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EESTI ELU reedel, 22. juulil 2022 — Friday, July 22, 2022
Is Jazz Dead? Natalie Jenkins Dimly-lit clubs adorned with rich, red velvet drapes, ingrained with the smell of cigars and pomade, once housed Miles Davis and Duke Ellington’s vivacious spirits. But today, it’s a different story. Modern pop culture has locked jazz’s relevance behind closed doors and swallowed the keys. It’s become antiquated and unreachable in its true form; it exists in the collective imagination of younger ge nerations as a reminder of the distant past. Some even say that jazz is dead. But is this truly the case? Should jazz musicians and critics mourn the loss of the once thriving, exceptionally complex genre? Those who claim jazz is dead likely hold a narrow view of what the genre encompasses. If we limit our definition of jazz to a sound belonging to a particular decade – such as New Orleans style jazz, which both climaxed and stagnated in the 1920s – then you can definitively argue that jazz died during that time. In 1922, for instance, Vogue contributor Clive Bell claimed that “Jazz is dead – or dying, at any rate – and the moment has come for someone who likes to fancy himself wider awake than his fellows to
Russian propaganda is making inroads with right-wing Canadians Philip Mai, Alyssa N. Saiphoo, Anatoliy Grudz, Felipe Bonow Soares, The Conversation, July 2022 On July 8, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly announced new sanctions against Russia as a counter to the Kremlin’s disinformation activities aimed at Canada. Ukraine and the West have long been a target of the Kremlin’s disinformation cam paigns. Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia has used a variety of information
Sizing up… (Continued from page 8)
ment blocks in Estonia are disliked. They’re cold. Sound travels through apartments easily. Space is limited, espe cially in the kitchen. That being said, having v isited more than a few relatives who occupy apartments like these, one will witness residents making welcoming, comfortable home environments in spite of physical or financial limitations. Snug and homey living rooms with books, family photos, and
The Weekend Guitar Trio.
Photo: jazz.ee
write its obituary notice.” But, as a genre, jazz is much broader than that. It has to be. Otherwise, we risk excluding a number of different but equally important artists, audiences, and movements in the evolution of its styles, according to Brian Kane, a professor in the Department of Music at Yale University. This, then, begs the question: what is jazz? Or, what should it include? As much as human nature is inclined to pack things away into neatly-defined boxes and categories, music is not always so clear-cut. The claim that jazz is dead ignores the fundamental fact that music does not exist in a vacuum. Genres grow and change, evolving to create new styles that may be equally remi
niscent of their roots as they are entirely different.
warfare tactics to destabilize the Ukrainian government and un dermine the legitimacy of democratic governments around the world. In recent years, as part of its bid to shape public perception of their action on the world’s stage, Russia has deployed an army of bots, trolls, hackers and other proxies across social media and the internet. These tactics are being used as a part of a concerted effort to curate a more favourable information environment for their agenda in Ukraine and other areas of geopolitical interest. In the lead up to the 2016 U.S. federal election, the Kremlin used the now infamous “Internet Research Agency” to sow discord online and off-line.
Since the start of Russia’s in vasion of Ukraine in February, the Social Media Lab’s Conflict Misinformation Dashboard has tracked over 1,000 false, mis leading and unproven claims. Some of these false and mis leading claims were spread by Russian government officials and their proxies. For example, in the early months of the war, the Kremlin was actively spreading the unsubstantiated claim that chemical and biologi cal weapons are being covertly developed in Ukraine. And Canada’s Communi cations Security Establishment has raised concerns about Russian online state-sponsored disinformation campaigns aimed at distorting Canada’s effort to help Ukraine defend itself. In our ongoing research into how misinformation, disinfor mation and conspiracy theories spread online, we conducted a survey in May 2022 to examine the extent to which Canadians are exposed to, and might be influenced by, pro-Kremlin propaganda on social media. Among other questions, we asked participants about their social media use, news con sumption about the war in Ukraine, political leanings as well as their exposure to and belief in common pro-Kremlin narratives. The data we collected shows that Canadians are being ex
warm quilts. And if your visit is long-awaited, make sure you arrive with an appetite because in a matter of hours you will be expeditiously stuffed with pirukad, deli treats, cake, fruit, and ice cream. Evidently, an ideal home is overwhelmingly shaped by the people who live in it. Nonetheless, if you could live in any of these types of Estonian dwellings, or another one not listed here, which one would you choose? Most defi nitely, there are ways to imbue one’s home with the best qualities of each type.
With one foot in the present and the other in the past, many contemporary artists draw their sound from jazz’s DNA. Though indisputably described as a hip-hop record, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly (2015), for instance, pays hom age to the jazz cats of the world. Upbeat tempos alongside the trumpet and piano instru mentals are reminiscent of the swing jazz that was popular in the 1930s. Even Kendrick’s syncopation parallels jazz’s in herently intuitive yet simul taneously unexpected nature. Jazz hasn’t truly died, consider ing its lasting prevalence and fusion into contemporary sounds. So, suppose we expand our
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conception of jazz beyond spe cific stylistic movements and periods. In that case, we can see that jazz’s changes over the years – from the earliest “rag time” styles to modern-day hip-hop/jazz fusions – are not deaths but rebirths. Instead of being feared or avoided, these changes should be embraced. Music dies when it becomes unrelatable. But these changes – these rebirths – make various genres relevant in new contexts. Most people are not going to listen to music from centuries past in their day-to-day lives because it’s out of sync with their milieu. But music that adapts to changing contexts becomes relatable to modern audiences. Though its jazz scene is moderate in size, Estonia has kept it alive because its musi cians do not cower away from change and rebirth within the genre. They are embracing the avant-garde. Uno Naissoo (1928–1980) was a jazz com poser and educator who, after World War II, laid the ground work for this by combining elements inspired by local Estonian folklore with more traditional American WestCoast jazz – a move that is viewed by many to be the starting point of the Estonian national school of jazz. Many contemporary Estonian Jazz artists now combine sounds inspired by the coun try’s local context – including electronic or folk-infused in strumentals – with more main stream jazz styles, creating new
fusions and integrating them into jazz’s larger collective consciousness.
posed to pro-Kremlin propa ganda. Slightly over half of Canadians (51 per cent) reported encountering at least one per sistent, false claim about the Russia-Ukraine war on social media pushed by the Kremlin and pro-Kremlin accounts. The most prevalent claim, encountered by 35 per cent of Canadians, was “Ukrainian na tionalism is a neo-Nazi move ment,” a false narrative that has long been debunked by nu merous fact-checkers. However, it is the claim about NATO expansion that gained the most traction with the Canadian public. Speci fi cally, nearly half of Canadians (49 per cent) believed at least to some extent that “since the end of the Cold War, NATO has sur rounded Russia with military bases and broken their promise to not offer NATO membership to former U.S.S.R. republics, like Ukraine.”
tary and homosexuality, which correlate with a traditional left/ right political affinity. Our analysis shows that left-leaning Canadians are con sistently less likely to believe in pro-Kremlin propaganda over all, as compared to Canadians who hold mixed or right-lean ing views. Conversely, those who hold right-leaning ideolo gies are more likely to believe in pro-Kremlin propaganda overall, as compared to Cana dians who hold mixed or left-leaning views.
Pro-Kremlin propaganda Next, we looked for a con nection between political ideo logy and people’s propensity to believe in pro-Kremlin propa ganda. We used the Ideological Consistency Scale developed by the Pew Research Center. The scale is designed to determine one’s political ideology on a scale between -10 (mostly liberal) to +10 (mostly conser vative). It is based on 10 ques tions about social issues, mili
Formed in 1993, The Weekend Guitar Trio (WGT) consists of Mart Soo, Robert Jürjendal, and Tõnis Leemets. Each member has a different musical background, including jazz, classical guitar, and am bient electronic, respectively. Together, they merge their talents to create a unique, cohe sive whole, unphased by strict definitions and limiting boun daries. “Incorporating an arsenal of effects, a variety of extended techniques and a few choice pieces of peripheral hardware, WGT creates striking sound scapes,” says the band’s web site. “They cross the borders of jazz, rock, traditional and elec tronic music… At their concert, you might feel as if [you are] in curved space, where the laws of three-dimensional physics are not valid. The program differs each time, depending on the venue, the atmosphere, the sound, and the audience.” While remaining true to some of jazz’s traditional roots (including improvisation), WGT offers a fresh, innovative take on the genre, inviting modern listeners into the larger jazz continuum who otherwise may not have paid any significant attention to it. Jazz has never died. It has been reborn throughout the ages. Countries like Estonia, which embrace these changes, are keeping the genre alive.
Reliance on social media Another important factor that we found to be associated with belief in pro-Kremlin disinfor mation was a preferred source for getting news about the Russia-Ukraine war. Particu larly concerning is the fact that those who believe in one or more of the pro-Kremlin claims are more likely to rely on social media for news about the war than those who do not believe in any. For instance, 57 per cent of Canadians who believe the claim that “Ukrainian national ism is a neo-Nazi movement” reported preferring social media as a source of news about the Russia-Ukraine war. In contrast, only 23 per cent of those who do not believe in this claim favour social media when accessing news on this topic. (Continued on page 10)
