Date Available

5-22-2022

Year of Publication

2022

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA)

College

Fine Arts

Department/School/Program

Music

Advisor

Mr. Bradley Kerns

Abstract

In the period following World War II, countries such as Japan, Vietnam, and Thailand were under constant intellectual bombardment from global superpowers vying for political influence. West Germany, a newly established ally of Western democracy, was a small part of a global effort to spread this democracy to Asia. Working alongside Joachim-Ernst Berendt and the Goethe Institute, the jazz trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff arranged an album which sought to merge both Western European and Asian music. The album, Now Jazz Ramwong (1964), and accompanying fifty-concert tour helped pioneer a lasting cultural connection between Western Europe and Asia. The methodology behind Now Jazz Ramwong was the repurposing of folk music from numerous Asian countries in the German jazz style, a style that Mangelsdorff himself was pivotal in establishing. In order to examine how the different aspects of Mangelsdorff’s arrangements contributed to the success of the album, this project primarily focused on transcription and musical analysis of each arrangement. The results of this study illustrated that the most significant facet of each arrangement to Mangelsdorff was the melody and its preservation within a jazz arrangement. Other factors such as harmony, rhythm, and form all serve to accentuate the melody and featured varied methods showing influence from both traditional Western jazz as well as Asian modal folk music. These compositional findings along with context provided by Joachim-Ernst Berendt, Wes Funderburk, and others helped explain how and why this tour was successful with Asian audiences.

The album, Now Jazz Ramwong (1964), and accompanying fifty-concert tour helped pioneer a lasting cultural connection between Western Europe and Asia. The methodology behind Now Jazz Ramwong was the repurposing of folk music from numerous Asian countries in the German jazz style, a style that Mangelsdorff himself was pivotal in establishing. In order to examine how the different aspects of Mangelsdorff’s arrangements contributed to the success of the album, this project primarily utilized transcription and theoretical analysis of each arrangement. The album was transcribed and studied with a focus on origin and cultural impact of the melody, as well as the inspiration and approach to harmonic, rhythmic, and formal features.

The results of this study illustrated that the most significant facet of each arrangement to Mangelsdorff was the melody and its preservation within a jazz arrangement. Other factors such as harmony, rhythm, and form all serve to accentuate the melody and featured varied methods showing influence from both traditional Western jazz as well as Asian modal folk music. These compositional findings along with context provided by Joachim-Ernst Berendt, Wes Funderburk, and others helped explain how and why this tour was successful with Asian audiences. Additionally, a large number of these countries would welcome Mangelsdorff and his quintet back again for future performances, solidifying a connection to Western Germany and Europe as a whole. Mangelsdorff would continue this type of folk jazz composition well into the late twentieth century, connecting cultures around the world through the flexibility of jazz and forging a path for a new global genre of music.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2022.189

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