Jazz historiography versus jazz reality
There's a great new Vijay Iyer article over at All About Jazz where he talks about the genre of jazz, where he seems himself fitting into that landscape, and what he really values in terms of a spirit of creativity in the music. I think it's interesting to fit his comments into the overarching discussion that has been going on about jazz since 1970, creative music economics, and jazz historiography. Iyer writes with his usual clarity and intent (if you haven't read any of his scholarly works he wrote while at UC Berkeley, I highly reccomend you do so), and ultimately comes to the following conclusion:
And that’s closest to what jazz is for me: an expressive and critical take on reality, at once tough and fragile, culturally and historically grounded yet perilously unstable, miraculously existing in the most unlikely circumstance and simply devastating in its effect on one’s worldview. The kind of musical experience I crave is the kind that makes me wonder if I even know what music is.
Wow. Perhaps a bit romantic (something I think Iyer is probably aware of) but not unrealistic in my opinion, having experienced some of those reality shaking listening experiences in my own limited tenure as an admirer of creative music.
I think the cultural capital (to borrow Pierre Bourdieu's phrase) of jazz is really what is at stake, and Iyer nails it by saying a bit part of the issue is economics, and staking a claim to that cultural capital. Musicians who create outside of the mainstream, but still utilize elements of the musical language of jazz (something that is perilously difficult to put borders on as well) risk losing the cultural capital of jazz if they are not included under its patchy umbrella, as well as the social capital of belonging to that group.
To take the Bourdieu-ian analysis further, the cultural capital is embodied in the individual by learning the tradition and gaining the musico-linguistic capital of the jazz language. Bourdieu also keenly noticed the value of the institutionalized state, and the ways in which it made for cleaner definitions through hierarchical achievements that translated into levels of compensation.
Iyer laments the flooding of the market with music school grads who may or may not have "paid their dues" - and while he states that this isn't a case of fetishizing musical hardship, his main point is made when he says: "When I hear mastery without risk, I feel ripped off."
I understand his point completely, and I think that the "mastery without risk" comes across in the music, and for me personally and I'm sure many others, it is a huge turn off. It's the musical equivalent of talkin' jive, or as I posted in an earlier blog, to quote the late great James Brown, talkin' loud and sayin' nothing.
I'd be interested to hear what people think of Iyer's article.
Syndicate
I had a hard time trying to condense my thoughts on this (and peter breslin’s handling of related issues) into a self-contained comment. Can of worms does not begin to describe it. I gave up and wrote a (rambling) post at my blog instead (hope you don’t mind)….
S, tig
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Submitted by the improvising guitarist (not verified) on Sun, 03/11/2007 - 5:33pm.Mind? I think it's great. The comments discussions on blogs can only go so far, and I think it's fantastic when we can take the topics back to our blogs and discuss them at greater length, hopefully bringing in a bigger audience and encouraging more people to express their views. I will certainly read on and comment over there.
-DM
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Submitted by Daniel Melnick on Mon, 03/12/2007 - 9:18am.I've long known Vijay Iyer to be a brilliant writer and thinker; he displays those talents in his recent AAJ piece, while also exposing fertile areas for discussion — especially for discussions that include both issues of market-share woes and existential dilemmas related to the word "jazz".
Here's a piece Bob Christgau asked me to write a few years ago for the Village Voice, that may be of some relevance and interest:
www.villagevoice.com/music/0422,blumenfeld,53995,22.html
LB
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Submitted by Larry Blumenfeld (not verified) on Sat, 03/10/2007 - 2:57pm.Hi Larry - thanks for stopping by and for the link. That's a great article, and I loved the Duke quote which I hadn't seen anywhere else. I'm currently preparing to do some research and interviews relating to the perceived divide between the so-called "avant garde" and the conventional metanarrative of jazz. Framing the issue commercially in terms of "crossover" was something I hadn't really considered but it is a welcome and valuable perspective. I think it all relates to an increasing desire on the part of creative musicians to embody some kind of genre mobility.
All best,
Dan
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Submitted by Daniel Melnick on Sat, 03/10/2007 - 3:39pm.It's interesting that you use the term "metanarrative," which is an odd term to begin with — meta meaning "beyond," yet simulataneously contributing to a schema that defines and confines by its very nature. I think the African-ness of jazz is often far too overlooking, and I'm not talking about overt representations such as rhythms or Thelonious Monk's fingers: I mean fundamental multiplicity, which sort of fucks with people who cling to things like metanarratives.
I ended up emailing Vijay about his essay, as follows, partly motivated by my temporary residence in New Orleans, where I'm reporting on the-greatest-threat-to-American-musical-culture-that-people-seem-oddly-at-ease-with:
I've been thinking lately that, between the sorts of things that you address in your allaboutjazz essay - the musical, interdisciplinary, and enterpreneurial creativity flowing in New York and elsewhere, coupled with the ways in which I'm seeing traditional jazz marshalled in the service of political opposition and activism in New Orleans, that there really may be a meaningful way to come anew to the term "jazz" and what it can mean today: The existential and semantic dilemma you talk about in your piece is one that has puzzled and intrigued me for more than a decade now, and I'm only recently trying to deal with it again (part of the reason I quit my editing gig was my ambivalence toward a magazine whose masthead contained the word "jazz" in any construction - its singnification, as well as its insignificance to the larger culture.
I'm not sure I'm headed with this, and I hope to develop the thoughts further on my still-gestating blog.
Good luck in your work.
LB
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Submitted by Larry Blumenfeld (not verified) on Sun, 03/11/2007 - 2:14am.Larry, thanks again for your comments, I find your thoughts on the matter insightful and valuable. Indeed, I choose the word metanarrative to represent what I see as the "official" or conventional discourse about jazz, as represented by the Wynton-Lincoln Center axis, precisely because I see it as a story about a story, a step removed from the reality on the ground. That "fundamental multiplicity" you mention is really at the heart of the matter for many of the artists I've spoken with, especially within the AACM, where genre mobility and musical hybridity are integral parts of their musical ethos (as George Lewis will explicitly show in his upcoming book in the AACM, I'm sure).
Please do develop these thoughts further in your blog. It's a valuable discourse for us all to participate in. Any meaningful new way to look at and approach the term jazz today would be more than welcome.
All best,
Dan
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Submitted by Daniel Melnick on Sun, 03/11/2007 - 10:13am.The music school problem is huge in Boston and has essentially killed the audience in the way a herd of cows eventually chows all the grass and leaves a destroyed range.
Berklee is the worst and squats in the middle like the 800 pound gorilla. It also puts significant effort into giving its jazz imposters orientation into grubbing money through grants, aggressive self promotion and so on. They are usually better at the money grubbing stuff than music.
Your real jazz musician generally despises biz stuff and rarely has much orientation to it. This is a common refrain from the handful of distinct people I have been coaching lately.
They also foisted fusion on the world and despise conventional jazz and view Ornette, Cecil Taylor and the AACM as radioactive pariahs. They hire very few african americans and none with real stature in the idiom.
So the fairly large numbers of people, a few thousand in the area, who own and like, say, A Love Supreme, or some counterpart, are rightly convinced that most of the scene is drivel.
Boston has around 10 venues tops that actually focus on jazz and several are high cost hotel fern bars while several more are pitiful ad hoc "art spaces' that have pay to play arrangements.
It has more than 50 jazz ensembles, mainly Berklee imposters or a few from the stodgy New England Conservatory, a bastion or pretense and classical preciousness that also has an enfeebled jazz department that at least hires real people like George Russell.
A number of the ensembles include moonlighting Berklee and NEC faculty who have job security and yet they insist on playing out constantly to feed their ego's. I'm sorry but no one is going to stand for 30 uears of a band like "the Fringe" playing the same sets night after night.
These people also lack the imagination to find other places in the six state region where there are few jazz ensembles and a greater likliehood of enthusiasm. Nor are they particularly interested in inviting counterparts from the region or New York for collaborations that would bring people out as they are jealous of their ravaged turf.
This is the mess I'm wading into but I've done it before. I've begun to restore contact with New York, surveyed funding options and have identified some venue sites I can work with. The weekly press will readily go along with it as they are among the bored and the system of college radio stations will also be enthused.
So the return of risk born mastery is at hand. I figure it'll take a year.
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Submitted by Chris Rich (not verified) on Tue, 03/06/2007 - 3:28pm.Boston really provides an extreme example of the issue, especially if you're talking about the music school/conservatory model. I wonder though, why is it that some people enter the belly of that beast and make it out unscathed, with their creative instincts intact? I know some personally.
One time when I was interviewing drummer Avreeayl Ra, he told me that Art Blakey put it this way (paraphrased): music school took a lot of people who might have been doctors or lawyers and turned them into musicians instead.
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Submitted by Daniel Melnick on Thu, 03/08/2007 - 10:12am.Music school is what you make of it, and you have to decide to make it creative. It's easy to attend big band rehearsal and improv classes and lessons and not pursue an individualistic path. There's the requirements of the curriculum and then there's the requirements of one's musical journey. I know a lot of people who do a B.Mus and go on to law school of med school (the antithesis of Blakey's statement, actually), and a fair amount of people take their music degrees and do something tangential to it.
I don't think conservatories are necessarily the culprit here - I think it's more the mindset that plagues all musical institutions, that training is now the end and no longer viewed as the means. It's up to the students to glean what they will from the training and filter it into art, and it's up to the teachers to facilitate any opportunity the student may want to seize.
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Submitted by Ryshpan (not verified) on Thu, 03/08/2007 - 1:55pm.I'd definitely agree that music school is not the only culprit, and you were one of the people I had in mind when I said people can go to music school and not come out worse for the wear (Corey Wilkes is another one - he spent a couple of years at Berklee and then replaced Lester Bowie in the Art Ensemble, so apparently it didn't cause him to 'play it safe). However, the whole conservatory model being applied to jazz is still a very new thing, and it's also a very European, or as George Lewis has put it Eurological (as opposed in his essay, although not in a dualistic sense, to an Afrological model). I think the discussion that Pat linked to over at Rifftides does a good job of wondering about the efficacy of some of these programs - there are some great comments below the article as well.
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Submitted by Daniel Melnick on Thu, 03/08/2007 - 3:35pm.