{"id":1013,"date":"2015-04-09T12:53:36","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T17:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=1013"},"modified":"2015-04-09T12:55:47","modified_gmt":"2015-04-09T17:55:47","slug":"bebop-is-vulgar-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2015\/04\/09\/bebop-is-vulgar-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Bebop Is Vulgar Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bebop was a jazz form birthed from a revolt against popularized commercial music. \u00a0As such, it was bound to have backlash and evoke strong reactions among the listeners. While researching this topic, I didn’t expect to find what I did: throughout decades of this music being around, the reactions have been somewhat… racist. \u00a0And the racist remarks coincidentally point to the Chinese. \u00a0See for yourself, as the article below shows a conversation at the U.N. which was published in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em> October of 1953.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"bebop<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This article aims to point out the bias of the Chinese interpreter at the U.N. discussion. \u00a0As the English representative used the work “bepop” which was a cognate in 4 of the 5 languages present. \u00a0However, the Chinese interpreter translated “bepop” to “vulgar music.” \u00a0So why is this strange? \u00a0Well on the front page regarding Bepop in the book Music in the Modern Age<\/em>,\u00a0there’s a quotation from Louis Armstrong as he disparagingly referred to Bepop as “Chinese music.” \u00a0This is pretty funny, isn’t it? After all, the Chinese representative would probably disagree with Louis, unless he thinks Chinese music is vulgar.<\/p>\n

\"bebop<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A modern band today known as The Far Eastside Band even includes this quotation in their liner notes, calling out Louis on his lack of knowledge on the subject. They Proclaim something that Armstrong would never imagine: how American\u00a0jazz could integrate the American greats like Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman with Asian instrumentation and improvisation. \u00a0Those liner notes can be found here<\/a>\u00a0and they introduce their new album\u00a0“Caverns.”<\/p>\n

So why did I decide to write my post about this? \u00a0I think the article really struck me and resonated when reading Armstrong’s quotation because this is not the first time in history it has happened. \u00a0We have associated Eastern music with something that is different and, often, strange. \u00a0Bepop was a strange form of jazz, and it was easy for listeners to describe it as Chinese with a negative connotation, labeling it strange and foreign, and perhaps unpleasant to listen to. \u00a0Unfortunately, this trend has not disappeared, as film scorers often use pentatonic scales to invoke the environment of Eastern lands or foreign places, tying down that scale to just that one location. \u00a0Even the soundtrack of\u00a0Bug’s Life<\/em><\/a>\u00a0is ridden with this, and it won many music awards. \u00a0I just think we as viewers and listeners need to be conscious of how we associate certain sounds with certain cultures, being careful to see music as an open connection where cultures and individuals can influence one another, not a stagnant and reliable sound to be scrutinized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bebop was a jazz form birthed from a revolt against popularized commercial music. \u00a0As such, it was bound to have backlash and evoke strong reactions among the listeners. While researching this topic, I didn’t expect to find what I did: … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":452,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[482,411,487,481,486,66,483,484,485],"class_list":["post-1013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-armstrong","tag-bebop","tag-bugs-life","tag-louis","tag-music-in-the-modern-age","tag-new-york-times","tag-stephen","tag-sweeney","tag-u-n"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jEhR-gl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/452"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1013"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1054,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013\/revisions\/1054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}