Both American and Global: Jazz and World Religions in the United States

Abstract

Jazz has often been considered in opposition to religion, representing the carnal pleasures of Saturday night in contrast to Sunday morning worship. Historically, though, jazz has enjoyed a complex but fruitful with religions in the United States, primarily Christianity but other faith traditions as well. Although celebrated as the quintessentially American art form, jazz emerged as a product of global cultural flows which also carried religious meanings. The fluid boundary between speech and music in black Christianity means that jazz artists have sometimes regarded their solos as a form of preaching, while ministers have constructed their sermons as musical performances. In addition to supplementing Christian worship, jazz has served as a surrogate religion for its musicians and listeners, expressing its own creeds, codes, cultures, and communities. Since early in the 20th century, jazz musicians have borrowed hymns or gospel songs, composed pieces whose titles and sounds evoke religious worship, and written pieces designed for performance in sacred space. The roots of jazz lie in the traditional drumming and dance of West Africa, practices that blended with Christianity to shape slave religion and Pentecostal worship. As several significant jazz artists have been Jewish, sounds, and occasionally ideas of Judaism have permeated the repertoire of jazz at different points. Beginning in the 1940s, some American jazz artists were drawn to Islam, and incorporated references and sonic allusions in their music. The general interest in Eastern spirituality during the 1960s affected the beliefs and music of a generation of leading jazz. Meanwhile, Duke Ellington drew on an eclectic set of Christian beliefs to write three sacred concerts, inspiring his protege Wynton Marsalis to probe through music the connections between the black church and African-American music. A century of jazz teaches us that both the music and the spiritual beliefs it has expressed are exceptionally American and inextricably global.