Harkness and jazz (Part 1)

I promised another blog post on Robert Harkness, the father of evangelistic piano playing.  I am intrigued by what the church musicians of his day believed about the secular music that was being written at the same time.   The music I am speaking of is jazz.

As I have mentioned before, it is clear that prominent church musicians from this time period had a love/hate relationship with jazz.  Clearly, they associated it with depravity.  They struggled with it for other reasons too.  But ironically, playing jazz piano music and playing church piano music require some of the same skills (such as improvisation).  And it is clear that the early church pianists including Harkness borrowed from jazz in some ways.

I thought it would be interesting to discuss jazz in this post.  Many church pianists know little about it.  They associate it with rhythm and very complex chords.  Some consider it to be barely music at all and certainly not worth learning to.  Others are just intimidated by it.  In this post, I will discuss jazz in general and in the next post, I will discuss Harkness’ writing about it.

Defining jazz is not easy.  If it is a genre, it has many sub-genres.  But there are characteristics of jazz that are pretty much true across all of these sub-genres and those are the things I am going to cover.
 
Jazz is a Twentieth Century phenomenon that was largely developed by African-Americans.  Jazz is not African (though it has African influence).  Rather, it is distinctly American; no America, no jazz music.  America provided a way for the fusion of African music with music of the Western tradition.  Make no mistake about it; jazz is influenced not only by African music but also by Western music.  In fact, many jazz greats were classically trained and were also great classical performers.  

Jazz harmony is built on Western harmony; it is an extension of the Western harmony of the classical period.  While modern classical composers were falling over themselves trying to avoid tonality, jazz musicians learned to use extended chords (chords with 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths) in ways that actually enhanced tonality.  The extremely complex sounds associated with jazz harmony largely come from extended chords.

On the other hand, much of the rhythm of jazz is not Western in origin.  The use of swing rhythm involves moving accents from the downbeats to off beats and even moving accents from the front of beats to the back of beats.  This is done to create energy and movement (contrary to what you may have heard elsewhere, it has absolutely nothing to do with sex).

The use of this complex harmony and distinctive rhythm creates the sound that most associate with jazz.  But performers know that the performance of jazz involves two bigger components.

Improvisation
Traditionally, jazz is largely improvised.  Jazz musicians that are playing solo are completely free to do what they want with a song.  Often, they will play a verse of the song so people will recognize it and then go off and play something that sounds nothing like the song. 

Even in groups, jazz musicians largely improvise.  They communicate with each other through the music and follow memorized chord charts so that they stay together.  Watching a jazz group perform in this way is a remarkable experience.  Good groups have musicians who are virtuosos that compose elaborate solos on the spot while being supported as if by magic by the other musicians.

Democracy
In traditional Western music of the classical tradition, performers are taught that they are to reproduce what a composer writes.  In fact, they are judged by how closely their playing matches a score.  In other words, there is a clear, single authority-the composer.

In jazz, the composer is only responsible for providing a framework (if that).  The performers are free (and encouraged) to change whatever they want.  In other words, the control shifts from the composer to the performer.  Rather than one authority, every performer has the right to decide how the song should sound.

Many believe that it is no accident that jazz happened in America.  America, with its distaste for aristocracy and love for democracy, created a political atmosphere for jazz.  And the fact that America is a melting pot where Africans could come and be exposed to Western music created a unique opportunity for a new genre to be born.

There are a number of myths about jazz that need to be debunked:

Myth: Jazz is pop music (just like Country or Rock).

At one point, that might have been true.  But the truth is that jazz cannot be called pop simply because it is not very popular any more (even the Christian music genre is much bigger).  Nor is jazz mass produced like pop music is.  Jazz struggles with the exact same waning popularity challenges that classical music faces.

Jazz is not like pop in another way; it is far more sophisticated.  Jazz is art music just like classical music is.  That is not to say that every jazz pianist playing in a hotel lounge is a great musician (just like every classical pianist not a great musician).  But the top jazz musicians are world class both in their skill as well as their knowledge of music.  Jazz musicians largely respect the classical tradition.  And that respect is finally being grudgingly returned.  Julliard for example now recognizes and teaches jazz.

Myth: Jazz is about dancing and sex.

It is true that jazz is good dancing music.  That is because it typically has a very solid tempo and the rhythm creates a feeling of movement.  But the idea that the rhythms and harmony are sexual in nature is unsubstantiated.

If you went to a jazz concert, you are not likely to see people dancing.  You are likely to see older, well-dressed people actively listening to the music.  In fact, the atmosphere is similar to a classical concert.

Myth: Jazz is just noise.  It is too dissonant and is confusing.

It is easy for people that do not understand jazz to come to this conclusion.  The reality is that jazz is extremely structured and requires an understanding of harmony that most musicians do not have.  It is also true that the dissonance in jazz is an acquired taste.  All dissonance is an acquired taste.  But after listening to the thick chords of jazz for awhile, listeners grow to appreciate the complexity just like a person learns to appreciate other kinds of art music.

While jazz can be dissonant, it traditionally (not always) still follows rules of harmony from the Western tradition.  In this, it is different from much modern classical music that is intentionally written (using systems like serialism) to break those rules. 

I have no intention of addressing whether Christians should listen to jazz, whether Christian musicians should learn jazz, or whether jazz belongs in the church.  In my opinion, those are issues of personal Christian liberty or in the case of corporate worship, issues for church leaders to decide.  I am just providing a little history and perspective.

But in the next post, I want to contrast my perspective to that of Robert Harkness.  To put it mildly, Harkness did not appreciate jazz, and he gives his reasons why.  You will find it most interesting.