I assume that people can follow the thread of discussion. I brought up the classical influences on jazz in response to an argument that seemed to place jazz harmony in a separate box. I ask if there is any major harmonic development in jazz that doesn’t have some precedent in composer music [insert your preferred term here]. No one has offered an example yet.
Even if we come up with one or two, my point stands–jazz harmony largely derives from existing music, the primary type of innovation coming in its adaptation for jazz performance. My point is not to diminish jazz–it’s been my life’s work; no one could respect it more than I do. My point is that jazz is an analytical category, and that most music we place in that category is profoundly influenced by music outside of that category.
The rude poster above (not you) implied that it is somehow improper to suggest that “white guys” did it first. Yet I have never mentioned race in this context. I will pose another challenge: What’s wrong with taking inspiration from other musicians? Why make the race of the inspiration the most salient feature of that artist?
To engage in race reduction when discussing jazz is a remnant of the Jim Crow era, particularly early 20th century primitivism. You can see it in jazz criticism of the 1920s, where black jazz musicians are presented as primitive untutored geniuses expressing their feelings naturally. The problem with this should be obvious. It diminishes the artist’s agency. It denies all the years of hard work and study he put in to be able to perform. Most significantly, it reproduces the racial ideology–the reduction of an artist’s humanity to his skin color.
