"Resurrecting the Bartok": An Open Letter to Jazz Musicians

Dear Jazz Musicians,

I speak to you today as the rarest of rarities: an ex jazz musician. There are numerous unemployed jazz musicians, day-jobbing jazz musicians, and dead jazz musicians, but I've never heard of anyone with any sort of established career who got out completely. This gives me a unique perspective, which I'd like to share.

As a civilian, I've been going out to hear live jazz under unfamiliar pretenses. I'm not networking. I'm not making myself visible. I'm not angling to sit in. I'm not scoping out the competition. I'm doing something I rarely did as a jazz musician: I'm simply there to listen, nothing else. Just another consumer of entertainment product. I am, yikes, a jazz fan.

Shifting into this new and disorienting role has given me fresh insight on an issue that always nagged at me. Jazz musicians overlook all sorts of irrationality to maintain their arcane pursuit, and this was the deepest of my repressed frustrations.

On my very first night as a jazz fan, I got dressed up and left the comfort of my home to drive for a half hour, line up on a cold sidewalk, pay a surly doorman way too much money to sit at a crappy little table and drink crappy overpriced drinks, and shut up and pay rapt attention to the people on stage. And after sixteen bars I realized that they really didn't deserve all that.

It's not that they weren’t competent. They were all fine instrumentalists who navigated through chord changes with skill. But that's all they did. And that's just not enough.

After a few such evenings, the problem came into clear focus. The proposition offered to listeners is "You dress up, drive, pay, sit, shut up, and pay attention and I'll navigate skillfully through chord changes. Then you applaud - preferably with enthusiasm - for my skillful navigation of chord changes. The entire proceeding is a testament to my skillful navigation of chord changes."

Well, okay. But shouldn't you pay *me* for being there to attest to your skillful navigation of chord changes? Since that's all it's about? I mean, what's in it for me, exactly?

I’m not suggesting, of course, that musicians play more accessibly, or, perish the thought, entertainingly. I respect the artistic choice to remain opaquely inaccessible. I don’t, however, respect the artistic choice to be unartistic. And fluent forward movement through harmonic structures is not an artistic enterprise.

There was a time when jazz was supposed to be played with deeper purpose. Players were expected to have an original, inventive approach and a personal sound. Improvisation was spontaneous - wildly unpredictable and sensitively impacted by the happenstance of the moment. You'd go out to listen to jazz with some reasonable chance of being affected, moved, inspired by the experience. Certainly you'd expect to be surprised and delighted. That's what good art does.

Then those things became exceptional.

Then those things became the unattainable hallmarks of the Great Men Who Came Before, Who We Merely Emulate.

Then the emulators were emulated by a generation that skillfully navigates, period (some less skillfully).

It's tempting to blame jazz schools, where that's the entire goal. Students who attain fluency receive praise and status. Today, middle-aged jazz musicians play like they're in their 25th year of jazz school; still seeking praise and status for their mere fluency. They speak the language like a native but have nothing interesting to say. A hollow endeavor with no discernible payoff - like striking nails into a discarded length of plywood.

But I don't think jazz education is to blame. This is what inevitably happens when a fresh, vital art form congeals into a repertory genre. Bartok was a wild man in his day. He'd warp your ears with his unbridled harmonies and shocking trajectories. Now his music is listened to politely in concert halls by bourgeois seeking a whiff of high culture. It's lost its spontaneity and its shock and danger, and the musicians who resurrect it go through the motions like photocopies of photocopies. If they pull it off competently, they are applauded; a testament to their skillful navigation.

Jazz musicians would say I'm talking crazy talk. They've worked their whole lives to skillfully navigate and been (mildly) rewarded for it since music school. It's what their colleagues do, and their teachers before them. Inspiration and inventiveness, surprise and delight have nothing to do with it. They don't aspire to anything greater because it never occurred to them that more was possible, much less necessary. They fill space fluently with jazzy notes, like resurrecting the Bartok, so what's to complain about?

Further reading: This explains some of the broader forces at work here.

---

Jim Leff performed with Sahib Shihab, Eddie Barefield, Cecil Payne, Ted Curson, Major Holley, Walter Perkins, Illinois Jacquet, Lionel Hampton, Tete Montoliu, and many more. In his more recent guise as a writer and entrepreneur, he founded the popular web site Chowhound.com and created the smart phone app "Eat Everywhere", and he slogs at https://jimleff.blogspot.com