Jazz, Hip Hop Etc.

[James Schmidt]

Doug Kellner writes:

>In regard to Adorno's jazz critique, it is rarely noted that the critique
>has force and relevance when applied to the crap jazz Adorno listened to
>on the radio when he was researching CBS programming with Lazarsfeld. But,
>as noted above, Adorno never heard the good stuff and thus generalized
>excessively....

I think this is only partly true. Much of Adorno's discussion of jazz does
treat "jazz" as basically equivalent to big band swing music. But, certain
of his discussions (most notably the review of Sargeant's book "Jazz Hot
and Hybrid" -- which appears in English in the 1941 volume of STUDIES IN
PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE (IX:1:167-178)) do seem to advance a stronger
claim that ALL jazz has a pseudo-emancipatory character to it. This would
include more complex forms of jazz such as some of the Ellington band
recordings. It is worth noting that Adorno pretty much stopped writing
about jazz before be-bop and other more complex forms emerged. So, Adorno
may well have heard some of the "good stuff" -- or at least was familiar
with discussions of it in Sargeant's book. What he made of it, is -- of
course -- a different story.

Those interested in this topic should keep a watch out for a paper James
Buhler is writing on all this (he is a musicologist who has been active in
an NEH Summer Seminar that I've been running on the Dialectic of
Enlightenment). He's one of the few people I've seen who is actually well
enough trained in the technical side of musical analysis to give a fair
presentation of Adorno's argument (which, even if it is wrong, is by no
means as dumb as it is sometimes made out to be). Buhler also is a work on
a paper on a very odd film: A SONG IS BORN -- a 1940s musical with Danny
Kaye playing the leader of a group of German scholars who are trying to
understand jazz (Benny Goodman -- Adorno's particular demon -- plays one of
the Germans). If you squint while watching it, Danny Kaye and the gang
start to look like Horkheimer et al. It's a rather wierd film.

Finally:  Those who have been engaged in the great Hip-Hop debate (which,
I'm afraid, I stopped following when things turned ugly) may be interested
to know that Christopher Rocco (another participant in the seminar) will be
presenting a paper at the APSA meetings in Washington on -- of all things
-- critical theory and hip hop. It should be good.

I will try to see if Chris and Jim would be willing to give me e-text
versions of their papers to post to the seminar's web site
(http://www.bu.edu/POLISCI/JSCHMIDT/NEH).