I Just as dance is music made visible,
so jazz is dance made music. Its study and discipline are part of
an oral tradition, best imparted by master-player to student.
Imagine this - jazz is first physically
conceived before the mind takes over. It is visceral. Jazz
playing cannot be learned by merely memorizing transcribed solos, for
instance. To play from transcription is like trying to get nourishment
from a picture of a meal. Jazz, unlike classical music, is not an
interpretative art. Unlike classical music, a music of theme and development,
jazz is a music of time and development. It is more verb than noun.
And it is a process antithetical to standard academic practice.
I write music theory (e.g., The 8-Tone Quarto-Modes Concept). Despite
that, I urge jazz students with only a minimum of theoretical knowledge
to first begin playing from where they dance - from where they feel music
when hearing others perform. Don't let the notes get in the way.
First, consider the time. With jazz, notes are secondary to the time
in which they are executed. If the balance of notes to an intended
or prefigured phrase will not fit within the fixed time allotted, then
the notes are what is to be sacrificed - not the time. One note effectively
placed is worth more than mere virtuosity.
Observe musically skillful children.
There is very little mind, initially, to what they do. They work
from their lower abdomen, from their central nervous system. Later
they begin to match what they have been doing to what else is out there,
when they are self-motivated to know more.
That is how it must be for a student
of jazz. An instrument is an extension of the body. Dance with
the instrument. When that begins to happen, one will be in a better
position to advance with music theory. You can see it in more primitive
music, rock for example. Later, with jazz, and as theory develops,
it becomes more internalized.
Almost all the arts are muscular, most
certainly all the performing arts. Creative art originates in
the body and is carried more or less forward with the mind. What
we think is not what we know. What we feel is what we know, even
if it cannot be explained.
There should be no inflexible intent
in the beginning to be a jazz musician. That may not be one's eventual
forte. Study music in general before taking up jazz in particular.
Jazz is a specialized process. First learn what it is to play, which
is a process for learning what you are. Find out what you are before
deciding where you are going.
Work from self back towards the convention
- not to become absorbed by it, of course, but in order to contribute
and to find a larger context in which to associate the music. The
creative artist can never be part of the large convention, however, at
least not for long.
Jazz's contemporary convention is a result
of the recording industry. Recordings are a mixed blessing.
Having been a commercial boon to players and their distant fans, recordings
are also a deceptive tool for learning. They are artefacts after
the fact. Jazz is a process of adjusting to the musical moment.
Recordings are fixed moments that cannot (and should not in totality) be
repeated.
Listeners get a frozen moment's dressing
up of a piece of music. They hear it over and over. It becomes
fixed in their minds. What really matters, the process that fleshes-out
and gives life to the skeleton, is often forgotten, if even recognized.
A skilled jazz improvisator will not
know or plan entirely in advance what he or she is going to play.
As with acting, it is reacting - or in the case of music, responding
- that makes the performance. A player's input, in turn, will cause
other players to respond, and so on. Trying to play jazz with a
record is like trying to make conversation with a dead man.
As far as jazz is concerned, there is
little point to theory unless the instrumental dance is taking place.
There is much discussion on the Internet, for instance, that urges learning
jazz by way of transcriptions from recordings. Transcribing is
good practice for the ear. It is often difficult, and helps to
build discipline. Certainly, it is one way to learn chords, patterns,
and voicings. It is very much like tracing a painting in order to
learn that art. It is trying to get at the cause by studying the effect.
It should not be forgotten that music
is a creative art; that to copy is to not create. The problem with
the transcribing process is that it drills people to sound alike.
It makes a commendable achievement out of playing like this or that famous
musician. It studies to emulate the dead butterfly.
II Adults, being self-conscious, become
vain. They find it difficult to not appear skillful, which is perceived
as failing to be in control, to not be a grown-up. Adults want
to know in advance. And what is meant by knowing is that which can
be explained cognitively, the mode of what is learned in school.
By keeping to current standards of academic
practice, schools are not yet properly the places for teaching jazz improvisating.
Improvisating is, after all, the sine qua non of jazz. And that originates
in the dance. American schools, for instance, follow scientific
methods for education. They think to teach jazz in the same way
they teach other subjects, especially classical music. This cannot
do for creative art. Creative art is a process of shaping into physical
reality what originates in the imagination, tied to emotion.
There are, as yet, no effective objective
standards by which to test artistic creativeness. Schools are smart
enough not to give degrees in it. But, they effectively obfuscate
this situation by producing teachers who become accepted as such because
they have been given a degree to teach in this or that art.
The scientific process is to objectively
observe - to analyze. Analysis belongs to study. Playing
and studying are two different things. To study is to set aside
time; to play music is to enter it. To try to put the two together
simultaneously is much the same as to both see and be the view simultaneously.
The danger that schools pose for jazz
improvisating is that they are busy producing certifiable teachers - that
is, those who know a lot about the subject - rather than doers. Teachers
who themselves cannot make jazz cannot teach it. By "making" it
is meant improvisating. Perhaps what they can do is approximate jazz.
They can teach music history - who did what and when - and point to examples
drawn from that. There are exceptional musician-teachers. I am
not talking about them.
Because jazz is orally transmitted, it
is most effectively taught by a master player. Jazz must
be demonstrated live to be properly transmittable.
I am not forgetting that there are, of
course, jazz bands in which the musicians perform almost entirely from
scores. This is in keeping with the utilitarian nature of so much
public education. Utilitarianism values a thing for its usefulness,
for what it can get.
In America we can see that music is a
tool for profit - an industry. In school it is a tool for earning
a degree (as well as for being a sport in jazz band competition).
In religion and government it is a tool for retaining and selling ideas
and for order. And among the emerging generations it is a tool for
mating.
In Utilitopia music is no longer process
but product. This might be okay for business and consumers and
would-be players who like to skip the process and rush towards the goal
through imitation. But, it is absolutely not right for creative musicians.
Music can and should serve, but not at the expense and death of its process. Jazz band curriculum, especially in mid-level
public schooling, has simply replaced the older concert band programs,
which were, like sports, not to be taken too seriously as though for a
lifelong occupation. However, when a graduate does go on to earn
a living in the field, he is appreciated not so much for music but for
achieving financial success in life. What is taught in schools is the interpretive
skill of reading well. It is more akin to the demands of classical
music than to jazz. Usually the graduates who go on to teach are
trained-up in this discipline, which may also entail training in notational
composition, arranging, orchestration, and the like. It prepares
a musician in the ways of the industry - for a job and for a teaching
position. Though economically commendable, it is
not suitable for jazz improvisating. Schools generally show an
interest only in the by-products of jazz - music permanently fleshed-out,
as on recordings. Jazz improvisating, on the other hand, is process.
It requires the skeleton rather than the finished item, in order for the
jazz process to take place. After which, the skeleton gets returned
to the closet bare-boned for another fleshing-out later. That is not to say that these skeletons
cannot be quite complex and a specialty in themselves. I agree with
a statement I recently heard saying that really new directions in jazz
will come from its composers. I understand that to mean the harmonies,
chord sequences, and melodic lines, those elements of the skeleton necessary
for the improvisating player to perform upon and within; and the advances
possible therein for jazz to discover directions beyond the mere manipulation
of tone production that is currently the mode. However, that is
subject for another paper.
III FINAL WORD Probably the current drive in schools
and among younger jazz hopefuls to literally transcribe from records is
due in no small part to jazz's political-economic devastation. Apprenticeship
training was possible for my (pre-Boomer) generation because of the availability
of local venues that featured jazz. Depending on an individual's skill, a
player could sit-in with, or at least be able to hear and observe, master
players at work. The players were not necessarily well-known.
But jazz venues have become rare and expensive, and often feature players
travelling through who do not stay around long enough to interact with
local musicians. There is the lesser-priced jazz venue
that features an occasional local worthy. But, with respect to the
performing arts, the general American social custom, especially among the
Boomers and subsequent generations whose artist-mentors are electronic media,
is to respect an artist relative to how much he or she has been projected
to them via major media. Many of these generations are now in
authoritative positions in our academic institutions. More and
more of our teachers look to the media for what to teach, to the marketplace
for jobs. They train rather than educate. When offered an introductory
lecture-demonstration of new jazz theory, one university professor characteristically
insisted that it first be marketed in retail music stores. What
does that signify? Is it not the purpose of higher institutions,
at least, to be interested in the thing and not just its commercial viability? The audio-visual that comes to me when
thinking of jazz in schools is a great sucking sound as student after
student slips into the vortex of academic convention and into the job
market. I read somewhere not long ago where a national American
organization of academic jazz educators signed an agreement with one
of the world's largest producer-distributor's of entertainment.
This could well be the ultimate step in cloning all jazz musicians, with
degrees in hand or requiring degrees, to fill the marketing goals of big
business. Let us hope not.
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