WHAT IS JAZZ

 

The argument is hot. Hectolitres of ink (real and virtual) have been spilled to compile countless studies, research, publications and social posts. Long-standing friendships have been shattered, famous musical groups have been disbanded, fierce enmities have arisen.

All for this plain, simple question: what is jazz?

Two main positions have grown since the seventies: the embalmers, led by their recognized emperor, Wynton Marsalis, and the everything goers lacking a true charismatic leader, but well established amongst music critics, journalists and assorted hacks. Let’s now take a look at the key points supported by these two schools.

The Embalmers

Jazz? Jazz equates to Dixieland/New Orleans. Swing era? Probably yes. Bebop? Maybe.

After which, the universal flood, brought by the total-global archenemy – the horrible, very mean, shoddy Miles Davis and his shady epigons like the “always out of tune” tenor sax John Coltrane, the mad pentatonicist McCoy Tyner and so on and so forth.

Don’t mention modal jazz, free jazz, fusion: hic sunt liones!

Luckily, there are a couple of positive things the embalmers did – and continue to do – for jazz: to preserve the purity of jazz styles that might otherwise have been lost, and to focus on instrumental and improvisational proficiency and technical virtuosity.

A separate discussion should be made on Barry Harris, not a stranger to biting rants against modal jazz but, in my humble opinion, excusable as he limits himself to a focused reflection on theoretical/didactic approaches that enable even the average student to successfully practice jazz, criticizing not so much modal or post-bebop music but its very teaching method.

The everything goers

Jazz? Everything having the word “jazz” in its label is, definitely, jazz. Modal jazz? Yes. Free jazz? Yes. Lounge jazz? Yes. Acid jazz? Yes. Disco jazz? Yes. Liscio Romagnolo jazz? Yes indeed!

It's not that I don't appreciate a certain open-mindedness and flexibility, I simply do not believe that a merely nominalist approach to the issue can lead to appreciable results. Moreover, when this approach is based solely on highly ideologised sociopolitical reflections - not that these elements do not have their relevance, mind you - then the derailment of the argument becomes almost certain.

Interestingly, this school is mainly made of journalists, writers, philosophers and university academics - very few musicians amongst the everything goers.

And then?

Between these Scylla and Charybdis, there are hundreds of intermediate opinions, unfortunately often marked by the same obtuse dogmatism of the extreme positions we have just mentioned. This is not the approach that aims to guide this brief analysis, as we believe that a cautious dialectic, well-founded on facts and nourished by a healthy spirit of skepticism, can provide hermeneutic tools that are much sharper than a dull, dogmatic ideological approach.

Let’s start with some overall considerations that will constitute the fil rouge of our reasoning line:

• The meeting/clash between the society, culture and music of African origin and those of European origin. This is, I strongly believe, the original characteristic of what can be understood as jazz: If we carefully examine any musician (white or African-American) who wants to propose himself as a jazz artist, we always find - obviously to a certain extent, given the historical era and the personal human and artistic experience - at least a small spark of this intimate fusion of cultures that gave rise to the original jazz.
• The unbroken thread, from heart to heart, from master to student, that inextricably binds jazz musicians. It is a long chain made of thousands of links, each one taking, transforming and building an uninterrupted transformative progression, which should be seen not so much in its individual constituent elements but in its gestalt whole. 
• And now, the hot topic: the sociopolitical implications of making jazz. No one can deny that the history of jazz is intimately linked to the difficult, tragic history of the African people, so brutally enslaved, segregated, persecuted and still today subjected to unimaginable abuse and violence. Jazz has been, paradoxically, at times a weapon of struggle and an uncle Tom instrument of seeking acceptance, it has been a scream and it has been a confidential wink, it has been tragedy and comedy. This does not mean, however, that the sociopolitical dimension is quintessential to making jazz, so much so that there are hundreds of white jazz musicians who practically do not care about this dimension...but they make excellent genuine jazz. 
• Last but not least, there is the dimension of freedom. I mention it here, in the place of honor, because I firmly believe that there can be no true jazz without the inner freedom of the jazz musician: free to think, free to feel, free to choose. Only a free man, truly free to "tell his story", can make true jazz. The others should be content to press keys, appropriately if they are gifted and like crazy windmills if they attended the Berkeley School of Music.

Now, some more technical/specific musical elements that should be considered – again, not in a dogmatic way but as potential “ingredients” of the jazz recipe:

• Let's start from the beginning: can there be jazz without swing? The answer may seem obvious, but a problem immediately arises: what is this ineffable swing? I have listened to hundreds of musicians: each one swings differently. I have read hundreds of explanations: each one is different, even radically. I have even heard - exceptionally, of course - some musicians play jazz practically without swinging. If these are the assumptions, the conclusion could be that swing is a very important component of jazz, but its definition is so broad as to leave free rein to many performing approaches.
• Improvisation is another of those concepts that are often considered essential to talking about jazz. Well: this is not the case. Hundreds of jazz pieces - pure jazz, of course - are written from beginning to end. No one denies the importance of improvisation in the general economy of the approach to jazz, but once again it is an ingredient that, however relevant and pervasive, is not intrinsically necessary.
• Another qualifying aspect of jazz music is - at least from the period immediately following its beginnings - the particular harmonic research in terms of both progressions, often stuffed with daring concatenations, substitutions and preparations, and the tendency to use extensions and alterations to make the harmonies more "flavorful". En passant, here the two-headed nature of jazz is revealed once again: African on one side, European on the other. Does this mean that there is no jazz without harmonic complexity? Not at all, there are very simple pieces that no one would dare deny the coveted "jazz music" label.
• Tension and resolution, the improviser's delight and bane: whether it is implemented through eminently tonal procedures (enclosures, chromaticisms, anticipations and postponements, etc.) or whether it is implemented through modal means (side slipping, Coltrane chords, quartalism, serialism), the need to create tension and resolve it has always been a basic feature in jazz. The problem is that many types of music - excluding contemporary trap-style garbage and similar monstrosities - make extensive use of this device. So, once again, nothing pathognomonic.
• I will leave the question of sound for last: no one could fail to grasp how the sound of a jazz musician is radically different from that of a classical interpreter, but also from that of a pop interpreter. Sounds that can be raw but also very refined, ranging between a scream and a whisper, between a snap and velvet, between the extra-percussive and the legato. A thousand types of sounds, but all marked by a complete disinterest in the "beautiful sound" of a classical-romantic setting: a question more of intention and profound artistic necessity than a mere discussion of instrumental technique. Once again the theme of inner freedom re-emerges, which I personally consider one of the most important pieces not only of "doing jazz" but even of "being jazz".

Well, let's try to sum up this brief excursus: there is no element whose presence guarantees the "jazzness" of a piece of music, just as there is no element whose absence mercilessly wrecks the ambition of actually making jazz. As in everything, and I believe this wholeheartedly, it is always a combination of things rather than elements taken out of context - and therefore instead of launching into passionate ideological paeans, it will always be necessary to implement, as someone said, "the concrete analysis of the concrete situation".