Boondocks and jazz

AT FIRST glance, the words "boondocks" and "jazz" share precious little in common. One is generally associated with hip, urban, African Americans while the other usually refers to back country areas populated by unsophisticated "rednecks." The ironic exception is a comic strip about African Americans called "Boondocks."

The dictionary defines "boondocks" as "hinterland, remote and underdeveloped area." Derived from the Tagalog word bundok, meaning mountain, it became part of the American lexicon during the "Philippine Insurrection" that followed the Spanish-American War of 1898.

The Filipino "insurgents" resisted the American occupation of the Philippines but could not engage the superior American forces in conventional warfare. They had to wage a guerilla war mostly in the mountains as the rugged terrains offered the only strategic advantage to the Filipinos fighting for their country's independence.

Patrolling the boondocks in search of Filipino "insurgents" became the everyday assignment for US soldiers who were tasked with eliminating opposition to US rule.

Some 125,000 US soldiers were deployed in the Philippines from 1898 to 1903. When they returned back to the US, they started using "boondocks" as part of their regular vocabulary and it caught on quickly with the American public.

Many of these soldiers were conscripted into the US Army as part of their states' National Guard units. They were designated as their state's volunteers ("Wyoming Volunteers," "Tennessee Volunteers") and remained as a unit during their tours of duty in the Philippines, returning back to their states as a unit after completion of their military assignments.

The only exception to the common practice of assigning "volunteers" to their state units was with African American "buffalo soldiers" who were assigned to the segregated 24th and 25th infantry regiments. Many of these soldiers were assigned as musicians to play in mobile bands to entertain the troops in the boondocks and to provide music for ceremonial occasions.

These African American soldier musicians brought the music of their particular localities and backgrounds -- from Negro spirituals and gospel music to work songs, field shouts, hymns, and songs of sorrow. Because they were often in the boondocks, they had to improvise and draw from the music of their various influences. The harmony, rhythm and melodies of this music eventually evolved into what we now know as jazz.

Jazz is defined as "a style of music, characterized by a strong but flexible rhythmic understructure with solo and ensemble improvisations on basic tunes and chord patterns."

In its early years, jazz was played by small bands usually made up of a cornet or trumpet, clarinet, trombone, and a rhythm section that included bass, drums, guitar, and sometimes piano. When the band marched in the boondocks, the piano and bass were replaced with a tuba.

"The three lead instruments provide a contrapuntal melody above the steady beat of the rhythm, and individualities of intonation and phrasing, with frequent use of vibrato and glissando, give the music its warm and highly personal quality."

These African American musicians, who honed their music in the Philippines, returned back to the United States through San Francisco as with all US soldiers assigned to the Philippines. But instead of taking the trains back to their states, many of these African American musicians chose to remain in the San Francisco Bay Area, where they formed music bands with their fellow comrades.

Their improvised boondocks music became the staple of early American jazz.

I first heard about the Philippine origins of jazz from a newspaper editor named James Finefrock. I had written an op-ed piece about the Dewey Monument in the center of San Francisco's Union Square ("To the Filipinos, Dewey was no hero," San Francisco Examiner, October 30, 2000). Mr. Finefrock called to tell me that there was once a street by Union Square called "Manila Street" until a jewelry business named Shreve & Co. successfully lobbied San Francisco authorities to rename the street "Maiden Lane" after the London street where jewelers hawk their merchandise.

In the course of our discussion, he relayed to me information he had gathered in his youth about the origins of jazz. The early jazz musicians in the Bay Area at the turn of the century had served "buffalo soldiers" in the Philippine American War. The friendships they forged there in the Philippine boondocks continued when they returned to the US and settled in the Bay Area, he told me.

A former colleague of mine in the San Francisco College Board, Dr. Bill Marquis, surprised me one day with his disclosure that his grandfather was a Filipino. As a young man, his grandfather stowed away on a ship bound for San Francisco from Manila at the turn of the century. When he arrived at the port, immigration officials asked his name and he answered "Marquez". Unfortunately, his thick Pangasinan accent made the authorities misspell his name as "Marquis."

Young Marquez eventually met a beautiful African American woman from Berkeley in the East Bay and fell in love with her. As it turned out, the woman's father had served as a "buffalo soldier" in the Philippines and held Filipinos in high regard which is why he did not oppose their marriage. That union produced phenomenal grandchildren: two are physicians in Houston, one, my friend Bill, has a PhD, and another is Sylvia Marquis Harper, a captain in the San Francisco Police Department, the highest-ranking "African American" woman in the force.

Bill's great grandfather may have played in a jazz band.

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