The teaching of Jazz is now legit!

[Quarky]

The law prohibiting the teaching of jazz in New Orleans has been finally abolished, Jazzers will be relieved to note.

Apparently a law was passed in March 1922 as proposed by a Mrs. Baumgartner.

https://www.radiofrance.fr/francemus...abolie-6777786 (try Google Translate)

[Old Grumpy]

Perhaps students can now play jazz on the practice pianos at the Royal Academy of Music too!

[Ian Thumwood]

Putting my legal head on, I am wondering how that law could ever have been enforced. I would be staggered if it was ever applied because of the difficulties of defining what jazz is ( especially if we are going by 1922 definitions of jazz) and the shear impracticality to policing this law. It clearly never worked and I would not be in the least bit surprised if anyone was actually aware of it. I would tend to think that it was something on the NOLA statute books which everyone may have thought was rescinded long ago and had forgotten that it was still there. It seems like it was superfluous when the law was passed and already an anachronism. At the bery least, this law must have been extremely obscure. I must admit to never have being aware of this before.

I think the more interesting question is actually how did people teach jazz in 1922? I would love to know exactly how people passed ideas on and whether it went beyond aural lessons where people just copied other musicians. I believe that there was a guide to jazz orchestration published in the early 1920s too. You just get the impression that the music was nowhere as naive as people might assume pre-Louis Armstrong. There must have been some form of education in jazz to be around in 1922 for it to be banned. Quite amazing to think that there would have been people teaching this music 5 years after ODJB first recorded and I would have assumed that there must have been some more formal education for the young Jelly Roll Morton to latch on to.

[Serial_Apologist]

Perhaps students can now play jazz on the practice pianos at the Royal Academy of Music too!

Oh that's been OK for a long time now - the RAM's a great producer of jazz talent, presently under Kenny Wheeler-trained trumpeter course leader and all-round nice guy Matt Smart.

[Serial_Apologist]

Putting my legal head on, I am wondering how that law could ever have been enforced. I would be staggered if it was ever applied because of the difficulties of defining what jazz is ( especially if we are going by 1922 definitions of jazz) and the shear impracticality to policing this law. It clearly never worked and I would not be in the least bit surprised if anyone was actually aware of it. I would tend to think that it was something on the NOLA statute books which everyone may have thought was rescinded long ago and had forgotten that it was still there. It seems like it was superfluous when the law was passed and already an anachronism. At the bery least, this law must have been extremely obscure. I must admit to never have being aware of this before.

I think the more interesting question is actually how did people teach jazz in 1922? I would love to know exactly how people passed ideas on and whether it went beyond aural lessons where people just copied other musicians. I believe that there was a guide to jazz orchestration published in the early 1920s too. You just get the impression that the music was nowhere as naive as people might assume pre-Louis Armstrong. There must have been some form of education in jazz to be around in 1922 for it to be banned. Quite amazing to think that there would have been people teaching this music 5 years after ODJB first recorded and I would have assumed that there must have been some more formal education for the young Jelly Roll Morton to latch on to.

There is nothing in Carr/Fairweather/Priestley to suggest Morton had any formal (as in academic) musical education, though WIKI says he started writing down his compositions in 1914; "Jelly Roll Blues" was one of the first jazz compositions to be published - in 1915.

[duncan]

Putting my legal head on, I am wondering how that law could ever have been enforced

That hasn't stopped other law-makers faced with a moral panic. Section 63 of Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994 banning “music” [that] includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats springs to mind.

[Ein Heldenleben]

The law prohibiting the teaching of jazz in New Orleans has been finally abolished, Jazzers will be relieved to note.

Apparently a law was passed in March 1922 as proposed by a Mrs. Baumgartner.

https://www.radiofrance.fr/francemus...abolie-6777786 (try Google Translate)

It seems from my schoolboy French that this law banned the performance of Jazz , particularly at dances , in schools .
Le two step was however permitted . The banning of teaching it was an irrelevance as it almost certainly wasn’t taught at all.

[Serial_Apologist]

That hasn't stopped other law-makers faced with a moral panic. Section 63 of Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994 banning “music” [that] includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats springs to mind.

I think I know where the govt was going on that one, the ridiculousness lies in ill thought out definition - what is meant by "repetitive beats"?

[Ein Heldenleben]

Putting my legal head on, I am wondering how that law could ever have been enforced. I would be staggered if it was ever applied because of the difficulties of defining what jazz is ( especially if we are going by 1922 definitions of jazz) and the shear impracticality to policing this law. It clearly never worked and I would not be in the least bit surprised if anyone was actually aware of it. I would tend to think that it was something on the NOLA statute books which everyone may have thought was rescinded long ago and had forgotten that it was still there. It seems like it was superfluous when the law was passed and already an anachronism. At the bery least, this law must have been extremely obscure. I must admit to never have being aware of this before.

I think the more interesting question is actually how did people teach jazz in 1922? I would love to know exactly how people passed ideas on and whether it went beyond aural lessons where people just copied other musicians. I believe that there was a guide to jazz orchestration published in the early 1920s too. You just get the impression that the music was nowhere as naive as people might assume pre-Louis Armstrong. There must have been some form of education in jazz to be around in 1922 for it to be banned. Quite amazing to think that there would have been people teaching this music 5 years after ODJB first recorded and I would have assumed that there must have been some more formal education for the young Jelly Roll Morton to latch on to.

I don’t think jazz “education “:in the 20’s went much beyond hearing it in the streets and bars , nagging your parents for an instrument )or borrowing theirs ) and learning by ear. Even now I’m not sure whether a formal jazz “ education” is really necessary. However it really helps if you can read and these days is pretty much essential if you are a pro. Though I’m pretty sure there are quite a few around who pick up chord sequences so instinctively they don’t even need to read. And then there those who can sight read anything and play anything by ear. I think Ronnie Scott with John Dankworth ran a campaign with the Inland Revenue the 60’s to get jazz LPs tax deductible as he argued playing along with them was the only way to learn at home . He won the case

[Serial_Apologist]

Even now I’m not sure whether a formal jazz “ education” is really necessary. However it really helps if you can read and these days is pretty much essential if you are a pro.

On that first WOMAD double LP there's a field recording of two African children of about 10 years of age playing a virtuosic duet on tuned wooden percussion. I'm pretty sure they would have acquired their skills "orally", yet the rhythms, of a complexity not matched in western orchestral music until "Le sacre", would not have needed writing down to be learned. So I know what you mean - the most creative advances in jazz being secured in the melting pot of performance (though some here disagree). On the other hand it was as an important step for African Americans to gain the right to study music in universities at a certain point, an acknowledgement of the music's assessability on equal terms with its white counterparts, as was the official recognition gained in having their music made notatable, a necessity in copyright terms and for the music to advance from small semi-informally composed to big band in the late 20s and 30s.

[Alyn_Shipton]

S-A head of jazz at the RAM is Nick Smart not Matt

[Serial_Apologist]

S-A head of jazz at the RAM is Nick Smart not Matt

Thanks Alyn!

I should have added in my last post that there being no jazz courses at the time meant black musicians such as Charlie Parker would have studied at Juilliard to gain knowledge in notated compositional forms and performance techniques suited thereto.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Thanks Alyn!

I should have added in my last post that there being no jazz courses at the time meant black musicians such as Charlie Parker would have studied at Juilliard to gain knowledge in notated compositional forms and performance techniques suited thereto.

Didn’t he have lessons from Varese ?

[Ein Heldenleben]

On that first WOMAD double LP there's a field recording of two African children of about 10 years of age playing a virtuosic duet on tuned wooden percussion. I'm pretty sure they would have acquired their skills "orally", yet the rhythms, of a complexity not matched in western orchestral music until "Le sacre", would not have needed writing down to be learned. So I know what you mean - the most creative advances in jazz being secured in the melting pot of performance (though some here disagree). On the other hand it was as an important step for African Americans to gain the right to study music in universities at a certain point, an acknowledgement of the music's assessability on equal terms with its white counterparts, as was the official recognition gained in having their music made notatable, a necessity in copyright terms and for the music to advance from small semi-informally composed to big band in the late 20s and 30s.

Yes it was important but …
I don’t think Jazz needs official recognition by academia. It stands with its own essential dignity as largely the music of the dispossessed and marginalised. The universities were decades behind the white students who bought jazz records and played in college bands in their thousands from thirties onward. What would be really ground - breaking would be more African Americans in classical music .All that jazz went legit when performed at Carnegie Hall isn’t as important as Benny Goodman having one of the first mixed race bands - that was socially very important in Jim Crow America wasn’t it?

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes it was important but …
I don’t think Jazz needs official recognition by academia. It stands with its own essential dignity as largely the music of the dispossessed and marginalised. The universities were decades behind the white students who bought jazz records and played in college bands in their thousands from thirties onward. What would be really ground - breaking would be more African Americans in classical music .All that jazz went legit when performed at Carnegie Hall isn’t as important as Benny Goodman having one of the first mixed race bands - that was socially very important in Jim Crow America wasn’t it?

I think it was important inasmuch as recognition in halls of learning would have signified a step towards equal recognition, which it was in American society if one was to "get on". Reluctance and non-recognition was one of the motivations for the advent of Bebop - the other already the potential signposted within the music itself - "If your music is so much better than ours, try playing this", sort of challenge. There were always these multiple issues - on the one hand the quest for status on white America's terms (its pioneering spirit), on the other racial integration: who originated the music still often seems vexed, not only in the minds of some African American musicians who lay claim to jazz as the one original musical form to come into being in the States, but tacitly in the way many still to this day judge American jazz as pre-eminent and look to initiatives as coming from there. It may be that such critics think how sad it would be were the initiative for taking the music forward to be taken out of the hands of African Americans by people from cultures which had so often appropriated it to feather their own nests. Which is not my view, by the way, seeing as I do jazz as black America's great gift to civilisation worldwide.