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

[Adam D]

Before I respond to this thread, let me say a little about myself first: I returned this summer from 2 years studying jazz in Scandinavia (a course called Nomazz that involved studying for 6 months in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway). Before that I spent a year at the Guildhall in London. I noticed at all the schools that there was a general preference for a certain conception of jazz: In Finland for example, there was a strong preference for Black American jazz from the 50's and 60's. Most of the pianists were McCoy Tyner enthusiasts, but Finland was very much the exception to the rule - In Denmark and Norway, particularly, there seemed to be a marked disdain for musicians playing 'black' jazz in the tradition - note that they didn't have anything against the music or musicians, but the general thought was: "Playing changes in 4/4 swing has been done many times, and to such a high level, that there is little point in trying to do it again". Moreover, while many musicians in Norway (for example), knew the works of Nils Petter Molvaer, Bugge Wesseltoft etc., there were quite a few who weren't acquainted with the likes of Ahmad Jamal, Dexter Gordon etc.

In the UK, ask most young pianists who their biggest influences are and many will say "Keith Jarrett" or even other young British jazz pianists like Gwilym Simcock and Kit Downes, who themselves are very much derived from the Jarrett school of thought (maybe without the ability to swing that Keith possesses, having come more from the tradition).

I guess it comes down to two facts:

One, there is so much music available to listen to nowadays, that many young jazzers mostly listen to the latest releases by people they feel some connection to. (To connect to the vast recorded legacy of jazz is quite a challenge!)

Two, playing 'European-style' music is actually far more fashionable - it's moving towards a sort of European classical musical tradition with performers playing with very little actual improvisation and much more through-composed tunes.

The result of this is that the young European jazzers are incrementally moving away from the American jazz tradition.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

thanks for that thoughtful post Adam D ....

the perception that it has all been done to a high standard is as true of the post bop tradition as for Jarrett and through composed [see the 3rd Stream etc]

i do wish more younger generation musicians were listening more to Eric Dolphy and Andrew Hill

[Tom Adustus]

Two, playing 'European-style' music is actually far more fashionable - it's moving towards a sort of European classical musical tradition with performers playing with very little actual improvisation and much more through-composed tunes.

So it's not really jazz then. It's some form of classical musc.

[Ian Thumwood]

Adam

Fascinating to read your post because it seems to reflect the comments made by some of my friends in France as I explained in the original post.

It's odd to read the criticism of playing changes in 4/4 as reflecting what American jazz has been about. This kind of generalisation is far too simple. Alot of early jazz was played in 2/4 and it took the best part of a decade for 4/4 to become the accepted norm. Granted that a lot of Bop in from the forties through to the mid sixties was based on this, surely by the mid sixties these kind of notions were already being challenged. if you like, 4/4 has not necessarily been the norm for the last 50 years which is effectively 50% of the recorded history of the music.

Alot of the interest music coming out of the States swings but is not 4/4 or simply blowing on changes. It really pisses me off that so many European teachers / scholars / critics are arrogant enough to suggest that what has coming out of Europe is "cutting edge." In my opinion, it is these people who are "killing " jazz and the likes of Stuart Nicholson have a lot to answer for in giving this music a bigger platform than it deserves. The likes of Tyner do sound "old hat" these days as you might expect from a generation who took their cues from Art Tatum, but the rhythmic aspect which is so rooted in the Black-American tradition will always trump anything that comes out of Europe for swing and energy.

In many respects, Calum has hit the nail firmly pn the head. It is a generation of musicians who have studied under the likes of Andrew Hill such as Vijay Iyer and Jason Moran who are defining their instrument for this generation and not the anodine shit that Bugge Wesseltoft is producing. Check on a site like All about Jazz and it is fascinating to see just how many American musicians are coming out of the "tradition" but it a way that reflects the musical styles of today. Strnage that the Norwegians should be checking out Wesseltoft and NPM whilst being blissfully unaware of the origins of the music. For me, anyone studying jazz and not being aware of it's origins (and by this I mean going right back to King Oliver) is misguided and beyond comprehension for me. It is these kind of musicians who shaped the music into something different to Classical Music. To be purposely ignorant of the black-American contribution to jazz and to promote Norwegian "pop" acts as an alternative on a jazz course is racism pure and simple. There isn't a white jazz musician worth his salt who has not taken his cures from his Black brother.

[Serial_Apologist]

So it's not really jazz then. It's some form of classical musc.

I can't be the only one to have noticed a certain convergence of supporters of English pastoral music and those contributing to the "What rock/pop/jazz-rock" etc thread. Apart from the more jazz-fusion-orientated stuff of the 1970s - in this country the Canterbury School (Soft Machine, Egg, National Health, etc) - Prog Rock tended to use improvisation, or jazz, as adjunctive or padding grafting onto through-composed music tracks. Those bits of improv were like gold dust to jazzers waiting folornly for The Next Step; listen to much of the Prog Rock of the time, whether it was Yes, Genesis or Pink Floyd, and one soon noticed how much in common there was between its harmonic language - minor subdominant - > minor dominant chords triumphantly resolved onto major tonics - and that of the more frequently played works of Vaughan Williams like the Tallis Fantasia and Fantasia on Greensleeves. The demise of Prog or its transmogrification into Ambient created an entirely new generation of arcadians in search of a ready-made pastoral school; and there they all are, exchanging pretty pics of record sleeves, and, with any luck, genuinely flagging up the odd tougher fare.

I digress, but only to a degree, I think...

Before the advent of co-operatives, jazz in the States had always been as much formed on the competitive drive epitomised by the cutting session as the idea of backed-up self-expression. It took a different form of jazz, free jazz, to stress performance as dialogue rather than monologue with accompaniment, and inter-dependability became the watchword as the political implications became clearer and jazz once again one form of artistic dissent. On the surface - and, at the time, going by the pronouncements and the socio-political affiliations - black American jazz had never been further in intent and utterance from the academic concert music tradition. Now it's no longer that much of a distinction - and, if one listens retrospectively to those charts that incorporated composition and improv on equal terms, say the JCOA, Archie Shepp's more compositional stuff and its now clearer indebtedness to Mingus - never one to disavow his debt to Western clasical models - and returns to today to listen to The Bad Plus, or read Ethan Iverson's highly informed interviews with equally highly informed representatives of cutting-edge American jazz today... or even listens to the more 19th century Romantics-inclined Brad Melhdau, for that matter - it is clear that strong European influences are at work in much of the music. I was listening today to Oliver Lake's "Boston Duets" CD with pianist Donal (sic) Fox - some of this stuff sounded like composed on 12-tone rows. But there again, some of the Art Ensemble of Chicago's live recordings from Paris between 1969-71 sound more than superficially close to the soundworld of Boulez. So, it's been around for some time.

Alongside all this is the continuation of the broad American post-bop mainstream that showcases talent and panache; what I am saying is that I don't believe we should worry too much about compositional imperatives swamping the improvised element, whether they be European or ostensibly non-American in character. I am personally more concerned about a tendency that has been around since Wynton Marsalis's youthful pronouncements rendered free jazz and Fusion anomalies in the story of the evolution of jazz, and which still manifests in a number of guises, principally ime among those being schooled in many of the jazz courses, as a commitment to the perfection of their skills within a particular juncture of the history, as if that juncture did not contain within the music the seeds of its own further development, but was, as it were, to be frozen in time and in gesture. But there are plenty - even coming from this area of education - coming on the scene who are eager to engage with jazz as the embracing of risk. That can (and will) happen only on the bandstand.

[Adam D]

To be purposely ignorant of the black-American contribution to jazz and to promote Norwegian "pop" acts as an alternative on a jazz course is racism pure and simple. There isn't a white jazz musician worth his salt who has not taken his cures from his Black brother.

Don't get me wrong - the schools in Scandinavia weren't purposefully ignoring the tradition in jazz, in fact in Norway, the teachers were trying to get the students to listen to and appreciate older styles of jazz- but many students were more concerned with 'finding their own voices' than learning the craft associated with the tradition. In Norway (partly because of a very supportive arts scene) this means that lots of very experimental bands are actually able to get gigs and audiences, but I have the feeling that many of them will be forgotten by the history books. I don't think it is purposeful ignorance (I'm talking about young music students), and certainly not racism, but I do think it results in a naive sense of what jazz was, and therefore what jazz can be.

[charles t]

Adam: If you (would) care to peruse the ramblins' of a non-playing jazz'r I would say that having been on the scene of which this thread is about (cf Black Jazz) that there was no controversy at the time, whatsoever.

Regardless of one's digs (domicile) the lugging of those Diz/Miles/Monk. etc/ sides to share with beatnik-inclined friends was as common to us as The Reader's Digest Monthly magazine was to de squares.

The one exception was when my friend, Kurt E. Heyl, a now free-jazz trombonist - his stuff can be bought from DMG (Downtown Music Gallery) brought over for a listen: Trane's Ascension.

TAKE THAT OFF NOW! was my reaction.

now I listen to: ROVA ORKESTROVA 2003 John Coltrane's Electric Ascension (Nels Cline, etc.)...crazy man!

for what it's worth...

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[Serial_Apologist]

Don't get me wrong - the schools in Scandinavia weren't purposefully ignoring the tradition in jazz, in fact in Norway, the teachers were trying to get the students to listen to and appreciate older styles of jazz- but many students were more concerned with 'finding their own voices' than learning the craft associated with the tradition. In Norway (partly because of a very supportive arts scene) this means that lots of very experimental bands are actually able to get gigs and audiences, but I have the feeling that many of them will be forgotten by the history books. I don't think it is purposeful ignorance (I'm talking about young music students), and certainly not racism, but I do think it results in a naive sense of what jazz was, and therefore what jazz can be.

I also don't agree with Ian that it - whatever "it" is - is racism. To me, the cultural and geographical transmission of jazz as a social form of music making that connects on all the right levels - intellectual, instinctual, (inter)cultural, physical, beyond America's borders, amounts in itself to a celebration of the enormous gift those great players of past and present have offered the world's peoples.

Didn't Mingus and Dizzy tell Ronnie, stop imitating us, find your own voice - in so many words?