Icons Among Us: Episode Four: Everything Everywhere
Jazz in the Present Tense
Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense, the weekly television series that's been airing on The Documentary Channel in the US since April 20, 2009, comes to a close with Episode Four: Everything Everywhere--a sweeping statement that addresses both the undeniable African-American roots of jazz and the music's expansion into places farther abroad.
....The episode is clear about the still present myopic view of jazz. Pianist Robert Glasper is, surprisingly, a member of that contingent: “There's a whole movement of cats from Europe that play jazz,” he says,”but there's a key thing missing in most of it when I hear it, 'cause--not putting Europe down out there--they're classically based. It's a classically trained thing and jazz isn't based on classical music, it's based on blues and church and emotion and spirit--the real shit. So you can play all the shit you want, but if you don't have none of that...,” with the editors astutely leaving out the obvious conclusion. All this spoken while the Dutch trio of saxophonist Tineke Postma, bassist Ernst Glerum and drummer Han Bennink--a legend in his own right--prove that taking the music of classical composer Villa Lobos and using it as a jumping off point for improvisation can be as swinging, emotional and spirited as anything Glasper refers to.
The good news is that Glasper's view is in the minority, at least across the broad range of musicians interviewed for this episode, ranging from guitarist Charlie Hunter, trumpeter Terence Blanchard and singer Jamie Cullum to pianist Herbie Hancock and saxophonist Wayne Shorter. Norwegian keyboardist Bugge Wesseltoft (pictured) has, perhaps, the most balanced view of how jazz has become a music that belongs to the whole world. “There is a difference,” Wesseltoft reflects. “American jazz music is based on the African-American tradition, it has a black feel to it, which is different to the European beat, which has more of a whitish, classical touch.”
With a performance of trumpeter Roy Hargrove's quintet onscreen, Wesselfoft continues: “Sometimes I wished I was African-American; I always wanted to be, 'Why didn't I grow up in the Bronx?' Then, at some stage, I realized that if I am to manage to do something which is strong for me, I have to find my own source, find my own spirit. I ended up listening to a lot of Norwegian traditional music, to Europe art music and I try to bring in those elements towards the improvised music and, of course, the jazz background that came from childhood--jazz I've been listening to--I'm still trying to have a mixture of those things.”
Jamie Cullum suggests the Wesseltoft should be an international star with his remarkable ability to mix contemporary beats and more with a clear reverence for jazz history. It's a fair statement. As a solo performance of Wesseltoft doing just that is featured, the Norwegian continues: “You can't separate things and say 'this is exclusively our art form,' because for thousands of years there's been communication throughout the world and everything sticks together and mixes. I love that with jazz music, it's been able to bring in new elements and once you mix two cultures together something new comes out.” Wesseltoft's view that jazz is a living, breathing, growing thing that continues to assimilate new sources is echoed by saxophonist Miguel Zenón: “I think that all this stuff is kind of mixing together, really almost without people realizing it. You hear everything everywhere; this stuff is really seamless, it's already a part of it and people don't really realize when it happened.”
So clearly it's a sentiment shared across numerous boundaries, rendering the more reductionist views of artists like Glasper as almost irrelevant, if not still slightly disturbing.
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