JAZZ NOTES:

ARMSTRONG:
Message: The old spiritual puts forth that in our aloneness / occasional loneliness
in life, when we carry the burdens and woes of life, we may turn to a higher power
for the will to endure. The song is universal in this way. Each of us speaks with
something we hope will give us the will to keep on keeping on. The singer in this
song believes it’s Jesus and that one’s faith in Jesus’s understanding of our troubles
is the salvation we can expect. Life is full of ups and downs, of sad times and some
fleeting moments of joy, but if we stay true to our faith, we will be rewarded with
heaven; and in doing so will rejoin those of our family and friends who have gone
before us. His repetition of the refrains – “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,
nobody knows but Jesus” - are used to emphasize the long and mundane road and
the necessity of faith, especially when he praises with the lyrics… “Glory, Glory
hallelujah!”
Vocal Style: The pace with which Armstrong delivers the lyrics gives us a sense of
the long march life can be. He elongates the vowel O…..and carries it out to
suggest that long walk through life. And similarly, when he phrases Jes/us one
cannot help but hear the lift of the second syllable as if symbolic of the ascension
to heaven; it works the same with the last syllable of ….”lujah.” As if to mimic the
lift of our reward into heaven at the end of the long journey. And as we said in
class, the tone of his voice emphasizes the weariness of the journey: his voice is
worn, tired, rough, ragged….you use other syllables….and soulful and thus we
believe what he sings.
Instruments: Opening the tune with a bank (multiple) of violins that sweep
upward in tone gives the listener an aural foreshadowing of that ascension to
heaven. And the tone of the strings also goes to temper the sadness of the lyric
message and offer small, sweet hope.
As we have noted, the trumpet, a single entity, takes the place of Armstrong’s
voice, is played by Armstrong, and is much brighter in tone as if to mimic the
trumpet of the archangel Gabriel as he calls us to the gates of heaven. It, as well,
fulfills its traditional duty of annunciation and gives credence to the belief that
Jesus, the son of god, has arrived and awaits us. Lastly, the guitar is played softly
in the background sounding like a harp, the instrument often associated biblically
with the angels who reside in heaven and the last notes we are left with come from
the guitar and ascend the scale as if to symbolize our ascension into heaven.
HOLIDAY:
Message: Holiday’s recording was done on April 20, 1939 and is clearly a “protest
song.” During the times of segregation in the south and the continued oppression
and often violent and dehumanized treatment of African-Americans in the country,
most horrifically known with the lynchings that were far too frequent in our nation,
especially in the south. This is not a practice that ended with slavery but is one that
continued well into the 20th century and occurred in other instances as later as the
close at the close of the last century. And often the lynchings were committed
solely because of the color of a person’s skin. Justice was not at the heart of these
hangings.
Holiday was a musician of America and sang for black audiences, white audiences,
and racially mixed audiences in concert halls, night clubs and a variety of venues
throughout the country. Often when black musicians traveled during the early part
of the century they did so on buses and had to abide by the segregated rules of the
south: hotels, restaurants, public drinking fountains and public bathrooms among
other services would have been labeled – “whites only” or “colored only” to
designate who might use them. Naturally those buses went through some of the
deep south and it was not uncommon to see people hung from trees and left to
“rot” or decompose. Holiday, a successful musician who earned her living from
concerts and recordings made the decision to record this tune using the lyrics from
a poem of a school teacher from New York, I believe. She needed to speak out
against the injustice.
Essentially she uses graphic language to give us the true picture of the murders so
we can see the degradation, the brutality and the suffering of these people who
were hung. We see the twisted mouths and bulging eyes, we see the blood at the
roots and the bodies, some burned, hanging from the trees, not given the ritual of
burial and left to the elements and to the birds who feast on carrion; who will drop
like fruit when they have decomposed enough. She compares them to fruit to
emphasize how their humanity has been stripped from them. And she also use the
poetic and literary technique of juxtaposing imagery as she compares the myth
many white southerners might like people to believe…..that the south has a code of
gallantry and respect and of pastoral harmony when the true reality is that in many
cases they had a culture of murder and disregard for black humanity.
Vocal Style: Holiday’s voice remains one of the most distinctive jazz voices in the
history of the music, both tonally and because of her unique phrasing. On “Strange
Fruit” she uses her tone and phrasing to convey the jagged pain of suffering, of
loss, a grieving wail that is both off key and haunting. Her pacing is slow as she
wants to be sure we hear each and every horrific detail of the hangings. She wants
us to know the true horror of what has happened. Near the end of the tune she
holds the notes in a long drawn out fashion so as to sustain the experience of the
suffering she imagines, has witnessed, and to draw our attention to the
dehumanization of the dead.
Instruments: The tune begins with the haunting and melancholy tone of the
trumpet. Just as one tradition finds the trumpet announcing the regal, the important,
another tradition of the trumpet is to convey the sadness and the grieving of the
living as they acknowledge their loss and pay tribute to the dead. It has been said
by many musicologists that the trumpet is the instrument that most resembles the
human voice. Here, as in Armstrong and Gunn’s tune, the trumpet replaces or
provides counterpoint with the voice for dramatic juxtaposition. The piano in the
tune plays only chords, avoids any flourishes or melody, and the pace of such
resembles the pace of the funeral dirges, marches that are like the funerals in New
Orleans. Again there is a guitar that provides background and before the dramatic
end of the tune you notice that the notes of the guitar descend the scale as if to
suggest lowering a body into its final resting place. And then the dramatic last
note: one strike of a bass drum, only one, as if to say “wake up, America!” or to
symbolize the jerk of the rope on a person’s neck or the body falling finally from
the tree.
GUNN:
Message: Gunn’s message is perhaps the most difficult to put into words as the rap
is served by the poetic and the metaphoric. Stay with me: “Hip hop means it’s okay
to hop off the bandwagon.” Hip hop was born from the artistic mandate that it
would be new and fresh and its initial “outlaw” character was that it did not have to
adhere to the parameters of the music that preceded it; of what was popular and
everyone else listens to. It was unique and one of a kind. “Quit bragging your true,
cause your pants are sagging.” In other words just because you affect a certain
style doesn’t mean you are that style. “You’re deeper than the clothes on your back
and the fact that you’re stuck in the ghetto, Jack.” Style and image are only one
layer of who we truly are and we must not be limited by our places of origination,
we must not allow people to define us accordingly or to pigeonhole us in that way.
We can grow and become and need not be solely defined by where we come from.
“How can you have rules in the game that changes” here he shifting not only from
style but to our taste in music and how many of us say we only listen to one
kind……when we limit our experiences and put them in a box. What he is saying
is that rap has many sub genres and that ultimately the real test of good music is if
it gets us moving and exclaiming our joy, perhaps with ‘Ho!”
Now gather round and let me tell you the story of Russell Gunn. He was a young
man growing up in East St. Louis and had the dream that what he wanted most was
to become and M.C., to rap, spit, create a flow with his rhymes. Then he was
introduced to the trumpet and jazz music and fell in love with it. Became very very
very good. Unlike Armstrong and Holiday, Gunn is still alive and still creating
music today and coined a new phrase to categorize his music and call it
“ethnomusicology.” His recordings and compositions often include influences of
varied music of the world that color his sound. He began to wonder why hip hop
and jazz could not be combined: and that’s the concept he speaks of. Music has
one long lineage in his mind and is not or should not be exclusive to other styles.
(Hence his lyric: “sounds like the blues with a phat groove”) In essence much of
America’s popular music comes from the blues and the field songs of the slave
experience. This tune of his is one of the first to combine elements of hip and jazz.
Once he was playing at a club in St. Louis and a famous and highly regarded alto
sax player heard him and told him he needed to come to New York and play; New
York, the mecca for all jazz players. Now, legend has it he went and showed up to
play a gig and he was dressed in baggy baggy jeans, had on a huge hockey shirt,
unlaced Timberlands and his hair braided into corn rows. In short he was dressed
as many of his generation: in style. The older jazz musicians didn’t believe he was
there to play or that he was worthy, until he took out his trumpet and then
proceeded to blow them away with his skills and technique. They soon realized he
was a musical force to be reckoned with.
In time he would return to his neighborhood and when his friends asked what he
was doing he told them and they gave him grief, telling him had sold out to the
older generation playing that “tired” jazz and not sticking with hip hop. It was then
he conceived of melding the music together and the concept was born.
When he speaks of “old socks new shoes” it’s simply an image of how the old fits
into the new all the time if we do not shut ourselves off to the evolution of art,
style, architecture…..the list goes on and on. Then the tune speaks of him wanting
to be an MC but shifts as well “swing” the language of a subgenre of jazz and then
speaking to innovation and how “we have our own thing.” The concept.
The last lyrics speak to man and wife which is only a metaphor for the marriage of
style and music. “What goes up must come down” speaks to how certain styles
return and in doing so offer new perspectives for new generations. He ends with
the admonition – “ do you remember the time, Black, when the only thing on your
mind was your hat?” In essence, do you remember the time when all you were
concerned with was style and not thinking about the bigger more complex picture
of life? It’s the concept.
Here’s another leap for you. Jazz is an art form that often sets up structure and then
offers opportunity for improvisation: the form is written out in musical notation for
all the musicians to follow: the improvisation is made up at the moment, played
from heart and offers insight to the heart of the soloist. The solo gives insight into
the truth of that person as that moment. Here Gunn plays the trumpet; and then
there is an improvisation of a saxophone. Notice how the latter in his solo towards
the end even affects a certain east Indian feel for what he plays, incorporating
Gunn’ s philosophy of music. Gunn does not play the sax, but he must have a
bandmate that agrees with his philosophy.
This bring us to the vocalist Chef Word, who like any MC worth his salt will have
the power to improvise as well and thus that will mark his status. So when Word
spits “ Runnin bustos, crush foes, Chef Word and Russell, goin on the gusto” he is
freestyling and thus proving his skills as an improviser – a concept known to both
jazz and hip hop…..or “I’ll drop jewels like that”…..intimating the values of his
rhymes. Or near the end when he says “flock to the moon, come soon…..etc.”
Soooooo in essence one might say Gunn’s primary audience is the black America
of his contemporaries, but like all good art, the message will transcend that limited
scope into the universal and apply to us all, regardless of race, creed, gender, age,
religious affiliation…..just as does Armstrong’s tune. We should not dismiss
people or art or expereince based in surface or first impression: people are much
more complex than that; music is as well; and so is life. And as well we all need a
certain structure – that’s what allows for the leisure time of civilizations, which is
where creativity really flourishes and allows for the individual and unique
expression of our own life’s improvisation. Why would we shut ourselves off to
experience when life is so rich and full of a multitude of experiences?
Vocal Style: Word’s use of the hip hop phrasing puts Gunn’s philosophy into
practice. And he is careful to enunciate so we hear the message as it is crucial to
what he and Gunn are doing. As with Armstrong, you might say Word’s voice is
soulful, truthful and we believe him. He is also skilled in that his freestyling is
adept and fluid and keeps us attentive to the tune. There is a flow that we connect
with. Notice how inviting he is in the beginning where he is reacting to the bass
line and he feels its pulse. We have all been there. If you have not, take your pulse
because you may not be alive. When music enters us….and it is very much a
physical experience…..there is no denying it. Do any of you ever say…oh stop
stop stop I cannot bear feeling this good. Usually we say….more more more.
Instruments: The acoustic bass opens the tune and sets a groove that never
changes: drums, piano and sax and trumpet then come in to establish the form
which the bass, drums, piano never relinquish. When Word breaks from the lyrics
then Gunn improvises on the trumpet; later, Antoine Roney does the same with the
tenor saxophone. The instruments support the rap of Word and his freestyling just
as they do the other improvisers.

So there you have it. I would have much preferred we had this conversation in
class but alas, it was not to be. I trust these notes will be of use to you in your own
interpretations. Remember to follow the format. Be in touch with questions. And if
you quote me or paraphrase this how.
In Text: (Blake 6). Or whatever page number you take from.
Work Cited: Blake, Jonathan. Jazz Notes: Class Handout. College Writing II.
Worcester State University. 3 Apr. 2020.

I have not cited the lyrics but you must and use the artist whose name is on the
recording. Last name as if an author. Now with these notes there will be 10
sources on your work cited page. Remember that history, definition and description
and bio are all important for context, but your primary focus is on interpretation,
and as well after establishing the message, how the latter two elements augment
that message to create the totality of the artistic experience.

Good luck.