Jazz, culture key topic at UNO musicology lecture

In 1957 something amazing happened at the Greenwich House on Barrow Street in New York City, something that hasn’t been talked or written about too often. On Friday, as the second part of UNO’s series of lectures in Musicology, NYU scholar Brigid Cohen talked about what happened in the New York home and the discussions of race and music that came from it.

A French composer by the name of Edgar Varèse migrated to America in 1914. After years of making a name for himself in the states musically, he began to become intrigued by a musical style that was steadily growing and becoming more popular: jazz.

In 1957, with some help from jazz artist Charles Mingus and a slew of other jazz musicians, Varese hosted an improv session at the Greenwich House in 1957, a session that hasn’t seen too much attention. The main reason for that was the separation between traditional musicians and jazz musicians.

“I think [the reason it isn’t talked about is] because the way that the history of American music has been written, especially in the narrative from World War II and onward, they tend to treat classical avant-gardes as being separate from jazz,” Cohen said.

“There is evidence that jazz musicians and concert avant-gardists were aware of one another and listening to one another’s music, but there wasn’t always acknowledgement of those exchanges or cross-borrowings. And part of that has to do with race.”

Varèse became very interested in jazz music, but was also very unaware of the culture and origins behind the music. This misunderstanding of the origins of music culture, according to Cohen, is a problem that is worse today than it was back then.

“Technologies of today make it an even bigger issue because we have access to more music from across the world than we have ever had before. We can just instantly get a hold of something on the Internet, but what do we know about it? And what does that say about questions of ownership too?”

About five years ago, rough tape recordings of the Greenwich House sessions surfaced, and became one of the major pieces of research in Cohen’s lecture. For some reason, the names of some of the other jazz artists that contributed to the session were left off the tape. Cohen used that as an example of how authorship and authenticity can be easily lost in the transition when these sounds and styles cross cultures.

The history that Cohen researched was one that’s filled with racial issues, inequality and ignorance. She aimed to present a lecture in music history that is different from what was told years ago.

“My ultimate goal [in the lecture] is to create a history that’s less tied to a segregated past because it's clear that this way of narrating jazz history, separate from concert music is tied to a racially inflected segregation of music.”

This was Cohen’s first time presenting this lecture. She will present it again next month at Northwestern University.

Cohen is also in the middle of working on her new book “Musical Migration in the Global City of New York.” In the book, she will look to focus on jazz, performance, electronic and concert music.

Ingrid Monson of Harvard University will present “Music, Resilience, and Dignity” as the third part of UNO’s Musicology lecture series on Friday in the Performance Arts Center Recital Hall at 2 p.m.