Re: Ernst Bloch on Jazz? A serious question

[Ralph Dumain <rdumain@xxxxxxx>]

At 06:04 PM 5/12/99 +0000, L Spencer wrote:
>Any serious consideration of jazz and jazz dance, indeed of much >of the
history of popular music in this century, would have to
> include an understanding of the way in which black and white
>musicians, black and white communities played off one another.

OK, but until this post eveyone else was too obsessed with what these
cultural forms might have meant to white people, they completely overlooked
the nature of the black contributions and what they might have meant to
blacks themselves.  This is not a question of "purity".

>When whites thought they were being very
>daring doing the charleston... upright, uptight, stiff legged but
>with plenty of gusto the Harlem dance halls were packing in >thousands
>of dancers (including some adventurous whites) - with many more
>queing in the streets - to do dances that were much looser, more
>sexually suggestive, much faster and athletic. Boogie-woogie,
>jitterbug, lindy-hop... The dances included all the most spectacular
>moves (throwing the woman over your shoulders or between your legs)
>that were later to be seen in rock n roll dancing. Dancers who
>perfected a particular move might be immortalised by having their
>name ( or more usually their nickname) attached to the move.

Well, thanks for adding in this information, which is just what has been
neglected.

>Ernst Bloch talks at various points very intelligently about slavery.
>But he never evinces much real feeling for the culture of black
>slaves or their decendents. Both he and Adorno are very Euro-centric
>in their approach to culture.

There you go!

>Benjamin who knew himself to be a
>European through and through (and declined desparate pleas to get
>him to emigrate to Palestine or to New York) was less culpale in
>this regard.

This is interesting.

>But, hey, who the hell are we to sit in judgement.

Normally, I would not even worry about it.  Why is it so hard to
acknowledge their narrow European bias, which is so painfully obvious?  I
can forgive them for that, no problem, but I cannot forgive the the
imperious little snots on this list who treat them as authorities.  I
suspect this has everything to do with the institutionalization of critical
theory in the contemporary world, not with its actual spirit.

>O.K. Ralph?

Great job, Lloyd!