Avram Andreea Larisa

MA American Studies, 1st year

African-Americans in the Media, prof. Dr Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru

Jazz and Hip-Hop in the Media

Black, White or Grey Art?

Introduction

The aim of the paper is to take a closer look at two music

genres, typically associated with African-Americans, that

influenced the development of American culture, namely jazz and

hip-hop. In order to grasp a better understanding of how they may

have influenced American culture and, more specifically, the

image that we have of African-Americans in the media nowadays, a

short history of both genres will be given in the first two parts

of the paper. The circumstances under which they were shaped are

of high importance when drawing a parallel between the two,

especially when pointing out the similarities that they share.

Both jazz and hip-hop started out as ‘street’ art forms meant to

relief pain and frustration brought upon African-Americans by a

society (still) reluctant to fully embracing them. In their

respective beginnings, jazz and hip-hop singers (musically

illiterate otherwise) would showcase their talent in the streets

and more often than not engage in ‘music battles’ that gave them

an opportunity to become known in their own communities.

However, in time, jazz managed to become a well established,

world-wide acclaimed and studied art form. Is there any chance

for hip-hop musicians to hope for the same? In terms of

development and influence, can hip-hop be ‘the next jazz’? Or

have its values been corrupted along the way? How have music

videos that promote hip-hop influenced this corruption?

I. A Short History of Jazz

Jazz brings together African and European music elements. It

originates in black communities around New Orleans, Louisiana, in

the twentieth century, and it was initially based on music

similar to early types of blues, sung by rural Black slaves. The

structure of this music lacked the European concept of harmony,

it bringing together the highly improvisational ‘call and

response’ pattern, typical to slave work songs, and traditional

African rhythms.

Dr Billy Taylor, also a renowned jazz musician, saw the birth of

jazz music as a response to the oppressions African-Americans

were forced to put up with during slavery, and as a positive

direction in which they managed to channel negative energy:

“In order to survive the harsh, restrictive and demanding realities of

enslavement, they were forced to be resourceful and creative. Since

music had always played such an important part in the daily lives of

so many Africans from different tribes, countries and backgrounds, it

was quickly seized upon as a tool to be used for communication and as

a relief from both physical and spiritual burdens.” (2)

The ‘spiritual relief’ is connected, I believe, with the slaves’

refusal to become victims, because when one’s identity is already

jeopardized, the easiest solution is to accept the identity of a

victim. African-Americans, however, being rather united and proud

people, mirrored these general characteristics of theirs in their

music. Even if they took out the central instrument used in

African traditional music, the drums, they kept the same kind of

feeling to their music and used it as a tool meant to help them

keep their pride. Toni Morrison also noted that “even when it’s

begging [jazz] to be understood in the lyrics, the music

contradicts that feeling of being a complete victim and

completely taken over. […] I don’t see it as a crying music.”

(18).

Having its roots in work music, it is obvious that early jazz

musicians could not read music. Their progress from ‘call and

response’ pattern to playing music for a living at the beginning

of the twentieth century was based on one key ingredient:

improvisation. Dr Billy Taylor talks about the importance of

improvisation in the development of jazz music: “Improvisation

was an important tool for many of the earliest jazz musicians who

were self taught and learned to play by trial and error” (2). So

it was part of their ‘coming of age’, of their building their own

culture. It was a step forward towards getting an identity, which

was similar to the baby-steps a child takes towards adulthood.

In 1879, New Orleans established Storyville District, where

prostitution and brothels were tolerated. Storyville District

quickly became a place where jazz could develop as a genre and

where many musicians were able to make their living, playing jazz

in brothels and saloons (Kennan, 9). By 1894 however, Storyville

District, along with New Orleans and the rest of the South, had

become segregated, and a large number of African Americans moved

to the North and West, taking jazz music with them and spreading

it to other states. Segregation and, later, World War I moved

aspiring musicians from the South to more technologically

developed cities (mainly Chicago, New York City and Los Angeles)

which made their access easier to recording studios and having

their music played on the radio.

This takes us to The Jazz Age, generally considered to have

happened in the 1920’s, although scholars have argued (Ted

Vincent, Alain Locke) that when talking about jazz as black

music, a more accurate period is between 1918 and 1926:

“Alain Locke dates […] the Jazz Age from 1918 to 1926 (declaring that

‘commercialization’ changed the music scene around 1926). In Chicago,

Jazz Age black music appears to have been mostly under the control of

African Americans from 1918 into late 1921 or 1922. In fact, black

initiative on the organizational front was evidenced in the years just

before the Jazz Age proper, when the music industry was just beginning

to experiment with the types of show places that would, in time,

evolve into modern nightclub.” (43, 44)

It is around this time that ‘battles’ also gained popularity.

Jazz bands would improvise together; they would begin on a given

theme and improvise, shifting turns from one to the other, in

order to have supremacy and recognition, to be seen as the best,

the most skillful band: “each band would try to outplay the other

in a contest of skill, endurance, and, in these days, volume.”

(Grandt, 308). Later on, similar to the battle of the bands,

another type of competition would emerge, one that could give

recognition to one of two individual musicians; this was called

cutting contest:

“Often, the competition pits two musicians who play the same

instrument against each other, according one chorus to each player at

the beginning before steadily decreasing solo space […], occasionally

even two or one. The cutting contest thus constitutes the musical

variety of African American oral traditions like signifying, playing

the dozens, or other call-and-response patterns.” (Grandt, 309)

Another event that changed the course of jazz after World War I

was the moving to Europe of some African Americans, especially

jazz musicians. In the 1920s, jazz was no longer “a regional

music dominated by African Americans” (Carney, 6), instead it

became the definition of modernity in the early twentieth

century. Due to coverage on radio, jazz had managed to be heard

abroad, more importantly all the way to Europe. And it was

successful too. Thus, there were musicians who chose to play in

Paris, at first, and this marked a new beginning and

transformation for jazz because, being appreciated, it started

being imitated by white Europeans who, despite having knowledge

in music, lacked all the emotion that came from years of slavery,

oppression, violence.

This, however, brings us closer to how jazz music is perceived

today. By being accepted world wide and by being given this new

‘white face’, jazz gained a different status. It is still based

on improvisation, but I could not dare to say that there are any

jazz musicians who cannot read music nowadays. It has become a

subject of study in music schools and it enjoys great

appreciation throughout the world. Still, even though I do enjoy

listening to – let’s say – contemporary Japanese jazz musician,

Hiromi Uehara, and I find her music highly entertaining, it will

never come close to the raw emotion that African Americans would

convey in early days jazz. It simply differs.

II. A Short History of Hip-Hop

Hip-hop emerged on the streets of New York City, in the South

Bronx section, in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s (Gladney,

292). It was born as a reaction, out of African Americans’

outrage to the injustice and discrimination they had to put up

with. It is heavily relied on Afro-Carribean and Afro-American

musical, oral, visual and dance forms (294). Even though it tends

to be widely associated with violence, we will later see how this

is more closely related to the image rappers have in the media.

Quite on contrary, initially, hip-hop lyrics would be or sound

violent so as for it to become a relief of pressure and anger

that would normally lead to actual violent acts. This is also

what Amiri Baraka was saying in his poem, “Black Art”:

“…We want ‘poems that kill.’

Assassin poems, Poems that shoot

guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys

and take their weapons leaving them dead

with tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland….

Let there be no love poems written until love can exist freely andcleanly.”(in Gladney, 292)

It has been established that, at least in its early days, hip-hop

can be qualified as Black Art and as having the same goals as the

Black Arts Movement (Gladney), especially if we associate hip-hop

lyrics with black poetry: “Failing to analyze hip-hop lyrics and

ideology critically and intellectually may lead one to dismiss an

art form capable of transmitting ideas to a community in dire

need of positive solutions” (Gladney, 292).

Apart from improvisation, another early characteristic of hip-hop

is the establishing of supremacy through ‘rapping battles’. This

still occurs nowadays with underground hip-hop artists. The

battle refers to a “competitive arena in which two M.C.s vied

against each other in the presence of an audience to determine

lyrical supremacy” (298).

By the end of the 1980’s hip-hop began being noticed, and some of

the artists starting signing contracts with music records.

Because music record companies’ owners were white Americans whose

sole interest was the well-being of their business, getting hip-

hop in the recording studio also meant making a more commercial

type of hip-hop, one accessible to both black and white

audiences. This phenomenon drew the attention and unfavorable

response of other hip-hop artists or simply Black Artists, who

saw it as betrayal, in a way, as selling their art to the white

man, the very target of their anger and frustration in the first

place. As an example, Addison Gayle, Jr noted that “the black

artist in the American society who creates without interjecting a

note of anger is creating not as a black man, but as an American.

For black anger in black art is as old as the first utterances by

black men on American soil…” (in Gladney, 291).

Signing contracts with record labels also meant exposure through

videos, and videos meant (and still mean, I believe) a certain

image pre-fabricated for African Americans that reached every

home everywhere through the MTV Channel. Early examples of

commercial hip-hop are M.C. Hammer and Sir Mix-a-Lot. They have

been fought back by many artists, one of whom, Busta Rhymes, was

also one of the first to pin-point a difference between ‘rap’ and

‘hip-hop’, in his the lyrics of his song, “Syntax Era”:

“Rich blood sucker of the poor I see

you, hickory, dickory hey, watch out for the trickery

What happened to creativity, dignity, integrity…

Understand that word and how you

use it, rap is business music, hip-hop is cultural music.” (inGladney, 294)

Some years later, when Busta Rhymes joined white diva Mariah

Carey for an R&B collaboration song about romance and betrayal,

some of us were still wondering “what happened to creativity,

dignity, integrity”. Like many did before him, and even more

after him, Busta Rhymes probably simply decided that “business

music” paid better.

Apart from hip-hop artists who eventually trade art for their

personal well-being, the problem with many of the videos for

commercial hip-hop is that, in order to be appealing to both the

white and the black man, they make use of women, showcasing them

dressed provocatively and, basically, objectifying them. This is

a habit that lives to this day and, what is more worrisome is

that female hip-hop and R&B artists take this as a given. It has

become mandatory in a way that powerful women with strong voices

and enough talent to make one’s hairs stand up on the back of the

neck with only syllable, have to have a certain image if they

want to sell records. One example of such a woman, one of whom

you would think no longer needs this image (if she ever did), is

R&B artist Beyonce.

Another disadvantage of videos has been the reduction of the

emphasis laid on orality:

“video commodification of artistic ideas has, in the end, compromised

unfavorably the ability of, and the need for, the rap artist to convey

through his or her art those images the rapper most wants to transmit

to an audience, and it has also affected rap’s emphasis on orality”

(298).

III. Jazz and Hip-Hop

So far we have seen how jazz and hip-hop developed independently.

This part of the paper will deal with the common ground the two

share, what distinguishes them one from the other as art forms,

and how they can be sensed in other types of art.

Unquestionably, both jazz and hip-hop are manifestations of Black

Art at core. They did not simply appear out of thin air, but

emerged as a response to oppression, violence, violation of

rights and, at core, they remain largely misunderstood by those

who do not share the same background: “the emerging music of

jazz, which, upon its emergence, was as misunderstood as hip-hop

is today” (299). Not only do they convey the same type of anger

targeted at American society mostly (and in different manners, it

is true), but they, as art forms, generate from a similar Afro-

American musical, oral and visual background and, moreover, they

manifested similarly in the streets, by having ‘band battles’ or

‘cutting contests’.

However, even if hip-hop battles still exist, it seems that

recognition gained in battle no longer suffices, which is

perfectly understandable: it does not feed one, not put a roof

over one’s head. Recognition from the white society, on the other

hand, can do that. So, more and more hip-hop artists choose to

invest their time and energy, not in battles, but in going door

to door from one record to another, trying to impress agents in

the hope that this could land them a contract deal. And, if it

does land, what does this contract mean? As we have seen in the

media, there is already a more-or-less well established pattern:

the hip-hop artist releases a song, a video and, later on, an

album, which mostly describe the life of the black youth in the

ghetto, with emphasis on violence he or she has been subjected to

so far. The following record(s) most commonly describes life

after gaining fame and the videos feature expensive cars, as-

naked-as-possible-voluptuous women and opulent outfits. Should

the artist survive in the business after this, a come-back is

made alongside, most of the times, a young pop or R&B female

artist. Examples of artists that I have seen following this

pattern all through my childhood and up to now are Busta Rhymes,

Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent, just to name a few.

I suppose this is what Maulana Ron Karenga would call “art for

art’s sake”, which – paradoxically – cannot exist, because “all

art reflects the value system(s) from which it comes” (296). The

above mentioned ‘non-existing’ art seems to be nothing more than

a fabrication for the media. Media wants what sells the best and,

right now, violence sells and sex sells. So commercial hip-hop

nowadays, this media dream whose purpose is strictly financial,

is what I will call black art in a white mask. It is still hip-

hop, as we see it today, but the poetry in it is forever lost,

not because white people are incapable of making poetry, but

because they failed (or wanted to fail) to see the poetry in hip-

hop, as it originally was. If there still is poetry in hip-hop,

it is most likely to be found in the streets, not on TV.

What about Jazz? Has it been corrupted by the media? As mentioned

before, jazz owes its first encounter with international fame to

the types of mass media that were available at that time, the

most important being the radio. Only later on could jazz

performances be filmed, but we could hardly speak of anything

even remotely close to the manipulation of image we have in music

videos today. Jazz too has been corrupted, however. It was so

appealing to audiences everywhere, that musicians all around the

world tried to copy and imitate that style, but they were unable

to capture the spirit of African American original jazz. Thus,

jazz evolve in style and eventually became an accessible genre to

all musicians, regardless of their cultural historical

backgrounds. This mélange which we call jazz today is what I see

as grey art, a mixture between black, white, yellow, and whatever

else may be possible. It has become universal in a way.

In this case, why should hip-hop be black art in white mask and

jazz grey art? Especially since there are white Americans (such

as Vanilla Ice and Eminem) and people all over the world who

tried to imitate hip hop too. My guess is that the fault lies

precisely in the images manipulated by the media described above.

In the 1910s-1920s, Parisians first heard jazz unaltered, coming

directly from the source, and they took whatever they made of it,

and tried to imitate. Hip-hop artists around the world nowadays,

on the other hand, try to imitate something that has already been

corrupted, so they do not really imitate true hip-hop art, but a

manipulated image fed to them by the media.

In the end, hip-hop is still rather recent, and there are many

opinions voiced around the subject, not all of them agreeing

necessarily. Cornel West, for instance, believes in the

importance of hip-hop for young African Americans, but sees the

violence, misogyny and homophobia in them as mirrored images of

what happens in the society at a larger scale (24). It makes me

wonder, though, is not this mirrored image a product of the

violence, misogyny and homophobia promoted in hip-hop videos in

the media? Are we not running round in a vicious circle?

IV. Conclusion

All in all, I strongly agree that both jazz and hip-hop are

manifestations of Black Art… Only originally, though, they are

black only at heart. While contemporary jazz has lost its ‘black

flavor’, in hip-hop it can still be found in its street

manifestations.

They both played an important role, culturally speaking, and

media has affected both of their trajectories in a way. For jazz,

media worked wonders, the radio helped jazz become the “metaphor

for the American idea of democracy” (Taylor, 1) of the beginning

of the twentieth century. In addition, I do believe that the

simple mentioning of the fact that the American Dialect Society

named “jazz” the Word of the Twentieth Century says a lot about

the strong impact it had on people everywhere. Needless to say,

it influenced many other art forms, literary, visual and so on.

Toni Morrison’s novel Jazz, just to mention my favorite example,

despite not even mentioning the word “jazz” apart from the title,

is structured like jazz music and even the use of language has

the same cadence as jazz music (Grandt).

In the case of hip-hop, media both gave and took away. I feel

this genre is a bit more problematic than jazz, probably also

because it is a lot more recent. Despite hiding its true nature

behind a white mask, hip-hop as it is still found in the streets

also managed to inspire artists in other areas, filmmakers,

graffiti artists and tattoo artists, just to mention a few.

To sum up, perhaps categorizing art forms by color as mentioned

in the title of the paper is not necessarily a good thing.

Calling Black Art something which is not, however, can neither be

good. Some distinction must be made between the original and what

that meant for very many people, and the corrupted (either

positively or negatively) replicas perpetuated by the images

promoted by the media, or by unfounded imitations.

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