Jazz It Up!

I know a lot about jazz, but I can’t believe I missed this tidbit my brother-in-law passed on about the origin of the word. It’s actually in a book I read a while back, On Highway 61: Music, Race and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom by Dennis McNally, so there’s no excuse. But check out this passage:

 

Among music’s little mysteries is the origin of the word “jazz.” My personal favorite comes from musician Garvin Bushell, who noted that the French had brought perfume making to New Orleans, and that ‘they used jasmine—oil of jasmine—in all different odors to pep it up. It gave more force to the scent. So they would say ‘let’s jass it up a bit,’ when something was a little dead. When you started improvising, they, they said, ‘jazz it up,’ meaning give your own concept of the melody…”. (p. 133)

 

I love it! I often talk about the alchemical golden transformation black musicians made of everything they touched musically. From the technique of the instrument to the style to the timbre to the rhythm to the connection to dance to the overall soul and spirit, all the things they had by necessity to deal with from the father’s European side were changed by the mother’s African sensibility and became part of this new language called jazz. It became the soundtrack of the 20^th century, described by Darius Milhaud as “the thunderclap that cleared the art sky.” 

 

Not that the European classical tradition was dead, but it certainly lost much contact with even a sophisticated audience as rhythm, melody and harmony spiraled away from the earth into higher and higher more abstract compositions. As jazz evolved, it caught the attention of classical composers, helping bring them back down to earth a bit. Debussy and Stravinsky wrote pieces inspired by ragtime. Horowitz and Rachmaninoff used to go hear Art Tatum play piano on 52^nd Street. Gershwin walked both sides of the tracks as he studied with Ravel and borrowed ideas from Duke Ellington. Charlie Parker openly admired Stravinsky and his favorite recording was with strings backing him. Leonard Bernstein also crossed the tracks in many ways, including summarizing music thus: “It’s all jazz.”

 

Never would I suggest that “swinging the classics” improves them—each genre has its own integrity and stylistic beauty. But the overall effect of jazz in America is well-described by its possible word origin— giving a perky sweet scent to the otherwise somewhat mundane and odorless. Be it music or life, let’s jazz it up!