Jazz Internationalism: Literary Afro-Modernism and the Cultural Politics of Black Music by John Lowney (2017)

Afro-modernity always had distinctive features that were derived from the politics of African-derived peoples, thus this development was a unique blend of European and African-American forms of artistic modernity.

Author John Lowney here combines research from a number of sources, as he considers the writings of Langston Hughes, Frank Marshall Davies, Ann Petry, Bob Kaufman and Paule Marshall. His emphasis on “internationalism” is derived mostly from an international perspective on jazz that started during the days of the Harlem Renaissance, and in the book is covered until the 1960s. Always with the focus on leftist African-American literature; which was indeed a part of the literary output.

While the conclusions of author Lowney convince most in the two final chapters, where he explores the political properties of Bob Kaufman’s poetry and Paule Marshall’s fiction (and identifies strong leftist, anti-colonialist, and in art socialist tendencies), the suggestion that already in the Harlem Renaissance and particularly in the writings of Langston Hughes leftist ideas were the strongest feature, is not really convincingly portrayed.

Even so, jazz fiction, or literature using the techniques of jazz and African-American music of the 1930s and 1940s, for example, was not always influenced by socialist ideas, feminist thought or anti-colonial propaganda exculsively. Actually, it hardly ever was.

Not even Claude McKay’s novels follow this pattern, although he freely experimented with a number of new literary techniques in his time. And unfortunately, there is very little “writing in jazz” in both Home to Harlem and Banjo; a similar unfruitful approach to Home to Harlem would be to read it as a novel of male prostitution (which would be entire nonsense and that is why nobody would suggest this seriously). Furthermore, one could argue if Home to Harlem (1928) actually was the very first novel to feature jazz by a black author; James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man was published in 1912, and featured the time’s most recent version of jazz, ragtime, a jazz forefather. (Johnson’s novel, however, was published before the Harlem Renaissance picked up full speed).

No matter how strong the desire for a powerful connection of jazz music and leftist ideas may still be, or the urge to “rewrite” history in a socialist sense, jazz was internationalist from a very early time on (the early 1920s). But the elements that made it internationalist were not of political (leftist) nature but of a common musical character. One that developed a language (or system of codes) that was learned and understood internationally by musicians and audiences.

The interesting aspect here is that jazz still “happened,” i.e. was performed and played – while largely underrated by the respective authorities – even in socialist countries where freedom of thought usually was suppressed. Therefore, it is astonishing that the role of the Popular Front, an American leftist organization that was supported by a number of left-wing groups and openly anti-democratic forces such as the CPUSA, is portrayed here somewhat differently. As a harmless and just loosely connected organization that simply wanted to promote jazz music and African-American authors. This image is largely inadequate.

As a matter of course, there were many allusions and even concrete references to socialist models of government in Richard Wright’s prose and particularly in Anne Petry’s The Street; however, they existed parallel with other forms of critique (of American racism) and protest. Both authors had former ties to socialistic publications, as Petry was working as a journalist for the leftist paper People’s Voice and the Amsterdam News, while Wright was editing/co-editing the Daily Worker, New Masses and the Left Front. That is until he distanced himself from socialism and in 1942 left the CPUSA. (Wright, on the other hand, hardly ever mentioned jazz in his writings).

Finally, to make the connection back to the music, just very few African-American (bebop) musicians really were politically active. The militancy and strong support for all things connected with a powerful Civil Rights movement, and the beginning liberation of African countries were – if we follow the majority of many other, if older publications on bebop – wishful (leftist) thinking. Instead, the development of bebop and later jazz styles had commercial and aesthetic reasons. That jazz continuously borrows from other music is an important element of the art form and has little to do with transatlantic sympathies for other cultures or political systems; naturally not even the strong Cuban musical influence of the 1950s was motivated by fraternal “longing” for socialist impulses from the communist island after 1959.

Much of what American socialist activists imagined – and rather ‘planned’ for the future of their political movement – simply never happened on a broad scale and American workers, artists, musicians and the average person were not finally convinced by communist ideas. This is one of the aspects that are somehow neglected several times throughout the study; even if the study centers on the few activists and artists who were in favor of socialism. At times, one has the impression that rather a lot of disappointments are uttered, as the whole idea “should” have worked.

However, the chapter on Langston Hughes’ Ask Your Mama (1960) and Cold War jazz is very good. As the cover text suggests that the book’s contents will result in “… an expansive understanding of jazz sure to spur new debates.” This may very well be the case here.

Jazz Internationalism then can serve as a good resource for early African-American literature, if one does not take too seriously the multitude of the badly wanted “possible” connections of the entire literary output of several decades. Fortunately, the incompatibilities of socialism and American life were revealed and for the most part despised by the majority of the African-American authors (even in fictional accounts like Ellison’s Invisible Man or the aforementioned Wright’s American Hunger).

Review by Dr. A. Ebert © 2018

John Lowney. Jazz Internationalism: Literary Afro-Modernism and the Cultural Politics of Black Music (New Black Studies Series). University of Illinois Press, 2017, 246 p.