The idea of property is pretty straightforward, with my possessions being my property and someone else’s possessions being their property. Can property become intellectual? According to the Oxford Learners Dictionary, intellectual property is “an idea, a design, etc. that somebody has created and that the law prevents other people from copying”(Oxford), or in other words, a concept like a novel or an invention that has been made by someone that cannot be taken, much like real property. This definition of intellectual property can apply to individuals or a collective that has a shared concept. By this definition, Blues, Ragtime, and Jazz are the intellectual property of Black culture. Although intellectual property should not be taken by those who did not make it, people have done it in the past. One may say that in the early days of Jazz and Blues, White musicians had taken the intellectual property of Black musicians and did not give these Black musicians the credit they deserved, which we see in the cases of artists like Jelly Roll Morton and Sidney Bechet.
Before we discuss how Black musicians did not receive credit for what they contributed to Jazz, we must turn to Samuel Floyd and Charlotte Forten to learn about the origins of Jazz and Blues. The styles of Blues, Ragtime, and Jazz pull elements such as syncopation, riffs, call and response, and many more from music sung by the enslaved people in the USA antebellum. Samuel Floyd, a notable author, writes about the direct connection between music and dance of the enslaved people, particularly the “ring shout”, and the music styles of Blues. He describes these “ring shouts” as having a soloist with other members of the group keeping a rhythm through clapping their hands and knees with “interjections of various kinds, elisions, blue-notes, and call-and-response devices”(Floyd 50), the same concepts in Jazz. The ring shout and similar styles were seen across the south where there was slavery, including the South Carolina sea isles, a very isolated community of people. Charlotte Forten, a teacher from the north, recalls that during her trip to teach the young freed peoples in the sea isles, saying that at night, the children would “form a ring, and move around in a kind of shuffling dance, singing all the time” (Forten 593). This dance was described as the ring shout that was talked about in Floyd’s writings. Songs and dances like the ring shout were a piece of intellectual property of African Americans that evolved to become Blues and Jazz not only because of how it originated in the cultures of African Americans across the US, but that the cultural song and dance has the same musical components as Jazz and Blues.
By the turn of the century, Blues and Jazz had already formed but were not popular because of how segregated the south was. Many Black musicians were simply not allowed to play their music for White audiences, mostly singing in their communities or out by themselves as a form of expression. The White Aristocracy despised the music just because it was made and sung by Black folk. Sidney Bechet, a famous Jazz musician, mentions how White people thought Jazz and Blues were “supposed to be bad”, but after hearing it, they could not hold hatred and anger against the music. Bechet goes on to say how the Jazz and Blues “hadn’t got any threat to it; there was just the simple things in it, a lot of moods, a lot of feelings people had inside themselves. And so the white band, it played too”(Gottlieb 11). This shows how the White musicians would copy the sounds of the Black musicians to entertain their guests without thinking about crediting the Black musician.
Although Blues style music is the intellectual property of Black musicians, one may ask if it is fair to say that White musicians copied ideas of Black musicians. To them, I say yes because White musicians did try to copy the styles of Black musicians once their music became popular across the world. Jazz took the world by storm in the early 20th century, with Jazz musicians like Sidney Bechet and Jelly Roll Morton traveling all over the world to deliver Jazz. After one of Bechet’s tours, a famous European conductor, Ernst-Alexandre Ansermet, wrote a paper about his thoughts on jazz and the musical revolution that it was. He brings up how every famous composer wanted to write Jazz music, saying that “hundreds of musicians who contribute to our popular music are all applying themselves at this very moment, to adapt this new art to the taste for the insipid and the sentimental, to the coarse and mediocre sensuality of their clientele”(Gottlieb 741). Ansemet’s statement shows how many White musicians wanted to copy and take the sounds they heard from the Black musicians they heard, but they failed to actually think about the music, who it was written by, and why, making it “insipid”. They also failed to give the Black musicians who created these sounds the credit they deserved, whether it be money, fame, or simple recognition. Amiri Baraka talks about this issue, saying that many White musicians and critics have stripped “the music too ingeniously of its social and cultural intent”(Baraka 257) and that they make Jazz and Blues appear “as an art (or a folk art) that has come out of no intelligent body of socio-cultural philosophy” (Baraka 257). By doing so, the White musicians do not give proper credit to the Black musicians who cultivated the art, nor do they properly acknowledge the feelings, meanings, and culture behind the music.
After White musicians started to master Jazz, the Black musicians started to lose credit for what they had created. One notable case of this happening was with Jelly Roll Morton, a famous Creole Jazz musician. After reconstruction in the US, many Black and Creole musicians had the opportunities to master music performance and perform for anyone, anywhere. However, once the color line was imposed in the Supreme Court case of Plessy v Fergusen in 1896, Black musicians no longer had the opportunities to perform in many places, and Creole musicians faced the same situation. Towards the end of his career, Morton had been receiving fewer and fewer gigs due to the rise of white performers like Benny Goodman. After that, most places would hire White musicians over Black musicians to “accommodate” their audiences who held prejudices. In Lomax’s writings, he writes about how Morton fell from fame, saying “Mister Jelly Roll had high-hatted the Negro world, and now the white world, into which he had entered briefly, closed his doors”(Lomax 221). Although one cannot deny that part of the cause of Morton’s downfall was his discrimination against Black musicians, they must recognize that Morton was also robbed of proper recognition for his work in the genre because of the prejudices of White audiences, and how Jim Crow and institutionalized racism pushed Black musicians out of performance. Morton’s wife, Mabel Morton, talked a bit more about how businesses and hotels started pushing Black musicians out, saying “Colored bands used to play at the Waldorf-Astoria and all the biggest hotels in New York, but then they began to cut that out. I never did figure it out, but I imagine there’s prejudice involved” (Lomax 218). Because venues and places did not accept Black musicians at the time of Jim Crow, the Black musicians were limited in the places where they could perform and received little recognition and credit for the genre and music they created. Bechet writes about how this segregation of performance venues has also caused many famous Black Jazz musicians to play in brothels and whorehouses, saying “how can you say Jazz started in whorehouses when the musicianers didn’t have no real need for them? It’s just like a man, you know: he doesn’t go to a whorehouse unless there’s just nothing else for him” (Gottlieb 8). Segregation and racism had pushed Black musicians like Morton outside of typical venues into brothels while the White musicians were able to take the sounds of the Black musicians in a manner that Ansermat described. This goes to show how White musicians copied the sounds of Black musicians while failing to give the Black musicians proper credit for creating Jazz and Blues.
In conclusion, it is undeniable that the music styles of Rag, Jazz, and Blues are the intellectual property of Black musicians and that it was taken by White musicians without giving the Black musicians their deserved recognition. Now one may ask what they should do with this information, and I say they should reflect and acknowledge. Reflect on the history of Jazz and Blues and how it is rooted in Black culture. Acknowledge how Jazz was taken and appropriated by White musicians while the Black musicians who helped revolutionize Jazz were forced out of the spotlight. This by no way means that someone who is not Black cannot enjoy, or listen to Jazz, or that all Jazz made by White musicians is criminal. All it means is to give the credit to those who created and brought the genre of music to life while acknowledging why they made the music we enjoy.
Works Cited
Floyd, Samuel A. “Ring Shout! Literary Studies, Historical Studies, and Black Music Inquiry.” Black Music Research Journal, vol. 22, 2002, p. 49., doi:10.2307/1519943.
Forten, Charlotte. “Life on the Sea Isles.” The Atlantic Monthly. May 1864, pp.567-595
Gottlieb, Robert. Reading Jazz: a Gathering of Autobiography, Reportage, and Criticism from 1919 to Now. Vintage Books, 1999.
Lomax, Alan, et al. Mister Jelly Roll: the Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and “Inventor of Jazz”. University of California Press, 2008.
WALSER, Robert. Keeping Time: Readings in Jazz History. Oxford University Press, 1999.
“Intellectual Property.” Intellectual-Property Noun – Definition, Pictures, Pronunciation and Usage Notes | Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com, www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/intellectual-property#:~:text=/ˌɪntəˌlektʃuəl ˈprɑːpərti/,prevents other people from copying.
