Neuroscience
"I think that trumpets and drugs have always gone hand in hand," Mark Ronson speaking on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, December 07.
Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, John Coltrane - the list of jazz greats who battled drug and alcohol addiction goes on and on. Contemporary stars like Amy Winehouse seem to be following the same pattern. Now in a review of the psychological and biographical literature, Gerald Tolson and Michael Cuyjet have rejected the romantic notion that musical genius needs the succour of drugs in order to thrive.
A survey conducted in 1957 by Nat Hentoff of 409 New York City jazz musicians confirmed the extent of the problem: More than half had tried heroin, with 16 per cent being regular users. Over half used marijuana.
Tolson and Cuyjet said the jazz greats turned to drugs to release their creativity, to enhance the natural high of performing, and to cope with the strain of a disapproving society. The musicians of the 40's and 60's spent much of their lives in nightclubs where drug use was rife. They further had to contend with racism, often being required to arrive through the service entrance of clubs and were often forbidden from mingling with the patrons, many of whom were white.
As psychologist Charles Winick wrote in the 60's "The substances they imbibed may have been instrumental in liberating these artists mentally from preoccupation with their life circumstances and subsequently, may have provided the opportunity for these artists to tap into their utmost level of creativity."
Yet tragically, for many of the jazz stars, their addictions invited trouble with the law, and led ultimately to poor health and early death. Saxophonist Charlie Parker, for example, died age 34 and Billie Holiday age 44. "The untapped potential that was languished on drugs and alcohol by these artists shall never be fully revealed," Tolson and Cuyjet wrote.
Indeed, book critic Jonathan Yardley, said reading Jazz Anecdotes led him to feel that "alcohol has been in jazz an instrument of distraction and debilitation masquerading as inspiration."
In truth, the link between drug use and creativity has yet to be fully empirically tested, Tolson and Cuyjet concluded, but they said that whatever the creative benefits may have been, "the reality is that for most jazz artists, particularly during the creative period from 1940-1960, substance abuse did more harm than good, and rather than being the road to creative genius, it was the pathway to premature death."
_________________________________
Tolson, G.H. & Cuyjet, M.J. (2007). Jazz and substance abuse: Road to creative genius or pathway to premature death. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 30, 530-538.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Would the jazz greats have been so great without drugs?
"I think that trumpets and drugs have always gone hand in hand," Mark Ronson speaking on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, December 07.Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, John Coltrane - the list of jazz greats who battled drug and alcohol addiction goes on and on. Contemporary stars like Amy Winehouse seem to be following the same pattern. Now in a review of the psychological and biographical literature, Gerald Tolson and Michael Cuyjet have rejected the romantic notion that musical genius needs the succour of drugs in order to thrive.
A survey conducted in 1957 by Nat Hentoff of 409 New York City jazz musicians confirmed the extent of the problem: More than half had tried heroin, with 16 per cent being regular users. Over half used marijuana.
Tolson and Cuyjet said the jazz greats turned to drugs to release their creativity, to enhance the natural high of performing, and to cope with the strain of a disapproving society. The musicians of the 40's and 60's spent much of their lives in nightclubs where drug use was rife. They further had to contend with racism, often being required to arrive through the service entrance of clubs and were often forbidden from mingling with the patrons, many of whom were white.
As psychologist Charles Winick wrote in the 60's "The substances they imbibed may have been instrumental in liberating these artists mentally from preoccupation with their life circumstances and subsequently, may have provided the opportunity for these artists to tap into their utmost level of creativity."
Yet tragically, for many of the jazz stars, their addictions invited trouble with the law, and led ultimately to poor health and early death. Saxophonist Charlie Parker, for example, died age 34 and Billie Holiday age 44. "The untapped potential that was languished on drugs and alcohol by these artists shall never be fully revealed," Tolson and Cuyjet wrote.
Indeed, book critic Jonathan Yardley, said reading Jazz Anecdotes led him to feel that "alcohol has been in jazz an instrument of distraction and debilitation masquerading as inspiration."
In truth, the link between drug use and creativity has yet to be fully empirically tested, Tolson and Cuyjet concluded, but they said that whatever the creative benefits may have been, "the reality is that for most jazz artists, particularly during the creative period from 1940-1960, substance abuse did more harm than good, and rather than being the road to creative genius, it was the pathway to premature death."
_________________________________
Tolson, G.H. & Cuyjet, M.J. (2007). Jazz and substance abuse: Road to creative genius or pathway to premature death. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 30, 530-538.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Pharmacotherapy, Freedom And Crime
PHARMACOTHERAPY AND THE FUTURE OF THE DRUG WAR - a report by the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics Summary: Over the next decade an increasing number of new "pharmacotherapy" medications will become available with the potential to tremendously impact...
- Poets And Artists Have As Many ‘unusual Experiences’ As People With Schizophrenia
The idea that creative geniuses might not be entirely sane isn't exactly new. But just how much do creative types have in common with people suffering from psychosis? Well, according to Daniel Nettle at the University of Newcastle, serious poets and...
- Virile Artists To Blame For Schizophrenia's Prevalence?
Artists and poets who have an embryonic form of schizophrenia called ‘schizotypy’ are responsible for the illness not dying out despite the fact that people with full-blown schizophrenia are far less likely to have children than healthy people. That’s...
- A Musical Interlude
NPR.org/music has some terrific musical material! They have interviews with musical acts of all stripes: rock/pop/folk; classical; jazz & blues; world; and urban. I've mostly explored the first category, which has featured: Moby -- All Things...
- Geniuses, Part Deux
The July 2006 issue of Wired has a great article called What Kind of Genius Are You?. Daniel Pink discusses University of Chicago economist David Galenson, who studies geniuses in art and devised a theory suggesting "that creativity comes in two distinct...