Repetition and Self-Realization in Jazz Improvisation

Author(s): John M. Carvalho

Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 68, No. 3 (SUMMER 2010), pp.
285-290
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40793270
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Carvalho Repetition and Self- Realization in Jazz Improvisation 285

John M. Carvalho
Repetition and Self- Realization in Jazz Improvisation

Susan McClary comments on the critical rejection can contribute to our understanding of repetition
of repetition in contemporary classical music byin contemporary music and how to avoid both the
Arnold Schoenberg, Theodor Adorno, and those reductive and superficial appeal to psychoanal-
who followed them (roughly, she says, the hege-ysis in critical appraisals of artistic and cultural
mony of Music Studies programs in the United productions.
States).1 In particular, she comments on Adorno's So, let us be specific. McClary describes Schoen-
disdain for contemporary music's failure to de-berg's aim as cultivating an "authentic, intensely
velop and "realize" itself- in the Hegelian senseorganic subjectivity . . . capable of producing its
of that term- because of a fascination with repeat-own self-generated objectivity" (p. 291). In other
ing local "truths," rather than challenging thosewords, McClary says Schoenberg sought to write
truths critically and dialectically. McClary specu-music that asserted the composer's independence
lates that the predominance of repetition in latefrom the cultural order around him, creating, for
twentieth-century music, from the classical reper-the listener, an alternative order of music.2 "If
toire to popular idioms like blues, rock, rap, andwe understand a piece of music as an allegory
jazz, is a negative, nondialectical response to theof personal development," McClary writes, gloss-
critique theorized by Adorno and practiced bying Adorno's support for Schoenberg's program,
twentieth-century composers, teachers, and crit- "then any reiteration registers as regression- as a
ics. She describes this response as the "oedipal failure or even a refusal to keep up the unending
child . . . acting out precisely the worst nightmarestruggle for continual growth demanded for suc-
of the too-strict parent" (p. 292). And she goes oncessful self-actualization" (p. 291). Schoenberg re-
to describe how this impulse to repeat- violating jected both redundant references to the external
the Law of the Father- drew sustenance from two world and the kind of redundancy in his compo-
sources: late nineteenth-century encounters withsitions that might offer the listener internal struc-
non-European, especially Javanese music, on thetural markers or references. "It glorifies a Self,"
one hand, and the early twentieth-century re-McClary writes, "so resistant to the constraints of
ception of African-based musical patterning thatnormative social interaction and accepted defini-
found its way into the blues, R&B, and jazz, on thetions of reason that it became- and quite delib-
other. erately so- indistinguishable from manifestations
My aim here is to challenge McClary's analysisof madness" (p. 291).3 The turn to repetition, on
of this family drama in American and EuropeanMcClary's argument, is a rejection of this mad-
classical and popular music with a more robust ness. But could repetition be another means of
psychoanalytic account that expands productivelyattaining as a comparable goal, not the madness
on what McClary tells us about the figure of repe-that comes from repeatedly frustrated attempts at
tition in contemporary music. This account willdefining a self, but a "madness" (if the word is still
prepare us to appreciate rather than repudiate appropriate) that comes from giving up any con-
repetition in jazz improvisation, to appeciate howventional sense of self at all? This is certainly not
repetition, on a revised description of it, con- possible on the description of repetition on offer
tributes to a form of self-realization for the impro- so far. For that we need something more, and we
viser and listener alike, which Adorno very likely can find that something more theorized in the psy-
would have rejected, but we should embrace as choanalysis of repetition's inception that McClary
advancing on his high modernist prejudices. In ad-has already recommended.
dition, this account will prepare us to appreciate Consider McClary's oedipal child. It makes no
and not repudiate psychoanalytic theory, to appre-sense to describe him, pace McClary, as acting
ciate how this view of consciousness and the un- out his too strict parent's worst nightmare. The
too strict parent in this psychoanalytic scenario
conscious contributes to our understanding of the
mind and of culture informed by mindful human can only be the father. The decidedly oedipal
interactions. McClary's essay gives us the chance
child, psychoanalysis tells us, is precisely the young
boy made docile and "civilized"- made oedipal,
to consider seriously how psychoanalytic theory

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286 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

that is- by internalizing the Freud

his principle, father'smodified histhreat
view to includeof
castration.4 Were he to aact out
drive that his
opposes thefather's worst
instinct for pleasure. The
death drive
nightmare- supposing that to be is "beyond
thethe pleasure principle"
failed efficacy in
of this threat- the result would
the sense be a
that it captures, for nonproduc-
Freud, a feature of
tive schizophrenia, thepsychical
proverbial
life that subtendswet ragfor
the instinct onplea-an
analyst's couch, tormented because
sure, is more fundamentalhe rejects
than the the
pleasure prin-
ciple, and
very thing that could give himconnects the subject
solace with something
and relilef fun-in
damental about
a world otherwise dominated by itself,
his something
Father'sJacques Lacan
Law.
The an-oedipal child, atwouldthecome toother extreme,
identify with the unconscious the
it-
uncivilized young man, self.8does not reverse Daddy's
threat; he rejects it. HeThewillinstinct fornot be themade
pleasure invests psyche in docile
objects expected
or socially acceptable. He actsto out return pleasure
noin dreams
kind. It but
his own. What we might seeks unity through
call identity with what in
repetition appearshis case,
other than and of
the compulsive reenactment externala tonarrative
it. This investment is that
appears nonconforming costly,
to however,
others and it but
drives the ispsyche
the further
only
truth there is for him, and
is further
not fromthe what Freud describesof
opposite as its self-
orig-
inally quiescent
actualization but something elsestate. The death drive
besides which opposeswe
will come to below. this instinct and compels the psyche to return,
Not incidentally, Adorno's critique of jazz playsagain and again, to that original quiescence and
in a decidedly psychoanalytic register but withoutthe original unity of itself with itself. It identifies
any further psychoanalytic sophistication than wethe psyche as ego with what has been returned to
find in McClary. He cites Virgil Thompson's com- it from its investments in external objects. And it
parison of Louis Armstrong to eighteenth-century returns the psyche, again and again, from encoun-
castrati and concludes about the auditors for mu- ters in which its desires are not satisfied to what
sic like Armstrong's that "the expressive impulseremains of its investments in a solidified, if narcis-
is exposed to the same threat of castration that sistic,
is sense of self. It is this repetition in search
symbolized and mechanically and ritually subdued of quiescence and the narcissism so closely asso-
in jazz."5 Adorno worries about the jazz formciated with this drive to repeat that connect with
becoming "so entrenched" that young audiences the theme of self-realization that is of interest to us

"hear only syncopations without being aware of here.9 This narcissistic sense of self is not only self-
absorbed, but also self-negating. It draws the self
the original conflict between it and the basic me-
ter."6 Presumably, this is because syncopationintois a set of associations and commitments that
so often repeated in the jazz form, but Adorno is vast and expanding, a sea filled with repeated,
does not mention repetition in his critique. Hefailed
is investments of desire, every rejection, ev-
focused there, instead, on the failure of listeners
ery disappointment, every missed opportunity. It
and, more importantly, jazz players to realize anis this pull and the ocean that absorbs and defines
identity for themselves apart from their histori-the self that we find in certain jazz improvisations.
cally indentured servitude. He rushes too quickly To really feel that pull, we need to say what
to consign the whole jazz idiom, forever, to the is so special about this form of repetition that it
can transform McClary's analysis and lead us to
dustbin of history or, worse, to the assembly lines
at work manufacturing culture at the expense appreciate
of the function of this repetition in jazz
improvisation. We need to introduce an account
those disenfranchised by the very culture they are
put to work manufacturing. of repetition in the death drive that remaps the ter-
ritory opened up by McClary's analysis in a pro-
Yet, repetition figures prominently in the stan-
ductive way. McClary describes the repetition she
dard psychoanalytic account of identity formation
notices in late twentieth-century music as "cyclic."
in the discussion of what Sigmund Freud calls the
She has in mind, she says, the kinds of repetition
death drive.7 Why, Freud asked, do some of his pa-
tients compulsively repeat traumatic events and found in music from Philip Glass and Terry Riley
other unpleasurable experiences? This seems to to P. J. Harvey, Tupac Shakur, and The Prodigy.
violate what Freud called the pleasure principle,But it is not clear that all of this music is cyclic
which would have the subject avoid unpleasur- or that it is repetitive in the same way. It is easy
to conceive of Glass and Riley as cyclic and The
able experiences at all costs. Rather than give up

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Carvalho Repetition and Self-Realization in Jazz Improvisation 287

Prodigy as repetitive, but not so easy to dardly repeated versions of which are collected
conceive
the reverse. In any case, as ordinarily in volumes of "real" and "fake" books which sup-
conceived,
cyclic and repetitive seem to be somewhat portdiffer-
the habitual cycling and recycling of the same,
ent concepts. We need a way to clarify this standard tunes. Nothing changes for jazz improvi-
distinc-
tion. sations which have been formed by playing and
Gilles Deleuze, commenting on David Hume, replaying the same tunes and by practice exer-
attributes cyclic repetition to the synthesis of time cises that habituate players to standard negotia-
formed by habit.10 When B follows A following tions of the II-V7-I progression, for example, or to
A and is followed by A again, as it often does all the ways John Coltrane himself navigated the
in what is referred to as the A AB A form in jazz, form for "Giant Steps."12 Most insidiously, per-
we develop the habit of thinking that where we haps, is Jamey Abersold's recommendation that
find A together with A we are bound to find B players listen to jazz impro visers and habituate
and to find A again after it. This time is cyclic themselves to sounding like them.13 At one very
in the sense of the clock's ticktock or the diur- rudimentary level, to be sure, successful jazz im-
nal rhythms of sunrise-sunset. Since B is not the provisation is a matter of repeating good habits.
same as A, repetition on this model seems to in-The relevance of memory to jazz improvisa-
corporate difference in its form and, as well, the tion also seems relatively clear. Memory figures
potential for development and realization. Even in jazz improvisation in a memory of the form,
A following A is a different A when it is repeated, in the first place, but also in a memory of all
and different again when it follows B. Repetition, the ways that form has been rendered by other
on this description, is in fact always repetition withplayers and by the improviser herself. Memoriz-
a difference, but in a closed form that is rehearsed ing the form is trivial, and perhaps another ex-
again and again in that same pattern. In other ample of habit. But the improviser's memory of
words, difference in this form reduces in the final all the lines that have drawn through that form
analysis to a repetition of the same- exactly what by herself and others figures both as a resource
worried Adorno about repetition in the first place. and a problem to be solved. How does she im-
Another model of repetition identified by provise on the form in a way that does not repeat
Deleuze that is not cyclic contributes to our dis- literally what other improvisers have played- that
cussion here: repetition in the synthesis of time would not be improvising- but that repeats the
formed by memory. Here time is figured as form a enough for her listeners to identify the form
straight line on which past events are made mean- and, more importantly, perhaps, for them to iden-
ingful by memory, which repeats the past as past tify what she plays as her improvisation. We distin-
and in relation to other past events to which the guish Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins, Joe Hen-
past was never related before it was synthesized derson, Pharoh Sanders, and David Ware not only
as such by this particular memory.11 Something by their sound, which is something of an impro-
is repeated for the remembering subject that did visation on the form of a tenor saxophone, but
not exist before it was remembered, even though also by the way they improvise on the standard
what the subject remembers are experiences of the jazz forms. They "find themselves" by virtue of re-
same subject who now remembers them. Repeti- peating what is already thought true about them.
tion, on this description, is once again repetition Conceived in this way, improvisers appear to re-
with a difference- in memory, the subject returns alize themselves through repetition, but, Adorno
to herself as something other than she has ever would say, they only ever repeat themselves, con-
been- yet, once again, it is a closed form. What the firm what they already think of themselves, and so
subject remembers only ever confirms an identity they do not realize themselves in any meaningful
she always already imagined for herself. Again, sense.

any attempt at self-realization is returned on this But we have promised another deploym
model to an unchanging starting point; Adorno's repetition in jazz improvisation modeled
worries are confirmed, again. death drive, and this deployment would a
The relevance of repetition as habit to jazz has address the issue of difference and repe
already been suggested, and it is not hard to see Deleuze, again, gives a sense of what thi
how we would fill out this account. We alluded sound like in a synthesis of time that pa
to the A AB A structure of many jazz tunes, stan- death drive with the unconscious and Friedrich

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288 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

thereeternal
Nietzsche's concept of the was a line shereturn.14
successfully developedFor but
that she wants toabout
our purposes, what is important cancel by going over it again.
Deleuze's
resort to this complex and central
But it may concept
also be that she in cho-
takes chorus after
rus because
Nietzsche's thought is what she is seeking to lose her
it contributes toSelf ourand
becomein
understanding of repetition whojazz
she is in the form or in spite of the
improvisation.
While habit cyclically returns difference
form. In this case, she is not hoping toas
die, the
literally,
same, and memory fashionsbut toanapproximate
identity that quiescence
from in which
how who
all the different ways weshe is or has been
have no longer matters.
already been What
re- mat-
ters instead is
turn to us, what is commonly the music"the
called and the oceanic
eternal feeling
of being
return of the same" always and absorbed
only, in that music, of findingto
according one-
self touching
Nietzsche, returns difference, on and connected
always and toonly
everything re-that
touches and isThe
turns what differs from itself. connected to this music. return,
eternal
This
as Deleuze understands it, is style of
the improvisation
pure form is commonly
of time heard
in modal jazz time
as becoming and, as becoming, compositions
is where
never the improviser
the
same but always something repeats a single mode or chord again and again
different.
Now, for an ego aiming inatmany different patterns
quiescence inand combinations of
confor-
mity with the death drive,tones.
the It differs strikingly from
repetition of what
time we hear
as in
becoming would appear traditional
to cause a problem,
jazz compositions but
where the soloist im-
just the opposite is true.provises
In on the the form,
face following
of an the changes
ever of a
changing and challenging real
complex world,
harmony quiescence
written over a single key. In tra-
ditional
is not gained by a habitual jazz improvisations, repetition
attachment to a fixed more often
turns up gained
identity. Quiescence is rather in habitual ways
byofahandling these com-
selective
plexand
adaptation to the successes changes or in what the
failures ofimproviser
the in- remem-
stinct for pleasure which bers
the about how the drive
death form has been
will played by him-
never
completely repress, and this self or others. In modal jazz, there
is precisely how are typically
the
healthy, happy subject navigates very few changes,the and theeternal
changes are tore-
differ-
turn. When we will that this ent, otherwise
moment, unnrelatedthis
keys. "So
actWhat?"
re- by
turn eternally, we affirmMiles it,Davis, is composed
select it fromof two chords
amongseparated
uncountable alternative moments and acts to re- by a minor second played in eight bar groupings
live again. And when it does return, we relive iton the AABA form. There is no melody to speak
with a difference obtained by its very repetition.of, unless it is in the bass line. Instead, the impro-
With the eternal return, then, we become who viser creates a melody by repeating the modes in
we are selectively, and this selectivity affirms dif-different combinations of tones from those modes.
ference and rejects or refuses the unification and She plays the same tones, again and again, which
reification of a self that might impede this becom-return to her, and the listener, with a difference
ing with a difference. With the eternal return as heard in the combinations she constructs and the
a model of repetition for the death drive, we getmelody she creates.
a form of self-realization that, as we said above, With "So What?" for example, working with
Adorno would reject, but we should embrace asthe minor seventh chord, the improviser can be-
advancing on his prejudices. gin by arpeggiating the minor scale, adding the
Still, how is this concept of repetition relevant augmented sixth from the dorian mode, dropping
to a discussion of self-realization in jazz improvi-the third to ambiguate the mood, shifting the tonal
sation? When the improviser takes a chorus againcenter to the seventh, and playing it with the ninth,
and again and again, it may be because she still haseleventh, and thirteenth as the root of a major sev-
not solved the form to her satisfaction. And she enth chord. The idea is to give the improviser more
may return to this form again and again, habitu- freedom- she is not restricted to playing what will
ally, because there is something yet to be resolvedharmonize with a given melody- and more chal-
for her there. She may also take several choruseslenges, since she must create a melody, something
because there is something she remembers fromthat will captivate the performer and the listener
the second time through the form that she wantsalike, with very little direction from the form. The
to capture for herself this time. Maybe there was improviser must give musical sense to a form that
a line she wanted to develop but missed. Maybecomes with few cues about how to take it. Again,

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Carvalho Repetition and Self- Realization in Jazz Improvisation 289

this frees the improviser from habits,patterning

good and that came to the attention of Western
bad, and from a remembered history oflisteners
improvi-in the early part of the twentieth cen-
tury. Any
sations on the standard forms, and it challenges theoedipal connection between this music
and exper-
improviser to lose herself in the form and that of the American and European masters,
iment with provisional solutions to thehowever,
problemswould seem to belong on the side of the
posed by the form. great white Fathers seeking to preserve their Egos
This form of repetition in improvisation and advance
be- their Selves against the unconscious
came the dominant style in large jazz ensembles forces of pleasure and "little bangs" sparking on
like those fronted by Omette Coleman, the "dark continent." Repetition in these impro-
starting
with Free Jazz (I960), John Coltrane, with visations,
A Lovewe have argued, is not a negative re-
Supreme (1965), and, more popularly, sponse perhaps,
to the truth that can be found in music but,
Miles Davis, with In a Silent Way and Bitches precisely,
Brew a fascination with local truths opening
(both 1969). "Shh, Peaceful," on In a Silent onto multiple,
Way, is minor universes that are beside the
formed on a single mode repeated in thepoint bassof that musical tradition. In place of the ego
over
which several different melodic lines are drawn. psychology that motivates Adorno's critique, we
There are no choruses to define these lines. There have introduced a positive psychoanalytic account
is just the eternal return of the bass line and the of the pleasures and "bangs" sparking in styles of
high-hat ride. Some of these melodic lines play for jazz improvisations that realize selves in the dif-
a minute and a half; others go on for over four ferences found by repeating the same form. The
minutes. In the time the improviser takes to pour value of McClary's analysis is, finally, that it leads
himself into the music, a melody is realized and, to a more substantial critique of Adorno's position
in realizing that melody, the improviser realizes and to an appreciation of the value of repetition
something about himself. In the repetitive drone in jazz improvisation.
of the rhythm, he precisely loses his Ego, his Self,
and identifies with a principle of selection that
guides him to his goal, more entelechy than telos,
and that goal is what we hear as melody.15 JOHN M. CARVALHO

Davis has said he played all night to find a Department of Philosophy

single successful line. We would add that this Villanova University
success is always provisional. The successful im- Villanova, Pennsylvania 19085
proviser actively forgets how she arrived at her
internet: john.carvalho@villanova.edu
destination the last time and, losing herself in
the music present now, finds another way to that
1. Susan McClary, "Rap, Minimalism, and Structures of
destination, another provisionally successful line. Time in Late Twentieth-Century Culture," in Audio Culture
McClary quotes Frederic Rzewski describing the Readings in Modern Music, ed. Christoph Cox and Daniel
process of improvising such a line as "an end- Warner (New York: Continuum, 2004), pp. 289-298, orig
less series of 'little bangs,' in which new universes inally presented as the Norman and Jane Geske Lecture,
University of Nebraska, 1999. Further in-text citations refer
are constantly being created."16 The comparison to this essay.
is with the physical universe, which is thought to 2. See McClary's "Terminal Prestige: The Case of Avant-
be the effect of one Big Bang. "The universe of Garde Music Composition," Culture Critique 12 (1989)
57-81.
improvisation," by contrast, "is constantly being
3. See also Theodor Adorno, "Arnold Schoenberg,
created; or rather, in each moment a new universe
1874-1951," in Prisms, trans. Samuel Weber and Sherry We-
is created" (p. 269). The pleasure that accompa- ber (MIT Press, 1981), pp. 147-172, and Philosophy of Mod-
nies these improvisations, "a state of perception ern Music, trans. Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster
in which one seems to be outside oneself, or to be (New York: Seabury, 1973).
4. lo be very clear, the threat or castration is not literal
in more than one place at the same time" (p. 269),
but figurative. It refers not so much to the boy's potential
is precisely the ecstasy, the jouissance, associated loss of a bodily part, but rather to the approved path for
with the death drive. The improviser realizes this the boy's becoming a man, which will be occasioned by a
pleasure in herself and her listeners and realizes number of threats to his standing as a man among men. To
herself in this jouissance, drawing on a form of become a man, the boy must give up his attachment to his
mother and join the company of other men. The boy who
repetition modeled on this drive. does not transfer his affections will be cut off from that com-
These large group improvisations, no doubt, pany. The threat of castration directs the boy to a socially ac-
drew sustenance from the African-based musical ceptable form of self-actualization. This is a complex matter,

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 290 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

investment,
however, since the boy loves his the ego is
father as leftmuch
to recover what
as hisit has lost in the
mother
and wants to be loved by him in
object. Butthe
what it way his
invested was itself.father loves
So, now, to save itself, his
mother, and since the threat theof castration
ego invests what is left of is felt as
its investment real
in itself. The be-
ego, in this way,
cause the boy believes his mother is recovers
castrateditself in the and
form of the
has desire it
been
castrated by his father. The had for the objectComplex
Oedipal and repeats its desire for the object in
describes the
its desire for
tension deriving from the desire to itself.
loveThrough a long process
mom theof more
way or lessdad
loves her and be loved by dadfailedthe
investments
way of desire,
shethe is egoloved
comes to realize
bywhat dad.
The complex is resolved by itthe
identifies boy's
as its self. becoming a man who
loves the mother of his own children, and the
10. Gilles Deleuze, Difference threat
and Repetition, of cas-
trans. Paul
tration serves this end. Patton (Columbia University Press, 1994), pp. 70-79.
5. Adorno, "Perennial Fashion- Jazz," Prisms, pp. 130, 11. Ibid.. do. 79-88.
131. 12. See John Coltrane Plays Giant Steps, transcrip-
6. Ibid., p. 121. tions and analysis by David Demsey (Milwaukee, WI: Hal
7. See Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Leonard, 1996).
and The Ego and the Id, both trans. James Stachey in The 13. Jamey Abersold, How to Play Jazz and Improvise, re-
Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of vised 6th ed. (New Albany, IN: Jamey Abersold Jazz, 1992),
Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of passim.
Psycho-Analysis, 1953-1974), vol. 18, pp. 7-64 and vol. 19, 14. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, pp. 88-108.
pp. 3-66, respectively. 15. As is well known, these melodies are brought out in
8. See Jacques Lacan, "The Unconscious and Repeti- this recording by Davis's remixing what was captured on
tion," in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, tape in postproduction. Davis was apparently so satisfied
trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), pp. with the melodies drawn by himself and John McGlaugh-
17-64. lin that they are repeated as the first and last third of the
9. If the instinct for pleasure invests the ego in objects eighteen-minute tune.
external to it, its pleasure comes from neutralizing the al- 16. Frederic Rzewski, "Little Bangs: A Nihilist Theory
terity of those objects and iterating or repeating itself in the of Improvisation," Current Musicology 67/68 (2002), as ex-
world. When these objects fail to make a return on the ego's cerpted in Audio Culture, p. 269.

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