The white reception of Jazz in America

African American Review, Spring, 2004 by Maureen Anderson

Eugenicist politics not only perpetuated mass murder by Hitler in order to promote his ideal Aryan race, but also motivated white Americans to justify killing and segregating African Americans, Jews, Irish immigrants, American Indians, and many others (Gould 24). Interracial marriages, consequently, were made illegal. Likewise, the panic of biological supremacy merged with racial hatred to create dangerous and irrational fears of the "savage." Davenport's book was, in the minds of white racists, justification for their fear and oppression of the black man. According to Davenport, behavior and physical characteristics were clear signifiers of biological make-up and position on the evolutionary ladder. If a white man or woman were to be "invok[ed]" to display that individual's "savage instincts," then the person's position on the Darwinian ladder would be jeopardized (Faulkner 16). (2)

Considering this fear of "savage instincts," and of the black population in general, it isn't surprising to see Faulkner maintain "that America is facing a most serious situation regarding its popular music." The "serious situation," of course, is the plight of whites, especially white American youth, becoming, in some sense, too black. And Faulkner claims to have supporting evidence: "Welfare workers tell us that never in the history of our land have there been such immoral conditions among young people, and in the surveys made by organizations regarding these conditions, the blame is laid on jazz music and its evil influence on the young people of to-day." Thus, not only does Faulkner indicate the existence of "immoral conditions," a Davenport signifier of an inferior race, but she also singles out jazz as "evil." Indeed, after using jazz dance as an example of the evil manifested in young whites, she closes her article with what she clearly intends to be a rhetorical question: "Can music ever be an influence for evil?" (16). Faulkner's "contribution," if we may call it that, to the early white literature on jazz is that she provides a new insult toward jazz, jazz musicians, and perhaps the entire black populace by suggesting that all three are evil, as well as inferior.

Over the next few years, other writers would repeat Faulkner's question, but in 1924, many authors joined together to respond rather directly to her query. Around this time, the Moore v. Dempsey case (1923) overturned convictions in courts where blacks had been systematically eliminated from juries. In addition, the Harlem Renaissance was flourishing and gaining sufficient popularity among both white and black populations that racist sentiments would once more appear with a special virulence in the popular press. The struggle for racist white critics, of course, was how to cope with and curtail the popularity of jazz. The Etude, a popular magazine on music, continued the discussion in 1924 with a special number that seems to pull all of the racist heavyweights into one issue in order to debunk jazz as a serious musical form. In the August 1924 Etude, the article "Where Is Jazz Leading America: Opinions of Famous Men and Women In and Out of Music" contains the reactions of a variety of white professionals toward jazz and jazz culture. Given that an increasing number of jazz musicians were by this time white, we see some more textured responses to the music. In some contexts, jazz is no longer seen as so severe a problem and may even be enjoyed, yet black jazz music remains "savage" and "evil." For example, George Ade is at once willing to call jazz "a collection of squa[w]ks and wails" and to observe that, "if [the] Paul Whiteman boys play 'jazz,' then I am in favor of that particular variety of 'jazz'" (515). In other words, if the white Whiteman plays jazz, Ade finds it pleasing. But if black artists play jazz, the music becomes objectionable--or, if we are to take him literally, black artists' efforts yield only noise, not music. Ade's reference to Paul Whiteman has especially severe racist implications, since, true to his name, Whiteman only hired white musicians while billing himself as "The King of Jazz."