“YOU SOUND LIKE AN OLD BLACK MAN”: PERFORMATIVITY

“YOU SOUND LIKE AN OLD BLACK MAN”:PERFORMATIVITY OF GENDER AND RACE AMONG FEMALE JAZZSAXOPHONISTSbyYoko SuzukiSubmitted to the Graduate Faculty ofSchool of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillmentof the requirements for the degree ofDoctor of PhilosophyUniversity of Pittsburgh2011i

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGHSCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCESThis dissertation was presentedbyYoko SuzukiIt was defended onMarch 22, 2011and approved byAndrew Weintraub, Professor, Department of MusicMathew Rosenblum, Professor, Department of MusicSherrie Tucker, Associate Professor, American Studies, University of KansasDissertation Advisor: Nathan Davis, Professor, Department of Musicii

Copyright by Yoko Suzuki2011iii

“YOU SOUND LIKE AN OLD BLACK MAN”:PERFORMATIVITY OF GENDER AND RACE AMONG FEMALE JAZZSAXOPHONISTSYoko Suzuki, PhDUniversity of Pittsburgh, 2011This dissertation explores through the case study of female saxophonists how theincreasing number of female jazz instrumentalists has impacted norms of gender, race, sexuality,and age among jazz musicians, audience members, and the music industry. Throughethnographic fieldwork, archival research, and an analysis of videotaped performances of femalejazz saxophonists, I demonstrate that female performers tend to perform masculinity in order toconform to the historically and culturally established discourse of the genre, the instrument, andits performance style, all of which are closely associated with African American men. Inaddition, I illustrate that female saxophonists’ “performances” of gender include not only visualaspects (clothing, hair style, make-up, facial expressions, body movements) but also musicalsound (composition types, sound quality, delivery style, volume, tempo, improvisational styles),which signify masculinity and femininity within the cultural contexts in which they perform.This work further shows that masculinity and femininity are complicated by other categories ofidentity including race, sexuality/sexual orientation, and age. In other words, masculinity andfemininity are not a simplistic binary construction but rather fluid variables that are historicallyand culturally contingent and also intricately intersected with race, sexuality and age. Further, Isuggest that the increasing visibility/audibility of female jazz saxophonists with the help ofdigital recording and network technology may pose a challenge to the masculinist andheterosexual discourse of jazz.iv

TABLE OF CONTENTSINTRODUCTION . 11.01.1RESEARCH QUESTIONS . 41.2THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK . 61.3STATE OF RESEARCH . 141.3.1Jazz and Gender/Sexuality . 141.3.2Jazz and Race . 231.4METHODOLOGY . 291.4.1Interviews . 301.4.2Participant-observation. 311.4.3Analysis of performance . 311.5RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE. 321.6CHAPTER OUTLINE . 342.0“INVISIBLE/INAUDIBLE WOMEN: VI BURNSIDE, WILLENE BARTON,AND VI REDD” . 372.1VI BURNSIDE . 402.2WILLENE BARTON . 452.3VI REDD. 532.4CONCLUSION . 64v

3.0CARESS THE NOTES OR GET UP AND BURN: GENDERING MUSICALSOUND IN JAZZ . 693.1JAZZ AS A “MASCULINE” MUSICAL GENRE. 713.2JAZZ AS DISCOURSE . 823.34.03.2.1Swing . 833.2.2The Saxophone . 843.2.3How Should Jazz Saxophonists Sound? . 893.2.4Improvisation . 953.2.5Jam Sessions—Cutting Contests . 99CONCLUSION . 103“ARE YOU STRAIGHT OR GAY?”: INTERSECTION OF GENDER ANDSEXUALITY IN JAZZ . 1064.1HOMOPHOBIA AND MASCULINE-SEXUALITY MYTH IN JAZZ. 1074.2WOMEN DON’T COME OUT . 1114.3FEMALE JAZZ SAXOPHONISTS—ARE YOU GAY? . 1144.4IS JAZZ A SAFE HAVEN FOR LESBIAN INSTRUMENTALISTS? . 1194.5RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SEXUALITY AND MUSIC . 1234.6CONCLUSION . 1275.0“TWO STRIKES” AND “DOUBLE NEGATIVE”: INTERSECTION OFGENDER AND RACE . 1295.1BLACKNESS, AUTHENTICITY, AND DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS . 1315.2ARE WHITE AND FEMALE TWO STRIKES? . 141vi

5.3“IT’S SOMETHING IN THE BLOOD”: BLACK CULTURAL IDENTITYAND JAZZ . 1485.4WHY ARE THERE SO FEW AFRICAN AMERICAN FEMALE JAZZSAXOPHONISTS? . 1565.56.0CONCLUSION—ESSENCE OF BLACKNESS VS. DIFFERENCE . NTATIONS OF FEMALE SAXOPHONISTS . 1666.1HOW DO THEY WANT TO LOOK?. 1686.1.1Pants and Shirts vs. Skirts and Dresses . 1686.1.2Women’s Age Matters . 1756.1.3Images of Female Jazz Saxophonists on the CD covers and Websites . 1786.2SOUND AND IMAGE IN ACTION: VIDEO CLIPS . 1876.2.1Sue Terry . 1876.2.2Tia Fuller . 1906.2.3Grace Kelly. 1936.3FEMALE SAXOPHONISTS IN SMOOTH JAZZ . 1966.4AUDIENCE RECEPTION: EMPIRICAL APPROACH . 2016.5CONCLUSION . 2067.0CONCLUSION: PERFORMING A FEMALE JAZZ SAXOPHONIST ANDCHALLENGING THE DISCOURSE OF THE JAZZ SAXOPHONIST . 2097.1ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF BEING A FEMALESAXOPHONIST . 2117.2ALL-FEMALE BANDS AND WOMEN’S JAZZ FESTIVALS . 214vii

7.3SO MANY WOMEN WERE WIMPY! . 2237.4MACHISMO WITHOUT MEN: DEALING WITH OTHER FEMALESAXOPHONISTS . 2267.5YES, I AM A WOMAN VS. I NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT BEING AWOMAN . 2297.6WE’RE EVOLVING: TOWARD THE NEW JAZZ DISCOURSE . 2327.7CONCLUDING REMARKS . 236BIBLIOGRAPHY . 243viii

LIST OF FIGURESFigure 1 Sharel Cassity, Just For You . 179Figure 2Sharel Cassity, Relentless . 180Figure 3Sharel Cassity . 181Figure 4Sharel Cassity . 181Figure 5Erica von Kleist, Project E . 182Figure 6Erica von Kleist, E's Boogaloo . 183Figure 7(left) Erica von Kleist, (right) Marilyn Monroe . 183Figure 8Tia Fuller, (left) Pillar of Strength, (right) Healing Space. 184Figure 9Tia Fuller, Decisive Steps . 185Figure 10 (left) Laura Dreyer, Mysterious Encounter, (right) Dreyer promo shot from 1982 186ix

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTMany people supported me in various ways to complete this project. I owe animmeasurable debt of gratitude to my advisor and dissertation supervisor, Nathan Davis for hissupport and encouragement throughout my doctorate work. I also owe deep thanks to mycommittee members, Andrew Weintraub, Mathew Rosenblum, and Sherrie Tucker for theirvaluable advice and productive criticism.For financial support, I would like to thank the Music Department at the University ofPittsburgh for Teaching Fellowships (2006-2008) and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation forAndrew Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship (2009-2010). I am also grateful to the Women’s StudiesProgram at the University of Pittsburgh for the Teaching Fellowship (2008-2009) and theresearch grant for summer 2009.x

1.0INTRODUCTIONAlthough female jazz instrumentalists have always existed in the history of jazz, theyhave been scarcely discussed in the dominant discourse of jazz history and their music has beenpoorly documented. As a result, until very recently, there were only a few female jazzinstrumentalists known to the general public with several exceptions of the pianists. However, inthe past ten years, a growing number of women have performed traditionally male-dominatedinstruments, and the saxophonists occupy the second largest number among these women next tothe pianists, who have always been majority. The visibility of female saxophonists is exemplifiedin these two events in 2008: The Kennedy Center held the first saxophone competition for youngwomen in May 2008, and eighteen-year old Haley Niswanger won the first place; Israeli-bornsaxophonist Anat Cohen led her band at the Village Vanguard in New York City in October2008, a first for a female horn player. How has the increasing number of female instrumentalistsimpacted the jazz scene and gender norms among players, audience members, the music,industry, and society in general? Since visibly a large number of female musicians areparticipating in performing jazz saxophone, the saxophone performance is a perfect site toinvestigate the question.This research project explores how female jazz saxophonists “perform” stereotypicalnotion of masculinity in order to conform to the historically and culturally established views ofthe genre, the instrument, and its performance style, which are closely associated with African1

American men. As a number of works of masculinity studies in recent years have shown,masculinity can be manifested in a number of different ways. For example, in music scholarship,authors have examined a variety of masculinities including black masculinity,1whitemasculinity, 2 Asian masculinity, 3 and working class masculinity. 4 However, in the jazz world,where strong heterosexual norms are persistent, a patriarchal definition of masculinity that isoften associated with “blackness” has been cultivated and displayed throughout its historyalthough alternative masculinities have also been presented by some performers.5Theheteronormative and patriarchal tradition has created clear gender roles in jazz: men are theperformers, women are audience members, girlfriends, wives, or supporters; and men areinstrumentalists, women are singers or, at best, pianists. 6 I argue that gender in jazz is“performed” through the musical sound (timbre, delivery, composition, improvisation, etc.) aswell as visual aspects such as hairstyles, clothing, demeanor, and facial expressions.Female jazz saxophonists’ performance of masculinity can be considered to be asuccession of the tradition as well as a requirement for these women to be accepted as authenticjazz saxophonists. Authenticity as a jazz saxophonist is further complicated by such factors as1Hazel Carby, Race Men (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), Steve Waksman, “Black Sound,Black Body: Jimi Hendrix, the Electric Guitar, and the Meanings of Blackness,” Popular Music and Society 23/1(1999), 75-113.2Patrick Burke, “Oasis of Swing: The Onix Club, Jazz, and White Masculinity in the Early 1930s,” American Music24/3 (2006), 320-346, Matthew Bannister, “’Loaded’: Indie Guitar Rock, Canonism, White Masculinities,” PopularMusic 25/1 (2006), 77-95.3Fabienne Darling-Wolf, “SMAP, Sex, and Masculinity: Constructing the Perfect Female Fantasy in JapanesePopular Music,” Popular Music and Society 27/3 (2004), 357-370.4Mark A. Hernandez, “Breaking the Mold of Contemporary Working-Class Mexican Masculinity: The RockUrbano Music of Tex Tex,” Journal of Popular Music Studies20/1 (2008), 2-25, Aaron Fox, Real Country: Musicand Language in Working-Class Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004).5Krin Gabbard, “Signifyin’ Phallus: Mo’ Better Blues and Representations of the Jazz Trumpet,” Representing Jazz.Krin Gabbard, ed. (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995), David Ake, “Re-masculating Jazz: OrnetteColeman, ‘Lonely Woman,” and the New York Jazz Scene in the Late 1960s.” American Music 16/1(1998), 25-44.6See the detailed discussion in Valerie Wilmer, As Serious Your Life: The Story of the New Jazz (Westport, Conn.:L. Hill, 1980).2