In
a period when protest music wasn't common, Billie Holiday does a live
performance of « Strange Fruit » in a theater or
nightclub. Although we cannot see the public in
the footage, we can guess that the audience was probably not an
exclusive black one. In a 1939 America where racial equality is
almost nonexistent, Billie Holiday sings a heartbreaking ballad and
we can feel the grief she sings it with. She sings her story, the
suffering of her people. She wouldn't have believed that 16 years
later, jazz was going to become America's music.
Penny Von Eschen's excerpt of the book SatchmoBlows up the World : Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War describes the irony of what seems to be two opposed worlds : an
intrinsically unequal America and the jazz being the music chosen to
show artistic expression to the world. During Eisenhower's
Administration, in 1956 Dizzy Gillespie tours the world as the
goodwill ambassador of the US.
On the Road by
Jack Kerouac, father of the Beat Movement so immensely inspired by
jazz music. Kerouac's prose is characterized by a style submerged in
the stream of consciousness, words spoken out in bursts, in
onomatopoeia, sparsely punctuated as if by reading we were playing a
trumpet or a saxophone, taking fast breaths in order to carry on
reading. The excerpt describes the hectic atmosphere of a jazz club.
Throughout this comment I'll hint at how the same music can be
used as a protest, as propaganda and to « let it all out ».
Redemption Songs
« Strange
Fruit » is a cry against the atrocities of racism. When Billie
Holiday sings we get goosebumps because we feel her pain. She sings
this song wholeheartedly and almost as gospel. We barely hear the
piano play on the back, all we feel is the extreme sadness that
releases from this almost
a Capella ballad. The poem describes a very explicit scene of
lynching « Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze ».
The strange fruit is the one who's different, is the rotten fruit
that nobody wants to pick, left « for the crows to
pluck ». It's the « strange and bitter crop » that had to be killed in order to avoid spoiling the field.
Lynching
is a particular kind of felony, instead of killing the person on the
spot and getting rid of the body, leaving the corpse hanging from the
tree is a lesson -if that word could ever be used to describe that
kind of cruelty-, it's left there for the others to see, it's not a
crime but the opposite, it's justice. Its purpose is to maintain the
order, the supremacy of the white, to spread terror.
By
singing « Strange Fruit » Billie Holiday not only
denounces the system but she also break all barriers and codes by
performing live.
We can feel the sweat of the mad crowd yelling and dancing in Kerouac's jazzclub scene.
Music brings races together and in this nightclub « everybody
was rocking and roaring ». People were « tripping
and riffing » if I may use the slang of that time. They dance
in an altered state of consciousness, they are high on hope, on life,
on music.
There
is no past, only this present moment where « The behatted
tenorman was blowing at the peak of a wonderfully satisfactory free
idea ». No resentment, the musicians play for all. The
euphoric crowd is in a trance state « a six-foot skinny negro
woman was rolling her bones at the man's hornbell ». It's
a religious-like experience, it's exhilarating, it's relieving. « A
big fat man was jumping on the platform, making it sag and creak ». Dean « was rubbing his chest, his belly, the sweat
splashed from his face ». But it's not only redemptive
for the crowds but for the musicians as well : « The
tenorman jumped down from the platform and stood in the crowd,
blowing around ».
The
musician is expressing what the crowds are feeling, the sound of
their instruments put into music what cannot be expressed with words.
« they were all urging that ternoman to hold it and keep it
with cries and wild eyes », the sound of the trumpet,
like that of Satchmo's, is the repressed cry of resistance of an
entire people.
Gillespie's world tour carried the voice of African Americans :
« blackness and race operating culturally to project an image
of American nationhood ». Jazz is inclusive was the
message : « I'm black, I'm American and this is our
music ».
President
Eisenhower wanted to expose American culture abroad for the purpose
of demonstrating the benefits of freedom -and capitalism for that
matter- on artistic expression. Dizzy Gillespie was probably
the first official jazz ambassador but many names followed « In
the high profile tours by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington » and also Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and many more.
Worldwide
audiences felt in this modern jazz -or Bebop as it was also known
when it contained a high degree of improvisation- something rebel and
indescribable that spoke for them. It wasn't only music; it became an
attitude towards life.
But
that leads me to question why was this music chosen? How did such a
revolutionary rhythm came to be representative of a country whose
roots were puritan and deeply repressive?
The Glaring contradiction
« Why
did American policymakers feel for the first time in history that the
country should be represented by jazz ? » asks Von Eschen. Why would Eisenhower's Republican administration take an
international stand against racism while indoors the situation was
far from ideal ?.
In
the context of the Cold War and particularly at this very ideological
stage, propaganda against Soviet Communism was major. America needed
to show the world the benefits of the « free world and the free
market ». Nevertheless the racial issue was brought up as a
main concern in global forums. Convinced that cultural influence is
irrevocably linked to political and economic power, the Eisenhower
administration sponsored America’s leading jazz musicians’ tours
abroad as part of its cultural foreign policy agenda, while a young
Martin Luther King led the boycott to the bus company. « The
prominence of African American jazz artists was critical to the
music's potential as a Cold War weapon ». But as Von
Escher puts it, this double irony does not end there, « with
the stroke of a pen, this hitherto disreputable music- routinely
associated in the mass media with drugs and crime- suddenly became
America's music ».
Billie
Holiday sings a protest song, a call for justice for black people in
this theatre where the audience is probably not black. The public had
bought their tickets to listen to this beautiful black woman sing the
sorrows of her people. This is a live performance, an almost a
capella one, and we hear no sound in the room whatsoever. The song
generates discomfort among the audience that does not clap at the
end. In the final seconds we see a very fragile Billie Holiday
standing in front of a mute audience. A public who payed this black
woman to tell them what they don't want to hear. What could have
possibly go through her head during those seconds? Was she scared
that this could put an end to her musical career? How much courage
does it take to sing to a white audience a song about crimes
perpetrated by... white people, their fellow countrymen? And what
does an applause mean, does it celebrate the talent, does it support
the cause?
In
any case the stake was immense and she won. Almost 80 years later,
this song continues to deplore racial discrimination.
The protagonists of On The Road are at a nightclub and it seems its a mainly black people one. We can almost
hear the music and see the frenetic public « Dean was
clutching his head in the crowd, and it was a mad crowd. » This two young men find their peers at this place, among the
African Americans. Their cry
for freedom is a different one but it perfectly resonates with that
of this black crowd and the black musicians. This rundown jazz club
echoes their need for non-conformity.
Kerouac describes the scene from inside instead of choosing an
omniscient voice and by doing so he takes the reader along and we all
merge with the crowd. There is no segregation, no classes, no
differences, we all let go of our identities, of our ethnicity,
there's only music... and humans.
The
essential role of African Americans in U.S. national culture
As
Von Eschen puts it, the Brown decision, the Gillespie tour and the
Montgomery bus boycott led by Martin Luther King « inaugurated
a new phase of the black freedom movement ensuring that jazz tours
and the modern civil rights movement would forever be joined ». Though of course the strategy was not intended as a promotion
of democracy led by black artists, this unique Cold War strategy
unintentionally demonstrated the essential role of African
Americans in U.S. national culture.
The
Eisenhower Administration, ironically enough, made the claim that
jazz was the most unique form of American culture. So not only does
this show that Gillespie's tour was designed to counter Soviet
propaganda but it also proves that by exporting jazz to the world,
the US wanted to reveal racial equality in action. « US
officials pursued a self-conscious campaign against worldwide
criticism of US racism ».
By
dehumanizing the black race, slavery in America managed to delete
fundamental traits of African culture but the remains blended in
with the local one. This led out to (if I may say so) a 3rd
culture, the African American one. American-born black people,
several generations along the line, feel as American as the European
immigrants. It is only natural that black people were so deeply
involved with the civil
rights movement. They are as American as everyone else on the
territory. They expressed their solidarity with all the struggles for
racial equality around the globe.
Billie
Holiday sings in a theatre and describes « a pastoral scene of
the gallant south » not quite as the audience would
picture it. She carries the voice of those silenced Americans to the
ears of the other America that, taken with her talent, wishes to
listen.
And
so is the case of Gillespie and the many other jazzmen that
followed : their talent opened doors and they became ambassadors
of a cause as well as of their own country. They sold «the
universal, race-transcending quality of jazz while depending on the
blackness of musicians to legitimize America's global agendas ».
Ever
since,
all over the world, America is associated with jazz, African American
culture, the land of freedom, opportunity and egalitarianism. That is
the image they project and the black population played a major role
in defining this picture.
And
is not surprising that Kerouac's protagonists go to this «sawdust
saloon », a negro jazzclub to find this urge for freedom
they are after. A place where everybody screams their hearts out,
literally « he drew breath and raised the horn and blew high,
wide, and screaming in the air ». The 2 young white men
know that the black cause calls their name, is appealing to them -in
a different way- but it speaks the same rebel language.
The
blackness and the American-ness cannot be dissociated.
Jazz
music has been playing on the background throughout this text as we
I had been shedding light on the crusade of the African American
population for equality and recognition. All things duly considered
it is still equally impressive that such a music can be used in so
many different ways but at the same time congregate different causes
under the same rhythm. Jazz music is unquestionably black, it
wouldn't exist without its African roots but neither without its
American branches. But it's a music that plays to everybody. Jazz
sells a dream. And America knew how to use it in its favour.
