Healing Humanity With Music: A Humanitarian Project
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Category Archives: jazz
Who owns Jazz?
[Excerpts from The Social Effects of Jazz by Zola Philipp]
“In response to the statement that whites stole the music, Jim Hall says, “I’ve always felt that the music started out as black but that it’s as much mine now as anyone else’s. I haven’t stolen the music from anybody—I just bring something different to it” (Gerard, 1998, p. 90). Hall is indeed acknowledging that blacks invented jazz, but he does not feel that whites have stolen it, even if whites imitated the various jazz styles created by blacks and became wealthy as a result.”
Hall’s statement above is true. Jazz music is the next commodity used by white men to accrue wealth since cotton. Their entitlement means that they do not have to steal something to make it theirs. They have a right to it and that’s all there is to it.
Meanwhile, “Malcolm X said that whites simply replicate what they heard in the past, whereas blacks could spontaneously invent. He stated “Black musicians at a jam session with white musicians—a whole lot of difference. The white musician can jam with sheet music in front of him. But that black musician picks up his horn and blows sounds he never thought of before. He improvises, he creates (Gerard, 1998, p. 78).”
“Mackey (1992) believed that there was the containment of black mobility on the political level and that the social and economic progress blacks might have accumulated because of their artistic innovation was blocked by whites.”
Although jazz music permeates the planet in clubs and festivals, “Jazz became so commercialized that the industry was less dependent on black innovation, but rather produced a music that was lacking the essence of jazz—its improvisation.” Kofsky (1998) “believed that this refusal of whites to credit blacks is because they refused to equate anything valuable with African Americans. According to Miles Davis, this is the case because “The white man likes to win everything. White people like to see other white people win and they can’t win when it comes to jazz because black people created this” (Gerard, 1998, p.16).
While whites in the jazz music industry got rich, black musicians did not reap equal benefits. The industry caused a great deal of exploitation and discrimination by whites against blacks. Rex Stewart said, “Where the control is, the money is. Do you see any of us running any record companies, booking agencies, radio stations, music magazines?” (Kofsky, 1998, p. 19).
[Source and References: https://www.york.cuny.edu/academics/writing-program/the-york-scholar-1/volume-6.1-fall-2009/the-social-effects-of-jazz]
THIS is where I come in. Go to: www.DrDivaJC.com
Haiku
Washed clothes, cried, angel cloud and moon, sun and celestial cloud, my father is flying, he’s soaring [. Haiku] while I’m down here on the ground. ~ DrDivaJC
My Song for Our America– a Poetic Essay
He that hath an ear, let him hear THIS!
I don’t call myself a poet, but yet I occasionally will write a poem. In honor of National Poetry Month, I will be publishing one or two of my works, and a couple of my daughter’s pieces (she IS a poet!).
This first submission is a spoken word piece I wrote for a show I performed in with my fellow Atlanta Drama Queens called Eclectic Noirisms or something like that, at Late Night at the Academy Theatre in Avondale, GA, back in 2007.
Enjoy!
Roz
Glorify with me all the bravests, greatests and firsts
Paid with turned backs, exhile, stripped medals and other inexplicable hurts.
We’ve finished up King’s memorial,, now let’s go on to the next.
Put statues in D.C. of David Walker, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, and, yes, Malcolm X.
I want national memorials for Colonels Tye, Turner and Brown
In fact ALL the fearless freedom fighters wh0 dared to take evil…
View original post 755 more words
Blues plus Jazz equals Cotton
Read: A HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN JAZZ AND BLUES
TALKIN’ THAT JAZZ
Joan Cartwright
It’s still a soul song.
It’s still a soul song.
It’s still a soul song.
It’s still a soul song.
It’s still a soul song.
It’s still a soul song.
It’s still a soul song.
It’s still a soul song.
Bebop off beat with sweet jingles
Hip hop cold beats and street lingo
Conductor pace set big band on time
DJ MC hype man gone shine
From Stacey’s to shell toes
Straight A’s to dope rhymes
Kool Herc to King Cole
Ice Tea to Eckstein
Player Daddyo
Break beats broken time
Pork pies and kango
Whodini to Earl Hines
Uptown Harlem at Minton’s in Manhattan
Is where the cats would improvise while other cats were scattin’
Then it moved downtown where upper classes hung out
To listen to the hep cats talkin’ that jazz
And in the fifties the lingo crossed the water
To Berlin and to Paree where a Baron’s daughter
Understood the story spoken in all blue notes
Fast notes, hot notes, soundin’ like some new notes
The music was a smash hit and such a sensation
It traveled ‘round the world receiving thunderous ovations
It soon became a language that everyone could dig
Because the beat is so hip when they’re talkin’ that jazz
At 7, I discovered I was imitating Ella
And making sounds like Hendricks, boy, was he a swingin’ fella
By 17, I dreamt of singing with my own band
And talkin’ that jazz in far exotic lands
Then it finally happened, I vacated Manhattan
And took a trip to Europe where all the cats were scattin’
I said, “Arrivederci,” to my friends in the city
And, “Comment ces’t va,” a mes amis nouveaux en France
It soon became apparent that language was a must
I had to talk to people. Boy, did I feel like a clutz.
But they could understand me ‘cause I could talk that jazz
And life on Earth was really not so bad
And now I go a trav’lin’, a singin’ and a croonin’
A bluesin’ and a croonin’, happy as a loonin’
To propogate the music, I make the razzmatazz
I’m walkin’ and a squawkin’ and a talkin’ that jazz
Listen to the hep cats talkin’ that jazz
Fast notes, hot notes, soundin’ like some new notes
The beat is so hip when we’re talkin’ that jazz
The beat is so hip when we’re talkin’ that jazz
Fast notes, hot notes, soundin’ like some new notes
The beat is so hip when we’re talkin’ that jazz
I AM the lucky ONE!
They've moved on!
After five days of reflecting on the suicides of Michael Jackson, Don Cornelius and Whitney Houston, the email message below prompted me to write down my feelings. Please read this message, then see my response at the bottom.
Diva JC
ON WHITNEY HOUSTON
If we know anything about the entertainment industry, especially music business, it’s a very ruthless, cut throat, bordering on criminal environment, in spite of the number of success stories associated with it.
Most entertainers that navigate the entertainment business are probably tough enough to abide the criminals and the inhuman demands. But some entertainers are not tough enough and should be protected from the ravishes of that business.
And then there are those entertainers who are just plain tender and who, though they may project bravado in the public arena, are really collapsing in their personal arena. Whitney Houston was tender. Michael Jackson was tender. Marvin Gaye was tender. Jimi Hendrix was tender. Billy Holiday was tender. And their tenderness is understood or misunderstood buy the outside world only when their tenderness is exposed. And nothing exposes the tenderness of these artists like the results of being unable to handle the use of drugs and stimulants.
For decades I’ve understood and raged about how well-connected, usually Jewish, white male producers, with a huge pool of talent to choose from, will “discover” a nonwhite talent and make millions, and in recent times, make hundreds of millions of dollars by controlling their “product”.
Yes, business is business, and like all markets, the music business has its particular rules and practices, but the participation of nonwhite artists in that business, business controlled by white criminals, is of deeper significance.
First of all, the bottom line is that the music industry in America, since the era of minstrel shows, has essentially commercialized our pain. It is the pain of our existence that produces the pain expressed in our music. Even gospel music, which was born of the same chords and strains as the blues, is music of pain, if for no other reason than the nonwhite church for centuries has served as a massive reservoir for the pain of our people. This was the legacy infused in every note of Whitney Houston’s melodies.
So when white producers, along with the entertainment industry, banks and all, in the name of “good” business, commercializes the pain of nonwhite people, they essentially are saying: “We will have your art, in fact, we will take your art, but you can keep the conditions and the history that produces your art.”
In the end, the entertainment industry, by its business practice, slyly sidesteps any obligation to do something about the injustice that they uncover in the process of ferreting out nonwhite talent. In fact, music moguls thus have a disincentive to address the injustice that they see when addressing it might alter the conditions that produced their “product” in the first place.
Meanwhile, music moguls, with their array of award shows, become filthy rich in the process, diversifying their portfolios in unrelated markets. For example, I would not be alarmed to learn that much of Israel’s financial support is derived from the commercialization of our music.
Anyway, there is probably some good to come out of this. When I hear Asian performers rendering Whitney Houston or John Coltrane or Jimi Hendrix (they can’t quite get James Brown or Aretha Franklin yet) I am made aware of the greater purpose of nonwhite people of African descent in America. Fittingly, for the sake of the point I am making here, music, like all art, is truly a universal language; it is understood and is capable of transmitting information much more readily than tongues.
That being the case, the globalization of our music, though done so via commercial enterprise, is an indication of the role we have played and continue to play in the unfolding circumstances of human development.
For thousands of years, human intelligence has known of the cyclical convergence of consciousness that takes place in human existence. Such a cyclical change is upon us as I write. So much that it becomes clear that the thrust of our people to freedom and justice in America is indeed the spearhead of a larger thrust for freedom and justice by the entire human family, and our music is a deeply connecting element in the course of human evolution.
R.I.P. Whitney. You did your part.
France Jackson
_____________________________________
First, I commend France Jackson for taking the time and energy to think about this subject, write about it and distribute it to those of us in cyberspace who received it. That being said, I’m prone to disagree that some entertainers are “tough”, while others are “tender”. I believe we all have toughness and tenderness. Not one of us, even the most vile criminal is tough all the time. Toughness comes from being tender and learning to fend off insane actions committed by others.
All of the entertainers France mentioned – Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye and Billie Holiday – fought their own demons, created by drug addiction. They lost the fight, all before the age of 50.
Consider this: Each of these performers, except Don Cornelius, agreed to reincarnate to bring their musical talents to humanity on one condition – that they would be dead by 50. Cornelius was 72.
I contend that most human beings have the wrong idea about death. I think it’s like graduation from high school or college. Once you get the lesson, you are free to move on up to the next level. However, one psychologist disagrees with me. She feels that suicide is not a healthy action and that people prone to killing themselves can be helped. I don’t think so. If that were true, surely one of these stars’ mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin, husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, child, god child, best friend, manager, producer or someone in their circle could have save them.
I think, like Jesus Christ, Joan of Arc and Martin Luther King, we each have a destiny, a time to be born and a time to die and nothing nor any one can alter that occasion. Every soldier that picked up a weapon and charged toward the enemy is suicidal. People who smoke and drink are suicidal. People who overeat are suicidal. People like Evel Knievel born Robert Craig Knievel, an American daredevil and entertainer was suicidal, just like every race car driver, skydiver, fire fighter, police officer, coal miner, window washer of skyscrapers – every person that takes a risk to get anything accomplished, which, by the way, includes drug dealers and pimps, who know that what they are doing is downright dangerous. Let’s not forget that every woman who gives birth to another human being puts her life in jeopardy for nine months and the moment of child birth is a very sensitive one.
On the issue of “white producers, along with the entertainment industry, banks and all, in the name of ‘good’ business, commercializing the pain of nonwhite people,” I published a book entitled, A HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN JAZZ AND BLUES that spells out the reasons why this music makes millions for Europeans and Euro-Americans, while African Americans reap paultry profits from their cultural production. The problem is that most people, particularly African Americans, are not interested in hearing what I have to say.
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My final analysis leads me to believe that I AM the lucky ONE! A veteran of the stage, since the age of four, I reached my 64th birthday unscathed. I had violent and abusive marriages and relationships. I encountered drugs and alcohol but managed to stave off addiction. My heart was broken by lovers, children, grandchildren, friends and enemies. I was overlooked as a singer and musician, while those with far less talent rose to the top, only to fall flat on their face or die senselessly. And I’ve survived. Only last night, I sang at a black-owned restaurant in Miami and taught an entire group of young people about Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday.
No, I don’t own a mansion in New Jersey or L.A.
No, I don’t get tons of royalties from the 60+ songs I’ve composed, performed and recorded.
No, I don’t have millions of dollars in the bank (not saying that I won’t in months to come)!
But I am still alive. I’m still in the game. I’m still in the running for fame and fortune that we all seem to think we deserve.
I survived being punched in the face by a man who was in this country illegally, using me and my kids as his cover.
I survived near-death car accidents.
I survived a tumor in my uterus.
I survived friends like Freddie Hubbard who recorded my song “Sweet Return” and lots of people who said I didn’t have any talent but their enterprise went south, while mine prevails.
I AM THE LUCKY ONE! None of my children are drug addicts, dealers, pimps, thieves, murderers or con artists.
I lived long enough to see a black couple in the White House.
I survived every airplane flight I’ve ever taken.
I survived a Carnival Caribbean cruise, not long before the sinking of the Costa Concordia cruise ship in Italy.
I AM THE LUCKY ONE! And I’m happy to report that I appreciate living as long as I have and, if I’m even luckier, I’ll live as long as my father who will be 93 on May 7, 2012, and has a wife more than half his age!
For me, the key to life is recognizing that you are blessed and appreciating what you have, who you are and the people around you.
Yes, it’s true that Michael, Whitney, Marvin and Billie had scoundrels around them but I truly believe making their transition at such an early age was a choice they made BEFORE they ever stepped foot upon this Earth! They are all angels, now!
What do you think?
Diva JC
____________________________________
This is a remark sent by Javier Bailey
I want all of my FB Family to know that the death and demise of Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, and many others is no coincidence. I am not saying that there was any conspiracy. However I want all of you to know that the music industry and the gangsters that run the industry, reach down into our churches, neighborhoods, and schools, and extract our best and brightest; then they introduce them to money and drugs, and a lifestyle that is totally destructive. They provide no protections for them and will dump them as soon as the money stops flowing.
Pro athletes started unions in order to give themselves some protections, but artists in music and film are sheep for the slaughter. The death of these icons is evidence of what happens when the money no longer flows from their works. The industry allows them to kill themselves so that they don’t have to continue paying out their contracts. Prince, Public Enemy, Sly Stone and others have revolted and refused to work for the major labels. Just take a look at what I am telling you and you will find that when an artist stops producing a cash-flow for the big labels, somehow that artists ends up getting prescription drugs from some industry supported doctors , and eventually the artist find death around the corner.
I AM AUTHOR
In my twenties, thirties and forties, I held authors in the highest esteem. I wondered why there were so many books. In my fifties, I began to understand that everyone has a story to tell and that’s why there are so many books. Some people have multiple stories to tell, thus, increasing the size of the Universal Library.
In 2003, I moved from Florida to Georgia and, in 2004, I began compiling my poetry and memoirs. For 13 months, I wrote my first book IN PURSUIT OF A MELODY, which includes my memoirs, photographs, poetry, songs and two lectures. That book was published at TRAFFORD in Canada.
In 2006, I spent 5 months in China and Japan. When I returned to Georgia, I knew it was not the place for me, so I returned to South Florida. By the end of 2007, I was teaching 8th grade Music at a charter school. But I was laid off in January 2008. I received unemployment compensation for the remainder of the year and discovered www.lulu.com online.
***
I republished my first book there and broke out the poetry into three books; the song book; Amazing Musiwomen; and So, You Want To Be A Singer?
Today, all of my books are available in soft and hard cover format, as well as ebooks. This is my book store.
***
It has been my supreme pleasure to teach children about the Amazing Musicwomen who brought blues and jazz music to the forefront of American society and abroad! Also, I have taught students about the intricacies of the Music Business.
Through a grant from BankAtlantic to my non-profit organization, I was able to visit summer camps at three elementary schools to present my children’s songs.
Many of my songs have been recorded on CDs by my group Jazz Hotline and by other artists like Freddie Hubbard and Sandy Patton. My CDs are available at www.cdbaby.com/jcartwright and www.cdbaby.com/jcartwright2
I’ve taught others how to write and publish their books:
Jackie Rodriguez and Joshua Kassar
Finally, I’ve instituted a blog for a new project featuring my book about my spiritual journey: www.divineconnectionchurch.com
Author’s Roundtable in Miami
On July 26, 2011, I participated in an author’s roundtable with Sisters in Harmony (SiH) at the Courtyard Marriott on Bayshore Drive, in Coconut Grove, Miami. Along with 9 other authors, I presented my book and discussed questions posed to all of us.
The audience was minimal but everyone in attendance enjoyed the presentations.
On September 1, 2011, I will be the co-host with Ed Umoja Herman on The Knowledge Tour, an online radio program featuring authors. Tune in at 8 p.m. at http://blogtalkradio.com/sisters-in-harmony
NO JAZZ in Miami Gardens – it’s an outrage!
Jazz is not just a WORD! It’s an art form that came out of the African experience in America. It’s a music that spoke of the FREEDOM of Spirit of a people kidnapped, exploit and worked to death by a vile and vicious oppressor in the form of European slave traders and owners.
Fast forward to the 21st century!
[Miami Gardens, FL] I don’t agree that Jazz in the Gardens is so great. I have never attended but this event draws 35,000 deluded people. This year, there will be only two jazz artists, Al Jarreau and Branford Marsalis and <strong>NO female jazz artists</strong> at all. This is an outrage.
The people on this festival are R&B and that is NOT Jazz. They never have jazz. It’s an insult to me and all the real jazz musicians I work with and promote in my organization. That would be like having a reggae festival that features country & western.
It’s abhorrent but the City uses the word “jazz” for insurance purposes. And they should be ashamed of themselves for exploiting the cultural production of African Americans who think above their navel.
Bobby Brown, Lauryn Hill, Gladys Knight, Charlie Wilson, En Vogue, El Debarge, Doug E Fresh, Slick Rick, none of these are Jazz Artists, meaning that people like me who perform jazz are continually OUT OF WORK. We are never engaged by these cities to bring real jazz to the community. I worked day in and day out to promote jazz music in South Florida and get very little recognition by any of these so-called jazz promoters. They are liars and thieves of the “only true art form in America”. Ella, Billie, Carmen, Betty are turning over in their graves from this fraudulent false advertisement. If I had the resources, I would sue the City of Miami Gardens for this terrible and continuous offense that is killing the art of jazz and all the hard work that so many African Americans artists did in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s.
It is a huge insult to the hundreds of African Americans in South Florida who know what jazz really is. However, I’ve moved away from being the complainer because people in South Florida have no respect for the culture of African Americans anyway, unless it’s gospel.
I wrote a book about Amazing Musicwomen – see it at http://fyicomminc.com/books.htm
See also my book
Visit our site: www.wijsf.org
Also, see my site:www.joancartwright.com
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?created&&note_id=10150114212673036
New Thought
Let the music open up your heart and take your soul up high! — Diva JC
Music, the sound of the spheres begins in the womb! — Diva JC
Words We Speak 
