Jazz scene should not be expected to accept its poverty as a natural and enduring state, argues Peter Rechniewski in his forthcoming essay on the state of the art form in Australia.
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That Australia produces many fine young jazz musicians is not in doubt.
But does jazz have a future or is it caught in a time warp, reproducing musical gestures that are merely variations of past styles?
Some who believe that jazz is a dead, or else a heritage form, say that improvisation has supplanted it. For them, jazz is no longer the site of innovation but a formalised tradition that has forsaken experimentation in favour of eternal verities such as the blues and swing.
Non-jazz improvisation, on the other hand, offers many of the possibilities that staunch supporters of the jazz tradition have rejected: the use of electronics and computers, multimedia performances and so on.
The argument that jazz is dead has its roots in the 1960s and ’70s, in the debates among British and European avant-garde jazz musicians who sought to create a space for their work where it wouldn’t be subject to endless comparisons with American jazz.
The rhetoric of the debate was political, born of a wish to create new musical forms that were explicitly anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and not racially discriminating.
Even at the time, some prominent musicians thought the exclusion of all jazz elements from a new improvised music was nothing short of a new orthodoxy. And today echoes of the argument that jazz has run its course can still be heard in Australia.
In the view of English critic Stuart Nicholson, American jazz is caught in permanent stasis, partly because highly influential musician Wynton Marsalis has steered the music into an aesthetic cul-de-sac and partly because the private jazz education system permits little time to nurture individuality. For Nicholson, the really vibrant, innovative jazz is being played in Europe, where it has been taken seriously as an art form for decades and where adequate public funding enables artists and private entrepreneurs to take risks.
Much of what Nicholson writes about the creativity of European and, especially, Scandinavian jazz could apply equally to Australia. The American style wars caused only a ripple in this country because the deeper issues involved – such as race – had no social foundation. Today, Australian contemporary jazz musicians are open to engaging with any music that interests them: from noise and rock (Bucketrider) to Afro-Cuban (Barney McAll), music from New Guinea (Aaron Choulai), music of the Pacific Islands (Aron Ottignon) and minimalist influenced improvisation (the Necks and Band of Five Names).
In their range of voices and quality, Australian musicians contribute more than would be expected of a small country, writes musician and critic Roger Dean. “From a period of largely imitative modern jazz, we have emerged with a vibrant heterodoxy which can compete with that of any country or region. Its only problems are those of exposure, travel, distance and free trade.”
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Read the remainder of this edited extract from Platform Papers 16, The Permanent Underground: Australian Contemporary Jazz in the New Millennium (Currency House).
Peter Rechniewski is president and artistic director of the Sydney Improvised Music Association.
Photo: Peter Rechniewski
