Tape Recording Magazine - AmericanRadioHistory.Com

Probably the most exciting audio adventure was taping live jam sessions. Author would set up shop in dancehall booths or in front of bandstands
(above) and tape improvised jazz on the spot. Despite unscientific microphone placement, recordings were remarkably balanced.
".lamming" above are members of the Don Richards band of Newark, N.J.
The Thesis Lan be Seen and Heard
. .. Here's the story of one of the first theses to be submitted
on tape for a master's degree
by
F. H. GARNER
SOME graduate students just have to be different. Not
content with a pedestrian thesis like, "An Evaluation
of Methods of Teaching Chaucer to Eighth- Graders
in South Orange Junior High School," or "An Inquiry
Into the Causes of Suicide Among Hill Marias in India,'
they go bizarre and pick a subject like the relationship of
American jazz to West African tribal music.
This subject ( jazz and African music) is no figment of
a primitive imagination. It's a fact. I, a candidate for a
master's degree in cultural anthropology, wrote a thesis
about it. And wiy not? I had developed a keen interest in
the field of comparative musicology (a branch of anthropology)
and I had been playing bass fiddle in jazz combos
and dance bands since grammar school. Besides, the idea
of a connection between jazz and African music was, still
is, a hot controversy in and out of academic circles. Why
not a live subject?
But it was more than a matter of timeliness and great
interest. Each graduate student has a faculty committee
who must approve the thesis subject before lie can write
a word. As a rule, the committee chairman simply says,
"Here, Jones, we think you should write your thesis on
'Causes of Suicide Among the Hill Marias.' Submit an
outline in thirty days." Luckily, my committee was more
democratic. They left it up to me. But they wanted to
know exactly how I planned to handle it.
When you are dealing with the music of another culture
area, you have to work with sound, not symbols.
Notes can be transcribed on manuscript paper, that's true.
But our five -line music staff and 18 standard key signatures
are geared to a scale of tones divided into eight -
note octaves. West African music, like the music of
peoples in many other parts of the world, is no respecter
of scale, even though it has been classified "pentatonic,"
a system of five whole- tones. What's more, the tones tend
to waver, the singers and players glide from note to note
and "bend" their voices. (Just like jazz.) Even trained
musicologists get lost in quarter -tones and glissando signs,
trying to notate this.
West African music emphasizes rhythm unlike European-
American music which stresses melody and harmony.
African rhythm often is so fantastically complex (a song
36