music reading response

[This reading guide will help you get the most out of the reading. You do not have to complete and submit responses to these questions.]

Reading guide for Week 3

Relevance of the reading:

LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka) writes that blues was a stance, not just a kind of music. It stood for Black experience and could not be replicated by White folk nor even by middle-class Blacks. Read a chapter from his famous Blues People that talks about how blues morphed into jazz and became a dominant musical experience for many American citizens in the 1920s and 1930s.

Have you ever wanted to know why young women screamed in ecstasy when Elvis shook his hips? What was the craze all about? Simon Frith, a well-known cultural studies scholar in popular music, explains how this crazed reaction came about in early rock music. His article is a deep and technical read; so, take your time to absorb his points and how he philosophically connects the dots. If you understand Frith, you will begin to understand how “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” came about and how North American popular music genres intersect with feeling, bodies, race, and gender.

Jones 1963. “Swing—From Verb to Noun.” From Blues People. Pp 142-65.

1. Take notes on these important bands that show up throughout the chapter:

Original Dixieland Jazz Band

King Oliver’s Creole Band

Hot Five

Benny Goodman Orchestra

2. Take notes on these important instrumentalists that show up throughout the chapter:

Louis Armstrong

Jelly Roll Morton

Paul Whiteman

Bix Beiderbecke

Fletcher Henderson

Duke Ellington

3. Cities are critical to the circulation of blues and jazz in the early 1900s. Which cities are some of the most important urban centers of music at this time?

4. Pages 147-8. Why does Jones say that white Americans could not properly do the blues?

5. Page 148. “___________ made it possible for the first time for something of the legitimate feeling of Afro-American music to be imitated successfully.”

6. Page 151. What is particularly novel, according to Jones, about white Americans appropriating black music styles which became “jazz”?

7. Page 153. Read the second full paragraph closely. Here is a thesis statement for Jones’ entire book dealing with the “blues attitude.” What do you think he means by this phrase?

8. Pages 162-65. Does Jones consider the growing black middle class in America to be an authentic Black class? Or an authentic American class? How does he read the Black middle class in America during the 1920s/30s? What does Jones mean that swing music is a symbol of the Black middle class during the late 1930s and early 1940s?

Frith 1996. "Rhythm: Race, Sex, and the Body." In Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Pp. 123-44.

1. Name several of the binaries that Frith discusses in the first pages of the article (example: nature vs. culture). What does the Industrial Revolution and European Romanticism have to do with these binaries? (you might have to come back to this question after you read the whole article)

2. Pages 126-7. What were some of the racist readings of “black” and “African” in the 19th-early 20th centuries?

3. Pages 128-9. Why did white audience interpret rock music ideologically like jazz music?

4. Pages 130-1. This is a critical part of the argument in this article. Make sure you understand two phrases: “white-boy-wildly-sings-black” and “blacking up.” What are the invisible ideological hegemons behind the production of this kind of white musician and also the black musician who had to “blacken up”?

5. Now, Frith will discuss rhythm in great detail as an element of African musics. One of his overall points is that music must be understood within its own context. So, to these aims, answer the following:

a. Rhythm is a physical matter. But how is rhythm in some African cultures (as referenced in this section) all about the mind too?

b. Why does it matter that in many African societies music is more about function and communication, and less about stage performance in the European sense?

c. Page 136. What is Frith’s point about the differences in how white and black children sing “Little Sally Water” in the schoolyard?

d. Page 138. Charles Keil is saying that “feeling” is engendered by “embodied meaning.” So, embodied meaning and feeling are inextricably linked. Understand here that the connection of sex to rock rhythms by way of African black bodies is disconnecting feeling from embodied meaning. It is a particular kind of white hearing.

6. Page 141. You almost made it! Where is the paragraph on this page that synthesizes the main point of the article?

7. Pages 142-44. The last two points are really good ones. One is about listening and the other is about the relationship of rhythm in popular music. Summarize each one of these final concepts.