It can be something of a parlour game, it can conjure images, it can simply tease. The art of the tune title, that is. Listening to an album one day heavily inspired by works of literature reading deeper I see in the sleeve notes that there are detailed cultural connections behind everything created that I have been listening to. And reading about them of course is interesting. Tiring, but interesting, both, steeling myself, to glean the way the artist gets inspiration and also as a jumping off point to enable the discovery of new ideas, new art. Yet there is a bit danger in all this for the artist as well as the consumer of the art because the art that the person is making is just becoming a signpost to somewhere else, destination known or unknown perhaps infinitely more interesting or distracting, and as thought provoking or more than the work of the person who is kindly holding up the sign.
The humble or even egomaniacal artist paying official or unofficial tribute may become just that, yes nice and all or terribly arrogant despite appearances but just that. Re-imagining the subject done the right way can help but only up to a point and listeners and critics (ie us all) are just as liable to make the wrong connections in the space between the delivery of the tribute in performance or captured on record to the time of the post-gig informal making-sense-of-it-all. Often the reference in the tune title is little more than a name check. Perhaps there is a spark but it is a bit like a sketch sometimes: after Degas, in the style of Monk, inspired by Satie... Tracey Emin.
Listeners need something to feed their imagination, yes for sure, the knack is buried in the music itself not the title, often just an after thought when the work has been recorded and thoughts turn to “what on earth do we actually call this anyway and can the graphic designer mock it up?” We might just be all too Googled out to be bothered to look up all the references tumbling at us unless there is a compelling reason so to do. Well perhaps. In a venue (not usually the right location) you are not going to be studying background materials apart from a cursory look at your phone to prove you are there like that tree falling in the forest. Instead you might be relying on the oral descriptions that the musicians on stage provide if they talk much. You might even have images flickering at you via screens on the stage; you might just have to rely on the music itself with nothing much beyond apart from subtle changes in the lighting.
If the tunes are standards and you are reasonably versed in standards from hearing them many times over the years then this is easy. Standards do not need much explanation, they are just part of the folklore and common currency of the music for both musician and listener alike. When they work best they are the right tune at the right place played by the right band. Just as simple, ubiquitous as a fake book, and as difficult as that.
New material does not need a lot of worthy explanation other than operate to pad out a few pages in a CD booklet and no we do not need necessarily to know the cultural background much unless it is vital to the piece and our perception of it then we do. Where is the mystery if we know the brand new Cool School album Quantitative Easing was inspired by the latest book from Bill ‘Two Brains’ Bloke!
“The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct its appeal” – Wassily Kandinsky
An angry piece of music comes across as angry and if we want to understand that anger then we are compelled to find out more. The same holds true maybe if the piece is a love song. But who needs words? Miles Davis’ paintings said a lot more about the way he wrote music for example than blow by blow accounts of his own in his autobiography or the often repetitive minutiae and loving fandom of specialist journalism.
Congrats that you've got this far but without wishing to detain you any further the next time you read a tune title ask not why is it called such and such; instead wonder how it came to be worked into the shorthand for the tune and does it actually relate in any way to what you are hearing on a literal level. The answer is unlikely to be yes but let your imagination run free after a while when you have got to know the tune.
So many jazz tunes by major artists are similar stylistically despite their many differences and easily picked out for the artist if not always the tune. Sometimes this is because of tricks of the harmonic trade or simply tunes that are variants or retreads of older successful material. It is a bit like a comedian repeating a good joke: it gets repeated to a different audience mind because it gets laughs.
Don't believe me? Well listen to 20 Charles Lloyd tunes from the 1960s that you have not heard before and listen to them again and then again. Try a dozen of the most obscure Monk tunes. My bet is that they will be fairly indistinguishable from one another after a while in terms of remembering their names at least. Yet the style is embedded in your mind for ever if you listen enough to store up for a lifetime of enjoyment. The Charles Lloyd style is a style few would get wrong even after not hearing Lloyd play for months and even more relevantly if a lot of listening in the past has been completed. (No you can’t notate as you go along if you can do this.)
A tune title is really only a slogan, a catchphrase, shorthand, a lot of other things. It does not have to show that you read a lot or have been to a lot of art galleries or watch lots of films on Netflix. But of course read lots, go to art shows and the movies. It is cool to be a culture vulture perhaps but it can be a bit wearing in the long run. And with instrumental music particularly very abstract instrumental music (and a lot of progressively inclined jazz is like this) actually can be diminished by over loading the signifiers. An arts alphabet of worthiness and grand design can just as easily run the gamut not from A-Z as intended but the much shorter journey of A-B.
Tune up, above. So THINK how does Sonny Rollins exactly make you FEEL deep in your mind and body beyond all connection when ALL there is happens to be the music, non pareil, itself, fingers on saxophone keys, mouth on a reed, ideas translated to become wordless sound?