Mary Lou Williams Fall Festival Weekend
Migratory Patterns
Migratory Patterns
There is something very urban about that in a kind of interactions with an urban context. And you see it with all of the music forms. You
see it with the blues. You see it with the birth of rhythm and blues and how all of those forms speak to each other are directly related to
the migration.”
Griffin started her career at the University of Pennsylvania, but ended up migrating herself to New York City and Columbia University
so that she would be close to the setting of the music that she wanted to study. What facilitated her move was a jazz discussion group at
Columbia.
“We had this thing called The Jazz Study Group that Robert O’Meally started,” Griffin recalled. “Although we are all over the country,
Bob sort of brought a bunch of us together and we’d meet maybe twice a semester or four times a year. It was really like a family. It was
like a little family reunion. It was a safe space where you felt you could try out new ideas and you would get good criticism. Nobody tried
to rip you apart. They were going to try and make you better. You could say ‘I really don’t know this.’ The musicians would correct you on
some things. You didn’t feel that you didn’t have anything to offer because you didn’t have enough knowledge. You knew that there were
people who knew things you didn’t know. I think we really formed a bond early on. And that is what you see when you see us all in a
room together. It’s like homecoming.”
Since landing at Columbia, Griffin has written two books about jazz. The first was ‘If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of
Billie Holiday.’ While Mary Lou Williams left behind an extensive archive filled with everything from her shopping lists to her recordings,
about the only things Billie Holiday left behind when she died at the age of 44 were the living memories of others.
“I think with Billie Holiday, the treasure trove was in talking to people who knew her,” Griffin said. “Maxine Gordon, the widow of
Dexter Gordon, had a story for me about her and Dexter. But she didn’t leave an archive. There was an archive that wasn’t about things
that she left herself. There was a woman named Linda Kuehl who was writing a biography of Billie Holiday. And she interviewed
absolutely everyone. She, unfortunately, committed suicide. But she left a lot of those interviews and things. Her family ended up giving
them to a collector. So there was that kind of an archive that really wasn’t available in a library. You could have access to it for a fee. But
I can appreciate Mary Lou’s archive because I know what didn’t exist for Billie Holiday. Most of the things for Billie Holiday would come
in the form of interviews with people and reading things she had written.”
Griffin is currently working on a book of four women who excelled in four different art forms and were a big part of the Harlem scene
in the 1940s, women who made it big, disappeared from the scene and then, reappeared once more to receive the recognition they
deserved.
“One of them was a novelist whom I actually knew,” Griffin said. “She is Ann Petry and she is the first Black woman to write a
novel that sold over one million copies. I knew her when she was living. She was the first Black woman in her time to acquire the kind
of literary celebrity that we associate with authors now. Even in the Harlem Renaissance, they didn’t have that kind of celebrity. Then she
falls off the map for a little while.”
Griffin also chose Pearl Primus, the dancer and Alice Neel, a White woman who was a painter and resided in what became known
as Spanish Harlem. And the fourth was Mary Lou Williams.
“They were all very politically engaged in a kind of leftist politics,” Griffin said. “They all had the support of progressive institutions.
And then that explained, in some ways, why by the end of the decade, they all sort of disappear because those progressive institutions
that supported them came under the surveillance of the McCarthy era. And the venues that are available to them — and also changing
aesthetic styles — began to fall. They just didn’t have the support that they always had. So they disappear. But I love all four of them also
because they don’t have these tragic, sad endings. They all sort of come back in the 1970s. New generations discover them. And they get
their due. Every single one of them gets recognized for her art when she is around 74 years old. But it is a nice ending. They revel in it.”
According to Griffin, Williams had a basic concern for humanity that led her in many directions and that expressed itself through her
music. She wasn’t consciously politically-driven. She just went where her compassion led her.
“Mary Lou had just a concern from birth, from the heart, for poor and disenfranchised people,” Griffin emphasized. “And in the
1940s, she finds a kind of a progressive social movement. The movement itself is where she has always been and so, it provides her,
for that moment, a kind of organized outlet to do things. She never joined a party or anything, but she was active. For instance, Ben Davis
was the second Black city councilman elected from Harlem after Adam Clayton Powell. But he was a Communist. Harlem sent a
Communist to the city council and Mary Lou was very active in the kind of ‘Artists for Ben Davis’ committee. She was also performing at
Café Society, which was a very progressive venue. She did lots and lots of fundraisers. She was signing petitions and working hard to
help desegregate the South. She tried to organize an interracial band to take south. She wrote everyone. She wrote Eleanor Roosevelt to
get her to sponsor the band. She wrote tons of people to make it happen. There is sort of a place for her own life and work — she was
always there, she would be there later — but there was something about the 1940s that gave her movement that she can then do this life
work in the context of a political movement.”
“Her commitment to people and her anger at injustice, her commitment always to the poor and anyone she thinks is suffering, I think
it is always there,” Griffin continued. “It is informing her art. It is informing everything she does. And you can’t separate Mary Lou’s
politics, from her sense of spirituality, from her religious devotion, from her music. Anyone who tries to separate those things, I think,
would be making a big mistake. They are all organically related to each other.”
And it is organically rooted in the history of African American people where jazz and other art forms reflected the suffering
experienced and the routes taken in life.
see it with the blues. You see it with the birth of rhythm and blues and how all of those forms speak to each other are directly related to
the migration.”
Griffin started her career at the University of Pennsylvania, but ended up migrating herself to New York City and Columbia University
so that she would be close to the setting of the music that she wanted to study. What facilitated her move was a jazz discussion group at
Columbia.
“We had this thing called The Jazz Study Group that Robert O’Meally started,” Griffin recalled. “Although we are all over the country,
Bob sort of brought a bunch of us together and we’d meet maybe twice a semester or four times a year. It was really like a family. It was
like a little family reunion. It was a safe space where you felt you could try out new ideas and you would get good criticism. Nobody tried
to rip you apart. They were going to try and make you better. You could say ‘I really don’t know this.’ The musicians would correct you on
some things. You didn’t feel that you didn’t have anything to offer because you didn’t have enough knowledge. You knew that there were
people who knew things you didn’t know. I think we really formed a bond early on. And that is what you see when you see us all in a
room together. It’s like homecoming.”
Since landing at Columbia, Griffin has written two books about jazz. The first was ‘If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of
Billie Holiday.’ While Mary Lou Williams left behind an extensive archive filled with everything from her shopping lists to her recordings,
about the only things Billie Holiday left behind when she died at the age of 44 were the living memories of others.
“I think with Billie Holiday, the treasure trove was in talking to people who knew her,” Griffin said. “Maxine Gordon, the widow of
Dexter Gordon, had a story for me about her and Dexter. But she didn’t leave an archive. There was an archive that wasn’t about things
that she left herself. There was a woman named Linda Kuehl who was writing a biography of Billie Holiday. And she interviewed
absolutely everyone. She, unfortunately, committed suicide. But she left a lot of those interviews and things. Her family ended up giving
them to a collector. So there was that kind of an archive that really wasn’t available in a library. You could have access to it for a fee. But
I can appreciate Mary Lou’s archive because I know what didn’t exist for Billie Holiday. Most of the things for Billie Holiday would come
in the form of interviews with people and reading things she had written.”
Griffin is currently working on a book of four women who excelled in four different art forms and were a big part of the Harlem scene
in the 1940s, women who made it big, disappeared from the scene and then, reappeared once more to receive the recognition they
deserved.
“One of them was a novelist whom I actually knew,” Griffin said. “She is Ann Petry and she is the first Black woman to write a
novel that sold over one million copies. I knew her when she was living. She was the first Black woman in her time to acquire the kind
of literary celebrity that we associate with authors now. Even in the Harlem Renaissance, they didn’t have that kind of celebrity. Then she
falls off the map for a little while.”
Griffin also chose Pearl Primus, the dancer and Alice Neel, a White woman who was a painter and resided in what became known
as Spanish Harlem. And the fourth was Mary Lou Williams.
“They were all very politically engaged in a kind of leftist politics,” Griffin said. “They all had the support of progressive institutions.
And then that explained, in some ways, why by the end of the decade, they all sort of disappear because those progressive institutions
that supported them came under the surveillance of the McCarthy era. And the venues that are available to them — and also changing
aesthetic styles — began to fall. They just didn’t have the support that they always had. So they disappear. But I love all four of them also
because they don’t have these tragic, sad endings. They all sort of come back in the 1970s. New generations discover them. And they get
their due. Every single one of them gets recognized for her art when she is around 74 years old. But it is a nice ending. They revel in it.”
According to Griffin, Williams had a basic concern for humanity that led her in many directions and that expressed itself through her
music. She wasn’t consciously politically-driven. She just went where her compassion led her.
“Mary Lou had just a concern from birth, from the heart, for poor and disenfranchised people,” Griffin emphasized. “And in the
1940s, she finds a kind of a progressive social movement. The movement itself is where she has always been and so, it provides her,
for that moment, a kind of organized outlet to do things. She never joined a party or anything, but she was active. For instance, Ben Davis
was the second Black city councilman elected from Harlem after Adam Clayton Powell. But he was a Communist. Harlem sent a
Communist to the city council and Mary Lou was very active in the kind of ‘Artists for Ben Davis’ committee. She was also performing at
Café Society, which was a very progressive venue. She did lots and lots of fundraisers. She was signing petitions and working hard to
help desegregate the South. She tried to organize an interracial band to take south. She wrote everyone. She wrote Eleanor Roosevelt to
get her to sponsor the band. She wrote tons of people to make it happen. There is sort of a place for her own life and work — she was
always there, she would be there later — but there was something about the 1940s that gave her movement that she can then do this life
work in the context of a political movement.”
“Her commitment to people and her anger at injustice, her commitment always to the poor and anyone she thinks is suffering, I think
it is always there,” Griffin continued. “It is informing her art. It is informing everything she does. And you can’t separate Mary Lou’s
politics, from her sense of spirituality, from her religious devotion, from her music. Anyone who tries to separate those things, I think,
would be making a big mistake. They are all organically related to each other.”
And it is organically rooted in the history of African American people where jazz and other art forms reflected the suffering
experienced and the routes taken in life.
Dr. Farah Griffin (r) and Maxine Gordon, the
widow of alto saxophonist Dexter Gordon,
are members of the Jazz Study Group at
Columbia University.
widow of alto saxophonist Dexter Gordon,
are members of the Jazz Study Group at
Columbia University.
By Jonathan Gramling
When people listen to jazz, it is the rhythm and the sounds that may take them away to
another world of feeling and imagery. Jazz becomes an abstract concept, devoid of any
sense of its culture or its origins. But jazz has real roots that spring from the African
American experience and the suffering and struggle that were a part of that experience.
Dr. Farah Griffin, a professor at Columbia University who spoke at a symposium on jazz in
Madison as a part of the Mary Lou Williams Fall Festival Weekend, had to drill down
deeper into the culture and the history of jazz. Griffin, who grew up in a family of jazz
aficionados in Philadelphia, traced the roots and evolution of African American culture in
her dissertation at Yale University.
“I wrote my dissertation on all of the kinds of art forms that came out of 20th century
African-American migration from the south to the north, looking at literature, painting, blues
and jazz and looking at a movement that mostly had been considered by social scientists,”
Griffin said. “I decided to look at what the arts produced. When people move, they make art
about what they do. The music really does reflect what the people bring to it and the
experiences that they are going through. So, for instance, something like bebop probably
would not have emerged in the same way in the southern setting.
When people listen to jazz, it is the rhythm and the sounds that may take them away to
another world of feeling and imagery. Jazz becomes an abstract concept, devoid of any
sense of its culture or its origins. But jazz has real roots that spring from the African
American experience and the suffering and struggle that were a part of that experience.
Dr. Farah Griffin, a professor at Columbia University who spoke at a symposium on jazz in
Madison as a part of the Mary Lou Williams Fall Festival Weekend, had to drill down
deeper into the culture and the history of jazz. Griffin, who grew up in a family of jazz
aficionados in Philadelphia, traced the roots and evolution of African American culture in
her dissertation at Yale University.
“I wrote my dissertation on all of the kinds of art forms that came out of 20th century
African-American migration from the south to the north, looking at literature, painting, blues
and jazz and looking at a movement that mostly had been considered by social scientists,”
Griffin said. “I decided to look at what the arts produced. When people move, they make art
about what they do. The music really does reflect what the people bring to it and the
experiences that they are going through. So, for instance, something like bebop probably
would not have emerged in the same way in the southern setting.
