Jazz Dissonance Thursday March 29, 2007
Landing On The Wrong Note by Ajay Heble (2000) seemed quite an interesting book. It’s sub-titled ‘jazz, dissonance and critical practice’, suggesting that the jazz ethos can be incorporated in a developed model of critical cultural theory. From its early days developed by an oppressed community, then reviled and rejected by a complacently genteel establishment, jazz has represented a vaguely counter-culture attitude. I like that because I think there’s much to criticise about society and as with punk, jazz expresses it. But I found most of the book unreadable, with large amounts of very tedious repetition based on a few simple points that are better expressed simply. It has its moments though, which are worth noting as these quotations show.
Jazz is an innovative form of cultural practice, one that has enabled me to think with rigour about the forces and assumptions that have shaped and detrmined my interpretive and critical habits (7)
Jazz contrasts against mainstream musical attitudes built on the idea of music as a text, best represented in the classical tradition but also evident in other musical forms. By emphasising improvisation rather than received compositions and repetition, jazz embodies a creative attitude that can be extrapolated and applied to other, possibly non-musical domains.
Much of today’s jazz argot runs the risk of becoming nettled by any number of traditional emotive approaches (jazz isn’t a type of music, it’s a feeling!) which sees forms of representation and expression inherent in musical structure. The tendency to think of jazz as a spontanous expression of the performer’s emotions clouds our awareness of the fact that jazz, like language, is a system of signs (31)
I’ve had a few internet exchanges on this subject, in relation to defining what jazz is, and know from experience how established the emotive position is. Indeed, my experience is jazz lovers don’t like the questioning, and respond by attacking and undermining its practice. In myself, I recognise both: it serves no purpose to intellectualise my enjoyment of jazz because it’s not an intellectual subject, but I simultanously recognise that jazz is something as opposed to something else and on that basis can be described and articulated in terms of a coherent schema. It’s two kinds of discourse – the musical/feeling one, and the intellectual/descriptive one – and while they are not inherently compatible they undoubtedly both exist in their own valid terms.
“Spontaneous creation comes from our deepest being and is immaculately and originally ourselves. What we have to express is already with us, is us, so the work of creativity is not a matter of making material come, but of unblocking the obstacles to its natural flow” What…these crticis…have in common is their insistence that improvisation is a powerful ally in struggles for self-expression, self-determination, and self-representation” (93)
This citation goes to the heart of what jazz represents to me as a cultural and schematic attitude. By emphasising improvisation – to what extent this happens is debateable but it’s certainly more evident in jazz than elsewhere in music – creativity, derived from an inherent creative process, is integral to jazz.
What enthusiastically stunted innocence sees as the jungle is actually factory-made through and through, even when, on special occasions, spontaneity is publicised as a feature attraction….Anyone who allows the growing respectability of mass culture to seduce him into equating a popular song with modern art because of a few false notes squeaked by a clarinet, anyone who mistakes a triad studded with ‘dirty notes’ for atonality, has already capitulated to barbarism (167)
This quotation is notoriously derived from cultural critic Theodor Adorno, followed by this:
The much announced rebelliousness and originality of jazz is just a stylistic trick developed by the culture industry in order to sell more products (Keith Tester: 167)
The more I explore and listen to jazz, find new material I’ve never heard before and expand my knowledge of the music as a whole, the more I enjoy it. For example I’ve recently been introduced to Nordic Jazz, which has its own unique style and tradition. I’ve seen it described as ‘glacial’ and a musical equivalent to Ingmar Bergman, which is a little disconcerting It’s probably not for everyone, like Bergman, but what I’ve heard so far has a beautiful, haunting, evocative simplicity which to my understanding ties in with the wider tradition of modal jazz It’s not Parker, Davis, Coltrane or Gillespie, comes from a different context indeed a different country, all of which is interesting.
I digress slightly…my point is, as I invest more time and interest in this music and find it rewarding to do so, the less inclined I am to agree with a rebuttal of jazz. I like it; I think it’s great. I sometimes play it first thing in the morning and employ it as a soothing lullaby tune, and while that in itself is not so remarkable I’ve not done that before with other music.
I do however, partially agree with Adorno and Tester. There’s a mythology built up around jazz, no differently but nonetheless true as it is with other cultural “products”. The industry and the musicians exploit this. I love the music, regard it quite highly, and it’s possible to make this remark with both care and qualification, holding together simultanous opposites of criticism and jazz-fan appreciation.