Jazz by Grella Bucking the Tide

by George Grella

In art music (meaning music not designed for mass commercial success), there used to be a general consensus about forms and styles. That’s obvious when you look at classical music, but also things like folk music (in the English speaking world) and the blues; things were generally done within certain guidelines and outliers were less revolutionaries than eccentrics and avantgardists, working to extend tradition, not refute it.

This all started to change for classical music around the turn of the 20th century—there was Luigi Russolo and his noise music—then much more so after World War I and drastically after World War II. Since 1945, there hasn’t been one tradition in classical music, but multiple ones, some of which (John Cage, electronic music) are barely within that tradition, if at all. A curious thing to me is that the same cannot be said of jazz. The music came about later and there’s certainly a sociological argument to be made that it itself is one of the fallouts from World War I, both psychologically and materially via James Reese Europe’s Harlem Hellfighters band’s presence in Europe for the war. From 1918 on, jazz has added new styles that build on the previous ones at the pace of modern life, an evolution rather than a branching away or a disassembly and rebuild. Even the free music revolution of the 1960s and the rock and funk of Miles Davis and others in the 1970s didn’t question jazz in any fundamental way, they just extended it further.

This isn’t a bad thing, and comparing this history to classical music is a useful way to see that advantages and drawbacks of these differing paths. Classical music, stylistically, has been fragmented for the past 80 years, which has meant some truly ex-

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(continued from page 13) unproven rumor, which the councilmember knowingly chose to recirculate, an historic Tunisian synagogue was destroyed.

On October 16, 2023, Councilwoman Hanif posted that the murder of a six year old boy in the Chicago suburbs had been “facilitated by rampant Islamophobic rhetoric stoked at the very highest levels of our government” and that “His blood is on our government’s hands”, thereby extending a blame to the Biden administration she has yet to extend to Hamas. By her own twisted logic, this would make her personally responsible for traordinary breakthroughs that questions the very nature of music, sound, and time—that’s the legacy of John Cage, Morton Feldman, Arvo Pärt, Alvin Lucier, electronic music, etc. It’s also meant a kind of dissipation of intellectual and aesthetic resources that has produced an accumulation of great music but few transformational works, ones that redefined the possibilities of compositional thinking and instrumental playing. The last was György Ligeti’s Etudes, which are almost 30 years old.

Jazz has had a pretty uniform aesthetic since it began, marked by progressive ideas that at first encounter have seemed outside of the music, but that in retrospect are easy to see as the natural development of the music’s possibilities. Cecil Taylor is a great example, a musician who seemed to be at odds with jazz at first but, through exposure and close listening, clearly connects in a straight line to Duke Ellington, just as one of his great musical partners, alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, was a logical and even inevitable development from Charlie Parker. Being able to hear those origins in Taylor and Lyons is one of the great pleasures in being a jazz listener. There were arguments between the mainstream and the avant-garde in the ‘60s, and the mainstream and rock and funk in the ‘70s. Those weren’t won so much as they disappeared in the face of the clear evidence that jazz could mix with, work with, and incorporate music that was happening around it while keeping the line of history going. And again, that dialogue with history that takes place inside the music is profound and unique, a simultaneous popular and art music that celebrates its own life in a beautiful and invigorating way every time it’s played.

This has meant, though, that jazz the destruction of the Tunisian synagogue

As reported in the Times, On August 3, 2022, a homeless man in Prospect Park attacked a woman and her dog with a wooden staff and a bottle of urine, killing the dog. With no arrest having been made, both the woman and another area resident, who was concerned about safety in the Park, separately went to Councilwoman Hanif’s office for help and “came away feeling her staff members were more concerned with the safety of the man — whom they presumed to be homeless and mentally ill — than with the threat he might pose to others.” The other resident was told “‘We don’t want the police involved in this.’”

On October 20, 2023, Councilwoman tends to drive an idea to stagnation, even death, innovations at first vibrant then turning baroque, then rococo, finally decadent. This happened with the formulas of swing and hard bop, and is always a danger with free improvisation, which can turn into a series of hollow gestures. And my accumulated listening to the 21st century has been raising warning signs about some trends that need some rethinking:

Before IDM there was EDM, and the daring, complex rhythms from Autechre and Squarepusher were good. So good that jazz drummers like Tyhshawn Sorey began to replicate them live, extending virtuosity and expanding the rhythmic possibilities of jazz— already a rhythmically sophisticated music. This moved from a flow to broken rhythmic patterns, compound meters that have become something of a way to prove bona fides, played not because they make any sense but because they identify the player as a certain kind of musician. This is mannerism, and has become complicated in an unmusical way, discontinuous to the point where it comes in irritating fragments.

There are vocal records, and singers, many good ones, and then there’s albums from instrumentalists that drop in a singer for a track or two. This is invariably a mistake. The vocalist changes the sound of the group so much that these tracks never fit with the rest of the album and don’t show a clear musical purpose. There’s also the problem with the songs themselves, which are never on the same level as the rest of the album, often made in a way that accommodates the singer rather than having them fit into the group, and that lyrically are sophomoric. That’s a high school sophomore.

Since Bix Beiderbecke sat down at

Hanif, in a somewhat justified slap at the Mayor’s failure to extend messages of consolation to his Moslem constituents, said “In every corner of this country, Muslim communities are asking for solidarity as we grieve. But at every opportunity, we are met with condescension from the people who claim to represent us. Muslim communities need support right now, not a stern talking to.”

So true, and I believe in every corner of the 39th Council District, there are many Jews who have the same problem with the Councilwoman who claims to represent us.

Maybe we need to do something so she would find us worthy of an extension of her sympathy.

Maybe we could kill a dog in Prospect the piano to play “In a Mist,” jazz has adapted many great structural and formal ideas from classical composers. But, with a very few exceptions, this has meant borrowing from the same small group of composers for the last 100 years: Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, some Bartók. But what about the music, as seen above, since WWII; revolutionary ideas in spectral harmony, the timbral possibilities of electronic music; minimalism, microtonality? One of the exhilarating things about the Ligeti Etudes is how they incorporate Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell (and African and Asian music) into the classical tradition and not only renews the tradition but establish new ways to play the piano.

It’s worth reflecting on that this year, which is Ligeti’s centennial. He was a music student, and when he escaped communist Hungary he taught in the West, but there’s nothing academic about his thinking, it’s all driven by his personal curiosity and the simple pleasure of making the sounds he imagined in his head. Academia took over jazz training in the last century, and pretty much every jazz musician born since 1970 has been through the conservatories. They come out as hellacious instrumentalists, but often disregard the original lesson of jazz education: learn everything, then for-

Park.

But I like dogs.

Nonetheless, something else might get her attention.

Having talked to the anti-vax conspiracy monger running as the Republican, I can’t give him my vote. And anyway such votes would be rightly dismissed as an embrace of reactionary lunacy.

So, I’m writing-in the persona I most admire, my 97 year old Holocaust survivor mother-in-law, Miriam Tyrk. You should do so too. The message of that vote will be unmistakable. Call it a vote for the Shoah E’Nuff Party.