By the mid-twentieth century, jazz had evolved into a kind of classical music, often presented in concert halls, but if anyone’s been to a juke joint or seen the Rebirth or Dirty Dozen brass bands at a place like the Glass House in New Orleans, then you’ve seen lots of dancing to jazz. Its roots are spiritual dance music. Yes, this is one kind of spiritual music that would sound terrible in most cathedrals.
The instrumentation of jazz was also modified so that the music could be heard over the sound of the dancers and the bar racket. Banjos were louder than acoustic guitars, and trumpets were nice and loud, too. Until amplification and microphones came into common use, the instruments written for and played were adapted to fit the situation. The makeup of the bands, as well as the parts the composers wrote, evolved to be heard.
Likewise, country music, blues, Latin music, and rock and roll were all (originally) music to dance to, and they too had to be loud enough to be heard above the chatter. Recorded music and amplification changed all that, but when these forms jelled, such factors were just beginning to be felt.
QUIET, PLEASE
With classical music, not only did the venues change, but the behavior of the audiences did, too. Around 1900, according to music writer Alex Ross, classical audiences were no longer allowed to shout, eat, and chat during a performance.2 One was expected to sit immobile and listen with rapt attention. Ross hints that this was a way of keeping the hoi polloi out of the new symphony halls and opera houses. (I guess it was assumed that the lower classes were inherently noisy.) Music that in many instances used to be for all was now exclusively for the elite. Nowadays, if someone’s phone rings or a person so much as whispers to their neighbor during a classical concert, it could stop the whole show.
This exclusionary policy affected the music being written, too—since no one was talking, eating, or dancing anymore, the music could have extreme dynamics. Composers knew that every detail would be heard, so very quiet passages could now be written. Harmonically complex passages could be appreciated as well. Much of twentieth-century classical music could only work in (and was written for) these socially and acoustically restrictive spaces. A new kind of music came into existence that didn’t exist previously—and the future emergence and refining of recording technology would make this music more available and ubiquitous. I do wonder how much of the audience’s fun was sacrificed in the effort to redefine the social parameters of the concert hall—it sounds almost masochistic of the upper crust, curtailing their own liveliness, but I guess they had their priorities.
Although the quietest harmonic and dynamic details and complexities could now be heard, performing in these larger more reverberant halls meant that rhythmically things got less distinct and much fuzzier—less African, one might say. Even the jazz now played in these rooms became a kind of chamber music. Certainly no one danced, drank, or hollered out “Hell, yeah!” even if it was Goodman, Ellington, or Marsalis playing—bands that certainly swing. The smaller jazz clubs followed suit; no one dances anymore at the Blue Note or Village Vanguard, though liquor is very quietly served.
One might conclude that removing the funky relaxed vibe from refined American concert music was not accidental. Separating the body from the head seems to have been an intended consequence—for anything to be serious, you couldn’t be seen shimmying around to it. (Not that any kind of music is aimed exclusively at either the body or head—that absolute demarcation is somewhat of an intellectual and social construct.) Serious music, in this way of thinking, is only absorbed and consumed above the neck. The regions below the neck are socially and morally suspect. The people who felt this way and enforced this way of encountering music probably didn’t take the wildly innovative and sophisticated arrangements of mid-century tango orchestras seriously either. The fact that it was wildly innovative and at the same time very danceable created, for twentieth-century sophisticates, a kind of cognitive dissonance.
RECORDED MUSIC
With the advent of recorded music in 1878, the nature of the places in which music was heard changed. Music now had to serve two very different needs simultaneously. The phonograph box in the parlor became a new venue; for many people, it replaced the concert hall or the club.
By the thirties, most people were listening to music either on radio or on home phonographs.N People probably heard a greater quantity of music, and a greater variety, on these devices than they would ever hear in person in their lifetimes. Music could now be completely free from any live context, or, more properly, the context in which it was heard became the living room and the jukebox—parallel alternatives to still-popular ballrooms and concert halls.
The performing musician was now expected to write and create for two very different spaces: the live venue, and the device that could play a recording or receive a transmission. Socially and acoustically, these spaces were worlds apart. But the compositions were expected to be the same! An audience who heard and loved a song on the radio naturally wanted to hear that same song at the club or the concert hall.
These two demands seem unfair to me. The performing skills, not to mention the writing needs, the instrumentation, and the acoustic properties for each venue are completely different. Just as stage actors often seem too loud and demonstrative for audiences used to movie acting, the requirements of musical mediums are somewhat mutually exclusive. What is best for one might work for the other, but it doesn’t always work that way.
Performers adapted to this new technology. The microphones that recorded singers changed the way they sang and the way their instruments were played.O Singers no longer had to have great lungs to be successful. Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby were pioneers when it came to singing “to the microphone.” They adjusted their vocal dynamics in ways that would have been unheard of earlier. It might not seem that radical now, but crooning was a new kind of singing back then. It wouldn’t have worked without a microphone.
Chet Baker even sang in a whisper, as did João Gilberto, and millions followed. To a listener, these guys are whispering like a lover, right into your ear, getting completely inside your head. Music had never been experienced that way before. Needless to say, without microphones this intimacy wouldn’t have been heard at all.
Technology had turned the living room or any small bar with a jukebox into a concert hallP—and often there was dancing. Besides changing the acoustic context, recorded music also allowed music venues to come into existence without stages and often without any live musicians at all. DJs could play at high school dances, folks could shove quarters into jukeboxes and dance in the middle of the bar, and in living rooms the music came out of furniture. Eventually venues evolved that were purposefully built to play only this kind of performerless music—discos.Q
Shure Brothers model 55S microphone by John Schneider
Graetz Melodia radio
Music written for contemporary discos, in my opinion, usually only works in those social and physical spaces—it really works best on the incredible sound systems that are often installed in those rooms. It feels stupid to listen to club music at its intended volume at home, though people do it. And, once again, it’s for dancing, as was early hip-hop, which emerged out of dance clubs in the same way that jazz did—by extending sections of the music so the dancers could show off and improvise. Once again the dancers were changing the context, urging the music in new directions.R
In