Let us now praise James Reese Europe. Who? you say. The first African American officer to enter battle in World War I and a member of the highly decorated 369th Infantry Regiment. The hottest bandleader of his time. The founder of the first Black labor union. The composer, arranger and music industry visionary that ragtime legend Eubie Blake called “the Martin Luther King of music.” The musical forebear hailed by present-day jazz great Jason Moran as "the Big Bang" of jazz.
For Moran, what’s “Big Bang” about Europe was how he put 125 Clef Club musicians on stage at a historic 1912 Carnegie Hall concert, and his confidence in the depth, complexity and excellence of Black music. In an interview on the SFJAZZ website, Moran said, “He’s what leads to the Big Band era of the '20s. He shows that you can have a big band, and you can play entirely Black music, and you can do it entirely with Black musicians. It’s like, ‘We don’t have to be imitating Europeans.
Kernodle is curator and host of "I Dream a World: The Harlem Renaissance in Europe," a two-week festival this month at the New World Symphony, the Miami, Fla. arts organization cofounded by Michael Tilson Thomas. The Marsalis project is one of three festival events on James Reese Europe.
On Feb. 17, 1919, thousands of New Yorkers lined Fifth Avenue to see the 369th “Hellfighters” victory parade led by Europe’s band. Right after, he booked a big tour for the mustered out musicians. “This was a man who understood this moment in time and how our music is so relevant to the rebirth of civilization after this carnage,” Kernodle said. “So he’s going to take this moment and not only use this music, but remind people that it was our Black presence that made the difference.
It was a particularly terrible time to lose a leader who was respected and admired by Blacks and whites. The Red Summer of 1919 had begun, a series of violent conflicts between white immigrants and Blacks migrating from the rural South to cities in the North and Midwest and between white Southerners intent on “keeping down” Blacks who had returned from the war with expectations that they should have the freedom they had helped their country secure for whites overseas.
One by one, the Black men performing on stage set their instruments aside and stood around the piano, heads bowed and hands joined as if they were gathered around a grave. Moran stood up, joined his left hand to the circle, played a few more notes with his right hand, then joined his bandmate’s grasp. The music stopped but the images kept playing for a few moments.
SFJAZZ and if you're in Miami tomorrow, go hear bmarsalis and the brilliant Tammy Kernodle open up James Reese Europe's music at nwsymphony .
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