The scene was every jazz musician’s nightmare:
Onstage, several of Chicago’s most accomplished singers and instrumentalists were pouring their hearts out, offering emotionally intense, technically brilliant improvisation. But out in the audience, the dressed-to-the-hilt socialites and well-connected politicos were sitting on their hands, barely taking a breath.
The performers were stunned by the silence. At one point, a blues singer walked to the edge of the stage, peered into the crowd and asked, “Is anybody out there?”
The awkward scene played out Dec. 31 in Arie Crown Theatre during the City of Chicago’s millennium celebration concert, and it crystallized the differences between African-American performance tradition and its white European counterpart.
By trying to be polite, the audience unwittingly ruined the performance, leaving the musicians dismayed at the silent treatment.
“Our music is interactive music — you don’t just sit there,” says Mwata Bowden, a noted Chicago jazz saxophonist, reflecting on the nature of African-American performance tradition. “Our music is not for passive listening.
“When you listen to European music, you’re supposed to be very still and cling to every note and keep quiet about it. It’s not about reciprocal energy.
“Our music is based on the communal traditions of Africa. You’re not in the audience — you’re part of the performance. It’s a community experience.”
Thus the continuous audience murmur that one hears even in a serious jazz listening room such as the Jazz Showcase is considered acceptable, even the norm. Better yet when listeners proclaim their approval during a particularly dramatic solo or when a band locks into a propulsive swing rhythm. Shouts, cheers and whistles simply egg the performers on.
“As a musician, I want to feel and hear the audience feedback,” adds Bowden. “That’s how I know they’re with me on the journey. That’s how I can tell that they’ve lost themselves in the performance.
“The audience is a real player in our music, and their energy shapes the music we make.”
Listen to live concert or club recordings by everyone from Louis Armstrong to Art Tatum, and you’ll hear listeners roar with approval when Satchmo hits a series of high notes or Tatum tosses off his signature keyboard thunderbolts.
But the response amounts to much more than just fan support. It’s no exaggeration to note that the interactive nature of African-American music dates back to antiquity.
Scholarly research by authors such as Samuel A. Floyd Jr. shows the predominance of the “ring dance” in ancient African culture. As its name implies, it brought individuals together in a circle, participants engaging in ritual chant, motion and storytelling. Everyone participated, no one was a spectator.
The ritual flourished among African-American slaves in the United States and transformed itself into the call-and-response patterns of the black church. To this day, gospel, jazz and blues express the communal nature of ancient African music.
“Whether you’re on the stage or at the pulpit, you feed from the audience,” says Billie Barrett GreenBey, of Chicago’s acclaimed Barrett Sisters gospel trio. “The more participation the audience gives, the more exciting it is for us to perform for them.
“This is church,” she adds. “If you’ve witnessed the trials and tribulations we sing about, you’re going to have to stand up and shout `Amen.’ You won’t even be able to avoid it. The feeling is too powerful.”
Yet it’s worth noting that noise for its own sake is not welcome.
“Even though audience reaction is a part of jazz, that doesn’t mean we don’t want people to listen,” says Fred Anderson, a revered Chicago tenor saxophonist and a founder of the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.
“One of the things we tried to do when we started the AACM [in 1965] was to give concerts where people actually would listen. We were tired of the noisy clubs. We like people to respond when a solo is over or a song has ended, but they’re supposed to be there to hear what we’re playing.”
