I don’t hate Punk Rock.
I don’t even actively dislike most of it.
I’m sometimes momentarily amused by Ramones’ songs like “Sheena is a Punk Rocker,” “I wanna be sedated,” or even “The KKK took my baby away.”
When I was a teenager in the 1980s, I was quite amused by Agent Orange’s deconstruction of surf rock (I didn’t actually think of it in terms of “deconstruction” though I think I thought of it in terms not incongruent with deconstructionism).
Mostly I’m terribly bored by most examples of punk rock. The one band that’s sometimes lumped in with the punk label that I’ve consistently liked over the years is The Clash, a band not really fitting the genre, and certainly not confined to it. The other main icons of punk, The Sex Pistols, have always struck me as a snot-nosed, put-together boy band that didn’t even have the virtue of cuteness – and they’ve struck me that way because that’s what they were.
Earlier today I was having a nice conversation about music with my good friend Jonathan Means. We began talking about historic concerts. I decided that if I could have been at one concert ever, I would have liked to have been there for the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.
I remembered having watched a documentary in honor of the 40th anniversary of the festival last year on VH1. Some of the most interesting footage was of the audience reactions to The Who and to The Jimi Hendrix Experience.
There had been some buzz about both groups among rock insiders in the U.S., but aside from those who had seen them in London, no one in the U.S. had yet seen or heard these two bands when they came on stage in Monterey.
As The Who’s set came toward an end, and guitars began to be smashed and drum kit demolished (ridiculously cliché now, but totally new then), many in the audience appear in a state of shock and fear, unsure whether they’re seeing an act or whether the high-energy band they’ve just seen and heard has gone bonkers. (The only filmed reactions I’ve seen that are similar can be found in the anthropological documentary First Contact, specifically footage of interior Papuans encountering a landing airplane up close for the first time in the 1930s. The degree of apparent shock and fear is more extreme in the First Contact footage, but not dissimilar in appearance.)
The Who were the ultimate manifestation of the Chuck Berry vein of rock and roll. Musically, they rehashed and developed anything left to develop in the Johnny B. Goode variety of hopped-up blues progression based rock and roll, and so were “ultimate” partly in the sense of the end of a line of development. Visually, The Who were the apotheosis of the raucous or “raw” energy so often associated with rock and roll.
Then Jimi Hendrix strode on stage with something completely different, a different rock sound (and if The Who were one of the last to play older style rock and roll, Jimi Hendrix was one of the first to play a musically different rock, largely referred to without the “and roll”). He was, of course, visually stunning as well, playing guitar behind his back, with his teeth, symbolically ejaculating on his guitar with lighter fluid and lighting it, and all the while sounding good. The audience reactions are again telling – a different reaction, not so much shock or fear as looks of wonder or bafflement.
Then the Mamas and Papas came onstage for one of the stranger denouements ever.
In any case, after Hendrix came along, rock was different. Not that he single-handedly changed everything, though he was a major influence on a variety of rock musicians and even Mile Davis in his creation of fusion, but he did present one new way of playing for a musical genre in need of new ideas.
What tends to bore me most about most punk is its intrinsically conservative quality – not that those who played it or who like it are conservative people, but that it’s musically conservative. Musically, most punk songs are a rehash of The Who’s rehashing of Chuck Berry, just sloppily played. In visual style, most punk is again a rehash of The Who and similar bands who acted out aggression and “raw energy.” Mostly punk trafficked in tropes of rebelliousness (with the fact that many punks self-consciously parodied this about themselves not making it any less true), though I would give punk credit for the introduction of at least two new tropes of rebelliousness, Mohawk haircuts and safety pins used as piercings.
Punk Rock was a genre of reduction, subversion, and negation. Those are fine tools, but as tropes or ends in themselves, they’re meaningless. If punk did help subvert prog rock to bring its over-seriousness and pomposity down a notch in the mid-1970s, that was a good thing, but mostly it seemed to consist of reducing rock to its minimal elements, badly played at that, something actually pretty old hat by then. For many, punk simply provided the tropes of rebellion or subversion, while not really doing anything new – musically much less politically.
What music isn’t boring? Music that works positively, not in the sense of “Shiny, Happy People,” but in the sense of producing something new, even if on a modest scale.
From the early 20th century Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, engaging in new rhythmic uses for the full orchestra, or the 1920s recordings of Louis Armstrong on songs like “West End Blues,” “Potato Head Blues,” or “Heebie Jeebies,” staking out both a new way to improvise within small band ensembles and a new form of popular singing are prime examples of positively-working non-boring music.
More contemporary with punk, and within the broad purview or rock, there’s Hendrix whom I already mentioned, or a bit later, the guitar style of Eddie Van Halen, which like it or not, produced a new sound and new way of playing the electric guitar (put to best use, in my opinion, on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” where Van Halen’s more restrained than normal playing is impressive enough while hinting at a sort of pent up but boundless energy). The speed metal of groups like Metallica and Slayer beginning in the early 1980s, like it or not, represented a new way of playing rock, that was if anything more akin to Stravinsky’s Rite than other ways of playing rock in using the entire band to focus nearly exclusively on the exploration of rhythm.
Showing posts with label Louis Armstrong. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Louis Armstrong. Show all posts
Friday, February 8, 2008
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Free Jazz and the End of the History of Jazz
Clement Greenberg and Arthur C. Danto share in common Neo-Hegelian perspectives on art criticism, though at least with regard to visual art, the details of their arguments are incompatible.
For Greenberg, progress in art or the trajectory of the history of art centers around the development of that which is essential and unique to a form and the simultaneous winnowing away of that which is extraneous. With regard to painting, Greenberg saw the play of color on the flat plane as the essential and unique element of the form, while the removal of the extraneous meant the elimination of the illusion of three dimensionality, including pictorial or representational qualities. In the mid-twentieth century, he was an important champion of abstract expressionist painters like Jackson Pollock and color field painters like Mark Rothko.
Danto conceptualizes the history of art as the movement towards a zero degree of difference between art world and real world, between objects created as art objects and other objects in the world. One could argue that this was achieved with Duchamp’s urinal and other early 20th century “ready mades,” though by simply taking an already existing object and calling it art, Duchamp and others are doing something subtly different than what Danto is speaking of. Danto claims the history of art ended, reaching this zero degree of difference, with Warhol’s Brillo boxes, which were created as art objects but also as indistinguishable from the “real things.” (The only problem with this is that Warhol’s Brillo boxes aren’t indistinguishable from industrially manufactured Brillo boxes, and so, they don’t represent the end of the history of art in Danto’s terms, though they do indicate the sort of thing that would represent that – an object created as art which so indistinguishably resembles an object already existing that there is essentially zero difference between them.)
With regard to visual art, Greenberg and Danto are not compatible. The trajectory of the history of visual art for Danto must necessarily move beyond painting to create objects that are indistinguishable from objects already in the world, whereas for Greenberg, the trajectory of the history of visual art entails the development of painting into art objects that are as far from other sorts of objects in the world as possible. The details of their respective Neo-Hegelian perspectives are opposed in their implications – for visual art.
If we shift our attention to music, and specifically to jazz as a distinct form or mode of making music, their arguments are compatible for that medium. If we start with Greenberg’s emphasis on the development of that which is essential and unique to a form and the removal of that which is extraneous, we see a clear trajectory in the history of jazz that ultimately produces a zero degree of difference between art world and real world, a zero degree of difference between musical sound and noise.
The essential element in the history of jazz as a distinct musical form is free improvisation. (Some, like Wynton Marsalis, would argue that an essential quality of jazz is also that it’s based on the blues. Early jazz certainly was based on the blues, and the blues has been an important source of material throughout the history of jazz, but at the same time, jazz was from the very beginning a musical form with a mixture of sources, i.e. it was always blues mixed with other things, and as more and more things have been added to the mix [ragtime and military marches early on, later classical music, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, Indian ragga, reggae, hip hop, etc.], jazz has been freed from having to be blues based, even while blues based playing remains a possibility.)
The first great jazz improviser to be well recorded was Louis Armstrong in the 1920s. His improvisations generally took the form of embellishments and variations on the melodic material of the particular song. In so doing, he set the basic template for jazz improvisational playing for at least the next two decades, clearly establishing the precedent allowing soloists to improvise on the material of the song, while at the same time doing so with fairly restricted freedom – Armstrong’s solos, as brilliant as they often are, typically have very clear relationship to the melodic material for even first time listeners. (I want to make quite clear that this is no criticism of Armstrong’s early work, nor is it to imply a lower degree of sophistication than those who moved the music forward at a later point. Instead, it’s simply a description of his work as jazz improviser in the 1920s and of his primary place in the history of the development of jazz. Those who came later could not have done what they did without Armstrong or someone else like him.)
In the 1940s, Charlie Parker and his bebop contemporaries began to do something a bit different. Parker in particular, while capable of playing beautiful melodic lines, did not restrict himself to embellishing or varying the melody of the song when soloing. Instead, he engaged in a freer improvisation based on the notes of the chords associated with the melody. So, while there was still a relationship to the basic melody of the song, improvisation was less restricted, and often as a result less clearly related to the song’s melody. This element of bebop made it one of the first examples of “difficult” jazz music – it was not as easy to listen to and enjoy for many casual listeners as most earlier, dance and melody focused swing jazz. Not coincidently, the 1940s and 1950s were associated with a gradual dwindling of the jazz audience, partly because bebop alienated some. At the same time, though, the fact that the jazz audience was already shrinking with competition from rhythm and blues in the 1940s and rock and roll in the 1950s, meant that jazz fans who remained were often more “hard core,” often more willing to take the time to learn to listen to difficult music, something in turn facilitating the continued development of freer jazz improvisation.
In the late 1950s, Miles Davis and others, notably John Coltrane, were associated with the development of modal jazz, something which created still greater freedom in improvising. The melodic material of new songs, while not unimportant, was often paired down, with instead a song usually strongly associated with a particular key and mode, which freed up soloists to improvise with a greater degree of freedom, using the notes available in the key and mode with less structural restriction, i.e. as the essential element (free improvisation) was developed, other elements of structure were reduced.
Free Jazz, particularly associated with Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Albert Ayler, represents the next and final step in the history of jazz via the development of free improvisation. Celebrated recordings, like Coleman’s Free Jazz or Coltrane’s Ascension don’t quite reach the point of completely unrestricted improvisation, e.g. Ascension involves structured intervals of semi-structured ensemble playing, interspersed with soloists freely improvising with other musicians freely accompanying them, with accompaniment improvised in relation to soloists’ improvisations, but they do come close, certainly getting closer to total freedom (and chaos) than many if not most listeners care to hear, and as close to total freedom/chaos as I can honestly claim to enjoy. It’s debatable whether anyone truly achieved totally free improvisation, but by the late 1960s, plenty had come close enough that for all practical purposes, a zero degree of difference between music and noise, between intentional sound production and random chaos, had been achieved, and with it, the history of jazz, in Hegel’s or Danto’s sense of “history” with a definite trajectory, ended.
This might sound bad for jazz, but it wasn’t. Danto has written that the end of the history of art isn’t the end of art. It just means that there’s no longer a grand trajectory that needs to be invested in any longer. Artists are freed form artistic necessity or destiny to do what they want to do. Likewise with jazz – once the history of the development of free improvisation in jazz is over, jazz isn’t over, but musicians can simply get on with making good music in any number of ways – Wynton Marsalis can make what some call “museum jazz,” though what I’d consider artfully juxtaposed and highly enjoyable elements from various points in the history of jazz; Josh Roseman can mix reggae and jazz or do jazz versions of rock “standards” like “Don’t Be Cruel” or “Smells Like Teen Spirit;” Hiromi can engage in amazing finger gymnastics on the piano; I can’t quite say of contemporary jazz that “It’s all good,” but there are a goodly number of ways for musicians to play good jazz today, and unlike much of the 20th century, no real reason to see any musician as out of step with the overall trajectory of jazz, because there is no longer any main stream or overarching trajectory for the music.
For Greenberg, progress in art or the trajectory of the history of art centers around the development of that which is essential and unique to a form and the simultaneous winnowing away of that which is extraneous. With regard to painting, Greenberg saw the play of color on the flat plane as the essential and unique element of the form, while the removal of the extraneous meant the elimination of the illusion of three dimensionality, including pictorial or representational qualities. In the mid-twentieth century, he was an important champion of abstract expressionist painters like Jackson Pollock and color field painters like Mark Rothko.
Danto conceptualizes the history of art as the movement towards a zero degree of difference between art world and real world, between objects created as art objects and other objects in the world. One could argue that this was achieved with Duchamp’s urinal and other early 20th century “ready mades,” though by simply taking an already existing object and calling it art, Duchamp and others are doing something subtly different than what Danto is speaking of. Danto claims the history of art ended, reaching this zero degree of difference, with Warhol’s Brillo boxes, which were created as art objects but also as indistinguishable from the “real things.” (The only problem with this is that Warhol’s Brillo boxes aren’t indistinguishable from industrially manufactured Brillo boxes, and so, they don’t represent the end of the history of art in Danto’s terms, though they do indicate the sort of thing that would represent that – an object created as art which so indistinguishably resembles an object already existing that there is essentially zero difference between them.)
With regard to visual art, Greenberg and Danto are not compatible. The trajectory of the history of visual art for Danto must necessarily move beyond painting to create objects that are indistinguishable from objects already in the world, whereas for Greenberg, the trajectory of the history of visual art entails the development of painting into art objects that are as far from other sorts of objects in the world as possible. The details of their respective Neo-Hegelian perspectives are opposed in their implications – for visual art.
If we shift our attention to music, and specifically to jazz as a distinct form or mode of making music, their arguments are compatible for that medium. If we start with Greenberg’s emphasis on the development of that which is essential and unique to a form and the removal of that which is extraneous, we see a clear trajectory in the history of jazz that ultimately produces a zero degree of difference between art world and real world, a zero degree of difference between musical sound and noise.
The essential element in the history of jazz as a distinct musical form is free improvisation. (Some, like Wynton Marsalis, would argue that an essential quality of jazz is also that it’s based on the blues. Early jazz certainly was based on the blues, and the blues has been an important source of material throughout the history of jazz, but at the same time, jazz was from the very beginning a musical form with a mixture of sources, i.e. it was always blues mixed with other things, and as more and more things have been added to the mix [ragtime and military marches early on, later classical music, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, Indian ragga, reggae, hip hop, etc.], jazz has been freed from having to be blues based, even while blues based playing remains a possibility.)
The first great jazz improviser to be well recorded was Louis Armstrong in the 1920s. His improvisations generally took the form of embellishments and variations on the melodic material of the particular song. In so doing, he set the basic template for jazz improvisational playing for at least the next two decades, clearly establishing the precedent allowing soloists to improvise on the material of the song, while at the same time doing so with fairly restricted freedom – Armstrong’s solos, as brilliant as they often are, typically have very clear relationship to the melodic material for even first time listeners. (I want to make quite clear that this is no criticism of Armstrong’s early work, nor is it to imply a lower degree of sophistication than those who moved the music forward at a later point. Instead, it’s simply a description of his work as jazz improviser in the 1920s and of his primary place in the history of the development of jazz. Those who came later could not have done what they did without Armstrong or someone else like him.)
In the 1940s, Charlie Parker and his bebop contemporaries began to do something a bit different. Parker in particular, while capable of playing beautiful melodic lines, did not restrict himself to embellishing or varying the melody of the song when soloing. Instead, he engaged in a freer improvisation based on the notes of the chords associated with the melody. So, while there was still a relationship to the basic melody of the song, improvisation was less restricted, and often as a result less clearly related to the song’s melody. This element of bebop made it one of the first examples of “difficult” jazz music – it was not as easy to listen to and enjoy for many casual listeners as most earlier, dance and melody focused swing jazz. Not coincidently, the 1940s and 1950s were associated with a gradual dwindling of the jazz audience, partly because bebop alienated some. At the same time, though, the fact that the jazz audience was already shrinking with competition from rhythm and blues in the 1940s and rock and roll in the 1950s, meant that jazz fans who remained were often more “hard core,” often more willing to take the time to learn to listen to difficult music, something in turn facilitating the continued development of freer jazz improvisation.
In the late 1950s, Miles Davis and others, notably John Coltrane, were associated with the development of modal jazz, something which created still greater freedom in improvising. The melodic material of new songs, while not unimportant, was often paired down, with instead a song usually strongly associated with a particular key and mode, which freed up soloists to improvise with a greater degree of freedom, using the notes available in the key and mode with less structural restriction, i.e. as the essential element (free improvisation) was developed, other elements of structure were reduced.
Free Jazz, particularly associated with Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Albert Ayler, represents the next and final step in the history of jazz via the development of free improvisation. Celebrated recordings, like Coleman’s Free Jazz or Coltrane’s Ascension don’t quite reach the point of completely unrestricted improvisation, e.g. Ascension involves structured intervals of semi-structured ensemble playing, interspersed with soloists freely improvising with other musicians freely accompanying them, with accompaniment improvised in relation to soloists’ improvisations, but they do come close, certainly getting closer to total freedom (and chaos) than many if not most listeners care to hear, and as close to total freedom/chaos as I can honestly claim to enjoy. It’s debatable whether anyone truly achieved totally free improvisation, but by the late 1960s, plenty had come close enough that for all practical purposes, a zero degree of difference between music and noise, between intentional sound production and random chaos, had been achieved, and with it, the history of jazz, in Hegel’s or Danto’s sense of “history” with a definite trajectory, ended.
This might sound bad for jazz, but it wasn’t. Danto has written that the end of the history of art isn’t the end of art. It just means that there’s no longer a grand trajectory that needs to be invested in any longer. Artists are freed form artistic necessity or destiny to do what they want to do. Likewise with jazz – once the history of the development of free improvisation in jazz is over, jazz isn’t over, but musicians can simply get on with making good music in any number of ways – Wynton Marsalis can make what some call “museum jazz,” though what I’d consider artfully juxtaposed and highly enjoyable elements from various points in the history of jazz; Josh Roseman can mix reggae and jazz or do jazz versions of rock “standards” like “Don’t Be Cruel” or “Smells Like Teen Spirit;” Hiromi can engage in amazing finger gymnastics on the piano; I can’t quite say of contemporary jazz that “It’s all good,” but there are a goodly number of ways for musicians to play good jazz today, and unlike much of the 20th century, no real reason to see any musician as out of step with the overall trajectory of jazz, because there is no longer any main stream or overarching trajectory for the music.
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