We've been hearing for a long time that jazz is dead. That sounds straightforward enough, but it quickly gets confusing when one tries to pin down what they mean. That is, what they mean by “jazz,” and what they mean by, “dead.”
Do real musicologists talk about a Golden Era of jazz? They really should. The period from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s was a magical period for a certain kind of innovation and improvisation. There had arisen a large number of extremely talented players who made a living by dressing formally and playing charts in big bands, taking brief solos if they were bandleaders or big star players. When opportunities and venues to do so became available, they started getting together after hours and playing for fun. You know, show off a bit, earn a reputation, maybe cut a rival down to size, a less formal setting where there were no charts, no bosses, little or no money, and no rules at all. That's where the real gold started appearing.
Guys with names like Bird, Diz, and Prez, got together and went nuts. They played the songs that they all knew, the “jazz standards,” and they played original compositions. When they played the standards, like, “Body and Soul,” they would all play the intro and a verse to the song together, straight, just as it was composed. Then they would each take solos in turn, taking either a fixed number of verses or, if things were really working out, a few extra, before nodding to the next guy, who would seamlessly begin his solo, and so forth. Once in a while they might all look at each other and wordlessly decide to play a verse straight, just to remind folks what song they were playing. They took turns “singing the song” with their instruments. How far off the beaten path you could take it varied with the group and their moods, but they mostly stuck to the chords of the song, and followed the changes. The motto was, “everybody solos.” That included the bass player and the drummer.
The original compositions could be startling. Those could be unsingable songs, with enough chord changes to make you dizzy. They'd play “the head” together once or twice to establish the piece, and then start the solos. Or, as in the case of “Chasin' the 'Trane,” they'd play the head, then play it inside out, then play it backwards, then take turns playing long solos, wandering the jazz countryside and leaving no chord unturned. It was 1960 by then, and the lads were getting a bit, not bored, let's say “overly familiar” with the routine.
That's when things like free-jazz and other abstractions began to appear in the jazz world. Many players stuck to what had been working; many moved onto more accessible jazzy variations on popular tunes; many spun right out of orbit and into new realms all together. This might be the point at which certain critics say that jazz “died,” but it's probably better to say that it entered a phase of extreme variation and transformation.
Musicians are funny. They are as varied a group as any highly skilled tradesmen out there. Some just want to get paid, and don't mind following direction and playing by a set of rules. Others resent authority, and always long to color outside of the lines. I've worked around machinists quite a bit in my endless search for new jobs to add to my resume. Those are the guys who operate mills (the billet is stationary and the tool moves; it's a vertical machine) and lathes (the tool is stationary and the billet revolves; it is a horizontal machine). They make very precise parts for very sophisticated machines, like cameras, or automobile engines, with tolerances in the thousandths of an inch. Most of them just want the parts to pass inspection, to be useful for their intended application to the whole machine. There are some, though, who also ensure that every part that they make is unique and beautiful. There are artists among them. All are very talented, highly skilled workers. Some are also artists. It's the same with musicians.
Another thing about musicians: they all listen to each other. They listen, and when they hear something they like, they just might borrow it. That's a nice way to say that they steal. Most of them admit it. If they hear techniques or styles that might enhance their own music, the odds are good that they will shamelessly appropriate them. Jazz was full of great ideas, and those ideas got around. Rhythm and Blues, or Jump-Blues (Louis Jordan), might be called a style of jazz. All of that, with a touch of Country Music, became rock and roll, (Ike Turner and Rocket 88) and everyone is listening to everything and soon you have Hillbilly Jazz (Jimmy Bryant), Hot (East Coast) jazz and Cool (West Coast) jazz, plus Kansas City jazz, and it's all swirling around everyone's heads turning into all kinds of combinations. This process has been going on for decades now.
We've been through rock, hard rock, smooth jazz, jazz rock, psychedelic rock, art rock, progressive rock, punk rock, new wave, electronica, Kraut rock, grunge, Hip-Hop, Go-Go (Chuck Brown), techno, jungle, and dozens of others.
Presently, we have DOMi and JD Beck playing “Giant Steps,” and people aren't sure what to call it, because DOMi is a French, twenty-something piano player and Beck is drummer about eighteen years old and what they are doing is jazz without a doubt, but it is highly personalized jazz. It's kind of like a nice hippie girl spiked the punch, but she was off by a decimal point and now the party is really in orbit. It's the March 11th post a few down from this one, if you want to hear it, and you do want to hear it.
DOMi and Beck are post jazz, post rock, post funk, post techno, post Jungle, post computer, and post ironic. They may or may not be part of the new Math Rock scene (if you can confidently count what they are playing, you have a very, very good ear). It's a safe bet that they are what jazz has become, after filtering itself through everything that has been in the air since classic jazz went on hiatus in the late 1960s.
(With apologies to all of those guys who have continued to play old-school jazz all of this time. Many of those fellows were terrific players, Richie “Alto Madness” Cole for example, but most of us just kept playing our old Miles and 'Trane records. A previous post of Richie's amazing band is repeated right below this post.)
Who knows? Maybe Math Rock itself is the new jazz. There is a lot of frighteningly complex but strangely melodic music coming out of Japan right now. (Tricot; Elephant Gym) America is big in the scene (Clever Girl). Math rock does seem to lack the aggression that characterized great jazz, and which is prominent in DOMi and Beck's music as well.
What would Miles say? (“Fuck that noise.”) How about Coltrane? (Picks up his tenor and falls in effortlessly.) The future arrives unbidden, wearing strange clothing.
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