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U.S. Constitution sings the blues
Scholar, essayist links founding document to musical cornerstone
By Adam Goldstein
goldstea@mscd.edu

Photo by Jenn LeBlanc • jkerriga@mscd.edu Stanley Crouch, artistic consultant for the Lincoln Center, speaks before an audience Sept. 20 in St. Cajetan’s. Crouch is also a noted jazz historian and essayist. In his lecture, Crouch compared the U.S. Constitution to the musical genre of the blues.

Essayist and jazz historian Stanley Crouch visited St. Cajetan’s on Sept. 20 to clarify the connections between two essential American institutions: the Constitution and the blues.

Crouch, an artistic consultant for New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center program, pointed to parallels between the country’s most enduring legislative and cultural contributions.

In excerpts from his essays “Constitution and the Blues” and “Blues to Go,” Crouch underlined the commonalities between the blues’ elasticity as an art form and the Constitution’s ability to “redress previous shortcomings.”

The musical equation behind the blues is simple: three degrees from the major scale, arranged in a predictable pattern and repeated.

The fundamental tenets of the U.S. Constitution are similarly simple.

The framers’ primal concern for individual liberty, for transparency and for accountability at the highest levels of government stand as the document’s driving principles.

Crouch repeatedly pointed to both the blues’ and the Constitution’s ability to evolve.

“The Constitution assumes that nothing is constant,” Crouch said, referring to its inherent power to be self-regulated through amendments.

Similarly, one of the marks of blues music is its capacity for improvisation and for its variation on a basic theme.

While the art form encourages artistic liberty based off a basic formula, the document’s ability to evolve points to what Crouch described “social redemption through policy.”

The Constitution’s concern with checks and balances displays a concern with the abuse of political power, while the blues’ focus on personal woes points to a more prosaic danger.

The Constitution sees power as a dangerous tool, while the blues addresses the darker side of romance and its toll on the human spirit.

Both seek to exorcise these separate dangers. According to Crouch, both are borne of a similar “tragic optimism” which takes into account the worst side of human nature.

“Tragic optimism does not expect to perfect men and women,” Crouch said. “It assumes that folly, corruption, mediocrity and incompetence are the demons who arrive season after season … (It’s) proof of our ability to learn and to fight until our learning takes hold of divisions in our governments, our policies and our homes.”

It is through its capacity for redress that the Constitution has evolved from its 18th century origins and limitations, Crouch said.

From abolition to voting rights for women, the Constitution’s amendments have superseded the prejudices and sins of its framers.

The document’s ability to transform itself functions like the blues’ ability to transform its players.

“The Constitution is a document that functions like … blues-based music,” Crouch said. “It values improvisation, the freedom to constantly reinterpret the meanings of our documents. It casts a cold eye on human beings and on the laws they make; it assumes that evil will not forever be allowed to pass by.”