Politics and Jazz

[Rootsie]

By  Gilad Atzmon
When bebop was born, it was the voice  of black America. Black Americans were calling for freedom, and  jazz expressed it better than mere words. Charlie "Bird"  Parker played Now's the Time, insisting the moment was right  for social change. Charles Mingus composed Fable of Faubus (1959)  in response to Orval Faubus's racism as governor of Arkansas.  John Coltrane recorded Alabama after four black girls died in  the Birmingham church bombing. When Martin Luther King started  his campaign for civil rights, the American jazz community, white  and black, stood right behind him. Not only was jazz aiming for freedom; the music itself was a real-time exercise in human liberation,  as performers reinvented themselves night after night. It was  hardly surprising that they became symbols of the black civil  rights campaign. Coltrane, whose music was deeply rooted in African  culture, became a hero of the civil rights movement in America  and around the world.

It didn't take long for America's  white elite to realise that jazz endangered their hegemony, and  that jazz and America represented opposing ideologies. While the American ethos is traditionally presented as a celebration  of civil freedom, jazz, as it appeared in the late 1950s, laid  bare crucial flaws in the American dream. Not only did it expose  the fundamental injustice within the capitalistic system; it  also valued beauty far higher than money. This was foreign to the American way of thinking.

After the second world war,  jazz became hugely popular in western Europe, and jazz giants  such as Bird, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Dexter Gordon were treated as major cultural figures. At home, those very legends  had to enter jazz clubs via back entrances, because the front  ones were for the white clients.

So jazz became the cultural  ambassador of the American civil rights movement--a fact that  was highly embarrassing for the establishment, already presenting  itself as the leader of the "free" and "democratic"  world. Since America's main motivation at the time was to convince  the world that Coca-Cola was the only way forward, jazz was clearly  in the way. It was anti-American. It revealed the relentless and abusive face of hard capitalism.

For the white bourgeoisie,  jazz became a problem that had to be addressed. Its political  and philosophical message was about to be crushed. The best way  to beat a resentful rival is to integrate it into your system--so  Voice of America, the government's broadcaster, adopted jazz  as its own and transmitted it to the world. Black Americans became  simply Americans, and jazz ceased to be subversive. It wasn't  long before black Americans were found qualified enough to die  en masse in Vietnam.

Soon after their alleged "liberation",  black Americans lost interest in their own revolutionary music.  Jazz was no longer the black American call for freedom, but a  white middle-class adventure. It was transformed from a vivid,  authentic and socially motivated artform into an academic exercise.  In the 1970s, more and more colleges launched jazz courses as  if jazz were a form of knowledge, rather than spirit.

The new challenge in jazz was  to play as fast as you could. By the late 1970s this challenge  was achieved: jazz became a form of meaningless white noise.  The melodic sensation had dried out. Swing was turned into endless  polyrhythmic exercises. American jazz was about to be declared  dead. Not many were kind or patient enough to listen to an endless  algorithmic musical exercise.

Jazz became a vanishing marginal  music, but then a miracle happened. Decision-makers in the ever-growing  record industry defined a fresh challenge for jazz. Rather than  play as fast as you could, they suggested, you should sell as  much as you could.

We are now at the apex of this  commercial phase. Occasionally, we hear that a new-born artist  has signed a multi-million-dollar record deal. As long as jazz  is in the hands of big business it will never produce acute social  criticism. The music industry, like any other industry, is aimed  at accumulating money and the best way to achieve this is to maintain the existing world order.

Sadly, jazz isn't a subversive  art form any more. It isn't even gymnastically challenging--merely  a marginal genre associated with easy listening background music  a la Kenny G and Norah Jones. A few first- and second-generation  veterans are still with us, playing as well as ever, and promising  young talents are queueing to enter the shrinking scene. But  neither group is socially engaged.

Jazz is still established enough  to occupy the back quarter of the second floor of every multi-storey record shop. It fits nicely into the American-led globalised  market philosophy. It provides us with an image of diversity,  of an expanding music market rich with sounds and colours. In  the shop they will tell you: "You name it, we have it."  And they are right--you can now buy Coltrane's revolutionary  album A Love Supreme for just £6.99 in almost every music shop. What a bargain, what a great Christmas present! I would  argue that our devoted Big Brother has almost won. Jazz's spiritual  and political message is almost defeated.

This is where I try to interfere.  As a bop player, I refuse to view jazz as a technical adventure.  It isn't about the speed with which I move my fingers or the complexity of my rhythmic figures. I insist that jazz is a form  not of knowledge but of spirit. Jazz is a world view, an innovative  form of resistance. For me, to play jazz is to fight the BBS  (Bush, Blair and Sharon) world order, to aim towards liberation  while knowing you may never get there, to fight the new American colonialism. To say what I believe in, to campaign for the liberation  of my Palestinian and Iraqi brothers. To play jazz is to suggest  an alternative reality, to reinvent myself, to be ready to do  it till the bitter end.

Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military. He is the author of the new novel A Guide to the Perplexed . Atzmon is also one of the most accomplished  jazz saxophonists in Europe. His new CD, Exile,  was just named the year's best jazz CD by the BBC. He now lives  in London and can be reached at: atz@onetel.net.uk

http://www.counterpunch.org/atzmon11202004.html

[Rootsie]

"Soon after their alleged "liberation",  black Americans lost interest in their own revolutionary music..."

I find this article really odd. The author has a disparaging attitude toward American blacks' supposed abandonment of 'their own revolutionary music' and apparently harbors some illusion that he, an Israeli living in Europe, is carrying the revolutionary torch of black musical culture.

Please. For one thing, the liberatory tradition of jazz and black music in America is alive and well, thank you. Ever heard of hip-hop? There is an abundance of brilliant militant hip-hop. The jazz sensibility is strong in it, as is the spirit of innovation and improvisation, not to mention a fearless political analysis and a raw evocation of the realities of life for so many blacks in this country. When I listen to Talib Kweli, Dead Prez, Immortal Technique, I am struck by the profound grief which their lyrics and music convey, a powerful conjuring of 300 years of the black presence on these shores. And further, these artists are explicit and articulate in their critique of global white supremacy, doing traditional jazz one better in terms of fearless poetry that links the black struggle in the U.S. to the rest of the world. This liberatory tradition in black music did not stop when jazz was co-opted by the white music industry.

Gilad Atzman apparently fancies himself a better kind of white, one who is not only capable of appreciating the spirit of jazz, but one whose mission it is to carry on the tradition. This is one of those classic examples of unexamined privilege. When Verdi wrote his opera Aida in the 1850's and performed it in Cairo, he did not see the irony of presenting an opera set in ancient Egypt in a white enclave of a city full of modern-day Egyptians who were essentially invisible to Europeans. In the same manner, Atzman seems to suggest that black music stopped with John Coltrane, and that he, by appropriating the form of be-bop, can interpose himself into this tradition and interpret it: and for who? Blacks and black culture are just another playground where whites can pick and choose, declaring the black past more important and culturally valuable than the black present, emphasizing without irony what they believe is most important to emphasize.

I do not question the author's feeling of spiritual connection to jazz, and do not argue with his right as a musician to play the music that calls to him. But whites who do feel this deep resonance with black cultural forms have a long journey to make to purge thmselves from the arrogance that tells them that their ideas about them are the most important or useful ideas. Voice of America appropriated revolutionary black music? No. Black music moved on, and found its revolutionary voice elsewhere.

As a bop player, I refuse to view jazz as a technical adventure.  It isn't about the speed with which I move my fingers or the complexity of my rhythmic figures. I insist that jazz is a form  not of knowledge but of spirit. Jazz is a world view, an innovative  form of resistance. For me, to play jazz is to fight the BBS  (Bush, Blair and Sharon) world order, to aim towards liberation  while knowing you may never get there, to fight the new American colonialism. To say what I believe in, to campaign for the liberation  of my Palestinian and Iraqi brothers. To play jazz is to suggest  an alternative reality, to reinvent myself, to be ready to do  it till the bitter end.

All well and good. But the vanguard is 50 years ahead, taking the forms Bird and Trane innovated and adding their own richness to it. The essence of 300 years of black resistance is not coming through the saxophone of a white Israeli guy playing a jazz club in Paris. He can appreciate and be inspired by it but he is not it. Sorry.