JAZZ IMPROVISATION AND LANGUAGE PERFORMANCE: Parallel Competencies

Author(s): Charles Suhor

Source: ETC: A Review of General Semantics , Summer 1986, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Summer
1986), pp. 133-140
Published by: Institute of General Semantics

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42576805

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 JAZZ IMPROVISATION AND
LANGUAGE PERFORMANCE:
Charles Suhor* Parallel Competencies

At tweentween
first jazz improvisation
glance, improvisation it would
and language seem andwould
performance language
followthat a discussion performance of relationships would follow be-
familiar paths of analysis. In recent years, semiotic theorists and art
philosophers have often focused attention on the arts as sign systems, each
with syntactic (structural) qualities that permit interesting comparisons and
contrasts. (1) Artists themselves have long been fond of creating works that
relate to other arts. Writers are among the most audacious. Poe wanted his
poems to have the effect of instrumental music. In "The Bells," he almost
succeeded; so did Dryden in "A Song for St. Cecilia's Day." Gertrude Stein
tried to write some short stories that would unfold to our perceptions as a
painting does. She failed, but her failures were among the most interesting
in the history of literature. Concrete poetry, a centuries-old form, is both
linguistic and graphic, since the words are arranged to form some sort of
image on the page.
Composers are even more prone to draw inspiration from other arts.
Innumerable operas and musicals are translations of drama and fiction. Com-
posers set poems to music, create impressionistic renderings of writers' works,
and write programmatic pieces with the intention of depicting paintings or
narratives in music. Critics and teachers, too, are fond of finding formal and
thematic connections among works created in different arts. The most acces-
sible similarities are the ones based on simple structural elements. High
school musicians can readily see the general schematic relationship between
the standard thirty-two bar popular song pattern -AABA- and the rhyme
pattern in, say, a Petrarchan sonnet-ABBA, ABBA, CD, CD, CD. College
students can perceive theme and variation approaches in Donne's Holy
Sonnets, and they can see cross-genre relationships between an epic poem
and a grand opera.
* Charles Suhor is Deputy Executive Director of the National Council of Teachers of English
and Director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills.

133

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 134 Et cetera • SUMMER 1986

The Elusive Arts

But it is precisely the highly composed aspects of literature, music, and othe
arts in the European tradition that invite analysts to make connections, some
times facile, across the arts. By contrast, everyday speech and jazz are fo
some reason terribly elusive. They have a fluidity, spontaneity, and unpr
dictability that are utterly fascinating. The late composer Alec Wilder
expressed wonder at the combination of instant invention and cohesivene
in jazz performances:
I wish to God that some neurologists would sit down and figure out how th
improviser's brain works, how he selects, out of hundreds of thousands of pos-
sibilities, the notes he does at the speed he does -how in Goďs name, his min
works so damned fast! And why, when the notes come out right, they are righ
. . . Composing is a slow, arduous, obvious, inch-by-inch process, whereas
improvisation is a lightning mystery. In fact, it is the creative mystery of our
age. (2)

Many musicians and students of jazz sense that similar principles underlie
the spontaneous -yet orderly- invention of both jazz and everyday language.
Yet those similarities are not easily laid out in terms of conventions of form
or qualities of genre, as they are in the traditional arts.
In 1972 a group of linguists sought out generative principles to explain
some aspects of musical composition at a conference on cognition and sym-
bolic processes. J.R. Ross spoke of discovering rules for a particular musical
form that could generate melodic sequences that are permissible within the
form and identify sequences that are not permissible. Ultimately, though,
the linguists were stymied. (3) Ray Kurzweil, a noted artificial intelligence
expert, sufficiently codified formal aspects of Mozart's music to develop a
computer program that produces what he calls "second rate Mozart." (4) Simi-
larly, Marcus and others are creating computer programs that can generate
(or help students to generate) second rate poems, essays, and short stories. (5)
Predictably, the computer specialists tend to rely on established notions of
genre and on applications of recent theory and research in linguistics and
artificial intelligence.
While aesthetic theory and art criticism have long dealt with the struc-
tures and principles underlying highly composed works, the questions posed
by Wilder seem to get closer to the heart of the matter of human invention.
There is greater mystery in the order that is struck in improvisational forms.
The generative principles underlying them are far more puzzling. In the
spontaneous expositions of everyday talk and jazz improvisation, the normal
performer rarely invents with the deliberate intention of providing an instance
of a defined structure. At most, skilled speakers angle their ideas off to par-
ticular listeners and rapidly gauge their rhetoric (as well as their body lan-
guage) for maximum clarity, persuasiveness, humor, or other communica-
tive functions. At most, skilled jazz musicians seek fresh and evocative

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Jazz Improvisation and Language Performance 135

approaches to stimulate themselves and their audiences. By and large, both

talk and jazz improvisation are set in motion rather unselfconsciously, with
self-expression and communication rather than genre fulfillment as goals.
Stated another way, process and product are more intimately related in the
creation of both talk and jazz than in highly composed language and music.
The instantaneous emergence of a well-formed conversational or musical
product seems like a small, common miracle.
Talk and Music: the African Tradition

Some interesting cross-disciplinary scholarship has shed light on the rela-

tionships between jazz and talk. Noting that jazz is essentially Afro-American
music, Gunther Schuller points to significant aspects of relationships between
melody patterns and speech among Africans, and he links rhythmic and
melodic-tonal features of African speech and music with the development
of jazz. Schuller draws largely on A.M. Jones's monumental studies to develop
the point that in African music, "words and their meanings are related to
musical sound. Instrumental music independent of verbal functions ... is
almost totally unknown to the African native. . . . And it is no mere coinci-
dence that the languages and dialects of the African Negro are in themselves
a form of music, often to the extent that certain syllables possess specific
intensities, durations, and even pitch levels." (6) Ben Sidran's analysis of Black
language and music in America hinges on the idea that "the quality of vocali-
zation of tone is a major characteristic of all Black communication in America
and, particularly, of Black music." (7)
Daphne Harrison cites ethnomusicological studies of the Ashanti, the
Yoruba, and her own observations of the Ewe in which the "talking drums"
create a surrogate for human speech. Similarly, Peter Farb notes that in
western and central Africa the drummers can use tonal phonemes alone to
deliver complete messages. (8) LeRoi Jones (Imamu Baraka) speaks of "the
phonetic reproduction of words" by African drummers and states that the
pitch relationships between African speech and music "were definitely passed
on to the Negroes of the New World." (9)
Schuller connects jazz improvisation with African music, noting that "in
a variation by an African master drummer, . . . what may already be rela-
tively complex expositional material (what Jones calls a "seed pattern") is
varied, manipulated, augmented, diminished, fragmented, regrouped into
new variants. All of this is done, moreover, without any sense of embellishing.
On the contrary, the drummer's skill as an improviser will be judged by his
ability to use with a maximum of variety the essential motivic material of
a given pattern, all within, we reiterate, exceedingly strict rules and tradi-
tions." (10) Historians Henry Kmen and William Schafer (11) add that in
America -especially, in the musically diverse city of New Orleans- African
traditions of improvisation and melody merged with European traditions
of harmony and song structure to produce jazz.

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 136 Et cetera • SUMMER 1986

Innumerable comments by jazz m

ideas about links between Afric
the music-language relationship
and others have long noted simi
and singing, and his phrasing a
drummer Alan White's recent com
"essentially talking to each othe
istic perception among jazz mus
ingenious creation of lyrics for
the cadences of natural languag

Jazz Styles - Language Ana

Schuller makes a valuable distinct
sation. Drawing on comments b
Schuller notes that the earliest j
essentially an embellishment
improvisational variations. (14)
set melodies might be a medieval
in the oral tradition, or perhap
dramatic texts. Clearly, musical
tive, are a far more limited con
What kind of jazz, then, furni
tion? Andre Hodeir has argued c
truly great jazz improviser. (15) M
strong worked - free improvisati
of the improvisational vehicle
improvisation. And it is the bop
Powell, and their immediate musi
jazz conversationalists. They wo
strong and his contemporaries, si
ture and taking rhythmic comp
levels. The boppers' exciting ba
perhaps stretched to the limits
Sonny Rollins and John Coltra
Warne Marsh.
In the sixties, post-bop avant garde artists claimed liberation from certain
restraints of bop, choosing to ignore bar lines, chord-based improvisation,
and even tonality in their explorations. (16) Omette Coleman, Don Cherry,
and John Coltrane were perhaps the dominant figures in this "free jazz" move-
ment. (Sidran noted that Coleman sounds like an "irrational version" of
Charlie Parker. (17) Their work is less rule-governed than bop; at its best,
it might be thought of as an improvised musical parallel to the work of writers
who consciously violate syntactic rules -the "creative ungrammatically" of
e e cummings, for example, or the self-defining structure of a novel like

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Jazz Improvisation and Language Performance 137

Finnegan's Wake . At its worst, free jazz might be compare

speaking in tongues, a babble of subjective sputterings wit
haps accidental, formal symmetries.

Jazz Performance and Speech Production

Although some of the bases for a comparison of jazz imp
speech production have already been suggested, let me now m
explicit in terms of linguistic theory. In transformational gr
of modern semantics, all native speakers are seen as having
competence that underlies their everyday language performan
entails a generative principle- the ability to apply rules to
structures to produce a potentially infinite number of surfac
tences. In the words of psycholinguist George A. Miller, "w
hypothetical constructs capable of combining verbal elem
matical sentences, and in order to account for our ability
unlimited variety of possible sentences, these hypothetical
have the character of linguistic rules." (18) Surely, this descri
the earlier-cited quotation from Gunther Schuller concern
sation by an African drummer. Schuller's comments can b
apply to natural language in this way: "In a variation by a
speaker, what may already be complex expositional materia
call 'kernel sentences') is varied, manipulated, augmented, d
mented, regrouped into new variants ... all within, we reitera
strict rules. . . ."
In jazz improvisation the chord structure and the bar patterns of songs
form a deep structure that parallels the kernel sentences hypothetically under-
lying human speech. The jazz musician, applying transformational rules
to the chords, proceeds to shape melodies of considerable rhythmic and har-
monic complexity. Like the native speaker, the jazz player can create an
unlimited number of musical statements -variously called "ideas," "lines,"
or simply "phrases" by jazz musicians -by drawing upon the harmonic sub-
structure. Consider, for example, the aptness of this paraphrase of the quote
from psycholinguist George A. Miller in the preceding paragraph. "We must
consider hypothetical constructs capable of combining musical elements
(chords, scales, bars) into coherent jazz phrases, and in order to account for
the ability to deal with an unlimited variety of possible phrases, these
hypothetical constructs must have the character of musical rules."
In Ways of the Hand : The Organization of Improvised Conduct , David
Sudnow constantly draws analogies to spoken language in a detailed account
of how he learned to play jazz piano. Although Sudnow's development was
the exact reverse of jazz history- moving from highly theoretical and mechan-
ical training to intuitive musical invention -his explanation of how scales,
chord changes, and song structure operate in jazz improvisation is gener-
ally accessible to nonmusicians. Concerning jazz performance, he says

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138 Et cetera • Summer 1986

For the jazz musician the song

originally written melody, whic
a first time . . . then the chord
dies or substituted for the the
with the exception of so-called
"melodies laid over" the under
cians perform together, they ge
tune, using the successively re
to keep them on track togethe
the song furnishes a formal org
turn-taking sections and unify

The jazz musician in action (a

process of jazz performance)
calls "discoursive competence
(play successive four-bar imp
individual soloist interacts with
are analogous to the pragmat
Grice's "principles of cooperati
understandings among jazz m
and a sense of mutual depen
that of intensive verbal inter
utterances on one hand, and
deep insights on the other- a
Jazz improvisation, then, is
the melodic potential of a giv
tion of a rhythmic componen
tally. The jazz line is fluid and
sive and communicative by w
in pitch (blue notes, growls, s
dynamics, and its precise dir
human speech produced acco
In making connections betwee
obvious differences. Surely, hu
improvisation is an art. Basi
a birthright of all humans exce
iologically impaired. By contra
mystery of apparent differing
Moreover, every normal pers
guage principles and structur
make considerable use of exp
And to turn Edgar Allan Poe's
mental jazz is to have the effec
that are syntactically well-fo
ments. Clearly, jazz must "m

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Jazz Improvisation and Language Performance 139

rhythm patterns and chord-based notes will not make sense eith
cian or a casual listener; and subtle devices employed with j
pragmatic signals of "content"- i.e., of the special understan
and traditions of various musical subcultures. (22)
In a broad sense, every sign system has semantic and pragm
as syntactic aspects. Any human performance or product, ho
trian or abstract, reflects to some extent the culture from whic
and expresses the consciousness of the individual performer.
Eco's terms, then, jazz might be seen as a social and psycholog
a web of interprétants that are linked with other forms of expr
ally interdependent and mutually explainable in unlimited s
Charlie Parker's words, jazz is "your own experience, your th
wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. See, e.g., Howard Gardner and David Perkins, "Symbol Systems: A Phil
chological, and Educational Investigation," in Media and Symbols : The For
sion, Communication , and Education, David Olson, ed. (Chicago: Na
for the Study of Education, 1984); Nelson Goodman, Language and Art
Bobbs-Merrill, 1968).
2. Warren Cooper, "Interviews with Jazz Musicians" (Unpublished p
Research Seminar in Education, 1974). Cited in Janet Emig, "The Biolog
Another View of the Process," in The Writing Processes of Students , Con
No. 1, Walter T. Petty and Patrick Finn, eds. (Buffalo, N.Y.: State
New York, 1975).
3. Walter Weimer and David Palermo, Cognition and the Symbolic Proc
New Jersey: Eribaum, 1974).
4. Louise Melton, "Mister Impossible: Roy Kurzweil," Computers and El
1984); reprint, n.p.
5. Stephen Marcus, "Compupoem: A Computer-Assisted Writing Activity," En
71 (February, 1982), pp. 96-99.
6. Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (Ne
University Press, 1968), p. 5.
7. Ben Sidran, Black Talk (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston), p.
8. Daphne D. Harrison, "Aesthetic and Social Aspects of Music in Afri
tings," in More Than Just Drumming: Essays on African and Afro-Latin A
and Musicians, Irene V. Jackson, ed. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Pres
Farb, Word Play: What Happens When People Talk (New York: Will
1975), p. 295.
9. LeRoi Jones, Blues People: Negro Music in White America (New York: W
1963), p. 26.
10. Schuller, op. cit., p. 58.
1 1 . Henry Kmen, Music in New Orleans: The Formative Years (Baton Rou
1966); William J. Schafer, Brass Bands and New Orleans Jazz (Bato
Press, 1977).
12. Robert Santelli, "Alan White," Modern Drummer, 9 (January, 1985), p. 10.
1 3. For example, listen to "Twisted," "Bijou," and "Cloudburst" on The Best of Lambert, Hen-
dricks, and Ross, Columbia LP 32911.

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 140 Et cetera • SUMMER 1986

14. Schuller, op. cit., p. 185; Bailey qu

Me Talkin ' to Ya (New York: Rine
15. Andre Hodeir, Jazz : Its Evolution
Press, 1980; orig. 1956).
16. Other (i.e., non-jazz) modes of imp
ural language. For example, "thorou
was less rule-bound than be-bop, sin
was not a structure made up of bar
ating within those bars. And of cou
elasticity of jazz and its speech-like
as blue notes and smears. Improvisat
through Ravi Shankar's music, is ri
precise melodic forms called ragas, n
structures. Nevertheless, it is not su
the subtle melodic explorations of
Bach. (Some of Bach's music for sol
e.g., "Passacaglia and Fugue in C M
17. Sidran, op. cit., p. 136.
18. George A. Miller, "Some Prelimin
Reading, Frank Smith, ed. (New Y
19. David Sudnow, Ways of the Hand-T
Mass.: Harvard University Press,
20. Umberto Eco, A Theory on Semiot
1976), pp. 136-137.
21. H.P. Grice, "Principles of Cooper
second lecture in Logic and Convers
sity, 1967.
22. For an in-depth exploration of the semantics of instrumental music, see Leonard B. Meyer,
Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956); and
Chapter 8, "On Significance in Music," Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key,
Third Edition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979).
23. Parker quotation is from Shapiro and HentofT, op. cit., p. 405.

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