Why is the new European Jazz ashamed of it's Black American roots?

[Serial_Apologist]

Just a nice lad showing off on the piano.

All the grimacing (minus yelps) brought Keith Jarrett on one of his solo voyages to mind for me - another one who goes in for lengthy ostinati.

[Lateralthinking1]

Thought I would give these clips a go. Just a few, less than well informed, impressions.

I see the phrase 'Modern European Jazz' and start with a few assumptions. It will be airy, easily accessible, possibly a bit boring two or three minutes in although the better stuff will retain atmosphere and hence hold attention. A zone in which I expect youngsters to have a least as much pretension as talent. And New Age like!!!

Hamasyan has a beautiful tone to his playing. It suggests class but I'm not sure he is quite there yet. He is also to my mind very irritating indeed to watch. The second clip was much better than the first. I couldn't believe how plodding the other musicians were in the former. A rock band hinting that they might break into funk, never doing so and sounding like a metronome. It might have worked had there been any sense of tension but there wasn't.

The latter clip begins classically and then becomes more what I would hear as jazz. Is that the illusion of the title? If so, that's another problem. In both the clips, I get the impression that there just isn't enough imagination in the gimmickry. He would be far better off without it but perhaps he worries about then being just light.

The Danielsson clip was nice. I doubt that is enough. An above par new age piece that belongs firmly in the 1990s which presumably isn't where it was born. For a musical magpie, there is absolutely no need to fight to get into it unlike areas of be-bop and more traditional jazz improvisation, for good and for bad.

And I think that's it really. With this modern European stuff, I start with a feeling of "I think I am going to like this piece". Sometimes I then do. Often it is a disappointment. Elsewhere I might often begin with an "I don't think I am going to like this" and then stick with it finding that actually I do like it. That is, as long as I can find some sort of connection with a part of its colour and complexity so that I then wish to follow it through.

[Ian Thumwood]

Lateral

I think Hamasyan is thinking about the music in an original fashion and his sets also involve him singing along with the music using wordless vocals and the effect can be erie. I doubt if there is anyone else using Armenian influences in jazz. The difficulty for me is that if you start to take other influences that owe nothing to jazz's black heritage you are on sticky territory. It is interestign to compare this work with John Surman whose influences similar involve a large chunk of folk music yet, as was proved at the gig I went to hear him perform in June, the underlying influence in his baritone playing in particular is Sonny Rollins. Surman's generation of player seems to me to be firmly anchored in the roots of what jazz is all about and I very much felt the same when I heard Enrico Rava and Aldo Romano play this month. These are all European musicians who seem to understand where jazz comes from.

An interesting point that I picked up on during the brilliant BBC 3 documentary last Monday regarding racism in football which was prompted by the recent furore with John Terry and , to a degree, with the Liverpool vindication of Suarez which, I feel, should have resulted in a fine and points deduction for Liverpool. Several black players were interviewed and all commented that they had little experience of racism in the game. Indeed, the whole issue seems to have been trivialised by the tweets of Rio Ferdinand and Ashley Cole which get reported in the papers despite the fact that neither player is a shining beacon within the game. All told, PFA Chairman Clark Carlisle proved to be an eloquent and intelligent commentator and perhaps better reflects the kid of personality who commands respect that we should be looking out for in the sport. However, it was a comedienne who made a remark which I felt was extremely salient and this was that whilst many protagonists may no longer make blatant racist remarks, there is still an underlaying latent racist aspect in the sport. The issue of not interviewing black candidates for managers was identified although the comedienne's comment about football commentators describing African national teams as being niave. I felt that was a brilliant observation - especially as so many of these players now perform for some of the best teams in Europe. In conclusion, it was stated that white people may no longer make blatant racist remarks, but their behaviour, conduct and sub-consciousness is still racist even if they may not totally be aware of the fact.

I turned the TV off after watching this programme and found that it was so powerful that I have been discussing it eslewhere on a football forum I also like to comment on. This ultimately made me think how you might judge those musicians who work in jazz but make a conscious effort not to follow the Afro-American root. In their favour, I commend these players for being original but how far within their subconscious is the thought as to why they have taken such a decision with their direction in music. I acknowledge that the music almost by definition much change but I wonder how much the European perspective of jazz would stand up to a similar degree of investigation carried out by Clark Carlisle last week. By the definitions of Carlisle's documentary, is European jazz racist - especially in those countries where there has been no multi-culturism.

[Serial_Apologist]

white people may no longer make blatant racist remarks, but their behaviour, conduct and sub-consciousness is still racist even if they may not totally be aware of the fact.

I turned the TV off after watching this programme and found that it was so powerful that I have been discussing it eslewhere on a football forum I also like to comment on. This ultimately made me think how you might judge those musicians who work in jazz but make a conscious effort not to follow the Afro-American root. In their favour, I commend these players for being original but how far within their subconscious is the thought as to why they have taken such a decision with their direction in music. I acknowledge that the music almost by definition much change but I wonder how much the European perspective of jazz would stand up to a similar degree of investigation carried out by Clark Carlisle last week. By the definitions of Carlisle's documentary, is European jazz racist - especially in those countries where there has been no multi-culturism.

My assessment would be that by absorbing non-black, non-American influences, European jazz exponents. far from disowning the roots of the music, aren't racist by attitude, thought or practice. Quite the reverse. In bebop's early days here, many of the white British exponents claimed that the race issue never arose in their considerations when working with black musicians like Joe Harriott and Harry Beckett; their respect for them was as individuals and musicians of calibre. One well-known bass player expressed his disappointment in Gary Crosby's and Courtney Pine's establishment of The Jazz Warriors in the late '80s as an institution specifically geared to introducing young black musicians to the practices and models of jazz and creating a British black jazz scene. Posters may remember the controversy surrounding the fact that the contemporary Loose Tubes did not include any black musicians, although it may be remembered that many of the musicians who came to prominence out of the JW soon established unproblematic working relations with white British musicians.

What I think was important was the social and political phenomenon of black British musicians establishing a footing in jazz. One of the problems to be overcome was established indigenous musicians who regarded their black colleagues as "just good musicians" failing to acknowledge their disproportionately small number in jazz in this country. In the 70s blacks here had got shunted into restrictive roles by the music business: black music was "dance music", with image tied to the two main categories engineered by business promotion, reggae or soul. The few contemporaries of Joe Harriott who sought to challenge the stereotypying, such as Rico Rodrigues, put their creative individuality as erstwhile jazz improvisers into reggae, or ended up playing wine bars until Gary Crosby came along and said, look, something must be done about this. Inevitably some of the young players gravitated towards American models, having no historical continuum with the Surmans and Tippetts who were unselfconsciously making an English form of jazz. Jazz is a form and ethos of performance involving an instantaneous degree of interactiveness in performance unequalled in any other branch of Western music, mostly and notably without resort to a conductor - contextualised, its forms and formats, derived ultimately from the meetings and schisms between races of African and European descent in and around the Mississippi Delta, comprise an aesthetic socio-political phenomenon constantly pressed upon our awareness by virtue of the still unresolved situation of racial inequality. It retains its ethos in taking on influences beyond those original to itself on its own terms - spirituals, blues, European instruments, harmonies, notations, Debussy, Stravinsky, abstraction, electronics, Spain, Africa, Latin America, English, Irish, Scottish, Scandinavian and Armenian folk idioms.

My argument is essentially that jazz evolved to the point at which it was capable of taking unto itself idioms and genres existent in their own right, but, most importantly, on jazz's own terms. This represents, as it were, an internationalist, universalising trait that was intrinsic to jazz from the very start, when black and white musicians playing each others musical dialects in vital interaction with each other, and audiences, created a dialect of individual/collective expression that stands in autonomous relationship with more heavily promoted and/or subsidised forms. If and when discrimination against blacks ceases, jazz will continue as an aesthetically valid way for people to play music together, primarily, as an alternative to the sausage machine of examinations and competitions, the sad route to classical professionalism.

[Ian Thumwood]

SA

I think you have presented a very good argument and I agree totally about jazz finding inspiration from outside it's own traditions. However, I feel that some branches of jazz in Europe are now starting to think along their own terms and the medias haven't helped by promoting jazz which is celebrated for merely being different as opposed to actually saying something. For me, one of the prime people to blame for this is Stuart Nicholson although I find another writer, John Kelman, equally unjusdemental. (albeit I find him to be a true gent whenever I have debated things with him online!) It is a bit disappointing to see some European acts lauded when they are prettyaverage.

The point I initially made in the original post wasn't something I came to myself but was prompted by two separate conversations that I was party to. Both expressed concern that the music was sounding increasingly limited as the improvisation was based on loops of short measures. The other was prompted about the desire to employ odd time signatures which discouraged more traditional (i.e. Armstrong - Coltrane) notions of swing. The latter comment was made by a friend who idolises Tony Williams, a drummer who was a creative force in how swing was defined.

For all the many changes that seems to take play in European jazz ( you just have to think about the kind of stuff put out by ECM and ACT or artists as diverse as EST, Polar Bear or St Etienne), the music seems merely modish and there are no major league improvisors of the calibre that hae emerged across the pond during this period. Taking American examples from the last twenty years as diverse as Dave Douglas, Chris Potter, Ambrose Akinsire, Vijay Iyer, Danilo Prerz, or Jason Moran, the European model seems deficient every time. That said, those European players who emerged in the 69's now seem even more precious and significant that ever. The curious point is that the comments I heard about the convervastoire at Lyon was that the jazz courses there were encouraging a more Euro-centric approach. The upshot of my argumeent is that perhaps you ignore the "cultural" element of jazz at your peril - the further you depart, the less successfuly the music is an credible jazz. I would put it to you that the simplification of jazz as an instrument for exploring time signatures or a mininalst approach to form is not where the music is likely to be "happening" in the future. Granted, the likes of Keith Jarrett have had success at simplifying the music but he is still honest to the origins of the music. Dilute jazz too much and it doesn't really amount to much.

[Lateralthinking1]

Ian and S-A

I can't do justice to the last three very fine posts, given my comparatively poor knowledge. I am also pretty tired tonight so I might come back with more later. For now, I welcome from a political angle any debate about serious racism and relatively trivial racism. Many run away from it when it should simply be a natural development of 20th Century change. There is a question to be asked about whether spats, which are understandably meaningful to those involved, prevent further enlightenment and concrete reform. I doubt too that any smugness about how far we have come should be permitted to be unchallenged as it is currently.

I am firmly of the view that while most people in most countries have many reasons to be critical of their national arrangements, condemnation of indigenous culture, valid as it often is in artistic terms, is not a good way of addressing race issues. I have got myself into hot water on this point with acts as diverse as Gilad Atzmon who is not a fan of his own country and Show of Hands, who didn't please everyone by waving the English flag. I would prefer English folk music to have the ability to be white and yet non-racist, not least because it embraces universal themes, and also to be able to incorporate all elements of what makes us British now without being marketed as some kind of novelty, eg The Imagined Village. As for Atzmon, well perhaps he isn't the best example in this discussion because I would contend that his statements tend to be more in his words and less in his music. If you vehemently disagree, and think his music is defiantly non-racist, do let me know. If not, are non-musical statements sufficient?

But then one turns to a Tigran Hamasyan. There you have Armenia but so you do too with, say, Djivan Gasparyan. When it comes to world music, I don't think anyone is going to say in a convincing way that the Armenian musical tradition is racist, any more than one might be able to argue that Archie Roach, by being Aboriginal, is an Australian racist. What are we to make of Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou? Is she in the African-American tradition more than she is Ethiopian? Surely there is an example of contrasting meanings of black and meanings of roots. Things get quite complex at that point. It seems to me that it is the historical roots of jazz which lead, if not uniquely then not at all typically, to a discussion about race purely on the axis white versus black. In some ways it reminds me of McCartney's assurances that the Beatles were essentially rock n roll and Motown.

I am not quite sure where you are going with Polar Bear and St Etienne but I recognise them, albeit with some merit, as faddish. I would do the same with Light of the World or Galliano who might in their day have spoken to me of jazz just a tad more. Certainly black artists who collaborate with white artists to cover Neil Young with jazz hints represent a development of sorts but it isn't a development of the African-American roots of jazz. Soweto Kinch, of whom we have spoken before, might have a better claim but there is a lot of hip-hop in there, whatever his journey to Ronnie Scotts. What I note though is that it is the Iyers and the Akinsires who do well in the critics lists. This follows the historical pattern. At one point we were trying for a thread on Dutch jazz. It is rich and varied but how many names trip off the tongue? Could it be that there has, rightly or wrongly, been a bias against Eurocentrism rather than vice versa? One could argue that the Europeans now are simply establishing some balance.

There is surely an argument for jazz, unlike folk, to roam wherever it wishes, for the listener to decide on its authenticity, for any decision to be based on the value an individual wishes to place on roots or calling it pure? I should have thought so. World music can do that too but arguably it is rather more hampered by expectations in regard to tradition. My major concern with all of these genres, while attempting to grapple with the different ways in which they develop, is not that they go off in a myriad of directions. Rather I would hope that when they do so, and no one will stop that, there is still sight of the trunk of the tree, if I can put it in that somewhat crass way. There always needs to be a central reference point and growth needs to come from that too.

Lat

[Serial_Apologist]

Ian and S-A

I can't do justice to the last three very fine posts, given my comparatively poor knowledge. I am also pretty tired tonight so I might come back with more later. For now, I welcome from a political angle any debate about serious racism and relatively trivial racism. Many run away from it when it should simply be a natural development of 20th century change. There is a question to be asked about whether spats, which are understandably meaningful to those involved, prevent further enlightenment and concrete reform. I doubt too that any smugness about how far we have come should be permitted to be unchallenged as it is currently.

Additionally, I am firmly of the view that while most people in most countries have many reasons to be critical of their national arrangements, condemnation of indigenous culture, valid as it often is in artistic terms, is not a good method of addressing race issues. I have got myself into hot water on this point with acts as diverse as Gilad Atzmon and Show of Hands. Obviously I respect alternative viewpoints but this probably comes from the folkier elements in me as well as the worldly ones. I would prefer English folk music to have the ability to be white and yet non-racist, not least because it embraces universal themes, and also to be able to incorporate all elements of what makes us British now without being marketed as some kind of novelty, eg The Imagined Village.

There is a problem for the would-be academic (like me ) who tends to treat new musical developments from the pov of developments intrinsic to the received language, and/or protocols of performance, divorced from "externals".

This is comparatively easy with classical music and jazz, up to a specific stage, perhaps... and it is false. The language of village folk music "prettyfied" to some extent in classical music at the turn of the 20th century by Vaughan Williams and contemporaries, had already been rendered obsolete by the time VW composed "On Wenlock Edge" to words by AE Houseman in 1909. As part of the Arts & Crafts movement, that trend, which lasted up to WW2 at least, and in the past 20 years has been revived, in the New Ruralists school of English painters, and today in the opening celebrations of the Olympic Games, wipes both the whole history of white urban working class contributions to folklore, and Britain's becoming a multicultural melting pot. "Externals" have become an over-determinant factor (note, not over-determining) in the shaping of how new artistic and musical forms emerge - in many cases short-cutting whatever intrinsic potentials may still have been felt to exist in whatever genres one might put under the artists' or the academician's microscope.

Where it seems to me that this does affect one's perspectives on the preservation of "pure" cultures, comes when evaluating cultural developments in developing countries, and the degree to which one's own perspectives are identified with one's own host culture. Here, I think, "externals" demand making critical choices between those aspects of ones own culture in which mass appeal becomes evermore difficult to dissociate from its promotional interests, since those promotional interests, and the aesthetics reflecting them, are inextricably intertwined with their permeation of once relatively untrammelled, self-determining cultures, evolving at their own pace.

From such a standpoint, jazz - where it remains open to development from within its own processes, unpressurised by market desiderata beyond the basic need to make its makers a decent living - remains a safe bet. The resulting jazz can take on aspects of other musical cultures, and in today's world will probably find it impossible to do otherwise, even if it wished to.

As for Atzmon, well perhaps he isn't the best example in this discussion because I would contend that his statements tend to be more in his words and less in his music. If you vehemently disagree, and think his music is defiantly non-racist, do let me know.

Well Gilad ain't exactly my favourite favoured jazz musician, but he has used many near-Eastern references in his music.

But then one turns to a Tigran Hamasyan. There you have Armenia but so you do too with, say, Djivan Gasparyan. When it comes to world music, I don't think anyone is going to say in a convincing way that the Armenian musical tradition is racist, any more than one might be able to argue that Archie Roach, by being Aboriginal, is an Australian racist. It seems to me that it is the historical roots of jazz which lead, if not uniquely then not at all typically, to a discussion about race purely on the axis white versus black. In some ways it reminds me of McCartney's assurances that the Beatles were essentially rock n roll and Motown.

I am not quite sure where you are going with Polar Bear and St Etienne but I recognise them, albeit with some merit, as faddish. I would do the same with Light of the World or Galliano who might in their day have spoken to me of jazz just a tad more. Certainly black artists who collaborate with white artists to cover Neil Young with jazz hints represent a development of sorts but it isn't a development of the African-American roots of jazz. Soweto Kinch, of whom we have spoken before, might have a better claim but there is a lot of hip-hop in there, whatever his journey with the jazz greats to Ronnie Scotts and beyond. So what next?

I'm afraid you've lost me a little there, Lat .

Isn't there an argument for jazz, unlike folk, to roam where it wishes, for the listener to decide on its authenticity, for any decision to be based on the value an individual wishes to place on roots and call it purity? I should have thought so. To some extent world music can do that too but arguably it is rather more hampered by expectations in regard to tradition. I think my major concern with all of these genres, while attempting to grapple with the different ways in which they develop, is not that they go off in a myriad of directions. Rather I would hope that when they do so, and no one will stop that, there is still sight of the trunk of the tree, if I can put it in that somewhat crass way. There needs to be a central reference point and growth needs to come from that too.

Lat

I think this is essentially right. Where we might (?) get into some difficulties is in deciding in what that "trunk of the tree" consists.

[Lateralthinking1]

S-A - You are definitely more successfully academic than me.

This post is probably an attempt at clarification of earlier points as well as some sort of response. Ian was questioning "how you might judge those musicians who work in jazz but make a conscious effort not to follow the Afro-American root.........I acknowledge that the music almost by definition must change but........is European jazz racist - especially in those countries where there has been no multi-culturalism". He also wrote about contrasts between the extensive coverage of the John Terry incident and the absence of black football managers. I was essentially agreeing that there is much to be said for focussing on the substantial. Dealing with individual playground style cases might look like a society being prepared to get to grips even with the minutiae. It can be something of a smokescreen if far less is done about the bigger picture, ie institutionally.

From that we get to the basic fact that "racism isn't just racism". Rather, there are different depths to it. Beyond that point, we can go quickly to "where is it and where isn't it?", ie can we be more specific about location? That in turn is not far from "what is it?". Jazz was Ian's cultural reference point and that's fine. There's a jazz heritage which is the main yardstick and yet a lot more going on besides. That underpins the idea that race 'rules' are complex. And we get into all kinds of specific issues then. A British black jazz scene, Loose Tubes, and whether it is the skin colour of the participants that matters or their musical loyalty to be bop, swing etc. Whether someone can emerge from Eastern Europe and ever connect with the Afro-American root given that his country has a lousy record on race relations. Whether it hardly matters how or what you play, even if it is Eurocentric, minimalist, and mucking around with time signatures, as long as you wear all the right badges against racism at the same time.

I was trying to build on those issues by adding a few further questions. An Armenian or Australian musician who is not a jazz musician but firmly in the musical tradition of his country can be very much in the business of breaking down racial barriers via his music. Why then should an Armenian or Australian jazz musician be seen as incapable of doing so because he comes from a country which has a bad or indifferent record on race relations? In response, you might ask why it is that his music appears to deconstruct jazz but my answer would be that innovation can be positive, eg it can be simply what it is. You refer to commercialisation which is inevitably a thorn in that particular area, ie you have to ask whether the new art is diluted by a motivation to make big money, but that isn't always the case. And it is generally the case that artists don't devise the labels - European, Eurocentric and so on. Those are economically convenient bandwagons to jump on. They only become a problem if they start to influence direction at root. Even then, that is not in many instances racist. I guess these are some of the "externals" to which you refer.

I can't help but think though that behind the basic question is the age old one about "what is jazz?". Somewhere close to the concerns about possible racism and the obvious commercial aspects of the recent music is a kind of "should I really think about taking this on board if it is so far removed from what appealed to me about the music in the first place?" I also think that there is something about feeling apologetic for being white. My comments about McCartney, which you can set alongside the original position in rock/blues of Jones, Clapton etc, are about the sense in many musicians that white music is popcorn. If your sales have hovered on that cusp, as those of the Beatles did, you might feel a need to accentuate any slight black leanings. While that preciousness is understandable, it is arguably less relevant to multicultural modernism in which many do what they want, mash everything up, and don't give a damn what the music is called. As it happens, Galliano were called an acid jazz group. I was wrong about them covering Neil Young. It was David Crosby but the point remains the same. And you won't accept it as jazz at all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGv3Wswe0U0

I feel that there is something in your arguments about RVW which also allude to the above. We should all have a problem with English folk music if it is simply all basket weaving, warm beer, cricket on the village green and a redoubtable maiden aunt. Vaughan Williams speaks to me of a different kind of romanticism that comes through the landscape. I like it very much. It doesn't speak to me of a rampant nationalism or class difference even if to others it might do. I don't see it as unreal but rather a different form of reality. I don't even think of it as ostensibly white because it doesn't speak to me much of people at all. I recognise it as a strand of folk but folk too can be gritty lyrically and even urban. As for the opening of the Olympic Games, surely nothing of that is in the context of any kind of reality although I am fascinated to see in a cynical way what happens. I suppose what worries me in all of this dialogue is how we should view traditional inuit folk musicians or a classically trained black African musician with jazz stylings if we are to say that all proper music must be a certain shade of black pertaining to key places and specific moments in history.

[Byas'd Opinion]

At the moment I can only offer a collection of isolated thoughts rather than a coherent argument.

1. I was at a solo concert by Tigran Hamasayan at the start of the year. I enjoyed most of it, but I did find myself wondering just how far you could get from the blues and still be regarded as playing jazz. There was definitely more Liszt than Basie in his sound.
2. Gunter Sommer once said in an interview, explaining why he became discontented playing conventional jazz and started experimenting with free improvisation "I was playing Black American music but I wasn't a Black American. I felt like a thief."
3. Two of the most influential jazz musicians of the last 30 years, at least in terms of generating a bunch of soundalikes, are Jan Garbarek and Esbjorn Svenson, both of them European and neither of them displaying many Black American influences in their playing. But I'm not sure how much they've affected the development of jazz on the western side of the Atlantic.
4. Jazz and the blues are further from general UK popular culture than they have been since the sixties. The majority of today's rock bands, I'd argue, didn't spend their teens listening to the blues or even to bands directly influenced by the blues, but to the bands who came after the bands who came after the bands who were listening to the blues. I'm sure this must have some effect on jazz, simply because the blues feel is no longer part of the general musical atmosphere. (I must admit I haven't worked out how hip-hop, today's Black American popular music, fits into this).

[Ian Thumwood]

Some interesting points and interesting to see that you have opened the debate to include Rock music. Listening to any number of white rock bands these days, there is nothing of the blues about their playing but I always felt that the link to this music was tenuous at best anyway - perhaps exluding the Rolling Stones. The problem with white rock music is that it has no groove and is in many ways a parallel in my mind to the kind of difference you had in the 30's with bands such as Basie's and many of the featureless, anonymous white big bands of the same era. Even more than with jazz, take about the black American elements from pop and it is pretty bland. I would rather have Motown than the Beatles any day!

I agree with the point about Garbarek and EST sound-a-likes too but I feel that the former has now successfully parted company with any pretext of being a jazz musician and those musicians like Tommy Smith and Tore Bronberg who followed in his wake don't sound at all "hip" these days. If anything, the feel of the jazz being played has passed them by. No one will remember EST in ten years time.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

As for Atzmon, well perhaps he isn't the best example in this discussion because I would contend that his statements tend to be more in his words and less in his music. If you vehemently disagree, and think his music is defiantly non-racist, do let me know

i might beg to differ quite profoundly with you about Atzmon .... having heard him at three gigs in the last couple of years and scored his albums ...

his improvising is i think masterful ... his politics and analyses of Israeli Arab relationships will not convince or appeal to many but his music is powerful without the prose ... i think especially of his Parker Strings tribute

as well as his Gilad Atzmon &The Orient House Ensemble work



oh and yeah he swings ....

[Lateralthinking1]

i might beg to differ quite profoundly with you about Atzmon .... having heard him at three gigs in the last couple of years and scored his albums ...

his improvising is i think masterful ... his politics and analyses of Israeli Arab relationships will not convince or appeal to many but his music is powerful without the prose ... i think especially of his Parker Strings tribute

as well as his Gilad Atzmon &The Orient House Ensemble work

oh and yeah he swings ....

Thanks Calum for your response to my question which I accept. More broadly, I feel that all the answers to the question in the title of this thread, including mine, still leave a lot of other unanswered questions. Perhaps 'the new European jazz' should not be called jazz at all. In that way, it presumably would be no more racist than, say, Kraftwerk were? Rather it would be rootless.

[cloughie]

Some interesting points and interesting to see that you have opened the debate to include Rock music. Listening to any number of white rock bands these days, there is nothing of the blues about their playing but I always felt that the link to this music was tenuous at best anyway - perhaps exluding the Rolling Stones. The problem with white rock music is that it has no groove and is in many ways a parallel in my mind to the kind of difference you had in the 30's with bands such as Basie's and many of the featureless, anonymous white big bands of the same era. Even more than with jazz, take about the black American elements from pop and it is pretty bland. I would rather have Motown than the Beatles any day!

I agree with the point about Garbarek and EST sound-a-likes too but I feel that the former has now successfully parted company with any pretext of being a jazz musician and those musicians like Tommy Smith and Tore Bronberg who followed in his wake don't sound at all "hip" these days. If anything, the feel of the jazz being played has passed them by. No one will remember EST in ten years time.

This certainly was not the case in the 60s with the white boy blues groups around at the time - Animals, Manfred Mann, Yardbirds and then Fleetwood Mac, Led Zep et al.

[Serial_Apologist]

This certainly was not the case in the 60s with the white boy blues groups around at the time - Animals, Manfred Mann, Yardbirds and then Fleetwood Mac, Led Zep et al.

To give credit where credit was due, I think that was true in the cases of some bands, or some individuals in some bands. I recently played a disc of Julie Driscoll and The Trinity to a 43-year old St Lucia-born black lady, and she was adamant that Julie must have been black. But one remembers the gratitude of American bluesmen to the British guys hosting and backing them as less a case of "we Brits can play the Blues as well" sort of thing, than an uncomfortable acknowledgement of the deplorable status of the music in America, still, in the 60s; indeed, by way of compensation for deficiencies in the vocal department, some of the most interesting adaptations of the blues over here were, I think, in terms of instrumental techniques and improvisation: an existent niche was in place for Jimi Hendrix

[cloughie]

To give credit where credit was due, I think that was true in the cases of some bands, or some individuals in some bands. I recently played a disc of Julie Driscoll and The Trinity to a 43-year old St Lucia-born black lady, and she was adamant that Julie must have been black. But one remembers the gratitude of American bluesmen to the British guys hosting and backing them as less a case of "we Brits can play the Blues as well" sort of thing, than an uncomfortable acknowledgement of the deplorable status of the music in America, still, in the 60s; indeed, by way of compensation for deficiencies in the vocal department, some of the most interesting adaptations of the blues over here were, I think, in terms of instrumental techniques and improvisation: an existent niche was in place for Jimi Hendrix

Managed by an ex Animal, and with a white British backing group.