The Girls in the Band Harlem
1 media/HarlemPhotoGirlsOfTheBand2008_thumb.jpg 2024-02-01T06:40:36-08:00 Isabella Villa Real Seabra b274038139e23a611419e5047ffa512436906ae9 43955 1 by The Girls in the Band, 2008 plain 2024-02-01T06:40:37-08:00 Isabella Villa Real Seabra b274038139e23a611419e5047ffa512436906ae9This page is referenced by:
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2023-11-26T08:51:50-08:00
Restaging ‘A Great Day in Harlem’: Representations of Gender in Jazz Historiography Through Photographs
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Rebecca Zola and Roosmarijn Klopper
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2024-02-01T06:49:44-08:00
Restaging ‘A Great Day in Harlem’: Representations of Gender in Jazz Historiography Through Photographs
Rebecca Zola and Roosmarijn Klopper
Introduction
Our project looks at a shifting representation of gender in jazz, through two photographs: “A Great Day in Harlem,” (1958), and a re-staging of that photograph, “The Girls in the Band Harlem” (2008). The re-staging of “A Great Day in Harlem” was created in conjunction with the Documentary, The Girls in the Band, which used a mixture of new interviews and archival footage and photographs of women jazz instrumentalists throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century. This documentary traces a history that is often left untold in standard jazz historiographies, of women working against systems that actively discriminated against and excluded them, in order to work as performing jazz instrumentalists. Footage of these women jazz musicians, retelling in their own words, reveals how they had to either fit themselves into, or pushed back against stereotypical notions of presenting as a woman in jazz. The documentary is bookended by these two photographs – first by an interactive zoom-in of “A Great Day in Harlem” that identifies some of the musicians present in the image, and closes with the live footage of the women jazz musicians posing for the re-staging of the photograph in the same location in Harlem, exactly fifty years later.
Our project will be broken down as follows:
1. We will outline what standard jazz historiography entails for gender representation, and analyze “A Great Day in Harlem” as a commonly used aesthetic object for teaching jazz history.
2. We will look at the documentary The Girls in the Band as an example of how alternative jazz historiographies can correct the erasure of women, and address why women were (are) commonly left out of this history.
3. We will analyze the restaged photograph, “The Girls in the Band Harlem,” in order to ask, how does re-staging this photograph change the conditions for gender representation in jazz, and how can we critique this re-staging?
Positionality
(Rebecca) I have been studying jazz since high school, and decided to pursue a degree in jazz vocal performance for an undergraduate degree at The New School. In my first year as a student at the school, we were encouraged to go to performances and jam sessions in the city as a vital supplement to our conservatory education. One evening after attending a jam session at Smalls Jazz Club in the West Village, I was sexually assaulted by another jazz student who attended The Juilliard School. The next morning when I got to school, I was immediately met with rumors that I had been raped by that other student, and not only that – people were saying it in a way that seemed to be humorous! Ever since that experience, I came to realize how much women had to struggle to make their way in the jazz scene. In my final year of undergrad, I decided to begin a research project on gender representation in jazz education, and ever since then, the topic of gender and jazz has been a passion of mine in my research. I continued to write my master’s thesis, “Women in Jazz: A Failed Brand” at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and I continue to pursue research on gender and jazz in my doctoral studies here at Columbia.
(Rose) For my undergraduate studies, I studied musicology and music performance. A specific memory comes from my Jazz History III course, where my professor compiled a list of the most significant bebop jazz artists. Over the course of 12 weeks, each student was required to present on one of these artists, all of whom were male instrumentalists. Only one presentation focused on a female singer, Ella Fitzgerald, due to a classmate's frustration over the absence of women on the list. This course sparked my skepticism about the one-sided narrative of jazz history taught in academic settings. Due to this experience, I decided to pursue a Master's in American Studies to research and contribute to contemporary scholarship on gender and queerness within jazz music.
A Great Day in Harlem
The notorious photograph, A Great Day in Harlem (1958) showcases the 57 most famous contributors and inventors of jazz music taken in Harlem in black and white. What we also see is a photograph of mainly men, 54 to be exact, and 3 women. This visually serves as a representation of gender in jazz music: the absence of women and the erasure of their impact on the music style. This photograph also visually represents the absence and diminishment of women in jazz historiography in music and jazz history textbooks taught in educational spaces, documentaries and photographs all presenting a traditional conservative canonized one-sided version of jazz history using linear lines to effectively exclude marginalized groups.
The traditional history of jazz is a story of progress. Let’s start at the beginning, when jazz was born. Jazz is presented as an American art form evolved out of slave spirituals, ragtime and blues music that originated in New Orleans. One of the linear lines displayed is the different jazz styles each labeled and assigned to a specific period. As Scott Deveaux summarizes, “New Orleans jazz up through the 1920s, swing in the 1930s, bebop in the 1940s, cool jazz and hard bop in the 1950s, free jazz and fusion in the 1960s.”[1] The move from traditional jazz music such as New Orleans jazz and swing to bebop and free jazz, is an example of progression. The former is mainly seen as a style associated with singers (many of whom are women), dance, and the body. If we focus on the traditional defining features of swing, it would feature big orchestras, easy listening, a dance groove and a simple consistent melody and beat. The latter, bebop, is associated with instrumentalists, not a music to dance to but one to sit down and listen - a music associated with the mind and intellect. The defining features of bebop are complex melodies and harmonies, rapid chord progressions, fast tempos, and improvisation. Within historiography, this ‘upward’ move to bebop has also been used as a voice against racism in the States.
Here is an example of how this progression was illustrated in my history class. In the 1930s and ‘40s swing music became prominent. As Americans and African Americans were sent overseas to fight against fascism and for freedom in World War II, Black soldiers realized they were still treated as second-class citizens in American society upon return to their homeland. Bebop music, a style developed in the 1940s, reflects this position and their fight for freedom through a greater improvisational freedom. The style, progressed out of swing music, required musicians to extensively study the music theory in order to perform it. It fought false stereotypes of Black people’s intellectual incapability and demanded people to take them seriously. As this new music evolved into a more complex style, it resulted in a split from older genres of jazz like swing. Whereas swing music emphasizes dance and melodic tunes and is associated with the body, mostly performed by large bands, bebop prioritizes attentive listening and uses more theoretical concepts often associated with the mind and intellect. Bebop, characterized by its instrumental nature, smaller ensemble sizes, and reputation for complexity, not only allows musicians greater freedom for improvisation but also stands out for its complex musical arrangements. Bebop, and its succeeding styles, evolved alongside with the American Civil Rights movement, serving as a genre that Black Americans utilized for protest and empowerment. Jazz became instrumental in addressing racial discrimination and advocating for equality.[2]
This narrative illustrates a progression from a music style deemed less valuable, to a jazz style worthy of notice. In this historiography, historians give a nod to the traditional jazz styles, bid farewell to singers, and then progress ‘upward’ to ‘real’ jazz music, namely bebop, hard bop, modal jazz, free jazz and so on. The music after this that fuses jazz with other genres such as rock or R&B, are not defined as jazz anymore (in this traditional jazz historiography). By that, the ‘real’ jazz in historiography remains separated from other music styles and is on its own. This is the typical way that jazz and its history is taught in music institutions and conservatories. For instance, jazz music schools study and teach Charlie Parker’s improvisations, but Ella Fitzgerald’s scatting receives little attention in the classroom.
Ken Burns
One of the most renowned and impactful examples of this classic jazz storyline can be found in Ken Burns' documentary series titled Jazz.[3] The film introduces a rather conservative jazz narrative to a broader audience as well as academic spaces. The documentary portrays a process of canonization, highlighting the overarching theme of how "individual artists elevated music from the streets into a refined art form" (Kelley 2001, 15). Through Burns' lens, the documentary unfolds the narrative of jazz evolving into a distinguished art form.
As Kelley states, “Black vernacular music is simply not art.” (Kelley 2001, 15) This implies that the roots of jazz music does not hold the same status as ‘real’ jazz. Ken Burns paves the way for conventional jazz to establish itself as an American art form by diminishing earlier jazz styles. It narrates a tale of how ‘lowbrow’ black American music manifests into a ‘high art’ form, recognized as the institutionalized jazz music form taught in schools.[4]
Ted Gioia
Likewise, the book, A History of Jazz by Ted Gioia, an author universally known for his comprehensive knowledge of jazz history, illustrates similar linear lines of progression from vernacular forms to the high culture of jazz music.[5] For example, Gioia refers to the linear historiography of jazz I describe above, writing, “Sometimes this ideology of progress was stated explicitly, … in other instances, no words were necessary, as with the implicit modernism of (Louis) Armstrong's breakthrough recordings of the 1920s.” (Gioia 2021, 189) He continues, “advancing the jazz idiom to produce an Ellington or Armstrong was nothing short of miraculous ─ and all in the span of a single generation!” (Gioia 2021, 199) Both of the above quotes refer to men instrumentalists that contributed to the transformation of jazz from swing and early jazz styles into bebop and other newer, more ‘serious’ styles.
Another common traditional straight line is the division of vocal forms from instrumental forms. This distinction separated singers from instrumentalists. Singers, often women, were mainly visible and audible in swing music, but had no place in bebop. Even if bebop contained vocal forms, it was seen as an entertainment form next to the actual instrument. For example, Louis Armstrong sang at some of his performances, but he is mainly known for playing the trumpet. Gioia describes vocal forms prevalent in the ‘prehistory’ of jazz music, and as soon as jazz is born, vocal forms are dropped from the canon and attention is only given to instruments and men instrumentalists. The rest of jazz history and its ‘upward’ march talks about men and their achievements. Women singers and women instrumentalists are excluded from this narrative and their contribution is not mentioned. Women are only mentioned in history as a side note when they are singing in a band or orchestras. This does not only show their exclusion, but also a rather one-sided and incomplete history of jazz music. While historians empowered black male musicians by portraying certain jazz forms as sophisticated and intellectually advanced, facilitating their command of respect and acknowledgment in the jazz scene, this recognition came at the expense of marginalized groups.
Moreover, the book portrays the defining boundaries of what counts as jazz and what does not count as jazz music. The moment jazz became mainstream and commercialized it has been defined as popular music, not as ‘real jazz’. This maintains genres such as the bebop, modal jazz, and free jazz as the legitimate ‘real’ jazz, which devalues styles such as swing that are mainstream and excludes styles fused with jazz such as rock and R&B. Gioia writes, “The definition of jazz already emerges as a problem by the middle of the decade. … for example, music from the hit 1927 movie The Jazz Singer, the first talking film, which was much closer to popular music than to jazz.” (Gioia 2021, 67) However, this idea of jazz as a linear progression proves to be untrue due to its constant expanding possibilities, combining and merging various styles. These styles need each other in order for innovation to happen. They share a common history and so separating and diminishing former jazz styles devalues their contribution. Likewise, excluding mainstream music that merges jazz with other music genres closes doors to new possibilities in the genre and new ways of seeing jazz music. Moreover, by carefully and deliberately excluding and separating certain styles from jazz despite their shared history this marginalizes women singers and their contribution to jazz and today’s culture, as they were seen as mere mainstream entertainment.
What “A Great Day in Harlem,” Ken Burns’ Jazz, and Ted Gioia’s A History of Jazz share is the absence of women’s participation in jazz music. Ted Gioia’s comprehensive book only mentions some women singers when male instrumentalist would accompany or compose songs for them. As one reads Gioia’s book, one will continuously see phrases such as “Buddy Bolden, the Elusive Father of Jazz”, or “Louis Armstrong, the greatest of the New Orleans trumpeters”, defining men as the inventors and contributors of jazz. (Gioia 2021, 33) As one watches the Ken Burns documentary, one will see only a few names of women mentioned, often singers, but the main characters shown are all men. But out of the three above analyzed aesthetic historical jazz documents, most obvious document that shows the erasure of women from jazz music is “A Great Day in Harlem,” only displaying three women when one looks hard enough.
Who are Represented in Jazz?
Going back to the original photograph, “A Great Day in Harlem,” all of the men featured in the image are well-known instrumentalists. Let’s pick out a few as case studies to shortly analyze their jazz style, and their place in the jazz community and history.
Dizzy Gillespie, a jazz composer, trumpeter and bandleader, is known in the jazz world as one of the major figures of bebop, and together with Charlie Parker, is acknowledged as the inventors of the style.[6] His major influences in bebop included popularizing an augmented 11th interval, as well as a bebop outfit he wore on stage.[7] His bent trumpet became his trademark, and many of his compositions became jazz standards known as bebop greatest hits.[8]
Thelonious Monk, a pianist and composer, is known as one of America’s greatest composers of the century, a title he shares with Duke Ellington.[9] He is famous for his unorthodox sounds and through his “mastery of dissonances and ambiguous chord structures, so beyond the mainstream that over a generation would pass before Monk’s more outra work became a regular part of the jazz repertoire.” (Gioia 2021, 201-202) Monk played differently than other bebop instrumentalists, as he was more interested in slower tempos, not the improvisational style the other beboppers played. (Gioia 2021, 212)
Charles Mingus, foremost a bass player, bandleader, composer and pianist, is known as one of jazz’s greatest composers. Next to playing bebop he was mostly prominent in the avant-garde jazz and post-bop styles. He helped the double bass become a multi-layered instrument playing complex harmonics and virtuoso solos.[10]
All three of these jazz artists, featured in the photograph and picked at random, are seen as pioneers and founders of a specific music style as instrumentalists. Nevertheless, they often borrowed and relied upon earlier music forms to create the styles they are known for. Their stories, found in commonly used jazz history books, documentaries and web pages, describe a male-dominated life where women out of the picture.
The Girls in the Band
When I first watched “The Girls in the Band,” I had stumbled across it online looking for a documentary to watch, with no prior knowledge that this existed. As someone who has attended jazz conservatory, conducted research on gender and jazz both in her undergraduate and graduate studies, and has done several ethnographic research projects on women musicians in global jazz scenes, it was crazy to me that I was never recommended or came across this documentary. The topic of “Women in jazz” has become somewhat of a trending topic in the larger jazz community with the rise of the #metoo movement. In 2017, the “Women in Jazz Organization” was founded,[11] which now comprises of over five-hundred members. Around the same time, New York City’s annual Winter Jazzfest started holding their “Jazz Talks” series[12], which focused primarily on gender and racial equity in the jazz scene. In 2018, Berklee College of Music in Boston founded their own “Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice,[13]” which offers its own degree program separate from Berklee’s ‘regular’ jazz degrees. The “We Have Voice” Collective wrote a manifesto that they offered jazz musicians and institutions to sign onto in order to be deemed gender-equitable spaces.[14] Organizations such as “Mutual Mentorship for Musicians” have been created to offer mentorship opportunities geared exclusively to what they refer to as “musicians of historically underrepresented gender identities.”[15]
There have been several different “Women in Jazz” festivals that existed long before the #metoo wave of “Women in Jazz,” including the “Jazz-women Jam First Festival” in Kansas City Missourri, back in 1978.[16] Even Jazz at Lincoln Center, one of the wealthiest jazz institutions in the world that has been widely criticized for its lack of attention to gender equity in jazz, previously produced and hosted the “Diet Coke Women in Jazz Festival” for several years around 2005.[17] In addition to all of these institutionalized initiatives, individual women jazz musicians have also taken the opportunity to share their own stories of overcoming hardship and persevering to succeed in the industry despite their gender identities.[18] All of these above institutional and individual actions took place several years after the release of “The Girls in the Band,” and this documentary is also not the first of its kind – there have been several other documentaries tracing women in jazz since inception, including for example, the documentary about the history of The International Sweethearts of Rhythm,[19] from which several pieces of archival footage were taken and re-used. This is all to say, while the intentions and materials that make up “The Girls in the Band” are important, and while I find the documentary to be quite effective, it is in no way a new narrative in a larger movement to try and change gender-equity in jazz. Yet, each new action, initiative, or organization that tries to change gender equity in jazz seems to reinvent the wheel, and whatever came before it is forgotten.
In McGee’s media review of “The Girls in the Band,” she writes, "Too often retrospectives on women and jazz willingly disavow the contributions of prior collectors and advocates, as if each new generation must excavate, once again, the activities and contributions of such innovative and singular musicians in a process of reversing our cultural amnesia." (McGee 2015, 96) I think in addition to acknowledging that this is obviously true, following the partial list of “women-in-jazz”-themed activities that continue to pop up, it almost seems as if each initiative is competing for attention. I argue that women in jazz as a historiography has not been able to flourish because of this very fact that each jazz-gender initiative seems to operate in solitary confinement, not acknowledging the other, and forgetting the work that has already been done. I argue that this is a symptom of neoliberal feminism, which positions women in competition with each other trying to fit into the narrow space that is allocated for women, rather than working together to change the conditions of gender equity.[20] In #metoo era of the “Women in Jazz” movement, “The Girls in the Band” is just another forgotten relic of women in jazz historiography of the past, swept aside to make room for new organizations to profit off of gender branding. However, I believe that “The Girls in the Band” is a documentary that should be considered in jazz pedagogy spaces for its digestible approach to jazz history, in which a combination of archival footage and live testimonies provide a rich retrospective on the ways in which women had to simultaneously navigate the changing gender dynamics of the United States as a country, and the music industry within the changing historical moment.
A main theme of the documentary is the way in which women had to present themselves, both on and off the bandstands, in order to even be considered for a position as a woman instrumentalist in jazz. Oftentimes, it seemed that the way these women dressed was even more important to industry professionals and spectators alike than the way they played their instruments. At one point in the documentary, pianist Marian McPartland reflects on a time in which she performs on a late-night TV show, (the documentary shows that referenced clip), in which the show host chooses to acknowledge how pretty McPartland looks, and diminishes the ability of women to play instruments. Throughout the testimonials of the veteran women jazz musicians, they share how they felt they were treated as novelties at best, that people thought it ‘was cute’ when they performed, that they needed to have long hair, could not wear certain clothes, that women were working ‘under a handicap’ as a woman jazz musician, and that a common compliment they would receive is that they played well ‘for a girl.’
At another point of the documentary, we see a collage of photographs of men (in most cases the photographs were famous men jazz musicians) covering their ears next to a woman playing an instrument. One picture of note is Louis Armstrong covering his ears next to an (unnamed) woman blowing into a trumpet. The choice to include this selection of photographs highlighted the way in which men jazz musicians would diminish or dismiss woman jazz musicians, and even make a joke out of them. I find it interesting that the documentary chooses to share some photographs from jazz archives that they felt effectively show gender dynamics in jazz. Unfortunately, because of the way that the documentary exhibited these photographs, it is not clear how the viewer can find the source of these photographs themselves. In the credits of the documentary, a handful of public and private jazz archives are listed as having provided the materials for the documentary. I wish there was a way for me to have a better understanding of which photographs and video clips came from which archives; I think this would then be a more accessible educational resource.
A majority of the documentary focused on the middle of the 20th century, particularly the 1940s-1960s, in which the older generation of interlocutors in the film were in the prime of their careers. Rustin and Tucker write that the 1950s were “an intriguing period of jazz history, one in which race, gender, and politics informed aesthetic and intellectual arguments about the music and the mark it made on American identity and culture.” (Rustin and Tucker 2008, 4-5) It’s important once again to acknowledge that many of the contemporary institutions for women in jazz today focus on contemporary musicians, and positions these musicians as pioneers in the charge for changing gender equity. But it’s vitally necessary to look at the bigger picture, and acknowledge that gender was already a topic of focus in jazz over seventy years ago, when women jazz musicians were losing their jobs as men jazz musicians returned from their posts after World War II. “The Girls in the Band” does a great job of connecting past and present in order to show how much this topic of gender equity is a continual process that is anything but new in jazz.
The Girls in the Band 2008: A Re-Staged Photograph
As mentioned in the introduction, this documentary is bookended by the original photograph, “A Great Day in Harlem,” (1958) and its re-staged version, “The Girls in the Band 2008.” This next section will address what the intentions may have been to re-stage this photograph, what this photograph re-staging was able to achieve, and what sorts of critiques we have for this choice as well.
In Nochlin’s famous essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”, (which we can very easily replace the world “artists” here with “jazz musicians” and it would be just as relevant) Nochlin writes, “it is certainly not realistic to hope that a majority of men, in the arts or in any other field, will soon see the light and find that it is in their own self-interest to grant complete equality to women, […] Those who have privileges inevitably hold on to them, and hold tight, no matter how marginal the advantage involved.” (Nochlin 1971, 149) Jazz is certainly not a genre that holds a history of privilege for any of those involved, save perhaps for the white club owners that exploited black jazz musicians for profits. But within the limited power dynamics of jazz musicians, masculinity has been central, both to the maintenance of the music’s identity, and to maintenance of the genre’s exclusionary borders from who can participate.[21] It would certainly not benefit the men of jazz to widen the parameters of who can participate, when the scene has always been and continues to be extremely small, competitive, and precarious. However, through alternative historiographies of jazz, such as “The Girls in the Band,” we see that despite gendered gate-keeping, women have continuously found ways to push themselves into the picture. In the case of these parallel photographs, we have to reckon with the fact that because the first photograph very much erased any evidence of women in the jazz history of that moment, the second photograph serves as a corrective history that shows many of the women who were actually alive and working at the time that first photograph was taken. Moreover, there is a history and a context behind the restaging and the fact that we see this as an unusual event shows how the photograph indirectly illustrates the inequity.
We therefore understand the intentions of the restaging of this photograph to be challenging a norm, or disproving a preconceived notion about gender representation in jazz. When a question like “why have there been no great women artists?” is posed in any medium of artistry, one method for answering the question is to disprove the validity of the question by listing women that in fact, are great artists. While we understand the impulse to respond to a question in this way, this response doesn’t actually solve the problem, but rather tries to use exceptions to the norm as a way of disproving the norm. Just as Nochlin gestures her readers to instead consider what the societal conditions are that have created a severe gender imbalance in fine art, we can similarly use this tactic in jazz – it is far more productive for us to address the conditions that create an inequitable reality, rather that trying to disprove the reality that there are far more men than women in jazz.
In her article, “Mary Lou Williams as Apology,” Teal writes about how particular women in jazz who have received more visibility in the genre, (in the case of this article, Mary Lou Williams) those women become exceptionalized, or treated as a "culture hero,” which essentially means that they are anomalies, or outside of the cultural norm. (Teal 2019, 2-3) Framing women as the exception does the opposite of proving their participation in a cultural movement – it actually ostracizes them and excludes them from the primary narrative. Rustin and Tucker write, "Asking 'where are the women' has also been an important route toward finding the gendered spheres of fields thought to be gender-neutral meritocracies" (Rustin and Tucker 2008, 15) In other words, it isn’t wrong to locate the women that were present as minorities, but it is important to then ask what the conditions were that put them in that minority position. While The Girls in the Band as a documentary does both – it shows us women who have been around throughout the twentieth century, working as performing jazz instrumentalists, and it asks them about their experiences as minorities in a genre dominated by men – the photograph doesn’t necessarily hold that information. Instead, the restaging is the easier but less realistic answer to Nochlin’s question – ‘here are the women!’, the photograph seems to offer.
Ariella Azoulay reminds us that a photograph carries meaning not only through the image we see, but also by the parameters or the context under which the photograph was taken. She writes, “I seek to differentiate between the event of photography and the photographed event that the photographer seeks to capture in his frame.” (Azoulay 2012, 21) For anyone with any background knowledge of jazz history and the typical gender divisions of the genre, looking at the restaged photo is striking in its irregularity. Viewing so many women associated with jazz together in one photograph invites the viewer to ask how this photographed event took place. Hopefully this curiosity would lead the viewer to the documentary, which would open up the opportunity for critical discussions about gender representations in jazz. Another noticeable aspect is the photograph’s contents is the age diversity of the subjects in the image. There is clearly a range of generations represented, which connects to the choice of interlocutors in the documentary. The age ranges shown in the photograph challenges the viewer who may have thought that a rise of women representation in jazz is a new phenomenon. So following Azoulay’s suggestion to consider the photographed event and the conditions that created that event for taking a photograph gives the photograph as an aesthetic object more weight in carrying meaning.
In “Is the Gaze Male?”, Kaplan asks, “When women are in the dominant position, are they in the masculine position? Can we envisage a female dominant position that would differ qualitatively from the male form of dominance?” (Kaplan 1983, 28) How can this question be applied to the restaging in which the gender representation of the original photograph is exactly reversed, but the women in the restaged photograph are taking up the same position as the men in the original photograph? Does this gender reversal actually change the gender dynamics, or does it just put women in the dominant, and therefore ‘masculine’ position? We believe that in this restaging, while it does offer more visibility to women in jazz that are often ignored in jazz historiographies, it does not challenge or change the conditions of jazz that created the original photograph. We do not think that the restaged photograph is successful if its attempt is to give agency or power to women in jazz, because ultimately, these women and this photo still represents exceptions to the norm. Placing these women in the same position as the “original” men only further points to how obviously outside of the norm these women are.
What would a more effective restaging of “A Great Day in Harlem” look like? One option I considered is what it would be like to ask only the women in the original photograph to come back to the original scene and take the same photograph in their original positions. Perhaps the absence of the rest of the group, the emptiness of the frame would point a finger at the glaring gender disparity, and also invite the viewer to ask, who are these women, how did they end up in this photograph, and what were the conditions that made a photograph so sparse of women in such a large group shot? Of course, a restaging of this nature would not be possible, as Marian McPartland, Mary Lou Williams, and Maxine Sullivan, the three women musicians in the original photograph, have all been dead for between ten and forty years.
In Conclusion
While praising the documentary for its valuable contributions, presenting an alternative jazz canon visualized in the photographs, it is crucial to acknowledge that the restaged photograph does not challenge the discriminatory conditions still in place today. Women’s continued exclusion from these traditional canonized jazz narratives lay bare the discriminatory consciousness and institutions that facilitate these conditions. This documentary and the restaged photo serve as an example of women instrumentalists in jazz music demanding to be included in the canonized jazz narrative taught by institutions.
A potential avenue for progress could involve the creation of a documentary that merges the jazz narratives of all musicians, highlighting all parts of gender, race and sexual orientation, placing them at the center of the extensive story. This could illuminate how Black women, for example, played foundational roles and became significant contributors to the development of bebop, influencing male musicians previously credited as the inventors of the genre. By interweaving these diverse stories, none would be relegated to the status of an exception. Instead, all contributors would be recognized as integral and connected components of the norm. How would this ‘restaging’ of jazz historiography look like? Would this result in an inclusive canonized narrative in jazz music?
Since the release of the documentary in 2011, much has changed for the LGBTQ+ community. Societal attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community have evolved, and some musicians featured in the original documentary identify with this community. While they were portrayed as accomplished women instrumentalists, a contemporary retake could shed light on their experiences within the LGBTQ+ community. It raises the question of whether they were not publicly part of the community at the time or if their stories were intentionally overlooked by the filmmakers. An updated version of the documentary that highlights these musicians' stories would offer a more comprehensive and inclusive perspective on the evolving landscape of jazz narratives.
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Sevian, Lauren. 2017. “Sexism in Jazz from the Conservatory to the Club: One Saxophonist Shares her Story,” WBGO.org www.wbgo.org/music/2017-10-20/sexism-in-jazz-from-the-conservatory-to-the-club-one-saxophonist-shares-her-story.
Teal, Kimberly Hannon. 2019. “Mary Lou Williams as Apology: Jazz, History, and Institutional Sexism in the Twenty-First Century,” Jazz and Culture, Vol 2. Pp. 1–26, University of Illinois Press.
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, ed., “Dizzy Gillespie,” Encyclopædia Britannica, October 17, 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dizzy-Gillespie.
Vandever, Kalia. 2018. “Token Girl,” medium https://medium.com/@kaliamariev/token-girl-564457c86f13.
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Zola, Rebecca. 2022. “Women in Jazz: A Failed Brand,” in The Routledge Companion to Jazz and Gender, Edited by James Reddan, Monika herzig, Michael Kahr. Routledge: New York.
Monson, Ingrid. 1995. “The Problem with White Hipness: Race, Gender, and Cultural Conceptions in Jazz Historical Discourse.” Journal of the American Musicological Society, 48:3, 396-422.[1] Scott DeVeaux, “Constructing the Jazz Tradition: Jazz Historiography,” Black American Literature Forum 25, no. 3 (Autumn 1991): 525–60, https://doi.org/10.2307/3041812, 525.[2] Klopper, Roosmarijn, “Queer Jazz.” Master’s Thesis in Preparation, GSAS, Columbia University, 2023.[3] Burns, Ken, Director. Jazz. PBS, 2001.[4] Klopper, Roosmarijn, “Queer Jazz.” Master’s Thesis in Preparation, GSAS, Columbia University, 2023.[5] Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021).[6] “John Birks ‘Dizzy’ Gillespie,” National Endowment for the Arts, accessed December 8, 2023, https://www.arts.gov/honors/jazz/john-birks-dizzy-gillespie.[7] The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, ed., “Dizzy Gillespie,” Encyclopædia Britannica, October 17, 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dizzy-Gillespie.[8] Ibid.[9] Robin D. G. Kelley, “Thelonious Monk,” Theloniousmonkmusic.com, accessed December 8, 2023, https://www.theloniousmonkmusic.com/bio/#/.[10] Vialma, “Charles Mingus,” Vialma, accessed December 8, 2023, https://www.vialma.com/en/jazz/articles/351/Charles-Mingus-en.[11] http://wearewijo.org/[12] https://www.winterjazzfest.com/jazz-talks-23[13] https://college.berklee.edu/jazz-gender-justice[14] https://too-many.org/open-letter/[15] Language taken from the Mutual Mentorship for Musicians Website. Similar organizations include the “bespoken” fellowship, the WIJO mentorship program, and the Maestra mentorship program.[16] For press coverage of this festival, I refer to a NYT article of this festival: https://www.nytimes.com/1978/03/20/archives/jazzwomen-jam-first-festival-mark-in-jazz-history.html[17] Jazz scholar and ethnomusicologist Lara Pellegrinelli has written several articles criticizing Jazz at Lincoln Center for their lack of gender equity.[18] A few of these include Kalia Vandever’s self-published essay, “Token Girl,” on medium.com in 2018; Sasha Berliner’s self-published essay, “An Open Letter to Ethan Iverson (And the Rest of Jazz Patriarchy) on her own website in 2017; and Lauren Sevian’s article, “Sexism in Jazz, From the Conservatory to the Club: One Saxophonist Shares her Story,” published on WBGO.org in 2017.[19] The documentary, “International Sweethearts of Rhythm: America’s Hottest Girl Band,” directed by Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss, was released in 1986.[20] I have written significantly on the topic of neoliberal feminism in jazz in my published master’s thesis: Zola, Rebecca. 2022. “Women in Jazz: A Failed Brand,” in The Routledge Companion to Jazz and Gender, Edited by James Reddan, Monika herzig, Michael Kahr. Routledge: New York.[21] Ingrid Monson’s essay, “The Problem with White Hipness: Race, Gender, and Cultural Conceptions in Jazz Historical Discourse” (1995) addresses the very topic of black masculinity in jazz, and on how race and gender have consistently been planes of intersectional conflict in participating in jazz and its history.
