Genius + soul = maths-jazz
Has jazz become too complicated?
Many of the leading new generation of players have formidable college backgrounds. Masters degrees are common. PhDs run-of-the-mill, cooler than the latest hashtag. But what of the audiences: can they keep up, do they need to? Will they freak out entirely eventually and just want something so goddamn dumb because they just don’t care – or have the strength – any more?
Pardon the pun but there is a degree of separation with the early era of jazz. Jazz colleges didn’t exist then. There wasn’t a lot of call for it somehow in Storyville. Jazz was frowned on at the big city conservatoires. Louis Armstrong left the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs at a young age to haul coal by day and play cornet by night. He wasn’t doing a PhD in Buddy Boldenology apart from delivering it up on the bandstand. Charlie Parker hardly stuck around for class. Miles Davis, who did go to music college, didn’t stay long at Julliard giving up to play the 52nd St clubs instead. Clearly you can be a great jazz musician without having a huge amount of formal tertiary education.
Slonimsky chic... gonzo Youtube style
But what of the audience: is it even qualified enough to turn up to hear maths-jazz or the latest prog-jazz offerings? Should there be a test at the door for punters to gain entry? Are we as listeners even conceptually fit for purpose any more? If we are there to listen to music to be entertained then being educated isn’t on the agenda. If we’re there to learn something then the entertainment value melts away more quickly than anyone can mouth Slonimsky.
But does anyone go to a gig to learn something in the same way as they do when they’re studying? No, it’s not the same at all. We’re going there instead for the thrill of it, to gain an experience, hear something we can’t properly appreciate in any other way. Seeing and hearing what someone is doing is part of the learning, playing it more so. And maybe the playing is actually the learning and jazz education should be more practical rather than theoretical. You can only observe so much, digest only so many jazz history books, chew up so many chords, dive in to only so much spectral theory – the latest thing apparently.
All well and good but where does this leave inspiration, something that cannot be taught? Artistry does not have to be complicated, but it does have to have feeling and passion, again things that can’t be taught. The blues are just as valid a form as serialism, playing punk as much an artistic statement as performing a symphony. Academics make the mistake that the more advanced or intellectual a form (ie the more it can be studied) the more cultural capital it should be accorded.
The recent attempt by one of the most creative new bands out there on the international circuit, Mostly Other People Do The Killing, to play Kind of Blue as a note for note facsimile in a ‘re-creation’ is a symbol of how the over-educated impulse can spell disaster. The exercise was a laughable failure because jazz is not about re-creation, it is as simple as that, nor is it actually understanding everything about the subject that can be understood!
The mystery of the unexplained has power. The notes even the best transcriber attempts to write down that remain stubbornly resistant to notation have currency. That passion a performer brings is as unquantifiable as outer space. So to answer the first question above: yes jazz has become too over-educated, we only need as much or as little education to set us free as players or listeners to communicate what is inside or experienced enough to make sense to us and the outside world. Anything else is just high blown trivia and fancy-that background knowledge to while away a quiet day in the ivory tower.
Stephen Graham