The Permanent Underground: Australian Contemporary Jazz in the New Millennium
Platform Papers: Quarterly Essays in the Performing Arts,
No 16, April 2008
By Peter Rechniewski
(Currency House)
Reviewed by John Clare
The Permanent Underground does not purport to be a history of Australian jazz from a musical point of view. As a history of arts politics in relation to jazz, it concisely describes the successes and failures of jazz in trying to find a place within the spectrum of arts that are seriously considered and, where it is deemed necessary, assisted. Rechniewski believes that the stream of modern and contemporary jazz in Australia has reached successive peaks of creativity that have not been met adequately by support systems which might have better exploited and sustained them. In this he allocates blame to organisations within jazz, including SIMA, for their failures in strategy and presentation.
Factors beyond the control of the arts world – except through lobbying – are also described. These include licensing laws in New South Wales of course. A brief overview of festivals is here – their triumphs (notably Wangaratta) and their inadequacies and missed opportunities.
Moving to the aerial view, Rechniewski also charts and analyses allocations of funding across the arts. This is not unfriendly. I should point out that politics is not something I am drawn to. I take an interest in politics generally out of duty. If you are going to vote, you ought to take an interest. Whether jazz should have proportionately more funding I will leave for others to debate. My input here is pretty much in the area of direct experience.
Where the book is most trenchant is in its regretful comparison of the importance acknowledged and support given to jazz in Europe with its exposure in Australian media and, hand in glove, the patronising attitude toward jazz found within the extremes of high art and pop culture millieux here. Rechniewski notes that when I was jazz critic for The Sydney Morning Herald I was given generous space. Unfortunately, my successor, John Shand, has been more meanly treated.
The time to which R (from here on we will adapt the Russian form – or is it French? – although the fellow is Polish) refers was an unusual one for coverage of the arts. Nor has newspaper space devoted to the arts contracted to the levels that preceded it. I contributed at that time on diverse topics (including sport) to the SMH, the Review section of The Australian Financial Review, The National Times and Nation Review. When I wanted to write a piece on jazz I was given plenty of space. Editors at that time respected my judgment as to what was important in the area, and what we should cover. Other arts writers were similarly treated.
Jazz had never been given so much space before. In fact all arts reviews had been considerably fewer and shorter before that. Since papers bulked up unmanageably with magazines and supplements, arts coverage has been increasingly trivialised, according to R. We will return to that. R notes that jazz in that period enjoyed a surge, which declined as promoters jumped on the bandwagon and brought out too many artists – some poorly chosen – in too short a space of time. The boom became a glut. The recent triumph of Ornette Coleman showed just how successful jazz at the highest levels can be. If we had one such event every month, people would look ever more carefully at their budgets.
The question of media exposure to international events is secondary in my view. Ornette was given reasonable exposure, and I note that Lynden Barber has published a long interview in The Australian with Sonny Rollins, prior to his unexpected forthcoming visit. There is a local scene of remarkable vitality right now. It is sometimes very well attended, sometimes not. This is what should be encouraged, because it is much less expensive for prospective audiences, and therefore more capable of being sustained. But it is very difficult to convince editors that this phenomenon is worth an article of comparable size to those given, for instance, to the reunion of a classic rock band.
My main journalism these days, apart from writing on this site, is in the form of book reviews for The Sun-Herald. This I very much enjoy, but when I am asked write on jazz there are editors who always insert a caveat that I should not treat the subject too seriously. How else am I to understand the editor who twice asked me to write on jazz topics while warning me that, “I don’t want a jazz piece.”? On the second occasion he repeated this four times during our conversation. It seemed absurd, and I declined the commission. On the matter of attitudes to jazz, you may find some interest in my piece http://www.sima.org.au/ 2007/06/13/art-sport-and-the-great-jazz-renunciation>The Great Jazz Renunciation on this site.
Shand has complained to me, quite understandably of being given far more space to write about a mildly amusing cocktail novelty band than to review Ornette Coleman or Dave Holland.
R seems to think these attitudes can be changed. I am far more pessimistic and have long treated it as a joke.
Rechniewski (I’ve given my wrists a rest – and here is indeed an illustration of a parallel silly attitude to long names with syllables we may not be sure how to pronounce that is not going to go away soon either) has presented the general outline of grand plan (and perhaps invited K Rudd comparisons) for uniting the efforts of jazz organisations to present a case for the recognition and encouragement of this still evolving form. It involves the dissolution of much Melbourne/Sydney rivalry. I see signs of this much to be wished for boon. Once again you may find some interest in my piece Melbourne & Sydney: The Tone Of Two Cities on this site. Also A Few Words About Wada. That R has created a site on which you can write in essay form and, however self-importantly, refer to your own work knowing it is still there, is one of his many achievements.
Rechniewski points to the advantages of the now non-existent jazz coordinator position. That had its problems too.
This is a valuable book, neatly written, that will serves as a reference point for all future discussion of the area.
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John Clare is the author of Bodgie Dada and the Cult of Cool (UNSW Press). He writes on music and culture for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald.
