andie nachgeborenen
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Yes, that's fair. But maybe put it this way. When black people play blues, jazz, etc., it's a way to express that black is beautiful. And the music is of course, no one with any knowledge of the subject would deny this, predominantly black in origin and in much of its development.
But of course it's black the way blackness is in America, which is eclectic,
^^^^ CB: Yes, think of Black American culture in the way Dubois does in _The Souls of Black Folk_ with double-consciouness. How many souls do Black Folk have ? Two. One Black and one white. Black culture , and thus music , is both Black and white. The difference between Black Americans and white Americans is not that Blacks are Black and whites are white. It is that Blacks are Black and white ,and whites are only white. Black people must learn white ways , the predominant culture, to get along. Whites can get along only learning white culture. But Black people learn Black culture too, in a sort of national liberationist and self-pride mode ( I'm Black and I'm proud; say it loud) Black people are bi-cultural in the US. Bilingual too. Black English and white English
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just as "black" people are a social group so identified by self and others rather than a biologically distinct population (a biological "race" if there is such a thing), whose social and biological makeup includes lots of elements adopted and transformed from the general background that influences them as they influence it, so jazz (blues, etc.) is a music, largely black in origin and development, that has lots of other _essential_ elements feeding into it from other parts or aspects of our culture (European classical music, American folk and country, Broadway show tunes, pop music generally).
^^^^^ CB: Sure . But think of the structuralist linguistic and anthropological definition of opposites or binary opposition. Opposites are two things which are identical in all respects except one. Black culture and white culture are opposites. They are all the same except for "one" or a relatively small difference, but a small difference is a critical difference. It's like calculus or marginal utility: the small difference that is a big difference.
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And of course when white and other musicians play jazz and blues, while it can be a tribute and support to the idea that black is beautiful, it's not a self-expression of that idea or feeling. But it's no less really and authentically jazz (blues) for all that: Duke Ellington or Woody Herman, Louis Armstrong or Muggsy Spanier, Ella Fitzgerald or Anita O'Day, James Carter or Joe Lovano -- you can argue the relative merits of these artists, but what you can't do is argue that the white artists aren't doing great authentic jazz.
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CB: I think Black people are accepting that some white individuals can become fluent in aspects of Black culture, become Black , become bi-cultural to some extent, especially within one art form. Bix B essentially became Black in terms of music.