Authentic Red Herrings

If you poke around in the dirt in Macedonia and find a coin with a picture of Alexander the Great, dated 331 BC, you can be sure it's not authentic. Similarly, if you're rummaging through an attic and come across a canvas signed Rembrandt, 1932, won't imagine that it was painted by the famous Dutch painter of the seventeenth century. Low-cost Rolex watches and Gucci bags are probably not manufactured by the companies they are purported to be made by. These are not authentic items, and I have no problem with using the word “authentic” in this context.

Nor can I object to the use of “authentic” in connection with people's expressions of emotion, as a synonym for true. The pride a parent feels for her child's success is authentic, whereas a mother's congratulations to the boy who got a higher grade than her son have a good chance of being inauthentic. In that sense, a lot of expressions like, “have a good day” and “let's have lunch some time” are inauthentic.

“Inauthentic” can also mean hypocritical, as in public condemnation of a political graft on the part of a corrupt politician, or condemnation of prostitution on the part of a man who regularly hires escorts when he travels on business. However, extension of the use of “authentic” and especially its opposite to people's character strikes me as presumptuous. For example, Woodie Guthrie, the American folk singer and composer, is regarded as “authentic,” since he was born in Oklahoma and his songs and political activism reflected the interests of the people among whom he was born. By contrast, Bob Dylan might be regarded as inauthentic, since he was born to a middle class Jewish family and his American folksiness is kind of a pose.

That, of course, is ridiculous, as it doesn't address either man's work. Guthrie might have been as authentic as all get out and been a terrible musician, and Dylan's personal background is irrelevant to the quality of his music. Criticism of his ostensible lack of authenticity is beside the point.

Still, one thinks one means something when one says that something is authentic and something else is not. 

Take one of the areas that means something to me: jazz. If you call it, as some do, “classical African American music,” does that mean that an African American jazz musician is necessarily more authentic than a white or Asian musician? Must I automatically prefer, on grounds of authenticity, the playing of the African-American alto saxophone player, Charlie Parker, to that of the white alto saxophone player, Art Pepper? Or must I declare that the European or Japanese jazz scenes are so inauthentic that the music played there can no longer be called jazz?



I readily concede that the great jazz trumpet player, Wynton Marsalis, an African-American musician from the acknowledged birthplace of jazz, New Orleans, has a strong personal connection to the music of his ethnic group, and this undoubtedly motivated him to develop into one of the leading exponents of jazz. However, he also has a very well developed background in Western classical music and could well have become a distinguished classical musician. Had he opted for the latter direction, no one could have called the choice “inauthentic,” just as the authenticity of his choice to be a jazz musician is not praiseworthy because of its authenticity. What's praiseworthy is the quality of his musicianship, his diligence, his leadership, and his influence.

In general, the language of authenticity, in the extended sense, is a claim of ownership. Historically, African American musicians suffered from brutal racial discrimination, and understandably they resented it when white musicians played more or less the same kind of music and got paid better, got to stay in clean hotels and travel in style, and became celebrities, whereas they were treated with contempt. So naturally they would argue that the music they were playing was theirs, and white people who claimed to be playing it were inauthentic. However, as Arnie Lawrence, a white jazz musician whom I came to know well, said, quoting Clark Terry, a black jazz musician who was one of his mentors: “The note doesn't know who played it.”

 Another area that concerns me is Judaism, and there, too, claims of authenticity are thrown about irresponsibly. But I think I'll get to that in another post.