The idea of genre in this study involves many factors, including the pressing business of labeling in popular culture; the tidal wave of “Negro” artistic experimentation and the surging black political efficacy that characterized the 1940s; modern jazz’s evolving critical discourse; the gendered musical language of bebop genius; and the potent atmosphere in which new identities and identifications were being made at this historical moment. During these years and set against these influences, Powell began his rise as a bona fide giant of modern jazz piano—just as black popular music and the social sphere it inhabited were experiencing the tumultuous changes mentioned above. His work is, therefore, ideally suited to an exploration of shifting notions of genre in jazz. Why? Because he was one of the key musicians who supported jazz’s perceived move outside the tight constellation of “vernacular” styles such as blues, gospel, jump and urban blues, rhythm and blues, and, later, rock ’n’ roll. And he is an exceptional example of this shift because even while he helped to codify bebop’s language, he developed an idiosyncratic, forward-looking voice within it.
THE SOCIAL CONTRACT IN BEBOP’S CHALLENGE
Jazz is singular in that its social mobility—its ability to move among “folk,” mass culture, and “high” art discourses—has been the subject of meticulous scrutiny. Through the years, divergent theories about it have surfaced as observers debated whether jazz was the music of an ethnic, subcultural folk, a popular music intended for mass audiences, or a cultural expression of the highest order, one requiring an elitist, specialized training to adequately comprehend its value. As such, we hear in its history the audible traces of this struggle for a cultural and social identity, the commercial interests of the music industry, and the “changing orientations and perspectives among working-class and middle-class African-Americans, especially black youth and young adults.”10 To this latter point, I note that at the time that Powell was building his early reputation, jazz occupied a similar cultural-social position to the one that hip-hop has held for the last thirty or so years.
When bebop drummer Kenny Clarke said he resented the label “bebop,” he joined a chorus of critics who understood the power as well as the limiting effect of musical labels. Yet labeling has been a major preoccupation in the world of arts and letters, particularly in the specific case of music, where the act of categorizing performs many functions. Stylistic distinctions, for example, tell us much more than which musical qualities constitute a piece of music. They shed light on what listeners value in sound organization. Categorizing also inherently comments on the nature of power relationships in society at large—it tells us who’s in charge and running the show. As bebop musicians were keenly aware, if you named it, you could claim it. In the “on the ground” listening experience, labeling establishes the rules of the game, allowing listeners to perceive the relationship between the idiosyncrasies of a single piece of music and the larger category of sound organization to which it belongs. Thus, a good deal of cultural work is achieved by the act of stylistic labeling: it provides a social contract between music and audiences, one that conditions the listeners’ expectations on many levels, particularly in the area of meaning. When one considers, for example, the range of musical tributaries flowing through Powell’s aesthetic sensibilities—as this study does—it becomes obvious how labels can constrain or discipline interpretations of a musician’s work.
African American music in general is a particularly rich site for exploring issues of stylistic labeling. Critics, scholars, and listeners have recognized that the singular historical experience of African Americans is perhaps the most compelling reason that the conventions of black music have inspired such powerful reactions. The ideology of race has, of course, contributed to the dynamic reception of the history of music labeled “African American.” And beyond this aspect of their shared social histories, the genres jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues, soul, blues, and hip-hop contain strong familial relationships based on common characteristics that many, despite contestation, continue to trace to an African cultural legacy, as well as other sonic tributaries originating in Europe and elsewhere. Despite their commonalities, however, these genres have distinguished themselves and are marked with social, historical, geographical, and commercial particularity.
Generic labels such as “jazz” guide listeners toward the “proper” responses as dictated by a social contract established by the label itself. They establish a framework for the communication of meaning, provide a context for interpretation, and serve as a starting point from which to discern changes or innovations. To be sure, positioning a musical practice in this or that category carries important consequences: it connects the music and musicians to commercial institutions, genre-specific interpretations, and traditional audience bases. Thus, when sound organization is assigned a genre designation, the name speaks to both purely musical issues and to larger social orders. Musicians are keenly aware of this fact.
I should back up a bit here and make clear how I’m using the terms genre and style. Important and helpful accounts tracing the etymology of these terms already exist, so I will not recount them here.11 I use genre to refer to the broadest categories of musical and social practices. The term style, for me, designates subsets of such practices. These groupings are always flexible and situational. For example, we use the term black music to indicate a large range of styles closely associated with the social and historical experiences of African Americans. Samuel A. Floyd, Jr., among many other writers, links these various styles by identifying a common set of conceptual approaches. When we turn to jazz specifically, the labels Dixieland, swing, bebop, modal, free, fusion, and acid represent substyles that have been subsumed under the “jazz” genre.12
Because musical practices tend to be dynamic, categorical designations are always moving. Consider the relationship of blues and gospel. On the purely stylistic level, they shared many common qualities in the 1920s. But as we see in the music of Thomas A. Dorsey, the “father” of gospel music, for example, socially grounded beliefs about each category of music (blues and gospel) began to codify. Thus, although they continued to share formal conventions, they became separate genres of music, a move that the commercial market perpetuated and helped to solidify. Categories or distinctions such as these performed a good deal of cultural work. They carried the baggage of social hierarchies: some genres fit into the “art” category of culture, while others were viewed as mass or folk culture. To further clarify this point, bebop permanently changed how jazz was viewed in the value system of American musical culture and represented an important rupture that was felt beyond the music world. This book seeks to index some of those changes by considering Powell’s career and music. Indeed, the specifics of his art and the identity he fashioned with it bring into sharp relief some of these shifting perceptions.
THE BEBOP FIGURE IN JAZZ HISTORY
One way to interpret these changes in the music’s social pedigree is by considering jazz historiography, or the history of writings on this topic. As such, my work engages a wide range of literature with the deliberate intention to contextualize Powell’s work. I should mention at the outset that I situate my own work within two broad historiographical streams. During the 1960s, the final years of Powell’s life, two vibrant studies appeared or were underway, and each of their premises is central to this book’s methodological approach. They are Gunther Schuller’s Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (1968) and LeRoi Jones’s (Amiri Baraka) Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1963).
When it was published, Schuller’s work promised to be a model for future jazz studies: a book-length treatise on jazz that explored its sonic qualities with rigor. In his opening paragraph on its origins, Schuller gives what one has come to expect from his writings: an emphasis on the notion of development: “Jazz . . . was not the product of a handful of stylistic innovators, but a relatively unsophisticated quasi-folk music—more sociological manifestation than music.”13 Schuller moves on to give the most thorough technical discussion in any jazz narrative to that date of the transformation of African and European musical practices into an uniquely African American one. Schuller considers form, timbre, melody, harmony, rhythm, and improvisation with the tools of western music analysis. The remainder of the book maintains this standard, with formalist, technical explanations of a large body of jazz recordings.