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They tried to make Stan Kenton a "white hope," called modern jazz and my music "progressive," then tried to tell me I played progressive music. I said, "You're full of shit!" Stan Kenton? There ain't nothing about my music that's cold, cold like his.1
We didn't want anything to do with progressive music. So we stayed with soul. And the kind of soul we wanted was fast dance things. We work hard, bloody hard, and we want to work hard on the dance floor. The faster the better.2
These refutations of progressive music by Dizzy Gillespie and James Brown are indicative of the problematic nature of the label "progressive" in popular music. Perhaps more than any other stylistic label, for a musician to be attributed as playing progressive music is especially damning. Unlike the use of the term in the political sense of liberal thought and action for initiating social change, the term progressive in popular music is used purely as a marker of musical ambition that typically includes extended form, harmonic and rhythmic complexity, and eclectic appropriation as in progressive rock or progressive jazz. In this sense the term progressive connotes musical change beyond the normative boundaries of popular song. Many musicians, fans, and writers have been quick to distance themselves or their music of choice from the faintest whiff of the progressive label to avoid critical derision or guilt by association.3
The above statements by Gillespie and Brown also reveal the extent to which the term is racialized, casting progressive music as overly intellectual, cold, and conspicuously white. Conversely, white critics have often praised the spontaneity and naturalness of black music in contrast to more calculated approaches by white musicians at the risk of reifying racial stereotypes.4 The notion that rock music must stay close to "authentic" black roots has been a central argument in the critical dismissal of progressive rock bands such as Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Jethro Tull and others from the early 1970s.5 This demonization of a small number of UK "prog" bands has contributed to a misunderstanding about this era in which being musically progressive was common to a much broader range of musicians in rock, jazz, and R&B. Progressive music featuring extended forms and ambitious concepts was at...