The Correlation between Jazz Musicians and the World of Addictive Substances

Music has been around and known for many centuries, even until the current present day. Different genres of music have been produced and specifically focusing on one type of genres, one of the genres had one of the highest rates of drug usage during its eras which was jazz. Jazz first developed in the later years of 1895, but was better known in around the 1917's.

In lecture it was taught that jazz is an American art form that comes from a mixture of global experiences such as African, European and Caribbean music (Edelstein, 2016). New Orleans is where jazz started and turned dance music into polyphonic music that would make people dance over a steady beat using collective improvisation.

With this new change in music that will make a change in history from when it was first developed, it will also have many problems that will not be predicted to happen and understand the pressure in what goes into music production, music performance and the drive of passion musicians will experience.

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Jazz musicians who make it their career to perform in front of individuals for entertainment are sacrificing many things to keep the audiences happy, but what audiences do not realize is behind every closed curtain, a musician opens their personal life up to pressure, situations, criticism, and spot lights that many individuals may not experience themselves or put themselves out to be to certain situations.

When it comes to jazz music and musicians, they have often been linked towards the exposure and world of addictive substances for better or worse in usage. Phillip Pearl who is an MD specialist in Neurology, had studied the different types of neurological problems among musicians that had affected their lives.

Pearl examined the vignettes of great musicians such as Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Charles Mingus and Bud Powell to understand the relationship between medical disorders and musicianship. Pearl's discovery among the history of neurology enhanced music appreciation by combining live performance with the artists' biographies (Pearl, 1037).

A variety of neurological problems have affected the lives of great jazz musicians in the jazz genre. Having taken my current jazz class and learning in lecture about different jazz musicians dying or developing drug addictions, I started to question the behavior of the addiction and why they turned to drugs.

Speculations of musicians using drugs as a form dependency or a reliever was something I wanted to investigate throughout this thesis. The purpose of this thesis is to answer if there is a connection between jazz and drug usage and addiction behaviors. Having the supporting resources throughout this thesis by research, there is a correlation between jazz and drug usage and addiction behaviors.

Furthermore, this thesis shows different perspectives of addiction either through biological change to their neurology functions, environmental pressures or other aspects for survival that lead to these musicians to develop a drug addiction.

My professor had introduced my class to different musicians and taught us about components of their jazz influences to the time era and what they were best known for. One of the jazz musicians we had learned about was Charlie Parker who was one of the most influential bebop saxophonist and was known for his speed, agility, elusiveness, melodic beauty, modern harmonic substitutions, rapid-free solos, and creative powerhouse, died from drug abuse of heroin in 1955 (Edelstein, 2016).

Looking back at Pearl's research, he explained that Parker was involved in a tragic car accident during his teenage years which resulted in him taking morphine that evidently lead him to become addicted to them and later on turned to heroine (Pearl, 1040).

Parker's addiction to drugs caused him to be heavily dependent on them that his drug abuse and risk-taking personality eventually caught up with him, in which it lead him to attempt suicide multiple times throughout his life. Due to his big hits in the late 1940's, may idolized Parker and thus, a logical syllogism was thought to be believed.

In lecture we learned about logical syllogism in class which my professor explained that people believed that Charlie Parker played great because he used heroin and therefore the logic would be to them that if they used heroin, they too will play great (Edelstein, 2016).

This logical syllogism is an example of how many musicians thought similarly when it came to jazz production of music in their careers and the significance of using drugs during their life.

Observing behaviors of other jazz musicians who were well known to the public, traumatic experiences often lead them to do dangerous behaviors. Bud Powell for example, was severely beaten by the police that led him to a lifetime of psychiatric treatment that slowly destroyed him (Edelstein, 2016).

Pearl argues that due to the severity of the beating Powell experienced, it lead to behavioral patterns throughout his life p eventually causing him to struggling with drugs, alcohol, arrests, becoming institutionalized (Pearl, 1041). Powell's health ability slowly began to decline throughout the years due to the continuous abuse he had gone through and passed away in 1966.

Thus, Powell is primarily one example of many musicians who passed away of some type of abuse towards substances. While Powell is one experience of traumatic experience it brings into question whether or not his race was a part into why he was a target. Race identification in terms of ones ethnicity whether black or white, played a big role in their musical career.

A professor of jazz studies and musical education Gerald Tolson, argues that due to societal problems of racism, it lead to additional challenges that was encountered on a regular basis by black performers everywhere they were. A statement that Tolson states about the problems African American musicians experienced during their performances in his publication was: "Performing conditions were often less than ideal.

Even though they were stars on the stage, many of the performers were treated with little respect by club owners and patrons. This may have been due to the itinerant nature of the work whereby artists would work on a club for several nights or weeks and then move to another club. In the case of many African American performers, their performance on stage was often the only location in the club where their presence was welcomed" (534).

Racism was still a big thing during the jazz era and due to this it is another factor that could be linked to drug addiction upon African Americans who were just trying to produce music based off something they were passionate and cared a lot for.

American columnist David Hajdu, presents an article on jazz singer Anita O'Day with an overview of her career through an interview. In his article he explains that after a book on her was published, it centered and focused on her drug and alcoholic abuse along with her sexual exploits.

She calls everything that had happened to her a mini-breakdown and that her addiction behavior was something that happened due to environmental situations (Hajdu, 21). Hajdu explains in his article:

"O'Day has long been an artist more difficult to accept than she is to appreciate, because of the primacy of dope in her aesthetic. We like our junkies tragic, preferably taken before their time, like O'Day's long-gone contemporaries Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday" (22).

This published interview really opens up the drug addiction awareness. To make an association between drug usages and better performance to performance levels, is something that Hajdu is emphasizing. He explains through his article that Anita O'Day's work was not priming because of her heroin addiction, it primed because of the effort she had put into her music career.

Thus, Hajdu explains that musicians before drugs produce well pieced music but once they start taking drugs and become addicted, everything about them changes and it is not the drug that has made them famous or successful, but rather their aesthetic to work hard.

Environmental factors maybe one aspect that can change a person into developing a drug addiction however, there are many more factors that can contribute to drug addiction.

Although there were different musicians who had big hits in the 70's and 80's, only focusing on jazz is there seen to be a correlation between substance abuse and addiction and jazz. It may not be the highest genre to have addiction, but it is one of the top known musical genres to have had problems with addiction.

In conclusion, this thesis paper shows the different perspective of drug usage amongst jazz musicians and how there was never one specific for why musicians began using substances during their lifetime.

The dangerous behaviors that came with the addiction was the musicians being young and not fully thinking of the negative consequences that could come from the current decision that was made to have taken the substances.

In addition to the addiction behavior, it is supported that many musicians had a reason behind using a substance and through this research, it can bring awareness to current musicians of today's generation to better care for themselves.

Reference

1. Rebecca. Personal interview. 22 October 2016. Cregan, Christina., et al. "The Effects of Age and Drug Dependency on the Emotional Exhaustion and Job Satisfaction of Adult Streetworkers in Australia." Archives of Sexual Behavior, 42:5 (Jul2013) 851-861. Academic Search Premier. Web. 25 Nov. 2016.
2. Edelstein, David. "Class Notes." 23 Nov. 2016. Lecture. Hajdu, David. "Heroine." New Republic. 235:26 (Dec2006) 21-24. Academic Search Premier. Web. 21 Nov. 2016.
3. Pearl, Phillip L. "Neurological Problems of Jazz Legends" Journal of Child Neurology. 24:8 (Aug2009): 1037-1042. Academic Search Premier. Web. 6 Oct. 2016.
4. Tolson, Gerald H., et al. "Jazz and substance abuse: Road to Creative Genius or Pathway to Premature Death." International Journal of Law & Psychiatry. 30: 6 (Nov2007): 530-538. Academic Search Premier, web. 22 Nov. 2016.

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