I think it is important to define our terms. My musical background is in jazz, and that is what we’ll be exploring here. But what is this thing called jazz music? It is important, because I’ve had many people tell me they don’t like jazz. When I talk to them further, I find that they don’t like a particular type of jazz, but other types of jazz they do enjoy. They just don’t really understand that jazz encompases many styles.
People have been trying to define jazz for years, so I know that we won’t get a perfect definition here. The Wikipedia post, here, really doesn’t define it. It just describes various aspects of it. Leonard Feather, a British journalist who moved to the U.S. and was both a musician and journalist, stated in his Encyclopedia of Jazz that it includes improvisation, and discussed rhythmic elements such as syncopation and “swing”, as well as harmonic elements such as structured chord progressions. In the end, though, he comes to the conclusion that one just knows it when one hears it.
So, jazz is music that includes all the normal elements of music (melody, harmony, rhythm, and silence), as well as improvisation (a very important part of jazz), and specific relationships of those elements (such as the “swing feel” that anyone who listens to Count Basie knows well.) But fundamentally, jazz is a feeling. Whether it is dixieland, big band swing, be-bop, or cool jazz, it is all jazz, and you know it when you hear it.
So when people say to me they don’t like jazz, what they really mean, if pressed, is that they don’t like to hear soloist after soloist, with long solos with (what sounds to them like) lots of notes that don’t make any sense and has no melody. Frankly, I often agree with them. I don’t really like that style of jazz either, unless the soloists are unusually talented and can really make a statement that emotionally touches me.
The kind of jazz I like to listen to, and to play, is melodic. There is a melody, and the harmony and the rhythm serve to support that melody. The solos take the music somewhere melodically, acting like the exposition part of a piece of classical music. Listen to early Miles Davis, or any Gerry Mulligan, or Stan Getz, or Dave Brubeck, or Paul Desmond, or the Modern Jazz Quartet, or any others in the so-called cool school (or West Coast Jazz) style of playing. That is what I’m talking about. (Here’s the Wikipedia page on Cool Jazz.) If you’re interested in a sample, here is part of a tune off my CD Monsoon. This is an excerpt from Marc VI, played by Marc Rosen and Sweet Thunder Jazztet to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.
A lot of serious jazz musicians and fans don’t respect this kind of jazz. I don’t know why. Playing it takes just as much skill as playing be-bop. I think it is because some jazz musicians don’t like the fact that this type of jazz is more accessible and understandable to the listeners. It isn’t just an inside thing that you can only “get” if you’re “hip”. Regular people can actually listen to it and enjoy it. To me, that is a good thing. We need more of that in order to get jazz back as part of the national musical conversation, so that there are a lot more jazz fans and jazz is much more available here in the US, where it was formed. To me, good music is about making an emotional connection, not showing off how many notes you can play.
Sorry for the lengthy post, but we needed to start somewhere! Let me know what you think.
