New York as the More Important Jazz City

            After it’s emergence in New Orleans near the turn of the 20^th century, jazz split in two directions: Chicago and New York. While Chicago held tightly to the roots of jazz created in New Orleans, New York attempted to evolve the sound and make jazz the most popular music of the day. New York achieved this feat through its heterogeneous community, distinct style, and exceptional musicians such as James P. Johnson.

According to Ken Burn’s theory, superlative individuals make jazz. These musicians are unmatched in their ability to play, perform, and adapt to the community’s interests. In cohesion with Burn’s theory, M.M. Bakhtin argues that there must be a dialogic involved in the creation of, in the context of this course, jazz. This dialogic imagination refers to the idea that a musician, novelist, etc. does not create a new piece without an intended listener in mind. This coincides with Thompson’s African theme of call and response. In Harlem during the 1920s, not only did the community create and influences the jazz, but also the jazz that helped build and create a culture in the community. Dr. Stewart proclaims Harlem was a crucible in which things are heating up and welding into one another to produce a distinct sound. The heterogeneous city that is Harlem gets its unique diversity from the middle class white neighborhood it was created for, and the plethora of races and cultures which eventually occupied it. Thus emerged the two Harlems: Renaissance and rent party. Renaissance Harlem had a deep community pride and provided a black “high culture”. Rent party Harlem reflected a crueler reality (Gioia 94). While Harlem Renaissance created a cultural context for jazz, the rent party led to the fusion cultures to create stride piano.

Stride piano is a style of jazz distinct to New York. It seeds from the rent parties of Harlem in the 20s where musicians were forced to change their style in accordance to the crowd in which they were playing for. Thus, the rent party musician must be practiced in classical, ragtime, blues, and jazz sounds. Combining these styles creates stride. Playing stride piano requires the improvisation and call and response necessary to please audiences of different tastes. Whereas Chicago style was more of an impersonation of New Orleans style, as demonstrated by the Austin High School Gang, New York’s community and artists produced its own style and directly contributed to the evolution of jazz.

James P. Johnson epitomizes the New York jazz pianist’s sound. Johnson’s “Carolina Shout” came to be the test-piece of all aspiring jazz pianists (Lyttleton 34). In the words of Duke Ellington, considered by some to be the premiere jazz musician, “James took over. Then you got the real invention—magic, sheer magic.” This incredible talent came from Johnson’s well known upbringing in various styles of music, including the ones mentioned above which led to the emergence of stride. This evidence may suggest Johnson to be the father of stride, and thus New York’s most important figure.

Jazz in New York helped mainstream the sound and consequently allowed the music to evolve into a much more fun and danceable form. Because of the heterogeneous nature of Harlem, and its call and response/dialogue, stars emerged to push jazz forward, making New York a more important city for jazz.

Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. Print.

Lyttelton, Humphrey. The Best of Jazz. New York: Taplinger, 1979. Print.