Why Jazz Matters
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.
What then is to be the stance of Radio 3 to Jazz?
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.
What then is to be the stance of Radio 3 to Jazz?
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