Klarinet Archive - Posting 000132.txt from 2005/05

From: "dnleeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Possible racist views in music titles (was: Rubank Method: not all by Voxman)
Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 18:55:51 -0400

Ed, that was a hell of a question. And it caused me to reflect
for some time.

The bottom line is that I am not able to put my finger on exactly
why that music has a negative connotation. Certainly the title
doesn't help. Something like "Paddy's Pig," might be analagous
but only tangentially.

Recognizing that I have not been placed in such a position of
justification in the past, I may be way off base. But here goes.

The music is loud and raucous, not dissimilar to the kind of
productions put on by minstrel shows. There is never a moment of
reflection in the music. It just keeps going at the same
irritating level. Were I to want to slander African Americans,
that is exactly the kind of music I would write; i.e., empty,
loud, vacuuous, and somewhat purposeless and entirely simplistic
music.

If you remember the Hollywood view of black Americans in the 30s,
that is invariably the way they were depicted then. There was no
sensitivity to their speech or interpersonal relations. Everyone
spoke loudly, and everyone always had a monstrously big smile on
their faces, not that there was much to smile about. The women
were mostly very fat, and the men either carried knives or razors
and drank a lot. That is what my subconscious thinks about when
I hear Lassus Trombone; i.e., a very bad depiction of the way
African Americans thought, behaved, and sounded.

In effect, Lassus Trombone appears to me to be the musical
equivalent in style and form of the old radio show Amos and Andy,
which was acted entirely by whites with the same degree of vulgar
characterization that the white world thought of whenever they
thought about black Americans, if indeed they ever did thing
about black Americans in any sense outside of their servitude.

Dan Leeson
DNLeeson@-----.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Lacy, Edwin [mailto:el2@-----.edu]
Sent: Friday, May 06, 2005 12:13 PM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: RE: [kl] Possible racist views in music titles (was:
Rubank
Method: not all by Voxman)

From: Dan Leeson:

<<<For example, Millard Filmore (of "Lassus Trombone" infamy, and
which
is a very vulgar picture of black America in their "happy, happy,
watermelon eating days")>>>

Dan, or anyone else who might be able to contribute, I want to
ask you
more about this. First, a little background: I was born and
grew up in
a part of southwestern Kentucky that is more like the Deep South
than
many parts of Alabama, Georgia or Mississippi. I attended
segregated
schools, and could never understand why there should be a dual
system of
education. When I was in my early high school years, the band
played
"Lassus Trombone," and I, perhaps naively, joined in, never
having an
inkling that there might be any racist connotations to this
piece. I
thought it was about the trombone.

Now, among many other things, I teach a class in Jazz History.
It is
necessary in such a class to discuss various aspects of the
relationships between the races. I am very sensitive to this
aspect of
history, and my African-American students report to me that they
do not
take offense at the way I present these issues.

One of the pieces that can be very useful in discussing the
origins or
precursors of jazz is "Lassus Trombone." I consistently have
played it
in my class, again completely devoid of any suggestion that there
might
be racial slurs somehow hidden in the music or in the title.

This is not the first time I have ever heard an allegation that
this
music has racial overtones, and I have to confess that I still
don't
know what it is about this music that can be interpreted in that
way.
The reason it has some relevance to the history of jazz is that
it
originated at about the same time as early ragtime, being
composed in
1898, I believe. And, the syncopated rhythms are exactly the
same as
those found in many of the rags of Scott Joplin and others. The
same
rhythms again appear in the early recordings of King Oliver,
Louis
Armstrong, Jellyroll Morton, among others.

To me, notes themselves can't be either moral or immoral. I
don't know
any way that I can order, arrange or combine musical tones to
create
music that has moral implications, even though the belief that
musical
entities can have such qualities dates back as far as the ancient
Greeks
and their Doctrine of Affections, and again reared its ugly head
in the
Soviet Union of the 20th century, where it was called "Socialist
realism."

So, to finally get to my question, what is it about "Lassus
Trombone"
that African-American people should take offense at?

Ed Lacy
University of Evansville

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