FEATURE:
Re-Birth of the Cool
PHOTO CREDIT: Unsplash
Is the Jazz Revival Here to Stay?
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THERE are still a lot of people…
PHOTO CREDIT: Unsplash
who have a limited impression of what Jazz music consists. They assume it is all rather ponderous, pretentious and, for the most part, boring. Many of us do not have the patience to sit through music without vocals. Submitting yourself to music that requires you to provide words can be a bit strange. We live in a time when music is constantly available and in front of us – most of what we hear on a daily basis has a vocal element of some sort. Jazz is a genre that relies, for the most part, on instrumentation and texture. There are great Jazz singers like Billie Holiday but we often associate the genre with these trumpet-heavy passages and sprawling songs. There are so many different styles of Jazz and we do not really have a handle regarding its depth and brilliance. If you want a classic by Miles Davis or John Coltrane then you have choices; if you want something more modern then there are some fantastic artists ready to excite the ear. Maybe it is hard reappropriating Jazz’s ‘reputation’ and how it been on the outside for a very long time. Whilst it is not toppling the mainstream and swinging in with the swagger of Britpop; Jazz is back in the news...
PHOTO CREDIT: Unsplash
It seems the genre’s popularity is starting to hit the new generation. We may not see the popularity it acquired in the 1920s but I can see a definite upswing – I will look at why many, in recent years, have slated Jazz and feel it is dead. Before I look at artists bringing Jazz into the mainstream; it seems there is a lot of stuffiness and futility swirling. We have seen the shortlist for this year’s Mercury Music Prize announced and, like every year, there is that ‘token’ Jazz album. Last year, we saw Dinosaur nominated; The Comet Is Coming were nominated the year before – this year, Sons of Kemet have made the cut with their record, Your Queen Is a Reptile. Even before people have heard a note, they are writing off the Jazz albums and assume they are there to make up the numbers! I feel the Jazz albums included on the Mercury list warrant a lot more acclaim. Modern Jazz is among the most exciting and innovative we have ever seen. Some purists prefer Jazz to be true to its roots and not modernise itself. Many modern Jazz artists, like Sons of Kemet, bring in other genres to give the music much more life and adventure. They fuse Rock and Caribbean Folk together; some African strands and stir it all together.
Critics praise Your Queen Is a Reptile’s killer charts, tightness; the great improvisations and how it tackles racism, immigration and troubling political times. Ecstatic, fulsome and endlessly inventive; not only have Son of Kemet shown British Jazz is thriving but they prove what can happen when you bring new ideas to Jazz. I doubt the album will win the Mercury but its genius and quality warrants recognition and celebration. One of the reasons why Jazz is starting to gain popularity and traction is how diverse and exciting it is. I mentioned how we have this impression of soothing, smooth and one-dimensional Jazz songs. The days of beard-stroking players noodling for hours still seems to pop into our minds. Look at the modern breed and you are treated to something heady, fantastic and vivacious. Whilst Jazz bands like Sons of Kemet are helping change minds and show Jazz’s flexibility; one has to look at U.S. artists like Kamasi Washington and Kendrick Lamar – two of the pioneers who are mixing Jazz sounds with political and social messages. Washington, in a recent interview with The Guardian, was asked about his upbringing and how Jazz came into his life:
“The cheerful ease with which he can bowl into a club and take over the stage is partly down to these links with jazz’s legacy. Up-and-coming musicians in the field often talk of the pressure they feel to not only appease the gatekeepers of tradition but to live up to the greats. Washington never felt daunted. “It wasn’t alien to us,” he explains. “[Jazz] comes from poor black neighbourhoods, so because of that foundation we thought of it as a support. It feels more like a horse that you can ride out on than a weight, the horse that’s taken all your forefathers around the world and allowed you to express yourself”.
Listen to Washington’s new (double) album, Heaven and Earth, and there are meditations on black identity and brutality: big social themes and powerful messages are mixed with gentler, spiritual codas. Modern Jazz artists are using the genre to deliver something hard-hitting and thought-provoking. Whilst Pop and Rock have a big role and are more popular than Jazz; I wonder whether artists are providing anything substantial and observant. Genres such as Post-Punk and Jazz, instead, are platforms where artists can discuss what the world is like and the problems out there. Washington, on his latest record, blew critics away with his epic soundscapes and immersive brilliance. Some noted a slightly limited scope in terms of improvisation – little harmonic momentum in his solos; pentatonic pattern-work harking back to Jazz’s traditions rather than reshaping them. The biggest compliment, mind, was levied at how he creates frameworks so his bold and expressionistic style can rouse battle-cry and buckle the knees. Rather than rip up the rulebooks and forensically evolve Jazz’s structure and core; Washington uses music as a way of creating transcendence, talking about his struggle and making Jazz accessible to the masses. More than anything, modern Jazz artists are making (the genre) easier to appreciate and love – rather than the academic and rather technical form that drove some away.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kamasi Washington/PHOTO CREDIT: Nina Corcoran
Returning to that aforementioned interview; Washington was asked whether he could see modern Popstars like Rihanna employ Jazz in their music:
“Yeah, if she wants her show to be great,” he says, laughing. “I mean, I think it’s already [begun]. Even at Coachella, seeing Beyoncé with a brass marching band, people are learning the value of what jazz represents: ideas of musicianship and allowing multitudes of people to express themselves within your show. It’s growing. Once you kind of get a taste of that, it’s hard to go back”.
Jazz is registering and resounding because of the messages coming through. Washington talks about police brutality and the role of the black citizen in America (in the world) in a way other artists aren’t. Aside from black musicians like Childish Gambino; there are fewer revealing what it is like in modern America; what life is like for the black population. That sort of honesty and harsh truth is speaking to people all over the world – not only the black population of the U.S. Look at Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 masterpiece, To Pimp a Butterfly, and that can be seen as a catalyst for the modern Jazz revival. Kamasi Washington was involved with that record and helped bring Jazz to the mainstream. Artists like A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul did that years before but, at a time when Jazz was struggling and not a populist force; Lamar reshaped our opinions regarding Jazz’s flexibility and promise – spicing incredible compositions with lyrics that hit the heart and made you think.
Other artists, such as Thundercat, are keeping Jazz’s flame and elasticity firm and fluid. I wonder whether we get caught up in clichés and stereotyped views regarding Jazz. Why, then, has the genre acquired a bad name? This feature goes back and time and tries to explain where Jazz went wrong:
“When jazz trumpeter Nicholas Payton wrote a famous essay about the demise of jazz, "On Why Jazz Isn't Cool Anymore," he made a curious declaration:
"I create music for the heart and the head, for the beauty and the booty."
When, however, was the last time anyone associated shaking their booty to jazz music? Probably not since the swing and big band era of the 1930s and '40s, when people actually danced to jazz.
They also sang along to jazz tunes. Vocal standards like "Summertime," "Alone Together" and "Days of Wine and Roses" were written for Broadway or Hollywood. Jazz offered accessible melodies that anyone could hum along to.
Then bebop came along after World War II and fans had trouble keeping up. Titans like trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker played music that was hyper-fast and fiendishly complex. The focus was on the virtuoso soloist -- not a catchy melody. People stopped singing and dancing to jazz; bebop supplanted the booty.
IN THIS PHOTO: Charlie Parker/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
Jazz also became more esoteric, its leaders becoming self-indulgent and playing primarily for themselves. If you were too square to follow, too bad. So when trumpeter Miles Davis started turning his back to the audience while performing live, it symbolized what jazz had already done -- it tuned out its audience”.
Modern Jazz, in the U.S. and U.K., is starting to reconnect with the audience and gain a sense of cool. That rather stuffy and elitist attitude to Jazz is turning. The genre does not require listeners to be experts or have a great knowledge of the form. Modern artists are not turning audiences away; they are eager for them to experience the music, hear their words and discover something wonderful. If political and socially-aware artists in the U.S. are trying to spearhead a Jazz revival; there is a wave of British artists who are getting under the radar:
“In the UK, a new and thrilling jazz movement has evolved. As with Lamar, Thundercat and Washington, it is born out of fresh experimentalism, is reaching far younger, more diverse audiences and doesn’t care for snootiness. Unlike in previous waves, these musicians are in their 20s and early 30s, come from diverse backgrounds and, as with grime, have created their own community outside of major labels and concert halls”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Unsplash
“…Their music, meanwhile, pulls liberally from other genres, whether hip-hop, neo-soul, UK club sounds such as broken beat, or from the African and Caribbean diaspora. And it’s not just at gigs that you can hear it but, much like in the acid jazz days, nightclubs too. British DJs such as Bradley Zero and Floating Points have liberated jazz for the dancefloor to the extent that it’s now not unheard of for a 10-minute Pharaoh Sanders odyssey to be spun on the decks to an appreciative, twentysomething crowd.
Notable, too, is how prolific this wave is, with jazz musicians infiltrating summer music festival listings, signing to indie labels or taking their sound abroad. The sheer volume of talent is being recognised across the world. “Wherever I’m travelling, whether it’s in the States, Argentina, Japan, or all over Europe, everyone is talking to me about the British invasion,” says DJ and broadcaster Gilles Peterson, who himself helped usher in the acid jazz sound of the mid-80s. “I’ve had people talking about Courtney Pine and Steve Williamson in slightly hushed tones, but I’ve never had this before. They feel this is a very important movement”.
New British Jazz stars like Moses Boyd have seen the changes in Jazz coming. He looks at technology’s role and how it has brought the music to a wider audience. We are now allowed to see the personalities of Jazz artists through social media – audiences get a better grasp of the inner-workings and how the music comes together; where it comes from and the sub-genres it brings in.
They (modern British artists) are not playing to standards and repeating what has come before: they are taking the history books from the masters and rewriting it in their own vision. Jazz allows British artists to talk about their culture and upbringing; add a distinct and personal stamp to a style of music that is still misunderstood and maligned. Sheila Maurice-Grey, in the article I have just quoted, talked about her experiences:
“She says the jazz world at large is closed off “and that’s a big problem”. She belongs to a seven-strong, mostly female collective, Nérija, and says, “most of our audience is basically white, middle-class [and] upper-class, elderly people. It’s cool, but that’s not what we want to do. In the next five years, we want to play to people our age.” But the jazz establishment is finally waking up to her generation, and Kokoroko are themselves due to play London jazz club Ronnie Scott’s in May. Maurice-Grey thinks there’s still a way to go; Scott’s is “trying to develop a new relationship with different artists, it’s interesting,” she says, one eyebrow raised – but she’s ready for the test of trying to make a seated dinner club get up and dance. “The audience is very much part of the show,” she says. “There’s no us and them. It’s more about collaborating to make it magical. We’re all part of this journey”.
There are, also, differences between the London and Manchester Jazz scenes. In Manchester, the genre is more spiritual and has a different ethos. Artists here have a different style and character; Jazz is a genre that can change its shape and aura depending on which part of the country you travel to. Many of us associate Jazz with male players. Nubya Garcia is one of the few female brass players who one can see in the contemporary Jazz movement. She reacted to this statistic:
“People do look at you, and it used to bother me a lot, but I’m trying to learn how to deal with it,” she says. “If you get comments like ‘Whoa, it’s so nice to see a woman on stage’ every time you gig, which I do, eventually you’re like, ‘Godammit!’ It’s not a negative thing, it’s just that person one doesn’t know that person 30 is also saying that. It’s just normal to me, but not normal to everyone else”.
It is clear there is a way to go until Jazz reverses opinions and gets full acceptance. Like Folk and Grime; it is still on the outskirts and has its particular audience. From great U.S. Jazz artists like Kamasi Washington, Thundercat and Kendrick Lamar (Jazz and Hip-Hop) to the British wave; it is clear there is an appetite and new view of Jazz – one not being widely reported in the media. Modern Jazz is much more engaging and political; it has variations and there are so many different cultures and choices. It is not about cold readings and rather listless solos: there is so much energy, story and motion one can discover! If you take a look at the artists defining modern Jazz and evolving its name; you will find something wonderful, intriguing and…
IN THIS PHOTO: Nubya Garcia/PHOTO CREDIT: Jim Aindow
INCREDIBLY moving.