Crossover: Interfaces with Rock and Jazz

Gann’s discussion about the intermixing of rock and jazz with the avant-garde was useful for a person like me who grew up with parents who never listened to popular music, particularly 1960s to 1980s rock.  Most often I feel intensely naive and that I am ignorant of any music that is the “popular” kind since we grew up hearing classical, jazz, and sacred music.  In other words, if a style of music could be found above the 91.5 range of the radio dial, I never heard it in my formative years (excluding the small slice of pop hits that I recognize from years of riding the school bus).  That being said, it was helpful for me at the beginning of the chapter “Interfaces with Rock and Jazz” to get a general overview about rock’s origins.

If we switch our focus from rock to jazz, it seems apparent that the trend has moved in an opposite direction.  As jazz has matured, its progressive artists ventured into avant-garde terrain in a manner that more closely resembles the European-influenced approach of Classical composers in first half of the Twentieth Century (or, before John Cage, in other words).  Rather than simplifying the harmonic language to favor rhythmic variation and minimalist techniques like rock-avant garde-classical composers like Laurie Anderson and Rhys Chatham, the jazz composers progressed into free jazz.  This jagged, jarring, harmonically dissonant style more closely resembles works by Babbit in its complexity and lack of accessibility. 

Here are videos of "O Superman" from Laurie Anderson and "Guitar Trio" from Rhys Chatham.

This is a huge contrast to the direction that jazz artists chose to embark at this time.  For example, an artist like Charles Mingus, seems to effortlessly flirt with the classical side and avant-garde while remaining an iconic jazz bassist and composer due to his multiethnic background, varied musical training, and abstract complexity in his jazz writing that seems to harken back to the rational serialism of post-tonality in the 1940s and 1950s.  

When one considers the racial injustices to which Mingus was subjected, it becomes obvious that this Chinese-American, African-American, Swedish-American man would have had an equal probability of achieving great success in the classical world as an orchestral cellist, bassist, or composer to what he actually attained as a jazz bassist.  It astounds me that an individual that is only 1/4 black was still known primarily as a black man in 1960s America.  My husband, who is a quarter Japanese, a quarter Dutch, and half Mexican seems, so varied in his ethnic background that it is inconceivable for him to be pigeonholed and discriminated against solely for being Japanese.  For this reason, a fusion of styles in Mingus’ music seems inevitable, expected, and organic, for this is the kind of music that a racially and socially unjust world might squeeze out of its most talented, albeit less privileged, individuals.

Is it possible that rock always provided a venue for the mainstream while jazz originally evolved as a cultural bastion for those relegated to the fringe?