What Happened to Jazz at Howard University?

Jul 28

*Howard University, "The Bison: 1971" (1971). Howard University Yearbooks. 140.*

Prior to the late 1960’s, Howard University’s Jazz Studies department did not exist. Classical music took precedence over jazz music at Howard, as classical music was generally more accepted and tolerated by administration and other popular organizations, but this is not to say that jazz didn’t happen at Howard before ‘68. Students performed outside of the Fine Arts building, in the cafeteria, created their own groups and bands, and sought other opportunities in the surrounding jazz clubs and venues in Washington, DC. In 1968, the Jazz Studies was officially created by Dr. Donald Byrd, a direct result from a changing Howard.

Jazz at Howard and Washington, DC in ‘68

A freshman at Howard University in the year of 1968, HistoryMaker Lena Williams, news reporter and a former senior writer for The New York Times, recalls herself getting the opportunity to see musicians like Nina Simone and Miles Davis at Howard (I was able to find Williams in The HistoryMakers Digital Archive by playing around with the keywords: “Howard,” “1968,” “jazz,” and “DC”). Not only would these artists be there on campus, but they would stay behind. Howard had just about “all kinds of dignitaries”[1] around constantly. With her recollection of various dignitaries at Howard, which included jazz musicians, one can easily picture Howard’s jazz scene existing even before it was officially instituted. Growing up in Washington, D.C., right down the street from Howard Theatre at 805 T Street, she also had the opportunity to sit on her porch and see musicians like Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, James Brown, and Ella Fitzgerald perform:

“And so we would see them walking through going to the Howard Theatre, they had just left somebody's house. And I remember they would see Ray Charles they would, I would say, "Well, why doesn't he have someone with him?" And Ray Charles with his cane would be walking to the Howard Theatre. They say, "Ray," and he would listen to the sound, and, and he would just, "How you kids doing?" I just remembered that. And I remembered, you know, when you were under twelve you could get to the Howard Theatre…”[2]

She realized how ‘privileged’ she was to experience DC at a time like that. We know that DC, today, is very different from then.

After ‘68, Beyond Howard

Around the same time that Howard’s Jazz Studies department was officially founded, singer and actress HistoryMaker Dee Dee Bridgewater, a three-time Grammy Award-winning singer, and her musical peers attempted to broaden the jazz scene in the 1970’s. For my search in The HistoryMakers Digital Archive, I prioritized the keywords: “1970” and “jazz” to yield me these results. After receiving recognition from musicians like Horace Silver, and other musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, and subsequently, after she joined the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, her role in the music scene drastically changed. Her involvement in the movement of “fusion music”[3] also heightened as she worked with musicians like Thelonious Sphere “T.S.” Monk, Onaje Allan Gumbs, Stanley Clarke, and Norman Connors. Bridgewater stated, “They called us like the young rebels or something, but we were all trying to broaden the whole jazz spectrum and bring in other musics that we liked. Stanley's love was with rock, so he you know he started doing his thing…”[4] Of course, she also remembers the popularity of Donald Byrd and The Blackbyrds in general at the time as well, and she goes on to describe her many other relationships with emerging jazz artists that molded her career. Gil Scott-Heron, Doug Carn, Jeane Carne, Carlos Garnet, James Mtume, Pharoah Sanders, and Gary Bartz are just a few of the artists Bridgewater mentions and implies are a part of an emerging, long tradition of being on “the cutting edge of changing the jazz scene.”[5] The struggle of the young rebels of Bridgewater’s time and the institutional changes that the students and musicians at Howard University demanded and fought for in the late 1960’s seem to be two comparable fights.

Fusion and Contemporary: The Shape of Jazz in the late 70’s and its Emergence into the 80’s

By the end of 1970’s, going into the 80’s, jazz was headed in a new direction. HistoryMaker jazz pianist Ghalib Ghallab (1950 - 2018), who founded the Ghalib Ghallab Experience, stated that a new, more contemporary sound of jazz emerged (I found myself searching the keywords: “jazz,” “improvisation,” and “contemporary” to achieve these results). It wasn’t “really what we call a traditional, straight-ahead jazz”[6] but rather a mixture of what you were feeling. Ghallab took contemporary grooves and started playing them, implementing it into his own sound. Instead of the previous swing or straight-ahead beat rhythms that were predominant in jazz before, funk and groove became influential elements in this emergence of a ‘newer jazz.’ However, still playing straight-ahead jazz, Ghallab “left the element of improvisation open,” proclaiming, “I'd start with a melody and then I would take it out to another level.”[7] Jazz, at this time, took on heavy improvisation that further fueled its integrity.

By the 1980’s, according to HistoryMaker James Phillips, jazz clubs and venues, like D.C. Space on Seventh Street in Washington, DC, that would bring in people like Don Cherry and David Murray, and Henry Bluitt, slowly started to fizzle out, “like everything else.”[8] To musicians like Ghalib Ghallab, the language of improvisation soon dwindled, and the creative elements of rhythm became “tight” and “pocketed” over time as jazz became commercialized[9], begging the question: what really happened to jazz?

Student Ambassador Weekly Update:

This week, I practiced writing a news article and blogpost in the style of The HistoryMakers for the first time. For my topics, I clearly chose to focus on the development of jazz at Howard University from what I could find in the archives. This topic is a research concentration of mine, so I was very interested to see what I would be able to uncover in the HM database. It was a step-back away from my usual method of conducting research; my involvement with The HistoryMakers Digital Archive has propelled me into the joyous, anecdotal world of oral histories. I hardly ever get to ‘hear’ the sources that I utilize in my research, and this drastically changes things. As I continue to navigate this database and become even more nuanced in my method(s) of searching, I hope to uncover more details on this topic because it is yet to be finished. I plan to primarily focus on other musical developments for my future weekly blogs.

Notes

[1] Lena Williams (The HistoryMakers A2007.056), interviewed by Larry Crowe, February 8, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 3, story 9, Lena Williams remembers her experiences at Howard University

[2] Lena Williams (The HistoryMakers A2007.056), interviewed by Larry Crowe, February 8, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 2, Lena Williams recalls the Howard Theatre and Dunbar Theater in Washington, D.C.

[3] Dee Dee Bridgewater (The HistoryMakers A2014.254), interviewed by Larry Crowe, November 10, 2014, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 4, story 6, Dee Dee Bridgewater describes the jazz fusion scene in the 1970s

[4] Dee Dee Bridgewater, interviewed by Larry Crowe, November 10, 2014.

[5] Dee Dee Bridgewater.

[6] Ghalib Ghallab (The HistoryMakers A2007.320), interviewed by Jacques Lesure, November 3, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 4, story 6, Ghalib Ghallab reflects on changes in jazz

[7] Ghalib Ghallab, interviewed by Jacques Lesure, November 3, 2007.

[8] James Phillips (The HistoryMakers A2013.210), interviewed by Larry Crowe, August 5, 2013, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 6, story 4, James Phillips describes the atmosphere at Howard University in Washington, D.C. during the 1970s

[9] Ghalib Ghallab.

Zoé Coker

Zoé Coker (she/her) is currently a rising Junior in the Department of African American Studies at Howard University in Washington, DC. She is a published poet and utilizes the poetics of the everyday to mechanize her writings. She is also a student worker at the Moorland Spingarn Research Center, where she is training to become a future archivist. Her research interests include African American Music and Culture with a concentration in Jazz History. After completing her undergraduate degree, she plans on continuing her studies at New York University with a Masters in Archives and Public History.