The Illinois times. (Champaign, Ill.) 19??-19??, 1950-09-22
4 HfsTORY or JAZZ

According to Legend, the beat
! which Is at the center Of Jazz
/ and something more, a fringe Of
decorative melody, came over u
| the Americas from West Africa
IN the slave ships. According 70
this tradition, the American Ne
gro, accepting or rejecting his
African heritage, shaped and form
ed jazz BY imposing a heavy layer
Of his native jungle chants and
rhythms upon the European ma
terials he found in the land Of his
enforced adoption. For some years
now a crew Of industrious anthro.
biologists, social scientists. and
emigres from other fields. has
been hard at work making this
story stick. From the outside
looking In, il Is an impressive sto-
~, buttressed with columns Of
footnotes, lnteflarded with quota
tions from German authorities.
generously sprlnkled with the
eommonplaces Of academic pre-
tension; It confirms the average
mans impression Of the Negro as
jungle formed primitive whose
basic expression is inevitably say
age: it sits we'll with the editors
and readers OF the eountry's chi
chi magazines, in which this con.
eeption Of jazz finds high favor.
From the inside looking out. from
the point of view Of the jazz mu-
sicians themselves, this is a the
DRY which in practice distofts the
facts out of all resemblance TO
the music which has been played
since the end of the 18th century
as jazz. by lazzmen. Whatever its
merits rs myth, il doesn't fit with
the facts of the music itself 1t
won't do.
The impetus for this interpre-
tatlon of sources, it seems 10 me,
lies within the range of musical
tastes of the men who make il.
In the case of writers like Rudi
Blesh. devotion to the music of
Jelly Roll Morton and Baby Doods
Jimmey Yaneey, George Lewis
and their singing and playing con
temporaries, clearly informs every
detailig Of jazz history. But is
this information or prejudice arts
ing from an entirely legitimate
personal taste? In the case of an
thropologists like Melville j. Her
skovlts, the highly placed and in
defatigable chief spokesman for
this line of inquiry, profession
al interest in Negro culture gov
erns the approach To jazz In ad
dition, there is that taste for and
appreciation of the recherche, the
| remote, which are the inevitable
| developments of u specialized
knowledge. In this instance, the
| specialized knowledge Of African
music and its tributary sounds
In other cultures has been the
spur To some very questionable
activity in the field of Jazz his
tory, and To some very curious.
unmusical identifications in Jazz
performances.
Ii Is vital to an understanding
of this issue to understand fur
Their the large part that the cul
tural anthropologist plays in our
academic life Coupling his rich
resources with the genuine dis
coverles of the clinical psychia
trist and the less certain specu.
lations of the literary pscho ana
lyst, the cultural anthropologist
| has made vast attacks upon his
7 own world as well as the surviv-
ing remnants of antecedent So
eieties. From such mating comes
| the concept of an African music
lodged in the unconscious of
American Negroes. CIT must be
emphasized, Blesh writes in his
Shining Trumpets,' that Dodds
has no first hand knowledge Of
African drumming and music. He
thinks of himself, ON the con
trary, as modern jazz drum
mer and evolves all of his effects
directly from the unconscious. y