Dumama don't allow no clarinet playin' here

[Serial_Apologist]

Sat 7 March
5pm - J to Z

The programme that everybody loves. Everybody on here, that is.

On the eve of International Women's Day, Jumoké Fashola celebrates women in jazz. She is joined in session by vocalist and violinist Alice Zawadski, whose latest album, Within You is a World of Spring, draws from folk, alt-rock and other genres.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000g4w4

12midnight - Freeness

Corey Mwamba with improvisatory explorations within African avant-garde music, featuring a collaboration between South African musician Gugulethu Duma (aka Dumama) and Algerian-German composer and musician Kechou. Plus driving grooves from the new release by Wildflower and an electro-acoustic piece by Russian musician Ilia Belorukov, who makes music with percussion, field recordings and samples.

Wildflower is a trio including flautist Idris Rahman, who I believe is the brother of the well-known pianist Zoe Rahman.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000g4wb

Sun 8 March
4pm - Jazz Record Requests
Alyn Shipton presents requests for music by female composers, among them Mary Lou Williams, Peggy Lee, Geri Allen, Carla Bley and Maria Schneider.

http://www.alynshipton.co.uk/blog

People might want to stay tuned for The Listening Service which immediately follows JRR - Tom Service on the Helsinki-born woman composer Kaija Saariaho - whose music harks back to the halcyon period when most modern contemporary music sounded unambiguously modern, and sported a good, er, finish.

Next Tuesday's Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert, starting at 1pm, concludes with a selection of Chick Corea's Children's Songs, performed by pianist Gabriela Montero.

And at 9.30pm Radio 4 features the first of four programmes titled New Weird Britain - nothing to do with Boris Johnson or Priti Patel, but, it says:
Urban Hinterlands. John Doran goes in search of an underground movement of musicians blossoming in the margins of Britain. Today he seeks out the musicians who are managing to cling on to the edgelands of big cities.

I missed this the first time around. Maybe it will include the man whose name I forget who composed electronic music by recording the wailing sounds given off by barbed wire. These sounds are actually the ghost echoes of victims who died entangled, trying to gain political asylum in neighbouring pastures, and whose skeletons, some of them still wearing old school ties, weren't discovered until thousands of years after.

[Ian Thumwood]

Well, JRR looks extremely promising as I am a huge fan of four of the musicians listed. A bit sad to read in a recent interview that Carla Bley was finding it difficult to acquire the finance to front her big band. I would have thought that the commissioned would have flooded in. Not quite sure how this actually works and who approaches who in these circumstances. For anyone unaware of her music, Maria Schneider is something special.

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, JRR looks extremely promising as I am a huge fan of four of the musicians listed. A bit sad to read in a recent interview that Carla Bley was finding it difficult to acquire the finance to front her big band. I would have thought that the commissioned would have flooded in. Not quite sure how this actually works and who approaches who in these circumstances. For anyone unaware of her music, Maria Schneider is something special.

I wonder which four.....! For me the Bobby Wellins track will be prime listening, not having heard this particular album before. Wellins is most often associated with Stan Tracey, and especially for that particular recording. "Starless and Bible Black" may well have formed the main impression of the "Wellins approach" in the public's mind, but with time, for me, that musical relationship yielded less in musical terms than as likened to a family re-union - rather as has Andy Sheppard's get-togethers with Carla Bley and Steve Swallow: I find it hard to believe that particular relationship has been going now for 25 years? For what it's worth I happen to think Wellins brought the best out of himself in the most challenging company he surrounded himself with - particularly that late 1970s/early '80s line-up with Pete Jacobsen, Spike Wells and the Brighton bassist and considerable jazz organiser on the south coast Adrian Kendon. Liam Noble is, like the late and hugely missed Pete Jacobsen, one with the gift to provoke the best out of any front line man or woman; Dave Wickens, too, is sadly no more. Like Dick Heckstall-Smith, who declared that he always liked to surround hiself with musicians who would bring out the best of himself, Bobby's most congenial surroundings were people who stretched both his ideas and his response-abilities, in contrast with others (including many famous ones) being more in the way of initiators.

The other track I want to hear is the Mike Gibbs one. For some reason I have never obtained a copy of that particular recording - considered by some as being Gibbs's most completely realised of all his recordings, and for me the one where he sounded most "himself". And what a line-up!

Oh, and there's 'Umph's "Bad Penny Blues" - 4 minutes that awakened a good many to be famous one day!

[Alyn_Shipton]

S-A I believe you are looking at the listing for last week's programme which has already been broadcast. Ian (correctly) is looking at this Sunday's IWD list...
However I agree with you about Bobby. Always enjoyed that band with Pete, Spike and Adrian, but also he did some cracking duos in his last few years here in Oxford with Liam Noble. On another note...I was lucky enough to play a bit with him and Dave Wickens back in the 70s - they were very kind to a student bassist who really didn't know very much about anything.

[Serial_Apologist]

S-A I believe you are looking at the listing for last week's programme which has already been broadcast. Ian (correctly) is looking at this Sunday's IWD list...
However I agree with you about Bobby. Always enjoyed that band with Pete, Spike and Adrian, but also he did some cracking duos in his last few years here in Oxford with Liam Noble. On another note...I was lucky enough to play a bit with him and Dave Wickens back in the 70s - they were very kind to a student bassist who really didn't know very much about anything.

Is your new list not yet up, Alyn?

As you were: I see it now is. Putting the Boutté in would have made a much better heading for me this week! I was out last Sunday - must give that JRR a listen.

"Tideway", by the way, is the name of Norma Winstone's house in Deal.

[Ian Thumwood]

The tracks on JRR were terrific but the Maria Schneider recording was absolutely incredible.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Yep, it was another very fine program. Thanks again Alyn for our mention at the top of the Mary Lou track, intriguing harmonies at the start of that . Also enjoyed the Carla Bley/ Swallow duo, not those I usually get too enthused about.

[Ian Thumwood]

The only track I was not so enthused with was the Ake Takase record. I quite like her work with David Murray so was a little surprised by the choice played this evening even though I have to say I like to hear more edgy stuff on JRR.

It is quite interesting to see just how many of the composers chosen are generally more associated with big bands. Schneider, Bley and Williams are generally more associated with this style of jazz or at least composition. The Anat Cohen disc is the third one she has made with a larger ensemble but this is the only one I never bought. She strikes me as someone who has invigorated the more Mainstream element of jazz in it's original sense. I don't think she writes the arrangements though. Her choice of material is really eclectic and includes music by the likes of Benny Goodman but is equally likely to include material by Egberto Gismonti or Hermeto Pascoal.

[Quarky]

People might want to stay tuned for The Listening Service which immediately follows JRR - Tom Service on the Helsinki-born woman composer Kaija Saariaho - whose music harks back to the halcyon period when most modern contemporary music sounded unambiguously modern, and sported a good, er, finish.

I did stay tuned, but regretted it. All too often, it's Tom Service plus musical accompaniment.

However he, together with KM, have improved on New Music Show.

The positive comments on JRR are agreed.

No comments yet on Freeness - I'll have to listen again.

[Serial_Apologist]

No comments yet on Freeness - I'll have to listen again.

A slight problem for me with Freeness is that improvised music in general does not lend itself so easily to the short track listening experience as jazz, with its self-contained, self-sufficient forms.

I think this, alongside the lack of adequate contextualisation in the announcements, could pose problems for the newcomer. This worries me to the extent that the genre (if I may use the term) already gets little exposure in any of the media.

[Quarky]

A slight problem for me with Freeness is that improvised music in general does not lend itself so easily to the short track listening experience as jazz, with its self-contained, self-sufficient forms.

I think this, alongside the lack of adequate contextualisation in the announcements, could pose problems for the newcomer. This worries me to the extent that the genre (if I may use the term) already gets little exposure in any of the media.

Although I have been listening to improvised music for quite a while, I wouldn't regard myself as far away from the newcomer's experiences.

Listening repeatedly to this episode of Freeness, the base requirement IMV is total 100% concentration . Then you might get somewhere! Currently my favourite track is Stillefelt, where the musicians responded to each other closely, followed by Dumama and Park Van Lau. But each track had its interest.

The programme is a mix of shortish tracks admittedly, but to that extent it is no different from much of The New Music Show. Jumping from one track to the next requires an effort, but I'm not sure that fewer and longer tracks, which I assume is what you are suggesting, would help my limited attention span!

[Serial_Apologist]

Although I have been listening to improvised music for quite a while, I wouldn't regard myself as far away from the newcomer's experiences.

Listening repeatedly to this episode of Freeness, the base requirement IMV is total 100% concentration . Then you might get somewhere! Currently my favourite track is Stillefelt, where the musicians responded to each other closely, followed by Dumama and Park Van Lau. But each track had its interest.

The programme is a mix of shortish tracks admittedly, but to that extent it is no different from much of The New Music Show. Jumping from one track to the next requires an effort, but I'm not sure that fewer and longer tracks, which I assume is what you are suggesting, would help my limited attention span!

Music offers a similar experience to meditation, inasmuch as one switches off mentation so as not to miss any passing event or at least reduces the thinking process to the very minimum. The bringing of oneself literally to ones senses is most often experienced by most people when confronted with immediate danger, for which an instantaneous response has to be called up for reasons of survival. The Buddha, whose existence seems to have been dedicated to this sort of stuff, is said in one anecdote to have contrasted the achievement of present-centred consciousness to a person shot through the heart by an arrow who refuses to have it removed until he is fully informed of everything he wants to know about his assailant's possible motivations. In various accounts of taking up meditation the emphasis usually placed on the process of stilling the mind assumes that novices will find this difficult on the grounds of being unable to concentrate while thinking about concentration: ie the old adage about a medecine not being effective as long as one thinks about a pink elephant when taking it. Other stories speak of experienced meditators succeeding in obtaining instantaneous present-centred consciousness (Samadhi) without needing to go through any preliminary disciplines.

It's horses for courses, though, isn't it? It seems to me that where listening to purely improvised music differs from jazz listening consists in the expectation, in jazz, of a theme being presented and followed by soloists or groups of musicians improvising on that theme while sticking to its general co-ordinates, whereas in free improv the musicians feel their way through a collective dialogue without musical pre-conditions. The conditions may be other than musical, per se. The extent to which the resulting discourse departs from gestures familiar to the listener from other contexts can occupy a space somewhere between knowns and unknowns, and here the famous known unknowns and unknown unknowns come into play according to the recipient's past experiences - but context also plays its part in another sense, namely that the improvising musician is culture-bound to bring into his or her contribution gestures or clichés from the kinds of music to which he, she and indeed all of us, are subject all the time through habit and expectation creation.

The kinds of improvised music that most attract me personally are those in which the musician(s) limber up in an initial search for common ground. There are other kinds of improv in which the musicians launch without any kind of pre-preparation, tacit or otherwise, into a sort of collective maelstrom in which what comes out is left in the lap of the gods. Some people really get off on this kind of thing - I'm thinking of Peter Brotzmann as being archetypal of this kind of approach - as can be judged from the whoops and ear-splitting audience whistles that seem determined to out-compete it. I would guess there to be unresolved anger management issues at play here which bring audience members into common cause with the performance. It's not my scene, and nowadays I prefer to avoid it rather than treat such occasions as some kind of masochistic self-testing ground - like this, if anything, is going to strengthen me in preparation for any experience, however terrifying or life-threatening, which shouldn't be permitted in any kind of civilisation. For me, the underpinning of such music by heavy regular rhythmic repetition seems more akin to some kind of primal scream inducement, intentional or not a form of sensory engulfment by means of assault, parallelling the above-described imposition of danger, which you won't find in even the most vigorously energised straight ahead or even free jazz.

I've always been against sensory engulfment by sheer sensory overload eclipsing the thinking process by obliteration, as in dance, or rave music and light shows, etc. There would seem to be something fascistic about such performance scenarios that goes even further than the robotic military beat. In Vietnam they blasted Wagner at the Viet-Cong to disorientate them before napalming them - heavy metal rock was similarly used in Panama to oust that renegade dictator. I suppose what I am trying to say is that the latter seems fundamentally to represent the opposite of the kind of unifying listenening/acting experience that can transport performer and listener into "higher realms" undamaged, physically or psychologically.

[Ian Thumwood]

I think Joe might find this article about jazz-rock interesting:-

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/cold-fusion-the-search-for-the-jazz-rock-unicorn-part-1

It is quite predictable and names the usual suspects without really addressing the fundamental problems with the idea of blending jazz with rock nor the breadth of the music which will has quite a lot of traction today even if it does cover a wide range of bases. I feel that to link the movement ultimately descending into "Smooth jazz" is a bit of a cop out for me. Setting aside the fact that no one really considers this dross to be jazz and most people think of it as instrumental pop music, I always feel that the problem with jazz-rock / fusion is far wider. There are plenty of musicians with decent jazz credentials who I feel go for the FM-friendly option who do not really get mentioned in these kinds of articles. I am thinking about musicians like Jim Beard, Randy Brecker, Mike Stern, Gary Husband, Richard Bona, Marcus Miller, etc who can be ok in concert (I have actually really enjoyed Marcus Miller whenever I have heard his bands perform live) yet I feel this stuff is often produced with airplay on mind, even when the music is pretty clever. I feel that you can throw criticism as this music as being slick, over-produced , undemanding, etc at it and I think sometimes these punches often land. There is also a tendency to have an almost built-in obsolescence in it. I am afraid to say that I feel this way about the Allan Holdsworth stuff posted on here. I do not mind it to listen to and do not find it objectionable yet is sounds old-fashioned with the keyboard sounds as dated as the fashion sense on the album covers. There is so much of this stuff still being issued but it doesn't seem to get any mention in the article.

There are players who have taken a rock / funk influence who I feel have managed to bridge the divide but largely because the stronger element in the music is the spirit of free jazz. There are players like John Scofield who use funk elements but he approaches the music from the combined influences of B B King and Ornette Coleman which gives his stuff far more credibility than the Allan Holdsworth stuff. Likewise there are other musicians like Sonny Sharrock who have absolutely nailed a blend of Coltrane - meets-Hendrix. You would also have to add Ornette's "Prime Time." I think the best attempt to blend rock and jazz in the last 20 -odd years has been MM&W who cover a wide range of bases inckuding out and out free improvisation as well as covering pieces by the likes of the Rev Gary Davis.

[Joseph K]

I think Joe might find this article about jazz-rock interesting:-

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/cold-fusion-the-search-for-the-jazz-rock-unicorn-part-1

It is quite predictable and names the usual suspects without really addressing the fundamental problems with the idea of blending jazz with rock nor the breadth of the music which will has quite a lot of traction today even if it does cover a wide range of bases. I feel that to link the movement ultimately descending into "Smooth jazz" is a bit of a cop out for me. Setting aside the fact that no one really considers this dross to be jazz and most people think of it as instrumental pop music, I always feel that the problem with jazz-rock / fusion is far wider. There are plenty of musicians with decent jazz credentials who I feel go for the FM-friendly option who do not really get mentioned in these kinds of articles. I am thinking about musicians like Jim Beard, Randy Brecker, Mike Stern, Gary Husband, Richard Bona, Marcus Miller, etc who can be ok in concert (I have actually really enjoyed Marcus Miller whenever I have heard his bands perform live) yet I feel this stuff is often produced with airplay on mind, even when the music is pretty clever. I feel that you can throw criticism as this music as being slick, over-produced , undemanding, etc at it and I think sometimes these punches often land. There is also a tendency to have an almost built-in obsolescence in it. I am afraid to say that I feel this way about the Allan Holdsworth stuff posted on here. I do not mind it to listen to and do not find it objectionable yet is sounds old-fashioned with the keyboard sounds as dated as the fashion sense on the album covers. There is so much of this stuff still being issued but it doesn't seem to get any mention in the article.

There are players who have taken a rock / funk influence who I feel have managed to bridge the divide but largely because the stronger element in the music is the spirit of free jazz. There are players like John Scofield who use funk elements but he approaches the music from the combined influences of B B King and Ornette Coleman which gives his stuff far more credibility than the Allan Holdsworth stuff. Likewise there are other musicians like Sonny Sharrock who have absolutely nailed a blend of Coltrane - meets-Hendrix. You would also have to add Ornette's "Prime Time." I think the best attempt to blend rock and jazz in the last 20 -odd years has been MM&W who cover a wide range of bases inckuding out and out free improvisation as well as covering pieces by the likes of the Rev Gary Davis.

I haven't yet read the article, but I take issue with much of what you say here, starting with this:

'no one really considers this dross to be jazz'

Since when did a music's jazziness - or lack thereof - become a value judgement? I have elsewhere seen you praise music as 'genuine' jazz. It's weird, I don't think you'd find any fan of another genre who would praise or denigrate music according to how well it holds up to some arbitrary standard that epitomises how generic it is. Or something like that anyway.

'There are players who have taken a rock / funk influence who I feel have managed to bridge the divide but largely because the stronger element in the music is the spirit of free jazz. There are players like John Scofield who use funk elements but he approaches the music from the combined influences of B B King and Ornette Coleman which gives his stuff far more credibility than the Allan Holdsworth stuff.'

If Holdsworth lacks credibility it's only because he's so incredible! Plus there are elements of free jazz in Holdsworth's playing, just look over on the Holdsworth thread.

Also, I'd say Holdsworth's harmonic palette and long-flowing lines are more reminiscent of Coltrane than Sonny Sharrock (or 'Ask the Ages' which is the only thing of his I've listened to).

The rest of your post is not interesting e.g. utilising electronic keyboards - what's the issue with that? Why are some timbres dated while others are not? Why do electronic keyboards get it in the neck but not electric guitars (presumably).

[Joseph K]

I've always been against sensory engulfment by sheer sensory overload eclipsing the thinking process by obliteration, as in dance, or rave music and light shows, etc. There would seem to be something fascistic about such performance scenarios that goes even further than the robotic military beat.

The fascism/rave connection is one I've thought myself. I concede that. But I would say that the experience becomes an experience when MDMA etc. is thrown into the mix. But then I would aver that MDMA is wasted on a club experience... much better to take it and experience Coltrane's Interstellar Space!

So why did I spend the best part of half a decade going to dance music raves? Well, there is a sense of camaraderie at such things... at least amongst certain people. Sometimes the music sounded good. But generally I disapprove of treating music - and, remember, this is music that one can 'take a break from' as funny as that sounds, by going to an outside smoking area - as a background thing but which is a really really loud background thing.

But, on the other hand, I mean, it's dance music, party music, something to spend the whole night doing, so these criticisms sort of miss the point, the raison d'étre of the music, which obviously is not as lofty as Bach, Coltrane or Miles - indeed, is not in the slightest bit lofty, in fact, it's pretty well underground - but serves a purpose, it has a function.

… But I still say that this purpose is definitely inferior to taking lots of euphoria-inducing drugs and listening to music that is already euphoric and intense, like Interstellar Space. I mean, drugs are there to enhance the senses, and I do consider that one of the first times I took MDMA and listening to Interstellar Space to be the most euphoric experience of my life. The intensity of the come-up on the big MDMA crystal I'd had about half-hour previously synergised with listening to the album on my CD Walkman whilst walking at night.

While EDM is or appears to me at least to be unsubtle, relentless and trashy... it's deliberately four-square and predictable. It's mind-numbing stuff. And I'd say for some people is echoed in a wrong attitude towards drugs - of overuse and habituation... (best ending it there since I keep typing stuff and deleting it!)