Jazz Revelation, Sinister Word Play, and Sad News

Back to Main Page

This entry was posted at
22:06 GMT on 17 January 2003

Terry Teachout has a review of Jazz Modernism by Alfred Appel, Jr., and I need to get this book.

Actually, the review alone may be enough. For years, whenever any jazz afficionado has discovered that I like jazz, I have had to explain, patiently, that my appreciation of the form essentially ends at about 1960. To be certain, there are numerous exceptions to this rule -- some of Herbie Hancock's work, Vince Guaraldi, Cannonball Adderley, to name but a few -- but these are exceptions. Prior to 1960, my love of jazz is the rule.

I'd never been able to articulate it before, though I had made some decent stabs at it. My best attempt was my explanation to a friend, during one of many conversations on the subject, that I preferred it when the musicians seemed to be having fun with their audience, rather than sniffing down upon them. In a different discussion, I made the point that art is communication with an audience, not a code for communicating past it.

Teachout is onto my point, as is Appel, but they both seem to explain it much more clearly. The paradigm used is that of "modernism" (about which moniker, more in a minute). Appel's project, it seems, is to seperate out self-indulgent, navel-gazing "modernism" from those modernist tendencies which actually serve some use to the outside world.

Here's Appel:

This jazz new wave eschewed the salient characteristics of 1920-1950 classic jazz: accessibility; humor; a capacity for joy; the Great (white) American Songbook, the backbone of jazz multiculturalism [...]; and the goals and ideals of racial integration.

Teachout sees the issue in a more complex light. He uses the example of Miles Davis, a "true jazz modernist," who nevertheless doesn't fit Appel's mold:

Davis was one of the leading stylistic innovators of modern jazz. In 1949, he led a nine-piece band whose members [...] collectively invented cool jazz. At the end of the 50's, working in tandem with Coltrane and the pianist Bill Evans, he introduced "modal improvisation," a technique of improvising on scales rather than on chordal patterns that was embraced by virtually all post-bop jazz musicians. Starting in 1968, he played a pivotal role in the blending of jazz and rock that came to be known as "fusion." Yet he was at the same time a truly popular artist, one whose records continue to be bought by people who know little of jazz save that Miles Davis played it.

[...]

Unlike any of the major jazz musicians who came before him, Davis received high-level classical training. [...] And while his knowledge of other art forms appears to have been limited, it is clear from [John] Szwed's book that he thought like a modernist, seeking artistic renewal by constantly changing the musical settings in which he displayed his distinctive trumpet playing. ("I have to change, it'iacute;s like a curse," he once remarked.)

For the record, I love Davis's work from the '50s. Birth of the Cool and Kind of Blue are amazing works. "Fusion" is something I have little or no patience with, and Davis's more synthetic, electronic works leave me cold. None of this diminishes my respect for his artistry, however.

As a(n aspiring) writer, I know where my bread is buttered. I never intend my work as an infinite jest at my reader's expense. I write in order to express something, and that something is much too important to render so indecipherable that nobody knows for certain exactly what it means.

Call this a pet peeve, if you want. There are few things that irritate me more than the intentional corruption of the english language. At the top of the list are people who "cleverly" name their movement/style/school/whatever.

"Modernism" is one. If I disagree with a "modern," does that automatically render me "old-fashioned?"

Let us not even venture near "post-modernism," shall we?

How about "method" acting? There is only one method, apparently. All else is mistaken.

Following on that, how about "The New School?" It's, what, 50 years old now? Will they ever call it "The Old School?" Not bloody likely!

And of course there's "affirmative action," against which, who can be? The only alternative, naturally, is negative action, and nobody wants to be for that.

I would attribute this to stupidity, but mendacity is closer to the mark. It's a linguistic trick, designed to automatically gain the high ground without any discussion, argument or deliberation.

Oh, hell. Pulling up a link above, I just discovered that one of my personal heroes, Richard Mitchell, died. Just before my birthday, too. God damn it.

Go. Read his work. All of it.