Has jazz run its course?

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

An aspect of "referencing back?" I hear something "new" and subconsciously now think of its precedents. He/she sounds a bit like Ayler, Ornette, Rollins etc. At the time I got into this music it was less easy to fall into that trap as there was a greater possibility to develop and push the form. Now most of the bases have been covered or at least a direction indicated. The old line about a new way to play the saxophone..."put the bell in your mouth" may have arrived.

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

I agree with Bluesnik and Calum on this. R Cartes and Richard B seem to have polarised views. It is temping to side with Richard's view but there is almost a subtext he expresses that the music needs to be "difficult" or "challenging." Braxton leaves me cold and I'm afraid that I'm not too interested to find out just how his "ghost trance music" might differ from something he produced 20 years ago. There is an implication that this style of playing is perhaps more "genuine" as innovative music because it is apparently unapproachable whilst ignoring the fact that jazz is so diverse that there are plenty of different approaches and styles today which can be considered as adventurous or forward thinking as Braxton.

There does need to be an emotional connection but I don't think that a more "approachable" style renders jazz any less worthy than someone like Braxton (who I don't like) and Evan Parker (who intrigues me whether I have heard him perform live.) At the same time, there is a lot of crap that masquerades as being "ahead of the curve" but later just transpires to be modish. The "Nu jazz" stuff of the late 90's / early 2000's is a good example. To cite Bluensnik's example, these musicians could never create something as profound as a Paul Bley piano solo.

If I were to side with R Cartes in one aspect, I concur that there is almost of badge of pride with British (and some European) improvisers to go their own way and produce something thorny and angular that does not invite the uninitiated in to the fold. That said, better proponents of this music tend to eventually win over a following because of the merits of the music. Personally, when the jazz element of this free-ish playing is lost, the music loses interest for me but then again, something unique like the improvising duo "Ortie" performed one of the best gigs I've heard this year. In contrast, the likes of SA will suggest that big band jazz is regressive yet Steve Owen's music has been a big discovery for me this year and I think he is someone who is thinking innovatively about what large ensembles are capable of. I felt the same about Alan Ferber's work when I encountered his music last year too - he has performed with strings as well and comes up with a different approach to Trish Clowes and no less relevant. (Perhaps a bit more successfully though!! )

[Rcartes]

Thinking about the issues raised in this thread, and in particular the question (that I perhaps unwisely raised) of what jazz is, I returned to Gunther Schuller's Early Jazz as a guide. Schuller identifies six elements, essentially derived from the African origins of the music, that define the music: these were:

1. Rhythm
2. Form
3. Harmony
4. Melody
5. Timbre
6. Improvisation

Clearly they don't all have to be present at the same time: for example, ballads on the whole don't swing and, say, the Ellington band frequently didn't really contain any improvisation (this struck me when I listened recently to the Ellington Fargo 1940 broadcasts: the version of Bojangles there, Ben Webster's magnificent solo in particular, is virtually identical to the studio-recorded version - not that this is a criticism: how could musicians produce different solos when they were playing much the same material night after night). But no one would say that Parker's Embraceable You or the aforementioned Bojangles weren't jazz, would they?

However, applying this list to free jazz, how does it fare? It scores obviously on 5. and 6. and possibly (though I wouldn't agree) on 1., but the rest have surely gone out of the window. I suppose free jazz's defenders would say that this doesn't matter at all, which I'd agree on if it's just referred to as free music, but it seems to me that it's gone a long way from jazz however it's defined. I think that's what I've been getting at here.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But artists re-define Art all the time. Jazz (or any Art) would indeed be "going nowhere" if it just conformed to one person's list of criteria. And how can any Music not have Form (in the structural, not detective show sense)? And, if more than one pitch is involved, there is harmony. "Melody" is a vast phenomenon. So, even by Schuller's standards, the windows are firmly shut. Again, it comes down to your preferences - you do not like the Forms, Harmonies, Melodies and Rhythms of "free jazz" - but that doesn't demonstrate their absence.

[Serial_Apologist]

Which is ?

The "original point" of the saxophone was to be a portable instrument for Belgian military bands. Learn one size and you can play them all, you can play it in the rain and it's easy to carry.

The original, and still for me, main point of jazz is to demonstrate that at a given stage in Euroclassical music's development it was possible for black and white musicians in one particular country to get together to forge from respective ethnic musical traditions a lasting evolving generic form, with improvisation its main, if not sole driving force for expansion and elaboration, and from largely working class beginnings create an enduring universal means of music making available to peoples of all nations and classes.

[Serial_Apologist]

But artists re-define Art all the time. Jazz (or any Art) would indeed be "going nowhere" if it just conformed to one person's list of criteria. And how can any Music not have Form (in the structural, not detective show sense)? And, if more than one pitch is involved, there is harmony. "Melody" is a vast phenomenon. So, even by Schuller's standards, the windows are firmly shut. Again, it comes down to your preferences - you do not like the Forms, Harmonies, Melodies and Rhythms of "free jazz" - but that doesn't demonstrate their absence.

I would put it that in free jazz the elements predefinable in listening to older forms remain so to speak tacit, but no longer restricted by formats of rhythmic and harmonic regularities taken as pre-givens in all earlier forms. Elements of "freedom" can be found prefiguring this qualitative change throughout stages of earlier jazz. Where precisely do Ornette and Don Cherry depart from the changes in "Blues Connotations" for example? The shift is imperceptible - as is the slip from tonality to atonality in Schoenberg's second string quartet. As the composer said, it's all degree. I happen to think Miles's group stick to the changes throughout most of the Plugged Nickel sessions, but some free jazz musicians have disagreed with me! Maybe my listening habits stand me in good stead!!! The main thing about jazz freedom is that ditching the changes allowed for a huge expansion in the capacity for jazz musicians to build up the inbuilt tension of the times - the '50s and '60s - without structural markers dictating; and seek on all our behalves and find some cathartic release. Once jazz was out of the bag it was difficult putting it back in without the approval of Commerce and Big Business, which is why retro hard bop defined the Reagan/Thatcher era as a besuited accessory. I would disagree with Rcartes that free jazz was the only form into which earlier jazz evolved, and agree with Ian in this regard; we can discuss which developments really represent innovation, but not change.

[Beef Oven!]

The original, and still for me, main point of jazz is to demonstrate that at a given stage in Euroclassical music's development it was possible for black and white musicians in one particular country to get together to forge from respective ethnic musical traditions a lasting evolving generic form, with improvisation its main, if not sole driving force for expansion and elaboration, and from largely working class beginnings create an enduring universal means of music making available to peoples of all nations and classes.

Shame the 'point' couldn't be a little more egalitarian and inclusive - as usual women don't figure much, in all this.

[MrGongGong]

1. Rhythm
2. Form
3. Harmony
4. Melody
5. Timbre
6. Improvisation



However, applying this list to free jazz, how does it fare? .

So applied to Evan Parkers solo playing
I would say that's a six out of six to my ears

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

So applied to Evan Parkers solo playing
I would say that's a six out of six to my ears

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Another factor is that when jazz lost its popular base to rock and Tyner and Dorham etc were driving taxis, another strand headed for the Academy where abstraction and quasi European art music developments were prized and rewarded. Often via tenure and grants. The US foundation for the arts programs. That ALSO shaped the music, let's not kid ourselves. If Ayler was "of the streets" many others were no longer.

BN.

[Quarky]

Shame the 'point' couldn't be a little more egalitarian and inclusive - as usual women don't figure much, in all this.

S_A makes some very interesting and significant comments on freedom in Jazz. But unfortunately this freedom doesn't apply so well in the political arena. Because of its working class origins and alignment with Civil Rights movement, and I guess abuse by Commercial interests, it seems to have been adopted by many in the left as "their music". This seems to me part of the problem of getting the world of classical music interested in Jazz. A Jazz concert in the Elgar Room, and the music "tweaked" to make it acceptable to a classical audience? Surely any self-respecting Jazzophile would sneer at this?

[Serial_Apologist]

Shame the 'point' couldn't be a little more egalitarian and inclusive - as usual women don't figure much, in all this.

True, but that is changing now, for sure. A bit late would be an understatement, but it's happening. At last.

[Richard Barrett]

It is temping to side with Richard's view but there is almost a subtext he expresses that the music needs to be "difficult" or "challenging."

If I gave that impression it was unintentional: no, I don't think the music needs to be those things. I want it to open my thinking/feeling to something about sound/structure/expression that I didn't previously know (and of course I apply that also to what I do myself), that could be called challenging I suppose but not "difficult", at least not in the sense of "hard to take". I can understand why a lot of jazz enthusiasts have a problem with Anthony Braxton; a well-known English jazz/improv musician once told me rather picturesquely that he thought Braxton "swings like a bucket of s**t" - I don't agree but I can see what he meant...

As for those six criteria, Rcartes, they might change their shape but they haven't gone away; and as for Beef Oven!'s complaint that women haven't been mentioned, of course there are very many women involved in the free music movement (a greater proportion than in more traditional forms of jazz I think, except where vocalists are concerned), and, returning to Anthony Braxton for a moment, he decided at a certain point that his various ensembles were henceforth going to be 50% female, which as far as I know he has kept to for at least ten years.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

.... i wrote this here some three years ago and still think this way ...

Jazz is an African American music with two defining features; improvisation and rhythmic excitement.
It began some 100 years ago in the cultural cauldron of New Orleans and the Caribbean with its heritage of colonialism, slavery, and trade.Although primarily an African American art, the miscgeny of culture and peoples is reflected in the music.

The first genius of Jazz, Louis Armstrong, led the art of improvisation on a path of virtuosic performance. Virtuosity became a key requirement for stature as a jazz artist; the jam session after hours became the testing and development ground for talent.

Virtuosic improvisation with rhythmic excitement and "swing" attained popularity and was carried by commercial platforms [dance halls, records, radio] to a wider audience. In the peak of this popularity in the 1930s and 1940s jazz artists developed an alternative to the commercial ethos with individual performers adopting a recital mode, with the concert hall and festival stage as their preferred arena.

Jazz, carried by commerce, and the spread of American culture generally, was accelerated as a global art form by the Second World War - the movement of people and cultural exchange entrenched jazz in Europe where it was already popular, and in Asia and Australasia. Since that war jazz has also developed further presence in South America.

The innovations and enhanced virtuosity of the music in the 1940s and 1950s took the music away from the commercial platform and created a global minority audience; and a growing number of non-American artists. The Lennox School and Third Stream movement established the first academic recognition of Jazz. It is now a substantial curriculum element in most major centres of music education.

It is an art form that speaks across the globe. It flourishes in major cities with high creativity in their populations, it has appeal for many people who live in open, tolerant, multi-ethnic cultures and cities.

Since its beginnings Jazz has demonstrated an amazing ability to enter and subvert conventional culture, it is never the art of the Establishment; always the dissident, the demi-monde, the bohemian. Yet it has become a truly global art form and has an amazing ability to replicate across boundaries and borders.

Jazz expresses the rejection of the slavery and colonialism of its historical roots and the racism of its country of origin. It expresses the liberation of the individual, the natural flow of individual experience, the mutuality of ensemble performance and the necessity for personal dedication and development.

It requires of its audience a similar dedication and openness to experience. It does not offer reassurance and comfort, but challenge and exhilaration.

It is one of the most significant art forms of the modern world.

erm i don't much care for Antony Braxton's music and was once moved to post that it was often not jazz, when it was i found it unappealing, rather poor in fact ... i recall that centrifuge has pretty well devoted his life to listening to Braxton's works and others are much more impressed than i am ... vive la difference!

[burning dog]

When I use the word Jazz it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.