Locke's Stock but No Smoking Barrelhausen

[Serial_Apologist]

A very interesting discussion, and I think Ian has hit several nails on the head simultaneously.

Just to observe that "the younger audience for jazz" ought to include any newcomers to Jazz music, or people wanting to broaden their acquaintance with Jazz. I recall as a youngster, I was knocked out by Les Double Six and Swingle Singers - nowadays they seem old-hat.

And I can't help feeling Jazz has given itself a stone to roll up a mountain side, without ever getting to the top, by the need to be "progressive". Good music does not need to progress anywhere.

The thing is, for me, jazz at its most authentic is progressive - not by choice, but by virtue of its origins and the circumstances in which it evolved.

That evolution came about by black musicians, who were more in the forefont, taking on their musical heritage's non-recognition by the Establishment and its artistic and ideological apologists in America and in other countries such as the UK. These countries, culturally and psychologically, have never really come to grips with the fallout from Empire. The way their challengers in the jazz tradition took this whole artistic and cultural apology for advanced civilisation, which had been in part challenged by artistic modernism in painting, sculpture, literature and music, but not as regards race (and gender for that matter), was by saying, yes, this music by Debussy, Stravinsky, Bartok, the Second Viennese School, Ives, Cage and co. evolves by virtue of the evolution of its components, and in so doing expresses what was hitherto unexpressed or only inadequately expressed by the language of the music, which in turn was inseparable from the instruments making it, and the background and education of the people playing those instruments. These advances were acknowledged and respected for the gains that successive generations of composers and those playing their music had achieved, while at the same time critiqueing its exclusivity and surrounding ethos.

But - and this is the main thing - because the black musicians developing their music in times of struggle for equality and equal recognition were progressing their music along similar lines - acquiring reading and writing skills, more harmonic and rhythmic sophistication and complexity - a certain point was reached at which they could turn round to the "accepted" academic concert tradition with its ideals borne of Europe's and America's cultural claim to the "top" (to which by default you refer), and say to its assumed superiority and its followers, we are taking you on; we are showing you we can progress out musical art form the way you have, by developing those aspects of it which are crying out for expansion... but doing it on our own terms, the terms as they evolve in our music..

And how has this come about? The progress I see had to be struggled for, between older generations who'd become exhausted and bereft of new ideas and resented new generations taking up what had been their cudgels. In the process some of the older generation were rejuvenated - Coleman Hawkins comes most immediately to my mind.

I would argue that it has come about by virtue of and through the improvisatory aspect of the music, whose developmental possibilities (for pushing the music forward) were always there in the way in which the essentially co-operative character of jazz led to different ways of musicians working on their bit of the musical equation interacting, supporting each other and making room for each to have his or her say, developing the narrative in ways that can never been completely forseen, initially over chord changes based on how they understood European harmonies and find ways to adapt variational forms, later sometimes rejecting them in the search for new harmonies or ways of connecting that are to do with the way black music traditions express themselves vocally through instruments, or seeking to re-establish ways of which their forbears had been deprived recognition, payment or performing space, or creating convivial contexts with audiences, as opposed one the one hand to the distanced musician/audience interaction mediated by composer score and conductor, and on the other by the standardising pressures of a commodified world of music as a profitable industry holding the music back and weakening its spirit.

I think that just about sums up why jazz is "progressive", as long as societies remain divided and people's capacities under-utilised. As John Stevens said (in so many words!): the reason we're still doing this is because the world still seems to need it.

[Ian Thumwood]

SA

I agree to a point but I also think that music should be seen as a puzzle or a bit of problem solving. This is a really strong thread throughout musical development in Classical music and jazz. Whilst you may be correct for the period up until the 1970s, how do you account for the development of jazz since the 1980's ? Project your ideas of innovation through to the last 30 odd years and your argument loses traction. The "problem solving" element of the music during this period has been much more of a driving force. I am also not sure that refracting left-wing philosophy really works in reality with a lot of jazz pre-Parker. How much did Ellington need to struggle to get his music across ? Probably not a lot. SOmeone like Benny Goodman , who grew up in grinding poverty, was probably unfortunate like many of his colleagues during the Great Depression but he emerged in the late 1930s and in to the early 194os with either the most culturally significant big band of that era or a small group in the 1940s that pointed the way ahead to the future.

The social struggles are certainly less today than back in jazz's heyday and the general absence of jazz from popular culture is more demonstrative that the public definitely does not feel that it needs jazz! By merely looking at jazz through the prism of the period 1920 - 1970 you totally forget that the music has existed for almost as long a period after it's alleged heyday. There have been some major advances in the music, both from a technical point of view with instrumental capability and from a compositional where writing has come on leaps and bounds. However, I don't think that you can really overlook technology as being an influence too (starting with electric guitars) and don't think you can argue that Collier's use of computer software to multi-track his voice and use some quite complex harmonies is not an innovation. There are interesting changes afoot in music. A singer I spoke to a few weeks ago who attended Berkeley explained that it is now electronic / computer studies which are dominating music now. You may not like the results (can't say I am too big a fan) but I think IT is very much of "the now" and should not be overlooked. I think that by reflecting upon "Black Culture" you are right to highlight that this has been the essential ingredient in the 20th century but it you want to extend your argument further, in this century the innovations that this is generating now is all centred around popular culture with the likes of J Dilla being perhaps as influential as Miles Davis, to be provocative !! Luckily there is a myriad of direction in which jazz is going at the moment and you can make your own choice what you choose to follow.