The Jive Still Jumps

There's nothing quite like the end of a millennium to bring about an era of artistic retrospection. Although this has been the trend in all the arts lately, it has been especially apparent in the jazz world. As the deaths of nearly all the pioneers of jazz make the preservation of the musical legacies and heritage of the tradition a most pressing concern, 1998 and 1999 have been seized upon by the jazz cognoscenti as milestone years: the respective centennials of George Gershwin and Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington.

It seems fitting for these two composers to be honored in historical tandem; both of their musical careers took flight during the grand heyday of American songsmithery known as Tin Pan Alley. Yet in ways too subtle and numerous to list, these consecutive tributes seem to underscore an unfortunate, but unsurprising discrepancy in our appreciation of the two composers. Although Duke's musical contribution is the more sprawling of the two, his work has not enjoyed the canonization that Gershwin's music has.

True, the number of Americans still alive who can hum a bit of "Rhapsody in Blue" are few, but how many people are even aware that Ellington wrote numerous concert-hall-length pieces like "Black, Brown, and Beige," one of his seminal works? How many composition departments in American music conservatories examine Ellington's vast oeuvre? And why is the jazz big band (once Ellington's compositional vehicle of choice) today only given the sidelong recognition of a novelty?

Quite simply, Ellington underappreciation is indicative of the larger condition of jazz in American society. The 100-year anniversary of Ellington's birth offers an exciting opportunity to re-educate America (the rest of the world caught on long ago) about the significance of one of the most prodigious and prolific composers of the Twentieth Century.

It would be difficult to exaggerate Ellington's influence on the music of the past 70 years. His popular compositions alone -- songs like "Satin Doll," "I'm Beginning to See the Light" and "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" -- are mountains in the vernacular landscape of the American song. Yet Ellington was much more than just a songwriter. He revolutionized the function of the big band in jazz, synthesizing blues, ragtime, and Tin Pan Alley, making it a vehicle for high art as well as dance. The Duke Ellington Orchestra was pivotal in bringing jazz out of the nightclubs and into the concert halls, opening the doorway to its crosscultural appreciation.

This was not always the most liberating experience, however. Duke and his band's first major gig was their residency at the legendary Cotton Club of Harlem in the late Twenties, where all-black acts would play for all-white audiences of movie stars, celebrities, and gangsters. Still Ellington thrived in spite of this demeaning arrangement. The music he wrote during that period (now known as his "jungle" music) was a savvy blend of danceable rhythms, show-biz-style glitz, and daringly different uses of the instruments in his ensemble. These songs were often impressionistic musical portraits of sounds familiar to the Ellington Band, like trains or the street noise of Harlem. With its quirky and rich soundscapes, the "jungle" music is the great-grandfather of contemporary exotica.

Something of a dandy, Ellington always lived up to his nickname with a certain signature elegance, and had a knack for charmingly eloquent yet unpretentious speech. But his style and grace were a manifestation both of the substance within the man, and his awareness that he was a representative of his people.

In the late Thirties, as Ellington found himself a star of rising prominence, he began to use his popularity to be something of a cultural emissary, both at home and abroad. In command of one of the most skilled group of musicians of his career, Ellington embarked upon "Black, Brown, and Beige," the first of what would be many epic big-band suites. Recorded in 1943, not only was it the first extended piece ever written for a jazz big band, it was perhaps the first attempt in contemporary music to deal explicitly with the American black experience. Featuring the renowned gospel vocalist of the day, Mahalia Jackson, it is a masterfully unique and moving piece of music.

Duke wrote many more extended works that dealt with African and African-American themes, such as 1956's "A Drum Is a Woman," which characterized the historical progression of African rhythms into Caribbean and American music, or the "My People" suite of 1963, a musical response to the civil rights movement. Yet he thought he had truly found his musical purpose in life when he began to write music with a very specific intent: as a messenger in the service of God.