Jazz and Poetry

 

Poetry and jazz at the 2019 Italian Fusion Festival in Dublin

 

 

 

     This survey is idiosyncratic and far from exhaustive.  Far from attempting a definitive scholarly study, this essay is an impressionistic sketch of collaboration between the two arts by a critic who is as well a practitioner.

 

 

     Music and poetry have always been closely allied arts.  Lyric poetry was once regularly performed with music as its name indicates.  The Greek muse Euterpe, originally associated specifically with music, came to govern lyric poetry as well [1].  Some troubadour cansos bear as title the name of the tune to which they were meant to be sung.  In fact, until the Renaissance virtually all short poems were performed to music.  In the past half millennium the silent reading of poetry on a page has become the norm, but it remains the fact that most people continue to consume the two arts at once in the form of pop music. 

     From the early years of jazz some intellectuals were fascinated by its rhythms, while others were inspired only with disdain.  Gilbert Seldes in The Seven Lively Arts (1924) reflects this ambivalent reception when he says jazz is the “characteristic American expression,” and then adds that this fact is recognized “with a shudder by the English and with real joy by the French.”  In the United States a few poets were particularly intrigued by African-American culture, and some decided that their work would be appropriately complemented by jazz accompaniment.  Vachel Lindsay’s flamboyant performances led many to find his style jazz-like (though the poet himself felt distaste for jazz).  His “The Daniel Jazz” represented the improvisatory cadences of a Pentecostal preacher (compete with call and response instructions) [2].  Perhaps the most succinct view of the white Bohemia’s attitude toward Black America opens Mina Loy’s "The Widow's Jazz": “The white flesh quakes to the negro soul.”  Nor did all Black intellectuals appreciate jazz.  In the era of the Harlem Renaissance, writers like Du Bois and Alain Locke favored music like that of R. Nathaniel Dett who was capable of clothing Black material in concert hall European Romanticism over what they viewed as the music of brothels and bars.

     Among the writers of the twenties Langston Hughes stands out for his unapologetic partisanship for blues and jazz and his use of syncopated rhythms in his poetry.  He also pioneered spoken word performances with jazz, reading before the Playwriter's Circle in 1926 with musical backing  and shortly thereafter as part of the Lincoln University’s Glee Club concert.  During the 1950s Lawrence Lipton privately recorded Hughes doing poetry with a changing group of musicians [3]. In 1958 The Weary Blues was released by MGM on which Hughes reads with two ensembles, one led by Leonard Feather and the other by Charles Mingus [4].  The same year he performed with the Doug Parker Band on the Canadian television program The 7 O’clock Show.

     Many white writers as well combined words and jazz during the 1950s.   Kenneth Patchen had, during the ‘forties, read his work on the radio while playing jazz records in the background, obliging him to adjust to the musicians’ pace, the opposite of the ordinary relationship.  In the ‘50s he appeared  in venues like San Francisco's Blackhawk Club and The Cellar, and eventually Oakland's Civic Auditorium, and the Los Angeles Concert Hall, accompanied by Allyn Ferguson and the Chamber Jazz Sextet with whom he recorded Kenneth Patchen with the Chamber Jazz Sextet (1957).  In 1959 he recorded Kenneth Patchen Reads with Jazz in Canada with the Alan Neil Quartet.

     Beat writers recorded several historic albums of jazz and poetry during the ‘fifties.  Rod McKuen read poetry in San Francisco area clubs in the late ‘fifties and released an album of poetry and jazz titled Beatsville in 1959. Ken Nordine meanwhile issued his first album of Word Jazz (1957) with the Fred Katz group including Chico Hamilton under an alias [5].  David Amram collaborated with Jack Kerouac and in 1957, he, along with Jack Kerouac and poets Howard Hart and Philip Lamantia performed at the Brata Art Gallery on East 10th Street, in New York.  Kerouac enjoyed  sufficient celebrity that he even appeared on the Steve Allen Plymouth show in 1959 backed by Allen on the piano.  Later that year Allen and Kerouac released Poetry for the Beat Generation.  Kenneth Rexroth and Lawrence Ferlinghetti read with the Cellar Jazz Quartet on Poetry Readings in the Cellar (1957) followed the next year by Ferlinghetti’s Tentative Description of a Dinner to Promote the Impeachment of President Eisenhower and other Poems and then in 1960 by Rexroth’s Poetry and Jazz at the Blackhawk.  Allen Ginsberg’s Songs of Innocence and Experience (1969) featured trumpeter Don Cherry and drummer Elvin Jones and Ted Joans Jazzpoems (1979) with musicians such as Andreas Leep (bass), Dietrich Rauschtenberger (drums), Ralf Falk (guitar), and Uli Espenlaub (keyboards) [6].  In 1957 jazz poet Jack Micheline was given the Revolt in Literature award by a panel that included Charles Mingus with whom he sometimes performed. 

     Mingus was in fact notable among prominent musicians receptive to using words other than song lyrics in their performances.   While poets were interested in exploring the possibilities of reading with a jazz accompaniment, with the musicians often following the poet’s lead, jazz had from the start balanced words and music in songs, sometimes beautiful and sometimes mediocre as well as accommodating shouts (“Yeah!’ “Play it!”) and scat-singing.  During the ‘fifties a few musicians began to add elements of spoken word with Mingus leading the movement.  In the late ‘fifties he released a series of recordings with poets.  In 1957 the title track of his album Clown featured the writer for radio Jean Shepherd whom he admired.  Shepherd’s work had affinities to jazz improvisation since he typically told his stories without a written text.  The following year Mingus collaborated with Langston Hughes to produce one side of the Weary Blues album and in 1959 tracks he had done with Hughes and Lonnie Elder two years earlier were released as A Modern Jazz Symposium of Music and Poetry.  Mingus Ah Um (1959) included the “Fables of Faubus” which skewered the racist governor with devastating ridicule, shouted rather than sung by the musicians.  Other artists experimented as well, notably Ornette Coleman, who collaborated with Frank O’Hara and Leroi Jones (later Amiri Baraka).  During this golden era for jazz and poetry, many others, including Archie Shepp and Sun Ra also included spoken word in  their performances.  Jayne Cortez married the free jazz exponent Ornette Coleman released Celebrations & Solitudes: The Poetry of Jayne Cortez (1974) with Richard Davis on bass and Unsubmissive Blues (1979) with the Firespitters.

     While these recordings arose in the jazz and beat poetry milieux, the following decade brought the arrival of Black Power and the allied Black Arts Movement.  Writers like Sonia Sanchez and Haki Madhubuti explored the intersection of politics with jazz and poetry [7] and the Last Poets collective with their recordings The Last Poets (1970), followed by  This Is Madness (1971) and Chastisement (1972) [8].  Meanwhile Gil Scott-Heron’s first album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox (1970) had an unlikely popular hit with “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."      

     More recently, the rise of hip hop culture, including manipulated DJing in the early seventies by figures like Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa and poetry with music (though sampling is scarcely jazz) such as the Sugar Hill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight (1979) and Grandmaster Flash’s album The Message (1982). 

     A good many jazz and poetry collaborations have appeared since the turn of the present century, including work by Steve Dalachinsky, Barry Wallenstein, Yusef Komunyakaa, Golda Solomon, and Allan Harris, among many others.  The hip hop tradition continues with artists like Kendrick Lamar.  The Jerry Jazz Musician website offers a great deal of information on many performers.  Many musicians and poets around the world have contributed as well, including numerous performances, many recorded, by British poets such as Michael Horovitz and Christopher Logue.  Among Eastern European practitioners have been Czech trumpeter Štepánka Balcarová and Polish vocalist Malgorzata Hutek’s who accompanied Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav’s sonnets and improvisations by Russian artists Vladimir Tarasov and Alexey Kruglov.  Perhaps the outstanding achievement in the genre is Speak-Spake-Spoke with Kirpal Gordon reading from his book Eros in Sanskrit with the great Claire Daly Band.  In this ensemble the music and words are elegantly balanced with the voice acting as another instrument, taking solos on occasion, but allowing the musicians free rein. 

     Music and poetry have been allied from archaic times, and poetry with jazz has already a hundred year history.  Jazz is hip for a number of reasons.  The association of jazz with African-Americans lends the combination an edgy radical avant-garde aspect, emphasized by its enthusiastic adoption by bohemians and socially conscious rappers.  Though few poets improvise (though free-stylers do exist) and, in fact, many other musical genres are improvised (notably Indian classical music both Hindustani and Carnatic), the improvisatory element in jazz is attractive to the Romantic view of art, emphasizing freedom and individual genius.  The rise of spoken word shows has to some extent pushed back against the post-Renaissance relegation of poetry to the silently read printed page, to a degree restoring poetry to its historic place as an entertainment, similar to a play or a concert.  If jazz is one of America’s greatest cultural contributions, the combination of jazz with poetry is its offspring, arising first in the United States, in minority racial and social milieux, yet blossoming into art meaningful and beautiful to all.

 

 

 

 

1.  Words and music were likewise joined for Melpomene, Thalia, Terpsichore, and Polyhymnia who represented tragedy, comedy, choral and sacred song respectively.  Calliope was the muse of epic which, while not sung, was chanted to the accompaniment of the phorminx.

2.  In spite of his hostility to jazz and his old-fashioned racial stereotyping, Lindsay was also influential In encouraging the young Hughes.

3.  This historic material has to my knowledge only been aired, for instance on a 1959 KNX radio program titled “The Beatniks” and as part of 1963 Conference at UCLA. 

4.  Hughes also appeared with Mingus’s group at the Five Spot and the Village Vanguard.

5.  This was followed by Love Words and Son of Word Jazz (1958) and a long series of further albums, popular among friends of cannabis.  Nordine later recorded with The Grateful Dead and released his final album at the age of eighty-seven. 

6.  Joans’ recording of “Jazz Must be a Woman” can be heard on I Giganti Del Jazz Vol. 96.

7.  Their recorded performances are much later, for instance, Haki Madhubuti with Nicole Mitchell on Liberation Narratives (2014) and Sonia Sanchez with bassist Christian McBride in The Movement Revisited (2020).

8.  Other recordings by members of the group include The Original Last Poets - Right On Original Soundtrack (1971), Black Spirits - Festival Of New Black Poets In America (1972), Hustlers Convention (1973), At Last (1973), Jazzoetry (1976), Delights of the Garden (1977) Oh My People (1984), Freedom Express (1988), Retro Fit (1992), Holy Terror (1993), Scatterap/Home (1994), Time Has Come (1997), The Prime Time Rhyme of The Last Poets - Best Of Vol. 1 (1999), The Prime Time Rhyme of The Last Poets - Best Of Vol. 2 (1999), Understand What Black Is (2018), and Transcending Toxic Times (2019). 

9.  Komunyakaa also collaborated with Sascha Feinstein on several anthologies of jazz-influenced poetry titled The Jazz Poetry Anthology (vols. 1 and 2). 

Song Lyrics as Poetry

This is a draft of my thoughts on the subject to be presented December 9, 2018 as part of a Megaphone Series program on the topic at the Seligmann Center.


     Over the chronological and geographic span of our species, poetry has far more often been consumed as sounds in the air than as signs on a two dimensional surface. In this sense the youth listening to pop songs on an iPod is more traditional than the Wordsworth scholar reading silently in the library. The fact is that until the Renaissance, most poetry was performed: lyric forms were sung and epics chanted often to musical accompaniment. Ancient Greek and medieval English poems alike were sung; not infrequently, the authors of Tang Dynasty Chinese poems and troubadours from the south of France titled poems with the name of the well-known song their rhythms recalled. Blues lyrics and some from the Great American Songbook may be among the most beautiful poems of the twentieth century. And, of course, Dylan, who decades ago was praised by Christopher Ricks, the Oxford Professor of Poetry, has now received the Nobel prize.
     The assumption that poems are more beautiful and meaningful than song lyrics is today clearly less widespread than it once was, though it has not disappeared entirely. There is, indeed, no formula nor can there be proof of literary excellence. Value can only appear in one’s consumption of art. Beauty is manifested in widely differing forms depending on the genre of the work in question.
     One sort of art might seem superior to another, more likely to elicit sensations of beauty and sublimity, and the most theoretically compelling is perhaps the Gesamtkunstwerk. If a reader is moved by a written text, how much stronger might the impact be when the text is sung? Add a striking set design, costumes that transform the actors, and dance to add yet another layer of signifiers, and one arrives at the concept, at least, of what might be defended as the very most effective work of art. Yet of course, its advantage is illusory. Quantity of signifiers is not equivalent to their quality. A simple piece may be more powerful than a complex one. Bollywood movies as well as Wagnerian operas employ multiple arts for effect.
     In practice the desirable integration of words and music is elusive. When poetic lyrics are sung, it is very difficult to maintain a balance between the musical and verbal elements. In general, when poetry is read with jazz, for instance, the musicians will follow the poet, accompanying the words with appropriate sounds. On Steve Allen’s television performance with Jack Kerouac , Allen provides no more than frames and decorations for Kerouac’s reading. Often music functions as a movie soundtrack often does, seeking to reinforce the primary element – image or word – while never taking the spotlight.
     On the other hand, Mingus’ “Fables of Faubus” is primarily musical with the simple, direct words making their impression through their apparent sincerity and transgressive hip radicalism. Many thirteenth century comments on troubadours critique their melodies as though the poems were incidental. Who remembers such librettists as Francesco Maria Piave or even Lorenzo Da Ponte as significant poets? How many opera-goers, while knowing the story, even follow the words of each passage? For unity the pitch and timbre of the abstract sounds must equally support and be supported by the language. Yet if this demanding goal is even partially met, the result can be enchanting.
     The general dialectic of performed and written texts is exemplified by the comparison of sung versus read poems. Out loud, the effect is different every time but fixed for the individual performance; on the page it is set as in stone yet subject to ever-new readings. Whereas the sung lyric is animated and immediate though evanescent and caught in the unrolling of time, on the page it stands still, palpably concrete. The exact symmetry of these relations indicates that neither is superior; the excitement of music in the air is balanced against the richness of possibility retained on the page.
     Song lyrics, as they are designed for musical accompaniment, do differ from lines meant to be read, either aloud or silently. The song must be understood in passing, processed by the consumer as it happens like a film or a symphony, while the reader may return at liberty to reread a written text. Therefore printed lyrics may be knotty and resistant to interpretation while sung ones tend toward transparent lucidity. The first is more likely to challenge assumptions and introduce new ideas whereas the latter will tend to confirm pre-existing attitudes.
     Further, the social situation in which singing occurs reinforces the unanimity of response. Often songs are addressed to a more specific audience. Warriors liked heroic epics, a cabaret audience is likely to value sophistication and polish, a heavy metal crowd will like dark and edgy imagery. Jazz clubs appeal to the hip, polka dances to those hip to a different beat altogether. While an individual poem in a book may likewise suggest a certain taste, the next poem may be quite different and the character of the readership is comparatively unpredictable.
     Ordinarily songs have a set stanza form with very little variation from one verse to the next. While a written poem may be structured in the same way, it has as well countless other possible forms. The song usually sticks to a single rhythmic pattern, though variation is always possible within limits, but a poet contemplating publication can use or ignore rhythm and rhyme much more freely. Many songs employ repeated content, whether a refrain or a key phrase, perhaps the song’s title, while poems in a book are less apt to do so.
     Singing, especially to accompaniment, adds elements of volume, stress, pitch and timbre which may either reinforce and enrich or distract from the piece as a whole. Just as the compelling vocalism of a great singer can make mediocre lyrics moving, shallow pop stylings can enervate even strong songs.
     Printed lyrics are generically different from sung ones, and a poem read out loud from a book or a song printed without music will be somewhere between. Each genre has unique challenges; neither is inherently more artful or beautiful. Indeed, each generic distinction opens certain possibilities while narrowing others.


• The addition of signifiers in music, phrasing, etc. increases expressive potential if all elements are mutually supportive. There is a risk of their not fitting and thus generating aesthetic dissonance that is absent in the silent reading of the printed page.

• Due to the social nature of performance thematic elements in songs more likely reinforce the already existing ideas of the audience. Thus they are less likely to challenge preconceptions or introduce new ideas.

• The formal reflection of the comparative thematic predictability of song is their adherence to a repeated metrical and rhyme pattern, adding melody and ingenuity while sacrificing the possibilities available to irregular and free verse.

• Songs have the immediacy of live performance yet lack the rich potential for leisurely contemplation offered by the page. Songs cannot in general afford tangled obscurity but aim rather at clarity and transparence. Sometimes the most direct, seemingly heartfelt lines are strongest, sometimes the ironic, oblique, and allusive.