In the above clip from Song of Lahore, the performers bring the artistry of their Pakistani musical heritage to New York City, to perform in a jazz festival at the world-famed Lincoln Center. It looks like a beautiful film, very well produced and with a compelling story of “culture” and “resistance” and the “politics of representation” of Pakistani Muslims in the western media, but one particular quote from the trailer caught my attention especially.  In reference to the symbolism of these Pakistanis, labeled as terrorists by the media and stripped of their music by a state-sanctioned traditionalism, performing jazz fusion in New York City: “jazz came from people who are persecuted.”

This caught my attention because it harkens back to a widely known, and yet widely overlooked, truth about jazz. Jazz came from black Americans. A fusion of blues (which evolved from traditional slave folk) and European classical music (with the incorporation of piano, as well as the drums and horns of European military band tunes), it was born in the red light districts of New Orleans, where black Americans were allowed to perform after the civil war in the late nineteenth century. Later, as jazz became popular in other parts of the country, the secrecy of Prohibition Era nightlife became synonymous with jazz music. The Harlem Renaissance and the Jazz Age were intrinsically linked.

Today, many people see jazz music as largely institutionalized. It has become state sanctioned. It has become the music of elite lounges and regal opera houses. It is a symbol of class to be well-versed in jazz, to listen to the greats like Miles Davis, Bing Crosby, and Louis Armstrong. In the Cold War period, the State Department even sent musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, and Duke Ellington on tours to represent the “diverse” culture of the US as part of the Jazz Ambassadors program (which I will not go further into because I believe we’ve exhausted the subject).

This brings me to my ultimate point: the consumption of blackness. Time and time again, we see black culture — especially in America — treated as dangerous. A toxin with the community. When jazz first emerged in New Orleans, it was associated with dirty, taboo, illegal activities. The name “jazz” itself is derived from the slang term “jasm,” antiquated 19th century slang for energetic, spontaneous, or — you guessed it — male ejaculate. At the turn of the century, to be in a space where jazz was being played or danced to was to be uncultured, primitive, and even criminal. Of course, in Prohibition Era, jazz was then harbored in the same spaces as prostitution, stripping, and alcohol. As is the natural course of history, appropriation, and gentrification, white Americans moved into these spaces because of such “exoctic” appeals. Just like Paul Bowles in Tangier, these spaces in Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, and New York held a sense of fantasy-fulfilling taboo. They were ripe for consumption.

— An interesting side note, to draw connection the Arab world: During the 1950s, when jazz was reaching a period of both cool jazz and Afro-Cuban jazz, famous writer and leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood Sayyid Qutb visited the United States. He returned to Egypt and wrote “The America I Have Seen,” essentially condemning everything American as jahiliyya (the state of chaos and barbarism before Islam). He condemned the sexuality, the alcohol, the widespread racism. But one particular topic he spoke out against was jazz. “The American’s enjoyment of jazz does not fully begin until he couples it with singing like crude screaming. It is this music that the savage bushmen created to satisfy their primitive desires.” It is interesting to note that the music so rejected by America’s white elite just forty years prior had become an intrinsic aspect of American Culture, to be thrown out with the rest of the US’s sinful ways.

But back to the US. This dangerous practice of rejecting, reveling in, and ultimately repurposing black culture has been repeated throughout American history. Fashion trends like baggy jeans, cornrows, bold patterns, basketball sneakers, and so many more were first rejected when appearing on black bodies, then exoticized by the white gaze, and ultimately repurposed to become “street fashion,” “urban fashion,” or “youth fashion.” This sentiment is largely summed up in a quote I found from Wallace Thurman’s controversial 1929 book The Blacker the Berry. He writes, “We are all living in a totally white world, where all the standards are the standards of the white man, and where almost invariably what the white man does is right, and what the black man does is wrong, unless it is precedented by something a white man has done.”

Models wear “African inspired” creations for Valentino’s Spring-Summer 2016 ready-to-wear fashion collection

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And in the music industry, we see the same trend, sadly not ending with jazz. Today’s top jazz artist? Michael Buble. (Featured on just about every Library Cafe playlist, if anyone was interested.) Slave folk songs? They now exist as americana or bluegrass, and are commonly associated with Mumford & Sons, The Lumineers, and Zooey Deschanel. How did rock and roll start? Not with Elvis “The King of Rock and Roll” Presley, but with black musicians like Little Richard, Jimmy Preston, and Bo Diddley.

And again, we see the same cycle being repeated with hip hop and rap. Gangsta rap first gained national publicity in the 1980s with NWA’s album “Straight Outta Compton.” It was widely viewed as a dangerous movement, hardly recognized as music at all. It was labelled “anti-police,” “ghetto,” and “hateful.” Militarized police forces would regulate NWA’s concerts, and mass arrests were made on several occasions. The news media was obsessed with picking apart their lyrics and criticizing them for inciting violence or misogyny for their vernacular.

But now, only 25 years later, rap has been through both the exoticized and the repurposed phases. White rappers like Vanilla Ice, Marky Mark, and the Beastie Boys emerged and gained huge popularity in the 1990s. In the video below Marky Mark (now A-list actor Mark Walberg) is witnessed engaging in a ridiculous amounts of “performances of blackness” from his baggy jeans and bandana, to faux-limp and chainz, and even an entourage of nameless voiceless black men flanking him as human accessories.

In this way, pop culture has repeatedly blurred the lines between hating and repurposing black culture. Blackness has been something to try on, a dress-up time for white America. Again and again, blackness and black culture has been seen as dangerous or uncultured until it gains enough popularity that its blackness is erased entirely. Jazz is seen as criminal, until it can be packaged for consumption by the State and sent out to be representative of the “diversity” of American Culture. As the saying goes, “everybody wants to be black until it’s time to be black.”

Finally, I come to the crux of my argument. What happens when the state-sanctioned, perfectly packaged icon of American Culture demands to be recognized for its erased blackness? What happens when state-sanctioned black culture uses its platform to subvert the oppressive regimes that have exoticized, repurposed, and exploited it?  About a year ago, Beyonce came out with her hugely popular Formation single. The song celebrates her blackness, her “baby hair and afros,” her “negro nose and Jackson Five nostrils.” However, it was her music video and her Super Bowl performance (to non-Americans: the Super Bowl is the symbol of American nationalism, where Beyonce was asked to perform before the entire country on what is widely considered more of an American holiday than our Independence Day) that caused such waves. Her dancers wore Black Panther outfits. The video featured New Orleans police cars sinking in what looked to be the remnants of Hurricane Katrina and black women as the positions of power in southern plantation scene. The message was clear: if America was going to repackage her blackness for consumption, she would not make it easy to digest. She would not allow the millions of white Americans that idolize her to ignore her heritage, her erased racial identity.

This sentiment, and its political poignancy, was perfectly captured by a Saturday Night Live skit released the following week. Titled “The Day Beyonce Turned Black,” it eloquently acknowledges white America’s willingness to ignore the racial identity of its pop culture.

To briefly tie back to Song of Lahore: the Pakistani performers were exactly right. Jazz is the music of the persecuted. And I think it’s beautiful that they are able to find a means to amplify their own voices and identity on an international stage. However, I think it is important to recognize the charged history of repurposing black culture. Where today, jazz is played at the Lincoln Center and Pakistani musicians are able to use it as leverage their cause (because jazz is now the Culture with a capital C), only a century ago jazz was being hidden and criminalized a few blocks away in Harlem. History has spelled a narrative of consumption of black culture: too dangerous when performed independently, celebrated when it is under the banner of American Culture.