When musicologists write the story of jazz in the 20th Century, 1997 should loom large, for history was made several times during the course of the year.
In America’s pivotal jazz cities — Chicago, New York and New Orleans — and in smaller but musically vibrant towns such as Kansas City, jazz was accorded a degree of respect and reverence it has waited a long time to receive.
That so many developments should take place within a single calendar year suggests that the resurgent interest in jazz that became apparent in the late 1980s continues to gather momentum. If you doubt it, consider the defining jazz moments of 1997:
Marsalis takes the Pulitzer: Though the Pulitzer Prize, America’s most prestigious arts award, has honored musical composition since 1943, never before had a jazz piece or jazz composer won it. Wynton Marsalis’ epic vocal-instrumental work “Blood on the Fields” made history not only because it revels in a jazz-blues vocabulary but also because it contains vast stretches of improvisation. For the first time, the Pulitzer went to a piece in which a great deal of music was not written on paper but, rather, improvised in performance.
At the same time that the Pulitzer board honored Marsalis, it announced significant changes in the music prize. For instance, while the Pulitzer board previously required that “all entries should include . . . a score or manuscript and a recording of the work,” the new instructions ask simply for “a score of the non-improvisational elements of the work and recording of the entire work.”
Improvisation — which is integral to jazz and other distinctly American musical art forms — now officially has been embraced as part of the Pulitzer Prize in Music. Clearly, America is beginning to appreciate its own music in ways unimagined in 1965, when the Pulitzer board declined to give Duke Ellington the prize that the Pulitzer music jury had recommended for him.
Jelly Roll Morton re-emerges: The Historic New Orleans Collection — a major repository of Crescent City history — announced that it held a vast archive of material relating to the first composer in jazz, Jelly Roll Morton. Though jazz connoisseurs already knew that the museum in 1992 had purchased the William Russell Jazz Collection — a massive jazz archive — no one realized that it contained 43 previously unknown Morton manuscripts, plus thousands of documents about Morton’s life and music (including interviews, photographs, letters, sheet music, instruments and other ephemera).
Scholars haven’t yet worked their way through this gold mine of information, but it should fill in many blanks in the only major Morton biography, Alan Lomax’s “Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and `Inventor of Jazz’ .” The manuscripts alone — meticulously penned in Morton’s hand and testifying to the man’s musical erudition — lend credence to Morton’s seemingly outlandish claim that he was the “inventor of jazz.” At the very least, Morton was the first to codify a music that soon would be celebrated around the world.
Kansas City swings: The Kansas City Jazz Museum opened, becoming the first in the country to present the history and musical legacy of jazz in a spacious, state-of-the-art museum setting. Never before has America built an edifice in which jazz scholars and casual fans alike can study rare recordings, browse computer data bases, ogle jazz collectibles and otherwise immerse themselves in the story of the music’s evolution.
For those who fear that a museum might be too stuffy an environment for a music as freewheeling as jazz, it’s worth noting that the Kansas City Jazz Museum not only includes a working jazz club (with bar) but also has made live performance and music education central to its mission. And because the museum owns the beautifully refurbished Gem Theater, located across the street, major concerts are likely to become integral to the calendar of events at the museum.
For the first time in about half a century, the fabled corner of 18th and Vine — where jazz flourished in the 1930s and where the new museum is located — is swinging once again.
Heavy Traffic at Steppenwolf: Though launched in November 1996, the groundbreaking Traffic series at Steppenwolf Theatre made its major impact in ’97. Where else could Chicagoans hear a brilliant performance by the pioneering Art Ensemble of Chicago or observe raconteur Studs Terkel and saxophonist Von Freeman riffing on the meaning of jazz or behold three generations of avant-garde musicians tracing the evolution of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians?
Because of the artistic savvy of Traffic curator Kahil El’Zabar, as well as the marketing muscle and top-notch production values of Steppenwolf Theatre, Traffic in its first full year became the most important jazz series in Chicago. If Traffic maintains its creative energy and develops its relationship with WBEZ (which broadcast the first season’s concerts), the series is poised to attain national recognition and influence.
Havana swings: American jazz artists have been experimenting with Cuban musical forms at least since the 1930s, and the island played a role in establishing the roots of jazz decades earlier. But it wasn’t until this year that Cuban musicians began performing in the United States in significant numbers, largely because the State Department and the government of Cuba have eased travel and performance restrictions on artists (despite the United States’ economic embargo of Cuba).
Cuban musicians who hadn’t played the U.S. in years (or, in some cases, ever before) swept across American stages, the distinguished list including percussionists Tata Guines and Changuito, pianist Chucho Valdes, pop band Los Van Van and the folkloric music-dance ensemble Grupo Afrocuba de Matanzas. Meanwhile, American musicians such as trumpeter Roy Hargrove, tenor saxophonist David Sanchez and others have headed to Havana to learn from the elder Cuban masters.
With American listeners and musicians hearing and perpetually learning more about Cuban dance and song forms, jazz may never be the same.
A jazz mecca turns 50: There was more than symbolic significance in the 50th anniversary of Joe Segal’s venerable Jazz Showcase club. By refusing to compromise artistically — even in the hand-to-mouth ’60s and ’70s, when jazz clubs were closing everywhere — Segal helped ensure that Chicago remained a major beachhead for bona fide jazz music.
Fortunately, Chicago has returned the favor, with music lovers making the swank new location of the Jazz Showcase (at 59 W. Grand Ave., in the River North entertainment district) a popular success. In addition, listeners have been supporting Joe’s Be-bop Cafe and Jazz Emporium (on Navy Pier), a restaurant-club run by Wayne Segal, the impresario’s son.
Only two other clubs in America — the Village Vanguard in New York and Preservation Hall in New Orleans — are regarded with comparable awe by jazz lovers around the world, and Chicago’s position in the pantheon owes entirely to Segal.
