Spring 2023 Music course: The Practice of the American Bandleaders
Spring 2023, MUHL4300/5320. Open to Grad/UG from across the TTU campus, TR 12:30-1:50pm. All welcome, and please pass the word!
IOR: Dr Christopher Smith, Chair of Musicology & Director of the Vernacular Music Center
COURSE: MUHL4300-001 (CRN 49844) / MUHL5320-001 (CRN 49848): THE PRACTICE OF THE AMERICAN BANDLEADERS
Explore the “situational virtuosity” of a wealth of New World/North American visionary artists, from the worlds of blues, jazz, funk, bluegrass, rock, hip hop, salsa, and beyond
MUHL4300/5320 is a one-semester, topics-oriented historical survey of the unique synthesis of musicianship, cultural awareness, people skills, and visionary creative imagination which American bandleaders of all eras, genres, and genders have contributed to the world.
Improvisation, group collaboration, and “situational virtuosity” have been a part of many American vernacular musics since the first founding of the Republic. Yet still, in the 21st century, the scope, nature, and integrated aesthetics of (especially) African American creative practices—especially in the areas of group creativity—are studied and understood only fragmentarily. Jazz, blues, funk, and related idioms are primarily studied as journalistic topics, subjects for theoretical or technical analysis, and/or sociological phenomena. This course will develop a model for understanding situational virtuosity as a unique form of leadership: that is, a mode of artistic command, distinctive from though complementary to technical facility or compositional creativity, which comprehends the complex and subtle musical, cognitive, personal, historical, and cultural factors which, when aligned, make superlative collaborative performance possible. We will place “situational virtuosity” at the heart of American creativity in collaborative performance.
Focal individuals may include: Allison Kraus & Bill Monroe (bluegrass), Art Blakey, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Carla Bley & Toshiko Akiyoshi, Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Esperanza Spaulding & Lil Hardin Armstrong (jazz), Frank Zappa, George Clinton, Howlin Wolf, James Brown, James Reese Europe, Jimi Hendrix, Maria Schneider & Mary Lou Williams (jazz), Missy Elliot (hip hop), Miles Davis, Muddy Waters, Prince Rogers Nelson, Sun Ra, Susan Tedeschi & Chrissie Hynde (rock), Tito Puente & Celia Cruz (salsa).
MODULES:
Introduction: frames the argument in chronological and interpretative fashion, lays out the parameters and criteria for inclusion and identifies key shared characteristics among the target individuals—characteristics which have not formally been theorized in the analysis of these same individuals’ creative activities
The Blues: The very different, yet contemporaneous and competitive, strategies of Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf, of their mentors and predecessors, and of their alumni, including Little Walter Jacobs, Hubert Sumlin, and Bob Margolin.
Jazz: The internationalist perspective of bandleaders like Toshiko Akiyoshi and Maria Schneider, the early compositional and directorial experiments of Carla Bley and Charles Mingus, and the collectivist, Afro-futurist vision of Sun Ra. Also cited in this module, parallel experiments with communal living and creative collaboration in the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the NYC loft-jazz movement.
Funk: the sources, rigor, and stylistic innovations of James Brown’s organizations, versus the open-ended, more sprawling “universe” of his disciple (and inheritor-of-musicians) George Clinton, and the synthesis of both promulgated by their spiritual descendent Prince Rogers Nelson.
Beyond and before: the leadership approaches, stylistic influence, and business acumen of bandleaders as diverse as Bill Monroe (bluegrass) and James Reese Europe (ragtime/pre-jazz). May also include examples like Susan Tedeschi and Chrissie Hynde (rock), Allison Kraus (bluegrass), Esperanza Spaulding and Lil Hardin Armstrong (jazz), and Missy Elliot (hip hop).
Conclusions: The concluding module summarizes key themes and in so doing argues for the necessity of fundamentally reconsidering the nature of intentional artistry in the American vernacular traditions, which is situational, communal, and collaborative, and thus stands in opposition to and largely uncomprehended by the post-Romantic tradition of the heroic individual. Recognizing the particular genius of the American bandleader requires letting go of the premise that composition is an isolated, solo, or exclusively individual activity. The “situational virtuosity” of bandleaders exists in the collaborative moment, on the bandstand or in the recording studio, in understanding the complex gestalt of combining precomposed material, individual players preferences and complementarities, and the moment by moment happy accidents which occur within the phenomena of improvised performance.
EXTENDED NARRATIVE:
The story of how influential bandleaders—from Bill Monroe to Muddy Waters to Carla Bley—convened groups of musicians to yield watershed performances and recordings is a story of particularly American set of cultural factors, including race, class, enslavement, politics, copyright, composition, improvisation, economics, infrastructure, and technology, combined at historical moments to permit visionary artistic innovations. The “great” bandleaders, including those mentioned and also Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and Prince, had a capacity to read such historical moments, to understand where music genres were and where they were going, and how to identify particular combinations of players who could respond to and create from within these moments. Some, like Art Blakey and Jimi Hendrix, were virtuosos themselves, whose ensembles showcased the leader’s musical prowess; others, like Ellington and Miles, were distinctive stylists but did not possess or choose to prioritize their own bravura technique, instead concentrating upon and showcasing unique talents not previously combined or conceived to be compatible. Others, like Mary Lou Williams and Dizzy Gillespie, let massively influential ensembles but also distinguished themselves as teachers and mentors. Still others, like Frank Zappa and George Clinton, possessed and maintained a strong if sprawling vision of a musical heterodoxy, often working from “roots” (blues, R&B, Appalachian, or regional) traditions to synthesize a complex, inclusive world of experimental and innovative musical practice.
Through the examination of individual case studies, the manuscript identifies causative phenomena shaping bandleaders’ responses to moments, individuals, and stylistic innovation. This module format also permits selective periodization and genre-by-genre examination, including “hard country,” blues, rhythm & blues, jazz, band music, funk, and so on. A Conclusions module will link the individual case studies’ insights to wider trends in cultural history and argue for a reconsideration of the nature of American musical virtuosity as a situational phenomenon, whose caliber and impact must be assessed by other means including but reaching beyond objectified results (recordings and compositions) to better depict and understand creative processes.
NO SPECIAL MUSIC TERMINOLOGY OR NOTATION SKILLS ARE REQUIRED, and the course is open to both music majors and non-music majors.
Course requirements include reading and listening, mid-term and final essay exams, and a research project (paper, website, other medium) assignment. Fulfills Grad and UG MUHL requirements
Meets Tue-Thu 12:30-1:50pm
Suitable for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students but does not presume any extensive formal musical knowledge; enrollment is thus welcomed from American Studies, History, Mass Communications, Black and Caribbean Studies, Anthropology, International Studies, and Political Science, as well as Music.
All materials open-access.
Facebook “event” at https://www.facebook.com/events/2941302435964934/
Dr Christopher Smith
(christopher.smith@ttu.edu)
Goals:
Developing familiarity with a range of social, cultural, historical, economic, and biographical factors which have shaped “situational virtuosity” in the artistic practice of American musical innovateors and bandleaders, in all ears of the Republic. Emphasis upon understanding the interaction of “content” (musical structure, procedure, aesthetics versus agendas, biographies, and writing, etc) and “context” (times-places-peoples from which musical idioms and cultural phenomena originated). Enhance sensitivity to interactions of music and cultural history.
Emphasis:
This course will concentrate on North American music and musical life as that culture has been spread throughout the African Diaspora, the Caribbean, and the Black Atlantic, with particular attention to the dissemination of African American musical aesthetics, approaches, and values. We will include sequential modules focusing upon: literature and analytical methodology; acoustic and electric blues; all eras and styles of jazz; funk from the 1970s to the present; additional North American musical styles beyond the African American world; and a concluding module which will help us summarize key themes and think about how these situational, communal, and collaborative ethics and aesthetics have shaped North American culture, both on and beyond the bandstand.
Instructor’s Personal Statement:
I have been a student and scholar of North American and Black American musical styles, instruments, performance practices, and cultural context since approximately 1974. Thus, although I am not a BIPOC, I nevertheless consider myself an ally of these musics and of the complex and challenging cultural experiences from which they emerge. I believe deeply in the depth, power, artistry, and profound human experience that lives within these musics and I have spent a lifetime advocating on their behalf. At the same time, I recognize that I am an outsider to Black American experience and I vow to always seek to center BIPOC voices in this course’s content, practice, personnel, and outlook.
