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.
WORKS CITED
Gladney, Marvin J. "The Black Arts Movement and Hip-Hop."
African American Review 29.2 (1995): 291-301. Print.
Grandt, Jurgen E. "Kinds of Blue: Toni Morrison, Hans
Janowitz, and the Jazz Aesthetic." African American Review 38.2
(2004): 303-12. Print.
Kennan, Tracy. Art and All That Jazz. Ed. Courtney Barrier. 1999.
Web. <http://www.noma.org/educationguides/Jazz.pdf>.
Morrison, Toni. "Blues, Love and Politics." Interview by
Cornel West. The Nation 24 May 2004: 18-28. Print.
Patterson Carney, Courtney. "Jazz and the Cultural
Transformation of America in the 1920s." Diss. Louisiana
State University, 2003. Jazz and the Cultural Transformation of America
in the 1920s. Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Library. Web.
7 Apr. 2012. <http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-1110103-
161818/unrestricted/Carney_dis.pdf>.
Taylor, Billy. "Http://www.billytaylorjazz.com/Jazz.pdf."
Web log post. Billy Taylor Jazz. Web. 7 Apr. 2012.
<http://www.billytaylorjazz.com/Jazz.pdf>.
Vincent, Ted. "The Community That Gave Jazz to Chicago."
Black Music Research Journal 12.1 (1992): 43-55. Print.
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