Thread by @GeePawHill

Here's Louis Armstrong, "West End Blues".

This is the thing that became jazz. Armstrong dint invent any of this. Nor did he ever define it. But this is the take that characterized the jazz that would dominate the 20th century.

The opening cadenza is what jazz players and some observers call, "watch this dude stand up on his hind legs and blow".

It is, *technically*, insane. There's a thousand covers, perhaps the best from Nicholas Payton, but none of them, not even one, captured the *feel* of it.

Then we get a trombone break. So that's a thing, yo, a *break*, where you let a player be a star.

Then. Oh fuck me. We get a scat-clarinet duet. Armstrong didn't invent scat, but just *listen*, he collaborating vocally as an instrument. This is in fact the thing that Billie Holiday got.

Then we break to piano, and I ain't hatin' on nobody, but it's, well, it's a chance to catch our breath.

THEN. Sixteen beats of one note. FOUR MEASURES, and he retires from it with grace and aplomb.

And none of this wordy description can possibly encompass the extent to which this guy change the world, in that one take.

There is zero 20th c American music that was not shaped by this African-American genius who did not even know his birthday, cuz they dint record Black birthdays in the Storyville district in 1900.

All of American music, even American classical music, comes back to the legacy of chattel slavery. All of it. And the British invasion, too, cuz their mentors were our blues players.

You gotta turn to face the question.

You can deny this. You can go raga, or you can go Chinese opera, or you can love your Russian folktunes.

But if you love American popular music, any of it, you are loving the extraordinary contributions of slaves and their children.

And. That is *awful*. It makes you seem like a bad person, to have taken so much advantage of so many humans. I feel you.

Good. That's good.

That is the beginning of us declaring for love.

There are legitimate grumblings, the Armstrong New Orleans saga is, mmmmmm, it's complicated. That shit was going on in Chicago and New York, too, and Armstrongs one of maybe three who we might claim central. But. But. That's intramurals, that's just detail.

The point is that there is no "American" music that isn't directly or a degree or two of separation "Black American" music.

Which raises the question.

How are we treating with the sub-population that effectively created every kind of music we think of as American?

Not, maybe, so well.