Duke " Style and Substance."
Reminiscing in Tempo: Duke Ellington Documentary
The Great African-American Classical Art-Form
Rashid Booker the researcher and Curator of the African-American Classical Art-Form remimbering Duke.
Style and Substance:
Duke's thoughts; Though widely considered to have been a pivotal figure in the history of so-called jazz, Ellington himself embraced the phrase "beyond category" as a "liberating principle", and referred his music to the more general category of "African- American Music", rather than to a musical genre such as "jazz". Born in Washington, D.C., he was based in New York City from the mid-1920s, and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club. In the 1930s they toured in Europe. Source: Tucker 1995, p. 6 writes "He tried to avoid the word 'jazz' preferring 'Negro' or 'American' music. He claimed there were only two types of music, 'good' and 'bad' ... And he embraced a phrase coined by his colleague Billy Strayhorn – 'beyond category' – as a liberating principle." Tucker, Mark. Ellington, The Early Years, University of Illinois Press, 1991. ISBN 0-252-01425-1 Tucker, Mark. The Duke Ellington Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993 ISBN 978-0-19-509391-9 . So-Called Jazz attracted the attention of classical musicians who began to incorporate some of its devices into their music as they had drawn on various European folk traditions. By this time the classical tradition had taken its central techniques to their limits and many composers were casting about for new inspiration, new scales, different compositional devices, and more rhythm . At the same time, European artists such as Pablo Picasso were responding to African sculpture and Sigmund Freud was diagnosing the emotional ills of Western culture. Europeans were ready for a change and jazz give it to them. Popular though jazz was, it did not receive universal approval . In particular, it was denounced for its sexuality. For example, a group of New York citizens formed a commission that complained about "slow jazz, which tempo in itself is the cause of most of the sensual and freakish dancing" . In 1926 the city of New York passed the first in a series of regulations intended to restrict opportunities for live jazz performance, though the regulations were never stated in those terms. At one point, Duke Ellington was moved publicly to deny that jazz was responsible for a rash of sex crimes.
