John Clare reviews the first book to assess recorded Australian contemporary jazz.
Roger Dean’s distinction as a concert double bassist, jazz pianist, composer and improviser of electronic/computer music, and of course as a scientist, is a pleasing phenomenon that should be explored beyond the confines of this review. I should say that I share most of Dean’s enthusiasm for particular areas of jazz, concert music, electro and groove music etc., as well as movements in the visual arts, yet there are certain Dean concerns that are slightly puzzling to me.
The core of this book is the presentation, with discussion at varying length, of 200-odd CDs issued or reissued in the period from 1973 to near the time of review. This is an invaluable, much-needed documentation. Appendices – following a substantial essay under the heading “Australia and Contemporary Jazz and Improvisation” (from economic, cultural, political and formalist viewpoints) – include “Instrumental Variety in Australian Jazz, Improvisation, The Experimental and World Music Scenes in Australia”, and responses to a wide-ranging questionnaire sent to many musicians by the author. A brief annotated survey of key books, articles, videos and sources since 1973 is a supplement to the ‘discography’. Two of my books are given very kind treatment (it seemed to me).
Therefore I’ll move straight to an area of puzzlement. This is contained in two statements, which I will take separately and then conflate. First, Dean says, “The musical conventions of jazz at the time of the iconoclastic emergence of free jazz in the 1960s included [he is quoting himself here] ‘the reliance on formulaic referent structures…on continuously expressed and unchanging pulse and meter…avoidance of harmonic complexity, substantial modulation from one key to another, atonality’…” Compared to what? Country and Western? Classic rock? Of course not. I grew up with these, and the oft-stated aim was simplicity. Dean means to compare it with art music of various kinds. Why? Some of the ‘free’ music to which Dean refers doesn’t have key changes at all, in that it attempts to find regions of sonic/musical space where such a concept is irrelevant. On the other hand, even the most hackneyed `tss-ta-t-tss-ta’ jazz cymbal pattern sets up a rudimentary polyrhythm. From well before free jazz, such patterns, while being allowed to stand for periods in their stripped directionality, were subjected by modern drummers to additional cross rhythmic punctuations, tending more and more toward the multidirectional and densely textural drumming of free jazz. This has been simplified again in some recent jazz and groove music, along with simplifications in areas of ‘art’ music.
Later Dean says, “I initially assumed that ‘improvised music’ meant [in Australia] what it did at the time [1980s] in the UK: Music which resists the jazz tradition.” I lived in the UK for a time in the 1960s and even there, leave aside Australia, resistance to the jazz tradition was not the unanimous stance of ‘free’ players. Referring back to the first statement, arguably the most important free jazz figure (Ornette Coleman) had begun moving in that direction by 1956. He believed, according to some of his statements at least, that he was expanding jazz rather than creating a rupture. The issue is not simple, but it could be argued that an iconoclastic intent was grafted onto an existing tendency. Perhaps it was the case during the period Dean mentions that anti-Americanism had grown, feeding some European breakaways from jazz, while most Australians lived quite happily between the poles of Empire and (the American) Republic.
The ‘resistance’ was certainly evident here when we saw the emergence of such categories as Improvised Music and New Music. I agree with the inclusion in Dean’s discography of such musicians, but find it somewhat ironic that many of the longest entries are devoted to musicians who are at pains to distance themselves from jazz, and often obsessively and tediously deride it. The concerns to which I’ve alluded give rise to (admittedly mild) caveats, along these lines: “Lively, expert playing, but predominately tonal”. And so…?
Having got that off my chest, I must say that it is a great pleasure to read through such a wide-ranging guide to an area of music that has been a stimulating, often vivid and exciting presence in recent decades. Who knows the name Elliott Dalgleish? Dean will not bring him to national attention, but his advocacy cannot be ignored in discerning, and even snobbish, circles. While Dalgleish, Scott Tinkler, Sandy Evans, Ken Eadie, Roger Frampton and Phil Slater – for instance – are right up Dean’s alley, there are many others here who are almost certainly too ‘mainstream’ to be Dean’s preferred listening. Yet, he has addressed them on their own terms (with caveats), in a generous spirit. This applies to James Morrison as much as it does to Tim Stevens.
When Dean writes, “One has to break any rule for Bernie McGann…” it seems like an admission that some of his concerns may not be universally relevant. Incidentally, Dean’s references and comparisons show him to be freakishly up to date in jazz, hip hop, electro, drum and bass, rock, etc.
The essay I have mentioned (paragraph 2) above, moves across musicological/cultural studies areas. Intriguing is Dean’s contradiction of Dr Bruce Johnson’s claim that jazz is ‘popular’ rather than ‘art’ music. Dean quotes a survey which seems to show that jazz is not popular in a literalist sense. At the same time he expresses sympathy with Johnson’s desire to move jazz discourse out of the classical music realm. It would have been interesting to read why. As I recall, Johnson does not want jazz to be called art at all, because the term is so fraught with proscriptive definitions, class and cultural snobbery, etc.
For me, one of the fascinating things about jazz is the way that its aims move about from functional danceabilty to formal experimentation. Impressionism, romantic and expressionist strains, and elements that somehow lie outside these territories inform it.
Sounds from the Corner
Australian Contemporary Jazz on CD
by Roger T. Dean. Australian Music Centre, 2005
Photo – James Muller: Dean describes his playing as brilliant.
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John Clare is a freelance journalist who writes regularly for Fairfax publications, sometimes about music. He is the author of “Bodgie Dada and the Cult of Cool: Australian Jazz Since 1945”.
This article was originally published in the Australian Music Centre’s Sounds Australian Journal, No. 66, 2005, and is reproduced with the permission of AMC and the author.
