{"id":8083,"date":"2023-10-30T14:15:06","date_gmt":"2023-10-30T19:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=8083"},"modified":"2023-10-30T14:15:06","modified_gmt":"2023-10-30T19:15:06","slug":"duke-ellington-got-it-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2023\/10\/30\/duke-ellington-got-it-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"Duke Ellington “Got It Bad”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Samuel A. Floyd Jr. ‘s \u201cBlack Music in the Harlem Renaissance\u201d quotes that \u201cThe white show world of downtown New York, where a few black musicians performed and where black shows were also presented, was active, but after hours everyone, white and black, went to Harlem to hear black music.\u201d1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Duke Ellington began his claim to fame starting in 1923, when he moved from Washington D.C. to New York to build his musical career. Within just one year, Ellington became the leader of his own band, which regularly performed at the Cotton Club. By 1930, Ellington and his band were playing all over the country and the world, winning countless awards, including 13 grammy\u2019s and the Pulitzer Prize Special Citation in 1999.2<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

George Redd\u2019s observations imply that it was the more educated jazz musicians who helped to bring the two camps (white and black musicians) together. He points out that Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, and others presented an image that was acceptable to the intellectuals. Ellington\u2019s dignified bearing, his aristocratic flair, and his self-assurance in any company exemplified the New Negro, in and outside the jazz world.\u201d1<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

And that is exactly what Ellington did. By the mid 1920s, Duke Ellington already established himself and his jazz orchestra as highly successful contributors to black music. But how could black composers further expand their brand while continuing to experience the inequalities of living compared to white people? One way that Ellington did so was by composing for a predominantly white profession: symphony orchestras, operas, and theatrical productions.
\n\u201cEllington and his peers used jazz not only to satirize white culture but also increasingly to parody the music itself thus shifting its direction from swing to bop.
\nEllington reflected through his music the social and cultural changes that occurred as more African Americans were able to gain greater personal autonomy free from interference by white society.3<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Ellington\u2019s three-movement suite titled Black, Brown and Beige\u201c presents historical narratives of the nation. Black, Brown and Beige, a \u201ctone parallel\u201d to black history as Ellington describes, \u201cuses sounds and themes associated with jungle style but recontextualizes their musical and racial meanings in ways that transform the style\u2019s primitivist codes. The work\u2019s three movements represent the monumental moments and movements in African American historical memory: slavery, emancipation, and urbanization in the northern metropole.4<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

During the same time period, a man by the name of Harry T. Burleigh was also a leading contributor to bridging the gap between black society and musicians to the white society and classically-trained musicians by composing and intertwining spirituals into the classical music tradition. Burleigh\u2019s new ideas, however, got loads of backlash, as segregation still played a major role in American society at the time.<\/p>\n

Van Vechten often made critical comments on Burleigh\u2019s arrangements: \u201cWhite singers have been attracted to Mr. Burleigh\u2019s arrangements, because they include many of the \u2018tricks\u2019 which make any song successful, while the accompaniments are often highly sophisticated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Van Vechten claimed, when discussing the arrangements of Harry Burleigh, that Harlem Renaissance musicians should base their work on the twentieth-century music of the South. If they really wanted to preserve the spirituals, they should go to the South and do their own fieldwork. Philosopher, arts patron, and friend of Van Vechten also made strong jabs at people like Ellington and Burleigh, claiming that \u201cthe proper idiom of Negro folk song calls for choral treatment\u201d and that Black musicians who were \u201cin vital touch with the folk traditions of Negro music\u201d were \u201cin commercial slavery to Tin Pan Alley and subject to the corruption and tyranny of the ready cash of our dance halls and the vaudeville stage.\u201d On the other hand, musicians (like Burleigh and Ellington), who had formal training, were in his opinion \u201cdivorced from the people and their vital inspiration by the cloister-walls of the conservatory and the taboos of musical respectability.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Regardless of the critics of the 1930-1940s, what Burleigh and Ellington did was create strides for racial equality through music. Ellington and his Orchestra will go down as one of the most influential musical groups in American history, not entirely for their catchy compositions, but for the impact they had on giving minorities a voice to make careers in whatever field they want, even with the backlash they often received from a predominantly white nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we could not say openly, we expressed in music, and what we know as \u2018jazz\u2019 is something more than just dance music.\u201d – Duke Ellington3<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

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1 <\/a>Floyd, Samuel A. \u201cChapter 1: Music in the Harlem Renaissance, An Overview, Samuel A. Floyd Jr.\u201d Essay. In Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance a Collection of Essays<\/i>. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1993.<\/a><\/p>\n

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2 <\/a>\u201cDuke Ellington.\u201d Duke Ellington | Songwriters Hall of Fame. Accessed October 30, 2023. https:\/\/www.songhall.org\/profile\/Duke_Ellington.<\/p>\n

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3 Malcolm, Douglas. “”MYRIAD SUBTLETIES”: SUBVERTING RACISM THROUGH IRONY IN THE MUSIC OF DUKE ELLINGTON AND DIZZY GILLESPIE.”\u00a0Black Music Research Journal<\/i>\u00a035, no. 2 (Fall, 2015): 185-227. https:\/\/www.proquest.com\/scholarly-journals\/myriad-subtleties-subverting-racism-through-irony\/docview\/1799185448\/se-2.<\/a><\/p>\n

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4 Barg, Lisa Diane. “National Voices \/modernist Histories: Race, Performance and Remembrance in American Music, 1927\u20131943.” Order No. 3044927, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 2001. https:\/\/www.proquest.com\/dissertations-theses\/national-voices-modernist-histories-race\/docview\/304756357\/se-2.<\/a><\/p>\n

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5 Snyder, Jean E..\u00a0Harry T. Burleigh : From the Spiritual to the Harlem Renaissance<\/i>. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2016. Accessed October 30, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Samuel A. Floyd Jr. ‘s \u201cBlack Music in the Harlem Renaissance\u201d quotes that \u201cThe white show world of downtown New York, where a few black musicians performed and where black shows were also presented, was active, but after hours everyone, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5142,"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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1397,1],"tags":[898,359,1070,35],"class_list":["post-8083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2023-mus-345-b","category-uncategorized","tag-concert-jazz","tag-duke-ellington","tag-harry-burleigh","tag-jazz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jEhR-26n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8083","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\/5142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8084,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8083\/revisions\/8084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}