“And all that Jazz,” Gypsies and Jim Crow, too

• Published in: Hungarian journal of English and American studies Vol. 22; no. 2; pp. 435 - 442
• Main Author: Morse, Donald E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Debrecen Centre for Arts, Humanities and Sciences, University of Debrecen 01.10.2016; De Gruyter Poland
• Subjects: Baraka, Amiri (1934-2014); Bellson, Louie; Keresiouan languages; Mingus, Charles; REVIEW ESSAYS; Romani people
• ISSN: 1218-7364

Prone to lecture audiences on how to listen to his music, Mingus did not suffer fools or the ignorant gladly. [...]he always had to be in charge no matter what the situation. Not that there were not long-standing, real grievances perhaps most forcefully and publically expressed in Roy Eldridge's famous cry that earned a headline in Downbeat, "No More White Bands For Me."3 Zabel sees the incorporation of "blues, gospel, and bebop into jazz as leading to black musicians' frustration over the 'bleaching' of African American musical forms" that finally found an outlet in hard bop. In "Ambassador Dizzy: Jazz Diplomacy in the Cold War Era," Castagneto tells with considerable authority the fascinating story of how Dizzy Gillespie and after him others became sponsored by the State Department to tour foreign countries.6 Ambassador Satch and Ambassador Dizzy, according to one Soviet writer, were part of "America's secret weapon number one" or, as another critic phrased it, the US had "a secret sonic weapon" in jazz. 8 Co-editor Zipernovszky contributes to this special issue a case study of what happens to a well-established cultural institution when it suddenly has to confront a foreign cultural invasion as Hungarian Gypsy music with its centurylong deeply "interwoven" relationship to Hungarian national culture had to confront American jazz.