Jazz & American Culture

Cliff’s

I had the chance over the weekend to visit what I consider to be one of the cornerstones of downtown Detroit, or the city in general, Cliff Bell’s jazz club. I consider Cliff Bell’s a cornerstone of Detroit because it captures part of the essence of the city and its culture. This marked my second trip to the bar and restaurant, my first time there brought about a transcendent experience. Perhaps the greatest moment of entertainment I have ever been exposed to. Growing up I always heard about jazz and the beauty within it, but not until seeing a jazz show live did I understand the sentiment and the realization that nearly all of the music that I enjoy is rooted in jazz. The beauty of it resides in its inability to be described, only felt. Jazz is raw, it is something that is not conjured up through thought, but derived from the soul, perhaps the purest form of artistic expression.

Sir Duke

Jazz music is, and remains, the single greatest artistic achievement and contribution from the United States. From a culmination of blues, European classical, church hymnals, and the musical traditions of west-Africa and the greater Congo basin, black Americans created something beautiful. To quote the legendary Jazz musician Duke Ellington, “It’s all music.”

Culture

Leaving the show Saturday evening I had a passing thought. If Jazz is the purest and most authentic form of artistic achievement ever created in this country, and it was created by people who were involuntarily brought to our shores, what is authentic American culture? Every other country on earth has an authentic identity and culture, to be born in France is to be French, to be born in Italy is to be Italian or Roman, to be born in South America is to be Latin. In each of the aforementioned countries, (and I could go on and on) each of them has an authentic culture, authentic achievements, and history that is specific to one race of people, and with that a sense of pride to be “Of those people.” This country is the first multicultural experiment in the history of the world, the first “melting pot.” A huge percentage of Americans (myself included) are a blend of multiple races and are multiple generations away from the immigrating generations. With that, is a natural reduction in identity that is formed from our ancestral roots. To use myself as an example, I am Mexican and British. While I am proud to come from a long line of Mexican and British ancestry, I am rid of an “authentic” race and people. My race, my people, are Americans, to be American is to be something that transcends race. To be American is to be the product of a culture that is a culmination of all races, cultures, ancestry, and history. Yes, we’re void of a deeply rooted French, middle-eastern, Italian, Latin American, African, Slavic, etc, foundation, but we’re a combination of influences from all of them, whether we realize it or not.

Diversity

Diversity is a beautiful thing, I would not prefer to live in a society that is monolithic in thought, appearance, and culture, I believe that this country is unique in that every day we are exposed to things that reside outside of our ancestral roots. Due to the manufacturing jobs created through the auto industry, immigrants and migrants from all over the country and world traveled to this specific region in hopes of prosperity for their families. This downriver suburb of Detroit is one of the most uniquely blended areas in the entire world. Detroit is one of the historic black cities, one of the places (along with Chicago and New York) that black folk migrated to during the “Great Migration.” Dearborn is the single greatest concentration of Arabs and Muslims outside of Africa and Eurasia. Hamtramck was where the Poles migrated and concentrated. Southwest Detroit is where Mexicans and Puerto Ricans concentrated. Canton has a very high concentration of Asian Indians. Jewish immigrants settled in Detroit. The same applies to Italians and Slavs, all other races. Detroit was settled by the French, however, it is the ancestral homeland of the Ojibwe, Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Wyandot native tribes. To broaden it further, all of our ancestries began in Africa, the cradle of civilization. The first people to arrive in North America did so by way of Africa, through the middle-east, then up through Asia until they reached the Beringia Land Bridge which connected northeast Siberia and Western Alaska. We all originated from the same place, we are all of the same race with the only difference being geography and where our ancestors settled in relation to the equator.

“Diversity”

“Diversity” and it’s affiliate “Anti-Racism” as it is defined today, is not the idea that we are a melting pot, but instead it is simply re-packaged race essentialism. Race essentialism is the belief that race is what defines someone, it is the idea that all people of a shared race are the same. It inherently degrades the idea of the individual, of being a solitary person that happens to be of particular ancestry. It is the idea shared by the KKK, who believed all people of African ancestry are the same, by Hitler who believed all jewish people are the same, and by black nationalists who believe all whites are the same. “Diversity” hyper-focuses on the ways in which we are different and in doing so, inherently degrades races and groups of people. When you look at the history of man, the trend of hyper-focusing on race and ways in which we are different, are the first steps taken down a dark, dark path. Bigotry, racism, eugenics, and genocide, all began with the idea of looking at one another exclusively as a group of people, and not as an individual, not as a person. “Diversity” is not just simply a recognition of our differences and a recognition of past exclusions based on race, it is instead conformity, it only works to conform the individual person to that of their group. While I think it is of tremendous importance to know and understand our history, and with that, the historical atrocities that have taken place, I think it is of greater import to both understand the ideas that led to the mistakes of our past and to not revert back to those destructive ideas. Prejudicial thought is not specific to whites, or any race for that matter, it is unfortunately something that comes pre-made within us. The origin of prejudice is an evolutionary trait that lives within us from thousands of years of disease and pathogen prevention. When settlers arrived in the Americas, the immunities they built up were foreign to the Native Americans, this led to the death of innumerable natives. This is no different than what happened throughout the entire world with exploration and the introduction of foreign antigens to native populations which decimated them. Repeat this process over the history of our civilization and we now enter this world with a prejudicial trait that trains us to pre-judge those that look different than us, across all races. In the year 2023, and in this country that is blended, this innate prejudice that resides within us no longer serves a purpose, there are no antigens that we are all not immune to that exist in society across all races. Because this innate evolutionary trait no longer serves a purpose, we must deny that aspect of our nature.

Ethic

For better and for worse, as Americans, we lack an authentically-rooted culture because we lack an authentic race, because of this, it seems that in order for us to work cohesively, there must be a shared ethic. Athletics as a metaphor embodies this idea, where the pursuit of a championship unites all of the individuals on the team. On an NFL roster, race and background do not matter, all that matters is merit and the shared ethic, the goal of winning the championship. We too need an ethic, a belief, or a thought that transcends race, not hyper-focuses on it. Since we come from all different backgrounds and ancestral cultures, it seems that making race the foundation of identity is an unstable one, it will result in all of us pulling in a bunch of different directions, it needs to be something deeper. America was founded on the Christian ethic, an idea that transcends race, an idea that is shared by people and shapes society based on shared principles. For the time being, faith as a foundational piece of identity for this country has left us, it is no longer the idea that is shared by the majority of people. Perhaps there can be a shared ethic around the idea that we’re all different, but the same, united under being the first place on earth designed to mix all races, religions, and cultures and take pride in being a culmination of all of the talents and contributions from all backgrounds. Perhaps, this idea is not deep enough to unite, I don’t know. But I do know that seeing people exclusively through the lens of ways in which we are different is not the answer. It is both counterproductive and destructive and will eventually destroy us from within. The conflict between races is often exaggerated. If you turn on the television and throughout all media, matters of race are often a focal point but I do not feel this in reality. Nowhere and never do I have tenuous interactions with someone of a different race because of race, neither their actions toward me nor mine toward them. When you look at crime, statistically, crimes are very rarely acted out cross-racially. First off, crimes are mostly acted out by those closest to us, family and friends, and then to broaden it out, it is exceedingly rare that a black person acts out a crime against a white person or a white person against a black person. The reality of race relations in this country is vastly different than the one we’re constantly beaten over the head with. Our survival as a country resides in denying the attempt to separate us through inflaming tensions among races. MLK introduced this country to the idea of a color-blind society, one in which we only judge people by their character and merit. Today, there is a concerted effort to rid our society of this idea, to instead only look at one another through the lens of the racial group in which we come from. It is time we return to this ideal. Our prosperity as a country resides in the denying of our nature to look at people in groups and the embracing of the idea of looking at one another as an individual, and with that, we can begin the formation of a shared ethic and then a shared piece of identity.

Wild Cherry

The beginning of the show featured a white man in his mid 20’s who could be described as a “Hipster” addressing the heavily-majority black crowd in front of a curtain that behind it sat an entirely black jazz band. He began addressing the crowd in a tone that came off cringe-y, saying something to the effect of, “Can I get an amen from the church?” as if he was a black preacher standing before a black congregation. Perhaps it was the paranoia from the pen I smacked outside the bar before the show, but I felt a sense of, “Who the hell does this white boy think he is?” come over the crowd. The show, featuring Detroit’s own Grammy-nominated Brandon Williams, went on and was outstanding. Toward the end of the show, the white DJ that performed the introduction stepped back out onto the stage with a saxophone. He proceeded to perform a remarkable extended sax solo that had the crowd in an uproar, clapping and cheering. It was at that moment that the crowd, myself included, no longer saw an “inauthentic white boy” and instead looked at him as a person who is exceptionally talented playing alongside a band that is not a “black band,” but individual people, who happen to be black that are also exceptionally talented. Through writing this I may have answered the question that came to me as a passing thought. Jazz music is the embodiment of our culture. It is something beautiful that was created using cultural contributions spanning the entire globe which is what too has led to this corner of the world becoming the most prosperous that civilization has ever seen.