Episode #4
Revisiting Symphonic and "Revue" form Jazz of the 1920s
Welcome back to Music and Global Politics, please like and subscribe, support and share! The follow is a lecture on how Jazz went global just as it went orchestral. In the 1920s just as Broadway composers sought to integrate Jazz, audiences across the world. Occurring just as the devastation of World War One gave way to the Roaring Twenties, it is an oft overlooked fact, that the first global audiences to have encountered Jazz would have done so via a stage revue. Jazz also enjoyed the timing of arriving just as traditional formal dance in Europe faced steeped decline. This multi-act sketch form would appear today more like a Broadway musical with dance and comedic elements, however without a fixed dramatic plot or book. From the Southern Syncopated Orchestra in the UK in 1919, to the Jazz Kings to Paris in 1919 or Leoni Leonidoff producer of the landmark 1925 European tour of the African American musical revue Chocolate Kiddies , which featured Sam Wooding and his Orchestra alongside early compositions by Duke Ellington. Crucially, Gershwin’s experiments positively inspired African American composers to think bigger musically. James P. Johnson’s ‘ Yamekraw: a Negro Rhapsody ,’ of 1927, was conceived in response to Gershwin. Edward Kennedy ‘Duke’ Ellington’s ‘ Black and Tan Fantasy ’ of that same year goes one step further in homage and directly quotes Gershwin’s iconic upward clarinet trill in its brass section. The contours of critique of Gershwin have not evolved much in a century. What was denounced as ‘middle class meddling,’ in the 1920s, is now subjected to the taunts that it is ‘ corny and Caucasian .’Can we even consider Bernstein's West Side Story, latter day attempt at this form, the great road not taken in American musical history. One of the legacies is that arguably Europe proved a more stable and supportive home for Jazz than almost all major cities in the USA. Please enjoy Eric Satie;'s "Transatlantic," an emblem for this time and Stravinsky's Ragime for 11 instruments. James Reese Europe castle house rag and Mitchell's jazz kings the Montmartre jazz... What is the Third Stream? Can Jazz even be successfully notated for classical players? Who was Paul Whiteman once called the :"King of Jazz"? Why has Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" been called America's "worst masterpiece"? Is it the "Sgt Pepper" of Jazz.? How did Europeans first understand Jazz? What is Gebrauchsmusik. How these earliest tours led to the founding of Blue Note Records label
