Writing: Discussion 5 – Jazz As “Art Music”

The idea that there is some sort of dividing line between what is considered “art music” and “everything else” is actually pretty new. If we go back to Medieval or Renaissance Europe, we can find discussions of different contexts for music, but never really a distinction that one was “art” and that another was “not art.” The same goes for the artistic context of early America. This idea that there is “art music” and “popular music” (which is thereby, not art) comes sometime in the mid-nineteenth century. It was tied up with all sorts of categorization efforts with which people in the US and Europe (and their colonies) were obsessed at the time. Thus, while it’s a relatively new idea, this idea is one that jazz inherited, or at least that the public inherited and applied to jazz.

Once we get to the mid-1940s, jazz seems to cross into the territory of “art music.” Basically, before WW2, folks thought of jazz as “pop music” and after the war they treated it more like “art music.” Generally, the term “art music” was applied to music played in fancy concert halls set aside just for this purpose, music written by dead German guys, music played on violins and oboes. Now, with the arrival of bebop, some of the reverence usually reserved for this old, dead music was being directed at jazz.

There are a variety of reasons for this shift in perception, some of which we have—or will—gone into elsewhere. The point, there, though, is simply that this shift in perception happened and what that means for the style’s future.

Modern Pop vs Art

This totally arbitrary line between “art” and “pop” persists, today. We interact with it all the time, even when we don’t do so on purpose. We “enforce” these “rules” about the music through all sorts of ways. For example, when attending a concert, we are supposed to dress and/or applaud differently depending upon which type of music we are seeing performed. This is kind of silly, but also aids in the ways we are able to truly “appreciate” the music in the most appropriate way.

But, this brings lots of dumb elitism to different styles of music.

Can you think of anything—a style of music, a type of movie, a type of book, etc.—which is often degraded as not very artistic, but who you just love or find very moving? Why do you think this thing—music, movie, book, etc.—is so derided by the elites? Why do you disagree?