Curating Community at The National Jazz Museum in Harlem

This article was downloaded by: [King's College London]
On: 21 October 2013, At: 05:23

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Jazz Perspectives
Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjaz20
Curating Community at the National

Jazz Museum in Harlem
Frederick J. Moehn
Published online: 20 Sep 2013.
To cite this article: Frederick J. Moehn (2013) Curating Community at the National Jazz Museum in
Harlem, Jazz Perspectives, 7:1, 3-29, DOI: 10.1080/17494060.2013.824136
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17494060.2013.824136
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
Content) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or
howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising
out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions
Jazz Perspectives, 2013

Vol. 7, No. 1, 329, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17494060.2013.824136
Curating Community at the National

Frederick J. Moehn
Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013
Id rather be a y on a lamppost in Harlem than a millionaire anywhere else

Willie the Lion Smith, as quoted on the National Jazz Museum in Harlem website.1
My membership card came in the mail: Jazz, it said in an understated cursive font
against a plain blue background, and then below, in smaller capital letters, BRINGS
PEOPLE TOGETHER (gure 1). It seemed a tting motto for the National Jazz
Museum in Harlem (NJMH), an institution that offers a variety of public programs
out of its Visitors Center at 104 East 126th Street in New York City. Starting shortly
after the museum opened its doors to the neighborhood in 2004, I began attending
the Harlem Speaks series of interviews with musicians and other individuals who
have had some connection to Harlem and to jazz. What struck me at these events
was the intimate sense of local-ness, and, in fact, a feeling that a sort of community
was enabled and enacted through these oral history sessions. Rather than a controlled
distance between the guests of honor and the audience members, the setting has tended
to be very informal, with a kind of give-and-take between the interviewee and the
public. Guests let down their guard somewhat at this space and often speak more
frankly than they might in a more mainstream media setting.
For example, bandleader Johnny Colon prefaced comments about race and Harlem
politics by saying, Now Im going to speak like I wouldnt normally on camera because
I feel so comfortable here. Other moments I documented were not so much frank as
they were emotional, such as when trumpeter Clark Terry looked at his audience before
his interview began and said, Im so overwhelmed to be here, to see so many old
friends back from the Apollo [Theater] days to see so many beautiful people of
such stature. Just makes me want to cry.2 Often, audience membersmany of
whom are seniorswould be called upon to supply a date or name when the guests
or hosts memory failed. Alternatively, something a guest said might remind one of
the more senior persons present of events marked by music from her or his younger
Overview, http://jazzmuseuminharlem.org/overview.php (accessed Aug. 13, 2011). The quotation can be found
in Willie the Lion Smith with George Hoefer, Music on My Mind: The Memoirs of an American Pianist (London:
MacGibbon & Kee, 1965), 6.
2
Authors eldnotes, Harlem Speaks: Johnny Colon, NJMH, Sept. 22, 2005; and Harlem Speaks: Clark Terry,
NJMH, Dec. 1, 2005. Subsequent direct quotations herein from NJMH events are also from my eldnotes for
the respective dates described (without footnoted citations). Quotations from my interviews are cited accordingly.
1
# 2013 Taylor & Francis
Figure 1 Jazz Museum membership card.

days. At times, audience afrmations of speakers statements almost seemed to build to
a call-and-response kind of cadence.
In this article I draw on my ethnography of museum events and my interviews with
patrons over the course of several years to examine how the assertion that jazz brings
people together is central to this institutions mission. I consider how the concept of
community has been theorized, specically in relation to what is commonly referred
to as the jazz community. I am concerned, too, with the museums place in the
rapidly developing New Harlem, as a participant in a trend that some have called
a Second Harlem Renaissance. What is the signicance of location for this museums
activities?3 What kinds of discussions and relationships emerge between older and
younger individuals at NJMH events, between experts and enthusiasts or acionados?
How might memory inuence the production of history there? How can new experiences of jazz shape memories of previous ones, or revise perceptions of canon? How
does the social aspect of museum events color the experience of jazz at this space?
Ken Prouty observes that there is an implicit hierarchy in discourse about jazz communities, in which artists, journalists, industry gures, [and] scholars have each played
a role.4 Jazz audiences, on the other hand, tend to be conceptualized simply as something that is there, either as consumers or as unnamed actors in the social play that
intersects with jazz at various points.5 He contrasts the New Jazz Studies paradigm,
which initially found its intellectual center at the Institute for Jazz Studies at Columbia
University (in the Morningside Heights part of West Harlem), with other questioning
moves in jazz that can emerge from the ground up.6 It may not be especially useful (or
accurate) to locate the thoughtful scholarship associated with the New Jazz Studies as
3
Harlem comprises much of the northern part of the island of Manhattan; roughly, between 110th and 155th
street, with East Harlem extending a little lower (sometimes the Morningside Heights area in the western part
of this space is excluded from popular ideas of Harlem, presumably because it is a more exclusive neighborhood
dominated by Columbia University). Harlem has historically been home to concentrations of various different ethnicities, including Jewish and Italian. East Harlem is also known as an important center of Latino culture.
4
Ken Prouty, Knowing Jazz: Community, Pedagogy, and Canon in the Information Age (Jackson: University Press of
Mississippi, 2012), 8.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid.
Jazz Perspectives
coming from above, but Proutys point about the relative under-theorization of audiences roles in jazz communities is constructive.7
At the NJMH, scholars associated with the New Jazz Studies have in fact been featured
guests (in the Harlem Speaks series), including the Columbia University professors Robert
OMeally, Farah Jasmine Grifn, and George E. Lewis. Nevertheless, one would not likely
describe the museums programming as geared toward academic discourse about, for
example, problems of representation or canon. Jazz knowledge is certainly incrementally
revised and augmented in events that often highlight the music and lives of under-appreciated gures (the clarinetist Pee Wee Russell and the trumpeter Frankie Newton, for
example; the pianist Marty Napoleon; the singer Sathima Bea Benjamin), or of individuals
who are not necessarily performers (e.g., the New York Times sports columnist William
C. Rhoden; the lmmaker Jean Bach), or jazz around the world (sessions on Asia,
Africa, Israel, Latin America, for instance). Whether pertaining to canonical gures and
repertoire or not, however, museum events are typically occasions for relaxed discussion
and appreciation. The message is: everyone possesses knowledge pertaining to their particular experiences of jazz music and history, and sharing it is a valuable community endeavor.
With limited exhibition space and relatively few physical holdings the NJMH has
thus far had little need for professional curators of the sort more typical to the visual
ne arts.8 In fact, its mission thus far has only partly been to preserve and archive.9
Rather, the jazz museum strives to foster a public forum for talking about, learning
about, appreciating, reecting upon, and experiencing jazz. In this manner, the
NJMH curates (from Latin cura, curarecare; to care) a dialogic notion of jazz as community. Curators with expert knowledge may conduct the sessions there, but
ground up discussion is encouraged and valued. Social moments of affective engagement with musical sound, history, and performance, and with other listeners present at
this space, give real texture to the notion of community here.
The Community Concept, and the Jazz Community
The term community, as one scholar observed, is difcult to dene yet easy to
use.10 It has been described as based on cultural criteria such as common traditions;
7
New Jazz Studies scholar Sherrie Tucker has, however, noted the importance of jazz audiences to the historiography of the music. See, for example, her chapter, But This Music Is Mine Already! White Woman as Jazz Collector
in the Film New Orleans (1947), in Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies, edited by Nichole T. Rustin and
Sherrie Tucker (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 235266. Ingrid Monson, too, acknowledged the importance of listeners in the construction of jazz community, as I describe below.
8
In the context of the visual arts especially, the curator has assumed a more creative and neo-critical role in
recent decades, reecting a curatorial turn in discourse about museums and exhibitions. Paul ONeill, The
Curatorial Turn: From Discourse to Practice, in Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance, edited
by Judith Rugg and Michle Sedgwick (Chicago: Intellect Books, 2007), 1328. Outside of museum spaces, to
curate has been adopted as a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded, who seem to paste it
onto any activity that involves culling and selecting, such as curating a musical happening, or even a
window display. Alex Williams, On the Tip of Creative Tongues, New York Times, October 4, 2009.
9
One reason for this is that the NJMH directors recognize that the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University in
neighboring New Jersey is already known for its extensive archive of papers, articles, photographs, and the like.
10
Patricia Hill Collins, The New Politics of Community, American Sociological Review 75 no. 1 (2010): 24.
on affective criteria such as shared interests; on proximity in a given locality; or in

functional terms as pertaining to more-or-less structured and reproducible relationships between individuals and social institutions. Older sociological models tended to
view communities as empirical things-in-themselves with relatively stable relationships between individuals (as in the community study). Later, the imagination
came to be seen as vital to communities (for example, Benedict Andersons conceptualization of the nation as an imagined community). Taste communities are said
to form around specic artistic manifestations. The Internet hosts virtual communities. Recently, municipalities and states trimming the budgets for social programs
have promoted community service.11 The concepts ability to evoke a sphere of
meaningful sociality, however ambiguous, helps it to persist in scholarly and public
discourse.
The literature on jazz, whether journalistic or academic, abounds with references
to community. Often the phrase the jazz community is evoked (by banding
together, the jazz community will help the music survive and thrive).12 It can
even be cited as a primary source for specic oral traditions.13 At times sub-categories
are identied, such as the Chicago jazz community (or New York, Harlem, etc.),
the avant-garde jazz community, the Latin jazz community, the black jazz community, the out jazz community, the American jazz community, the Japanese
jazz community, the wartime jazz community; or super-categories such as the
international jazz community.14 Clearly, the idea of community is important in discourse about jazz, but it is not always apparent which community is being evoked, or
how it is constituted.15 Indeed, the community concepts exibility, feel-good associations, and potential for vagueness led the anthropologists Vered Amit and Nigel
Rapport to protest that it can serve primarily as a convenient conceptual haven,
one that may be particularly useful in a world where bounded eldwork sites
seem no longer to exist.16
There have, however, been a few attempts to theorize the concept of jazz community
with some rigor. Early behavioral and functional denitions from the 1950s and 1960s
tended to portray it as a self-selecting subculture, one that deviated from a normative
For example, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron placed community at the center of his Big Society agenda.
See David Cameron, We will tackle poverty by building strong community ties. The Independent, Nov. 11,
2009, 32.
12
Jon Pareles, Jazz Displays a Unied Spirit, New York Times, Sept. 8, 1985.
13
Paul F. Berliner, Thinking in Jazz: The Innite Art of Improvisation (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994),
763.
14
I take all these examples from scholarly publications on jazz. This journal makes a reference to the academic jazz
community in its statement of aims and scope.
15
Jazz discourse, Sherrie Tucker observes, is a curious mix of romance about modernist geniuses who appear to
have no communities, and nostalgic communities for whom playing jazz seems to achieve historical and social and
political transcendence. Sherrie Tucker, Bordering on Community: Improvising Women Improvising Womenin-Jazz, in The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue, Edited by Daniel Fischlin
and Ajay Heble (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2004), 247248.
16
Vered Amit and Nigel Rapport, The Trouble with Community: Anthropological Reections on Movement, Identity,
and Collectivity (London: Pluto, 2002), 17.
11
Jazz Perspectives
17
notion of the social order (in particular, Merriams and Macks 1960 article). Jazzs
place in American life has changed in recent decades, perhaps most visibly in its institutionalization at the Jazz at Lincoln Center venue. Nevertheless, some of the older
speakers in the NJMH Harlem Speaks series still recalled the days of being made to
feel like social deviants.18
In Saying Something Ingrid Monson recognizes musical performance as the most
prestigious activity that goes into constituting the jazz community, but she also
acknowledges that it requires the active participation of informed listeners.19 The interaction between the musician and audience members who listen within the context of
the richly textured aural legacy of jazz and African American music, Monson writes,
takes a given jazz moment beyond technical competence, beyond the chord changes,
and into the realm of saying something.20 The resulting interaction of musical
sounds, people, and their musical and cultural histories establishes a moment of
community, whether temporary or enduring.21
Sherrie Tucker, on the other hand, has proposed that scholars consider not only
the possibilities of jazz as a site of community-formation, improvisation, and collaboration, but also the limitations of concepts and spaces of jazz community.22 She
sees community as a terrain of changing-same power relations. So with respect to
women and the jazz community, for example, individuals may imagine themselves
as active community members yet nd themselves unimaginable and unrepresentable at many community functions. Tucker calls for critical investigations that
might yield possible theories and practices of community formation that are
porous, exible, strategic, and liberatory, as opposed to ideas about belonging and
unbelonging that are conservative, comfy, and entrenched. As she puts it, this
Alan P. Merriam, and Raymond W. Mack, The Jazz Community, Social Forces 38, no. 3 (1960): 211222. In
a subsequent article published in 1968, Robert A. Stebbins described a subcultural status community (from
Weber), that espouses values opposed to the commercialization of music. Robert A. Stebbins, A Theory of
the Jazz Community, The Sociological Quarterly 9, no. 3 (1968): 331. In a 2005 article Peter J. Martin revisited
Merriams and Macks analysis. Expanding on their idea of a community of interest, Martin proposed that we
think of the jazz community as an art world (using Howard S. Beckers concept), whereby numerous actors
collaboratively contribute toward maintaining a sense of community oriented around jazz as artistic production.
The social signicance of the jazz aesthetic, in Martins view, is that improvisation can effect a reconciliation of
individual inspiration and established conventions, spontaneity and organization, the individual and the social.
Peter J. Martin, The Jazz Community as an Art World: A Sociological Perspective, The Source: Challenging Jazz
Criticism 2 (2005), 11. With respect to the jazz community as an art world and a community of interest, see
also Paul Berliner, Thinking in Jazz, pp. 7 and 772. Ken Proutys Knowing Jazz (op. cit.), offers a good critical
reading of the literature on jazz and community, with particular attention to what it means for jazz program
pedagogy.
18
In commenting on a draft of this article, a colleague pointed out that although the term jazz may today signal
an elite art that resides in afuent institutions, there are still musicians who dene themselves as playing jazz who
scrape by and who purposely embrace marginal statusalbeit out of complex motives (Matthew Somoroff, pers.
comm., 5 Nov. 2011).
19
Ingrid T. Monson, Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1996), 14.
20
Ibid., 12.
21
Ibid., 2.
22
Tucker, Bordering on Community, 250.
17
means examining edginess as well as collectivity.23 Extending Monsons metaphor,

we might ask, Who gets to say something? What do they get to say? Is talking about
musical sound as important as making it when it comes to the jazz community? And
we might also wonder if there is any edginess to the goings on at the National Jazz
Museum in Harlem.
One of the more entrenched ideas relating to jazz is that specialized or even arcane
knowledge is required to participate in the community. This knowledge may be technical and musical, or it may be historical. Outsiders might feel that some who are in
the jazz community attribute exaggerated signicance to seemingly trivial biographical
and other details at the expense of allowing less invested listeners to appreciate the
music. In my previous research in Brazil, for example, I asked a musician known for
mixing North American (U.S.) inuences with Brazilian ones if she was into jazz.
No, she responded, because it seemed like a closed club, adding that she felt it
was best not to get involved.24 The curating that takes place at the NJMH Visitors
Center invites locals to get involved, and to say something about jazz (without needing
to be a performer). Moreover, as already noted, the NJMH has fostered a space that,
while not specically targeted to seniors, has welcomed their contribution to its
mission. Older adults may in fact hold some comfy values, or they may in some
aspects be more progressive in outlook than younger ones. How can they speak to
changing-same power relations? We recognize aging jazz legends; what about aging
jazz enthusiasts? Lets examine the setting more closely.
A New Museum for a New Harlem

One of the conditions of possibility for the NJMH was the re-development of its
decayed urban setting. There is general agreement that parts of Harlem have been
experiencing a kind of rebirth in terms of business investment, real estate development, and support for cultural institutions after decades of neglect.25 From around
113th to 125th Streets on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, perhaps the most obviously
gentried part of the New Harlem, an astonishing number of new residence buildings has risen in the past seven years or so. Dozens of new restaurants, bakeries, and
cafs, as well as two wine shops, have been established and are packed with customers.
A three-oor supermarket with an extensive selection of boutique and imported beer is
doing brisk business on one block, with a Chase bank and a Starbucks coffee shop on
either corner, all of which were not there seven years ago. The recently opened Harlem
Tavern at 116th Street is a burger and beer sports bar with a large outdoor seating area.
23
Ibid.
Fernanda Abreu, interview with the author, Aug. 9, 2007. See Frederick Moehn, Contemporary Carioca: Technologies of Mixing in a Brazilian Music Scene (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 131.
25
One journalist suggested that president Bill Clintons establishment of ofces in Harlem in 2001 after leaving the
White House helped facilitate the new effervescence of the neighborhood. Dewayne Wickham, Clinton Paves Way
for Second Harlem Renaissance, USA Today, Aug. 6, 2001. David Dunlaps Feb. 10, 2002 New York Times article,
The Changing Look of the New Harlem, further signaled to the general public that the neighborhood was seeing
a new phase of development.
24
Jazz Perspectives
It found instant popularity. The latest addition to this stretch is a sushi restaurant, not
far from a new yoga studio.
Demographic changes have accompanied this process. A recent New York Times
article noted that Harlem is no longer majority African American, with four in ten residents being black.26 In March 2009 I photographed a large sign that promoted a new
reality series on the BET cable channel about young black professionals in Harlem. In
black capital letters against a white background it stated, HARLEM IS A month
later someone had added the words FED UP in black paint (gure 2). Perhaps this
was intended as an expression of frustration with the rapid redevelopment of the neighborhood and the inux of new residents.
At the same time, precisely because of Harlems iconic status as a kind of capital of
black U.S. culture, there are certain distinguishing characteristics to the way its second
renaissance is unfolding. Real estate developers and tourism agencies, for example,
market and have a stake in the neighborhoods legacy. But there are also laudable
efforts at local institutions such as Harlem Stage, the Studio Museum, or the Apollo
Theater, among various others, to recognize and promote black cultural expression
and a sense of artistic community. In May 2011, for example, the Apollo Theater, in collaboration with Harlem Stage, Jazzmobile, and Columbia University, promoted the
Harlem Jazz Shrines Festival to celebrate the neighborhoods several historically important jazz venues, among them Mintons Playhouse, the jazz club where many would say
bebop was born in the 1940s.27 One ethnographer observed that the majority of the
neighborhoods professional residents, both newly arrived and long-term, are on
record as saying they chose to live in Harlem because of its illustrious history, architectural riches, affordable rents, and proximity to a black majority.28 Azure Thompson, a
young African American Jazz Museum patron, expressed similar sentiments. She grew
up in Seattle and attended Howard University, where she wrote for The Hilltop, a newspaper co-founded in 1924 by Zora Neal Hurston (with Louis Eugene King). Ideas of
Sam Roberts, No Longer Majority Black, Harlem Is in Transition, New York Times, 6 January 2010. An African
American NJMH patron I interviewed questioned the research upon which this article based its conclusions. She
noted that while the lower, western portion of Harlem had seen an obvious increase in white residents, other parts
of Harlem, particularly above 125th Street, seemed to her to still be overwhelmingly black. One reader of this essay
wondered if I meant to associate Starbucks and yoga studios with whiteness. I do not. Rather, these are businesses
that tend to move in to neighborhoods where there is a substantial population of middle-class professionals and/
or students. While more whites have moved into this part of Harlem in recent years, the clientele and staff at the
local Starbucks, the Best Yet Supermarket, or the Chase Bank, for example, is very diverse in terms of race,
tending toward African American and Hispanic. The same goes for many of the new restaurants such as
Harlem Tavern, Harlem Food Bar, and Cedrics French Bistro. There are several yoga studios in Harlem run by
African American yoga instructors.
27
Mintons Playhouse, on 118th St. near St. Nicholas Ave., was open from 19381974. In 2006 Earl Spain, former
manager of St. Nicks Pub, another classic Harlem spot (now closed) reopened the space as the Uptown Jazz
Lounge at Mintons Playhouse. The reopened Mintons never really became a jazz hotspot. One journalist
suggested that Spain did not market the clubs history sufciently; in May 2010 Mintons closed down again.
Ron Scott, Jazz Notes; Mintons closes, Great Night in Harlem, New York Amsterdam News, 1319 May 2010: 25.
28
Sabiyha Prince, Race, Class, and the Packaging of Harlem, Identities 12 no. 3 (2005): 399. This is an interesting
claim, but I am skeptical that the majority of Harlems professional residents are on record about their reasons
for living there.
26
10
Figure 2 HARLEM IS FED UP billboard, 4 May 2009 (Photo F. Moehn)

what Harlem used to be attracted her to want to live there, Thompson told me. In some
way, she felt she was following the spirit of Hurston.29
The initial idea for the NJMH came from jazz impresario Art DLugoff, owner of the
legendary downtown Village Gate jazz club. Around 1996 DLugoff suggested to David
C. Levy, then director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, that New York
City needed a jazz museum and hall of fame.30 Levy in turn brought Washington
power lawyers and jazz acionados Leonard Garment and Daryl Libow on board to
begin planning a museum that they envisioned as a companion to the emergent
Jazz at Lincoln Center institution. They thought Harlem should be its home.31
Garment later acknowledged that, under difcult economic circumstances, the neighborhoods second renaissance helped keep the boards project to secure a permanent
space alive.32 Meanwhile, the NJMH has had an impact in the local cultural landscape
through the outreach programming it administers out of its ofces on an unremarkable
29
As an African American professional, Azure Thompson may feel that she is following the spirit of certain black
Americans who moved to Harlem before her. White professionals who have recently chosen to live in Harlem,
however, necessarily have a different relationship to that historyone more of consumption than of continuation
or participation (except perhaps in the sense of continuing a pattern of whites taking an interest in Harlem, and in
general, black culture).
30
Art DLugoff passed away in 2009.
31
Leonard Garment, The Genesis of the Musuem, http://www.jazzmuseuminharlem.org/genesis.html (accessed
6 June 2011). Journalist Nat Hentoff observed in a prole of the incipient museum that there was no more
obvious site for a jazz museum than Harlem. Nat Hentoff, Jazz Is Coming Home to Harlem, Wall Street
Journal, 18 March 2004: 10.
32
Despite winning some nancial support from the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone with matching funds
from Abe and Marian Sofaer, early plans for the museum foundered. However, through his connections in
Washington, Leonard Garment persuaded inuential congressmen such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan to establish
a $1 million line item in the year 2000 federal budget to establish the museum. Moreover, in the changed urban
setting of the New Harlem, Garment wrote, the jazz museum came back to life like a rim shot. Previous to this
moment, Garment suggested, the Harlem community was not ready for a jazz museum. Leonard Garment, The
Genesis of the Museum. For more on the donation from the Sofaers, see: http://abesofaer.com/2011-pdfs/THENATIONAL-JAZZ-MUSEUM-IN-HARLEM.pdf (accessed 31 August 2012).
Jazz Perspectives
11
Figure 3 NJMH building, 1 April 2008. (Photo F. Moehn).

block just off of Park Avenue. Initially, the museum lacked any identifying markers on
the exterior of the building. In 2008 it raised a large banner featuring a photograph of
Louis Armstrong blowing his trumpet (gure 3).
During the time I was conducting some of my ethnography of NJMH events at the
second oor Visitors Center, the room featured an attractive photo exhibit of local
musicians, a small library, a couple of audiovisual computer setups, a baby grand
piano (on loan from Dick Katz), and foldable steel chairs for public events.33 Now
located on the third oor, it remains an unassuming space that might be contrasted
with the high-prole polish of Jazz at Lincoln Center. For a while, an announcement
printed on an 8 x 11-inch sheet of white paper and taped outside the door
advised, You KNOW we love you but no food or beverages inside. The warmly
welcoming stance of the space owes in good measure to the personality, enthusiasm,
and leadership of the Museums artistic director, Loren Schoenberg, a saxophonist,
pianist, band-leader, former radio host, and author (gure 4). A museum like this
will only succeed, Schoenberg stated in an early press interview, if there is a perception that it comes from the community and it receives support from the community
leaders, and all others in the locality, who have everything to gain from this.34
The exhibit was Hank ONeals Ghosts of Harlem, which included photographs from ONeals book of the
same name (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2009). It focuses on musicians who worked in Harlem
during its artistic peak, both well-known names and lesser-known. Dick Katz, who lent the NJMH the baby
grand piano, has since passed away.
34
John Robert Brown, A Jazz Museum for Harlem, http://www.jazzmuseuminharlem.org/ajazz.html (accessed
16 August 2011). Schoenberg has been involved in the New YorkNew Jersey jazz scene since the 1970s; he
worked with Benny Goodman in the 1980s (until the latters death in 1986); he released several albums with
his big band and he has participated in a number of other recordings. He won two Grammy Awards for Best
33
12
Figure 4 Jazz writer and producer Greg Thomas (L) with NJMH Executive Director
Loren Schoenberg, 24 March 2005. Note the cut-out of Dizzy Gillespie in the background. (Photo F. Moehn).
Here Schoenberg evokes, perhaps not entirely intentionally, a particular usage of the
term the community in the local context, where it can mean, specically, the black
community of Harlem. This allows him to present the museum as a kind of grass roots
organization that seeks (and merits) the support of that community, and it highlights
another way that the NJMHs location contrasts with that of Jazz at Lincoln Center (at
Columbus Circle; the value of real estate in the area is another obvious point of contrast).35 This is not to say that the museum directors sought to appeal only to African
American residents; the ambiguity of the community concept permits an ecumenical
and uid prole for the museums local public. But that ambiguity also lets Schoenberg
make overtures to an intensely local sense of community as a kind of yardstick of the
museums success in its mission. Patricia Hill Collins has proposed that the exibility of
the term community can be put to good use. Like Sherrie Tucker, she sees it as a terrain
of changing-same power relations. It may be especially suitable in helping people
manage ambiguities associated with changing congurations of intersecting power
relations, she notes.36 People imagine new forms of community, Collins proposes,
Album Notes on jazz releases, and he published The NPR Curious Listeners Guide to Jazz in 2002 (New York:
Perigee/Berkley), the year he was appointed executive director of the Museum. He concedes that his tastes in
jazz lean toward the more traditional. Schoenbergs title was later changed to artistic director (Bill Terry is, at
the time of this writing, interim executive director).
35
A recent article on the progress of Harlem redevelopment described the immediate surroundings of the NJMH as
blighted and ignored, but possibly ready for change. It mentions a developer who recently purchased ve plots of
vacant land in this area for $1.35 million. Kia Gregory, Change May Be Coming to a Block Skipped by Harlems
Rebirth, New York Times, 11 October 2012.
36
Collins, The New Politics of Community, 24.
Jazz Perspectives
13
even as they retrieve and rework symbols from the past. Harlem has been alive to
such re-imaginings in recent years.
At the NJMH Visitors Center, Schoenberg seeks to emphasize the relationships
between jazz as history or tradition, on the one hand, and jazz as live performance,
as improvisation, as a medium for bringing people together, on the other. The intimacy
and informality of the museum ofces, Schoenberg felt, made possible an interchange
between the subject and the audience that just cannot happen on a stage with a podium
and a microphone.38 My eldwork conrms this. Azure Thompson, the museum
patron I introduced above, told me that, although the Jazz for Curious Listeners sessions she has attended are actually classes, she sees the space as more of a social
club. There was something very soothing to her about being around the older
patrons (Thompson is in her mid-thirties), as if they offered a kind of informal mentoring. She felt that she was getting something from them that she did not nd in any
other kind of space, and that she was a valued person in this kind of social club. There
was a kind of comfort, she said, in talking about the music. And maybe afterwards
a little bit of dialogue I might have with someone there. Thats the social aspect. Not
the actual music but just being able to have this discussion. It takes a person like
Loren [Schoenberg] to create a space where you feel comfortable talking, and you
dont feel stupid for not knowing, for not being a musician, or whatever.39 Thompsons observations suggest that the comfort one can experience in a given communityin this case, a jazz communityis not necessarily normative; it may require a
welcoming personality to set the tone. It may require work.
In 2005 the museum board brought in bassist Christian McBride to serve as artistic
advisor and global ambassador for the NJMH. Equally at home in jazz as in funk and
other popular music styles, McBride sees himself as capable of reaching out to African
American listeners who think of jazz as yesterdays music, and also to draw to Harlem
those who already appreciate the music. Too many people worldwide have a sense that
jazz has lost its standing in the black community, McBride noted when he assumed the
position. In a sense it has, he added. His aim was not only to nd a home in Harlem
for jazzthe most celebrated black community in the worldbut also to see if people
who claim they love this music will travel uptown. For Azure Thompson, the
museums location in Harlem is important not only because of the historical signicance of the neighborhood in which she prefers to socialize, but also precisely
because she does not have to travel downtown to get to it. I havent gone to Jazz at
Lincoln Center in a while, she said. I prefer the simplicity of being able to walk
over to 126th Street. I feel like this is my home and it feels so good just to be
able to walk up the street and go to the museum, [to] walk upstairs and people look
familiar.40 The NJMH, therefore, has a decidedly neighborhoody feel to it; it feels
like home.
37
37
Ibid., 25.
Loren Schoenberg, interview with author, 19 March 2008, Harlem.
39
Azure Thompson, interview with author, 17 November 2010, Harlem.
40
Ibid.
38
14
Jazz, Hip-hop, and the Generational Divide

What I am kind of critical of, Thompson said during our interview, referring not just
to the jazz museum but also to other inter-generational social contexts, is the limited
views that the older people have of youthThey dont do this, they dont listen to this,
or whatever. This was troubling, she said. There was a need for more inter-generational music dialogues. There ought to be, for example, a class about jazz and hiphop. After all, there was a whole period of hip-hop music where it was like jazz
hip-hop. [For example, the group] Digable Planets they were sampling all kinds
of jazz musicians.41 Thompsons friend from Howard University, Courtney Liddell,
who also attends Jazz for Curious Listeners, grew interested in jazz precisely because
of hip-hop. She recalled how in the late 1980s and early 1990s hip-hop artists tried
to nd obscure jazz musicians to sample for their grooves. Im pretty sure thats
how I got familiar with who certain [jazz] artists were, where such and such was
sampled, and then I got more interested in the record that it came from.42 Some
jazz acionados who grew up before hip-hop, however (and perhaps some who grew
up with hip-hop), see the music as an inferior, commodied phenomenon, a vehicle
for vulgar lyrics expressing violence, misogyny, and crass displays of hedonistic
stardom. Liddell and Thompson saw things differently and lamented the chasm
between the jazz and hip-hop communities (gure 5).
One evening at the NJMH, an awkward moment arose precisely around this theme.
It was a Harlem Speaks event on 24 March 2005, with drummer and vocalist Grady
Tate as guest of honor. Loren Schoenberg and jazz journalist/producer Greg Thomas
hosted the interview. Mr. Tate, dressed sharply in a brown suit with matching shirt,
tie, and handkerchief, and lightly tinted eyeglasses, was in good spirits. He spoke
frankly, condently, and proudly about his life in music, and about being a black
man in the United States (in his case, growing up in Durham, North Carolina in the
1930s and 1940s, then serving in the Air Force in Waco, Texas, where he played
drums in the service band, and his subsequent versatile career in the music business).43
The Visitors Center was full (about 60 people). The audience was enthralled, voicing
afrmations to some of his statements, laughing appreciatively at others.
At some point during the lively question and answer portion after the interview,
however, the issue of how things have changed with younger generations arose.
Someone mentioned hip-hop, and a couple of people expressed ambivalence toward
or even disapproval of the genre. Loren Schoenberg, too, professed his own lack of
comprehension of the misogyny and violence he heard in hip-hop. An audience
member in the back of the room, by the door and apparently about to leave, seemed
41
Ibid.
Courtney Liddell, interview with the author, 12 July 2011, Harlem.
43
Grady Tate is a drummer and singer associated with hard bop and soul-jazz. He performed with a long list of
legendary jazz musicians, including Jimmy Smith, Wes Montgomery, and Quincy Jones. He played drums and
percussion for the 1981 Simon and Garfunkel concert in Central Park, and he was the drummer for The
Tonight Show with Johnny Carson for several years. Tate also recorded vocals for the Sesame Street Schoolhouse
Rock series, such as Naughty Number 9. He served on the faculty of Howard University for 20 years (1989
2009).
42
Jazz Perspectives
15
Figure 5 Museum patrons Azure Thompson (L) and friend Courtney Liddell (to her
immediate right), 25 September, 2010. (Photo F. Moehn).
to take offence and paused to accuse the museum director of over-generalizing about
the genre. The atmosphere in the Visitors Center quickly grew tense; the fact that
Schoenberg is white while the vexed audience member, as well as the guest of
honor, co-interviewer Greg Thomas, and much of the audience were black suddenly
seemed more apparent than it had previous to this moment, even though the critical
view of hip-hop was shared by some African American audience members (as well
as, seemingly, by Grady Tate, at rst). The NJMHs prized sense of community was
momentarily threatened as the discussion oundered.
Or was it? Was it perhaps a moment to forge community? A moment of changingsame power relations and the conscientious negotiation of difference? Debate resumed
and at one point Schoenberg said, Im glad were having this talk tonight. Then he
turned to his guest, Grady? Im glad I started it, Tate responded. A young audience
member now rose to address Mr. Tate. Hi. As one of the younger people here, she
slowly began. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, several audience members interjected,
perhaps eager for someone to ease the tension. Im sorry, Im nervous, she
blurted. Tell us old folks, Loren Schoenberg said. Make peace, make peace, a
man in the audience exclaimed. Yeah, she responded. On both levels, she continued, motioning to the man in the doorway and then to the front of the room where
Tate sat next to Schoenberg, I just want to point something out. Please, said
Schoenberg, encouragingly. The energy in the room has completely shifted in a
moment, she went on. You know, just by going from whats of now [i.e., the topic
of hip-hop], coming from whats of then [that is, before the discussion turned]of
the jazz, and the music getting into you, she continued, making expressive hand
16
gestures. And just to go back to that for just a moment. Thank you, Schoenberg
said. First of all I wanna say, she offered, now beginning to smile broadly. I am
so inspired by you, as a vocalist, as an artist, now motioning with her open hand
toward Grady Tate, and then gently crossing her open palms over her heart for the
word artist. I wanna know two things. The rst is She paused, and then
shook the tension out of her shoulders and head to exclaim, Oh, Im so nervous!
her bodily expression as important as her words. Dont be nervous, Schoenberg
said. Youre amongst friends, a woman in the audience added as a few people
gently chuckled sympathetically. The young woman continued:
The rst one is, Id like to know your favorite Shakespeare play. I know you said you
performed in Richard III, but I was wondering if you had a preference for another?
And the second is: you said 90% of the time you were scared. You didnt know
what you was doin, you know. And as a performer I take that with me. And if you
have any advice, especially for younger people who feel like, you know, some of
the hip-hop world islike the gentleman said [motioning to the man in the
doorway]its not all the same thing, its different, its give-and-take. But the
music industry right now is soits not like it used to be at all. Not like when my
parents came up. Im 25 years old, and if you ask an average say, 15 to 25-yearold what their favorite group is, theyre gonna tell you something commercial
mines Earth Wind and Fire You know what I mean? Thats what I came up
on[and] jazz in New Orleans. Thats where Im from. And I basically wanted to
get back to the point: What do you have to say to younger people, as far as to encourage [them] And also your favorite Shakespeare play. Thank you.
She apologized for the long discourse.

Grady Tate absorbed this information. Um, he said haltingly, in his rich baritone,
amplied by a microphone. I started, um, I started this thing, and I was trying to let
everyone that can hear me know that, um, all the kids are not bad. All the kids are not
products of their environment, as one would, uh, suggest. There are individualists out
here, and theyre doing what they want to do. And some of it is great, just as some of the
music is greatthe jazz. Some of its sad. You have to be very discerning in what you
listen to and what you want to hear, continually. Its your judgment. Whatever you like
is what you should listen to. I dont tell anybody what to like. I cant. I tell me what I
enjoy hearing, and if you ask me about it I can explain to you why I like it, and how
much I like it. But I dont explain it to you so that you can like it too. You make
your own decisions. These kids are, these kids are marvelous. Some of them are wild
look at our jazz musicians, man! A few audience members laughed knowingly.
Yeah. You know, they came through some terrible periods. Um hum, several
people murmured. And [back then] everybody was saying Whatever you do, dont
be a jazz musician, thats the worst thing You know? Yeah, several older folks
in the room afrmed, nodding to their neighbors. Its about growth, Tate continued,
authoritatively. This will work itself out. The room grew quiet.
And one of the things thats so interesting, Tate continued. If this description of
women [in hip-hop] is so degrading, why arent the women more up in arms about it?
They dont know any better, responded an older African American woman in the
audience, without hesitation. Is that what it is? Tate asked. Yes, replied another
Jazz Perspectives
17
woman. Yes, afrmed another. Well maybe they know a little better than you
think, said Tate. Yeah, thank you, said a younger African American woman, chuckling. Some of us have been steeped in certain, uh, little traits and certain little things we
do, Tate reected. And sometimes as we grow older we think, This is the only way it
should be. You know, the older we get, the more we should be looking to the kids, to
see what theyre doing. And to make comments on it. But, you know, just dont,
dont blanket itIts all bad! he exclaimed with a sweeping downward motion of
his hand. Right, someone agreed. You know? Tate reiterated. Um hum, folks
afrmed. Leave them alone, theyll grow up, Tate added, drawing snickers and
single word expressions of approval (although the woman who said that young
women didnt know any better seemed to shake her head in disagreement). Theyll
grow up, he repeated.
There was a silent pause in the room. Uh, Much Ado About Nothing, Tate stated
dryly. Oh, someone gasped. Does that answer you? Tate said to the young
woman who had asked the question.
Yeah, she gratefully responded, almost breathless at Tates rhetorical skill in
answering her question about Shakespeare plays while simultaneously making a
meta-commentary about the entire hubbub over hip-hop. Thank you.
Youre welcome darling. Thank you, Tate laughed heartily. The audience joined
him in laughter as the sense of community in the Visitors Center was redeemed.
The process of publicly reecting on his young interlocutors question while considering the intimate but momentarily edgy social dynamic of the roomand also thinking
about his own life in musicprompted Tate to nd a way to both restore a sense of
community for those present in the Visitors Center, and to express his own feelings
in a more balanced and thoughtful manner. Meanwhile, in using the word darling
to refer to his young female interlocutor, Tate may be drawing on a southern linguistic
custom from his youth in North Carolina. The woman, also from the South, may possibly have appreciated the endearment. (Consider how she momentarily switched to
vernacular forms more common in the South when she said to Mr. Tate, You
didnt know what you was doin. ) In the context of this exchange, however, it also
underscores Tates gendered and generational discursive authority vis--vis the questioner. It was, plausibly, a retreat to the comfort of a changing-same power relation
that remained unchallenged in this episode.
Now Loren Schoenberg took over to close:
We have got just a couple of minutes left here, folks. Unfortunately, its been going by
so quick. Before I introduce Mr. [Greg] Thomas Id just like to say something
about the audience tonight. On the one hand its an old ploy of a bandleader, of
an entertainer, to look at the audience and say I want you all to give a round of
applause for yourselves. But, having said that, actually a bunch of people commented on this during the break tonight, and I felt it. First of all I want to thank my friend
back there for bringing that good feeling back [meaning the young woman who asked
the question] and Ill admit some responsibility on my part for what happened
there. But, having said that, uh, the feeling in the room tonight in general[]
Ive been in a lot of rooms hearing a lot of people interviewed, and Ive never
heard quite a combination of someone speaking and the people in the room.
18
Theres been a simpatico and a concentration. I feel like Im in someones living

room, and just hanging out with someone.
Thats what it is, Grady Tate interjected, opening his arms out wide to the audience.
Were all hanging out. The informality and comparative lack of structure lends this
setting an improvisatory feeling, and again the notion of it being like a home is
highlighted.44
Its a very, very special feeling, continued Schoenberg. So I want to thank everyone
who came here to participate. Greg? He passed the microphone to his co-producer
Greg Thomas (gure 4). For how many of you is this the very rst time that youve been
here? Thomas asked. Several people raised a hand. OK. All right. Well, I want to
especially welcome all of you who are here for the rst time. And I ask you to please,
please come back. Each time is wonderful and different in its own way, and were particularly proud to have Mr. Grady Tate tonight. Loren mentioned about the simpatico
in the room, and I just want to say that, you know, if you look around, in this room
[there] is one of the most diverse audiences you can imagine, I mean, age, ethnicity,
culture. I mean, look. Right here. And its about Mr. Tate. Its about this music. Its
about the Jazz Museum in Harlem. And Id like you to please, please keep supporting
us. Make sure you give a dollar on the way out. And tell all the people If you put
your name and information on the mailing list, well stay in touch, and wed love to
see you again. So thank you very much. There was applause all around.
I have one last thing to say, Grady Tate spoke up. If this, if this could only be the
whole world, wouldnt we be into something? Oooh, someone swooned, to more
laughter and handclapping. Sure would be! Greg Thomas acknowledged.
Schoenbergs, Thomass, and Tates concluding remarks evoke what Paul Austerlitz
has identied as jazz consciousness, a humanist ethos of ecumenicity, and an aesthetic of inclusion.45 To Tate, it represents a model of community lacking in the wider
society. At rst glance, it may seem like a comfy or perhaps even nave idea of community, but Tate is no ingnue. The sentiment was sincere. At the same time, we
observe a kind of edginess to community as enacted here. Once hip-hop was introduced into the discussion, the conversation almost left the ecumenical space of the Visitors Center to enter into what Guthrie P. Ramsey calls a community theater in black
American cultural life, that is, public and private spaces that provide audiences with
a place to negotiate with othersin a highly social waywhat cultural expressions
such as music mean.46 The metaphor of hanging out in someones living room
seems appropriate. It is comfy. Yet, it also threatened, momentarily, to become a
volatile discussion about black youth, a discussion in which hip-hop (or, more specically, the lyrics in rap music) inevitably looms large.
The ethnomusicologist Matthew Somoroff discovered a similar sentiment in his eldwork in New York City
among musicians invested in avant-garde jazz. They really valued the performance venues that gave a feeling
of intimacy, of informality, of not being in an ofcial arts institution, he found. Pers. comm., 5 Nov. 2011.
45
Paul Austerlitz, Jazz Consciousness: Music, Race, and Humanity (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2005),
xxi.
46
Guthrie P. Ramsey, Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-hop (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 2003), 77.
44
Jazz Perspectives
19
I mentioned this episode to Jazz for Curious Listeners patron Azure Thompson in
our interview, after she brought up the need for more dialogue about jazz and hiphop. Like the woman who asked the question of Grady Tate, Thompson rst noted
that hip-hop culture was much more diverse than it tends to be portrayed in such discussions (she cited as an example the group The Roots, which she used to see perform
at Howard University). It always happens that older people are critical of youth
culture, she said, so its not anything new. I asked if she thought this dynamic
was the same for older white patrons of the Jazz Museum as for older black ones.
For older black folks, Thompson thought, there was often an additional weight to
those kinds of conversations, a narrative that holds black youth responsible for the
African American condition. The behavior of black youthsor the way their behavior
is represented in the media and elsewheretends to be taken as a signal of the successes
or failures of African Americans as a whole in the social order (recall Grady Tates
desire that not all black youths be seen as products of their environment but
rather as individualists). It is a narrative of linked fate that echoes what Evelyn
Brooks Higginbotham identied as the politics of respectability in certain strands
of early twentieth-century African American culture, Thompson observed in a
follow-up e-mail message.47 Upstanding moral behavior in the black community
(which, for the time period Higginbotham analyzed, included staying clear of the emergent jazz music scenes) could prove white supremacists wrong about the purported
inferiority of African Americans.48 By contrast, Thompson felt, when there is an
inter-generational conversation among whites, youre not thinking about the whole
condition of white people.49
Thompson would sometimes go from the Jazz for Curious Listeners sessions to the
Creole Restaurant six blocks south on Third Avenue for what was at the time (201011)
known as the Revive da Live jazz jam. Revive da Live was founded by Meghan Stabile
with some friends while she was a student at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Stabile
grew up listening to rock and pop and had very little exposure to jazz. When she got to
Berklee, however, she became an enthusiast for the music and began promoting live
shows. She moved to New York City and started the jam in Harlem. The young musicians who participated in the Creole Restaurant jam were, as Thompson put it, trained
jazz musicians who do hip-hop very well.50 Most of them studied jazz at schools (such
as Berklee College of Music and The New Schools jazz program), but they grew up
with and appreciate hip-hop, and they incorporate inuences from it into their live,
acoustic music. The Revive musicians might play with, for example, jazz trumpeter
Terence Blanchard, but they also play with rappers and hip-hop artists such as
Q-Tip or Common, or with bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding. Theyre not just
jazz you know, theyre in popular culture, Thompson observed. Jazz was still
47
Azure Thompson, e-mail message to the author, 4 September 2012.

Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Womens Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880
1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).
49
Azure Thompson, interview with author, 17 November 2010, Harlem. As Thompson observed in this interview,
many of the older white NJMH patrons are Jewish residents of the Upper West Side, and hence not from Harlem.
50
Ibid.
48
20
present, but in another form, in hip-hop and R&B, she thought.51 In 2011 the Revive
Da Live jazz collective also held a jam at Mintons Playhouse as part of the Harlem Jazz
Shrines Festival I mentioned above.
The jazz museums artistic advisor Christian McBride attended the Creole jam on
at least one occasion, and one of the young volunteers at the museum, a Juilliard
student, told me he regularly went there to jam after closing the Visitors Center.
While such genre crossings may seem fairly natural to the listener, however, for
the musician, they require effort and attention to detail. One of the musicians
Stabile promotes, the trumpeter Igmar Thomas (27 at the time of our interview),
described how, in his experience, many of the popular music fans of his generation
are not used to the kinds of harmonic changes common in jazz. One of my battles as
a composer [has been to] try to reintroduce a lot of chords to the mainstream audience, he related. Jazz is much more colorful than most of the grooves that are, you
know, taken in a mainstream way. Thomas noted that, although he likes The Roots,
what he does is distinct. The Roots stay away from jazz, and theyll tell you that.
They do not want to be considered that. Theyre amazing musicians, he said,
but some people would say that, to achieve some of these other levels [of mainstream popularity], you dont have to spend quite as much time in the shed. You
dont need to learn your craft quite as in-depth to get to that level. Im talking
about the things that, like, John Coltrane achieved guys like Miles, the people
that we look up to.52
Thomas would later lead the Revive da Live Big Band at Harlem Stage in a tribute to
the inuential hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest (on 2 March 2012). Like The Roots,
A Tribe Called Quest pioneered hip-hop with jazz inuences and some acoustic instrumentation. At Harlem Stage the big band accompanied and swung to the rapping of
MCs in Thomass exciting arrangements of this groups iconic hip-hop repertoire.
Such productions would seem to validate Grady Tates reection that older generations
should not blanket the hip-hop of youths (and specically of black youths) as all
bad. Leave them alone, theyll grow up, he said at the decisive moment in the community theater described above. The conversation that Azure Thompson called for
regarding cross-inuences between jazz and hip-hop is worth having at the NJMH
(and I would not be surprised if it does eventually take place there). Young musicians
are already having this conversation, but it is noteworthy that old debates over, for
example, craft and virtuosity versus commercial success, or the canonical legacy of
great men can still mark out the borders between jazz and certain other musical
styles.
At one of the sessions for Jazz for Curious Listeners: A Month with Christian
McBride, the bassist noted that a similar, albeit less pronounced, tension used to
arise between some, perhaps comparatively purist, jazz musicians, and the funk,
51
Ibid. A good example of this new generation of musicians is keyboardist Robert Glasper, whose music combines
soul, gospel, jazz, and hip-hop inuences. Stabile has produced live shows of the Robert Glasper Experiment in
New York City.
52
Igmar Thomas, interview with author, 13 January 2011, New York City.
Jazz Perspectives
21
soul, or pop scenes in which he has worked. McBride demonstrated an eclectic range of
bass players who inuenced him as he shared tracks featuring his father Lee Smith, also
a bassist, as well as Jaco Pastorius, Paul Chambers, Ray Brown, and nally, Bernard
Odum in James Browns 1960s band and the young Bootsy Collins in Browns early
1970s group.53 Still, hip-hop remains a more edgy topic in some jazz circles. This is
partly because of the lyrics and the politics of respectability pertaining to black
youths as described above, but also because the genre, as Igmar Thomas noted, is
not typically associated with the kind of instrumental genius or virtuosity attributed
to canonical jazz performances and recordings, or indeed, to James Browns music.
Sound Recordings, Memory, and Canon

In jazz communities, sound recordings tend to be regarded as windows to an authentic
past. As seemingly transparent registers of genius they are prized primary sources for
the construction and maintenance of a jazz canon. Unreleased recordings can excite
jazz communities with their potential to augment knowledge. In 2010 the NJMH
made a unique archival acquisition when it purchased the Savory Collection of
audio recordings, named after the engineer who made them, Bill Savory. In the late
1930s Savory captured onto disc live jazz sessions from radio broadcasts. He held on
to them for years, showing little interest in releasing them to an archive. Loren Schoenberg knew that the recordings included sessions of Benny Goodmans band. They were
of special signicance for Schoenberg because he worked with Goodman in the 1980s
before the bandleaders death in 1986. Despite Schoenbergs pleas to Bill Savory, it was
the latters son, Gene, who nally allowed Schoenberg to examine the collection and to
make an offer for it after Bill had passed away.
The journalist Larry Rohter wrote a feature article for the New York Times on the
acquisition. Museum Acquires Storied Trove of Performances by Jazz Greats, was
the headline on the front page of the Arts section. A companion page, titled Jazz
Lost and Found, offers abridged streamed audio samples from the Savory collection,
including performances by Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Charlie Christian
with Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton.54 Reader comments posted to the
New York Times web site about these samples evidence tremendous enthusiasm for
the collection and reveal one way that the Internet can enable virtual jazz communities.
From the 29 December 2009 Jazz for Curious Listeners: A Month with Christian McBride. The musical
examples included selections with Billy Pauls 1974 band and with Mongo Santamaria in 1980), and others
with Jaco Pastorius (Portrait of Tracy and Donna Lee, from 1976), Paul Chambers (No Blues with Miles
Davis in 1967, and Chamberss arco solo on Bennie Golsons Stroller from 1959), Ray Brown (his classic
bass line on Killer Joe with the Quincy Jones Big Band, 1969). One memorable moment occurred when, as
we listened to Soul Power, McBride performed his long since internalized ngering of Bootsy Collinss inuential funk lines on air bass (that is, without a physical instrument), enthralling those present at the Visitors Center
with a vivid visual narrative of how Bootsy produced the sound (or at least how McBride learned to reproduce it).
54
Larry Rohter, Museum Acquires Storied Trove of Performances by Jazz Greats, New York Times, 16 August
2010; Jazz Lost and Found, New York Times, 16 June 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/08/17/
arts/music/savory-collection.html?ref=music (accessed 11August 2011). See also, Larry Rohter, The Savory
Collection Likely to Hold More Surprises for Jazz Fans, New York Times, 17 August 2011.
53
22
One reader/listener wrote the following in reference to an editorial discussing how the
NJMH may not be able to release most of the tracks on CD format for copyright
reasons: National Jazz Museum, please do not hold these recordings hostage. With
all due respect, coming there to stand in a room wearing headphones, then remembering the sounds, is not what we had in mind. We who care will be happy to pay for copies
of our own, make donations to the museum, or both. Whatever it takes.55
In an age when people have grown accustomed to having access to extensive catalogs of recorded repertoire via the Internet (whether paid or pirated), curious listeners can only hear the Savory collectionaside from the brief samples mentioned
aboveat 104 E. 126th Street. Following the press release, Loren Schoenberg organized a series of public listening sessions at the NJMH Visitors Center. These featured special guests such as Gene Savory, producer George Avakian, and Coleman
Hawkinss daughter, Colette (the collection includes Coleman Hawkins performing
Body and Soul). On 28 September 2010, for example, the museum hosted a
Savory event titled, Jam Sessions: Benny Goodman/Bobby Hackett/Lionel
Hampton/Slim and Slam. Gaps in jazz lore are lled to overowing in the
Savory Collection, the publicity announcement read. Come listen and be one of
the rst to hear these fascinating records.56
Schoenbergs excitement about the acquisition was palpable (the Savory events also
gave him the opportunity to appeal for donations to aid in properly restoring and
archiving the collection). My eld notes document how, at one point during this 28
September session, Schoenberg played a version of Jazz Me Blues for the audience.
It featured Bobby Hackett on cornet, Joe Marsala on clarinet, Ernie Caceres on baritone
sax, Joe Bushkin on piano, Artie Shapiro on bass, and George Wettling on drums. The
track had special resonance for audience member Bill Crow, a bassist who performed
with George Wettling many years ago (gure 6). Crow was hearing something new and
old at the same time, and remembering personal experiences from the past, which he
shared with the public at the museum. Those present could thus appreciate this recording in its immediate historical connection to someones life there, while also feeling a
kind of thrill in hearing something apparently unearthed for the rst time. When Loren
Schoenberg needed a few minutes to nd his next audio example on his iPod, older
audience members reminisced about their younger days. I overhead someone lean
toward Morris Hodara in the front rowthen 86 years oldand say to him, Ernie
Caceres was a fantastic musician. Elder members of the jazz museum public can
claim to having witnessed jazzs past, whether as a participant in the music making,
like Bill Crow or the legendary producer George Avakian, or as a listener and fan.57
History is thus experienced as part of the present.
Loren Schoenberg often arranges to mix live performance into museum sessions that
simultaneously commemorate the past. In this manner, another layer of musical
Jazz Lost and Found, reader comment # 76, dan in New York, 31 August 2010, accessed 26 October 2012. See
also Free That Tenor Sax, New York Times, 17 August 2011.
56
http://www.jazzmuseuminharlem.org/archive.php?id=699 (accessed 21 October 2012).
57
George Avakian has had a storied career as a record producer. While at Columbia Records in the 1940s and 50s,
for example, he signed Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis, among others, as well as popular music artists.
55
Jazz Perspectives
23
Figure 6 Bassist Bill Crow (L) chatting with producer George Avakian, 28 March, 2009.
meaning that weaved past and present, live and remembered now occurred as the
young Sullivan Fortner jumped in with a version of the song Mack the Knife on
the piano of the Visitors Center. An older man noted that Fortners version of the standard was in a distinct style, and he asked the pianist what it was. Fortner answered that
he had chosen to play a Harlem stride interpretation, with inuences of Erroll Garner
(who, in the 1940s, developed his own style in New York, drawing on earlier stride
greats such as James P. Johnson). An iconic era from jazzs paststride was most
popular in the 1920s and 1930swas performatively brought into the present as
part of a listening, teaching, talking and remembering session.
In another example from the Jazz for Curious Listeners classes, on 5 October 2010
Dominick Farinacci, a young trumpet player and graduate of the Juilliard jazz program,
led a session on Miles Daviss seminal Kind of Blue album (1959). He asked the audience to listen closely to Bill Evanss piano on the track So What. An older man commented, You know, Ive heard this album hundreds of times but now Im hearing the
piano different. A middle-aged woman added, It sounds like the piano was answering
the trumpet. There was a pause as we listened. Eighty-year-old Jackie Taja Murdock,
a longtime regular at the NJMH Visitors Center, interjected, Like a call-andresponse (gure 7). A little later, the rst man said, I think it has a lot to do with
the characteristics of Miles. I mean, he was a pretty cool guy. Miles was really cool.
Farinacci demonstrated the Dorian mode employed in So What on the piano.
Now another audience member suddenly spoke up: I just wanted to throw this into
the mix. I was 17 when I saw Miles for the rst time I saw Miles about 50 times
over the years, and each time I could hear the evolution One time opposite
Dizzy, who was still playing that busy bebop harmony and Miles got on stage and
did his cool thing. I came all the way down from The Bronx because I just had to
hear this. I remember the day in 1959 when my father brought this album home,
and I knew that it was very special.
24
Figure 7 Museum patrons Jackie Taja Murdock (L) and Fredericka Woodford, 14
September, 2010. (Photo F. Moehn).
While jazz lore sometimes veers into the anecdotal like this, the kinds of talk I just
described at NJMH Curious Listeners sessions interested Azure Thompson a good deal.
She had not previously thought about the details of musical lives in that way, she
related. Now when she goes to see live jazz she is more cognizant that she is witnessing
certain people coming together to create a given musical sound at a particular time and
place, engaging with specic inuences. She situates musical events in a more historical
context, she explained:
You have people at [the Jazz Museum] say, I remember when I saw so-and-so in this
club, and they played with so-and-so. So when I go to [see live music] I feel like
Im part of a moment [in] history as well, like Im going to be telling similar stories 20
or 30 years from now. So thats why I really appreciate just having that available to
me. Who was working with whom? Who signed whom? How [did] certain musicians become known to music execs? Those kinds of relationships.
This is a kind of socialization into jazz community that is not about shedding (practicing long hours in solitary) or paying ones dues in clubs or on the road, or about
being in-the-know, but about feeling free to talk about ones personal experience or
tastes. The excitement at witnessing live performance, moreover, can become heightened when connected to the impulse to historicize that tends to prevail in jazz narratives. The mix of generations at NJMH eventsof witnesses, doers, and curious
listenersfosters this kind of consciousness.
For Thompsons friend, Courtney Liddell, the Jazz for Curious Listeners sessions are
an odd experience because the classes are taught by deeply knowledgeable experts,
but the audience comprises an odd mix of enthusiasts. The conversations that
happen after classes are important to her. I always wind up sticking around until
they kick us out, she said. Everybody there seems really happy to see younger
Jazz Perspectives
25
Figure 8 Museum patron and volunteer Burt Westridge chatting with another patron,
16 April, 2009. (Photo F. Moehn).
people out listening to the music, Liddell observed. One time she went with one of the
older students of the NJMH classes to watch a Chicago Bulls basketball game at the
local Applebees restaurant after class (Liddell is originally from Chicago). They talked
for hours, she related. Applebees, she joked, was the ofcial after-party of the NJMH.
Were in the bar, watching the game, she remembered, and in walks Burt.
Burt Westridge is 75 years old; he has lived on the Upper West Side of New York City
since the 1970s, currently on Duke Ellington Boulevard (gure 8).58 I have seen him at
nearly every Jazz Museum event I have been to since 2004. Hes a longtime member of
New York Citys Duke Ellington Society. Burt was one of the rst people I talked to [at
the NJMH], Liddell remembered. And he came to me right away with the whole
Ellington Society thing. Burt and Morris Hodara (introduced above, see gure 9)
often hand out yers about The Duke Ellington Society as they seek to recruit new
members. A lot of our members are old, Burt told Liddell as she was leaving the
museum one day, which she interpreted to mean that the society was in danger of
folding if it could not recruit younger members.59
On 25 September 2010, the NJMH held one of what it calls its Saturday Panels
longer weekend sessions of listening, debate, and discussion. The Who Was Bill
58
In 1977 The Duke Ellington Society, of which Burt Westridge is a member, successfully lobbied the city to
rename W. 106th St. Duke Ellington Boulevard. Edward Kennedy Duke Ellington and his son had homes on
this street (Dukes was at Riverside Dr.), and Burt lives on the street as well. In our interview, he told me how,
as a minor, living with his family in Brooklyn, he borrowed a friends draft card to get into the Basin Street nightclub and see Louis Armstrong in 1953.
59
As far as I can tell, Westridges and Hodaras efforts to recruit new members for The Duke Ellington Society at the
NJMH have not been terribly successful. As we have seen, for some Harlem residents, the NJMHs location uptown
increased its attractiveness. (Additionally, a society devoted to one composers music may have too narrow an
appeal for some.)
26
Figure 9 Museum patron Morris Hodara (L), volunteer Paul Backman (C), and jazz
scholar and archivist Dan Morgenstern (R), 28 March 2009. (Photo F. Moehn).
Savory? panel featured guests Gene Savory, George Avakian, and Larry Rohter (the
New York Times reporter), as well as the Library of Congress jazz specialist Larry Applebaum and the history professor Susan Schmidt-Horning. The listening for this session
included a Savory recording of Coleman Hawkins performing Body and Soul. Hawkinss October 1939 recording of this song contains one of the best known and most
admired solos in jazz history. Many have memorized his extemporization and can
perform it note-for-note; it is probably as canonized as an improvisation can get.
Included in the Savory Collection, however, is a slightly later Hawkins improvisation.
In keeping with Schoenbergs aim to have musicians create around the classics [and
thus] bring them back to life, as he put it at one of these listening sessions, he
Figure 10 Saxophonist Scott Robinson, 25 September, 2010. (Photo F. Moehn).
Jazz Perspectives
27
invited the young guitarist Marty Napoleon and the saxophonist Scott Robinson to
perform musical interludes for the Saturday Panel. Seemingly spontaneously, Schoenberg asked Robinson to accompany the Savory Body and Soul recording on his tenor
for the museum public. Imagine the saxophonists surprise upon receiving this request,
for he had never heard this Hawkins recording. Robinson obligingly put the reed to his
mouth but failed to blow a single note. Im supposed to just step all over it? he asked.
Id kind of like to hear it. Schoenberg grasped the saxophonists sentiment and
allowed the recording to play without live accompaniment. After a break, Robinson
performed an improvisation and Schoenberg explained to the audience how he
wants to keep live music a part of the NJMH jazz experience. As a musician, Robinson reected on the previous moment, sometimes you gotta know when not to touch
something (gure 10).
Conclusions
As I too listened to Hawkinss later solo that evening at the National Jazz Museum in
Harlem, I was comparing it with my memories of the canonical one. This was now the
third time I had heard the Savory version at the Visitors Center. The rst time I quickly
concluded that it could not compare to the better-known version, which today hardly
seems like an improvisation and rather more like a perfect composition. The
second time I listened with a more open mind. By the third time, the rmly inscribed
memory of the October 1939 solo was beginning to loosen up, allowing me to appreciate this different improvisation more.60 I wondered if other listeners had similar experiences, or if perhaps their memories of the canonical solo were different from mine.
Maybe there were even some listeners who heard the later recording with little or no
experience of the earlier, famous one. Whatever the case, our individual listening
experiences on this occasion and many others were also social ones. For a few
people, the better-known recording of Hawkins performing Body and Soul was
placed into a new perspective. In the interactions between doers, listeners, learners,
older and younger individuals, and between museum patrons of different heritages
(perhaps predominantly African American and Jewish, but not exclusively so), a
kind of dialogic jazz community is given voice at the Visitors Center. Prouty has
observed that every person, every jazz community, understands canon differently,
and these differences are critical to understanding how different communities come
to know jazz. To know jazz, to relate oneself to canon, and to identify with the
jazz community, Prouty writes, are conscious acts that require a degree of self-identication. We live in an era of social networking, as it is called, in which we can parse
our friends into virtual communities. The NJMH, too, has a useful Facebook site for
announcing upcoming events, and for friends of the museum to post commentary.
A brief excerpt of the Savory Body and Soul can be heard at the New York Times interactive feature on the
collection. The excerpt demonstrates how different the improvisation is, although the listener may notice some
similarities in the melodic leaps 20 seconds into the example: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/08/17/
arts/music/savory-collection.html (accessed 12 October 2011). Visitors to the museum can request to hear any
of the Savory examples in their entirety there.
60
28
But it is at the Visitors Center in the New Harlem where the real work of the museum
takes place: the curating ofif not the jazz communitya community of curious
listeners and talkers.
It should be clear that I do not mean to propose a romantic ideal of harmonious
social of relations here. Ingrid Monson described the ability of jazz-oriented interactions to establish a moment of community, whether temporary or enduring.
Certainly, the question of whether the sociability that takes place at the Jazz
Museum amounts to eeting moments or something more lasting is pertinent.
The folklorist Burt Feintuch has lamented the casual use of the term community
to describe occasional musical get-togethers (such as revivalist music sessions).
Community, he holds, is more than what happens in one, occasional sphere of
interaction. Rather, it is to participate in a web of connectedness to others that
continues beyond special events.61 The social web that congregates at Jazz
Museum events probably does not attain this standard of sustainability and extension. Indeed, it seems quite specic to the space of the Visitors Center. But it
may also be the case that, for some of the museum patrons, few webs do meet Feintuchs denition.
Meanwhile, live jazz in Harlem is becoming scarcer. Like Mintons Playhouse, the
much-loved St. Nicks Pub closed recently, in what one reporter described as yet
another blow to Harlem jazz.62 A similar fate may await the storied Lenox Lounge,
this reporter worried. (Meanwhile, a Whole Foods Market is planned for 125th
Street and Lenox Avenue, doors away from the Lounge.)63 Will the jazz museum be
able to move into its hopeful permanent building on 125th Street, near the Apollo
Theater, and offer expanded exhibitions and programming? If so, will its public
change? Will it be able to serve both the Harlem community and visitors from the
world over, as it currently does? What will be the nature of the Harlem community
ve years hence? The Revive Music Group (formerly Revive da Live) no longer hosts
jams at Creole restaurant near the museum (and the restaurant itself has recently
closed). However, the musicians who have been a part of Revive are performing steadily
elsewhere and attracting critical acclaim.64 At the same time, the NJMH has added personnel and maintains a full program of events. Both Azure Thompson and Courtney
Lidell informed me that, after time away from museum events, they have recently
resumed their attendance. The Visitors Center has been serving the public for
nearly a decade; whatever happens going forward, the NJMH, which records on
video and in photographs the Harlem Speaks sessions and other public events, has
amassed a rich archive of materials documenting how jazz can bring some people
together some of the time.
Burt Feintuch, Longing for Community, Western Folklore 60 2/3 (2001): 149. See also Prouty, Knowing Jazz, 14.
Kia Gregory, Frustration Builds Over Closed Harlem Nightspot, New York Times, 29 July 2012.
63
See Michael J. Feeney, Mixed reaction to Harlem Whole Foods, Daily News, 18 October 2012, NYDailyNews.
com, accessed 28 October 2012. See also, Michael J. Feeney, Lenox Lounge, Harlems famed jazz club, could be on
last set, Daily News, 8 March 2012, NYDailyNews.com, accessed 28 October 2012.
64
For example, trumpeter Igmar Thomas currently hosts The Evolution Jam Session at Zinc Bar, downtown.
61
62
Jazz Perspectives
29
Acknowledgments
This research would not have been possible were NJMH artistic director Loren Schoenberg not such a gracious and welcoming individual. I thank Loren and Christian
McBride for allowing me to take notes and occasional photographs at museum
events. I am grateful also to Greg Thomas and all the individuals I had the pleasure
of listening to at the NJMH, and to those I was able to interview for this article.
Thoughtful feedback from the anonymous reviewers, from attendees of the 2011 International Council for Traditional Music Conference, where I presented a version of this
article, from Azure Thompson, and from Matthew Somoroff was helpful in revising
this for publication. I conducted some of the research at the museum with support
from the Fundao para a Cincia e a Tecnologia in Portugal, administered through
the Instituto de EtnomusicologiaCentro de Estudos em Msica e Dana
(INET-MD).
Abstract
This article draws from the authors experiences as a participant-observer of public
events at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem over the course of several years.
Taking a critical view of the popular phrase, the jazz community, the article examines
how this institution seeks to integrate into Harlem and to nurture a community of
curious listeners and talkers through jazz appreciation. Among the questions
examine are: What kinds of discussions and relationships emerge between older and
younger individuals at museum events, between experts and enthusiasts or acionados?
How might memory inuence the production of history there? How can new experiences of jazz shape memories of previous ones, or revise perceptions of canon? How
does the social aspect of museum events color the experience of jazz at this space?
The author argues that a kind of dialogic jazz community is given voice at the
museum Visitors Center in the interactions between doers, listeners, and learners,
between older and younger individuals.

Curating Community at The National Jazz Museum in Harlem

Cargado por

Información del documento

Título original

Derechos de autor

Formatos disponibles

Compartir este documento

Compartir o incrustar documentos

Opciones para compartir

¿Le pareció útil este documento?

¿Este contenido es inapropiado?

Copyright:

Formatos disponibles

Curating Community at The National Jazz Museum in Harlem

Cargado por

Copyright:

Formatos disponibles

This article was downloaded by: [King's College London]

On: 21 October 2013, At: 05:23

Curating Community at the National

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Jazz Perspectives, 2013

Curating Community at the National

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Id rather be a y on a lamppost in Harlem than a millionaire anywhere else

# 2013 Taylor & Francis

Jazz Museum in Harlem

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Figure 1 Jazz Museum membership card.

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Jazz Museum in Harlem

on affective criteria such as shared interests; on proximity in a given locality; or in

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Jazz Museum in Harlem

means examining edginess as well as collectivity.23 Extending Monsons metaphor,

A New Museum for a New Harlem

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Jazz Museum in Harlem

Figure 2 HARLEM IS FED UP billboard, 4 May 2009 (Photo F. Moehn)

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Figure 3 NJMH building, 1 April 2008. (Photo F. Moehn).

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Jazz Museum in Harlem

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Jazz Museum in Harlem

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Jazz, Hip-hop, and the Generational Divide

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Jazz Museum in Harlem

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

She apologized for the long discourse.

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Jazz Museum in Harlem

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Theres been a simpatico and a concentration. I feel like Im in someones living

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Azure Thompson, e-mail message to the author, 4 September 2012.

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Jazz Museum in Harlem

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Sound Recordings, Memory, and Canon

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Jazz Museum in Harlem

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Jazz Museum in Harlem

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Jazz Museum in Harlem

Figure 10 Saxophonist Scott Robinson, 25 September, 2010. (Photo F. Moehn).

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

Jazz Museum in Harlem

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 05:23 21 October 2013

También podría gustarte