{"id":873,"date":"2015-03-24T00:55:51","date_gmt":"2015-03-24T05:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=873"},"modified":"2015-03-24T00:58:50","modified_gmt":"2015-03-24T05:58:50","slug":"is-rhapsody-in-blue-an-inauthentic-representation-of-jazz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2015\/03\/24\/is-rhapsody-in-blue-an-inauthentic-representation-of-jazz\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Rhapsody in Blue an “Inauthentic” Representation of Jazz?"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to some jazz scholars, a racialized barrier between the black, \u201cauthentic\u201d extended jazz compositions of Duke Ellington and the white, \u201cinauthentic\u201d symphonic jazz of Gershwin has emerged in critical and scholarly accounts of these traditions.\u00a0However, when Ellington rearranged\u00a0Rhapsody in blue<\/em>, these barriers were considered to become more complex and permeable.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhites Cannot Play Real Jazz\u201d- this is not only the title of a newspaper article (Pittsburgh Courier) in 1923, but inclined the idea that \u201cin Whites\u2019 performance, there is little real substance to black art in itself, that it is mainly a figment of white people\u2019s racially twisted imagination.(Gerard, 101)\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ba\u00f1agale, Ryan Raul. “Rewriting the Narrative One Arrangement at a Time: Duke Ellington and Rhapsody in Blue.” Jazz Perspectives<\/i> 6.1-2 (2012): 5-27.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Duke Ellington\u2019s arrangements performed in 1925 and 1932 tried to remove long-held assumptions that the\u00a0Rhapsody in blue<\/em>\u00a0was the provenience of white bands and provide insight into Ellington’s own development of concertized jazz. With a belief that \u201ca soloist should be given absolute freedom,\u201d Ellington might be one of the \u201cangry African-American avant-garde jazz artists\u201d that tried to point out white composers who have made money out of spontaneity and primitiveness of African- American art fail to see the skill and calculation of the Black composers\/performers(Gerard, 98). In his 1932 arrangement of Rhapsody<\/em>, he increased the large saxophone section into four, instead of using clarinets, hoping to achieve more complex harmonies and timbral. He also wanted to recall a social dance tradition instead of letting audiences sit on concert hall chairs. Except of an improvised piano solo, his arrangement can be played with a steady, danceable tempo\u00a0(Raul, 105).<\/p>\n

Here is a reconding of\u00a0Ellington’s latest arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue:<\/em><\/p>\n

http:\/\/ezproxy.stolaf.edu\/login?url=https:\/\/search.alexanderstreet.com\/view\/work\/be|recorded_track|li_isrc_884385543143USESK0602247<\/a><\/p>\n

However, would it be possible that Duke Ellington misunderstood intentions of some White composers? Chick Corea once said:<\/p>\n

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Gerard, Charley. Jazz in Black and White: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Jazz Community<\/i>. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1998. Print.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thus some of White composers\u2019 interests in jazz were primarily aesthetic, since their music does not play a part in establishing a group\u2019s social cohesion, as African-American music does for Black culture. Whites have a strong interest in expanding the technical aspects of jazz by introducing elements from modern classical music. At the same time, it would be rigorous that a successful performance of music that has jazz elements requires that all of its traditional ingredients be present in order for it to be considered authentic. Thus I personally won\u2019t agree that in transforming jazz into \u201cfine art\u201d, composers\/performers sought to transform\/affirm their racial status in order to \u201cdistant\u201d blackness.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited:<\/p>\n

Ban\u0303agale, Ryan R. Arranging Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue and the Creation of an American Icon<\/i>. , 2014. Print.<\/p>\n

Ba\u00f1agale, Ryan Raul. “Rewriting the Narrative One Arrangement at a Time: Duke Ellington and Rhapsody in Blue.” Jazz Perspectives<\/i> 6.1-2 (2012): 5-27.<\/p>\n

Gerard, Charley. Jazz in Black and White: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Jazz Community<\/i>. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1998. Print.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to some jazz scholars, a racialized barrier between the black, \u201cauthentic\u201d extended jazz compositions of Duke Ellington and the white, \u201cinauthentic\u201d symphonic jazz of Gershwin has emerged in critical and scholarly accounts of these traditions.\u00a0However, when Ellington rearranged\u00a0Rhapsody in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1296,"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":[],"class_list":["post-873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jEhR-e5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873","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\/1296"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":883,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions\/883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}