One thing I appreciate about Nate Chinen’s book “Playing Changes, Jazz for the New Century” was his willingness and adept ability to point out the social conventions and fashions surrounding the jazz culture. Whether it be reductionist narratives about its performers that can box people in, or the conservative nature of certain enclaves seeking to elevate or preserve the status of jazz as a “respectable” art form.
Or the way certain things go in vogue. Or the evergreen language and social conventions that surround jazz, or really music culture in general. Name dropping J-Dilla to show your knowledge or affiliation with a certain strain of the culture. All the different signs one might show of their allegiance or even anti, or non-allegiance. People who take an “all styles are valid” approach will be quick to dismiss stifling language or ideas, attitudes that perpetuate preconceived notions of what jazz, or music, “is”.
In the book, there was a flurry of names and movements. I always think about some study I saw floating around where your mind can only hold the information of 150 people in it at once. It makes me curious where well over 150 brilliant artists are supposed to fit into my world. Some names are giants and stick out almost like a parasocial ghost friend. Monk. Mingus. Davis. C o l t r a n e.
I’m always left with a certain envy and longing when reading jazz or music bios. I’m searching for some tribal connection within a “scene”. So many of Nate’s subjects have a tribe and an enclave of their own to call home within the landscape. It seems such a crucial element to the success and artistry of so many artists.
Nate does give, in a way, clearance to those artists amongst us, those mavericks, that set out on their own with nothing but millions of hours of YouTube tutorial videos and an undeniable sense of who they are. Those artists that, by pure force of their own will, carve out a name for themselves and make an undeniable case for why they should be listened to.
And isn’t that what jazz is all about? Who the hell are you anyway? Tenacity and perseverance are part of the make-up of any “great” jazz artist. Pure individualism, and a band… A sense of taste helps too. Don’t try to be something you’re not!
A few choice quotes:
Speaking with Esperanza Spalding: She just envisioned her primary role less as a bedrock than as a catalyst. “In the moment, with the band, I’m just trying to play the bass parts that make the music stronger,” she said. “And make it more beautiful or more whole-sounding, or create density where there needs to be density, or intensity where there needs to be intensity, or space or emotion or a color. And the same is true when soloing. It’s not about shape or pattern. You just are really trying to translate what you’re receiving in that moment in that format of sound”
A quote from Mary Halvorsen on a big takeaway from her study with Anthony Braxton. The difference between a stylist and a restructuralist: “A stylist would be somebody that had basically perfected a tradition, and maybe they had their own voice within it but it was definitely confined to a particular style. Like Wynton Marsalis. And then a restructuralist would be somebody who had come up with their own system and method.”
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