Jazz and Justice
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A galvanizing history of how jazz and jazz musicians flourished despite rampant cultural exploitation The music we call “jazz” arose in late nineteenth century North America—most likely in New Orleans—based on the musical traditions of Africans, newly freed from slavery. Grounded in the music known as the “blues,” which expressed the pain, sufferings, and hopes of Black folk then pulverized by Jim Crow, this new music entered the world via the instruments that had been abandoned by departing military bands after the Civil War. Jazz and Justice examines the economic, social, and political forces that shaped this music into a phenomenal US—and Black American—contribution to global arts and culture. Horne assembles a galvanic story depicting what may have been the era’s most virulent economic—and racist—exploitation, as jazz musicians battled organized crime, the Ku Klux Klan, and other variously malignant forces dominating the nightclub scene where jazz became known. Horne pays particular attention to women artists, such as pianist Mary Lou Williams and trombonist Melba Liston, and limns the contributions of musicians with Native American roots. This is the story of a beautiful lotus, growing from the filth of the crassest form of human immiseration.
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JAZZ AND JUSTICE
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There was also collective enterprise. Early on, Negro-owned recording companies included Sunshine Record Company formed by Johnny and Reb Spikes in 1921; Leroy Hurte’s Bronze Records in 1940; and Leon and Otis Rene’s Excelsior, then called Exclusive, in Los Angeles.73 In 1961, the musician Harold Battiste formed a record label, inspired by the Nation of Islam and their self-help philosophy. The fact that he received a mere $125 for playing saxophone on the blockbuster hit by Sonny and Cher “I’ve Got You Babe” impelled him further: “That’s all,” he said disgustedly.74
The writer Ishmael Reed has argued that the Nation of Islam was a “competitor” of the traditional Italian and Jewish-American branches of organized crime.75 It is well known that the First World War–era movement led by Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey served as predicate to the rise of the NOI in the 1930s, and that earlier Pan-African movement was not unknown to musicians. “Garveyites were prevalent,” says the saxophonist Sonny Rollins, born in 1930, when he was growing up in Harlem.76 Drummer Panama Francis, born in 1918 in Miami, said, “I played my first gig—it was on the Fourth of July at the UNIA Hall in 1931,” the initials signifying the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Garvey’s vehicle.77 Trombonist Roy Palmer in the early 1920s led a 35-piece band of the UNIA in Chicago.78 Paul Barbarin, the drummer born more than a century ago in New Orleans, said that the Onward Brass Band of which his uncle was a member were adorned with plumed hats akin to those worn by Garveyites.79
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