There is no it there. Only them.
I love her swing music! I had no idea she did jazz. Have you ever heard the Deleted Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor album?
That’s the one and only album I have of hers. And I didn’t know she was a jazz singer either, but according to her Wikipedia entry she’s a jazz singer. It kind of goes with the OP’s point that “it’s even difficult to objectively define what jazz is today.”
I don’t see any compelling reason to stop using jazz in favor of Black American Music. Jazz isn’t generally thought of as a derogatory term. I’m certainly happy to acknowledge the roots of jazz are in the African American community, but given it’s more popular in Europe than it is in the United States, I’m not sure calling in BAM is even accurate at this point.
The origins of jazz are integral to the black community around the turn of the 20th century, but not all of the elements that fed into it were exclusive to black culture of the time, nor were all those who helped it evolve into various later forms black. So basically “Well, sort of, but sort of not”.
I don’t see any constructive purpose in slapping a “Sole property of black people” label on jazz, as long as no one is whitewashing its cultural roots.
I can’t see the Reddit Thread – seems to be a private community. From the title of the Reddit thread, it looks like the question is about calling it jazz as opposed to calling it something else (maybe Black American Music? I don’t know, because I can’t see the thread).
So, from what I can tell, the original debate is about whether jazz is a good name or a racist name or something, not whether it got its origins among Black American musicians and not whether other people in other countries can play it.
OP, is that the debate you’re trying to have?
It appears that the moderators have taken it private and now I can’t see it either even though I posted to it. I think it may be part of that whole third-party app protest, but that was just supposed to be 48 hours.
Anyway, I posted that jazz started from roots of African music and grew from that into jazz invented by Black Americans. But over 100 years later, it has evolved so much and has had so many other influences that today’s jazz is not “Black American music.” Someone vehemently disagreed with me and accused me of denying jazz’s roots. It kind of ran on from there, with me talking about jazz in 2023 and someone else talking about the roots of jazz.
Ah, I got it. I don’t think you’ll get much pushback from either of those statements here.
African music was one of the roots of jazz. Also field/work songs, church hymns, military band music, ballroom dances and a whole lot of other cultural influences that poured into New Orleans at the same time to cook into jazz and blues music.
Jazz in 2023 is a whole other beast.
The controversy has apparently been around for a decade.
Here’s a powerful personal statement from “Nicholas Payton aka The Creator of #BAM”
Trying to partition different types of music as being ‘owned’ by sime group is a ridiculous way to look at music. No one gets upset if Don Henley puts an Irish Air into one of his songs. No one cares if a black rapper samples a white rock star, or vide versa.
It’s important to acknowledge roots and influences and in general to track the history and develop,ent of music through different societies and cultures.
And roots of music are not simple. Everyone takes ideas from everyone else. Metal has influences in classical music. Rock has influence ftom country and the Blues. Classical music is influenced by earlier. And the Blues itself was influenced by other styles.
From Brittannica:
Everyone leans on everyone else in art. No one ‘owns’ any particular style.
I agree with this.
Some of the origin is previous to sound recording, so at the edges you can’t be sure.
There is sometimes a smaller debate over the origin of barbershop quartets.
Some have said that the origin was barbershops in the South when barbershops in the South were all Black owned and operated. End of story.
But there’s another hypothesis, mentioned here, concerning a group of Austrian immigrant singers that for decades was the opening act before hundreds of public speeches by Frederick Douglass. Without nineteenth century recordings, it is impossible to know whether the Austrians contributed a lot, but maybe they did.