The Ethnomusicology of Jazz: Be Bop Is Black (Part 1) by Music In Culture: Sounds of the Black Experience

"The Ethnomusicology of Jazz: Be Bop is Black" originally aired on WOWD 94.3 FM in the Washington DC area on Sunday December 1, 2019 @ 3pm. The Black American music known as jazz is one of the most contested music forms - everybody wants a piece! Despite wild origination claims by some that jazz is a Euro-American, Italian or even a Caribbean invention, or that it is a hybridized African-American/Euro American music, an examination of the music’s aesthetics prove that it is solely a Black American creation. This broadcast explores the sophisticated African American cultural music known as "Be Bop" from the insiders view of the musicians who innovated the form. I also use Portia Maultsby’s theory of “disengaged engagement” (Maultsby, 2016: 8) and Miles Davis' perspective as a cultural insider on the creation of the music in Harlem, a Black community, in order to refute long standing untruths that have been echoed by certain jazz critics, music historians and others: that Charlie Parker and others Black musicians drew from European classical composers to create the music. Be Bop comes from the blues. You are cordially invited to tune in to enjoy some of the most exciting music of the 20th century from artists like Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan and others.