(Why jazz is dying and what it needs to become vital again. A rant by bassdocta)
Jazz sessions follow the real book picking out tunes and playing standard for head-solos-head. The problem as I see it with standards. Standards are built on the pop songs of the 20’s 30’s 40’s. They are old workhorses that even by Charlie Parker’s time were tired. Bird reused the chord changes because everybody knew them. He just discarding the corny melodies. Here we are fifty years later using standards as a basis for playing jazz. Ludicrous. Who relates to these corny old melodies? I for one didn’t grow up with them , and when I did hear them I quickly changed the channel. We now have to LEARN standards again because there is no context – and then internalize the forms in order to blow on them. I LIKE some of the standards that serve well as blowing vehicles – where the chords move in interesting ways. But the melodies require a chink-a-chink drum pattern that locks the bass player into quarter notes. This proves to be a waste of resources at best. The soloing is well supported but the “support” team is more like a “slave” team. They are supporting the soloist without any sign of life themselves.
Trane opened it up in his later years. He let Elvin have his run, and it worked. Rythym and melody came to the forefront. Mccoy was just about out of a job. It was the revitalization of the pulse that allowed Trane to go so deep. (Although he could go deep even playing crap like Mary Poppins, which he did). But the pulse of the music became much more important and the music depth or soul was undeniable.
On the hard boppers.
By the late 50’s the time was ripe for swinging a little harder and talking it easier. It took players a decade to try to catch Bird. They never did but they at least began doing something else. The tempos slowed, the players took on forms that were more digestible and the diet was more that just rhythm changes and bluse. If the beboppers where listening to the pop of their day, standards, and blowing off its song forms , what were the hard boppers listening to (bombarded with?) from the everyday world. Rock and Roll was well on its way, but jazz was still mainly a black tradition and all but the luckiest the jazz guys were still playing pop on the side to make a living. Rhythm and Blues, early soul, and pop is my guess. Most of the elements of soul were not in place for soul to be rich enough to steal from. It would be the mid 60’s before soul really had some content to it. So maybe it was just some of the simplicity of the popular music that they dragged in. Add some hip horn charts, and careers bloomed for Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley and the rest of the Blue Note artists. They were just bringing in some of the elements of their environment. What they lacked was the worship of rhythm that James Brown would get to in a few years.
James brown knew about Trane, he clearly admired him. You can hear his tell Maceo to “blow like Trane” on his records. Did Trane influence him to free up his rhythm? I don’t know, but by 1967, JB had reduced the chords and increased the rhythm. Funk was born. JB hit gold musically and $ wise. By reducing the chords, players could concentrate on the rhythm more, and the afro part of Afro-American came more in to play. It was the drums that drove it. The drums pushed the bass, and the guitar parts changed radically too. The long passages of evolving rhythms required breaks in what would become either hypnotic or monotonous, depending on whether the music got to you or not. The horns added layers to change it up, and then killer hooks, and then “take it to the bridge” would throw in a whole new section. Jazz snobs laughed at “take it to the bridge” because “the bridge” was usually just the 4 chord for an indefinite amount of time ended by a tight hook to get back into the verse. Jazz players be dammed. This form worked more like the textbook definition of a bridge than standards did. It truly provided contrast to the verse. (Ironically standards have a bridge that provides no relief from the chink-a-chink “swing” rhythms – only different chord patterns.)
Jazz did not successfully bring in Soul for the most part. Miles used its influence and produced some great records, Jack Johnson (Miles’ Record, not the pop artist) comes closest (IMHO) but lacks a low down funky groove, and isn’t really down home at all unless home is a big apartment with a river view. Headhunters? Close – even funkier, really “bad” playing but still no warmth.
I’m not going to try to prove myself. It’s all opinion anyway
Jazz is searching now to find a new basis. Players regularly adopt pop songs as the “new standard”. Herbie even names an album as such. I like some of it just because clever people are working so hard on it - so there’s bound to be something “interesting” come out of it. But “interesting” is what Keith Jarrett is, not a movement. Why? There is no basis. Pop songs have boring chord changes (disappointing the standards oriented jazz guys) and they have no rhythm to speak of, so they don’t swing or sweat.
I n my jazz playing experience, players are constantly duplicating the jazz “real book” Half of the book is standards, old and tired when the book was published in the 70’s. Some really hip tunes, too. But all based on a whole environment that has not existed for 50 years! Why do we struggle with 2/5/1’s when you really can’t NOT make them sound tired and clichéd? Why do we struggle with the form of standards? 70 years ago they served a role: it was a form that everybody knew instinctively – because it was all around them, almost the “folk” music of the time.
Suffice to say, we play from our cultural roots. (Like it or not pop music is our folk music) So for us to be playing standards is wrong. We’re in a time warp. The options are grim, though. We all grew up with the Beatles, so we share that experience, but is there something to blow on? Not much.
So, if Standards and the real book are our , the jazz players, basis , and the basis is no longer relevant. What is there?
(so glad you asked)
What the previous masters did. Decompose. Go back to the rhythm. De-cliche. Simplify. Go back to the meaning of a verse and a bridge as statement and a contrast. More than do the unexpected, don’t do the expected: (but don’t do it too much, then the unexpected becomes the expected) Occasionally, deliberately emphasize off beats. Don’t always play in 2/8/16 bar phrases. And always build from the bottom up. The “Riddim, mon” . Skip chord changes, go to MODE changes. Don’t sound weird just to sound weird. I hate that. So many people listen to jazz and are attracted at first to Monk or Dolphy. Why – because it’s so weird. There equation is jazz=weird. They want to be on the fringe as well! Well, god bless them, they are welcome, but that’s not what jazz is, that’s only a compartment, a piece of what jazz is. (I know it comes from the mentality of “anything I don’t understand is “weird”. My feeling is that jazz players genuinely want to communicate, not be weird, but they do insist on communication on their own terms
Jazz before 1940 could be considered folk music if you take a broad definition of folk music. Many people listened to it, it was “singable”, and you could dance to it. Bebop ended that. Jazz become a language for listeners, not dancers, and very little was hummable. Jazz could be folk music once again. Drill down simplify, play da riddum, make it tight and loose at the same time. (see JB) . I don’t have a map so don’t ask for more. I haven’t been there yet.
(Music that is “folk” music around the world is usually but not necessarily simple. It is simple to the local culture but if you are not privy to that culture, it may be sound very strange to you. Listen to Middle Eastern Belly dancer music. That and Eastern Europe music. They play in “odd’ (to us) time signatures that take us years to learn and rarely sound natural. )
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