Alf Arvidsson, institution for culture- and media, Umeå University
Jazz and the jazzmuscian: Changed genre systems and roles in
Swedish music during the 19th century
Spring 2011
The aim of the project was to study how the jazz musician was established as an independent
actor in Sweden’s music scene, and thereby shed light upon the processes leading to today’s
differentiated art music field. This aim has during the project been widened to deal with the
establishment of jazz music in general as an independent and artistic genre. In this process the
role of the jazz musician has been very important since jazz by and large has been presented as
depending on the musician’s qualities, especially the ability to improvise.
One result is that the presence of an autonomous jazz criticism was very important in this
process. During the thirties, the journal Orkesterjournalen developed into a site for a distinct jazz
aesthetics, where musicians and critics who had understood American jazz were identified. It was
important to mark a distance to the image of jazz that had dominated during the twenties, to put
African American musicians up as role-models and to stress that the most important stylistic
traits and qualities, especially improvisation, could not be learned within conventional
conservatory education. At the same time, the established jazz musicians’ competence in classical
music was put forward as well. During the fifties, jazz criticism makes its way onto the culture
debate in the daily newspapers and speaks for the recognition of jazz in the public art music
world. There were two kinds of arguments put forward; one pragmatically stressing the good
effects of the jazz interest of youth as leading to a general interest in good music, and one
stressing the artistic value of jazz itself, especially naming it the music of modern society.
Another result is a mapping of the strategies used for raising the status of jazz music. Besides the
growth of a written discourse they included: creating public forms that make jazz discernable as
something for itself, like concerts, recordings and jam sessions; the shaping of a distinguished
jazz musician’s role for musicians who embodied jazz; cultivating a (male dominated) élitism and
professionalization; distinguishing from popular culture; taking part in already established artistic
contexts; shaping cross over – forms to established music styles; organizing, making petitions
and other forms of political action.
Yet another result is that when jazz music eventually got a public recognition in the early sixties,
it was with a narrow and qualified definition of ”jazz” and ”jazz musician”, where also
composing and arranging were important competences. The first generation to get artist grants
or similar recognition (Bengt-Arne Wallin, Bengt Hallberg, Georg Riedel, Jan Johansson, Nils
Lindberg) had besides their jazz competences also studied classical music with established
composers, and set up their images by expanding from the conventional pop music formats still
dominating in jazz. In other words, it required a ”double competence”, a control of the internal
aesthetics of jazz as well as of the compositional techniques of classical music, in order to be
entitled to transcend and adjust the boundaries between the genres.
1
A question raised by the project is what the inclusion of jazz into the art music field means in
terms of the composition of its audience, concert contexts, and the musicians’ status. Jazz seems
to be a separate field in the arts, so the question is in what ways the cross over – forms that were
important in the sixties and seventies really have been established within jazz and within art
music in general. This asks for an expansion of jazz history research into the eighties and
nineties. Another question raised by the project is what importance jazz has had for Swedish
popular music. This is not put forward in the self-presentations of jazz musicians but their
contribution has been important in the shaping of a common Swedish musical frame of
reference.
The main publication of the project is the monograph that also incorporates separate papers in
expanded form. It comprises of four studies. One is a close reading of the journal
Orkesterjournalen during the thirties, focusing on the techniques for distinguishing between
musicians and critics who were competent in jazz and those who were not. One is a study of
how ”swing vocalists” in the early forties became a role that made space within jazz available to
young women, and how women later on were excluded. One chapter of the book deals with jazz
in public debate during the fifties, while another chapter deals with how jazz during the sixties
exchanged its function as dance music with other, more highly valued contexts and the effects
this had on musical form and repertoire. The two latter chapters include studies of how jazz was
included within the debates in music pedagogy. The two chapters have in common a focus on
the qualities that were put forward in contemporary criticism, and on what was expected from
the good jazz musician.
Of the other publications, the article “Mike’ Disc-Courses on Hot Jazz: Discursive Strategies in
the Writings of Spike Hughes, 1931-33, deals with British musician Spike Hughes as a critic in
the journal Melody Maker. His criticism were influential in Sweden as well as in the USA, and on
the international level he was perhaps the first to cultivate in writing an aesthetics of jazz putting
African Americans as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington at centre. His role in giving jazz
recognition as an artistic form has been obscured by the impact of French critic Hugues Panassié
who was noticed somewhat later in the thirties. This paper contributes to a deeper understanding
of the growth of jazz criticism and of the introduction of African American stylistic ideals in
Europe. Other papers deal with “symphonic jazz” in Sweden during the forties, and the life
history intervies as a genre in jazz history research.
The results of the project have been presented at the conference Musikvetenskap idag, Växjö
2006; at the 15th congress of the International Society of Folk Narrative Research, Athen 2009;
the 8th Nordic Jazz conference Aalborg 2009; by lectures at the Institute for Jazz Studies and the
Department of Music, Rutgers University, Newark; Fisk University, Nashville; Umeå universitet,
Örebro universitet, Svenskt Visarkiv. Contacts have also been established with the Centre of Jazz
Studies at Columbia University and the National Jazz Museum in Harlem.
2