Across the pond, the BAM debate rages on, as Nicholas Payton replies to his critics Jeremy Pelt and Marcus Strickland with an indignation and sense of wounded pride worthy of Fabio Capello. As Brad Mehldau asks: ‘how could we survive without the bitchy, bickering fun of polemics?’
Fabio Capello: not a happy bunny
Cantab David Greenberg’s response to last week’s blog was particularly thoughtful and provocative:
‘I feel that the problem is that jazz music today doesn’t describe the oppression and struggles of today, and is rather trying to continue to describe, musically, the struggles of the 60’s and prior. If jazz musicians can describe the human experience of today through improvisation, then I think that will go a hell of a longer way in terms of propelling jazz music, than changing its name.’
This first raises a question as to whether improvisation, one of the most immediate and spontaneous forms of musical expression, can have relevance outside the present context in which it is situated. If an instrumentalist today has learned to improvise in the style of, say, Louis Armstrong, their playing could either be seen as a representation (inauthentic or otherwise) of the music of Armstrong’s era, or as having been transformed by a combination its immediate context and the musician’s own experience into something that is relevant and appropriate to the present.
Louis Armstrong: a commonly imitated innovator
More generally, there is no consensus on whether jazz should be treated as a cultural artefact and preserved, as if behind glass in a museum, as a reminder of the role it has played in social and racial unification in America in the twentieth century, or whether it should be allowed to develop and mutate unchecked, exposed to myriad worldwide influences.
There are compelling cases for both. If the music as it existed in New Orleans in the 1910s and 20s or in New York in the 1950s and 60s is no longer played, huge elements of an indigenous art form will be lost. It is true that there is recorded evidence of the music at various stages of its development, but it inevitably loses some of its characteristic vitality in the transition between live performance and recording (even one that manages to capture the original atmosphere as well as this).
On the other hand, saxophonist and composer Henry Threadgill, who has added his voice to the rising chorus of those who claim that the word ‘jazz’ has lost its meaning, is wary of any attempt to recreate styles from the past. He concedes that an appreciation of the history of the music is vital to an understanding of how to continue in the tradition and move it forward, but rules out the possibility of innovation or creation within any style that is not rooted in the present:
‘I don’t really believe it’s possible to do it, to play legitimate music from another period, because music is tied into social situations too. Social, emotional reality, and psychological reality is all connected culturally to any art form, and you can’t jump back and place yourself – it’s not like some kind of time capsule where you can go back and be in that cultural moment, which underscores social, psychological, emotional reality.’
None of which is to say that records such as Kind of Blue or A Love Supreme should occupy any less of a revered place in the history of the music. Illustrating the importance of appreciating and engaging with past innovators, Threadgill compares the student of music to the student of art: ‘you look at painting and frescoes and you see where perspective came in and where infinity came in’. It would be impossible to progress without due respect to Davis, Coltrane et al. But if Threadgill is right in arguing that art is a product of and relevant only to its cultural and social context, an attempt to replicate it in one of its past forms authentically is self-deception.
Kind of Blue: a hard act to follow
There is a fine line between imitation and adaptation; neither of these two should be dismissed outright, and it would be wrong to assert that the two approaches cannot be adopted consecutively, if not concurrently. As each generation of improvisers brings to bear their own experience on the music of their predecessors, the music will inevitably split into many different directions. Whether this amounts to desecration of jazz as a valuable cultural artefact is up for debate.
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