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Coco Montoya - What I Know Now

Certainly, any historical narrative that emphasizes the immense contributions to jazz by individuals of color is understandable and well founded, it remains irrefutable that the vast majority of the genre’s most influential players have originated from Afro diasporic communities. This Afrocentric historiographical stance appears especially warranted in light of the deplorable white washing of the music’s history that has surfaced on occasion. However, such narratives tend to ignore the fact that racial identity among jazz musicians and their attendant audiences within the various camps of this supposed black/white dichotomy has been marked by contradiction and antagonism as well as by cultural pride and unity. And what I hope to demonstrate in this article is that lived realities in the jazz world, as in the broader American social and cultural world, are more complex than our simple biracial categories would lead us to believe. Moreover, given the present tendencies to anoint jazz as America’s classical music and its practitioners as treasured artists, it might be useful to recall that these lofty understandings developed only recently, and not just in the mainstream white community.

Musicking in turn of the century New Orleans entailed virtually citywide participation. And while the extraordinary vibrancy of musical life in that town was most conspicuously and most famously demonstrated by the frequent parades that wound through the streets, these events constituted only one realm in which musicians developed and displayed their craft. For apart from the parades and the more prestigious concert hall genres, instrumentalists... played whenever and wherever community events called for their services, on riverboats, at birthday parties, picnics, social clubs, weddings, funerals, in brothels, nightclubs, and stage shows. Repertoire ranged from rags and popular songs to marches, spirituals, and classical fare. And if their music wasn’t exactly jazz, one branch of the early jazz musicians’ immediate forebears frequently utilized a ragged performance style that present day listeners, musicians, and scholars would consider to be, at the very least, jazz like. These players relied heavily on growls, scoops, and other effects derived from blues style vocalizations, while incorporating varying degrees of rhythmic swing, and greater or lesser amounts of improvisation.


Coco Montoya - What I Know Now
  • Release on: January 25, 2000
  • Genre: Blues
  • Produced By: Jim Gaines

"Though he grew up a drummer raised on rock & roll, Coco Montoya is an outstanding blues rock guitarist. Over a five decade plus career he has proven an influential, charting, award winning technician, and songwriter."

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Location: United States

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