Interview: October 10, 2024

Benjamin Barson is a historian, a baritone saxophonist, a political activist and an assistant professor of music at Bucknell University. His newly released book, BRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY, recasts the birth of jazz, unearthing vibrant narratives of New Orleans musicians to reveal how early jazz was inextricably tied to the mass mobilization of freedpeople during Reconstruction and the decades that followed. In this interview conducted by Michael Barson, Senior Publicity Executive at Melville House (and Benjamin’s father), Benjamin talks about his inspiration for the book, a thrilling discovery he made while researching this fascinating subject, and his next project, which is somewhat of a sequel to BRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY.

Question: How did you discover the gap in musical history that became the impetus for writing BRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY?

Benjamin Barson: Since my graduate school years, I have broken bread with both historians and musicologists in near equal measure. One of the striking things I noticed from spending time with historians of the colonial Americas is the extent to which Haiti has entered the conversation in a sustained and meaningful way. Scholars recently have uncovered more and more archival evidence that points to how central the first Black republic really was to the Age of Revolution. From material support and refuge offered to revolutionaries like Simón Bolivar, to the ideological resources the revolution provided with its extensive antislavery provisions and early pan-Africanist ideas, historians of the early Atlantic world --- those working on New Orleans --- simply cannot stop talking about Haiti and its revolution. In fact, New Orleans becomes an American possession precisely because Napoleon cut his losses after failing to reinstate slavery in the colony.

Now let’s fast forward to early jazz. Suddenly Haiti is nowhere to be found. Granted, by the 1880s, we are generations later from the revolution. But Haitian/Saint-Domingue migrants doubled the city’s population by 1810, and several early jazz musicians --- Jelly Roll Morton and Sidney Bechet, among them --- could credibly trace Haitian/Saint-Domingue ancestry. Given jazz’s connection to collective improvisation and the frequent invocation of “jazz-as-democracy,” one might think that the history of Haiti would be an important framing of the music, and especially its reliance of Afro-Caribbean rhythms such as the tresillo and cinquillo. After all, what was more democratic than the first revolution against slavery, not only in the Americas, but in the world? What blow was more significant to the myth of white supremacy than the defeat of Napoleon’s armies?

Instead, it seems, the Haitian connection was lost to a different narrative --- one imagined the music as the point of unity between Europe and Africa. But this discourse, as I suggest in the book, hides more than it reveals. Particularly significant was the ways that Black and Afro-Creole activists during the Reconstruction era tied their activism and vision of the future to the Haitian Revolution. When this movement was suppressed, many of them, like Rodolphe Desdunes, himself Haitian-descended, had children who were important jazz musicians. These activists and musicians employed brass bands to mobilize Black communities and white allies in defense of the Reconstruction’s interracial democracy.

Although these movements were defeated politically, many jazz musicians came of age as brass bands frequently marched down the streets of New Orleans, and in the plantations outside of Louisiana, ushering in a new era (if ultimately aborted) of grassroots democracy. Hence, BRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY: how Black brass band musicians infused participatory music practices that drew from, and influenced, innovative forms of grassroots democracy.

Q: This study grew out of your dissertation for your degree in Jazz Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. How much new material did you ultimately include in the book that wasn’t present in your first version?

BB: While the core arguments regarding jazz’s connection to Afro-Atlantic social movements and the concept of “brassroots democracy” remain intact, I added substantial new material to the book. In the dissertation, my primary focus was on the intra-Caribbean influences on early jazz and the political organizing of Louisiana's Black communities, particularly through the lens of the Desdunes family and the Haitian Revolution. In the book, I expanded these ideas by incorporating more detailed case studies, additional archival research, and comparative studies that examine broader influences beyond Louisiana, such as the Mexican borderlands and the Afro-Louisianan connections to maroon ecologies​.

“Maroon ecologies” describe the communities and environments created by escaped enslaved Africans, known as Maroons, who fled plantations and settled in remote areas across the Americas. These communities were often located in difficult-to-reach swamps, mountains and dense forests, which provided natural defenses against recapture, and where they improvised a new, democratic political culture. What I found was a widespread network of fugitive and maroon musicians who continued to play in New Orleans deep into the 1830s. At least one musician from these clandestine jam sessions became a Reconstruction-era politician.

Q: In the course of your lengthy research into this subject, what would you say was the single most thrilling discovery you made along the way? And how did it come about?

BB: One of the most thrilling discoveries was unearthing Alice Zeno’s 1958 recording of a song in Haitian Creole from her grandmother, dating back to the era of President Fabre Geffrard’s rule in Haiti (1859–1867). This chance find provided a tangible connection between Louisiana’s Black communities and their Haitian heritage, a link that, as I suggested earlier, has long been overlooked in jazz scholarship. Zeno was the mother of an influential early jazz clarinetist, George Lewis (not to be confused with the Columbia University professor and trombonist of the current era).

The discovery happened during a visit to the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University, where I was researching interviews that might help me understand the political commitments and worldviews of New Orleans jazz musicians. Zeno’s song embodied a trans-Caribbean connection late into the 20th century and pointed to a latent cultural memory of resistance embedded in the musical traditions of Louisiana​.

Q: Was there one historical incident or development you had targeted about this topic that never materialized despite your concerted efforts?

BB: Yes, one incident that I hoped to substantiate further was a more direct and consistent link between the maroon communities of the Louisiana cypress swamps and the brass band traditions that arose in New Orleans. While I found some evidence of overlap, including references to musicians with maroon ancestry and ties to these rebel communities, the direct line of transmission between maroon musical traditions and early jazz remains elusive. The records from this period are often sparse or fragmented, and while there are clear influences, I could not fully document this specific connection​. Research I have conducted since the book’s publishing with historian John Bardes and musicologist Henry Stoll has deepened this connection, and I am excited to share that we are working on a new essay that will think through this maroon history more explicitly.

Q: How have other experts in the field of jazz studies greeted your findings in BRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY in the early going?

BB: So far, the reception has been enthusiastic, particularly among scholars who are interested in expanding the historical scope of jazz studies beyond its traditional narrative. My argument about the deep connections between jazz and Black radical politics has resonated well with those researching African American activism, labor movements and music. Experts such as George Lipsitz, Salim Washington and Matt Sakakeeny have provided positive feedback, noting that the book fills a crucial gap in understanding the political roots of jazz. There also has been considerable interest in how I frame jazz within the larger context of the Afro-Atlantic world, particularly my work on the Haitian Revolution and the Desdunes family.

Q: Writing this first book was the result of several years of toil. Do you have a second subject in mind already for your next book, or is it too soon to think about that?

BB: For my next project, I’m intrigued by the contradictory forces within jazz during the Jazz Age, particularly focusing on the imperial and liberatory vectors that coexisted. This period saw jazz becoming a global phenomenon, often associated with the U.S. imperial presence, particularly in places like Haiti during the U.S. occupation (1915–1934). However, jazz also became a tool of resistance, as seen in the emergence of Vodou jazz, which fused Haitian spiritual traditions with the sounds of jazz, creating a form of music that resisted U.S. cultural dominance. So how do we think through the “coming home” of the music to Haiti, even and especially if it’s within the context of a U.S. Marine occupation?

One figure I’m particularly interested in is Issa El Saeih, a Palestinian-Haitian saxophonist whose music embodies these contradictions. El Saeih’s work, along with other Vodou jazz musicians, was born from the resistance to U.S. occupation. He used jazz to bridge local traditions like Vodou with jazz and salsa, crafting a sound that was both an assertion of Haitian identity and a critique of the imperial forces shaping his world. Exploring these figures and their music would allow me to delve deeper into the ways in which jazz has always been both a product of and a reaction against imperial forces, while also highlighting its role as a liberatory tool in postcolonial movements.

In a way, it would be kind of a “sequel” to BRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY, expanding the loci of resistance and cultural syncretism that I explored in the current volume by bringing attention to how jazz has functioned in anti-imperial contexts in the Caribbean world during the era of the Monroe Doctrine.