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Miles Davis
For the past 30 years, jazz has seen a steady transformation from pop music to art music. Many of today’s most prominent jazz musicians and bands are on financial “life support” by various philanthropic foundations that strive to preserve the arts. With jazz a proverbial endangered species in the musical world, the question is posed: “Can Jazz be Saved?”
Throughout the 20th century, African Americans have used jazz as an avenue in which to express their struggle against adversity. It is not coincidental that jazz’s popularity dwindled with the passing of civil rights legislation and thereby the consequent eradication of the legal divide between the two races. If jazz is to reaffirm it’s standing in the frontier of American pop music, then it is going to have to adapt to the times. Even today, nearly 45 years since the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, jazz music holds the reputation of symbolizing black struggle in the 20th century. Overcoming this stereotype will be difficult, as jazz music and its meaning have been embedded in the very foundation of American society for almost one hundred and fifty years, but doing so will prove pertinent to the genre’s survival.
Weather Report
One band that was successful in blending jazz with modern pop music was Weather Report, in their song Birdland. Technically, the song is rather rudimentary as it constantly repeats phrases and figures, but nevertheless the song somehow is very catchy. It is very upbeat, uses electric instruments, and almost has a Rock n’ Roll feeling to it. If current jazz groups could emulate Weather Report’s innovation in terms of catering jazz songs to modern pop standards, then jazz not only has a chance of survival, but an opportunity to thrive.
Weather Report – Birdland
Miles Davis also embraced the idea of blending jazz traditions with contemporary pop music. Even though he was frequently censured for “selling out,” Miles Davis did exactly what needs to be done in order to maintain jazz’s appeal. In order to counter the rise of Rock music, Davis refused to play songs from earlier eras and stuck to avant-garde pieces that featured electronic instruments and Rock N’ Roll structures. Davis’s innovation is portrayed in his piece Electric 73.
Miles Davis – Electric 73
Even though jazz’s future may seem uncertain, its relevance and position in mainstream music can be revived. Jazz icons such as Miles Davis and Weather Report took the first much-needed step toward innovation and compromise…now current jazz musicians just have to follow suit.
Colin Zelicof
Being a musician, I am, of course, biased but the good news is that I do believe jazz can be saved. The bad news is, I doubt that it will. The art of melodic improvisation flourished when it was part of the popular music of the ’20′s through the big band era. Kids who were buying records could relate to it physically through dancing. In order to awaken the public’s atrophied ears to our beloved art form, that connection would have to be reestablished. A golden opportunity was missed during the GAP commercial inspired mini swing craze of the mid to late ’90′s. It got young people swing dancing. The craze ended because, not suprisingly, people became bored with the music even though the players wore funny hats and twirled their instruments and made every effort to be visually entertaining. Why?
Maybe we should be a little scientific about this. Not rocket science, mind you, because we are talking about entertainment here. Back in the ’70′s, when dance clubs still hired bands (before DJs took over completely) I had an epiphany of sorts while taking a guitar solo with my “funk” band. The dance floor was full but I realized that my solo could be good, bad, or mediocre and it really would not make much of a difference to the dancers. That was because they were dancing to the symmetrical back beats on 2 and 4 of the measure. As Dick Clark’s studio audiences on American Band Stand repeatedly informed us – it is a good beat and it is easy to dance to (sic).
I once saw a film of the Benny Goodman band where the camera was looking down on a crowded dance floor from a balcony. As Goodman built his clarinet solo to a climax, you could see the dancers jumping higher into the air. They were driven by Gene Krupa’s quarter notes on the bass drum and loud, propulsive, asymmetrical hits on the snare, but people were essentially dancing to the improvised melody. The drumming of Joe Jones with the Basie band is another example of asymmetrical back beats. Unfortunately, none of the swing acts that achieved notoriety during the ’90′s (Big, Bad Voodoo Daddy, Brian Setzer et al…) picked up on this. The shuffle got old real fast. Strong back beats propel the dancers but a steady 2 and 4 disengages them from the melody.
Forget jazz and history and zoot suits for a minute and break it down to the sonic essentials of what makes people dance and there may be a glimmer of hope for a fusion with melodic improvisation. Whether people are dancing to Rihanna or Basie, we know that they like it around 120 beats per minute. What they are dancing to is the quarter note pulse. You can easily take any contemporary dance track, strip away everything but the bass drum, and superimpose Satin Doll. The only difference is that the rhythm of the modern (unimprovised) melodic content is usually defined with straight eighths and sixteenth notes instead of swing eighths.
At this point, you may ask – “who cares?” Well, we do, obviously and the marketing and promotional geniuses have not been able to prevent America’s only original art form from going down the tubes. Could it be that the music itself needs to be dealt with? It didn’t mean a thing without that swing because that was the feeling that connected the dancer and the melodic improvisor. New music can be created with that feeling that connects with today’s dancers but it won’t swing for long unless the crutch of the symmetrical back beat is avoided.