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Relativism has acquired an increasing influence over cultural life over re- cent decades; it is a perspective that contends that conceptions of the truth and moral values are not absolute but relative to the persons or groups holding them. In effect, the truth is in the eye of the beholder, an ethos that has had significant impact on educational and cultural insti- tutions. As the historian Eric Hobsbawm has written: “The fashion for what (at least in Anglo-Saxon academic discourse) is known as ‘postmod- ernism’ [skeptical interpretations of culture, literature, art, and history associated with deconstruction and poststructuralism] . . . throws doubt on the distinction between fact and fiction, objective reality and concep- tual discourse. It is profoundly relativist. If there is no clear distinction between what is true and what I feel to be true, then my construction of reality is as good as yours, or anybody else’s.”40 _{Since relativism contends} that there is no such thing as objective truth, that anything written has the same status as anything else, and no point of view is privileged, then it follows that different opinions represent different truths (frequently taking the form of “subjective insight”). This results in the authority and pursuit of “knowledge” for its own sake becoming compromised, since relativism contends that all “knowledges” become in principle equally valid, and “real knowledge” becomes a point of view of no special signifi- cance. Here is Dr. Tony Whyton on a presentation given by Dan Morgen- stern, widely acknowledged as the greatest living authority on jazz: “I was amazed at the audience’s low level of critical engagement with the subject matter and the general awe-inspired response to the material being pre- sented. The silence and total obedience of the audience were disrupted only when Morgenstern uncovered one of the great untold secrets of jazz history. A gasp ensued as, wait for it, Morgenstern confessed to witness- ing Billie Holiday . . . eating a chicken in a basket in a nightclub.”41

The doctrine of cultural relativism has contributed to a flourishing of academic theories that encourage a cavalier attitude to “real knowledge,” where historical fact is not regarded as absolute and where different opin- ions represent truths. This clearly asks questions of jazz scholarship today, since a relativist reading of jazz history means that “subjective insight” and historical fact, or real knowledge, become different perspectives

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that share equal validity, a methodology that may have particular value to, as Hobsbawm has noted, “those who see themselves as representing collectivities or [the] milieux marginalized.”42 _{But even so, he says, such} methodology “is wrong.”43 _{Instead, he insists on the distinction between} verifiable historical fact and fiction that is, he asserts, “one of the ways of exercising the historian’s responsibility.”44

In 2008, Krin Gabbard, professor of comparative literary and cultural studies at Stony Brook University, published Hotter than That: The Trum- pet, Jazz and American Culture. Gabbard’s work as been welcomed by many New Jazz Studies advocates, such as Dr. Tony Whyton, as demonstrating how “the study of jazz could be enriched by perspectives from outside for- malist musicology.”45 _{No doubt perspectives from outside formalist musi-} cology can enrich the study of jazz, but historian Randall Sandke doubts if Gabbard’s book-length study, based on his 1995 essay “Signifyin(g) the Phallus: Mo’ Better Blues and Representations of the Jazz Trumpet,”46 _suc- ceeds in this ambition. Gabbard focuses on the trumpet as “a symbol of manhood,” a “masculine signifier,” and an emblem of “masculine display,” prompting Sandke, who is also a highly respected trumpeter and com- poser on the New York jazz scene, to observe:

An overriding flaw in this book is that . . . [Gabbard] constantly puts forth myths and spurious conventional wisdom as incontrovertible fact, or offers half-baked academic theories. For example, “One school of psychoanalysis has theorised that boys grow up wanting the father’s phallus, the symbol of power. If they are right, then the primal fantasy came true at only one remove for young Louis Armstrong.” These re- marks are prompted simply because Armstrong was given Oliver’s old cornet after his mentor acquired a new one. (The repetition of phal- lic imagery quickly grows tiresome. The author speaks of Armstrong’s “ability to ‘get it up’ with high notes,” and Dizzy Gillespie’s horn, with its upward pointing bell, “suggests an erection.” Even “advertisements for minstrel shows featuring a caricatured black man holding a banjo in front of his crotch” are overt references to male genitalia).47

In a sixteen-page study detailing inaccuracies, “[Gabbard’s] book is rid- dled with factual errors”;48 _{with speculation passed as fact, “Gabbard owes} it to his readers to draw a clear line between fact and supposition”;49 _and a list of shortcomings too long to dwell on here, a relativist reading of jazz emerges where “myths and spurious conventional wisdom” are presented as “incontrovertible fact,” since real knowledge is not valued above opin-

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ion or conjecture (or what the relativists call “subjective insight”). For ex- ample, Gabbard claims that “if nothing else [the Miles Davis album Kind of Blue] contained no altered chords. The musicians simply improvised around a set of scales. Modal jazz was born.”50 _{In just three short sen-} tences a young student exploring jazz and American culture can be deeply misled in two important respects. First, as Sandke points out, “‘Blue in Green,’ the third title on the original lp, includes nine [altered chords] in the space of ten bars . . . [and] might rightfully be considered a study in al- tered chords. Other tracks on the album, such as ‘All Blues’ and ‘Flamenco Sketches,’ likewise contain altered chords.”51 _{Secondly, modal jazz was by} no means “born” with Kind of Blue; George Russell was experimenting with modal ideas in the late 1940s, Shorty Rogers and Duane Tatro in the early 1950s, George Russell’s Smalltet recording Jazz Workshop from 1956 included several modal pieces, while pianist Bill Evans had impressed the jazz world with his modal solo on All about Rosie (recorded with George Russell) in 1957. Davis himself had been dabbling with static harmony/ modal concepts on Ascenseur pour L’echafaud (1957) and Porgy and Bess (1958) prior to the modal “Milestones” from his album of the same name, recorded a year before Kind of Blue.

Gabbard’s text, of course, serves as a device to make an ideological point, and since relativist reasoning believes conceptions of the truth are not absolute but are relative to the persons holding them, frequently tak- ing the form of “subjective insight,” a relativist response to Hotter than That might take the form of: “Gabbard has a point because I consider the historical record may not be that accurate and precise, so we should not be limited by it since it is open to many readings.” As Sandke concludes: “Gabbard should take a long hard look at the culture he comes from: one in which the arduous task of seeking informed and impartial conclusions has been supplanted by a glitzy pursuit of easy acclaim through a zom- bie-like adherence to fashionable ideologies. The aim of scholarship now seems too often bound up in formulating theory first and then selectively marshalling evidence to support it.”52

Jazz through the Relativist Prism