Nicholson - Jazz and Culture in a Global Age Rbl

ALSO BY STUART NICHOLSON

Jazz: The Modern Resurgence (reprinted in 1995 as Jazz: The 1980s Resurgence)

Ella Fitzgerald

Billie Holiday

Jazz-Rock: A History

Reminiscing in Tempo: A Portrait of Duke Ellington Is Jazz Dead? (Or Has It Moved to a New Address)

With Max Harrison and Eric Thacker

The Essential Jazz Records, Vol. 2

With Will Friedwald, Ted Gioia, Peter Watrous, Ben Ratliff, and others

The Future of Jazz, Yuval Taylor (ed.)

Northeastern University Press

An imprint of University Press of New England

www.upne.com

2014 Stuart Nicholson

All rights reserved

For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nicholson, Stuart, 1948, author.

Jazz and culture in a global age / Stuart Nicholson.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-55553-727-2 (cloth: alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-55553-844-6 (pbk.: alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-55553-839-2 (ebook)

1. JazzHistory and criticism. 2. Music and globalization.

I. Title.

ML3506.N515 2014

781.65dc23 2013044223

In Memory of
Beatrice Margaret
Nicholson

Preface

J azz is the only art form originated in the United States. It was given iconic status by the 100th Congress of the United States, which declared it a rare and valuable national treasure in a resolution passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate in 1987 and reaffirmed by the 111th Congress in 2009.

Nevertheless, despite the weight of American jazz history and the presumption of American exceptionalism, a gradual awakening to jazz from other nations has become apparent, not only among American audiences but also among global jazz audiences. It is well documented how jazz became a global phenomenon during the 1920s, but the success of the jazz education business in conquering global markets almost a half-century later is often overlooked. The effects of this have been profound. At the end of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first, its results were beginning to be felt in local jazz scenes around the world. For example, a 2009 editorial in the German jazz handbook Wegweiser But it wasnt that American jazz was suddenly somehow doing badly. Just as in the world of tennis, when 20 Americans made the draw in the 2007 U.S. Open compared with 128 in 1977, the reason was that other nations were catching up: in 2007, the final 16 players in the U.S. Open came from ten different countries.

Jazz has been Americas great gift to the world and, as the 100th Congresss resolution presciently noted, it has been adopted by musicians around the world as a music best able to express contemporary realities from a personal perspective. This is not to say that jazz from global sources is somehow better than American jazz, but rather that today it both complements and contrasts it in a way that contributes to a more rich, diverse jazz scene that speaks of the musics continuing good health as we look beyond jazzs centennial. Over the past couple of decades I have become more and more convinced of the need for mobility in interpreting todays fast-moving global jazz scene. Listening to jazz recordings from cultures other than our own reveals only a partial picture, since context can contribute to meaning as well as alter and transform it. Travel, as they say, broadens the mind, and there is no doubt that leaving the comfort blanket of your own sociocultural norms and experiencing those of others provides a direct route to reaching a deeper and more nuanced understanding of jazz in the global context. Since countless jazz fans around the world have traveled to the United States, or harbor a desire to travel there in the hope of deepening their understanding of American jazz by hearing, seeing, and experiencing it in its sociocultural context, it follows that the reverse may be true. To gain a deeper understanding of jazz outside the United States, it helps to experience it in person.

I am fortunate and privileged to have been invited to jazz events in more than twenty countries around the world over the last couple of decades. The extent of these peripatetic endeavors was brought home to me when I was invited to participate in a panel discussion at the Blackheath Jazz Festival in London in November 2011. One of the students asked me how much jazz I had seen in the last ten years. I did a quick calculation. Normally I attend two festivals a month in various countries, sometimes more, sometimesbut not oftenless, so two festivals a month would be a fair average. Each festival typically lasts three (sometimes four) days, and between about three in the afternoon and midnight I would typically see about eight bands. Over a three-day festival thats 24 bands, or around 48 concerts a month, which equates to 576 concerts a year, or 5,760 concerts over a ten-year period. Thats not as many as some of my colleagues, to be sure, but probably more than a lot of people, and certainly far more than I would have imagined. Over the years, these concerts have provided a valuable window through which to witness the changes in jazz in the global jazz scene at first hand, and to speak to local musicians, jazz writers, animators, educators, and fans to learn about the dynamics of their local jazz scene in its local context. Also, during this same period I have been the recipient of literally thousands of CDS, typically between thirty and fifty every week. This too has provided valuable background from which to piece together my thoughts. These chapters have grown out of these combined experiences.

In todays complex and often discordant world, culture can be a loaded word. Yet the term surfaces and resurfaces throughout this book in a way that seems to suggest a distant but unifying theme in a way that was never intended at the outset. Maybe this is a reflection of the times we live in, since culture is a term thats brandished daily in the mediaa typical broadsheet in the Western world might cite the term between one and ten times each day. Similarly, magazines and radio and television programs make frequent use of the term, yet none feel the need to break off abruptly midflight to define their terms. This suggests that there is a common usage understanding of what the term means, which is perhaps hardly surprising, since the notion of what culture means was first put into words in Ancient Greece in the 5th century BC by Herodotus, the Father of History, who described what made the disparate communities of Ancient Greece band together in a common culture: common blood, common language, common shrines and rituals, and common customs. Today, this has been modified to incorporate a set of values, beliefs, and practices that distinguish one group of people from another, whether its the language we speak, the kind of clothes we wear, the kind of leisure we pursue, the social norms we abide by, or the traditions and values we embrace.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the whole notion of a distinctive culture came under particular scrutiny in the United States as intellectuals, artists, writers, and poets began to grapple with the notion of American-ness in their creations, trying to find ways in which they could reflect an American culture that would not subsequently be

Hollywood has been an ideal vehicle for the global transmission of American cultural themes, codes, norms, and values from which most people beyond the borders of the United States have acquired the