What makes "jazz" the revolutionary music of the 20th century, and will it be revolutionary for the 21st century?

African American Review, Summer, 1995 by Fred Wei-han Ho

Improvisation

Finally, let me address the issue of composition/notation and improvisation. Some have argued that once the composition is heavily notated and improvisation is necessarily diminished, the music becomes more "European" and less "African American." Initially, Western European music also relied on improvisation; player/composers under economic pressure were required to come up quickly with new works to entertain and satisfy their aristocratic employers. Though these musicians were "literate," improvisation satisfied both economic expediency and their own creative desire to avoid the repetitive boredom of performing the same hits the same way all the time. As solo and small-group works expanded to large ensembles and extended compositions, and as paying audiences began to demand faithful replication of their favorites, notation assumed increasingly greater dominance.

African American music has never, until recently, had to face the prospect of institutionalization, canonization, standardization, and codification by a ruling class (presently, bourgeois). Paradoxically, the music of an oppressed nationality was free to be free. Duke Ellington's orchestra could play the same show music every night for years and still retain spontaneity and freshness, no matter how much notation, choreography, and staging was set. As "jazz" became more of an "art" music (i.e., primarily listened to and not danced to), and the "jazz" composer (who still could be a player/leader) began to pen extended works such as suites, ballets, theater and film scores, etc., the best and strongest writing always allowed for an enhanced spontaneity and for improvised contributions from the players. Ideally these written compositions are memorized and internalized until the written page is no longer looked at and the players play from understanding and interaction. The essence of African American music is a whole which is greater than the sum of its inseparable and mutually dependent parts - player and composer, notation and performance, composition and improvisation.

Notation is not the enslaver, the oppressor of spontaneity and improvisation. Calcification, de-African Americanization, co-option is not caused by musical deviations and practices, but, in my view, by ethical violations. Clearly, in Ellington's large-scale works, the essence of African American spontaneity is reflected in a highly composed music. And there are players who play "correct jazz" which is sterile and reactionary.

As a non-African American, but a person of color (oppressed nationality in the U.S.), I was drawn to and inspired and revolutionized by the music's musical and - possibly more profoundly - extramusical qualities. Many years later, after becoming a professional musician, I came across a statement by V. I. Lenin which crystallized this confluence: "Ethics will be the aesthetics of the future." 20th-century African American music is part of an extramusical ethical/spiritual/sociopolitical revolution - the commitment, attitude, resistance, perseverance, celebration, love and joy opposing oppression, brutality, poverty, persecution, and exclusion. Archie Shepp expressed it in poetic language: "Jazz is the lily in spite of the swamp." It is the triumph of the human spirit, of spirituality and ethicality in the midst of cannibalistic and corrupting capitalism.