“According to the bookstore, there’s one book that hasn’t come in yet, The Bride and the Bachelors, but they do have the other three books we’ll be discussing this semester: Early Jazz, Country Music: USA, and Blues People. How many of you had time to read the first chapter of Early Jazz? Most of you? Good. We may have time to get into it today, but I want to start by talking a bit about what we’re going to be doing here and have everyone introduce themselves, since you’re going to be spending a lot of time together this year.”
It’s Monday morning, the first class of term, my first college seminar. Coffee is still kicking in for most, but Mr. Coleman seems comfortable with the drill: the nearly silent classroom, the early morning fog in the eyes of his students.
“I met with most of you last week, but for those few I’ve yet to meet, I’ll be your adviser for the year, and this class, in addition to discussing the books that all American Music students will be reading this year, will be a bit like homeroom, I suppose, for those who are new to Evergreen—there are a couple of you. If anything comes up with American Music, any changes to the schedule or events that need to be discussed, we’ll get into it here. We’ll meet every Monday at nine, and if you have any concerns or problems with the program, you can communicate them to me, either in this class or in private.”
After this introduction, Mr. Coleman reads a list of announcements and directives: telling students to make sure they have paid their fall tuition; the news that, due to a clerical miscalculation, the dorms are not yet full and are still accepting a few students; logistics for the upcoming retreat (“meet Friday morning at eight A.M. in front of the Library with bedding, an overnight bag, and musical instruments”); and dates and times of a weekly folk dance in the Library and open mic at the campus coffeehouse, which are new this year.
“Does anyone have any questions?”
I glance around the room at the group of about fifteen students, all either still waking up or too cool to show any interest in what Mr. Coleman is saying.
“No? Maybe we should go around the room and introduce ourselves before I put even more of you to sleep. Anyone want to start?”
“I will, I guess. I’m Shelley. I’m from Boise, Idaho, although this is my third year at Evergreen and I haven’t lived at home since I graduated high school. So, I’m a local now.” Her light, cheery voice is at odds with her intense, unblinking eyes and long blond hair, cut raggedly on one side and shaved behind the ear, but it matches her outfit: blue overalls and an oversize, hand-knit sweater that is starting to unravel in places. “I should have done a group contract this year, but American Music looked too good to pass up. I sing and play piano and guitar, but this is the first music program I’ve been in. I write and perform my own songs. Some of you know me, I think.” Two or three students sitting near her nod or smile nonchalantly.
The athletic-looking black guy sitting beside me chimes in next. He has a loose, puffy Afro and a scraggly beard and is wearing a Coltrane T-shirt. “Gabe Henderson here. This is my second year at Evergreen, but I went to the University of Oregon for a year. I’m from Eugene, my dad’s a track coach at U of O. This is my first music program, too. I was in Freedom to Struggle last year, so I’m looking forward to a little less struggle and a lot more freedom this year.” This elicits a few laughs; the group is warming up.
We proceed around the room, but I lose interest as the capsule autobiographies become repetitive. I’m one of the last to go and I keep it short: “I’m Lucas, from Long Beach, California, which is just south of LA. I play guitar, mainly acoustic. This is my first year at Evergreen, but I’m digging it. It’s a big change from Southern California.”
“So, it looks like we do have time to talk about Early Jazz,” Mr. Coleman says, after the last student finishes. “This kind of book will be foreign to many of you. It’s academic and somewhat dry, and I’d guess that most of you won’t have heard much, if any, of the music it’s about. But, as the author, Gunther Schuller, points out, most writing about jazz has been sociological instead of musicological, and the difference between this book and other books on jazz is that it uses musical analysis, as well as the historical record, to talk about the early years of the music. Since some of you are in the advanced theory class, where you will be analyzing classical music, mostly, this should be an interesting complement to your theory lessons. Those of you who don’t read music may get discouraged by all the musical examples in the text, but hang in there. You don’t need to be able to read or play any of the music in the book to get something out of it.
“At any rate, I’m not going to start this seminar with a lecture. That’s not what we’re about. Would anyone like to share their impressions of the first chapter, ‘Origins’? Maybe the section on African music?”
“Sure,” Shelley says. “I didn’t know anything about African music before this, and I found it fascinating, though I couldn’t follow everything he was saying. The transcriptions were cool, especially the ones of the Ewe dance pieces, with all those overlapping parts. It made me want to hear the music.”
“I thought so, too,” I say, “so I looked in the library and found a record called Ewe Music of Ghana. Most of it is different than the music Schuller talks about. Some songs are just one or two drummers, or a singer and a couple of drummers, instead of the big seven-piece bands he mentions. But there were a few tracks with multiple drums and a chorus of voices doing something like what he describes, with different instruments in different meters, I think. At first it sounded kind of monotonous, almost random, but then I started hearing the polyrhythms and was able to pick out some of the parts. I had to pay attention, though, or they’d all blend into one another again.”
“That’s cool,” Mr. Coleman says. “We should listen to that. Maybe you could check the record out of the library for us, Lucas?”
“Sure. But what I wanted to say was that I was reading the liner notes, which are written by the guy who recorded the music, a member of the Ewe tribe. He confirmed a lot of what Schuller says—the names of the instruments, for example. But the notes say he’s an instructor at the Ghana Institute of Art and Culture, and Schuller says there is no word for ‘art’ in any African language, which I thought was weird. Also, this Ewe guy says that there are three main styles of African music, based on regions. The style in the north is simpler and Arabic or Islamic; the one in the middle, where Ghana is, is the most complex; and then there’s another style in the south. But Schuller only mentions one kind of African music.”
“I don’t think Schuller knows jack about Africans or African music,” Gabe says.
“He obviously knows something,” Shelley says.
“Can you elaborate on your, uh, conclusion, Gabe?” Mr. Coleman says, raising an eye.
“He talks like there’s only one kind of African music, which is such a typically racist thing to say. You know, ‘All us negroes got riddim,’ right? On the other hand, he says that classical music is an umbrella term for all this diverse European music—Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, Schoenberg, all that—but he talks as if African music is this monochromatic thing. It’s cool to see those pieces written out—all the weird phrase lengths, and how the parts interlock—but they all come from this one guy, A.M. Jones, who turns out to be an English missionary. I mean, did Schuller actually listen to any African music? Did he just figure that’s where jazz started so he had to say something about it? It’s like this fetishization of the primitive, with no understanding that African music is probably as varied as European music.”
“But how can Schuller be racist if the entire book is about black people?” A handsome, tanned, and blond “surfer dude,” whose name I’ve forgotten, responds, his voice a little strained, agitated. “Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, Bessie Smith. These are all black musicians, and Schuller obviously digs the music. He wouldn’t write about it if he didn’t.”
“I didn’t say he’s racist, per se,” Gabe says. “I said his attitude toward African music is racist, or ignorant, which is the same thing.”
“Whoa, ignorant? This is the most intellectual thing I’ve ever read about music. No way this guy is stupid,” surfer dude says.
“I didn’t say ‘stupid,’ I said ‘ignorant.’” Gabe says. The room is awake now, and there’s a pause in the conversation, as everyone wonders how or if to respond. It’s a little early in the day (and year) for confrontation.
“OK, here’s what I mean,” Gabe continues, addressing surfer dude. “You look like a rocker.”
Surfer dude shrugs.
“So, say you live in, I don’t know, some remote island in the Pacific, no real contact with the outside world, no radio, TV. You get hold of a couple of records, maybe the Beach Boys and the Eagles, LA pop music, and you run into some cat in a bar who used to be a studio musician in LA, so you talk to him about the two years he spent playing piano on pop sessions in Hollywood and in a band at Disneyland or wherever, and then you write up a long dissertation and analysis of what you consider to be the state of rock music in America based on two records and this one guy’s life story. You think you might be missing something?”
“Fine, I understand what you’re saying. But if I did that, it wouldn’t make me racist.”
“No, just ignorant.”
“OK, let’s pull it back a bit,” Mr. Coleman says. “We get your point, Gabe. So, let’s say we agree that Schuller’s analysis of African music is interesting but . . . limited, and that he shouldn’t have referred to his one source as ‘African music,’ but as one example of African music, which I seem to remember he did, I could be wrong, doesn’t matter. Early Jazz is not about African music, it’s about the beginnings of jazz. So, does his analysis of this one example of African music help you understand the origins of jazz, or anything about early jazz?”
“The music on the Ewe record—it’s hard to imagine how that became jazz,” I say. “I’ve only listened to a handful of early jazz records—Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman—but the Ewe music didn’t sound anything like that.”
“Louis Armstrong? What, like ‘Hello Dolly’? Probably not a good comparison.” Angelica, a slim, striking girl with high cheekbones and a neatly trimmed Afro smiles at me as she says this.
“No, not ‘Hello Dolly.’” I try not to sound annoyed. “I’ve listened a lot to this Louis Armstrong record from the late twenties that’s amazing, with this great pianist, Earl Hines. And a record of Benny Goodman’s 1938 Carnegie Hall concert, which is kind of a history of jazz up to that point, with a lot of big band stuff but also New Orleans music and Dixieland.”
“Played by white guys, no doubt,” Angelica says.
“Maybe, I don’t know. But it’s really good. And yeah, those are only a couple examples.” I decide not to press the point.
“I was also going to say something about Schuller treating African music like it’s just one thing,” says Andrew, an auburn-haired, intensely freckled guy sitting at the back of the room. “Have any of you ever heard of highlife?”
“No, what’s that?” Shelley says.
“It’s this music, also from Ghana, kind of a mix of jazz and early rock ’n’ roll, with horns and electric guitars and Western-style drums. It sounds like it was made by guys raised on tribal drumming, but imitating the music they heard on American radio broadcasts maybe. My dad bought a few highlife records in London years ago. He used to go there once a year for work, and during his free time he’d look for old jazz records in music shops. On a whim, he bought a record by this highlife band E.T. Mensah and the Tempos, and he really dug it. One of his English friends still sends him records—highlife, Afrobeat, Nigerian juju music—so he’s got a couple of dozen albums by now. He would play them around the house when I was younger, but I didn’t pay much attention—it just sounded like some funky, old-people music, fifties rock ’n’ roll, Fats Domino or Chuck Berry, that kind of thing. But last year he went to see The Harder They Come with me, and when we got home, he pulled out one of his highlife records. It’s pretty cool stuff.”
“If you guys are interested in African music, there’s a musician from Zimbabwe teaching at Evergreen this year, Dumi Maraire,” Mr. Coleman says. “He plays mbira and marimba and sings: another example of a style of African music not mentioned by Schuller.”
“But that’s all modern African music, right?” Shelley says. “This book is about early jazz, and if you’re trying to figure out how African music influenced jazz, you’d have to look at what the slaves would have heard or played before they were brought to the US. Isn’t that what Schuller is doing?”
“But Jones’s book, which is the only thing Schuller references, was published in the 1950s,” Gabe says. “How do we know the music he’s analyzing is anything like the music that slaves would have known?”
“It’s more likely to be that than music influenced by rock ’n’ roll,” Shelley says.
“Maybe so,” Angelica says. “But the slave trade lasted for what, 200 some years? How can anyone say anything authoritatively about the music that enslaved Africans would have brought with them, or heard, or played, during that time. It’s all conjecture.”
“But at least Schuller does a good job of analyzing the African music available to him,” Shelley persists.
“Does he?” says Gabe. “I don’t know. I couldn’t make heads or tails of all that stuff about the ‘thirds tribes’ and ‘fourths and fifths tribes.’”
“You know, maybe the fact that Schuller is an expert in classical music—he’s the head of the New England Conservatory, I think—means that he has a pretty good idea about what classical music is and isn’t,” I say, tentatively. “So, he hears this stuff—this music with overlapping polyrhythms—and he’s excited about it because it’s music that doesn’t exist in the classical world.”
“So, you’re saying that because he knows what European classical music is, or isn’t, Schuller has a good idea of what African music is?” Angelica says.
Nobody responds immediately, so Angelica continues, “What Gabe said about the ‘thirds tribes’ and ‘fourths and fifths’ tribes: you can bet that’s Schuller’s own terminology. I bet none of those musicians would talk or think about their music like that.”
“It’s like the blind men and the elephant, except in this case, there’s just one blind man,” Andrew says.
“I think this is a good place to stop,” Mr. Coleman says. “We could go on, but we’re running out of time. I’m glad to hear so many of you chiming in, and I hope we’ll hear from the rest of you in the future.
“I’d like to suggest that you do some writing regularly—about what we’re reading or talking about. I’m not going to give you a specific assignment until near the end of the semester. But it’s good to keep your writing chops up, and it will help you later, when it’s time to write your term papers. I considered giving you a goal of writing maybe two or three pages a week, but I know everyone operates differently. Some people like structure and specific goals, and others prefer to wait for inspiration to strike. My experience, though, is that inspiration needs to be encouraged.”
I’m glad Mr. Coleman is urging us to write. At times I’ve thought I would like to be a writer, though I haven’t pursued it much, and I don’t keep a journal. I wrote a couple of record reviews for my high school newspaper—a friend was the editor—and I helped get an underground paper going when I was a junior, though we only put out a few issues. In a way, I’m further along as a writer than as a musician, but I never write without some sort of assignment. Maybe I should set a goal of writing two or three pages a week, like Mr. Coleman suggests. I could keep a journal, too, although when I try writing for myself, for no other reason than a vague desire to see visible proof of my thoughts, I tend to get discouraged and give up after a paragraph or two, put down my pen and reach for my guitar or a book or something else less likely to make me feel worthless and incompetent.
For some reason, when I started playing the guitar, the judgmental side of my nature disappeared. Noodling on the guitar after school was an end in itself, enjoyable and relaxing, and I didn’t mind that I was bad at it as long as no one paid any attention to me. Music, played like that, disappears when it’s over; its impermanence discourages judgment. When I took the guitar out of the house and started playing with friends, they were all welcoming and forgiving of my mistakes and stumbles. But now I’m studying music in college, with all the expectations that entails. Evergreen may not have grades, but that doesn’t mean my playing—or writing—won’t be judged.
“So, where’s all this African music in the library?” Gabe says to me as we’re leaving.
“Hey, I’m Lucas.”
“I remember. Gabe.”
“Right. I can show you, or you can check the card catalog. It’s easy to find.”
“I’m not exactly a library kind of guy. I was more of a jock in high school than anything. It would never have occurred to me to go to the library to hear hip music.”
“I don’t know about ‘hip.’ This African record is pretty rough, like an anthropologist’s recording of tribal customs. I don’t know if they have any, what did that guy Andrew say, ‘highlife’? I’ll have to check, though. That sounds cool.”
“So, you’re into jazz and African music? Not what I’d expect from a SoCal longhair.”
“I’m into a lot of stuff, I guess. I hadn’t heard any African music until last week, and I’m just getting into jazz, mostly through my dad’s record collection. I don’t know anything about playing it. How about you? What do you play?”
“Bass, R&B mostly: Funkadelic, JB, Sly, Hendrix, cats like that. My dad’s into jazz, too, mostly the soul stuff, Wes Montgomery, Grant Green. I can handle basic changes, but I want to learn to play more modern stuff, like some of these grooves that Herbie Hancock and Miles are putting down. You heard any of that?”
“A little. I bought On the Corner, but it’s a little too far out for me.”
“You have that? That’s some wild shit.”
“I was listening to this Miles and Coltrane album in the library last week. That was challenging, too, but maybe more my style.”
“Right on, man. Hey, you said you were from Long Beach? My old man grew up there. Probably not your part of town, though. My granny still lives there, at the bottom of Signal Hill.”
“Your dad is from Signal Hill? Did he go to Poly? I went there last year.”
“You’re kidding me?”
“No. My folks live on the west side, near El Dorado Park. I was going to Millikan, but I was pretty bored. I even thought about dropping out. But then the school district started this alternative school program at Poly: SEA School. I’d go to PE first period at Millikan and then get on a bus to Poly.”
“They were bussing you to the hood? That’s crazy.”
“I guess. SEA School was great, very self-directed, kind of like Evergreen, I think, and you could pretty much do whatever you wanted. I’d just started playing the guitar, so it was cool.”
“My dad was a track star at Poly. He got a scholarship to UCLA and even went to the Olympics in 1956. Then he got a coaching job in Chicago for a while, before the U of O gig. I was born in Compton when my dad was still at UCLA, but I don’t remember it at all. We moved to Chicago when I was four.”
“My dad was a track star in high school, too; he was the Iowa state hurdles champ his senior year. But he didn’t run much in college. His mom lives in Chicago now, well, Oak Park. That’s a suburb, right? I’ve been to see her a few times. I tell people I was in Chicago for the 1968 Democratic Convention, but I neglect to mention I was staying with my granny in the suburbs.”
“That’s good. ’68? We were in Eugene by then.”
That was a great discussion for the first day class! There was so much going on at Evergreen then. I think that was the same year that Norman Durkee taught his Tuesday composition class. So lucky have been there. I really enjoy your writing Scott.