Almost ten years ago, I applied for a grant from the Doris Duke Foundation to fund a project with the electric jazz band I was then leading on Wurlitzer electric piano. We had just released a CD, “I’m Back I’m Therapy and It’s All Your Fault”, and I envisioned a second recording integrating both acoustic and electric piano, bring in some Latin elements as well.
I didn’t get the grant, so I called the Foundation to see if I could get some feedback on why I had been rejected. This is pretty standard procedure with arts organizations. Sometimes the insight into why the judges didn’t approve your proposal can help you make a stronger application the next time. The administrator I spoke with found the notes on my application. All it said was that the judges didn’t think my project was jazz. Now, if I had been told that they didn’t think the project was good enough, I could have accepted that, even if I disagreed with them. But to be told, after devoting my life to the jazz idiom, that I wasn’t playing jazz felt like a dismissive slap in the face.
So I found myself reviewing the different elements that we think of as part of jazz to figure out which of them might have been lacking from my effort… Extended improvisations? check. Advanced jazz-based harmonic language? check. One or two blues? check. Lots of spontaneous interaction beween the musicians? check. Swing feel? oops.
Most of the music on the CD was a straight-eighth feel, often with poly-rhythms, but not a swung-eighth feel. Could that be it? But what about bossa nova? Latin jazz? All those ECM records? Not jazz?
Moving further down the checklist – acoustic instruments? Oops again. Electric bass and piano. Could that be why my recording wasn’t jazz? Is the instrumentation a part of the language of jazz? That seems like a silly definition. It’s kind of like saying Bach isn’t Bach if it’s played on a piano instead of a harpsichord.
Everntually I had to accept that whoever the judges of the Chamber Music America competition, their concept of what jazz is was prejudiced by the limits of their own experience and knowledge. I realized that was going to be true for pretty much any grant I applied for; and so ended my potential for a life as a career grant applicant.
For many musicians who are looking for a grant or trying to get written about in a “jazz” magazine, the argument about “what jazz is” is more than academic. Too narrow a definition discourages innovation, leaving us with a stagnant pool of star imitators who pale next to the real greats of the past.
I have no time, for example, for those who argue that Miles Davis was not playing jazz towards the end of his career. (Really? We REALLY have nothing better to do than argue about whether one of the major inventors and innovators of jazz had a right to call his music jazz?)
On the other hand, I understand the cultural, political and artistic concerns of those who see the term jazz being diluted by everyone from pop singers to rambling pop instrumentalists.
Some will argue that any music with improvisation is jazz. But several cultures have improvised traditions that have nothing to do with jazz. Until about 100 years ago, classical composers routinely improvised on their pieces.
The flip side of that argument is that if it doesn’t have improvisation, it’s not jazz. But I could name a number of famous jazz recordings with no improvisation that are included in the jazz pantheon by any reasonable person, such as this one by the quintessential jazz pianist, Wynton Kelly.
So this is my attempt answer to the endless question: WHAT IS JAZZ, prejudiced by the limits of my experience and knowledge.
I believe jazz is any music played (intentionally) by jazz musicians. I know that sounds like a roundabout definition so I will expand on it. If you have thoroughly studied and attained some degree of mastery over the elements of this music (jazz improvisation, jazz harmony, jazz rhythm, jazz phrasing, etc.), then whatever you do, with an artistic intention is jazz.
I use the phrase “artistic intention” as an out for the times when a jazz musician is, for example, playing pop music, for some commercial purpose. I’m not saying that’s jazz just because a jazz musician is sitting in that chair.
But, with that exclusion in mind, I believe if you have mastered the jazz idiom to a certain degree then your music will be informed by that mastery. Therefore, you as the artist have the right to call what you do jazz. (And who has the right to label the artist’s music other than the artist?) If, on the other hand, you haven’t mastered that idiom, then you haven’t earned the honor of using the term jazz.
We might disagree over whether certain singers are “jazz singers” based on their mastery (or lack thereof) of jazz phrasing, harmony, melodic style. But I like my definition because I think it’s inclusive enough, without giving every bulls#$tter on the planet permission to use the word “jazz” to describe their meanderings.