads of New Orleans jazz was also based on internalized models of music and stigmas. Furthermore, for some groups or cultures, such self-constitution and work on the self requires the other. These dynamics were probably reinforced by shared experiences of exclusion. As Gerald Horne writes, the way musicians were treated “drove musicians closer together and compelled a solidarity and familiarity that could be translated into sterling performances” (2019, 109). In early jazz, the other worked as a model and also as a member of a collective enterprise; the other also must work to improve himself. In the autobiographies of New Orleans jazz musicians, imperatives about improvement applied to both individuals and the bands to which they belonged. Scholars of jazz and music in the United States have also analyzed the complex ways in which musicians of color and white musicians might have influenced or “borrowed” from each other. The narrative of white musicians stealing from their Black counterparts is quite common in jazz autobiography. Critics and scholars have also supported these ideas, sometimes with more nuance (Stearns 1970; Gioia 1997). Yet it plays an important social function in autobiography, for it is a way to publicly and symbolically claim authenticity and the creative powers that, paradoxically, are denied by terms associated with authenticity. After listing the white musicians who were part of jam

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sessions organized by Paul Mares, Dodds writes that many of those “who later hit the big money in the swing music era learned from us old timers” ([1959] 2002, 63). He recognizes their ability, but in a way that places Black musicians as the creators, reversing primitivistic stereotypes that denied actual creative powers to musicians of color. Jazz autobiography, in a way, allows the narrators to establish the personal and collective criteria needed to become a jazz musician. But it is also an opportunity to place their contributions as part of the larger story of jazz. In the historiography they construct, they are original creators but also linked to other jazz genres, including styles that became more popular than theirs as well as what could be taken as the contributions of white musicians. Furthermore, the Paul Mares jam sessions are a way in which Dodds provides some general frameworks the reader can use to imagine the life of white musicians. WHAT COULD YOU LEARN FROM OTHERS? As Sebastian Harrer writes, self-constitution “is achieved by way of certain ascetic technologies of the self, which one practices first under supervision of a master” (2005, 83). Such relationships are inscribed in the individual, who then reacts to what he or she has been taught. Within early jazz, the nature of these relationships was constructed as necessarily vulnerable and resembles what Gaston Bachelard called the Prometheus complex. According to Bachelard, the Prometheus complex is “all those tendencies which impel us to know as much as our fathers, more than our fathers, as much as our teachers, more than our teachers” (1964, 12, emphasis in the original). That is, young musicians felt the need to be something different from their teachers. While this implies the possibility of being better than their predecessors, it seems that in traditional jazz, it was related to the development of an authentic-yet-individual style of playing. Authenticity in jazz is at least twofold: it requires playing according to musical conventions accepted by the emergent jazz community, but also involves being true to oneself or developing a personal style. The general imperative of individual progress is related to the problematization of how musicians should learn and assert their individuality. As Peretti writes, “Early jazz, it has been argued, marked the emergence of players who asserted their individuality and their distinctiveness from others in their culture” (1994, 72). However, knowledge can also constrain a musician’s development. In the context of the differences between traditional jazz and swing, Gendron writes, “No issue area provoked more concentrated energy, or more straining of intellectual resources, than the debate over the proper standards

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for evaluating jazz” (1993, 142). Such “standards” included different values for the proper knowledge and abilities for jazz musicians to develop (Gendron 1993). The framing of the criteria for evaluating jazz musicians promoted two different kinds of narration. Adhering to one narration instead of the other might invisibilize what was necessary for someone to become a musician, but also reinforce and promote a particular kind of path and way of being. Thus, while all musicians need to train and study, the way such techniques are represented in traditional jazz versus swing and bebop reflects different discourses and surrounding notions about the self and the music. Sidney Bechet writes that he saw “learning” and “musical education” as limiting factors that would constrain musicians from developing their unique musical voices ([1960] 2002, 68). Learning and developing skills related to performing music, while fundamental, must not get in the way of creativity and musical self-expression. Despite the training several New Orleans musicians went through during their formative years, many were worried about the potential limitations of such training (Brothers 2006). Help and guidance from others is allowed and welcomed, as long as it doesn’t interfere with self-expression. Furthermore, Gendron (1993) shows that, in the context of debates between traditionalists and modernists (who were defending swing), the former argued that jazz was not supposed to be governed by books and teachers. Both Dodds and Bechet mention the teachers they had while growing up. Dodds ([1959] 2002) names Dave Perkins and Walter Brundy as his teachers, depicting Brundy as the better of the two. Furthermore, he “got ideas and pointers from lots of others who were playing in New Orleans” (Dodds [1959] 2002, 8). According to Dodds, drummers should have the necessary rudiments to play jazz, which he acquired from his teachers and other drummers. For a solo recording in the last years of his career, he called one of the numbers “Rudiments with Drumstick Neverbeats” (Dodds 1951). He describes the title of the track as a sample of the “rudiments” that he used when he played in an ensemble (Dodds [1959] 2002, 84). In this case, the autobiography authenticates the track, which in turn serves to authenticate Dodds’s ethical system. Bechet states that teachers force on their pupils a normalized way of playing, claiming that the lessons Baquet and Lorenzo Tio gave him were of no use to him ([1960] 2002, 80). This is perhaps a harsher appraisal than Dodds’s, yet, at the level of discourse, they are in agreement, for both try to establish some aspects of their musical self as autonomous. While a common thread in these narratives is their collectivistic sense of self, there are individualistic elements that surface when the narrator puts himself in a position where he must say something about what he acquired from others. Perhaps a source for degrees of individualism and sense of autonomy could

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be associated or reinforced by the demands and conditions of a career in the world of entertainment. Since teachers are represented here more as constraints than as guides, musicians are naturalized as individuals with internal qualities that should unfold. Musicians are not made; they have to become. Bechet even tells the story of a hypothetical musician who received physical punishment for not playing the way his teacher wanted. He compares not being able to play in one’s own style to physical punishment. He writes, in the second part of his thought experiment, “you take the same man, give him a chance to do it his own way, leave him be . . . if there’s anything inside him, that man, he’ll go to town, he’ll make something” (Bechet [1960] 2002, 81). However a musician works on himself, his internal and potential qualities matter the most. These statements should not give the impression that music was easy, or that only by looking inward could one become a drummer or a horn player. Dodds, for example, emphasized the need for hard work and how many things are learned throughout the process of becoming a musician. Dodds even claims he figured out how to tune and take care of his drums by himself ([1959] 2002, 8–9). He developed many of the techniques he used as a self-imposed requirement (Dodds [1959] 2002, 26). This form of self-constitution stresses the musician’s agency. Instead of reading or blindly following a teacher’s style, if he incorporates a feature from another field, it is only because he wants to, not because he was coerced, coaxed, or influenced. As quoted earlier, Dodds asserts his agency and identity as a jazz musician by noting his ability to integrate elements of classical music in jazz (Dodds [1959] 2002, 3). Likewise, the use of the word “feel” in this sentence implies that his internal and authentic self is the locus of his decisions. By attributing to himself the possible use of features from other musical fields, he stresses personal agency, instead of resignation, within his context. In this sense, jazz cannot be constructed merely as reaction or opposition to dominant discourses and practices, but also as the assertion of agency, individuality, and collective history. In a similar manner, Bechet uses his “grandfather’s life story” to localize the origins of jazz music in African American heritage. Jazz autobiographers describe some of the teachers they had during their formative years, but in order to construct themselves as authentic musicians who did not succumb to the normalizing pressures of their professors, they also mention stories where they learned and practiced in solitude—in some cases, defying the lessons they were supposed to internalize from their mentors. Lee Collins remembers Buddy Petit, whose style resembled Bunk Johnson, and mentions that he “learned a lot from him” (1974, 53). However, Collins (1974, 14) remembers taking lessons with Jim Humphrey in different terms, specifically to fulfill his desire to improve his abilities by learning to

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read music. He acknowledges the possibility of acquiring specific skills from a teacher but makes it clear that he already knew how to play scales. Before seeking teachers or becoming part of Buddy Bolden’s tradition through Buddy Petit, Collins remembers playing his father’s cornet while he was away. Bechet remembers how, before formally starting any musical training, he found his brother’s clarinet and practiced by himself in the house, hiding under the porch to figure out by himself how to play the instrument ([1960] 2002, 69). In his account, even before he was exposed to professional musicians, Bechet was his own teacher. It is quite possible some of these early experiences shaped the first versions of the narratives these musicians gradually constructed and revised about themselves. There is certainly a retrospective factor in the process of telling the story, which fits with their self-presentation. Bechet’s anecdote about becoming a musician works to highlight his status as a prodigy and early force in jazz. When his mother saw him playing his brother’s clarinet without permission, instead of disciplining him, she asked him to keep playing; Bechet relates that he played a song titled “I Don’t Know Where I’m Going but I’m on My Way.” In the sixth chapter of his autobiography, Bechet repeats this, saying that “I Don’t Know Where I’m Going but I’m on My Way” was both the first song he played on the clarinet and the first song he played after leaving New Orleans (Bechet [1960] 2002, 96). The symbolic title of the song provides an almost mythical, full-circle, or musical rebirth that lunges him forward. There is slight problem with the accuracy of this story, but the fact that is inaccurate makes it all the more relevant. Autobiographical memory, like human memory in general, is not a digitallike retrieval of contents saved by the user. Furthermore, as Elizabeth Bruss (1976) argues, autobiographies are a sample of the writer’s epistemology. Bechet was born in 1897, and if the story just quoted occurred when he was six, that would place the events around 1903—two years before the song was published. According to John Chilton, The bestowing of this gift [his brother’s clarinet] probably took place around Christmas 1905. Sidney was inclined to stress his status as a prodigy by sometimes putting the date at 1903, but this doesn’t tie in with a chronology suggested by the comments of Joe Rena, who clearly remembered Sidney receiving the C clarinet. Bechet himself said that the first tune he ever learnt to play on clarinet was I don’t know where I’m going but I’m on my way (written and published by Joseph Bren in 1905). (Chilton 1987, 4)

In addition to enabling Bechet to position himself as a prodigy, the song’s title also fits perfectly within Bechet’s construction of his public persona, thematizing one aspect of the elaboration of the self in jazz; this is evidenced by

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the fact that chapter six of his autobiography references this song in the title. Learning from others, then, is problematized on account of a musician’s need to develop in his own way and become his own self. It is up to the musician, regardless of his destination, to be a stumbling and vulnerable autonomous individual. The autobiographers’ descriptions of how to deal with a teacher are complemented by how they represented themselves in the role of the professor. Folk singer Dave Van Ronk said of the period he spent within the jazz world: “There is an apprenticeship system in jazz, so even if the older musicians were not personally all that accessible or friendly, they felt an obligation to help the younger musicians” (2006, 17). Both Bechet and Dodds followed that pattern. However, they apply the same criteria for describing teachers to their descriptions of how they mentored others. And, just as they appropriated ideas from others, they claimed others got ideas from them. This is especially evident in Dodds’s ([1959] 2002) autobiography, since he explicitly identifies himself first as a “youngster” and later as an “old timer” and points out different qualities and appropriate behaviors for each category of being. Within the statements regarding teacher-student relationships and the acquisition of the skills needed to become a musician, the common thread in both autobiographies is the problematization of a normalized way of learning and playing music. They describe how some musicians, including themselves, were fundamental in the elaboration of others. According to Dodds ([1959] 2002, 24), Joe Howard helped many musicians, including Louis Armstrong and Davy Jones. Bechet ([1960] 2002) recalls giving lessons to Bob Wilber, emphasizing the need for Wilber to become his own musician. Bob Wilber became a professional musician, and as Bechet mentions in his autobiography, they made some records together (Bechet [1960] 2002). Although Wilber developed his own style, he still recognized the importance of Bechet in his own music (Marin, 2020). According to Bechet, Wilber’s main problem when he was Bechet’s student was the inability to find himself. This is particularly interesting for it reproduces the analysis of developmental psychologists such as Erik Erikson (1968) who underscored the role of crisis of identity in psychological growth. Bechet writes: But the trouble was, Bobbie didn’t know whether he wanted to be a Jazz, or modern or classic clarinettist [sic]. [. . .] And that is very embarrassing and troublesome to you when you really can’t find yourself, you know. [. . .] He played so close to me that it began to annoy him. ([1960] 2002, 185–86)

In his analysis of Wilber’s abilities, Bechet’s concern was mostly his difficulty in finding his own style, which in turn was related to his playing being

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too similar to Bechet’s. By worrying about his pupil’s ability to develop his own musical voice, Bechet applies to Wilber a similar criterion he used on himself: a musician should not completely follow his lessons in order to become a real musician. In the same fashion that Dodds acquired aspects of his musical abilities from multiple sources, he claims he also influenced others. Dodds mentions inspiring Zutty Singleton, but not offering lessons to him ([1959] 2002, 64). Bechet also claims to have influenced other musicians, such as Johnny Dodds and Jimmy Noone, but he qualifies this assertion by pointing to external sources, writing, “that’s what the people who have written books have said [Noone] told them” ([1960] 2002, 94). In a way, these statements also reveal the importance of acknowledging the role others played in their own development. They adopt the voice of their interlocutors and humbly make them appear in their autobiographies. On the other hand, Foster criticizes Louis Armstrong for not giving his brother credit for what he learned from him: “In all Louis’s books and things he never mentions Willie [Foster]. [. . .] Louis should’ve given him credit for the things he taught him” ([1971] 2005, 98). Foster challenges Armstrong’s books and account of his life through the same discursive thread and implicit rule that requires these autobiographers to recognize, to a degree, what they acquired from others. However, such omissions, if intentional, would not be surprising, for there is a limit to how much they could say they learned from others while still keeping their image as original musicians and contributors to jazz. By using his own experiences and memory, alongside what others said about him, Bechet places himself not only in an important position within jazz history, but also as a direct and indirect mentor in the elaboration of others. Both Dodds and Bechet also claim that white musicians were directly and indirectly influenced by their music. Dodds writes that he influenced drummers such as Gene Krupa ([1959] 2002, 64), and Bechet states that Larry Shields “used to come to me for lessons” ([1960] 2002, 94). In this way, they also reinforce the notion that jazz is an African American art form and that white musicians came to it later. There have been many debates regarding the contributions and collaborations between African American, Creole, and white musicians, some of which go beyond the scope of the book; what I find more interesting, from the perspective of a discourse on elaboration, is how these musicians construct positions for themselves and others. Jazz autobiographers narrate how they came into being through constant work on themselves, problematizing the influences others had on them and qualifying the lessons they received from others as minimal. Furthermore, when they analyze their role in the elaboration of others, even though they construct themselves as cardinal points in the history of jazz, they still emphasize the need for jazz musicians to become their own selves. In this form of

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self-making, emphasizing personal discovery and development, the other might promote or constrain the musician-in-the-making. This, however, does not imply that the elaboration of the self in jazz is strictly individualistic, since, as discussed above, not only the individual but also musical ensembles must work on themselves. In these ethics, both the individual and the group are constructed as different yet complementary levels of experience. STUMBLING AND BECOMING Like the title of Joseph Bren’s song, musicians must travel an unknown path. Both chance and the preexisting conditions of living play a role in the elaboration of jazz musicians; that is, in their autobiographies, social circumstances and, to a degree, chance, are recognized as fields that, to an extent, drove the lives of musicians of color in the United States. Their narratives are not of surrender or pity. For jazz autobiographers, the self is not a mere product of individual goal-directed agency, but a complex entity that integrates what they acquire from their world, cultural heritage, and even chance. Louis Armstrong remembers some of his non-musical jobs and part of his early career as events where some degree of luck or chance was necessary for a path to be opened. When he left his hometown after accepting Joe Oliver’s offer to join him in Chicago, Armstrong felt “all of New Orleans had gathered at the train to give me a little luck” ([1954] 1986, 228). He then adds that the waiters on the train told him he was “lucky” for the chance to play with Oliver, to which he replied confirming his excitement about the opportunity to play with his “idol, Papa Joe” (Armstrong [1954] 1986, 228). Armstrong remembers going back to New Orleans after a season on the riverboats using similar terms: “When I reached New Orleans I went straight away to Liberty and Perdido, the corner where I used to hang out before I was lucky enough to find the job with Fate Marable” ([1954] 1986, 211–12). Lee Collins also describes finding a steady job at Ship’s Café in similar terms as an accident (1974, 73). These statements are quite interesting for their integration of agency and social circumstances. Life is constructed as a combination of both. Statements about “luck” can also be used strategically to contradict those who might be relying too much on individualistic discourses to tell their stories. George Foster claims that Jelly Roll Morton presented himself through characteristically individualistic statements: He [Morton] used to always tell me that New Orleans had the best musicians. I’d argue with him and say, “No, man, New Orleans had the luckiest musicians. You take Johnny Dodds, Sidney Bechet, and those guys, they just lucked up on making some early records. Guys like Manuel Perez, Arnold Metoyer, Frank

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Keeley, and Tig Chambers, they could play, but where are they?” I think there were a lot of guys around New Orleans and New York like James P. Johnson who played better than Jelly. ([1971] 2005, 111)

Foster is not saying New Orleans musicians were worse than non–New Orleans musicians. As we saw above, he privileges the dynamics of New Orleans bands over those of “screaming bands” (Foster [1971] 2005, 166). He is strategically problematizing Morton’s role in the public perception of jazz and his individualistic and self-promoting narrative. Sidney Bechet is also quite explicit and reflective on the relationship between the self, community, and luck. According to Bechet ([1960] 2002), he met George Baquet by chance, when Freddie Keppard’s band was playing for Bechet’s brother’s birthday in their house. Bechet was, once again, hiding and playing the clarinet, and the band heard him. According to Bechet, once they found him, the band asked him to play with them. Even if he later minimized Baquet’s influence on him, he described that event with Keppard’s band as a fulfilling experience, a fundamental encounter, and one of the first’s steps that shaped his journey into music. Later, when Bechet describes the importance of a person’s life story in the way they make music, he undermines individualism by questioning individual autonomy and how people’s narratives fail to account for the heterogeneous influences that shape them ([1960] 2002, 139). In addition to the individual aspects of self-construction that Bechet emphasized throughout his musical career, he argues that life also plays a role in a musician’s development. In doing so, Bechet recognizes himself as a vulnerable subject at the intersection of multiple fields, both musical and extramusical. These extramusical fields also shape an individual’s music. Bechet’s conception of the self problematizes conceptions of human life as articulated by liberal humanism. As Nadine Ehlers writes, in this tradition, The constituting subject is seen to be the masterful owner of property in his own person. Consequently, this individual (inevitably cast as “man”) has been thought of as self-determining and capable of exercising agency through the rational operation of free will. ([emphasis in original], 2012, 107)

Bechet’s account of the self problematizes white subjectivity and masculinity by contradicting what is taken at face value when individuals talk about their own elaboration and becoming. His ideas recognize and highlight the relational character of the self and autobiography (Eakin 1999, 43). Jazz autobiographies are relational for the attention they pay to the broader factors of social life in the United States as well as the lives of meaningful others who played a significant role in their lives and narratives (Eakin 1999, 69). This recognition turns prescriptive when Bechet and Foster make explicit claims

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about how individuals (including fellow autobiographers) fail to recognize what they have acquired from others. Bechet’s notions of the self are attached to gender roles supported by a collectivistic imagination where women are imagined, for the most part, in relation to male instrumentalists, and female performers are associated with commercialism. Jazz musicians imagined roles for female singers and instrumentalists from the perspective of “domestic life” (Provost 2017), extending ideals of family dynamics to their interactions with women. Furthermore, as Lara Pellegrinelli (2008) notes, women in jazz were associated with the commercial aspects of the music, which made it easier for musicians, as well as critics and some historians, to dismiss women’s contributions: The erasure [of women] insures jazz’s quest for authenticity and respectability. Although the voice may have been thought “authentic” in terms of its expression of race, women’s blues as performed on the vaudeville and Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA) circuits as well as recordings were thought to be commercial. (2008, 42)

Male musicians were also, in a way, entrepreneurs who performed their art in front of audiences and sought a degree of commercial success or financial stability. Following Pellegrinelli (2008) and Provost (2017), we can see how notions of race and authenticity are embedded in a discourse and micro-subjectivation that recognizes masculine creativity at the expense of denying the contributions of female singers and instrumentalists. According to Ken McLeod (2009), African American artists might have had more self-awareness than their white counterparts. This “increased” self-awareness could have been associated with the intersubjective aspects of living in a society that divides groups by race and requires members of every category to act according to legal and cultural hierarchies. These ideas resonates with Du Bois’s double consciousness ([1903] 1994). Jazz autobiographers promoted a sophisticated and sociological understanding of the role of race in the United States and the paths society created or obstructed based on skin color, painfully aware of how social conditions in the United States shaped their own lives. Dodds recognizes the limited opportunities for African Americans in the United States ([1959] 2002, 30). In the first pages of his autobiography, before describing his path through jazz life, he explains that as a child he wanted to play classical flute, but social circumstances would not have allowed that. After mentioning that he sometimes stood close to an opera house listening to the music, Dodds explains there was no place for him in classical music due to segregation ([1959] 2002, 3). In this story, social conditions constrain African Americans by closing possible paths. Dodds is aware of how such conditions shaped his life; however, as the quote

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above demonstrates, he incorporated classical elements in his music out of his own agency. Instead of constructing himself as a victim of circumstances, he is aware of his circumstances and re-appropriates in his own manner what he can. When Bechet thinks about his own struggles in the United States, he is reminded of his grandfather’s story (fashioned after the folk story of Bras-Coupé [Gabbard 2016, 137]). After describing examples of racial discrimination he encountered, Bechet claims those experiences allowed him to better understand Omar ([1960] 2002, 104). The continued history and conditions of oppression in the United States are seen by Bechet as a background and collection of experiences that make communication and understanding across generations commensurable and communicable. Furthermore, these circumstances also play a role in music, since an individual’s conditions and how one reacts to them are, according to Bechet, a source of inspiration ([1960] 2002, 213). As Frederick Garber writes: All of these aspects of jazz, its ideologies, discourses, politics, emerge from the conditions we read at the center of jazz, the conditions that define where the power and privilege lie. We have put at the center of jazz what finally has to be seen as a circumstance of being, a way of being in the world. (1995, 79–90)

New Orleans jazz autobiographers were deeply aware of the world they lived in and the positions that were possible for them. They, in turn, promote their own understanding of the world and their own criteria for who was authorized to speak on behalf of jazz on the basis of authenticity. It must be noted that circumstances alone are not enough to explain their lives and music; their agency played a fundamental role in what they became. But agency, too, is insufficient to explain human life and music. Both Dodds and Bechet construct social conditions as constraints and individual agency as a mutually influencing spiral. Chance, on the other hand, is embraced for its possibilities. Chance is an opportunity to exceed the normative constraints of one’s circumstances, an unintended break or mutation in the patterns that were thought to replicate and reproduce life. THE ELABORATION OF THE MUSIC Jazz autobiographies allowed the musicians to occupy narrative authority on jazz. They also construct jazz as a collective and historical entity. In a way, they personify jazz as an extension of themselves. As Lakoff and Johnson write in Metaphors We Live By,

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Personification is a general category that covers a very wide range of metaphors, each picking out different aspects of a person or ways of looking at a person. What they all have in common is that they are extensions of ontological metaphors and that they allow us to make sense of phenomena in the world in human terms. (1980, 34)

In jazz autobiography, personification reveals an epistemology that integrates the personal and the social. By personifying jazz, they also subject their music to a form of elaboration. The two themes analyzed above are also used to describe jazz and its future: protecting jazz and the role of musicians in the elaboration of jazz. Other personifications will be discussed in chapter seven. When Dodds played on riverboats in the Mississippi with Fate Marable’s band, the musicians called white musicians “alligators” (Dodds [1959] 2002, 25), a term that allowed them to be aware of the presence of members of a predatory outgroup. One of their strategies to protect their songs from being stolen was changing the name of the songs they were playing so white musicians could not find their music sheets (Dodds [1959] 2002). Armstrong’s use of the term “alligator” in Swing That Music, as “a person who is not a player himself but who loves to sit and listen to swing music” ([1936] 1993, 77), is different from Dodds’s use of the word, but it expresses part of the same sentiment, establishing differences between insiders and outsiders. The term is used not only in the narrative, but also in a glossary at the end of the book (Armstrong [1936] 1993). Likewise, many said that Freddie Keppard did not want to make recordings because he didn’t want white musicians to steal his music (Ogren 1989). However, according to Bechet, Keppard did many things that people interpreted as attempts to make his music secret (such as covering his fingers with a handkerchief when playing trumpet), but rather than hiding his music from other musicians, what Keppard feared was the commercialization of music. In this aspect, Dodds and Bechet provide different, but complementary, interpretations of similar behaviors. In a way, both interpretations (stealing songs or commercializing them) come from a similar worry over the exploitation of their music by white musicians as well as the potential such attempts had to dilute the qualities of jazz. The belief that jazz could be harmed, either through theft or over-commercialization, constructs the music as a vulnerable entity. There is another complementary explanation at play, particularly in the Keppard story. According to John Chilton, “Keppard is most often remembered now for declining an offer to record for the Victor Talking Machine Company” (1987, 31). However, the disagreement came when the Original Creole Orchestra was asked to rehearse without remuneration to see if the equipment could adequately record their music (Chilton 1987).

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In addition to protecting jazz, Dodds and Bechet provide accounts of some important developments, both their own and those of others, in the elaboration of jazz. According to Dodds ([1959] 2002), playing in quartets was popularized by his brother, while playing in trios was popularized by Jelly Roll Morton. Dodds claims that he helped develop “sock cymbals” for drums, but since he didn’t believe in the device, he didn’t want credit for it ([1959] 2002, 27). In addition to the configuration of ensembles and devices for instruments, Bechet mentions that Alphonse Picou adapted to the clarinet what was originally played by a piccolo in the song “High Society,” forever changing how the song was performed (Bechet [1960] 2002, 87). In this manner, they construct the history of jazz as a pastiche of contributions concerned with the music. According to Bechet, Eddie Condon “wanted to do something sincere to advance Jazz” ([1960] 2002, 164). This included helping musicians, since, “the way he’d say it, helping one is helping another and that way the music, it’s helping itself” (Bechet [1960] 2002, 164–65). The elaboration and mutual support musicians can give each other extends to the possibility of helping the music grow and move forward. However, this extended legacy is not granted to every jazz genre, as bebop and those who play what could be described as “commercial” were not deemed as worthy as New Orleans jazz. Furthermore, one way to harm jazz, in their view, is to arrange it so much that it paralyzes the music and diminishes the role of spontaneity (Bechet [1960] 2002, 95). In contrast, such musicians as Paul Whiteman wanted to play jazz but at the same time “elevate it” to the social standards of classical music by using arrangements. As Mario Dunkel writes, “scoring—the written fixation of jazz—became the central domesticating activity by which the value of jazz had to be judged” (2015, 127). In the same manner that arrangements and too many strict lessons can harm the development of an aspiring jazz musician, relying too much on methods and techniques that specify one way of playing is harmful for jazz. The personification of jazz and its relationship to a politics of authenticity and protectionism is understandable. As Thomas Brothers writes, “music offered enslaved people a way to extend a sense of self into the made world. It became the free space where total control was possible” (2006, 279). He then adds, “the idea that in music it was possible to control the product of one’s labor and assert a sense of autonomous self became part of the professional scene in New Orleans” (2006, 279). Music, or perhaps sound in general, becomes a space where the personal and collective sense of self is affirmed and negotiated. The personification of jazz performs the emotional bonds of jazz musicians toward their community and affirms their agency. The sonic and audible expressions of their sense of self are then supported by the textual performances in the form of autobiographies.

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FUTURE OF JAZZ As Peter Hollerbach writes, “Musicians’ narratives can elucidate the varied exigencies of their musical and social lives” (2004, 155). Jazz autobiographers call for the improvement of the individual, the group, and jazz itself. This requires constant work and commitment on three levels of musical experience. However, the improvement and constant work on the self they promote problematizes the position and appropriate level of influence for those teaching jazz. Strict mentors, arrangements, and the normalization of jazz’s sound and education are inappropriate influences that constrain the possibilities of developing musicians, bands, and jazz itself. As Foucault writes, the core aspects of our practices as ethical individuals “these themes of sexual austerity should be understood [. . .] as the elaboration and stylization of an activity in the exercise of its power and the practice of liberty” (1990, 23). In the case of jazz autobiographies, the practices considered appropriate for the elaboration of the self, bands, and jazz are activities in the practice of authenticity. Yet their notions of authenticity are grounded in a collectivistic sense of self which transcends their generation and will continue to survive and thrive.

Chapter 6

Wise Old-Timers

The act of telling a story (or perhaps most actions beyond automatic physiological reflexes) shoulders, reinforces, creates, and chooses positions for the speaker. Storytellers implicitly or explicitly imagine, propose, and problematize a world filled with categories of identities. Some of these categories, such as the one discussed in chapter four, are related to the kind of beings and notions of the self whose actions in the world are the object of ethical deliberation. But as we experience, live in, and row over the streams of time, we negotiate positions and categories of self that tentatively define identities over time. In this chapter, I focus on the implicit models of the telos of jazz. As I mentioned earlier, Foucault’s notion of telos as one of the elements of subjectivation is similar to a socially constructed and culturally reinforced notion of the life-cycle. Human growth and development are characterized by biological and cognitive changes, which always take place in a community. The narratives we develop from the resources of the groups to which we belong play an important role in how we constitute ourselves, others, and the relationships among the categories of individuals we recognize in our tales. The acquisition of language and the way we are socialized and primed to use sounds to think about ourselves and the world shape even the most basic aspects of our existence. Research in developmental, social, and cultural psychology has shown that different languages shape brain function, eye movement, and how we explain the world around us (Nelson 2007; Nisbett 2004; de Oliveira and Nisbett 2017). In broad terms, it is said that people from individualistic cultures frame themselves as “autonomous and independent from their in-groups,” while people from collectivistic cultures “shape their behavior primarily on the basis of in-group norms, and behave in a communal way” (Triandis 2001, 909). These differences also occur within a country such as the United States, where people of color, from a combination of their rich ancestry and the patterns of interaction and affective bonds that emerge from shared 105

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experiences of oppression, have developed processes of collaboration and community building. Jazz musicians who were not from New Orleans could at times take issue with these descriptions while reproducing the same discourses. They adopted the same epistemology while adapting the narrative to their sense of self and highlighting other aspects of the history of jazz. It is worth quoting Willie “The Lion” Smith’s autobiography: What they call jazz is just the music of people’s emotions. It comes from wherever there have been colored people gathering together during the last hundred years. You’d think from reading the jazz books, most of them written by non-playing, so-called critics, that all the jazz and all the musicians came from New Orleans. They’d have you believing that if a musician had not been born down in those swamps, down in the Delta country, he had no business trying to play jazz. ([1964] 1978, 3)

He then continues: Well, I’ll tell you. All the different forms can be traced back to Negro church music, and the Negroes have worshiped God for centuries, whether they lived in Africa, the southern United States, or in the New York City area. You can still hear some of the older styles of jazz playing, the old rocks, stomps, and ring shouts right in the churches of Harlem today. (Smith [1964] 1978, 3)

This quote resonates with most of the themes discussed in the previous chapter, while disagreeing with the narrative that New Orleans was the sole birthplace of jazz and blaming writers (most of whom were white) for perpetuating that myth. While he did not grow up in New Orleans, Smith establishes himself in his memoir as a musician who went through similar experiences as those who did (Ogren 1991). Many musicians from New Orleans and elsewhere benefited from or adapted that narrative to their purposes. For example, in Illinois, flyers intended to appease jazz-hungry audiences assured them that Franz Jackson (born in Illinois) and his band could provide an experience of traditional jazz to audiences without their having to travel to New Orleans (“You don’t have to,” n.d.). The negotiation of the origins of jazz placed emphasis on authenticity, power over the narratives, and a symbolic control of the music. It was not unlike using one’s genealogy to assert power over populations by claiming the right to a throne. In a world of financial exploitation and racial discrimination, it might be more feasible to achieve control over one’s narrative (at who knows what expense) than a proportionate share of record sales. Even then, some stories could be crafted and exploited after a musician’s death to sell more records (Kofsky 1998).

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THE LIFE CYCLE OF JAZZ MUSICIANS In general terms, the autobiographies of New Orleans musicians identify two main stages of in their musical lives: young musician and old-timer. Certainly, many working musicians, including the autobiographers, went through periods of musical and personal maturity that could be classified as being between these stages, but those periods do not receive the same attention. For example, Dodds ([1959] 2002) uses such terms as “finished musician” (19) and “finished drummer” (63, 95) to describe those who had mastered their instruments, but musical “adulthood” does not merit too much additional theorization and it is somewhat assumed that the reader knows, or should know, what he means. Dodds does provide a parsimonious definition of a drummer as someone “who has been schooled and has learned music, and his instrument” ([1959] 2002, 57). Dodds’s definition of a finished musician is consonant with an ethics of professionalism, as discussed earlier in the book. It is also quite interesting how notions about training and schooling made their way into a general evaluation of jazz musicians. The aspiration to be a finished musician is also implicit in how Dodds positions himself as one when he talks about the drummer Ormond Downes as a good performer and “a finished musician” ([1959] 2002, 63). Musical adulthood, then, is a stage where little if anything regarding one’s abilities is needed from those who have reached their creative maturity or their status as old-timers. We must wonder how their mentors and other members of their communities provided some of the threads that connect these narrators with their communities and the sense of self that emerges in their writing. As Eakin suggests, following Antonio Damasio, the self and narrative are not separable, for they make each other simultaneously (2008, 76). There is a dynamic but not contradictory tension between the self and other members of the autobiographer’s community. Self-discovery and self-creation do not occur in a vacuum, and jazz autobiographers negotiate and strategically emphasize or underplay their bonds with others depending on the narrative performance taking place. Before reaching musical adulthood, jazz musicians were young and impressionable, with remarkable abilities for their age. At the same time, they needed tutelage and protection from other musicians in some of the extramusical aspects of the trade. Our autobiographers, and many early jazz musicians, were raised in families who filled life with music. As Jason Berry writes, “Family structure [. . .] was central to early jazz” (2018, 166). Music most likely became a vehicle that produced and reinforced emotional connections and the coordination of family life. Furthermore, in some cases,

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their siblings were instrumental in some jazz musicians’ obtaining their first professional or quasi-professional jobs. Many early jazz musicians started playing music in public before they reached adult height. For some instrumentalists, this could be a challenge. Foster, who was around thirteen years old at the time, remembers: Back in those days I was real small and still had to stand on a box to reach the string bass right. I always told Willie [Foster] that the string bass was too big for me to carry. I’d carry his violin or banjo on a job, and he’d carry my string bass. ([1971] 2005, 18)

Foster’s brother would then help the young bassist carry the heavy instrument around New Orleans. Foster paid forward his brother’s helping hand to younger musicians. In an adult world, the weight of a musical instrument was not the only factor that would have made their lives difficult. Older musicians also took care of daring young instrumentalists and provided assurance to their parents that their kids would be safe. Lee Collins remembers that Foster asked him to play with the Eagle Band. He writes, “Pops called for me and promised my Aunt Mabel that he would look after me and see to it personally that I got home okay after the job” (1974, 17). Playing with a famous local band surely would have stressed a kid. Collins also remembers the emotional support he received from the bassist, who assured him he would do a good job. As I will discuss in the next chapter, family life played an important role in how New Orleans musicians stylized themselves, which in turn influenced how they treated each other. Paternal roles acquired not through being a parent, but as the providers the recipient of love and care, provided models for how early jazz musicians treated each other according to the developmental stages of a life in jazz. Life is paradoxically about possibilities and constraints. The categorization of musicians as too young to go to musical jobs by themselves was associated with the potential limits of their adventures. When asked to substitute for Buddy Petit at a club in the District, Collins, eager for the opportunity, was turned away by the club’s manager, only to return with other members of the band, who allowed him to at least listen to the music (Collins 1974). The musicians probably negotiated with the owner or manager of the club, creating gray areas that allowed young Collins to circumvent legal and social rules in order to give him a chance to grow musically. Unlike in future generations, when musicians had access to records and record players, chances to listen to and consequently learn the music were limited during the first decades of jazz. This was probably an incentive to help some young musicians find a way into clubs.

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The first years of these musicians were also marked by initiations into the social dynamics of jazz. In some cases, this included their potential roles, albeit on a smaller scale, as finished musicians and old-timers. Collins remembers following Joe Oliver in a parade in New Orleans, where it was customary for boys to assist the musicians by carrying their instruments (1974, 14). After Collins decided to play the horn instead of being content with carrying it, Oliver praised him. Bechet’s story about his brother’s birthday and the attendees discovering young Bechet hiding and playing the clarinet resonates with these themes. Both received praise from accomplished musicians in a social situation. The way these autobiographers organize the events in their narratives offers sociological and ethnographic insight into a musician’s life journey. Furthermore, it embeds the writers’ coming of age in the context of their communities, as these events are a sample of New Orleans culture and family life. When our autobiographers report memories of adult-like behaviors, marked by the retrospective analysis of what they probably imagined as children, it reinforces their status in the world of jazz by establishing a continuity in their musical powers, which were present before they achieved prominence. Bechet, for example, argues that since he was already playing with some bands in New Orleans, Louis Armstrong “sort of looked up to me, me playing in bands and being with the big men” ([1960] 2002, 92). Yet, while musicians defined codes of care and mentorship for younger instrumentalists, their families might not have been as supportive. Dodds recalls asking his father for a drum set, which would allow him to evolve from working with homemade instruments, but his father apparently did not like the idea. While remembering being hurt by this, Dodds clarifies his father’s position from a sociological perspective by explaining that music was not considered an acceptable pursuit ([1959] 2002, 5). He also assumes his father’s position and, in the same paragraph, criticizes musicians who paid no attention to their appearance, which he associates with a lack of professionalism (Dodds [1959] 2002, 5). Instead of narrating this process in an antagonistic way, Dodds integrates his father’s position into the narrative and partly assumes his voice in his analysis of musicians. In a way, Dodds’s attitudes are somewhere between Booker T. Washington’s “myth of uplift” (Stepto 1991, 44) and the affirmation of cultural and collective identity we can find in Du Bois (Stepto 1991, chapter 3). The act of writing an autobiography implies, for the most part, the status of an old-timer. As Olney writes, “The very act of writing a life down constitutes an attempt on the writer’s part to justify his life, and implicit in every act of autobiography is the judgment that his life is worth being written down” (1993, 212). Among the remarkable aspects of these autobiographies are the writers’ construction of their public self-presentations, their performance

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of their status in jazz, and their positioning of themselves as authoritative speakers. Part of the worth of these texts is derived from the writers’ status as old-timers, which they also reinforce in the acts required for the publication of their books. The notion of an old-timer is used by the autobiographers in several ways. The term refers to those who possess some knowledge about the history of jazz not readily available to others. In their books, narrators who define themselves as old-timers, like these autobiographers, claim a special authority for themselves, as well as for those they describe with the term. This way of using the term goes hand in hand with creating a space and legitimacy for themselves against a backdrop of narratives about their music dominated by white writers. At the same time, the notion of an old-timer is associated with the proper way of playing the music, which, in turn, gives them a degree of gatekeeping power. In the micro-subjectivations of jazz, they had the potential to decide the possible paths for younger musicians. According to Collins, Tig Chambers was a cornetist who followed Buddy Bolden’s style, but whom only some old-timers remember (1974, 53). Since Collins is providing the reader with information about Chambers, he reinforces his own status as both an old-timer and a New Orleanian. As discussed in previous chapters, an important criterion for being considered an authentic jazz musician was knowledge about the music. Being an old-timer is not only about having encyclopedic knowledge that is not accessible through other means, but also about the ability to play authentically. Collins (1974) remembers that Louis Armstrong was being consulted about possible musicians to play for the film Pete Kelly’s Blues. Armstrong told the director to hire a band of old-timers led by Alfred Williams (Collins 1974, 129), a decision Collins evaluates in a positive way. Collins, in addition to recognizing Armstrong’s knowledge and authority (which incidentally positions Collins as an authority), frames old-timers as musicians who can play music authentically. This in turn positions old-timers as those who have an integral role in the micro-governmentality of jazz and the negotiations with outsiders. It is an assertion of power associated with the knowledge they have about the music. In a way, it reveals the power/knowledge games that occur at other levels of social organization, which are not entirely dependent on larger social processes. Furthermore, by positioning themselves as old-timers, they construct themselves as those who possess the “truth,” paired in their autobiographies with notions of authenticity, which in turn is associated with the exercise of power (and resistance). In an interview with Alessandro Fontana and Pasquale Pasquino, Foucault describes truth and power in the following terms:

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Truth isn’t outside power, or lacking in power [. . .] truth isn’t the reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude, nor the privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. (Foucault 1980b, 131)

Foucault later adds, “‘Truth’ is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, circulation and operation of statements,” which in turn are “linked in a circular relation with systems of power” (1980b, 133). The position of the old-timer allows New Orleans musicians to locate themselves in the economy of knowledge and power through notions of authenticity. Their autobiographies perform both power and knowledge not only in their content but in the fact that they place the narratives of musicians at the center of what must be known about jazz. Old-timers played an important role in the development of musicians, and probably dissuaded many from following a musical career. The power they held could have been employed consciously, or it could have been a somewhat unintended effect of scripts of socialization. According to Dodds, when an older musician rejected a younger musician due to their lacking musical skills, the younger musician was motivated to work harder and meet the standards that would grant him entry and recognition ([1959] 2002, 44). Notice how his evaluation of musicians follows the same pattern as his tale of his father’s refusal to buy a drum set for him. Later, when he describes a band Joe Oliver organized with young musicians in 1935, Dodds expresses a certain surprise and happiness at having been asked to play with them as a way of helping the younger musicians, setting himself up as an old-timer (Dodds, [1959] 2002). What could be interpreted in a negative way, such as the power of the old-timers over young musicians, is also a rite of passage that likely relied on and reproduced family dynamics. The status of old-timer turns the narrators into griots. The old-timers are also the ones who seek to establish the parameters of authenticity and perform some degree of gatekeeping. Whether or not this is intended as a form of reverse psychology, that is sometimes its consequence. The continuity they construct in their sense of self-over-time extends to their analysis of the history of jazz (discussed in the next section), revealing an overarching epistemology that binds the narrators’ selves and their music. TELOS OF JAZZ In addition to a personal past, several autobiographies connect their story with the tale of their ancestors. The quote by Smith in the beginning of this

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chapter, and the examples cited in other chapters from Bechet’s story about Omar, are used by the narrators to establish a continuity between themselves and African American and African traditions (Ogren 1991). Debates about the historicity of jazz are almost as old as the music itself; “the debate over jazz was just one of the many that characterized American social discourse in the 1920s” (Ogren 1989, 3). The death and resuscitation of jazz or some of its genres have also generated detached postures and existential anxiety (Gennari 2006). Bechet sets part of the tone of his narrative in the first chapter by weaving together a conversation with a pessimistic interlocutor worried about the final days of jazz and a sample of his philosophy that foreshadows several themes of the book. Bechet defines jazz as a circular and infinite entity that will continue to live on even in his absence and that of his colleagues ([1960] 2002, 2). Bechet problematizes the trivia version of history that would seek a single source who could carry the title of “founder of jazz,” instead proposing a narrative that combines folk knowledge, the history of slavery in the United States, the culture of people of color in the South, his experience, and a collectivistic framework that sees the music as a communal product. This resonates with the kind of self Du Bois constructs in his narrative, which, as Stepto analyzes, is constructed as a spiritual entity that exists “beyond history” (1991, 66). In this context, the mythical and spiritual tones of Bechet and Du Bois are an extension of a collectivistic worldview that connects past, present, and future. The telos of jazz, which we can consider an extension of the narrator’s collectivistic sense of self, grounds the emotional complexity of the narrator’s internal and social life. It challenges early discourses that associated the music with the pleasures of the red-light district by laying out the multiplicity of spaces and practices that gave birth to jazz. Even narrators who disagree about the specifics rely on and promote the same discourse. Bechet’s use of the folkloric Bras-Coupé figure to craft a narrative about his own grandfather (Gabbard 2016, 137) reveals the strategic, malleable, and creative ways in which storytellers fashion themselves through the multiple discourses that appeal to them. It could also point to complex racial dynamics in a society that gradually reduced, by legal and social means, the identities individuals of color could claim for themselves. Willie “The Lion” Smith ([1964] 1978) might disagree with New Orleans musicians who claimed their home was where jazz was born, yet he, like Bechet, identifies a pre-history of jazz grounded in African and African American culture. Bechet blurs the boundaries between past, myth, and self, while Smith challenges geographical boundaries. Their accounts can complement historical and sociological studies of music, for, as many scholars of autobiography suggest, autobiographies do not always need to follow rules of

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factual accuracy (Smith and Watson 2010). They construct their own system of truth through these micro-subjectivations in which the narrators position themselves as authoritative speakers. Furthermore, as Jason Berry (2018) notes, decades before the publication of Danny Barker’s autobiography, he integrated his knowledge of the history of jazz (what had been written and what had been ignored) to create a fictional story about Buddy Bolden. According to Berry, “Danny Barker’s vision of the birth of jazz stems from that moment when Bolden, in his house, melds the sacred and profane, a hymn fused with the burning pathos of the blues” (2018, 267). This “melding” is again one of the elements of the complex and holistic worldview of the autobiographers who, as discussed earlier in the book, problematize dualistic ways of thinking about the world. Treat It Gentle constructs a historiography and selfhood that unites Africa and New Orleans. In the final chapter, Bechet argues that every New Orleans musician had an equivalent of his grandfather ([1960] 2002, 202). This would also apply to Bechet himself, who, even if his Omar was not Omar (or at least his Omar), still had one: a discursive ancestor who served as an archetype and allowed him to make his life and his narrative that of the collective. As Olney (1993) notes, African autobiographies, for the most part, are stories of the we, not the I. Omar is used to perform Bechet’s collectivistic sense of the rich history and agency of people of color in the United States. These ideas also apply to Louis Armstrong, whose Satchmo, as Kenney (1991) argues, “recreates a series of vivid pictures of life in black New Orleans, offering in the place of individual introspection, a group biography in which the self in enmeshed in family and neighborhood” (51). Historians and scholars of jazz might disagree on the importance of such locations as Congo Square in the chain of events that led to the first jazz songs, or the degree to which jazz was influenced by European music (Gioia 1997; Hersch 2007; Radano 2003). While these studies are interesting, taking these autobiographers at face value, or criticizing the degree to which they cannot be taken at face value, is similar to the situation in psychological theory in which some schools of developmental psychology treat children as if they were scientists (Nelson 2007). While the metaphor could prove useful, it is limited. Furthermore, there is a similar situation for those engaged in the study of cultures, like the author of this book, in which the historical self we invent for ourselves does not match the history of racial dynamics of our archipelago (Alleyne 2005; Baerga 2015). Yet, when I live my life and tell my story and that of my ancestors, I’m not a miniature version of a historian of Puerto Rico. The meanings I have acquired through socialization and the contexts in which I perform my story shape that story. While these narrators grew up in an environment that reinforced differences between Creoles of color and African Americans, that does not mean

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they do not share and negotiate discourses about the self, which also influence their self-constitution and presentation. As Marquis (2005) writes: An 1894 amendment to the Black Code thrust [Creoles] into the same category as full-blooded blacks. Creole musicians had had the society jobs almost entirely to themselves for years, and as white bands began to take over these jobs the Creoles were forced to compete with black bands, to integrate with them or to abandon music altogether. (75)

At the same time, the multiple identities they can perform remain available for them to use strategically. Autobiographers such as Barker even reclaim some of the disputed facts about jazz history and autobiographical statements. Even conversations between jazz fans or afficionados sometimes deal with Jelly Roll Morton’s exaggerations about being the inventor of jazz. Barker ([1986] 2016) brings some nuance to the discussion in a way that asserts Morton’s narrative authority over his own life, regardless of what connoisseurs might debate. He writes: Jelly was partly right in his claim that he invented jazz—that is, his type of jazz [. . .]. Yes, Jelly Roll felt that he was the greatest jazz pianist and composer, and he was just not concerned with any other talent but his own—that is, his own piano playing and composing. (114)

He then adds: It was the custom of celebrities in those early days to arrive in a city and immediately to the main drag, where they would loudly start to boast of their ability, and then the mouth-to-mouth news would spread like wildfire that the great So-and-so was in town, and that would really draw a crowd. (Barker [1986] 2016, 114)

Barker’s sociological and historical statements provide some context for Morton’s exaggerations while, as an observer, colleague, and autobiographer, he reinforces the authority and power of jazz musicians over their life stories. Bechet also uses his authority to problematize the narratives about jazz that over-emphasize the role of the red-light district, instead pathologizing the observers as the ones who project their desires over jazz ([1960] 2002, 53). He does not deny the presence of jazz in Storyville, but rather places the focus on the elements that allow him to ground the early years of jazz in a narrative that is consonant with the spiritual and collective frameworks he used to tell Omar’s story. In a way, Bechet’s comment could be taken as a reaction against the public discourses about jazz that emerged in the context of the narratives that supported the jazz revival. At the same time, his analysis

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resonates with psychoanalytical explanations, for he accuses the observer of projecting their own anxieties onto jazz as if they were using a defense mechanism to guard themselves. As Brothers writes, “The first historians of early jazz made a lot out of Storyville, and it has been glued to the music’s image ever since. [. . .] Sex sells, and the legend of bawdy Storyville helped sell the revival of New Orleans jazz in the 1940s” (2006, 256). The narratives the musical communities of New Orleans crafted to explain the origins of the music they played probably influenced how some musicians fashioned certain aspects of their performances or how they researched ideas for inspiration. According to John McCusker (2012), Kid Ory, among other musicians, believed that Buddy Bolden incorporated into his musical performances elements of the churches he visited. Logically, Ory was motivated to do some research of his own and visit the same churches for inspiration (McCusker 2012). Biographical statements about the relationship between music and musicians probably played a role in the paths several instrumentalists made and stumbled upon. In addition to the past, the telos of jazz is marked by problematizations, which resonate, reinforce, and complicate social discourses about the preservation and the future of the music. Dodds ([1959] 2002), for example, highlights some events as historical, and laments some of the music that was never recorded and of which there is no audible record. Ideas about what deserves to be saved for posterity establish a symbolic economy among alternatives whose ephemeral nature is not the object of concern. Bechet’s ([1960] 2002) conversation with his interlocutor at the beginning of the book is not about the future of bebop or classical music, but about New Orleans jazz. And Lee Collins argues that Sid Dawson will be remembered as a great musician (1974, 130). While Collins doesn’t explicitly apply the same kind words to himself, it is likely that one of the motivations for laying out his life is to be remembered. But, in the song of what is appropriate to tell in a personal narrative, that would probably be one of the many unspoken lines (Eakin 2008). Danny Barker is an interesting figure as it relates to the preservation and the future of jazz. Thomas W. Jacobsen’s Traditional New Orleans Jazz (2011) is filled with interviews of musicians from New Orleans who, to this day, remember playing with Barker after his return to the city or being helped by him in one way or another in their professional journeys. Barker, who believed traditions such as the brass bands were worth preserving, prioritized giving this assistance (Jacobsen 2011, 32, 67–66, 75, 90). In a way, Barker and other jazz autobiographers, through their texts and interactions with younger generations of musicians, provided a general frame for the complementary operations of self-discovery and self-creation involved in the crafting of one’s narrative (Eakin 1988, 55).

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As the autobiographers once were, young musicians are constructed in these narratives as precarious subjects in development whose physical and psychological needs are supposed to be looked after. Their precarity is associated not with social identities, but with their developmental stage. Musical communities find ways for them and their young ones to move forward by mapping and creating opportunities for younger musicians eager to be members of the emerging jazz culture. Jazz, as precarious and strong as the musicians themselves, is a continuation of their sense of self and their community. It is telling that these musicians lived through several so-called revivals, the flu pandemic of 1918, and the Great Depression—all of which, in one way or another, filled newspapers and conversations with images of death and hopelessness. Could their autobiographies, which reinforced their status as old-timers (Berry 2018), be possible in a context or society that was not concerned with the preservation of jazz? Discourses about the history and future of jazz have continued to play a role in the music, public policy, and political economy of jazz in ways that complicate constructions of the music’s past. The self-constitution of these autobiographers as self-conscious historical narrators was probably influenced by society’s ways of defining the value of human life. Yet several jazz autobiographers used a communal voice that integrated past and present, which in turn allowed their voices to live, like Omar’s voice, through others in the future. This, of course, was an act of authority and power that established and policed how music and the self were made under the veil of authenticity.

Chapter 7

Stylizing the Self: The Mechanic and the Domestic

While the work of Michel Foucault (1990) is usually associated with a bleak picture of humanity—in which we are the product of oppresive historical and social forces that steer us through multiple systems and techniques of control—his last works, as we have seen throughout this book, provide a set of concepts grounded in a different conception of the self. The self of the late Foucault is a complex entity whose acts of self-constitution and meaning making go beyond the demands of higher-level social forces (Foucault 1990; Veyne 2010; Lemke 2011). Self-constitution is also, as Butler (2005) argues, grounded in a language that fully belongs not to the individual but to society. The social and socio-psychological study of groups also identifies how these forms of organization reproduce and create their own dynamics grounded in how they construct their identities (Haslam, Reicher, and Platow 2010). As discussed in previous chapters, jazz musicians’ conceptions of the elaboration and development of the self were framed not only as the progress of the individual but also as the progress of their bands and the apprenticeship system that emerged during those early years of the music. JAZZ: STYLIZATIONS AND METAPHORS Playing music both taxes and elevates the self in ways that few other trades in the world can. Devoting one’s life to the nightly business of creating jazz will certainly take a toll on anyone’s mind and body, yet for an outsider—as well as many insiders—a musician’s life, in addition to its hardships, is filled with musical and extramusical experiences of a special nature. Outsiders might, of course, be more generous in what pleasures and nonworldly experiences they project onto music than what Western societies can actually provide for most artists. The autobiographies of these first jazz musicians do very little 117

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to construct music as worldly, though this is, of course, a matter of degree. As we have seen in previous chapters, Sidney Bechet’s autobiography relies on the myth of Bras-Coupé as a way of framing his own story within a larger African American tradition (Gabbard 2016). And while Dodds’s prose is more down-to-earth, at least when compared with those of many jazz autobiographers, music is still far from being just any other job that pays the bills. Anyone who is friends with musicians, for example, has probably heard them protest against people assuming that they should accept whatever money they are offered by the organizer of an event or the owner of a club or restaurant. These individuals reinforce and exploit these old-fashioned bohemian-like stereotypes, which intersect with notions about authenticity being inversely related to money (Trilling 1972). On the other hand, autobiographers whose writings adopt a more sociological stance, have felt the need to narratively construct music as “more worldly than you think” by problematizing stereotypes about jazz musicians. Even today, the conflict between magical and realist conceptions of jazz seems very much alive. Educators such as Mark Levine (1995), for example, argue that jazz solos are made primarily of elements that are quantifiable, with a small percentage of mysterious unexplainable abilities. In spite of the beyond-worldliness that both audiences and musicians associate with the lives devoted to this craft, the way we make sense of this art is embedded in the constraints of our imagination and our capacity to use metaphors. Imagination is not a boundless quality of our nervous system; it is shaped by the same world that it helps to shape. I cannot imagine that which is completely outside my frames of reference, experiences, dispositions, knowledge, prejudices, abilities, or vicarious experiences that also make up, in part, who I am and how I interact with the world. Furthermore, one’s creative powers are at the same time constrained by social pressures that might discourage certain groups and individuals from bringing certain behaviors and attitudes to the front stage of their existence. This is precisely one of the topics Stein (2012) carefully analyzes in his study of Armstrong’s personal documents. While some, including musicians such as Miles Davis, criticized the extramusical features of Louis Armstrong’s performance for supposedly catering to white audiences, Stein (2012) argues that Armstrong’s performances, music, and writings are actually quite subversive when one takes into account the prejudice and discrimination Armstrong had to face throughout his lifetime. The Armstrong–Davis controversy can be understood in terms of stylization. As defined earlier in this volume, stylization refers to how individuals shape and intervene in their own lives using other relevant fields of experience as a model (Veyne 2010). The notion of stylization places culture and society at the center of historical, sociological, and socio-psychological

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explanations of creativity and imagination. As Paul Veyne writes, while Foucault conceived stylization as a craft of oneself in which the subject “aestheticizes himself freely and actively,” an individual “is still a child of his time” (Veyne 2010, 106). If Foucault’s final work can be associated with notions such as “a return to the subject” or “the ethical turn,” it is precisely because of how he provides stylization as a category that navigates across the other aspects of subjectivation. When compared with ethical substance, subjection, elaboration, and teleology, this final concept is grounded in the premise that individuals are not only products but also producers. Perhaps one of the most obvious examples of stylization comes from Miles Davis’s self-fashioning as a boxer. Taking care of one’s body, then, could be perceived to be almost as important as taking care of a musical instrument, which comes to life only when it is attached and manipulated by a musician. While the intimate connection between the body of a musician and the ability to make music seems obvious enough, it was probably not so well articulated for those outside the inner circles of musicians as it was when Miles Davis posed as a boxer for one of his albums. The image of Davis dressed and posing as a boxer, Gerald Early (1993) analyzes, complicates, or at least evidences the complex relationship between the mouth of a musician and its ability to produce the most delicate or strident sounds. Furthermore, it promotes a different kind of relationship with the self and others based on how Davis conceptualizes and contrasts his music with more traditional forms of jazz. As Early (1993) writes, “Davis came along as a young artist in the ’40s during the bebop revolution with its attendant racial consciousness which saw itself in revolt against the image of the jazz musician as Armstrong-type entertainer” (137). Davis’s view of Armstrong as just an entertainer invisibilizes the complex ways in which Armstrong asserted his identity and heritage through his music and the opportunities available to previous generations of Black musicians in the United States (Stein 2012). During Davis’s lifetime, social and cultural changes offered other possibilities and models from which newer generations of musicians could draw and stylize their selves and music. According to Early (1993), “It is black masculine stylization in popular culture, which Davis sees as a sort of coded continuum of honor and implied individualized protest, that makes Davis see what is for him an entirely sensible connection between himself and [Sugar Ray] Robinson” (139–40). According to Davis’s autobiographical narrative, Sugar Ray Robinson was a model of how to assert masculinity and individuality and a model of self-improvement that inspired him to stop using drugs (Early 1993). As we will see later in this chapter, the models of popular culture available to the first jazz autobiographers were quite different from those available to bebop musicians.

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In their book Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) analyze how people use metaphors to understand certain aspects of their experience. Metaphors work because they are social, and they allow individuals to use the linguistic and epistemic resources of their group to interact with the world and others. At the same time, the use of these “literary” devices reveals the function and value of different fields of discursive experience that play a significant role in people’s worldview. Metaphors can promote, constrain, justify, or problematize statements about the world and human interaction. Lakoff and Johnson’s ideas converge with social constructionism, qualitative research, and discourse analysis. Discourse analysis is an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of theoretical frameworks and qualitative strategies used by social constructionists to study life. While these theoretical frameworks and approaches define discourses and their relations to the world in different ways (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002), following what Norman Denzin wrote in his Manifesto (2010), they can coexist, interact, and inspire one another. Likewise, when researchers study discourses by engaging in multi-and transdisciplinary dialogues, they can explore connections across multiple sites of human life. Some have noted the possible connections between discourse and personality theories, specifically psychoanalysis (Hollway and Jefferson 2006). Following these lines, it could be argued that research on stylization is somewhat akin to free association where subjects more or less “freely” connect their discourse with other covert, unconscious, or available discourses. Using this analogy, we could also say that some aspects of covert culture (Marx, Bowron, and Rose 1988), which as a concept works as a sociological equivalent of the conscious/unconscious continuum in social issues, might come to light during the examination of stylizations. Throughout the rest of this chapter, I will analyze early jazz musicians who stylized their lives and sense of self in their autobiographies. There are four main complementary themes in their narratives, some more prevalent than others. As I have argued throughout the book, these autobiographies, from a social and discursive perspective, can be taken as complementary accounts of the emerging narratives and discourses of jazz life. THE MECHANICAL WORLD In a previous chapter, I discussed how jazz autobiographers problematized the excessive use of written arrangements and constant rehearsal leading nowhere. They understood the goal of both practices as a process of standardization that removed spontaneity. At the same time, early jazz musicians

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were products of a world that was increasingly making art more mechanical, as scholars such as Walter Benjamin (1968) analyzed. However, the mechanization of music, which allowed these musicians to record their songs and distribute them all over the world, was built upon the same spirit and exciting technological developments that shortened distances and allowed individuals, groups, and the imagination to exploit new possibilities of being. These two different and contemporary discourses leave the individual at the intersection of a world filled with ambivalent attitudes toward technology. Even Freud in his Civilization and Its Discontents (2002) acknowledges that technology both causes and alleviates human misery. In our societies, it is not uncommon for someone to describe a functional organization or group as a well-oiled machine. Warren Dodds, for example, said similar things about the Fate Marable band, praising it for being “just like a clock” ([1959] 2002, 32). Dodds uses the same language to convey a sense of what occurs when an ensemble fails to perform well. Just like a car, Dodds says, “if the gears are meshing badly, they’re going to hit each other” ([1959] 2002, 23). For Dodds, the mechanical world provides a metaphor for the organization and precision required among musicians playing together in a group. Both clocks and cars embody some of the values of modernity that also cross over to jazz. Dodds’s association of musical ensembles with these machines are a projection of modernist values onto early jazz. A reading of early jazz grounded in the appreciation of bebop as an avant-garde musical expression embedded in modernist values runs the risk of misinterpreting early jazz aesthetics and sense of self as an expression from the outskirts of modernity. The reach of jazz was amplified by radio and commercial recordings, which won more listeners and inspired others to pick up their instruments and imitate what they heard (Ogren 1989). Furthermore, during the 1920s, long before the advent of bebop, jazz already “received credit or scorn for the effects it supposedly had on the pace of life” (Ogren 1989, 144). Furthermore, as Gioia hints, “the modern jazz movement that emerged in the 1940s was especially important in crystallizing the nascent aesthetics of abundance that had been implicit in earlier jazz” (1988, 111). While bebop is often characterized as the musical embodiment of modernity and was associated with more “serious” forms of self-presentation, the roots of these ideas were already in the narratives of the first jazz musicians. However, these early autobiographers still held ambivalent attitudes toward the same technological developments they used as metaphors for musical performance. Sidney Bechet also relies on the metaphor of cars, and even airplanes, as a way of establishing the New Orleans style of jazz as the most legitimate and authentic form of the music: “You can have a car or you can have an airplane. But whatever it is, you’ve always got the wheels. No matter what

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kind of thing you’ve got, it’s the wheel you start from; it’s the foundation” ([1960] 2002, 117–18). Then Bechet adds, “New Orleans, it’s the wheels” ([1960] 2002, 118). These machines, then, are a metaphor for precision and, in Bechet’s strategic use, serve to highlight the role of New Orleans jazz as the necessary foundation for the different styles of playing that emerged later. At the same time, this allows him to hint that forms of jazz that deviate too much from the style he played lack authenticity and substance. Machines are also used to problematize the “mechanization” of musical performances. Louis Armstrong problematizes how “any average player [. . .] can follow through a score” ([1936] 1993, 30), yet good musicians are those who can play beyond what is written for them. Sidney Bechet resonates with Armstrong when he writes that “personality boys,” rather than real musicians, rely on bands whose music is completely arranged. Bechet compares such bands to machines that provide the necessary support for the star of the show ([1960] 2002, 210). The use of arrangements, which are neither modern nor premodern but something often associated with so-called classical music, is criticized by using aspects of the mechanical world as a metaphor, revealing the complex and ambivalent ways the emerging jazz discourse strategically associated key aspects of their trade with the modern world. In addition to musical scores, musicians themselves could potentially be turned into machines through excessive rehearsing, as Armstrong states: Swing players have got to have a good time when they are playing and they can’t have a good time, playing and rehearsing as they do twelve and fourteen hours a day, if you just make machines out of them. ([1936] 1993, 32)

This idea is also embedded in the fears that modernity inspired in some, including a degradation of the value of human life and art (Marx, Bowron, and Rose 1988). In the context of jazz, a key aspect that was “threatened” by the excesses of modernity was spontaneity. The mechanical world reduces spontaneity, which is often associated with improvisation, a key element of most jazz performances. Furthermore, technology and the mechanical reproduction of art force individuals to challenge their notions of authenticity. According to Lionel Trilling, “In an increasingly urban and technological society, the natural processes of human existence have acquired a moral status in the degree that they are thwarted” (1972, 128). These autobiographers constructed an ethics of jazz that incorporated some aspects of the modern world while problematizing the consequences of its excesses.

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GENDER While jazz has been studied or praised by scholars and fans alike as a social and discursive force against racism and social injustice, the music’s history when it comes to gender is somewhat different. Jazz allowed white musicians and musicians of color, albeit in a sometimes imperfect manner, to discover, embrace, and cultivate forms of interaction among differences in a society that distributed privileges in unequal ways. Yet jazz, especially early jazz, was a male-dominated field, which more or less reproduced some of the same sexist patterns of interaction found in society at large. As Christopher Harlos writes, “Along with the addiction narrative, for example, one recurrent and particularly disturbing aspect of the jazz autobiography is the candid expression of a naked and often violent sexism” (1995, 160). Furthermore, these autobiographers also bend their positions on gender and use it strategically to speak with authority about jazz. In this section, my goal is not to absolve these autobiographers of their strategic use of gender-related notions to understand certain aspects of their lives and music, but to analyze how they used conceptions about gender to stylize these aspects. As Sarah Caissie Provost (2017) analyzes, the writings of male jazz musicians reveal patterns of exclusion with limited and precarious opportunities for a career in jazz. Likewise, male musicians often projected so-called domestic values on the women who played with them (Provost 2017; Heble and Siddall 2000). When Armstrong talks about the skills of Lillian Hardin, to whom he was married for a time, he says, “She was, and is, one of the best women jazz pianists in the country” ([1936] 1993, 70), creating a separate category for female musicians and allowing her to be “one of the best” but only in her gender, and not even in the world but just in the United States. And Bill Coleman remembers when he heard Amanda Randolph play the piano, writing in his autobiography, “Amanda Randolph was a very capable pianist. Although I did not know music, I knew when it was well played, and Amanda was the first woman I ever heard who played like a man” (1991, 4). Warren Dodds does the same when he evaluates Emma Barrett’s skill as comparable to that of a generic male ([1959] 2002, 19). With women discursively constructed as the other outside the in-groups of male musicians, women pursuing a successful career in jazz had to adopt so-called masculine styles of playing (Provost 2017). About the pianist Cleo Brown, Dodds says something a bit different yet grounded in the same kind of discourse. Brown, according to Dodds, was able to play in a distinctive way that separated her from other female instrumentalists ([1959] 2002, 56). He praises Brown for playing in a supposedly nonfeminine way, which again denies by default any kind of creative performance

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of jazz that could be seen as feminine (Provost 2017). In revealing how they viewed and treated female musicians, these autobiographers reinforce the myth of male superiority in jazz by using their authoritative narratives about jazz to position male instrumentalists as the standard of musical performance. There is another strategically ambivalent way in which Sidney Bechet uses gender in his autobiography; it also promotes essentialist views of masculinity and femininity, which are used as a metaphor to explain the relationship between jazz and society. As Evelyn Fox Keller (2000) analyzes, in the history of science in the Western world, essentialist notions about gender have conceptualized masculinity as active and femininity as passive. Bechet describes jazz as either passive or active, using and reinforcing notions about gender by society at large, depending on how he positions jazz in relation to others. When explaining and justifying how jazz was associated with the red-light district in New Orleans, Bechet apologizes for jazz, as if the genre were an extension of the musician’s masculinity—as if it were natural for men, and for jazz, to satisfy a sexual drive over which none has control ([1960] 2002, 54). He uses a conversational style, perhaps in the way a couple of friends could negotiate the meanings of the actions of one of their friends with whom they identify. The association of jazz with a man who visits the red-light district works both ways, of course. Bechet promotes the idea of an active masculinity, which ostensibly explains and justifies supposed needs. On the same page of his autobiography, Bechet attempts to defend jazz from a masculine other who tries to take advantage of it: If she moves, and you watch her, all the time thinking about having her, that isn’t her fault either. [. . .] And that’s Jazz too. If people want to take a melody and think what it’s saying is trash, that ain’t the fault of the melody. ([1960] 2002, 54)

Here, jazz is the object of the impure desires of an implicit masculine/active other taking advantage of jazz, which in turn makes jazz feminine. This strategic feminization or masculinization of music always seems to work in favor of jazz. The stylization of jazz through gender makes the music either feminine (passive) or masculine (active) depending on how the music and outsiders are positioned in relation to gender. It is also a male narrator who employs these gendered notions to frame jazz as either an active entity that must satisfy its impulses, explaining its complex origins in the red-light district, or a passive being subjected to the impure desires of an active other.

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THE PAST The autobiographies of these jazz musicians were made possible in part by the desire of the narrators and audiences to have access to the voices and stories of some of the icons of popular music. With a few exceptions, most of the autobiographies discussed in this book were published after heated debates between promoters of bebop and supporters of more traditional forms of jazz. Bechet’s and Dodds’s autobiographies, along with Armstrong’s Satchmo, were published “in part to supply information then demanded by traditional jazz fans” (Kenney 1991, 50). These texts answered the demand of audiences interested in their music, and at the same time, they used these textual performances to construct and divulge their own and supposedly more authentic version of the history of jazz. Marshall Stearns (1970) even suggests that “the advent of bop was not only sudden but also highly threatening to many established musicians” (219). It is precisely against a long history of negative depictions of their music in the press and criticism, both positive and negative, by white critics that these autobiographies construct an alternate account of their lives and music (Ogren 1989; Gennari 2006). When Armstrong says, “I was born on July 4, 1900” ([1936] 1993, 3), he is not just making an inaccurate statement about his birthday, he is stylizing and inserting himself in an American historical discourse that has to reconcile the fact that he is an icon. He asserts himself as a leading voice in the history of one of America’s most salient musical and cultural icons. As Garber (1995) argues, fabulations in jazz do not cloud our understanding of the music; rather, they allow us to better comprehend the discourses and ideologies in which it is grounded. Armstrong violates Lejeune’s (1989) autobiographical pact to claim his rightful place in the history of the United States by strategically using the birthday of the new century as his birthday. Autobiographers such as Dodds, and especially Bechet, draw heavily from the past in their stylization of their sense of self and music. Dodds remembers recording songs that revived his memories of the music he played during his musical growth ([1959] 2002, 82). Dodds’s music connects him to his own ontogenetic past and life story. Jazz, or at least the songs with which he had an emotional bond, is then a vehicle to a happier past. Bechet recapitulates this kind of statement, but by drawing from the myth of Bras-Coupé, he further associates his life with the collective history and trauma of African Americans in the United States. Bechet, for example, draws a connection between the music he plays and the songs of earlier generations ([1960] 2002, 46). He, of course, is not literally playing the same music his grandfather played, but he constructs jazz as part of an African American tradition, which he continued

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throughout his lifetime. This is a theme Bechet introduces early in the book and continues throughout the whole narrative. Knowledge about the past also allows musicians to stylize themselves as part of a larger tradition, thereby asserting their authenticity and authority. When Lee Collins describes Bunk Johnson’s technique, he writes, “It was said that he [Johnson] took his style from Buddy Bolden, so this style came from Bolden, through Bunk, to Buddy Petit, Louis Armstrong, and me” (1974, 17–18). Jazz autobiographers stylize their life stories through conceptions about the past and the sense of belonging to a larger tradition. However, they exclude from that tradition musicians who played bebop. Dodds constructs his argument in a positive way by praising Honoré Dutrey, who did not play bebop ([1959] 2002, 43). Bechet, on the other hand, argues that Roy Eldridge can also be a good musician, but only when he is not playing bebop and stays true to more traditional forms of jazz ([1960] 2002, 200). The past of jazz has an overarching presence in these autobiographers’ careers and narratives, and they projected the same values onto other musicians and, implicitly, the future. FAMILY LIFE In her analysis of early jazz autobiography, Kathy Ogren (1991) argues, “In each autobiography, the significance of family and community influences on music is captured through strong evocations of place and the literal sounds of a city that the musicians credit with inspiration” (115). The way these musicians treated each other reveals complex collectivistic notions and patterns of behavior that transcend the social contracts mediating the relationships among members of North American society at large. Coleman recalls Freddie Jenkins’s reaction to his rendition of “Maytime,” which copied Jenkins’s own version of the song: “Freddie was so pleased that he started calling me brother, and we called each other brother from then on” (1991, 27). Jenkins’s and Coleman’s recognition of each other as “brothers,” at least in the latter’s autobiography, grew out of the musical commensurabilities between them. Yet such possibility of making music is associated with the emotional bonds of one’s primary groups. The stylization of other musicians as family members facilitated the musical interactions among them, and vice versa. This stylization is very likely embedded in the characteristics of African American culture (Carson 2009), which, compared with white culture, promotes collectivistic values. These values in turn allow individuals who become significant members of someone’s life to be treated “as family.” Dodds compares musicians to siblings and musical aggrupations to families. In New Orleans, members of a band were

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expected to treat each other almost as if they were siblings (Dodds [1959] 2002, 15). While playing with Joe Oliver, the musicians had known each other so long we felt that we were almost related. That outfit had more harmony and feeling of brotherly love than any I ever worked with. [. . .] If you’ve got a family of ten, regardless of what goes on, if you haven’t got harmony you know it’s a terrible house. I feel the same thing applies to musicians. (Dodds [1959] 2002, 39–40)

Collins echoes these feelings when he describes his relationships with those who worked at the Ship Café. After describing some of the hardships of working there, he writes, “One nice thing about the Ship, we were all just like one big, happy family. On Christmas Eve we would have a big tree in the place, and everybody exchanged presents” (1974, 76). Collins’s hiring of Joe White, described in chapter three, could be misinterpreted as nepotism (and maybe there is a slight hint of that). But regardless of whether nepotism played a role, Collins’s actions were motivated by the underlying emotional bonds musicians develop with each other, which extended to those who were identified as members of the same tradition. In these ensembles, musicians reproduce the emotional bonds that they developed during their growth. Their internal emotional models of family life stylized how they treated each other. The stylization of the self from a collectivistic perspective is also reflected in how the autobiographies are written. As William H. Kenney suggests, these autobiographies go beyond the representation of an individual’s account of their own past: they are “a group biography” (1991, 51). And they not only tell their story as the story of their primary groups and culture, they represent and reinforce a collectivistic sense of self in which one’s subjectivity and well-being depends on meaningful others. That is why notions about family are an important source of stylization of their narratives as well as their relations with others. In this context, acts that would otherwise be deemed inappropriate might be narrated in a positive light or in a familiar tone, if they are meant to reveal something about the bonds among them. Physical punishment might be construed by some groups as a mechanism of discipline between members of the in-group. Foster describes an incident between Frankie Dusen and Bunk Johnson in which physical punishment is noted as somewhat comical but unremarkable. Upon a band member mentioning that Dusen was on the way, Johnson would change his demeanor and try to act less inebriated. Foster’s explanation highlights the emotional bonds among these musicians as well as how these patterns of attachment influence the self throughout their lives. Bunk would change his behavior in front of Dusen because “Frankie used to beat Bunk just like you beat a kid” (Foster

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[1971] 2005, 56). In this quote, disciplining one’s kid through physical punishment is merely mentioned as an untellable fact. What is tellable, following Popkin’s (1993) work, is the fact that an adult and an important figure in the history of jazz is disciplined as if he were a child and behaves as such when he fears a potential punishment. The family also plays a fundamental role in Bechet’s Treat It Gentle. Through his use of the story of Bras-Coupé, he connects his music, his personal history, and his family to African American traditions. Music, whether through lyrics (Espada-Brignoni and Ruiz-Alfaro 2017), the traditions and practices that allow members of a community to come together and negotiate meanings of their social world (Turino 2008; Mattern 1998; Espada-Brignoni and Ruiz-Alfaro 2021), or the discourses and subjectivations they design to understand and guide their practices, is understood through metaphors that stylize how music is defined. These autobiographies constructed complex yet somewhat overlooked texts that reveal the social arrangements that these musicians developed with each other. The stylization of band members as brothers also reveals patterns of resistance and endurance of their own culture, which they asserted in different ways. Their representations of jazz, as well as using notions of authenticity to justify categories of self associated with the jazz world, are partly grounded in the emotional investment to the music they created with friends and family. STYLIZING THE SELF Throughout this chapter, I have discussed the main themes that provide some of the metaphors that the first jazz musicians/autobiographers used to make sense of their lives and their relationships with others in the world. These musicians problematize and reproduce some of the values and power dynamics of society at large while also developing ethics and a sense of self based on their experiences. The fields of experience that they used metaphorically have also been at the center of many debates on the nature of modernism and life during the twentieth century. The way they stylized themselves gives us an insight into the extramusical aspects of the jazz life that shape the sense of self and the complex process of self-understanding that this community of musicians was crafting for themselves. The ambivalent attitudes toward technology that Marx, Bowron and Rose (1988) identified in literary discourses are recapitulated in a different way by these musicians, who see in the machine a metaphor for both progress and stagnation. In a similar pattern, they “genderize,” strategically assigning jazz a different discursive position depending on their role with others. Their

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interpretation of the past drives their present and future, and the collective bond that shaped their childhood and family lives greatly influenced their bonds with other musicians. These fields of experience provide meaning through the metaphors used to navigate their interactions with others, the world, and themselves. Just like any other metaphor, the intentional (or perhaps unconscious) choice of particular fields of experience to illustrate and convey what jazz means to them speaks volumes of the importance of such issues in American life.

Conclusion

Jazz autobiography is a performance of the self that, as many scholars suggest, is grounded in the broader patterns of the jazz life (Ogren 1989; Farrington 2006; Stein 2012; Marin 2020). It is a microcosm that allows us to understand the complexities and politics of identity in the United States (Baraka [1963] 2002). At the same time, these texts constitute a performance of some of the patterns of micro-governmentalities and micro-subjectivations of those who claim to belong to the jazz community. Their narratives are complementary, for they rely on, reinforce, and reproduce a discourse that places authenticity as the mode of truth embedded in the rules and categories of being in jazz. Autobiographies such as Treat It Gentle, The Baby Dodds Story, Oh, Didn’t He Ramble, and The Autobiography of Pops Foster embrace the complexity of human life and construct a sense of self that embraces paradoxes and heteronomy. Their autobiographical acts, not unlike Du Bois, are filled with psychological and sociological insight, and at times, it feels that, more than autobiographers, they are chroniclers and griots. These narrators also reproduce and constructs an ethics of jazz around notions of authenticity. The history and politics of this emotionally charged term are far from simple. In jazz, musicians use authenticity to problematize white narrators’ and musicians’ symbolic authority over the music and to position African American musicians as the ones with the proper authority to play and qualify its most precious forms. It is quite understandable that jazz musicians relied on racialized notions of authenticity. Not only were they exploited by a majority-white society, record companies, audiences, and critics, but the hopes of racial integration that jazz seemed to make possible vanished during the Second World War (Kofsky 1998; Baraka [1963] 2002; Horne 2019). Notions of authenticity in our societies are not divorced from the ontological assumptions of modernity, authority over cultural productions (Bendix 1997), essentialist notions about race (Radano 2003), or consumerism (Trilling 1972). If authenticity exists, it is only produced through complex social performances embedded in social discourses and institutions and supported by complementary yet asymmetrical relationships. In this sense, it 131

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plays a role in the constitution and reproduction of the modern sense of self. As Bendix (1997) notes, notions about authenticity have also been tied to the production of national narratives, similar to how history has been tasked with the fashioning of collective and political identities. Foucault’s comments on history also apply to the autobiographies of jazz musicians, which, taken together, represent their own meso-level discipline. According to Foucault, History was a discipline by means of which the bourgeoisie showed, first, that its reign was only the result, the product, the fruit, of a slow maturation, and that this reign was thus perfectly justified, since it came from the mists of time [. . .]. History assigned itself the task of bringing the whole national past back to life. (1998, 423)

Can we not say something similar about jazz autobiography? As an act of resistance, which in itself is an assertion of power, jazz autobiographers show they are the result, product, and producers of a music with a long past that extends grounded in their communities. Jazz autobiography constitutes authenticity as the mode of truth in which their narratives make sense of their communities and the potential positions for jazz musicians and people of color in American society. We should not be mistaken about the power and uses of authenticity; it is a construction and a double-edged sword. It acquires its force from reducing a person’s or community’s life to essentialist notions about culture and self, and from establishing ratios and values between kinds of being and the outcomes of musical performances. In our world, categories associated with authenticity, race, and ethnicity are embedded in the production, reproduction, and problematization of ways of living. These processes occur not just in the larger institutions we associate with the production of knowledge and power, but at every level of our existence. Thinking of Ian Hacking’s (2004) looping effects, my reactions against the terms used by others to describe me, even if I can creatively act beyond the limits of what I have imagined for myself using my social and personal resources, can reinforce the same dynamics, if not the same meanings, with members of other groups. Engaging with notions about authenticity, even when I attempt to use the term in other ways, can reify the ontologies and epistemologies that precede me. As Nadine Ehlers writes, Race does not exist ontologically, rather, it is a system of meanings and practices that I have argued is disciplinary: race as discipline produces and regulates subjectivity in that mechanisms of control and techniques of power form the subject as raced. (2012, 31)

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However, knowledge, power, and subjectivation occur in different forms at every level of human existence. The use of racial or ethnic terms by minorities in the self-constitution and public articulation of their identity also plays a role in what is held as truth, both toward the outside and within the community. It gives communities power and the potential to resist and fight back against oppression. However, at the same time, relying on some of the same ontological pillars of the majority, which might be necessary to make them understand what is being said, places members of the community within the dictum of “be your own authentic self,” ignoring the discursive and performative acts through which we make the many selves we all are. Throughout this book, I have used jazz autobiography to explore microgovernmentalities and micro-subjectivations and how authenticity in the modern world invites us to imagine a version of ourselves that is true and essential, compared to the many parts of ourselves that would, by default, be deemed fake. We have inherited much of that discourse. Few accusations could be more devastating than being called any of the terms we have to describe someone as inauthentic. Many of us remember conversations with fellow music lovers where the biographies of artists were supposed to justify the words they sang. The demand to be yourself, supported by some naïve psychologies, attempts to solve the ontological anxieties of our modern and not-so-modern world. Its solution is not liberating—quite the opposite. To be your authentic self is to self-impose, tyrannically, an existentially meaningless quest toward self-obsession under the assumption that you are, rather than we become. Jazz autobiographies navigate these perspectives in interesting ways. In his appraisal of authenticity, Charles Taylor writes, “Authenticity involves originality, it demands a revolt against convention” (2018, 65). It is a moral stance grounded in individualism while partially acknowledging the intersubjective foundations of the self. But narrators of color, in their use of the term “authenticity,” go far beyond revolting against convention and the reification of an essentialist self. As Radano writes, “Black music gives voice to the moral victory of an African-American experience that realizes black humanity against the logical failure of Euro-modernity as such” (2003, 24). The conception of authenticity proposed by Black jazz autobiographers, while reproducing some of the implications of the term in modern society at large, is not just a revolt against the social acting as the other side of the coin or as a way of balancing an equation. It is a textual assertion of themselves and their communities that continues and reinforces their music and sense of self. Part of the beauty and revolutionary character of jazz, but later its own irony, was the practice of “ragging,” which precedes what was later called jazz (Brothers 2006), and which Black musicians used to, among other things, reinterpret and imbue with their own musical practices the music they

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heard (Radano 2003; Hersch 2007). Few things were perhaps feared more by mainstream society during the birth of jazz than the erasure, problematization, blurring, or crossing of racial boundaries. Perhaps the performance of jazz threatened the modern ontology and misplaced certainties about race more than intended or imagined. I can’t shake the impression that some of the resistance to the problematization of the categories we have invented to construct and discipline identity is grounded in an existential anxiety about the possibility of not being who we think we are. As Thomas Brothers writes, “when ragging a tune, the musician used the familiar melody to draw the listener into his own field of creativity” (2006, 159). The combination of the familiar, shared by the groups of reference of the musician and the audience, and the vernacular, from which the musician draws techniques to assert and impose on the listener a new way of imagining their music, affirms the musician’s identity and proposes other ways of imagining each other. In the introduction to this book, I played with possible metaphors to make sense of jazz musicians’ autobiographical acts. In a way, our autobiographers were scientists, psychologists, linguists, and historians. However, part of the beauty and appeal of jazz is also its promises and what it can say not just about the United States, but about humanity. At the risk of reducing the complexity of human life to another metaphor, are we not jazz musicians? Are we not improvising ourselves with the knowledge we have acquired from our ancestors as we stumble through this world? Bechet ([1960] 2002) could not have been clearer: people do not make themselves, a statement that resonates with social psychology. However, in jazz, the recognition that we are through and because of others does not oppose human agency or will. The agency of a jazz musician is actualized in the dynamics and sounds that emerge from the collective immersions and collaborations of a group of musicians. My aim in this book has been to contribute to the study of autobiographical documents from a socio-psychological perspective. In a way, I think of this text as a humble exploration of Michel Foucault’s ideas about how individuals and communities make sense of their world and their own lives. However, in the end, as Albert Stone writes, reading these autobiographical masterpieces, first through the historian’s, then the literary critic’s, and the social psychologist’s bailiwick, will not guarantee full understanding of its cultural significance. [. . .] The reader of autobiography must also contribute to the translation his or her own intuitions and interpretations. (1993, 186)

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History, literary criticism, and social psychology are, then, some of the fields playing somewhat complementary themes and phrases to the melodies and narratives of jazz musicians.

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Index

abilities, jazz musician, 55, 60, 74–75, 90–91; practicing to improve, 87–88, 120–22; sight-reading as, 56, 63, 93 abolition, of slavery, 27–28 Africa, 35, 40, 106, 112–13 African Americans, 3, 40–41, 73, 111; churches of, 36, 52, 67–68, 106; Creoles compared to, 37–38, 76, 112–14; culture of, 14, 20, 53–54, 112, 126–28; as jazz autobiographers, 25, 42, 96, 133; jazz musicians as, 21, 47–48, 86, 119; music, 45, 68, 72 agency, 93, 98–100, 102, 134 alcohol, 53, 69–70 alligators, metaphor, 101 ambivalence, 53, 56, 61–63, 69, 121–22 ancestors, 38, 41, 59, 111–13 Animule Hall (venue), 12, 29 apprenticeships, 55, 95, 117 The Archeology of Knowledge (Foucault), 19 Armstrong, Louis, 2, 4, 8, 47, 95–96, 118, 122; on alcohol use, 69–70; on Hardin, 123; individualism of, 77–78, 119; jazz critics on, 67; musical knowledge of, 54, 56, 110; narratives adopted by, 34, 49, 62; on riverboats, 49, 97; Satchmo, 22, 24,

43–44, 113; stylization by, 125–26; Swing That Music, 6, 14, 22, 42, 43, 62, 101 audiences, 21, 35, 43, 45, 58; authenticity of, 65, 78–82; heckling by, 65, 79; white, 14, 70, 80, 118 authentication, 14, 20, 29, 42–45 authenticity, 2–3, 5, 6, 20, 56, 59, 66; of audiences, 65, 78–82; in jazz, 7–8, 30, 91, 131–33; microgovernmentalities, 28–32 authority, narrative, 34, 57, 100, 114 autobiographers, jazz, 7–8, 11, 14, 35, 44, 56, 72; African American, 25, 42, 96, 133; on authenticity of audiences, 78; double consciousness for, 85; in jazz communities, 75–76; money framed by, 61–62; racial stereotypes against, 47. See also white, jazz autobiographers; specific autobiographers Autobiographical Acts (Bruss), 16 autobiographical pacts, 8, 23–24, 44–45, 125 autobiographical statements, 9, 34, 60–61, 114 autobiographies, jazz. See specific autobiographies; specific topics autonomous self, 24, 89, 92, 94, 102 149

150

Index

Bachelard, Gaston, 91 Baggers, Joe, 12 Balliett, Whitney, 2 The Band That Played (Turner), 1 Baptist churches, 52, 68 Baquet, George, 86, 92, 98 Baraka, Amiri, 9, 53–54, 67 Barker, Danny, 7, 8, 12, 29, 50, 113–15 Barker, Hugh, 20 Barou, Jean-Pierre, 30 Barrett, Emma, 123 bebop music, 21, 23, 37, 67, 88, 92, 121; as commercial, 102; as individualistic, 75; melody in, 57–58 Bechet, Sidney, 43, 76, 79, 102, 109, 121–22; on Armstrong, 77; on Bolden, 74; Bras-Coupé myth referenced by, 38–39, 41, 59, 73, 100, 112, 118; on jazz teachers, 55, 92–95; on melody, 57–59; on money, 62; musical knowledge of, 53–54, 112; on red-light district, 114; on selfhood, 69, 86–88, 90, 93–94, 98; stylization by, 125–28; Treat It Gentle, 4, 25, 41, 57, 113 128 Bendix, Regina, 3, 20–21, 39, 132 Benjamin, Walter, 121 Berry, Jason, 107, 113 Besley, Tina, 5, 85 Better Git It in Your Soul (Gabbard), 4 Binkley, Sam, 47 Black Autobiography in America (Butterfield), 41 Black Code, US, 114 Black Music, White Business (Kofsky), 39–40 black people. See African Americans Blowin’ Hot and Cool (Gennari), 7 blues music, 36, 70–71, 73 Bolden, Buddy, 2, 36–37, 74–75, 93, 113 Bowron, Bernard, 128–29 brains, 3–4, 105 Bras-Coupé (myth), 38–39, 41, 59, 73, 100, 112, 118

brass bands, 35, 115 Bren, Joseph, 97 Brewster, Dan, 52 Brothers, Thomas, 39, 68, 102, 115, 134 Brown, Cleo, 123 Brundy, Walter, 92 Bruss, Elizabeth W., 12, 16, 93 Buddy Petit (musician), 60, 93, 108, 126 Burchell, Graham, 26 Butler, Judith, 11, 82, 117 Butterfield, Stephen, 41 capitalism, 4, 54, 80 careers, 33, 36, 50–51, 107, 123 Caribbean, 35 Chambers, Tig, 110 chance, 97–100 Chicago, Illinois, 2, 33–34, 36–37, 60, 73, 77, 79 childhood narratives, 50, 52, 86–87, 108, 129 Chilton, John, 37, 54, 57, 94, 101 churches, African Americans, 36, 52, 67–68, 106 Civilization and Its Discontents (Freud), 40, 121 clarinets, 58, 80, 93–94, 98, 102 class, race and, 70–72 classical music, 16, 55, 56, 68 Cold War, 43 Coleman, Bill, 123, 126 collectivism, 8, 21, 25, 38–39, 72, 112; of African Americans, 40–41, 113, 126–28; authenticity and, 59; cultures centering, 18, 105; individualism compared to, 18, 71, 75–78, 86–91; values, 81 Collier, James Lincoln, 40 Collins, Lee, 43, 50–51, 53, 59, 74, 126–27; on audiences, 78–81; on Buddy Petit, 60, 92, 108; on chance, 97; on Creole musicians, 76; on Dawson, 115; on Mezzrow, 62; on New Orleans, 71, 109–10 colonialism, 35, 38

Index

commercialism, 31, 61–62, 98–99, 101– 2; of swing music, 53–54, 73–74 communities, 6, 8, 12, 28, 30, 36, 45; micro-governmentalities of, 47; roles in, 66, 75–77 Condon, Eddie, 102 Confessions (Rousseau), 24 Conlon, Donald E., 75 constructed: identities as, 12–13, 40, 91–97; selfhood as, 23–24, 39, 48, 90–93 coronets, 36, 60, 71, 110 cover art, 43–45 covert cultures, 53, 61, 63, 120 The Creation of Jazz (Peretti), 7 creativity, 55–56, 68, 92, 99 Creole people, 37–38, 76, 112–14 criticism, jazz, 5–6, 16, 47–48, 67, 77–78 cultures, 78, 105–6; African American, 14, 20, 53–54, 112, 126–28; covert, 53, 61, 63, 120; mainstream, 18, 20–21, 47–48, 79, 87, 134 Damasio, Antonio, 107 Davis, Miles, 14, 118, 119 Dawson, Sid, 115 death, 1, 34, 43, 107, 116 Denzin, Norman, 120 Devlin, Paul, 43 discourse analysis, 19, 120 discourses, 20, 27–28, 48, 52, 72, 82, 114; Foucault on, 4, 19, 41 discrimination, racial, 40, 81, 100, 106, 118 discursive formation, 15, 47 Dixieland jazz, 15, 17 doctors, 50, 66 Dodds, John, 49, 96 Dodds, Warren “Baby,” 8, 14, 43, 92, 115, 123; as a drummer, 1, 52, 58, 61, 77, 107; family influence on, 50, 61, 69, 72; on jazz teachers, 95–96, 109, 111; metaphors used by, 20, 121; narratives adopted by, 48,

151

52–53; on professionalism, 51, 107; on riverboats, 22, 49, 60, 69–70, 101; selfhood for, 67–68, 71, 76; stylization by, 125–26; on white people, 73, 90–91; on work ethic, 51–53, 87–89 Dodge, Roger Pryor, 56 double consciousness, 26, 36, 67, 85, 95, 99, 109 Downes, Ormond, 107 drugs, 53, 69–70 drummers, jazz, 92–93; Dodds,W., as, 1, 52, 58, 61, 77, 107 Du Bois, W. E. B., 42, 109, 112, 131; double consciousness posited by, 26, 36, 67, 85, 95, 99, 109 Ducasse, Isidore, 66 Dunkel, Mario, 102 Dusen, Frankie, 127–28 Dutrey, Honoré, 126 dynamics, 26–27, 30, 123–24; of identification, 2, 19, 65, 68, 82; outgroup, 11, 20, 28, 101; power, 5, 12, 28–31, 34, 45; social, 11, 19, 25, 29, 76–77. See also in-group dynamics Eakin, Paul John, 24, 71, 107 Early, Gerald, 119 early jazz, 34–39, 49, 53, 75, 77, 90–91; gender dynamics in, 123–24 Ehlers, Nadine, 15, 26–27, 98, 132 Ekins, Richard, 2, 5–6, 80 elaboration, 20, 79, 94–95, 97–102; Foucault, 8, 21–22, 85, 90 Eldridge, Roy, 126 employment. See careers Erikson, Erik, 95 essentialism, 3, 5, 29, 72–73, 124; racial, 21, 39, 80–82, 131–32 ethical codes, 45, 50 ethical substance, 8, 20, 47, 63 ethics, 13, 17–20, 65, 67, 97; of jazz, 1, 56–57, 62–63, 122. See also work ethic ethnicity, 15–16, 25, 76. See also race

152

Index

Europe, 3, 16, 35, 39, 79, 113 families, 18, 40, 72, 99, 107–9; ancestors as, 38, 41, 59, 111–13; expectation of, 50–52, 61, 69; as metaphors, 22–23, 75, 126–28 Farrington, Holly E., 5, 58 Finkelstein, Sidney, 16 folk music, 3, 39 Fontana, Alessandro, 110–11 Foster, George “Pops,” 8, 43, 50, 61, 74, 107; on alcohol use, 69; on blues music, 70–71; on chance, 97–98; on jazz teachers, 55, 96; on social dynamics, 77–78; on work ethic, 87, 89–90 Foucault, Michel, 30, 31, 103, 110–11, 119, 132; on discourse, 4, 19, 41; on elaboration, 8, 21–22, 85, 90; on ethical substance, 20, 47, 63; genealogical approach of, 13–19; mode of subjection posited by, 21, 81–82; on subjectivation, 7, 14–15, 17–23, 26; on teleology, 8, 22, 105 Frank, Arthur, 23, 30–31 Freud, Sigmund, 17, 40, 121 From Behind the Veil (Stepto), 5 Funky Butt Hall (venue), 87 future, of jazz music, 8, 103, 115–16 Gabbard, Krin, 4–5, 38 Gara, Larry, 50 Garber, Frederick, 34, 100, 125 gatekeeping, 12, 50, 110, 112 gazes, 30, 79 Gebhardt, Nicholas, 39 gender, 8, 30, 34, 67, 123; masculinity and, 62, 86, 98–99, 119, 124 Gendron, Bernard, 15, 73–74, 80, 92 genealogy, 13–19, 23, 66, 106 Gennari, John, 7, 56, 78 Gergen, Kenneth J., 17–18 Germany, 39 ghostwriters, 14, 40, 44 Gioia, Ted, 7, 33–34, 36, 53, 59–60, 121

Giving an Account of Oneself (Bulter), 11 Goffin, Robert, 14 Goffman, Erving, 15, 44, 65 Goncalo, Jack A., 81 Gordon, Max, 14, 65, 78 governmentality, 28–29, 47 Great Depression, U.S., 62, 116 Great Migration, U.S., 36 groups, 11, 20, 66, 75–78, 86–91; minority, 15–16, 21, 26, 133; oppressed, 21–22, 28, 30–31, 42. See also communities; in-group dynamics; out-group dynamics; social dynamics Guignon, Charles, 31 Gutman, Huck, 23 Hacking, Ian, 15, 132 Haddix, Chuck, 88 Hammond, John, 34 Hardin, Lillian, 123 Harlos, Christopher, 48, 123 Harrer, Sebastian, 91 Hartman, Saidiya V., 15, 27–28 Havel, Vaclav, 26 Hebdige, Dick, 60 Heble, Ajay, 15, 48, 67 hecklers, 65, 79 Hersch, Charles, 9, 29, 49, 70, 72, 89 Hetherington, Kevin, 29 Hightower, Willie, 61 history, jazz, 2, 16–17, 21, 45, 91, 112, 114–15; in jazz autobiographies, 4, 7, 38–39, 125–26. See also early jazz; origins, jazz The History of Jazz (Gioia), 7 Hollerbach, Peter, 103 Horne, Gerald, 40, 50, 90 Horney, Karen, 82 Howard, Joe, 95 How Music Expresses Ideas (Finkelstein), 16 Hughes, Langston, 58, 69, 72 Huijer, Martin, 23

Index

Humphrey, Jim, 93 identification, dynamics of, 2, 19, 65, 68, 82 identities, 1–2, 15–16, 22, 24, 48, 60; American, 67, 131; categories of, 8, 21, 66–67, 72, 102; as constructed, 12–13, 40, 91–97 Illinois, 33, 71, 106. See also Chicago, Illinois improvisation, 3, 48, 54–55, 60, 122 income, 50, 61–62, 89 individualism, 17, 55–56, 77–78, 105, 119; collectivism compared to, 18, 71, 75–78, 86–91 in-group dynamics, 11, 28, 30, 70, 101, 105–6; gender and, 123–24 instruments, 16, 35, 51, 58, 60, 77. See also specific instruments intersubjectivity, 22, 26–27, 38, 45 Jackson, Chubby, 57 Jackson, Franz, 33, 106 Jacobsen, Thomas W., 115 jazz, New Orleans, 2, 6, 15, 29, 37, 62–63, 115; collectivism of, 75, 81, 87, 90; as origin of jazz, 33, 35, 54, 96, 106; red-light district for, 35, 112, 114, 124; showmanship in, 74–75; style of, 55, 58, 60 jazz men, 47, 68–75 Jazzmen (Ramsey, Smith, C.), 2–3 jazz music, 15, 30, 35–36, 51, 103; authenticity in, 7–8, 30, 91, 131–33; criticism, 5–6, 16, 47–48, 67, 77–78; ethics of, 1, 56–57, 62–63, 122; modern, 57, 73–74, 121; musical knowledge in, 53–57; performance of, 57–62; personification of, 100–102; power dynamics of, 29, 34; teachers in, 21–22, 55, 91–97, 109, 111; traditional, 33, 37, 57–58; translation used in, 60, 63. See also autobiographies, jazz;

153

gender; history, jazz; revival, jazz; specific musicians jazz musicians, 1–2, 4, 7–8, 16–17, 30–31, 39–40, 106; African American, 21, 47–48, 86, 119; careers for, 33, 36, 50–51, 107, 123; categories of self for, 66–67; roles of, 45, 51, 86, 107–8, 111; selfhood for, 8, 67–69, 87, 97–100; stereotypes about, 53, 69; training for, 48, 55, 91–97, 107; white, 5, 67, 70, 81–82, 90, 101; women as, 34, 67, 98–99, 123–24; young, 29, 88–89, 91, 107– 11, 116. See also abilities; jazz men; specific musicians jazz musicians, New Orleans, 7–8, 14, 21, 33–34, 110–11; race and ethnicity of, 37–38; stylization by, 22–23; work ethic of, 49–53, 87–88. See also specific musicians The Jazz Revolution (Ogren), 7 Jenkins, Freddie, 126 Johnson, Bill, 56 Johnson, Bunk, 2, 8, 74, 93, 126, 127–128 Johnson, E. Patrick, 20 Johnson, Mark, 100–101, 120 Jones, Davy, 95 Kadar, Marlene, 9 Keller, Evelyn Fox, 124 Kenney, William H., 24, 33, 40–41, 42–44, 77, 113; on Chicago, 73, 79 Keppard, Freddie, 98, 101 knowledge, 25, 88, 91, 111; musical, 8, 53–57, 63, 110, 112 Kofsky, Frank, 17, 39–40, 80 Krupa, Gene, 96 Lakoff, George, 100–101, 120 language, 6, 16–17, 31, 71, 105, 117; of Jazz, 59–61, 80–81; linguistics and, 72–73, 79. See also metaphors Laslett, Barbara, 11 Leadbelly (musician), 20

154

Index

Lejeune, Philippe, 23–24, 44, 125 letters, 26, 33 Levine, Mark, 118 A Life in Jazz (Barker, D.), 7, 29, 50 linguistics, 72–73, 79 Live at the Village Vanguard (Gordon), 65, 78 Living Autobiographically (Easkin), 24 Lomax, Alan, 45 Lomax, John, 3, 20 Louisiana, 38, 40. See also New Orleans mainstream cultures, 18, 20–21, 47–48, 79, 87, 134 Manifesto (Denzin), 120 Marable, Fate, 49, 69–70, 97, 101, 121 Mares, Paul, 90–91 Marin, Reva, 5, 54, 72–73 Marquis, Donald M., 74, 114 Marx, Leo, 128–29 Marxism, 17, 39 masculinity, 62, 67, 86, 98–99, 119, 123–24 Maynes, Mary Jo, 11 McCusker, John, 38, 115 McLeod, Ken, 88, 99 Mead, George Herbert, 26 mechanization, 56, 120–22, 128–29 melody, 21, 56, 57–59, 68 memories, 78, 94, 96 men, 34, 67, 86, 123–24; jazz, 47, 68–75; white, 79–80, 85 metaphors, 1, 6, 8, 30, 66, 100–101; Dodds, W., using, 20, 121; family, 22–23, 75, 126–28; gendered, 123– 24; stylization conveyed by, 22–23, 75, 117–20 Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff, Johnson, M.), 100–101, 120 Mezzrow, Mezz, 62, 73 micro-governmentalities, 28–32, 41, 110, 131 micro-subjectivations, 28–29, 41, 51, 66, 99, 110, 131 Mingus, Charles, 4, 14, 67

minority groups, 15–16, 21, 26, 133 Mississippi, 70–71, 80 Mister Jelly Roll (Morton), 6, 44–45 Mitchell, Sandra, 19 modernity, 3, 8, 12, 30, 52, 67, 71; traditional jazz and, 37, 92; values of, 75, 121 modern jazz music, 57, 73–74, 121 money, 61–62, 90, 101, 118 Monson, Ingrid, 49 Morton, Jelly Roll, 8, 36, 80, 97–98, 101–2, 114; as Creole, 37–38; Mister Jelly Roll, 6, 44–45 Moses, Wilson J., 67 motivations, 1–2, 20, 78, 88, 115 Murnighan, J. Keith, 75 museums, 30 music, 16, 35–36, 39, 88; African American, 45, 68, 72; mechanization of, 56, 120–22; ragging, 59–61, 133–34; sight-reading, 56, 63, 93. See also specific genres musical knowledge, 8, 53–57, 63, 110, 112 Music Is My Life (Stein), 4 myths, 2, 34–35, 54, 69, 109; Bras-Coupé, 38–39, 41, 59, 73, 100, 112, 118 narratives, 3, 6, 15, 23, 43, 90, 107; Armstrong using, 34, 49, 62; authority, 34, 57, 100, 114; childhood, 50, 52, 86–87, 108, 129; collectivism supported by, 38–39; Dodds, W., using, 48, 52–53; first person, 45; personal, 11, 12, 17, 40; slave, 5, 38–39, 42 narrators. See autobiographers, jazz Navy, U.S., 35 nepotism, 59, 127 New Orleans, Louisiana, 1, 2, 71, 87, 113; Animule Hall, 12, 29; jazz originating from, 33, 35, 54, 96, 106; red-light district, 35, 112, 114, 124.

Index

See also jazz, New Orleans; jazz musicians, New Orleans New York, 1, 2, 14, 36–37, 62, 89 Nicholas, Albert, 76 nightlife, 35–36, 37 1984 (Orwelll), 41 Noone, Jimmie, 38, 96 Not Without Laughter (Hughes), 58, 69, 72 Oberprantacher, Andreas, 18–19 Ogren, Kathy, 7, 36, 45, 126 old-timers, jazz musicians as, 107–11 Oliver, Joe, 55, 61–62, 88–89, 97, 109, 111, 127 Oliver, King, 52 Olney, James, 9, 24, 109–10, 113 Omar (grandfather), 38, 59, 100, 111–13 “One Thing at a Time” (Stodart), 51 oppressed groups, 21–22, 28, 30–31, 42 oppression, 5, 20, 25, 28, 73, 105–6 orality, 56, 64, 85 Original Creole Orchestra, 38, 101 Original Dixieland Jazz Band, 70 origins, jazz, 33, 35, 54, 96, 106 Orwell, George, 41 Ory, Kid, 61, 115 otherness, 2–3, 20–21, 26, 29, 90; gender and, 123–24; in jazz criticism, 47–48 out-group dynamics, 11, 20, 28, 101 Outside and Inside (Marin), 5 Paden, William E., 23, 24 Panassié, Hugues, 14, 62 Parker, Charlie, 57, 69, 88 Pasquandrea, Sergio, 47, 54 Pasquino, Pasquale, 110–11 Pellegrinelli, Lara, 99 people of color, 37–38, 57, 69, 105–6, 113–14; subjectivation for, 25–28, 76. See also African Americans; Creole people Peretti, Burton, 7, 40, 49, 53, 91 Perez, Manuel, 74

155

performances, 27, 34, 44, 55, 89, 131; authenticity as, 2–3, 5; of jazz, 57–62; textual, 1, 25, 26, 102–3, 125 Perkins, Dave, 92 Perrot, Michelle, 30 personal narratives, 11, 12, 17, 40 personification, 100–102 Pete Kelly’s Blues (film), 110 Peters, Michael, 5, 85 pianos, 35, 36, 123 Pichón-Rivière, Enrique, 40–41 Picou, Alphonse, 102 Pierce, Jennifer L., 11 Plessy v. Ferguson, U.S., 38 Popkin, Cathy, 128 power, 13, 15, 19, 41, 100, 107; dynamics, 5, 12, 28–31, 34, 45; ethical substance and, 47; knowledge and, 110–11; subjectivity and, 26 practice, 87–90, 120–22 primitivism, 56, 70, 73, 81–82, 91 privileges, 12, 38, 98, 100 productive power, 5, 30, 31 professionalism, 3, 48–49, 51, 107, 109 Prometheus complex, 91 Protestant values, 49 Prouty, Kenneth, 47, 54 Provost, Sarah, 30, 67, 99, 123 psychology, 6, 8, 17, 105 race, 15, 26–27, 28, 44, 76–77; class and, 70–72; discrimination by, 40, 81, 100, 106, 118; essentialism and, 21, 39, 80–82, 131–32; of New Orleans jazz musicians, 37–38; otherness and, 2–3, 29; segregation by, 80, 99, 114 Racevskis, Karlis, 40 racism, 20, 26–27, 39, 72, 99; stereotypes and, 21, 80–82 Radano, Ronald, 3, 9, 16, 29, 133 radio, 36, 121 ragging music, 59–61, 133–34 ragtime music, 35–36, 72 Ramsey, Frederic, 2

156

Randolph, Amanda, 123 Red Arrow (venue), 33 red-light district, New Orleans, 35, 112, 114, 124 Red Onion (venue), 79 religions, 52 Rena, Joe, 94 representation, 5, 20, 23. See also self-constitution Representing Jazz (Gabbard), 4–5 resistance, 41, 75, 81, 128, 132; microgovernmentalities as, 28–29, 47 responsibilities, 42, 55, 60, 62 revival, jazz, 15, 37, 43, 80, 114–15; modern jazz compared to, 73– 74 risks, 14, 73, 74, 121 rituals, 5, 25–26, 34 riverboats, 22, 35, 49, 60, 69–70, 97, 109 Robinson, Sugar Ray, 119 roles, 5, 16, 18, 41, 44, 74; in communities, 66, 75–77; gender, 98–99; of instruments, 58, 60, 77; of jazz musicians, 45, 51, 86, 107–8, 111; of jazz teachers, 91–97; of melody, 21, 57–58, 68; of race, 80, 99 Rose, Arnold, 128–29 Rosenblatt, Roger, 25 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 24 Ruiz-Alfaro, Frances, 41 Russell, Luis, 89–90 Russell, William, 2–3 Saar, Martin, 13, 22 salaries. See income Sanctified Church, 67–68 Satchmo (Armstrong), 22, 24, 43–44, 113 Scott, Walter (Sir), 29 segregation, racial, 80, 99, 114 self-constitution, 22, 66, 90–91, 93, 113–14, 116–17 selfhood, 8, 16, 18, 42, 72, 82; Bechet on, 69, 86–88, 90, 93–94,

Index

98; collectivism and, 86–91; as constructed, 23–24, 39, 48, 90–93; for jazz musicians, 8, 67–69, 87, 97–100; jazz teachers and, 91–97; mode of subjection and, 21, 65–66. See also autonomous self; identities sexuality, 22, 35, 81 Shields, Larry, 96 showmanship, 74–75, 76 Siclodi, Andrei, 18–19 Sidney (riverboat), 22 sight-reading music, 56, 63, 93 sincerity, 3, 27, 59, 74, 102 Singleton, Zutty, 96 slavery, 27–28, 35, 43, 59, 112; narratives, 5, 38–39, 42 Smith, Bessie, 34 Smith, Charles Edward, 2 Smith, Sidonie, 15 Smith, Stephen W., 2–3 Smith, Willie “The Lion,” 36, 106, 111–12 social constructions, 16–17, 22 social dynamics, 11, 19, 25, 29, 76–77 socialization, 2, 18, 41, 111, 113 The Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois), 42 Spain, 79 spontaneity, 8, 56, 102, 120–22 Squire (slave), 38 Staw, Barry M., 81 Stearns, Marshall, 37, 57, 125 Steele, Claude M., 27 Stein, Daniel, 4, 14, 34, 37, 60, 69, 71; on Armstrong, 44, 56, 62, 118; on bebop, 67 Stepto, Robert B., 5, 26, 42, 112 stereotypes, 53, 69, 91, 118; racist, 21, 47–48, 80 stereotype threat, 27 Stodart, M. A., 51–53 Stone, Albert E., 43, 134 Storyville. See red-light district, New Orleans style, 56, 59–60, 88, 91, 95; New Orleans jazz, 55, 58, 60

Index

stylization, 1, 22, 103, 124–29; metaphors conveying, 22–23, 75, 117–20 subjection, mode of, 20, 21, 65, 81–82; categories of identity in, 8, 66, 72; race informing, 72, 76–77 subjectivation, 7, 14–15, 17–24, 25–28, 41 subjectivities, 17, 20, 26, 27, 37, 98 Sudhalter, Richard M., 56 Sullivan, Lester, 38 surveillance, 30 swing music, 5–6, 14, 37, 80, 92; commercialism of, 53–54, 73–74 Swing That Music (Armstrong), 6, 14, 22, 42, 43, 62, 101 Taylor, Charles, 133 Taylor, Yuval, 20, 71 teachers, jazz music, 21–22, 55, 91–97, 109, 111 Teachout, Terry, 36 technology, 36, 108–9, 121, 128 telos/teleology, 8, 20, 22, 105, 111–16 textual performances, 1, 25, 26, 102–3, 125 Tio, Lorenzo, 92 Titanic, R.M.S., 1, 14, 30 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 71 traditional jazz, 33, 37, 57–58, 88, 92, 125 Traditional New Orleans Jazz (Jacobsen), 115 training, for jazz musicians, 48, 55, 91–97, 107 translation, in jazz music, 60, 63 Travis, Dempsey, 33 Treat It Gentle (Bechet), 14, 25, 41, 57, 113, 128 Trilling, Lionel, 30–31, 61, 74, 122 truth, 13, 20, 23–24, 110–11, 113, 132 Turner, Steven, 1

157

United States (U.S.), 4, 8, 13–14, 30, 35, 105–6; Black Code, 113; commercialism in, 53–54; Great Depression in, 62, 116; Great Migration in, 36; identities in, 67, 131; individualism in, 18; Navy, 35; racial otherness in, 2–3, 20–21; racism in, 20–21, 26–27, 99. See also slavery; specific states The Use of Pleasure (Foucault), 19, 22, 23, 67 values, 49, 77, 81, 116; modernist, 75, 121 Van Ronk, Dave, 5, 95 versatility, 60, 68, 89 Veyne, Paul, 17, 26, 119 Victor Talking Machine Company, 101 Village Vanguard (venue), 14, 65 violins, 35, 58 vulnerability, 5, 30, 91, 94, 98, 101–2 Wagner, Bryan, 38–39 Washington, Booker T., 109 Watson, Julia, 15 West Africa, 35 white, jazz autobiographers, 5, 21, 25, 42, 67, 72–73; essentialism of, 81; men as, 85 White, Joe, 127 Whiteman, Paul, 102 white people, 3, 27, 40, 73, 79–80, 85; audiences as, 14, 70, 80, 118; jazz musicians as, 5, 67, 70, 81–82, 90–91, 101 Wilber, Bob, 54, 95 Williams, Alfred, 110 women, 34, 67, 98–99 123–124 Wooden Joe (musician), 55 work ethic, 1, 8, 49–53, 87, 92–93, 103 World War II, 17, 40 young jazz musicians, 29, 88–89, 91, 107–11, 116

About the Author

Teófilo Espada-Brignoni is auxiliary professor of psychology at The University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. He earned an M.A. in socialcommunity psychology and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Puerto Rico. He was taught psychology in Aruba, Ohio, and Puerto Rico. His publications include articles about jazz and autobiography in journals such as Jazz Perspectives and  Popular Music and Society. In addition, he has co-authored articles with Frances Ruiz-Alfaro about Puerto Rico from psychological and social perspectives. He plays saxophone, flute, and oboe.

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