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I also scored several art, semi-documentary, and
educational films, in addition to a number of popular songs. Through
writing such songs I thought I could gain entré to a job in the record
industry as a music arranger. Eventually, writing songs got me to Chess
Records, home of Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Howling Wolf, Chuck Berry,
and many others. Needless to say, the songs I wrote were ill suited for
Chess, which was a Race Records company. (Later Race Records were called
Rhythm and Blues.)
It was obvious to me that racism, thievery, and
contempt for the blacks who made up Chess’ talent pool were rampant on
the part of the Chess brothers, owners of the label. This was not
surprising. What was surprising was that the music these southern blacks
created celebrated the eternal present, thus intersecting with the
dominant interest of my compositional studies. Especially significant in
this regard were the early recordings of Bo Diddley whose music was more
starkly polymetric than that of the others. His use of additive rhythms,
conflicting with accentual ones, was much more pronounced than one could
find in jazz.
Around this time,
intriguing reports came into the Chess offices of white youths venturing
into black neighborhoods to buy the music of these Delta Blues musicians
and other Rhythm and Blues artists. This phenomenon was occurring in
many cities North and South. Vee Jay Records, also in Chicago, and
Atlantic Records in New York City were other labels noticing similar
trends.
It became obvious to me as I studied the Billboard
hit parade charts, and watched the trainloads of southern blacks
arriving in Chicago seeking work due to an important technological
change taking place in cotton picking down south, that this was more
than a ninety-day music trend. It was something more significant
sociologically, economically and culturally.
What finally
convinced me that I was correct was the creation of Elvis Presley, whose
movements and singing were based on the singing and dancing of the
black artist, Little Richard, and his colleagues
From New Orleans and
Big Band jazz of the 1920s and 30s, the impact of the eternal Now had
widened to include the market of pop music and lower middle-class whites
Duplicating the phenomenon of lower middle-class
whites imitating the dress, walk and talk of blacks, were upper-class
white intellectuals, like those clustered around the University of
Chicago and other American colleges and universities, who were imitating
the life-styles of blacks as well.
Musically, however, their take-off point was West
Coast jazz, which many blacks and whites at the time thought was an
attempt to remove blackness from jazz. Frequently I was verbally
accosted by these would-be jazz critics and had to listen to their
theories about jazz and blacks. These jazz fans, who were musically
illiterate, would lecture me about jazz music, which they couldn’t play
and had no experience of except as consumers.
Eventually, I grew tired of this barrage of nonsense
and enlisted the help of some friends to make the semi-documentary film,
THE CRY OF JAZZ. We started work on this film in 1956. The structural
and syntactical features of jazz were used as a metaphor for the Black
American Experience.
Looking back fifty years, I realize that one of the
shortcomings of THE CRY OF JAZZ is that we didn’t use the concept of
black culture to help construct the film. As far as I’m aware, that
concept didn’t come into American consciousness until the late 1960s.
However, if one acknowledges the confrontational spirit of Hip Hop, THE
CRY OF JAZZ can be called the first Hip Hop film. It was released in
1959, nine years before the assassination of Martin Luther King.
According to Kenneth
Tynan, critic of the London Observer, the CRY was a landmark film
as it was the first film made by black Americans that challenged the
humanity of white Americans.
Willard Van Dyke, pre-eminent American film
documentarian and head of the Film Division of the Museum of Modern Art
in New York City, said the CRY predicted the riots in American cities of
the 1960s and 70s.
Simultaneously,
while noting the influence of aspects of black culture on certain
artifacts of the West, I had immersed myself into the study of as much
of Western Art Music as I could tolerate. While there were many elegant
and ingenious works, those that I found most significant musically and
emotionally were Beethoven’s “Grosse Fugue,” the last movement of his
“Hammerklavier Sonata” and the Scherzo from his “String Quartet op.135.”
I had lost interest in Stravinsky except to keep track of his new
technical journeys. Whatever insight he may have had into the eternal
Now with the “Rite” was abandoned with his foray into ragtime and
neo-classicism.
The aesthetic of the eternal Now had guided me to and
through jazz to the “Rite of Spring,” the beginnings of R&B, and Delta
Blues. Otherwise I was wandering lost in the sea of serialism, musique
concrete, and Cowell/Seeger’s dissonant counterpoint. I certainly wasn’t
getting informed about the eternal Now in those waters.
One day, while
shooting scenes in a black gospel church for THE CRY OF JAZZ, I was
stunned by the power and immediacy of the music. Here was the strongest
manifestation of the eternal Now I had experienced since the “Rite of
Spring.” I asked myself, why was I fooling around with Stravinsky’s
neo-classicism, serialism or dissonant counterpoint when I had black
gospel right at my fingertips? Around, that time, I also heard the first
two Hammond electric organ recordings of Jimmy Smith for Blue Note
Records, and Bobby Timmons’ “Dat Dere,” “This Here,” and ”Moanin.”
Gospel and Funk were new stylistic manifestations of the eternal Now.
The music was about
as tonal as one could get, and harmonically very simple, although there
were a number of peculiar harmonic progressions, passing notes and other
traits that had to be learned. I promised myself that I would study
gospel and Funk music, and make it part of my arsenal as soon as I
could, after I finished the CRY. My strong reaction was to the music of
black gospel, not to any of its religious elements. I had to re-examine
myself musically.
As interest in THE CRY OF JAZZ had arisen in New York
City, in 1960, I moved my family from Chicago to take advantage of the
integrated musician’s union there.
Learning the syntax
of Funk and gospel music made facing the problem of earning a living
much easier, coupled with my command of Western Art Music, Jazz, and
West African drumming. There was a demand for my arranging services in
the record industry, and also as a composer/orchestrator for film and
TV. Funk, gospel, R&B. and Soul were fast growing trends.
While doing myriad recording projects for R&B and
soul singers, including sessions with Jimi Hendrix and George Benson, my
composition, “Skunk Juice,” evolved from writing for a Harlem-based R&B
band, the Pazant Brothers. The musical objective was to create a raw,
colorful, funky, soulful sound combined with complex linear patterns,
thus contrasting mightily with groups like James Brown, Kool and The
Gang, the Stax Records bands in Memphis, and Motown’s Junior Walker. The
music that I was writing for the Pazants was both funky and intelligent,
and showed many degrees of polymetric design as I pushed on with my
pursuit of the eternal NOW as best I could by creating unpredictable
patterns within a highly predictable commercial framework.
In 1974, after
writing for Lionel Hampton, Al Hirt, Dizzy Gillespie, and many other
prominent acts, Vanguard Records hired me as executive producer for the
label. During my tenure there, I added Blues legend, Big Mama Thornton,
to Vanguard’s roster.
In
addition to establishing a jazz line with Clark Terry, James Moody,
Elvin Jones, Bunky Green, and Roland Prince, I signed and produced the
artist Camille Yarbrough and her Iron Pot Cooker album in 1975.
Yarbrough’s Iron Pot Cooker has been called “A landmark album
that pre-dates the commercial breakthrough of hip hop. , , , Without
question, ‘The Iron Pot Cooker’ is a precursor to Lauryn Hill.” (From
the CD liner notes by Kevin Powell.)
Iron Pot Cooker
was ahead of its time. The culture began to catch up with my musical
vision twenty-five years later, in 2000, when Fat Boy Slim sampled “Take
Yo’ Praise,” from “Iron Pot Cooker” and made the recording “Praise You,”
which was a huge international hit.
I also signed the Pazant Brothers to Vanguard. I
produced their album, Loose and Juicy, in 1975. Twenty-two years
later, in 1997, this LP was re-released on CD by Vanguard. My
composition, “A Gritty Nitty,” on this LP and CD, was sampled three
times on three different Sony Records releases by the Hip Hop group,
Cypress Hill. Some, if not all of these three CDs became platinum hits.
Wanting to further
enlarge my catalog of Art music, I left Vanguard to concentrate on
composing. Upon hearing my “Piece For Chamber Orchestra,” which was
composed in 1979, Gunther Schuller, American composer/conductor/author
said, “An amazing tour de force in terms of relentless energy and build
up of tension...a fascinating strong piece.” “Original and Fresh,” said
Bruce Creditor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
In the mid-80s, as
work in the studio recording scene started fading away, I resettled in
Los Angeles and wrote music for motion pictures, television, and
occasional record productions, while adding to my Art music catalog.
In 1998, when I was 72 years old, a 26-year-old hip
hopper from South Central LA listened to my “Piece For Chamber
Orchestra” and called it “Rap Without Words.” My music had already
crossed several generation gaps, and there was more to come. Soon two
CDs of my Art music emerged: Urban Classical - The Music Of Ed
Bland on Cambria Records; and
Dancing Through The
Walls on Delos International Records.
With my “Piece For
Chamber Orchestra,” I had turned the corner and created the first of a
series of works that celebrate the eternal Now
One of the problems
facing me as an Art music composer is that of getting an economically
sufficient following. My thoughts turned to the universal acceptance of
the pop song
The curse of pop
music and jazz is that they are too predictable. Ideally, Art music
should demand unpredictability.
In my 31 “Urban
Counterpoint” piano works, the musical language I’ve used is in the
vernacular – the language of pop music and jazz. Unpredictability is
introduced into this vernacular setting through a rampaging
polyphonic/polymetric texture. Unpredictability, by definition,
Unpredictability, by definition, means that the listener is forced to
think about vernacular musical relationships, and thus has moved
from a pop music approach to a serious/art music approach. This
phenomenon is what these 29 short piano works (Vols.1-4) and the 2
larger pieces “Classical Soul and Three Chaconnes in Blue” (Vol. 5)
address.
The 31 piano works
are stand-alone pieces. A unifying factor can be found in the effects
these works give of Tatum-like improvisation in a contrapuntal situation
or as musical essays on “Tatum with Counterpoint.”
Interestingly
enough, the singer Beyonce leased my work “Skunk Juice” for sampling on
her single, “Creole” and Atari Video Games leased “A Gritty Nitty” for
their game TEST DRIVE UNLIMITED.
Considering that these two pieces were written
between 1966-’71 I would say that my Urban Classical Funk style has come
full circle.
Currently I am composing several works in my Urban
Classical Funk style, including a series of percussion works with the
working title “Penderecki Funk.”
With the universal
acceptance of the eternal Now through Funk, ragtime, blues, jazz, soul,
R&B, and Hip Hop, one can wonder what effect this acceptance will have
on the evolution of Art music. Whatever the outcome, it is clear that
celebration of the eternal Now has become the norm of the international
musical world. |
