Moldy figs are purist advocates of early

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

, originally those such as

Rudi Blesh Rudolph Pickett Blesh (January 21, 1899 – August 25, 1985) was an American jazz critic and enthusiast. Biography Blesh studied at Dartmouth College and held jobs writing jazz reviews for the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' and the '' New York ...

Alan Lomax Alan Lomax (; January 31, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music of the 20th century. He was also a musician himself, as well as a folklorist, archivist, writer, sch ...

, and James Jones, who argued that jazz took a wrong turn in the early 1920s with developments such as the introduction of printed scores. Blesh, for example, dismissed the work of

Duke Ellington Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based ...

as " tea dansant music" with no jazz content whatever. The term was later used by the

bebop Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early-to-mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumen ...

pers with reference to those who preferred older jazz to bebop. During the post-

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

era there was something of a revival of "traditional" jazz, and bebop displaced swing as the "modern" music to which it was contrasted. More recently,

Gene Santoro In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a ba ...

has referred to

Wynton Marsalis Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is an American trumpeter, composer, teacher, and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has promoted classical and jazz music, often to young audiences. Marsalis has won nine Grammy Awar ...

and others, who embrace bebop but not other forms of jazz that followed it, as "latter-day moldy figs", with bebop now lying on the side of "jazz tradition". Although the term was originally a pejorative, it has at times been embraced by

trad jazz Trad jazz, short for "traditional jazz", is a form of jazz in the United States and Britain in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, played by musicians such as Chris Barber, Acker Bilk, Kenny Ball, Ken Colyer and Monty Sunshine, based on a revival ...

fans and players.See, for example, the notes for th
Pentastic Jazz Festival, Penticton, British Columbia
where the Pip Squeek Orchestra is described as "a moldy fig high wire act featuring an engaging posse of instrumentalists" that "harvests all the chestnuts and moldy figs". Accessed online 4 August 2007. Also, Robert L. Campbell and Robert Pruter

June 7, 2007. "As a traddie, I take pride in the early attention paid to blues by us 'moldy figs.'" Accessed online 4 August 2007. In

Stan Freberg Stan Freberg (born Stanley Friberg; August 7, 1926 – April 7, 2015) was an American actor, author, comedian, musician, radio personality, puppeteer and advertising creative director. His best-known works include " St. George and the Dragonet ...

's recorded comedy sketch " Yankee Doodle Go Home", the fife player isn't happy with the drummer. "No, I mean when I accepted the gig I didn't know I was going to play fife with the kind of ''moldy fig'' drumming like what is going on up ahead there, man."

Notes

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References

* John Lowney, "Langston Hughes and the 'Nonsense' of Bebop", p.357–385 in ''American Literature'', Volume 72, Number 2, June 2000 (Duke University Press). Jazz culture Pejorative terms for people Musical terminology Jazz terminology