{"id":8217,"date":"2023-11-08T16:02:14","date_gmt":"2023-11-08T22:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=8217"},"modified":"2023-11-08T16:02:45","modified_gmt":"2023-11-08T22:02:45","slug":"real-music-in-the-chicago-defender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2023\/11\/08\/real-music-in-the-chicago-defender\/","title":{"rendered":"Real Music in the Chicago Defender"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chicago Defender<\/em> was one of the most important newspapers of its time.\u00a0 The first black newspaper to have a circulation of over 100,000 copies1<\/sup><\/a>, the\u00a0Defender\u00a0<\/em>was read all throughout Chicago and the South.\u00a0 In addition, almost two thirds of its readers lived outside of Chicago.\u00a0 Within the\u00a0Defender<\/em> was a column written by David Peyton called “The Musical Bunch” which wasn’t as much aimed at the consumer as much as it was the musician.\u00a0 Peyton would encourage “…his readers, whom he referred to as \u201cthe Musical Bunch,\u201d to practice their instruments, attend engagements, arrive punctually for gigs, perform well, and above all to behave in a professional manner” (Waits 2013) 2<\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

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While Peyton was supportive of black musicians, he was derisive towards jazz as a genre.\u00a0 While he was glad that playing jazz was a means for black musicians to be successful, he wrote in 1927 that jazz did little to supplement musicians from an artistic standpoint3<\/sup><\/a>.\u00a0 To him, jazz was raucous and illegitimate; full of “incorrect fingerings”. This perspective is echoed in Anne Faulkner’s article, “Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation”, where she describes jazz as a destructive influence on American popular music.\u00a0 Similar to Faulkner, Peyton makes a distinction between orchestrated jazz and the kind found in bars.\u00a0 Both found the latter to be, in Peyton’s words, “barbaric, discordant, wild, shrieky music” that tainted otherwise talented musicians.<\/p>\n

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While Peyton denied the merit of jazz, what he could not deny was its overwhelming popularity.\u00a0 Even this concession, however, was filled with lament.\u00a0 Further in his July, 1927 edition of “The Musical Bunch”, Peyton discusses how jazz has expanded throughout the American and international sphere, but he applauds the “high calibre” Europeans that would rather import American jazz than learn the tradition themselves.\u00a0 Peyton, who was a pianist and orchestra leader at the time, also mentioned that he would only play jazz briefly upon request due to its popularity.<\/p>\n

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While it is easy to write of people like Anne Faulkner as fearful racists, it was curious to see that a black musician would so aggressively deride jazz.\u00a0 He wanted for black musicians to be successful in the music business, but only under the Western musical canon, which he believed to be uniquely refined and technical.\u00a0 Jazz, to him, a means to bread on the table, not real music.<\/p>\n

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1<\/a>\u201cThe Chicago Defender.\u201d n.d. www.pbs.org. Accessed November 8, 2023. http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/blackpress\/news_bios\/defender.html#:~:text=The%20Chicago%20Defender%20was%20the.<\/p>\n

\u200c2<\/a>Waits, Sarah A., “”Listen to the Wild Discord”: Jazz in the Chicago Defender and the Louisiana Weekly, 1925-1929″ (2013). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 1676. https:\/\/scholarworks.uno.edu\/td\/1676<\/p>\n

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3<\/a>Peyton, Dave. “THE MUSICAL BUNCH: WHAT JAZZ HAS DONE.”\u00a0The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967),<\/i>\u00a0Jul 16, 1927. https:\/\/www.proquest.com\/historical-newspapers\/musical-bunch\/docview\/492206986\/se-2.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Chicago Defender.\u201d n.d. www.pbs.org. Accessed November 8, 2023. http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/blackpress\/news_bios\/defender.html#:~:text=The%20Chicago%20Defender%20was%20the.<\/p>\n

Waits, Sarah A., “”Listen to the Wild Discord”: Jazz in the Chicago Defender and the Louisiana Weekly, 1925-1929″ (2013). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 1676. https:\/\/scholarworks.uno.edu\/td\/1676<\/p>\n

Walser, Robert. 2015.\u00a0Keeping Time : Readings in Jazz History<\/i>. New York: Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Chicago Defender was one of the most important newspapers of its time.\u00a0 The first black newspaper to have a circulation of over 100,000 copies1, the\u00a0Defender\u00a0was read all throughout Chicago and the South.\u00a0 In addition, almost two thirds of its … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5143,"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],"tags":[1068,36,1300],"class_list":["post-8217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2023-mus-345-b","tag-american-popular-music","tag-early-jazz","tag-the-chicago-defender"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jEhR-28x","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8217","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\/5143"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8221,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8217\/revisions\/8221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}