The Invention of Tradition

[Simon Weil]

This is the title of a book edited by Eric Hobsbawn (Jazz critic under another name) and Terence Ranger. I got it through Amazon because I was interested in the article on the British monarchy. Then it occurred to me that the whole idea of the invention of tradition has some interesting ramifications for Jazz. So, here are some bits from the introduction(pp1,2,8):

'Traditions' which appear or claim to be old are often of quite recent origin and sometimes invented.

'Invented tradition' is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.'...However, insofar as there is such a reference to a historic past, the pecularity of 'invented traditions' is that the continuity is largely factitious. In short, they are responses to novel situations which take the form of reference to old situations, or which establish their own past by quasi-obligatory repetition. It is the contrast between the constant change and innovation of the modern world and the attempt to structure at least some parts of social life within it as unchanging and invariant, that make the 'invention of tradition' so interesting for historians of the past two centuries

...the strength and adaptability of genuine traditions is not to be confused with 'the invention of tradition'. Where the old ways are alive, traditions need be neither revived or invented.

"...the contrast between the constant change and innovation of [Post 60s Jazz] and the attempt to structure at least some parts of [Jazz as traditional] within it as unchanging and invariant" seems pretty much where we are.

And, I kind of feel, unnatural.

Simon Weil

Edited April 15, 2007 by Simon Weil

[king ubu]

That idea of Hobsbawm's is indeed a very interesting one. Makes sense a lot of time, if applied to how groups define their identinties (usually by excluding all those who do not belong to the group, discriminating, creating bullshit historical lineages etc. etc.).

I assume this could be applied in the most swell of ways to the Wynton Lincoln Center gang, no?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

This is a pretty well known phenomenon. The development of traditional Welsh dress is a well documented 19th C phenomenon. The more recent "resurgence" of the Welsh language is a continuation. The chap who used to live upstairs of us in the seventies was the head of the Welsh National Language Unit and part of his job was inventing new Welsh words and deciding on their grammar etc!

Religious fundamentalism is part of the same movement.

Hobsbawm deals with this issue at some length in "The age of empire", which I finished a week or so ago.

MG

PS Hobsbawm also made a very good TV programme about 3 hours long about it perhaps five or six years ago. I think it was called "The lies our country tells us".

Edited April 15, 2007 by The Magnificent Goldberg

[Simon Weil]

That idea of Hobsbawm's is indeed a very interesting one. Makes sense a lot of time, if applied to how groups define their identinties (usually by excluding all those who do not belong to the group, discriminating, creating bullshit historical lineages etc. etc.).

I assume this could be applied in the most swell of ways to the Wynton Lincoln Center gang, no?

You could practically do it standing on your head with Wynton. It's kind of too easy. But the thing that really interested me was the wider ramifications. People do use the concept of "the tradition" in Jazz and I think it matters. Like it gives people some sort of sense of solidity to feel there is that thing there - "The tradition". Yet I don't have any firm sense of what it means - or rather, when I think about it, the sense is of a marshmallow (mushy) centre.

I do have a sense of what Jazz is (though I wouldn't like to define it), so that's not the problem. My suspicion is that the reason I get that sense - of a centre of mush - is that the idea of "the tradition" in Jazz is a fallacious one. That is it isn't just a Lincoln Center problem - and if you got rid of those guys, you wouldn't have the problem. Rather "the invention of tradition" is a problem for Jazz as a whole.

It's about creating an identity for Jazz with "bullshit historical lineages".

And....

Simon Weil

Edited April 15, 2007 by Simon Weil

[mikeweil]

I think the look back to African roots among African-American people in the 1960's and 1970's has a lot of aspects of inventing a tradition. I think this always comes into play when people are somehow removed or cut off from a major part of their roots - then you have to re-invent. It is part of forming your identity.

Edited April 16, 2007 by mikeweil

[Simon Weil]

This is a pretty well known phenomenon.

Well, the thing is you're an ex-speech-writer. Inasmuch as trying to get your guy recognised as the legitimate heir to whatever is going to be central to what you do (did), I think the malleability of the tradition is liable to very much in your mind. So, with respect (and it would be an interesting conversation to talk about your experiences in this regard), I don't think you're terribly representative.

The development of traditional Welsh dress is a well documented 19th C phenomenon. The more recent "resurgence" of the Welsh language is a continuation. The chap who used to live upstairs of us in the seventies was the head of the Welsh National Language Unit and part of his job was inventing new Welsh words and deciding on their grammar etc!

Right, the invention of tradition in the sense of the sense of traditional dress is very much what the book is about (or at least large chunks). The thing about language, I think, is probably different. There seems to be an accepted view (maybe going back to Herder) that language is central to national identity. So then you've got to have a language to be a distinctive national entity - like Israel's got Hebrew. Kind of without "our" language, specific to "our" lot we cannot express "our national soul" properly.

So your mate upstairs would have been involved in inventing the Welsh national soul, I guess. And, erm, Jazz can be construed as a form of language - which is, I think, where Wynton and his lot are coming from when they talk about Jazz as a democratic music conveying the soul of America.

Religious fundamentalism is part of the same movement.

Right. I think this (from above) more or less covers fundamentalism:

"...insofar as there is such a reference to a historic past, the pecularity of 'invented traditions' is that the continuity is largely factitious. In short, they are responses to novel situations which take the form of reference to old situations, or which establish their own past by quasi-obligatory repetition. It is the contrast between the constant change and innovation of the modern world and the attempt to structure at least some parts of social life within it as unchanging and invariant, that make the 'invention of tradition' so interesting for historians of the past two centuries..."

Again, Wynton and his lot do the fundamentalist thing when they talk about "blues" and "swing" as being the unchanging and invariant fundamentals of jazz (see, Ubu, now I am doing the Wynton/Lincoln Center subject). But, actually, of course, this isn't so. I mean early Ellington doesn't swing, and James P. Johnson is not a blues player - so, what are they going to do, remove these guys into proto-jazz or something?

OK, lets take a wider look than just Wynton, using a dictionary definition of "tradition":

"...(L. traditio, f. tradere...hand over, deliver...)...The action of handing down something, from generation to generation, transmission of statements, beliefs, customs etc. esp. by word of mouth or unwritten custom; the fact of being handed down thus...A long established and generally accepted practice or custom; immemorial usage. Also spec. the principles held and generally followed by any branch of art or literature, acquired from and handed down by experience and practice..."

The thing is, if you look at the different generations in Jazz - lets say the Armstrong generation, the Parker generation and the Coleman one - the process by which each generation comes into being is not so much a handing down of customs, rather than a ripping up of old customs and replacing with new. This occurs to such an extent, that the preceding generation sees the new as playing something alien - a foreign language. Thus Armstrong saw what Parker was doing as "chinese music" and I'm pretty sure you could say the same about the response of the boppers to Ornette (as a whole, that is).

Now, someone like Ayler certainly did see himself as part of what went before. I mean the innovators generally do. But, in these sort of major events in Jazz - those that have after all made the history of the music - their predecessors generally don't. What, then, are we to make of view of jazz as a tradition? Well I think it's only a tradition in retrospect. Simply because the process of generation-forming is not tthat of handing down of customs, the traditional process - rather it is the introduction of major new practices.

Hobsbawm deals with this issue at some length in "The age of empire", which I finished a week or so ago.

MG

PS Hobsbawm also made a very good TV programme about 3 hours long about it perhaps five or six years ago. I think it was called "The lies our country tells us".

Got "The Age of Empire". Missed the TV programme.

Simon Weil

[Simon Weil]

I think the look back to African roots among African-American people in the 1960's and 1970's has a lot of aspects of inventing a tradition. I think this always comes into play when people are somehow removed or cut off from a major part of their roots - then you have to re-invent. It is part of forming your identity.

This is quite a big subject (anyway I think it's big) and I need to go away and try to think about it. I am going to answer, Mike...but not yet awhile. Also I think Ubu probably deserves a better answer than the one I gave.

Not usually the way with (my) internet discussions, but I need the time to think.

So...Please bear with me.

Simon Weil

Edited April 16, 2007 by Simon Weil

[Tom Storer]

One of the great seductions of "tradition" is that it provides a ready-made framework to support decisions. In many cases it simply provides the decisions for you.

In some cases, a tradition has become a tradition, i.e. an established way of thinking and acting, because the decisions it embodies are powerful--they work. They get good results with few ill side effects. It has "invented the wheel" and hence justifiably attracts those who wish to roll.

But it also appeals to the group-identity thing and the (related) individual-insecurity thing in us. We jump on the bandwagon in part because it's a warm, cozy feeling to be on the bandwagon with our co-traditionalists; in part because if we jumped off, we'd have to figure out what to do and where to go next, all by ourselves. We'd have the anxiety of judging our own decisions without the tradition's support.

No surprise that "tradition" is so popular. And even those who bravely jump off the bandwagon often get together and form another one as soon as possible, which both exactly replicates the reassuring characteristics of any tradition, and also brags that it is brave enough to defy tradition!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

One of the great seductions of "tradition" is that it provides a ready-made framework to support decisions. In many cases it simply provides the decisions for you.

In some cases, a tradition has become a tradition, i.e. an established way of thinking and acting, because the decisions it embodies are powerful--they work. They get good results with few ill side effects. It has "invented the wheel" and hence justifiably attracts those who wish to roll.

This is a very important point. But the invented tradition has no such virtue. It is, in Hobsbawms view, and others, a response against a new situation, when what is usually called for is a response with a new situation; ie the development of a new tradition, that works.

MG

[Simon Weil]

I think the look back to African roots among African-American people in the 1960's and 1970's has a lot of aspects of inventing a tradition. I think this always comes into play when people are somehow removed or cut off from a major part of their roots - then you have to re-invent. It is part of forming your identity.

My sense of the term "African-American" is of a person squaring up his shoulders and sticking his chest out - so I think that's about national pride. Kind of a people pulling themselves up to their full height after the humiliations of slavery and segregation. So I think a pride in their heritage comes into that, in that by dressing up in dashikis, blacks were able to identify themselves with pre-slavery ancestors = people who could carry themselves around unabashed - without the fear of the whip.

I'm not sure it's about inventing an identity so much as seeing their identity in as positive way.

I don't think they invented the tradition of African forebears so much as brought it out.

Any musical ramifications?

Simon Weil

Edited April 16, 2007 by Simon Weil

[Simon Weil]

That idea of Hobsbawm's is indeed a very interesting one. Makes sense a lot of time, if applied to how groups define their identinties (usually by excluding all those who do not belong to the group, discriminating, creating bullshit historical lineages etc. etc.).

I assume this could be applied in the most swell of ways to the Wynton Lincoln Center gang, no?

The thing about invented traditions is that they've basically got this centre of mush - factitious relationship to the past is how Hobsbawn puts it. This is why they've got to define themselves by exclusion - like by what's outside - because there's nothing at the centre. It certainly looks like Wynton et al do that - but, to be straight with you, I haven't really done enough research to be sure.

Where I do know it's the case - because I spent years researching it - is in Wagner's (the composer) idea off Germanness. He actually says he doesn't know what "German" is - and ends up defining it as the opposite of Jewishness.

And I do think he's representative.

Simon Weil

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I think the look back to African roots among African-American people in the 1960's and 1970's has a lot of aspects of inventing a tradition. I think this always comes into play when people are somehow removed or cut off from a major part of their roots - then you have to re-invent. It is part of forming your identity.

My sense of the term "African-American" is of a person squaring up his shoulders and sticking his chest out - so I think that's about national pride. Kind of a people pulling themselves up to their full height after the humiliations of slavery and segregation. So I think a pride in their heritage comes into that, in that by dressing up in dashikis, blacks were able to identify themselves with pre-slavery ancestors = people who could carry themselves around unabashed - without the fear of the whip.

I'm not sure it's about inventing an identity so much as seeing their identity in as positive way.

I don't think they invented the tradition of African forebears so much as brought it out.

Any musical ramifications?

Simon Weil

What got invented was Afro-centricism; the idea that a) Egypt was run by sub-Saharan Africans (it was for some of the time) and b) had a big influence on European culture (well, certainly some, but not necessarily when the southern kings were running Egypt); and that therefore Europe owes Africa its civilisation (or maybe a free pass to the ball game). This notion is VERY big in African-American circles. I had to go to 125 Street in Harlem to buy (on the street) books in English by Cheikh Anta Diop - couldn't get them in the mainstream bookstores of NYC; not in Britain, very easily.

I accompanied a bunch of African-Americans on a tour of Goree Island, just off Dakar, in Senegal, a few years ago. They were astounded, and almost hysterically mortified, to learn that Africans had participated in and profited from the slave trade.

MG

[porcy62]

Really interesting topic. I am sorry that my poor english prevents me to fully join it. Anyway I didn't read the Hobsbawm's book. I remember I read something closely related at this issue in one of my philosophy courses at university, maybe Todorov, the research was about how a culture represents themselves.

Edited April 16, 2007 by porcy62

[mikeweil]

I think the look back to African roots among African-American people in the 1960's and 1970's has a lot of aspects of inventing a tradition. I think this always comes into play when people are somehow removed or cut off from a major part of their roots - then you have to re-invent. It is part of forming your identity.

My sense of the term "African-American" is of a person squaring up his shoulders and sticking his chest out - so I think that's about national pride. Kind of a people pulling themselves up to their full height after the humiliations of slavery and segregation. So I think a pride in their heritage comes into that, in that by dressing up in dashikis, blacks were able to identify themselves with pre-slavery ancestors = people who could carry themselves around unabashed - without the fear of the whip.

I'm not sure it's about inventing an identity so much as seeing their identity in as positive way.

I don't think they invented the tradition of African forebears so much as brought it out.

Any musical ramifications?

Simon Weil

I take your comment as a warning not to generalize - which I did not intend to.

The one example that comes to my mind is the Capoeira movement in Brazil, where fragmentary traditions originating in Africa were forged into a new whole and legend was created along the way to "explain" the historical connections. See Gerhard Kubik's books on the subject, "Angolan Traits in black Music, Games and dances in Brazil" and "Extensionen afrikanischer Kulturen in Brasilien". To summarize: The training of the body, which had its roots in initiation rites for young males in Angola, was re-defined as self-defense training in the historical process of opposition towards slavery, and music and instruments adopted to accompany it (berimbau, agogo, and atabaque) that originally had no connection to it; the etymology of the term "capoeira" also was defined beyond scientifically proven facts (I can't recall the details on this).

But today Brazilians tend to see this as an unbroken tradition pointing back to Africa in the form it is now practiced.

Could that be an example?

I would have to read Hobsbawm's book to see if this really fits as an example.

[Larry Kart]

[Where I do know it's the case - because I spent years researching it - is in Wagner's (the composer) idea of Germanness. He actually says he doesn't know what "German" is - and ends up defining it as the opposite of Jewishness.

Thanks, Herr Wagner, that was handy of you.

Edited April 16, 2007 by Larry Kart

[Simon Weil]

In some cases, a tradition has become a tradition, i.e. an established way of thinking and acting, because the decisions it embodies are powerful--they work. They get good results with few ill side effects. It has "invented the wheel" and hence justifiably attracts those who wish to roll.

I'm taking this bit out because I basically agree with the rest of your post. It's interesting that you pick the word "roll", given that this is a jazz group. I mean "rock and roll", "let's rock", "ready to rock", "let's roll" etc are the connotations. See, "swing" would be the more obvious choice. Except, of course, it doesn't work - the dictionary definition is: "To sway or wave to and fro, as a body hanging freely...to oscillate...to move forward with a swaying gait..."

To sway or oscillate would fit much better with the idea of a tradition, in that's basically about staying on one spot - and there's some element of relevance to Jazz in that a swing tune can go on as long as you want - as long as you have soloists. To move forward with a swaying gait perhaps more accurately conveys the idea of Jazz swing - but it doesn't have the directness of "roll".

You're conveying the sense of "tradition" as a kind of turbo-charged car, Tom. But I don't know that this is quite right. In terms of traditionalist Jazz, let's say Wynton et al, it's true that being inside the music can convey a sense of this sort of power. But I don't think that Wynton's Jazz really does "roll" in the outside world - attracting people to it. I think that's because it's an attempt to get back to some nebulous (Jazz) past when the rest of the world has moved on.

It's just kind of hanging there.

Simon Weil

[Simon Weil]

I think the look back to African roots among African-American people in the 1960's and 1970's has a lot of aspects of inventing a tradition. I think this always comes into play when people are somehow removed or cut off from a major part of their roots - then you have to re-invent. It is part of forming your identity.

My sense of the term "African-American" is of a person squaring up his shoulders and sticking his chest out - so I think that's about national pride. Kind of a people pulling themselves up to their full height after the humiliations of slavery and segregation. So I think a pride in their heritage comes into that, in that by dressing up in dashikis, blacks were able to identify themselves with pre-slavery ancestors = people who could carry themselves around unabashed - without the fear of the whip.

I'm not sure it's about inventing an identity so much as seeing their identity in as positive way.

I don't think they invented the tradition of African forebears so much as brought it out.

Any musical ramifications?

Simon Weil

What got invented was Afro-centricism; the idea that a) Egypt was run by sub-Saharan Africans (it was for some of the time) and b) had a big influence on European culture (well, certainly some, but not necessarily when the southern kings were running Egypt); and that therefore Europe owes Africa its civilisation (or maybe a free pass to the ball game). This notion is VERY big in African-American circles. I had to go to 125 Street in Harlem to buy (on the street) books in English by Cheikh Anta Diop - couldn't get them in the mainstream bookstores of NYC; not in Britain, very easily.

I accompanied a bunch of African-Americans on a tour of Goree Island, just off Dakar, in Senegal, a few years ago. They were astounded, and almost hysterically mortified, to learn that Africans had participated in and profited from the slave trade.

MG

I think this stuff comes out of "the drive to pride", in that anything positive about Afro-Americans is given an audience. And people's critical faculties go out the window. Free pass to the ball game in that sense. You get the same sort of stuff in feminist circles.

It'll pass, in time. With enhanced self-confidence will come self-criticism (the capacity for).

Hopefully, anyway.

Simon Weil

Edited April 17, 2007 by Simon Weil

[Simon Weil]

I take your comment as a warning not to generalize - which I did not intend to.

The one example that comes to my mind is the Capoeira movement in Brazil, where fragmentary traditions originating in Africa were forged into a new whole and legend was created along the way to "explain" the historical connections. See Gerhard Kubik's books on the subject, "Angolan Traits in black Music, Games and dances in Brazil" and "Extensionen afrikanischer Kulturen in Brasilien". To summarize: The training of the body, which had its roots in initiation rites for young males in Angola, was re-defined as self-defense training in the historical process of opposition towards slavery, and music and instruments adopted to accompany it (berimbau, agogo, and atabaque) that originally had no connection to it; the etymology of the term "capoeira" also was defined beyond scientifically proven facts (I can't recall the details on this).

But today Brazilians tend to see this as an unbroken tradition pointing back to Africa in the form it is now practiced.

Could that be an example?

Sounds like it - and it does sound interesting, per se. The fact of there being a break which "the tradition" hides seems to fit right in - as well as the novel use of a time-honoured custom.

Yup, very good.

Simon Weil

[Tom Storer]

In some cases, a tradition has become a tradition, i.e. an established way of thinking and acting, because the decisions it embodies are powerful--they work. They get good results with few ill side effects. It has "invented the wheel" and hence justifiably attracts those who wish to roll.

I'm taking this bit out because I basically agree with the rest of your post. It's interesting that you pick the word "roll", given that this is a jazz group. I mean "rock and roll", "let's rock", "ready to rock", "let's roll" etc are the connotations. See, "swing" would be the more obvious choice. Except, of course, it doesn't work - the dictionary definition is: "To sway or wave to and fro, as a body hanging freely...to oscillate...to move forward with a swaying gait..."

To sway or oscillate would fit much better with the idea of a tradition, in that's basically about staying on one spot - and there's some element of relevance to Jazz in that a swing tune can go on as long as you want - as long as you have soloists. To move forward with a swaying gait perhaps more accurately conveys the idea of Jazz swing - but it doesn't have the directness of "roll".

You're conveying the sense of "tradition" as a kind of turbo-charged car, Tom.

I was actually speaking in general terms about traditions, not meaning to refer to jazz or even music in particular. And "roll" was just the verb that came spontaneously to mind right after the wheel metaphor.

In terms of traditionalist Jazz, let's say Wynton et al, it's true that being inside the music can convey a sense of this sort of power. But I don't think that Wynton's Jazz really does "roll" in the outside world - attracting people to it. I think that's because it's an attempt to get back to some nebulous (Jazz) past when the rest of the world has moved on.

I think it would be Wynton himself and his acolytes who cling to the (pre-70's) jazz tradition, regardless of whether they represent it creditably or not. It's powerful music, already developed and schematized to a very high degree of sophistication, a racing car (to use your image) just waiting for a skilled driver to hop in and take it around the well-worn track. Round and round... There's also the relationship to the parental generation, particularly strong in Wynton's case... trying to find a mode of self-expression that doesn't depend on "tradition" risks angering the father figures. Championing the tradition, the fathers' tradition, lets neoclassicists avoid that anxiety.

Disclaimer: I don't think this casual armchair psychoanalysis, much as I enjoy churning it out, can be applied indiscriminately to anybody who happens to love to play New Orleans, swing or bebop. It's just pure speculation about some of them.

[Simon Weil]

I think it would be Wynton himself and his acolytes who cling to the (pre-70's) jazz tradition, regardless of whether they represent it creditably or not. It's powerful music, already developed and schematized to a very high degree of sophistication, a racing car (to use your image) just waiting for a skilled driver to hop in and take it around the well-worn track. Round and round... There's also the relationship to the parental generation, particularly strong in Wynton's case... trying to find a mode of self-expression that doesn't depend on "tradition" risks angering the father figures. Championing the tradition, the fathers' tradition, lets neoclassicists avoid that anxiety.

Let's go at this slowly. First a couple of canonical texts:

1) It don't mean a thing if you ain't got that swing

2) What is jazz? If you have to ask, you'll never know.

The Ellington one is a classic of the "traditional" view of Jazz - Without this specific element, swing, it asserts, the music is worthless. To it Wynton would add "blues" - it don't mean a thing if it ain't got blues 'n swing - is his position, and one we're all familiar with. But the thing about the Ellington quote, and this is very characteristic of Ellington, is that falls to bits if you look at it. Because, like I said above, actually Ellington's early music doesn't swing. So this is like one of those exchanges from "The Mirrored Self", where in his role as interviewee he'll say something and in his role as interviewer question it.

This leads on to (2), the ineffable heart of jazz view. Basically, I'm arguing, if you look too hard at any specific element of Jazz, it turns out not to be quite that specific. Even Ellington's catch-phrase doesn't have quite that specificity in his case. This is about defining Jazz - that basically you can't do it.

Wynton of course would disagree - and he's on record as making it a battle between him, who wants jazz defined one way, and the critics who (he asserts) want it defined another. But that is to assume that Jazz should be defined at all. It in fact overturns the position of point (2).

Now I'm one of those guys who thinks there's something really beautiful about leaving the heart of Jazz kind of ineffable and unknown. That if you nail it down (or assert that it can be), you lose...well basically you lose what gives it life.

So, then, "tradition":

"...(L. traditio, f. tradere...hand over, deliver...)...The action of handing down something, from generation to generation, transmission of statements, beliefs, customs etc. esp. by word of mouth or unwritten custom; the fact of being handed down thus...A long established and generally accepted practice or custom; immemorial usage. Also spec. the principles held and generally followed by any branch of art or literature, acquired from and handed down by experience and practice..."

The argument I made above is that, in Jazz, the process of generation forming is not about handing down specific (musical) customs, rather it's about introducing new ones - i.e it's non-traditional. And this, in a sense, is what's kept Jazz alive - it's ability to renew itself.

Now you can argue that, in the 60s, the process went too far, that in introducing new customs you lost what made Jazz distinctive - and this is Wynton's view. That the old musical customs, of blues and swing, which had previously defined Jazz got thrown out of the window, leaving us with a music without meaning. Dead in that way. Wynton asserts that in "bringing back" blues and swing, he was revifying a music that was dead.

"...the strength and adaptability of genuine traditions is not to be confused with 'the invention of tradition'. Where the old ways are alive, traditions need be neither revived or invented."

That was in my first post. In Hobsbawm's view, Wynton would be an example of "inventing the tradition". If the process of generation-forming in Jazz is non-traditional, this would fit with that.

I think Wynton needs "a story", that's why he's a traditionalist.

Simon Weil

Edited April 18, 2007 by Simon Weil