And in retrospect it's an attack that sounds so peculiar it doesn't even register as funny at first

[cimorene]

Golden Age detective novels from the 1920s and 30s occasionally betray an obviously widespread societal meme, because the casualness and briefness with which it's invoked imply that it would be easily recognized and understood by the audience: that jazz isn't "real" music.

Take this representative example from Bats in the Belfry by the prolific and popular Golden Age author, ECR Lorac (Edith Caroline Rivett), wherein a young woman thinks that a stuffy old uncle has done his best for her because he's "done what he could to teach her to read, to appreciate literature and despise trash, to listen to music as well as to jazz, and to speak English instead of schoolgirl slang."

This is interesting because this is exactly what a certain large subset of people thought was witty to say, and other people would sincerely and angrily say, about rap music in the 1990s.

Of course, it's not like it was a secret at the time that this claim was just racism, but there were always plenty of people who didn't know it, like other things that are well-known to be just racism like the 'blue lives matter' movement, or welfare cuts, or "bad neighborhoods".

But the point is that jazz not only sounds completely different from rap to the neophyte (I'm aware this is ignoring the musical traditions that connect them and plenty of sophisticated music analysis), with the main feature that connects them being their Black roots and their associations with Black culture; jazz has also now attained a venerable status as a genre, spoken of in the same breath as classical music.

Anyway, the pattern makes it even clearer, doesn't it? It's the exact same preposterous criticism.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

Yeah, it's so strange to read books from the period and realize that, compared to the status jazz has today.

[cimorene]

Yeah, exactly. Jazz moved right into the academy and then rap appeared on the street instead...

[twistedchick]

One reason for that difference is that a lot of early jazz musicians weren't classically trained -- they didn't read music. So here's this group of people making wild amazing music that doesn't follow musical rules and doesn't require a decade of serious lessons (though it doesn't hurt) and who often don't read music at all but can hear where the music is going and get there and be with it. What a shock!

[cimorene]

Yeah, of course, in that sense they were essentially folk musicians. But the status of jazz in popular culture wasn't like folk music's at all, and then, of course, like rap in the 90s, it was making rapid gains in recognition with white audiences in a field that was previously white, and it was also, as you say, philosophically and culturally as well as aesthetically very different.

[twistedchick]

When that book was written in the 20s and 30s, folk music had no status in popular culture but was something done by unlettered hicks somewhere else. It got little to no respect from the highly educated crowd until the late 40s and 50s, and the folk renaissance of the early 60s.

[cimorene]

Quite, it didn't have high status associated with it, but it had an identity, was a known quantity: not an unexpected newcomer with an alien sound and structure like jazz. A hillbilly playing on a banjo or a harmonica and a poor traveling jazz musician were very different characters, both marginalized, but one of them already had an established place in the cultural narrative.

[oracne]

Yep.

[phosfate]

Or Tom Lehrer's "Rock and roll and other children's records." My buddy, you are in the record shops under 'novelty songs,' next to "Flying Purple People Eater."

[cimorene]

🤣