In the second year of his 27 year tenure at Bennington College (1968-1995) composer and musician Bill Dixon penned a letter to the composer / philosopher John Cage perhaps the preeminent music and art theorist of the time. Dixon's letter was written in response to Cage's recently published book Notations. It is transcribed here from a draft found in the Bill Dixon archives now housed at NYU. Dixon had organized the historic 1964 October Revolution in Jazz , founded the Jazz Composer's Guild in 1965 and in 1973 founded the Bennington Black Music Division.
This piece is presented in conjunction with the 60th Anniversary Celebration of the October Revolution in Jazz, 2024. More information can be found at october-revolution.org/ and TICKETS for the closing performances, discussions and screenings at 2220 Arts on October 5th can be purchased HERE.
Bennington College,
Bennington, Vermont
June 7, 1969
Mr. John Cage
c/o Merce Cunningham Studio
498 Third Avenue
NYC
CC: Something Else Press
Dear John,
A few weeks ago I purchased a copy of your new book “NOTATIONS”, a collection of facsimiles of score excerpts from the works of nearly 300 contemporary composers, published by the Something Else Press in NYC. It is truly a remarkable book and something that, from the standpoint of making available to the student composer ideas (visual) about the way and manner in which some people are now notating their music, is long overdue. I also felt that the absence of the generally long and turgid explanatory text that usually accompanies most studies of this kind contributed to the success of the book.
There is, however, something about this book, its conception and its present form that both made me uncomfortable and caused me a bit of consternation and on this I shall have to elaborate and would like to speak to you candidly.
It is no secret to those of us who inhabit the music world under the guise of jazz musicians and jazz composers (a white man’s definition of us and our work ; a questionable title in light of today’s events) that you, John, have always, at least in your published statements, felt that American jazz music was something slightly less valuable in importance than the more European oriented, in tradition, other Western and even Eastern music. The fact that this opinion you have held (and as indicated by certain omissions in your current book under discussion), still do hold, may have, (1) been to a lack of perseverance on your part to acquaint yourself with the merits, achievements and contributions to this music or (2) simply as a white man you felt that a black man’s contribution could not equal a white man’s – could not be formally questioned until your views regarding the collection of material in the book under discussion came to light. You have stated in this book quite affirmatively an idea about notation that is both contemporary and one which puts this oft mysterious phenomenon about the value of notes on paper in its proper perspective. Whether by design or not you also consciously or unconsciously lent much credibility (not that it was needed) to the role that the jazz composer (the improvisor and the man who notated, the other composer, being almost synonymous within the scope of their achievement) has had and pioneered in the idea that notation at its best could only serve as a guide to the making of music. The melodic line with the chord symbol has been the focal point of much of the genius that the late Charlie Parker brought to music. Ornette Coleman and others far too numerous to mention (and I only mention Coleman and Parker because it would be impossible for you to have not heard of them) have also used this relatively simple structure to create music of the most complexity both in feeling and structural design. The fact that so many non-jazz contemporary composers are finding the tyranny of Western man’s idea that music exist on the printed page equal to its being heard by the ear that they have had to revert to the original idea of making music and making symbols which allowed them, the composers to fully create a language which served their needs rather something that would exist for the sake of being “read” by others, can not be taken out of context and credit for their sudden “awareness” about their use of relevant (to them) symbols in notation can not be elaborated on without the inclusion of the black musician who has pioneered in this role for many years. In fact it strikes so many of us as being humorous and almost racist that so many so-called “serious” composers are much more conversant with the “music” being produced by so-called rock groups than they are with the work of such artists as JOHN COLTRANE, CECIL TAYLOR, ALBERT AYLER, ORNETTE COLEMAN, GEORGE RUSSELL or myself and we ALL have recorded and we are all Black.
I also don’t find the inclusion of the work of Jimmy Guiffre, who although a fine musician and composer, enough to satisfy the artistic goal you inadvertently set out for yourself in this book simply because too many other people (some of the above named) were omitted. And unless you believe, and this then is your way of expressing it, in artistic apartheid, I don’t know how it is possible not to have included some of the work of either: Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, George Russell, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Sonny Stitt, Andrew Hill, Cecil Taylor, myself and the list, like the night, goes on, in a book of this projected scope and magnitude which has to do with contemporary music notation.
I don’t know you too well, John, I have however spoken to you occasionally at Merce’s (Cunningham’s) and at a concert or two and I’ve always felt that your lack of knowledge about jazz (based on a statement in your book SILENCE and an article or interview in the VILLAGE VOICE a few years ago) were so dichotomous by nature relevant to the authority that you bring to philosophies regarding other musics that it was hard for me to believe that the same man who possessed such contemporary ideas and philosophies and who was so able to articulate the making of a certain kind of new music could be so unknowledgeable about another aspect of music which also coexisted in his own time and which was also closer to his own tradition.
In closing let me say that with the focus of so much of this nation’s youth, Black and White, on effecting, by whatever means necessary, social change in all areas and with the naturally resultant “fleeing to the suburbs” idea of so many “liberals” that in your case it is to be hoped that what I’ve outlined to you has existed for you simply because of your lack of real knowledge of jazz music and its makers thus making it only YOUR Achille’s heel. I personally would hate to think that the shape and content of the book NOTATIONS by its exclusion of black jazz composers was linked in any way to the idea and philosophy it strongly suggests. But then, if the book DOES reflect the suggestion and therefore really means what I’ve outlined then I’ll simply have to say to the world of the white composer that they’ll just have to keep on trying because it should be obvious by now that whether we (the black musician and composer) get “serious” recognition or not, we are here to stay, we’re not going to disappear.
Sincerely,
Bill Dixon
P.S. the reason for the disparity between the date of writing and mailing is simply that after I wrote the letter I decided against mailing it, recently however, something prompted me to mail – but that is another story.
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