Staking a Claim - Part 1

Peter Hum in a recent blog juxtaposed the phenomenal video download statistics of Lady Gaga, and the inexorable rise of the manufactured pop star (no talent necessary, only lookers need apply) with the difficulties jazz in which jazz finds itself regarding numbers - Hum mentions that Brad Mehldau’s best selling CD sold only 34000 copies, and I believe Wayne Shorter’s first Quartet CD ‘Footprints’ sold around the same number of units.

This is undoubtedly scary stuff if you believe that jazz is in some kind of competition with music from these other genres, or that jazz even inhabits the same universe. Personally I don’t feel that what I do and what Lady Gaga does has anything in common at all beyond the surface similarity that we are both connected to music in some way. I think a noticeable characteristic of pop music these days is how little the music itself – the actual notes and chords, form and structure – features in terms of its percentage of the whole package. Music plays a tiny part in the success of people such as Gaga or Britney Spears – so much more is concerned with looks, marketing, merchandise tie-ins etc.

Of course popular artists have always needed to cash in on their looks (if any – some people such as Elton John or Rod Stewart wouldn’t have had a chance if they were attempting to break into today’s pop market), and their image was always important. But the importance of the visual image took a quantum leap forward with the appearance of music videos in the 80’s, when the talents of the video directors and camera people could be used to create striking visual images to accompany music that was essentially vapid rubbish. That process has grown exponentially in the intervening years to the point where a Gaga or a Beyoncé is the product of a frighteningly huge machine that ties in visuals with marketing, with merchandising, websites, Facebook, Twitter and all of that. The actual act of music making plays a smaller and smaller part in this behemoth as the multi-nationals drive for ever bigger profits from an ever-widening circle of merchandising opportunities.

Jazz cannot compete in that world

Jazz shouldn’t even try.

There was a time when jazz was of course a popular music, and then when rock and roll took over in the 50s and onwards, jazz was still seen as something that had some relationship to pop music and people like Miles Davis could sell very respectable amounts of recordings and be mentioned in the same breath as pop stars. But I think we have to let that go altogether – popular music – of the huge selling variety – has NOTHING in common with jazz any more. Contemporary pop music has nothing in common with jazz in either the musical or the aesthetic world it inhabits. And I think some kind of over-the-shoulder looking at the behemoth of the pop music industry does us no good at all – not only can we not compete with that world, we’re not even involved in the same industry in my opinion. It’s like being a small boutique winemaker and being concerned about what Coca Cola is doing. The product is different and the market is different.

The market we are in is – I agree – tiny in comparison to that of pop music, but that’s neither here nor there. In fact I would say that the more the two musics diverge in form and approach, the more opportunity there is for jazz to develop and flourish in the marketplace. But we have to accept that our marketplace is both small and specialised. We have to realise that our customer base, though not huge, will be discerning. And like most boutique products, we can grow our customer base by clearly identifying what is different and good about what we do. We have to stop trying to be seen in a market that is just so huge and so different to ours that the quest for recognition is hopeless. We don’t have the tools or the resources to fight such a war – rather than try to snatch territory from such a giant foe, we have to be happy with our own territory, develop it, let it speak for itself, and then inevitably some people who are looking for an alternative place to live other than than the cheap, facile, and crowded musical country they currently inhabit, will want to come to where we are and will want to partake in the quality of musical life that we have to offer.

In taking such an approach we have to accept that the financial rewards of operating in such a relatively small musical country, will be less than the rewards available to those who make it into the upper echelons of the pop music empire. So what can we reasonably expect as jazz musicians operating in our own musical territory? Well I think being able to make a living playing the music isn’t an unreasonable target to aim at – anything beyond that would be a serious bonus. And it IS do-able, despite all the doom and gloom being spread among the online jazz community these days. Despite the outpourings of woe, I personally know literally hundreds of people who make their entire living from jazz – including me. I’m an Irish bassist who started playing in a country with little or no jazz tradition – I still live in Ireland, yet here I am writing this blog in South Africa, where I’m working, and I’ve just been chatting to a bassist from the US, and there’s a guy here from Turkey – all of whom play jazz for a living. So it can be done – we just need to take care of our own business and be as good as we can be and develop what we do. Quality DOES have a market, no matter what the doom-merchants may say. We may see the relative lack of large CD sales for someone like Brad Mehldau as being a barometer of how bad things are, but these days CD sales – even for huge acts in pop music – form a tiny part of the economics of the music business – the real money is in performing. And Brad Mehldau is no different in this regard – Brad’s diary is pretty full, you can be sure that he’s as busy as he’s ever been – CD sales or no CD sales.

So let’s stop worrying about what’s happening in pop music and in the music industry – let’s just make our own music as good as it can be and then find the best way we can to get it out there and get our music to the most amount of people. And how can we best do that? Well that’s a whole other discussion............. TBC

Developing New Music

Recently I've been playing some new music with two great French musicians, the saxophonist Stéphane Payen and the drummer Christophe Lavergne. At the moment we're trying to develop the music and then we'll look at doing some performances and maybe recording. It's been a luxury to be able to work on music without the pressure of preparing for a particular performance, this is so unusual these days. I wrote some music for the project and Stéphane wrote some also and we worked on the pieces and looked at different ways to develop them.

In February I went to Paris to play with the guys (they have a very cool little practice room which they rent collectively with some colleagues), and in March they came to Dublin, and we had a lot of fun playing and trying things out. We decided to do an informal performance in front of an invited audience in Dublin at the end of our rehearsal period, and I set the video camera up.


I've out some footage of it up on Youtube, here's a clip below

Why!?

I read this (admiring) description by Kyle Gann of a piece of contemporary music recently - a string quartet written in 1984 by Ben Johnston, which has never been played due to the almost insurmountable difficulties of performing it - here's a description of it:

If you know much about Ben's Third Quartet, you know it works its way measure by measure through a 53-note microtonal scale. The finale of the Seventh is built on a similar plan, but the structural tone row consists of 176 pitches - all different, 176 pitches within one octave, heard in the viola on each successive downbeat. Many other notes are heard in the other instruments whose harmonies link each note to the next, and Tim tells me that altogether there are more than 1200 discrete pitches in the movement - more than one per cent, five times as many as most people can perceive.

Mr. Gann goes on to describe how one Timothy Ernest Johnson of Roosevelt U. (the Tim referred to in the previous quote), had written his doctoral thesis on this quartet and delivered a paper on the subject to a Microtonal Conference. Here's a description of part of the paper:

Tim demonstrated how the players are supposed to proceed from the opening C to the subsequent D7bv-, a pitch ratio of 896/891. The violist is tasked to move upward from this C and come back down on a pitch 9.7 cents higher - just under one tenth of a half-step - than she started on. At the downbeat of the next measure, the violist lands on Dbb--, pitch ratio 2048/2025 - another ten cents higher. And so on for another 175 measures until the viola ends up traversing the octave and ends at C again. A good half of Tim's paper was spent talking us through the performance challenges of the first two measures.

So, a piece that can't be played, and even if it could be played most people couldn't perceive the pitches. Sounds like a great night out doesn't it? Yet despite the fact that it can't be played and most people can't hear it, guys do doctoral theses on it and deliver papers to others similarly interested. What is the point of this music? It certainly isn't written for the same reason most music is written - to be performed and listened to, by people who don't have a PhD..................

Contemporary composed music has long been accused of this kind of thing - composers writing music for each other and in order to fulfill some kind self-perpetuating composing/academic paper delivering world - for a long time. I'm very wary of this kind of accusation until I've heard the music, but in this case since it's not possible to hear the music I have to ask - WHY!? These guys really are writing for each other and nobody else

On Tour with Jim Black and Julian Arguelles

I'm on the road with Jim and Julian at the moment - this is a trio that has played together, (and recorded for Auand), for a while - this is our third tour and so far as much or even more fun than the the others. The group has a real free-wheeling way of playing which I love. We have some composed material but the vast majority of the music on the gigs is improvised on the spot. I think the blend of our three personalities - a similar broad outlook and background but with enough differences in the details of how we play to keep it interesting - makes for very creative music making.

I'm keeping a tour diary on my website blog - you can see it here It's an improvised opening from the Dublin gig.

You can here some of the music from the tour here

And here's a clip of the trio in action taken on the last tour

Steve Coleman and Dave Holland - The Two That Got Away

{Although Dave and Steve played together in several other incarnations other than the ones mentioned here, I wanted to confine my discussion of their music to the recordings where they both played on the entire albums}

Steve Coleman and Dave Holland playing together was a musical marriage made in heaven. I can remember the first time I heard them together on Dave's Jumpin' In album in 1985, and I knew immediately there was something new going on here. As a bassist I was of course familiar with Dave's playing, in fact I was a huge devotee of his, but I'd never heard Coleman before - he was relatively new on the scene, at least as far as international recognition was concerned - but I was immediately struck by both his sound and his harmonic/melodic approach. I'd never really heard anything like it - he seemed to be both inside and outside the tonality at the same time, and his sound had a unique wiry quality with very little vibrato - it struck me as being quite a 'pure' sound for some reason. And the wide intervallic leaps and unexpected twists and turns of his lines made for really refreshing listening - there were no cliches in his playing, and no obvious antecedents that I could discern at the time. Later I found out the provenance of at least some of his concept, but at that time it seemed like he'd come from a completely different place to anyone else I'd heard. And the combination of this skittish sound and approach with Dave's propulsive lines and incredible rhythmic depth and weight made an immediate impact on me.

But impressive though 'Jumpin' In' was, it was really just a prototype for what was to come. I'm still very fond of this recording even though it's not typical of the later music by the quintet. It has an almost traditional jazz quality about it - the melodies are played, the three front line players solo collectively before two drop out leaving one soloist, who is eventually rejoined by the others who in turn take their own solos. Of course the music sounds nothing like traditional jazz, but it has that collective ethos about it, rather than the relentless linearity of bebop soloing practices. Steve Ellington's drumming has a much different quality to that of his successor in the group, Marvin 'Smitty' Smith - it has none of the rhythmic complexity that Smitty demonstrated, but then again the music on "Jumpin' In" didn't demand that either. Ellington's bouncy swing feel would never have worked on the music that was to come in the next album, but here it meshes perfectly with the compositions, providing space and a nice sense of propulsion for the soloists. I love the drum sound too, and the sound on the recording in general, which is spacious with a very nice reverb that does justice to the great sound of the band and its stellar front line soloists - Coleman, Kenny Wheeler and Julian Priester - and to the resonance and depth of Dave's bass sound.

This fresh approach to soloing conventions, the balance between open playing ('Jumpin' In') and playing over form ('You I Love'), the combination of strong and original soloists, and the sheer rhythmic virility of the music all pointed to this being one of the great new bands in modern jazz. But with the next album Seeds of Time, the band and the music went to another level of invention, creativity and originality.



When 'Seeds of Time' came out the band had one new member - the precocious drummer Marvin Smitty Smith, and good though Steve Ellington had been, Smitty's phenomenal rhythmic skills allowed the music to enter a new world of rhythmic complexity unknown to jazz at the time. The opening track, Coleman's 'Uhren' sets the mood immediately with a spare bass and drum line announcing a highly unusual piece of music whose pulse is clear but whose metre is not. At around this time (1986, a while after 'Seeds of Time' was released), I had the great good fortune to be a student at the legendary jazz summer school at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada, where Dave was the head of the programme and both Steve and Smitty were teachers. If it hadn't been for me having direct access to the concepts and ideas of Steve and Dave's music, I must admit I wouldn't have had a chance of figuring out what was going on on 'Uhren' or many of the other tracks on 'Seeds of Time'.

By this point Steve was already developing his very original rhythmic concept, and 'Uhren' demonstrates his originality perfectly. In Banff he explained his idea of metres possessing the possibility of having half a beat in them. In other words he would describe some tunes which would have a metre that would be conventionally called 7/8, as being instead in 'three & a half four' - the argument being that the music did not have an 8th-note feel but rather had a feeling of three long beats and one short one. This is very hard to explain in words, but notating the rhythmic cycle of 'Uhren' demonstrates it very well - it being in three measures of 'four & a half four', with the half beat being added to the third beat in the first two bars and to the second beat of the third bar - as follows:



The piece not only has a written melody and bass part, but has a completely composed drum part also. This is something Coleman calls a 'drum chant' - a kind of rhythmic melody written for the drums and which forms an integral part of the composition. This drum chant idea is something Coleman has used extensively ever since and is an idea he freely admits he got from the innovative if little known drummer Doug Hammond, with whose trio Steve worked in the early 80's. One of Hammond's pieces, 'Perspicuity', which clearly outlines the drum chant concept is also included on the recording.

But these are just two tracks in an album of amazing creative richness. The band strikes a wonderful balance between using different types of material while retaining a unified group sound. So pieces as different as Kenny Wheeler's 'The Good Doctor' with its typically rich Wheeler-esque harmonies, sits comfortably alongside Coleman's breakneck tempo, harum-scarum 'Gridlock' - his musical depiction of New York's traffic system. "Walk-a-Way' - a bass and percussion duet based on a bass excercise of Dave's and completely improvised in the studio - complements Holland's 'Homecoming', one of those dancing-around-the-Maypole English folky pieces that Dave used to write, that leads into some wonderful time-no-changes improvising.

There is a real sense of excitement about this recording, and about the music that Dave and Steve were playing together - the younger questing musician inspiring and being bolstered by the slightly older and more experienced musician, the incisive linearity of the saxophonist finding the perfect foil in the depth and weightiness of the bassist. And the newness of so much of this music! Coleman's harmonic sense that allowed him to seem to be both in and out of the tonality at the same time (for a partial explanation of how this is done - and be warned, it's not for the faint-hearted - have a look at Steve's explanation of his Symmetric System), and Dave's similar ability to explore tonality and seeming atonality simultaneously. And the rhythmic constructs were so new! I remember seeing them perform at a faculty concert at the Banff Centre with Smitty on drums, and I, along with pretty much much all of the audience, was simply dumbfounded by what was going on musically on the stage.............

'Seeds of Time' was followed by Razor's Edge, an album with equally interesting music on it including one of Steve's most popular tunes 'Wights Weights for Weights', based around an equally killing bass line and drum chant. Steve was at the same time also recording with his own '5 Elements' band that had a more electric instrumentation, but that Dave also guested on from time to time.


The next full album in the Dave/Steve continuum, recorded in 1988, was Triplicate, a departure from the previous recordings since it was a more free-wheeling saxophone trio recording with the great Jack DeJohnette on drums. It's very interesting to hear this recording because we hear Coleman in a very different setting to the previous recordings mentioned. DeJohnette's presence ensures a much more loose-limbed approach to the rhythmic aspects of the music than were heard from Smitty, and on Coleman's 'Games' for example you can hear that Jack is not entirely comfortable with the unusual form of the piece. However there are some real highlights on this recording not least hearing Steve's approach to traditional harmony and the swing idiom on 'Take the Coltrane' and Bird's 'Segment'.

As far as I know this is the first recording of Steve playing 'standards' and many musicians of my generation point to Steve's and Jack's alto/drum duet on 'Segment' as being one of the real highlights of contemporary standard playing. I think this trio, which was under Dave's name, only did a couple of tours and was never the kind of group fixture the quintet was. Which is a pity - Dave and Jack have one of the greatest bass/drum hook-ups in jazz history, and with Coleman's highly original playing skittering along on top of this amazing foundation one can only wonder if they'd played together longer what they might have achieved in terms of setting a new benchmark in how contemporary swing can be approached.

Next up was the seminal Extensions, still spoken of with awe by musicians of many generations. This unveiled a new line-up, dispensing with the trumpet and trombone but adding Kevin Eubanks (in his pre-Tonight Show incarnation), on guitar. Sometimes it surprises me that an album like 'Seeds of Time' is so little known in some circles, but the same can't be said of 'Extensions' which is widely known not just by musicians of my generation, but many younger musicians also. It's hard to say why this album gets a higher profile than the others - maybe the presence of the guitar on it makes it more accessible to many rather than the 3-horn, chord-less format of the quintet. One other reason could be the absolutely devastating opening track - Eubanks' 'Nemesis', an 11/4 workout with a great vamp which contains what is for my, and many other people's money, one of Coleman's greatest recorded solos. His playing on this track and indeed throughout this album is extraordinary, so inventive, so rhythmically complex and with a much bigger sound. It's mature Coleman, showing him at this stage to not only be one of the real theorists and original minds in contemporary jazz, but also one of its greatest soloists. The material on 'Extensions' may not be as interesting and varied in itself as on the Quintet albums, but the playing is of the highest level. I'm not a huge fan of Eubanks' playing, especially his soloing, but I really like his comping behind Coleman's solos and the quartet's sound has a lightness about it that's very transparent and attractive.

I saw this band in London in 1991 over a couple of nights at Ronnie Scott's club and I still regard it as some of the greatest live music I've ever seen - Dave, Smitty and Steve's hook-up was SO strong and the things they were doing with both original compositions and standards were extraordinary both in imagination and execution. I remember coming home completely fired up and enthusiastic, full of ideas of stuff to try and stuff to think about. Little did I know that I'd seen Dave and Steve play some of their last gigs together.

1991 proved to be the last year they recorded together and (probably, though I'm not 100% certain about this), the last year they played together. For reasons best known to themselves two of the great accomplices in the creation of new ways to play improvised music never played again together after this year. But before they were finished, they recorded two more albums, one a masterpiece and the other something of an oddity.



Recorded in January 1991 Phase Space is a monument to the connection between Dave and Steve, a bass and alto duo recording that shows all their great qualities - a fearsome command of time and rhythm, an ability to negotiate the most complex forms at speed ('Cud Ba-Rith'), real swing ('Ah-Leu-Cha'), and a kind of astringent lyricism that had been a feature of their playing together from the earliest recordings ('Straight Ahead'). "Phase Space' is a testament to their musical relationship and the understanding that existed between them - here it's pared down to its essentials, just bass and alto, no overdubs, playing together with a synchronicity and intuition that's only given to rare combinations of players - Elvin and Trane, Ron Carter and Tony Williams, Bill Evans and Scott LaFaro, Clifford Brown and Max Roach - these seem to be hook-ups that go beyond just compatibility and into the realms of telepathy. It's clear that Dave and Steve, and I know this anecdotally from both of them, that they worked on a lot of stuff together and talked about music incessantly, but there's also a natural fit to the way they play together that goes beyond mere calculation and intellectual discussion.

It would have been fitting if 'Phase Space' had been their Swansong as a recording team, but there was one more album to come - Coleman's Rhythm in Mind, a rather odd collection of musicians and music. The music on this recording ranges from straight readings of some Thad Jones pieces ('Slipped Again', 'Zec'), to more typically angular M-Base compositions ('Left of Center', 'Vet Blues'), to 'Pass it On' - a Holland flag-waver of a tune. The personnel is equally mixed with veterans Tommy Flanagan, Ed Blackwell and Von Freeman mixed in with Coleman, Holland, Smitty, Kenny Wheeler and Kevin Eubanks. The mixture of music and musicians makes for a very puzzling recording that seems to be neither one thing nor another. There are some nice moments on it but it doesn't make anything like the unified statement that 'Phase Space' or indeed any of their other albums together did.

And that was all she wrote so to speak - they never recorded or played together again. And this is really a shame since I think they made some of their most vital work together. In fact I'd go as far as to say that together they recorded music that had elements that are missing from their work apart. The acoustic linear quality that Dave brings to their music together is missing in much of the more densely layered music that Steve plays these days, and Dave's current and highly lauded quintet is to my mind, though featuring great musicians, much more formulaic than the great quintet of the 1980s. Both players are in good health and working and playing, and living in the same corner of the US, so it's almost tragic, given their amazingly creative partnership, that they haven't played a note together in almost 20 years. Let's hope that situation gets rectified soon. In the meantime here's a clip of the quintet in all their glory - check out Steve's solo from about 8.20 on the clip - this was the stuff that turned us all around back then...................

Grim...........

New York may well be the best place in the world for jazz music - at least in terms of there being more great musicians in one small concentrated area than anywhere else on the planet. Also in terms of seeing great creative music, NY is hard to beat - there is just SO much going on. But at what cost to the musicians who produce this music? The money that can be earned there from playing creative music is risible, and outside NY it just gets worse and worse.

I've always known this, but a recent blog about touring in the US by the Norwegian saxophonist Frøy Aagre really brings it home again. In a fascinating article she shows in great detail what a joke the US is for creative musicians in terms of earning a living. It may be a great place for creativity, but you can't eat creativity! She estimates the tour costed $6000 and took in a total in fees of $1000. There you have it - American Jazz Economics. It makes for compelling if grim reading.

You can see it here

The Chattering Classes

I've heard divided opinions over the years from musicians about playing in noisy environments. Most say they hate it - actually virtually everyone says they hate it, but there is a divide between those who say it puts them off completely and those who say you just need to ignore it and get on with it.

I'm completely with the former group - I just can't stand playing in a room where the majority of people are talking. This post is prompted by a gig I've just done at an alleged jazz club called Dexters in Odense in Denmark. It's been a long time since I had to deal with something like this, though I did many gigs of this kind in my early years. But gradually the environments in which I played got better, and I had to deal less and less with noisy audiences as my 'career' (as I optimistically call it) developed. So it was a bit of a shock to come to this club in jazz loving (at least that's its reputation) Denmark, with a fine group of players from four different countries, with a good sound system and equipment, and then play to the noisiest bunch of Yahoos it's been my misfortune to encounter in a long time.

For me this environment is creative and emotional death - I just can't stand it. Music can be many things - it can make you think, it can make you happy, sad, make you want to dance etc. It can celebrate, it can commiserate, it can mark important moments in life, or death. It can be religious, it can be profane, it can be spiritual, it can be sensual, it can be both other-worldly or very worldly. Music should, above all, make you feel something - when music is being played people should be affected by it in some way, otherwise what's the point of having it played? I don't play weddings, but I can see the value of music at a wedding. I don't play dance music (which is a pity, as I love to play for dancers) but I can see the value of dance music. Of course I can see the value of music as an artistic artefact and as a vessel for the communication of ideas and emotions to the listener. But the one thing I refuse to believe music was ever intended for was to provide some kind of aural wallpaper to accompany the chattering classes.

For this same reason I've never been able to play corporate gigs – where you’re hired by a company to provide ‘ambience’ for their staff and/or clients. In fact I’ve never been constitutionally capable of playing any background music gigs since they bother me so much that I begin to question the whole purpose of being a professional musician. When I left school I worked in a day job for 10 years, and quite honestly I’d rather return to that than make my living playing in noisy and uncaring musical environments. To play in such places seems to call into question the whole purpose of practicing and trying to be creative and inventive. If you’re just providing some kind of backdrop to the inane chatter of people getting drunk then what’s the point? Background music is a degradation of music and the purpose of music, and unfortunately is a plague that besets western society. In fact I’d go as far as to say that western society with its ringtones, jingles, background music in restaurants, elevators, shopping malls, and virtually every public space degrades and cheapens music in a way that no other society does, or has done in the history of music.

Some musicians maintain that you should be able to mentally cut through the noise and be able to get to your own creative space regardless. And of course there are famous recordings where much greater musicians than I (Bill Evans at the Vanguard, Miles at the Plugged Nickel for example) have produced sublime music despite audible chatter going on in the background. Some people say we’re being too precious by looking for silence while performing, and in a way denying jazz’s populist roots. But just because jazz musicians of earlier eras had to perform in noisy environments doesn’t necessarily mean they enjoyed it – they dealt with it because they had to. I’m pretty certain that given the choice of playing for people who were ignoring them and using them as mere aural environment, and playing for people who were listening to them intently, they’d take the latter option every time.

And after years of seeing this kind of crap (though it’s thankfully rare for me nowadays), I’ve still yet to fathom why someone would pay a cover charge into a venue and then talk all night when they can talk outside for free. The psychology of that is a closed book to me. One of the most imbecilic comments I ever heard about this phenomenon was from a hoary old jazz critic from Belfast who disagreeing with my opinion that it was a drag to play in a room where everyone was talking said ‘I think jazz is a music that can stand up to a lot of chatter’. What can you say to a comment as vapid as that? Not a lot. So I’ll stop here................

Whatever Happened to Odd Metre Swing?

When I got into trying to develop my rhythmic language and technique, almost 20 years ago now, I became really interested in three areas that I saw as being natural extensions of what I was already doing – i.e. things that would and could be organically developed from my grounding in the jazz tradition: subdivision, metric modulation, and odd metre playing. Of these three techniques, some work had been done already in jazz – Tristano had done some fascinating things with regrouping of triplets as far back as the late 40s, and metric modulation had been shown to be a wonderful, if difficult, technique that could be used to create seemingly contradictory statements of where the beat was, sometimes simultaneously. The third element – odd metre playing, was by far the least explored, especially in the swing idiom.

The first guy to extensively use odd metres in jazz was probably Brubeck, he certainly was the first guy to bring it to the attention of the public and players. Brubeck studied composition in Paris with Darius Milhaud, so I’d imagine the odd metre stuff came from there – there’s no real precedent for it in jazz before that as far as I know. Then there was Don Ellis’ work in the 60’s – his big band stuff used lots of odd metres, some really unusual ones. He was a pioneer in that, but I feel, (also with Brubeck), that what was interesting was the fact that they were interested in doing it at all, not so much what they did musically – because I don’t think that much of the actual music that was produced was very interesting as music in itself. But there is an interesting Andrew Hill recording from the 60’s - ‘Judgement’ - with Elvin on it in which they play a piece in 7 called Siete Ocho and Elvin gets a good swinging groove going, although the band gets a bit shaky from time to time. Actually it’s amazing how Elvin attacks the groove, and really makes it swing, especially considering it was quite probably the first time he’d ever had to play in 7, and certainly the first time he recorded it.

But the real breakthrough with odd metres came with the fusion (or Jazz/Rock as it was known then) guys in the early 70’s – Billy Cobham with the Mahavishnu in particular – that’s an interesting one. He was an out-and-out jazz drummer (with Horace Silver among others) and then suddenly became this odd metre virtuoso. Personally I think he got a lot of that stuff from McLaughlin’s knowledge of Indian music – (though Cobham would probably rather die than admit that!), a lot of what he does is very like the way mridangam players from South India play.






After the fusion guys we’re into the 80’s with Steve Coleman and Dave Holland etc. (the Dave Holland Quintet Albums Seeds of Time
and Razor's Edge are both classics in regard to rhythmic exploration), and the real breakthroughs with odd metres – the expanding rhythmic universe, (along with the Downtown scene in the 90s) starts there.

When I got into the whole rhythmic thing in the early 90s I was particularly interested in making what I already did in a jazz context work in the new rhythmic areas I was exploring. Since a lot of the music I was playing at the time was in the swing idiom I felt it to be a natural outgrowth of that to try and play odd metres in the swing idiom. And so along with my brother Conor and Mike Nielsen on guitar I got into trying to find ways to make odd metres swing – or to find ways in which one could swing when playing in an odd metre. We spent about two years on this – it was challenging, the swing feel was developed over 4/4, and that four in the bar feel is hard to achieve when you’re playing in 11! But we made real progress in it and I think we became very convincing when playing things like walking bass lines and the typical jazz cymbal beat in various different metres. The trio at that time played exclusively standards, but re-arranged everything rhythmically and harmonically. In 1993 we did an unreleased recording of standards unofficially titled ‘Fucked Up Classics’ in which every single piece was in an odd metre. It never got issued for various reasons but you can download it for free here

At that time I was convinced that what we were doing was the tip of the iceberg as far as rhythm was concerned and that it would only be a matter of time before others followed suit and we were about to witness an explosion in new rhythmic techniques. To some extent that did happen, but I have to say that almost nobody has convincingly dealt with the swing idiom in odd metres. The metric modulation thing has exploded and been heavily explored, but that’s not the case with odd metre swing. When I say swing here I’m not talking about a vague swing feel, but a real dirt under the fingernails, spang-spang-a-lang, walking ride cymbal + walking bass style swing. For sure standards are sometimes played in odd metres – Brad Mehldau has done some interesting work in this area (including a stunning live recording of All the Things) but even when you hear Mehldau’s group playing in an odd metre it doesn’t really swing as much as when they’re playing in 4/4. We really worked on that, to make sure that the swing didn’t diminish due to whatever metre we were in. Hasn’t really been done since in my opinion – not in anything I’ve heard anyway.

Maybe the reason it hasn’t been done is because it’s HARD! You have to not only figure out how to manipulate the rhythms to allow the swing feeling to flow, but you also have to make sure your melodic lines match up with the changes moving at the same rate of the metre you’ve chosen. It’s a voice-leading tightrope – a trial by fire of your rhythmic and harmonic technique. It’s much easier to cop-out by just playing over one chord and picking a straight 8 based rhythm – a cop-out that has resulted in far too much boring and quasi-faked playing over the past 10 years.

It’s not that long ago since jazz musicians couldn’t play in 3/4, and almost never did - how many 3/4 pieces did Bird record? None. But eventually jazz musicians figured out how to do it and to make it really swing. For an example of this evolution listen to Max Roach’s very stiff playing on Rollins’ Valse Hot and Elvin Jones’ loose and flowing playing on any Coltrane tune in 3/4. Within 5 years 3/4 swing had gone from stiff and unnatural to convincingly swinging. But now more than 20 years since the first explosion of interest in non-standard rhythmic techniques, odd metre swing is not that much further down the road.

If anyone reading this knows of any really convincing odd metre swing recordings please let me know, I’d be really interested in hearing it. I really enjoy playing swing in 11, 5, 7, 9 and 15 – it provides a wonderful vehicle for creativity and freshness. But there’s plenty of room for much more of this – it just needs the desire to do it and people who are prepared to put in the work. Any takers?

Damascus - Axis of Evil Tour!

I travel a lot as a working musician, and if there’s one thing that travelling teaches you it’s that nothing is black and white. This was once again brought home to me on my recent visit to Damascus, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth, and the capital city of Syria, part of George Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ (the other members of George’s trio are Iran and North Korea). Long known as an implacable enemy of Israel (who annexed the Golan Heights from them in 1967), and therefore by extension an enemy of America and by further extension, the ‘free world’, Syria has been demonised in the West. So when I told people I would be going there with my family for a holiday over the Christmas/New Year period they reacted with horrified amazement. I might as well have said I was going to Baghdad or Afghanistan - as far as they were concerned Syria represented the same level of danger and madness, and therefore visiting Syria for a ‘holiday’ provided proof, if proof were needed, that when it comes to choosing holiday destinations I was barking mad.



But as I said, things are never black and white, and in fact Syria is a very safe destination for a tourist to go to, with almost no street crime of any kind (if only we could say the same in Europe or America.....), and is a country with an incredible mixture of races and religions living in it. One of the misapprehensions we in the west have about Syria is that it's a fundamentalist Muslim country, but it's actually one of the most secular and possibly the most, (officially at least), religiously tolerant in the Middle East. This is mainly due to the fact that the ruling regime are all Alawites - a minority Islamic sect that's looked on as being heretic by many fundamentalist Muslims. As part of protecting their own situation they are very heavy on religious tolerance.



About 15% of the population are Christians, and there are Shias, Sunnis, Druze, Orthodox Christians, Armenian Christians, and many others there, as well, as believe it or not - Jews! There are two synagogues in Damascus, though there's not a big Syrian Jewish population any more (most left in 1994 as part of an agreement with the US – one of the conditions worked out at the Madrid Peace Conference) . So though the Syrian regime hates the Israelis, they don't (officially at least), hate Jewish people per se. Having said that, it’s probably not an easy place to be Jewish in, but the fact that Jewish people live in the capital city of Israel’s most implacable enemy, and that Syria is a police state that enforces religious tolerance, shows again how many shades of grey there can be, and how little is black and white.



Marian Shrine, Christian Quarter, Damascus


On arrival in Damascus it was immediately interesting to compare this place to other places I’ve been in the Middle East. One thing that’s particularly noticeable is the lack of tourists around – Syria’s reputation, (undeserved), as a hot bed of radical Muslim fundamentalism keeps westerners away. As a result, you get almost no hassle at all to buy things, or to go into shops, or to take taxis – people leave you alone to do your own thing. Which is COMPLETELY different to Morocco or Cairo, or even Turkey (at least in the tourist areas) – because they depend so much on tourism, they see tourists as being like ATMs, so everywhere you go they try and talk you into buying this or doing that, or going into this restaurant, or that carpet shop etc. - which can get very wearing after a while. But in Syria this is not the case, and on our first day we went into the huge covered market and were amazed not to get the usual calls of ‘please sir’, or ‘this way sir!’, or ‘you want carpet/jacket/shoes/etc. sir?’ - we were allowed to wander around without being importuned even once, which was great – it allowed you to stop and look at things for as long as you want without keeping watch from the corner of your eye for yet another salesman trying to drag you into his shop. Very cool.



The second thing that was striking was the variety of races, cultures and religions represented out on the street. Within the first ten minutes of being in the Souq, we saw women covered from head to toe in the black Chador of Shia Islam, women in designer jeans and jewellery, men in traditional Bedouin costume, Mullahs, a Christian priest, men in business suits, women wearing head scarves - but the colours of which were carefully matched with their earrings and makeup. Again the shades of grey concept was fully in evidence - we saw one man bargaining in a spice shop in the souq, he had a Muslim skullcap on, a full beard, and a jacket, the back of which bore the legend ‘Colorado Boy’s Ranch’.



It said in the guidebook that Syria was one of the friendliest places to visit in the Middle East – we found the guidebook to be unreliable on several fronts, (maps and restaurant recommendations in particular), but they were right about this. The Middle East is in general a very welcoming region, with an incredible tradition of hospitality, and after much travel in the region I’ve come to expect this kind of thing. But the Syrians take friendliness and hospitality into another realm – this welcome we got everywhere we went was truly remarkable. Within one minute of being in the Souq, we had asked and been given permission to take photographs of two sieve makers, who then asked us where we were from, welcomed us and offered us sweets from a bag they produced from under the counter. Later we went for a coffee and were approached by two young guys who again asked us where we were from, told us all about themselves (students – one about to go off to Germany to study for seven years), asked about our impressions of Syria and made suggestions as to things we could do and restaurants to check out. Before leaving they gave us their mobile numbers and asked us to call them if we needed any help or assistance while in Damascus. Again and again we were met with kindness, friendliness and hospitality – people would shout ‘welcome’ to us as we went past and wave. The very scarcity of western visitors to Damascus seems to make the Damascenes all the more appreciative of those who do venture in, and the combination of friendliness and yet at the same time not being hassled into buying things makes this city unique in my experience of travels in the Middle East.

Not that I want to give the impression that Syria is some paradise on earth either. The people of Syria may be wonderful, but the same can’t be said for the regime that rules it. Make no mistake about it, this is a police state, where any political dissent is ruthlessly crushed, and no opposition of any kind is permitted. President Assad – whose slightly geeky features are plastered everywhere – got 97% of the vote in the last election, which wasn’t as good a result as it sounds when you consider that he was the sole candidate! Syria has been under ‘Emergency Law’ which suspends the basic rights of its citizens, since 1962. Censorship is widespread – in fact I had to wait to get back from there to do this post since Blogger is blocked in Syria – a fate that’s shared there by other well known websites such as Youtube and Facebook. When the current president Bashar Al-Assad took over from his father Hafez, there was hope that things would change, but they haven’t – they’ve tried to open up the economy more and you see progressive kinds of things like the introduction of a partial smoking ban (in the Middle East!) coming next year. But still, say anything publicly against Bashar and you’d better get yourself ready for a visit from the secret police and a vacation that will definitely differ from the one we just had............



A Shi'ite restaurant with a painting of Iran's President Ahmedinijad, Syria's President Assad and the Iraqi Shia radical cleric Mokhtada Al-Sadr displayed over the door. 'The Rogues Gallery Restaurant' perhaps?

Old City, Ummayad Mosque and the incompatibility of Chadors and Escalators......




Damascus is divided into two parts, the Old City, and everywhere else. The new part of the city is fairly nondescript - apartment blocks, shops, seething traffic which seems to operate on the chaos principle, (no road markings on roads wide enough to take cars four abreast resulting in a weaving mass of horn-tooting vehicles), fairly poor air quality and little of architectural merit to attract the eye or delay the casual traveller.

The old city on the other hand is an extraordinary place, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and is essentially a mediaeval Arab city, complete with a maze of narrow lanes, tiny shops, bustling street life, and a massive souq right in the middle of it. When you enter this part of the city you really feel like you’re in the Middle East.


And this feeling of being, for a Westerner at least, somewhere very different, is never stronger than when you approach the massive Ummayad Mosque which takes up a sizeable chunk of the old city. This is one of the most famous and venerated mosques in the Islamic world, attracting pilgrims and visitors for hundreds of years. In my own travels I’ve visited quite a few famous mosques in Cairo, and especially in Istanbul. I’ve always enjoyed the atmosphere in these places — there’s something different about the feeling that one gets in a big mosque as opposed to the atmosphere of one of Christianity’s massive cathedrals. With the latter I always get a feeling of heaviness in the architecture — you can almost feel the weight of the building as it towers over you. The mosques on the other hand — particularly the domed mosques of the Ottomans — have a lightness about them, almost a feeling as if being in a huge tent. The carpets which cover the floors of these buildings accentuate that feeling, especially since you are required to take off your shoes before entering a mosque - the feeling of walking around on a carpet in your stocking feet helps foster an intimacy with the interior of the building that one just doesn’t get when walking around a large Christian cathedral. The fact too that it is quite acceptable to sit on the floor of these buildings, rest your back against the wall, and contemplate the architecture adds to this feeling of intimacy.



The Ummayad Mosque has an extraordinarily beautiful courtyard — appropriately massive, and covered in the kind of gilded calligraphy that you often encounter in places like this. As you enter it through the main gate, a huge square opens up in front of you, you get a sense of the importance of this building to the faithful, who constantly pour in and remind you of the myriad nationalities and races that are encompassed by the Islamic world — Malaysians, Arabs, Africans, people from the Subcontinent, Turks etc.



On entering the mosque itself, I was actually a little disappointed. Yes it’s a huge building, with some beautiful calligraphy and tiling, and it has a beautiful section which houses the Mihrab , but architecturally I found to be quite disappointing — a kind of giant rectangular box, with little of the grace and airiness of the domed mosques of Istanbul. I first went to the Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul in 1986, and in a way it kind of spoiled me for all others! I knew the reputation of the Ummayad, so I was expecting something architecturally spectacular, but found instead something that was almost ordinary — relatively speaking at least.




The mosque attracts many Shia pilgrims, especially from Iran. You can see them arriving in groups, the women clearly identifiable by their head-to-toe black Chadors, which, enhanced by the fact that often all you can see of them is their nose, gives them the appearance of a flock of crows shuffling along towards the mosque entrance. But before they can reach the haven of the mosque, if approaching from the souq, they have to negotiate an urban hazard — an escalator!



We couldn’t figure out what the problem with escalators was for these women, whether it was because they were not used to them, (a lot of these pilgrims are quite probably people from rural areas of Iran), or because they were worried that their Chadors would catch in the mechanism, or whether it was something else. But whatever it was, they definitely had issues with escalators! Time and again we would see them teetering on the brink of jumping onto the escalator, like people standing on the edge of a cliff — irresolute, unable to decide whether to jump or not, before finally making the great leap into the unknown and tottering unsteadily on the first step before grabbing the rail and hanging on for dear life. On one occasion a woman actually lost her footing and began toppling backwards down the escalator as it went up, only a despairing grasp by her husband of her sleeve-end prevented her from falling backwards and hitting the back of her head off the iron steps. It would seem that modern technology in the form of escalators, and Chador-clad Shia women don’t mix.

“Avatar”, Hollywood, and the War On Terror



It’s always interesting to go to the movies in a different country, and especially in a different culture to your own. We once had a great time at a Tamil movie in Madras, despite not understanding a word of what was going on. But the vibe in the cinema was great, with the audience getting involved in the on-screen action in a way that you never see in the West. Walking through the new part of Damascus one day, we came across a new cinema — a real western style, multiscreen place, that was showing “Avatar”, and we decided to go and and get a Syrian cinematic experience. The movie was in English with Arabic subtitles, and though the audience was made up of obviously middle-class, westernised people, mostly in their early 20s, their behaviour in the cinema was quite different to an equivalent audience in a western cinema. As soon as the lights went down chatter broke out amongst the entire audience, and the film was punctuated throughout by giggling and chatting in a way that would draw much irritated shushing in an Irish cinema at least.



So far so good, but then something happened on the screen that gives a very real perspective on how things can be seen in different parts of the world. Those familiar with the story of “Avatar” will know that its premise is that invaders from Earth come to a far away planet in order to exploit its mineral resources for their own use. The fact that the people from ‘Earth’ were to a man, and a woman, Americans made the obvious parallel of the Western exploitation of the oil wealth of the Middle East, and the wars and political shenanigans used by the West to control energy sources emanating from there, all the more obvious. And it began to dawn on me as I sat there in the dark, that some of this made uncomfortable viewing for a Westerner sitting in an audience of Arabs.



But this feeling of slight discomfort with the storyline was ratcheted up several notches when the bad guy in the film — a stereotype GI Joe kind of guy dressed in American military fatigues — announces to a military briefing, “We will defeat the Hostiles - we will meet terror with terror!”, his description of what he was about to unleash on the native people included the phrase “shock and awe” -- the phrase coined by Rumsfeld to describe what America was going to do to the Iraqis — a people who lived only a couple of hundred kilometres from where we were sitting in the cinema. The phrase ‘we will meet terror with terror’ was greeted by an audible intake of breath by the audience in the cinema, and I was suddenly conscious and that we were three Westerners sitting in an audience of about 1000 Syrians, whose country has been demonised by the leading military power in the West, and were watching a film in which a stereotypically macho American Marine is about to launch his helicopter gunships on the native population. It’s not that I felt that we were in any danger of any kind, but when you watch something like that in Damascus, it definitely gives you a different perspective than if you watched it in Dun Laoghaire! When GI Joe bad guy was eventually killed in the film, the audience erupted into wild cheering and clapping — which given the context in which most of the people were watching that film, was hardly surprising.

All in all we spent five days in Damascus, which is probably about enough — the city doesn’t have much more in it that would keep the tourist occupied for much longer than that. It was an interesting and fascinating experience to be in a country that is often seen as a pariah in the West, and yet to be met with only friendliness and kindness, to see a very deep culture, to see a myriad of people, races, and religions living together harmoniously, and, oh yes, did I mention the great food!?

Thanks and Happy New Year!

So, I reach the end of the first calendar year in which I've been doing this blog. I started it because I wanted to add to the rather slim ranks of musicians who write blogs, and write about the music in terms of the inner workings of the music as well as the social landscape in which it finds itself these days. This social aspect of the music is covered very well also by many non-musician bloggers - the NPR's "A Blog Supreme" is a particular favourite of mine in this respect - but I still think there's room for a bit more in-depth writing about the technical aspects of playing this music. I know I particularly enjoy reading musician's thoughts on all aspects of their profession, and I hope others will enjoy this blog for the same reason.

It's been an instructive seven months or so, some posts got amazing reaction in terms of comments, and others didn't - and I rarely know which subjects are going to provoke the most reaction - the massive response to the bass solos post was a case in point...........

I'd like to thank all who read the blog in 2009 and especially to those who took the time to write and respond - it's been a really interesting and stimulating experience for me and one I hope to continue into 2010. I'm off to Syria next week, where for reasons best known to themselves, the Government have banned Blogger, so my impressions of that trip, (I know it's not strictly music related, but the blog is call Mostly Music - my get-out clause for writing about other interests occasionally), will have to wait till I get back.

In the meantime I wish all of you a very Happy Christmas and peaceful and prosperous New Year.

Art and Craft

How important is craft to the art of jazz improvisation? In a music that developed out of many different approaches and solutions to technical, theoretical and aesthetic problems, can any one benchmark of craft be placed front and centre of the music as an identifier as to whether a performer is sufficiently proficient to be taken seriously in the music? How important is craft to the art? Is craft in itself something worthy of respect?

These thoughts were prompted by two things – something I read recently and something I watched. What I read was a post from the Groove Notes blog (thanks to the always interesting NPR 'A Blog Supreme' for this), ‘A jazz reminiscence by Dick Stein’, in which he told a story about how a less than proficient clarinettist was publicly humiliated by Jaki Byard
at a club in New York. The second thing that prompted the post was watching a Youtube clip of Hamiet Bluiett playing ‘Peggy’s Blue Skylight’ with the Charles Mingus group in 1972 (Posted below).

In the Byard story, he (Byard) not only heckles the clarinet player who is playing during the intermission in a duo with a drummer, but decides to prove that the clarinet player is a faker by going to the bandstand and challenging the guy to a trial by blues – accompanying him on the piano and punctuating the resultant performance with a profane ongoing critique, as a result of which a) the crowd are made to realise that the clarinet guy can’t play, b) they turn ugly, and c) clarinet guy turns tail and runs out into the night. At least that’s how the story is told – with no little relish – by Dick Stein.

This kind of story divides jazz readers into two camps — one camp would enjoy the story very much and see it as being a classic example of an interloper getting his comeuppance, someone who hasn’t done the necessary groundwork trying to put one over on the jazz public, and being found out, unmasked, and driven out by a crusader for the real jazz. This is definitely the view that would be taken by traditionalist defenders of the faith. On the other hand, there are doubtless readers of this story who would be outraged by it, and would see it as a typical piece of jazz fascism in which a very narrow view of what constitutes “correct” musicianship is foisted on all-comers, irrespective of their artistic leanings. I think this is definitely the view that would be taken by the post- free guys, who both argue for a broader definition of what constitutes jazz, and also question whether proficiency in playing over form, and over changes, constitutes any kind of litmus test of ability.

So which view is the correct one? Of course it’s impossible to tell from that story whether the clarinettist was as bad as was claimed or not. But should he have been given the opportunity to play his music unfettered by the views of Jaki Byard as to his abilities? In short, was Byard’s definition of craft — and insistence on the lack of it being shown here — too narrow, or did he have a point?

Again, it’s impossible to tell at this distance and at this remove from the incident itself whether the guy could play or not, but as far as my opinion is concerned, if the guy was as bad as suggested, then I have to have a certain sympathy with Byard’s views. I do think a certain element of craft is necessary in anybody who pertains to be a professional musician of any stripe, and in particular a professional jazz musician. I think anyone who demands money from the public to listen to their music, has a certain responsibility to that public to be a valid practitioner of a certain level — a musician that is of a high enough level to charge for his or her services. But what is the yardstick by which one can tell whether said musician is of a professional level?

Sound? This is a VERY subjective call, especially in jazz where you can hear such a huge divergence in sound – listen to Coleman Hawkins and John Coltrane for an example of two acknowledged giants who could almost be playing different instruments, so great is the difference in their respective sounds. Classical music has a much narrower definition of what constitutes a ‘good’ sound – in jazz it’s a moveable feast, depending on era, style, approach and many other factors.

Intonation? Again, this is a grey area in jazz – less grey than it used to be, but grey nevertheless. While it’s true to say that there is more uniformity of opinion of what it means to be ‘in tune’ these days, there have been many examples of great jazz players whose approach to intonation would have raised many an eyebrow in other music, and often did even in jazz itself. And again the response to these different intonation approaches can be very subjective. In my own case I love the acerbic sound that Jackie McLean achieved largely by dint of his wayward intonation, yet I can barely listen to Eric Dolphy’s flute playing for the same reason. Go figure, as they say.

Speed? Technique is often defined by velocity, unfortunately. The speed somebody can play at is often taken as a measure of how good they are – i.e the faster you are, the better you are. Which is of course a very shallow way to listen to music and to judge music – but it appeals to certain types, especially young male jazz musicians! But leaving aside what the speed is used for, for the moment, there is no doubt that the ability to play fast and in time, (and this is a crucial distinction between those who are simply moving their fingers quickly and those who are relating what they’re playing to the underlying pulse), is definitely evidence of craft. The ability to play fast and in time is something that can only be achieved through years of dedicated practice and hard work. If somebody can do that well, they are definitely exhibiting a high level of craft. Whether they apply that craft in the service of art is a whole other question........

Ability to play on changes? Definitely a high craft factor here too – playing well over changes is HARD! Again it’s something that can only be done if you’ve spent long hours in the practice room, and it’s something that involves the ear, instrumental technique and rhythmic strength. There’s no doubt in my mind that anyone who can play well over changes, and negotiate them with good voice leading, and good time and feel is demonstrating a high level of craftsmanship.

But of course it's too easy to get into a narrow definition of what defines craft, and this is often done in jazz. There's a story about Thelonious Monk that describes how much he loved Bud Powell's playing and how in private he (Monk) would demonstrate his love for Bud by playing exactly like him. I've heard this story several times and have always hated it, since its agenda is really clear. This story sets out out to apologise for Monk's playing and 'validate' him by showing that he could play the way the piano should really be played if he chose to. I'm pretty sure that a) Monk couldn't play in the Powell style, (any more than Powell could have played in Monk's), and b) wouldn't have wanted to either. Because, like Powell, Monk's technique was of the highest level in that it was perfectly fashioned to express what it was he wanted to express.

And this seems to me to be the definition of craft serving art - a situation where the player has worked hard to reach a level of instrumental (or vocal) skill where he or she is perfectly equipped to express the musical ideas they have. Which is why the Monk/Powell story outlined above is so screwed up, since it implies that Monk’s craft or technique was less than Powell’s. This feeds into the idea that craft can be defined by very narrow parameters such as speed and dexterity. Speed and dexterity, assuming they’re aligned with a strong rhythmic sense, ARE signs of high levels of craft, but they’re not the only ones by any means.

When I was younger I must admit to being as bad as anybody in confusing speed with technique, or defining an ability to play by how well someone displayed a conventional technique on an instrument. For example in my early days as a player I just didn’t get Charlie Haden – I saw him as a primitive in comparison to say Paul Chambers or Scott LaFaro. It took several years for the penny to drop and for me to see the extraordinary levels of craft involved in what Haden did and to recognise that there’s more than one way to skin a cat, technique-wise.

But I have to say that I also believe there are measurable levels of craft on display when listening to a musician perform – i.e not everybody is of the same level of technique and craft in music. For me it comes down to being able to adequately deal with the technical challenges of the music you choose to play. There’s a very cruel, though funny, aphorism attributed to the great guitarist and pedagogue Mick Goodrick in which he will say to somebody struggling through something - ‘Yeah man, I hear what you’re trying to say......’ Which kind of sums it up for me – is the player technically equipped to deal with the musical challenges of a given piece of music? If so, this is a real demonstration of craft. But if a musician is struggling through something and clearly trying to play something that is beyond them technically, then there's definitely a craft problem.

Which brings me back to the Hamiet Bluiett video mentioned earlier. Bluiett is well known, and highly regarded as a member of the World Saxophone Quartet, and is a player from the freer end of the spectrum of jazz. But here he’s playing ‘Peggy’s Blue Skylight’ with Charles Mingus, a piece with both form and changes, and when it comes to the playing over the changes, his level of craft in this area is just not high enough to make his playing sound convincing. He opens his solo with a sonic barrage, which is very impressive, and you can clearly see that this is an area in which he’s very comfortable, and there’s no doubting the raw excitement it generates, with both audience and drummer Roy Books responding to it. But throughout the solo he alternates these frenzied passages with playing lines over the changes, and whenever he does the latter the rhythm is poor, the voice leading is poor - in short the craft is poor. And he’s clearly trying to play conventional lines in these sections, but he just hasn’t put in the man-hours on this particular facet of improvising to be convincing in it. This to me is a demonstrable lack of craft, and prevents me from enjoying the solo since there are so many flaws in the technique that it gets in then way of the music. The craft doesn’t support the art.

Opinion in the jazz world seems to be divided on the issue of craft. On the one hand you have the people who revere a very narrow definition of instrumental technique and equate that with musical greatness. This is clearly a very myopic and shallow way to think about music – craft does not automatically equal art, nor is there only one kind of craft.

On the opposing side you have the people who dismiss musicians who do have high levels of technical craft in their armoury, for just that reason – implying that the playing of changes with ease, (for example), automatically makes the musician a hollow vessel, incapable of real feeling, emotion and creativity. This attitude not only disrespects the work that’s been undertaken by the musician to achieve a high level of craft, it also denies craft in itself as being something worthy of respect.

Both of these attitudes are seriously flawed – a plague on both their houses just about sums it up. As someone who has spent the majority of his life, playing, thinking and talking about jazz, I do believe there’s far too much high craft put to poor use these days – far too much technical skill used for far too little result. But as a musician, I will always respect the craft of good musicians. Someone who can play at a high technical level has spent years getting to that level, which means they must be serious about what they do. Whether we like the result or not, the effort, skill and sheer hard work that’s gone into the music should be respected. Sometimes the art and the craft are in perfect harmony, sometimes they’re not, but though great art may be the ultimate goal for all creative musicians, great craft should equally be something that’s respected and recognised.

Art and Craft - like so many things in jazz, and in life, it's not simply an either/or issue.....................