What is Jazz? (or How Do We Know We Know What We Know?)

The following is a letter I wrote to the host of a CBC radio program. I do this with increasing frequency, as age morphs me into Abraham Simpson. CBC radio makes me want to rant, and my thoughts about people's opinions (the public at large) got me thinking about why we rant. I think "Why We Rant" could be a good serialized blog topic. Apparently, I am a perfectionist, which is why I procrastinate. Truthfully, I'd rather stare down a deadline until the clock is just a tick from zero and then jujutsu the thing into submission. I think Douglas Adams had the best quote about procrastination, or more precisely, dropping the ball. In no way do I condone dropping the ball.

Here we go.

Hi _____:

Something is really bugging me about the show I’m listening to, for the second time. It’s your program about all the music that you don’t have time to put on your show and it’s being re-broadcast during the summer. You’re telling of the negotiation you had with ____ over a piece of “jazz” music (justification for these quotation marks follows). I believe you told ____ that you found this particular piece, a rendering of Summertime (or perhaps jazz in general) “difficult”. It’s the use of “jazz” as a modifier on your program that is troubling me and I’m going to explain why and, while in the process, hopefully clarify for you what should and shouldn’t, reasonably, be referred to as jazz.

I am Canadian and I am a musician. I had a successful career as a freelance musician in Edmonton, before leaving to pursue an international teaching career in high school chemistry. It’s not my intent to fill this space with my CV; I want you to understand that as a musician, a scholar and an educator, I’ve played, studied and taught jazz music and my thoughts are relevant to the discussion “what is and is not jazz?”

First and foremost, jazz is improvisational music. I assume you were sincere in your espoused ignorance of jazz: improvisation, as it relates to jazz, is the spontaneous composition of a melody over a pre-established sequence of chords. Improvisation does not include the playing of a pre-existing part, written or memorized. This ideal isn’t always strictly met, but it is, strictly, always the goal of jazz improvisation. The rendering of Summertime on your show had no improvisational element, at least as far as the saxophone was concerned. Often, we will describe a piece of music as “jazz” simply because a saxophone is present and playing over a harmonic progression we recognize from a Broadway show or a pop song.

Secondly, virtuosic skill is a prerequisite to jazz improvisation. To compose in real time, the very essence of jazz, requires that the performer not be limited by the technical demands of the instrument they are playing. Young jazz musicians spend their early careers (a Gladwellian 10,000+ hours) pushing back the threshold of their limitations as instrumentalists and spontaneous composers, thereby allowing the technical demands of the music to fall away and the music to emerge, unfettered and unique to that moment.

Virtuosity is an absolute necessity for a musician to execute a jazz performance, but not necessarily to interpret a piece of music. For example, compare Howlin’ Wolf to Oscar Peterson, one a master of interpretation and the other a master of execution, each clearly a genius, given the extent of their work. Howlin’ Wolf’s virtuosity manifests in his interpretation of a song, not in his technical execution, whereas the opposite can be said for Oscar Peterson (the subject of a Sunday Edition episode following Oscar Peterson’s passing). Specifically, the rendering of Summertime on your show was an interesting interpretation of an existing written melody, but it is my opinion that it falls short on execution. Listen to any current Mike Murley or Brad Turner CD as a benchmark for execution in jazz. Interpretation alone doth not jazz make.

I’m going to end my letter here: any further writing will become too analytical and too subjective. I know your mandate is not to play Howlin’ Wolf or Oscar Peterson, though perhaps to showcase those aspiring to those heights. The version of Summertime that you played does not meet the standards I outlined above, so it should not be classified as jazz. And once it’s no longer qualified as jazz, it cannot meet your burden of “jazz is difficult”. I think the performance has many of the hallmarks of Punk music. Maybe that is how it is better classified?

Finally, there are hundreds of bonafide jazz artists in Canada who have invested thousands of hours writing and performing their own music, relevant music, fully deserving of wider recognition on “________”: _______ and _______ are two that immediately come to mind, but there are many, many more. These two musicians are brilliant players and composers who, besides not having been enshrined in Wikipedia, don’t receive the national recognition of Mike Murley, Rich Underhill, Kevin Turcotte or Ingrid Jensen.

And then I signed off.

Two final words: Bach/improvisation. Bach was able to improvise over the liturgical music of the day because he had expert knowledge and virtuosic technique on the organ. Bach also wrote church music, over which he would improvise new melodies to create his fugues, a method analogous to the great jazz player/composers: Horace Silver and Hank Mobley are but two examples who don't get the acknowledgment they deserve. Were Bach’s fugal compositions jazz? No, and I think a little logic is necessary to illuminate why not: all jazz music is improvisatory, but not all improvisatory music is jazz.

Now you can abuse my opinion.

Thanks to Emilia for holding me accountable: this was the best I could do ... for now.

postscript: I have not read any Malcolm Gladwell; a colleague of mine relates his work to me over coffee. I don't read Dan Brown either. Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist, not a scientist, just as Dan Brown is a novelist, not a historian.