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Etcetera, Jazz Music

September 18, 2009

Better Red Than Dead

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Buddy BoldenBlood­less­ness is the enemy.

Jazz began life as a folk music, and therein lay much of its appeal – an appeal totally absent from most of the jazz pro­duced by today’s lum­ber­ing insti­tu­tions and uni­ver­si­ties. Acad­e­m­iz­ing brings about an alien­ation of the  music’s folk roots, pro­duc­ing a type of jazz that, values-wise, more closely resem­bles Euro­pean clas­si­cal music than the music of Arm­strong, Parker, and Coltrane. That clas­si­cal mind-set pro­duces musi­cians who avoid gut­bucket expres­sion­ism like they would some crazy uncle who lives in the bomb shel­ter he built dur­ing the JFK administration.

A cer­tain con­tem­po­rary sax­o­phon­ist comes to mind. (We’ll call him “Name­less,” since there are count­less oth­ers exactly like him. What’s the point in pick­ing on just one?) I first heard Name­less in the con­text of a well-known big band, where he struck me as a musi­cian of con­sid­er­able tech­ni­cal skill and not much orig­i­nal­ity. He could play in what­ever styl­is­tic bag the arrange­ments required, from early New Orleans to ‘50s hard bop. Every note was authen­tic to the period the music was meant to evoke. As a sax­o­phon­ist myself, I must con­fess that – for a moment – I got caught up in the vir­tu­osic aspect of his work. There will always be a part of me that admires and even thrills to some­one who can play so fast and pre­cise. Indeed, if tech­ni­cal abil­ity is the main cri­te­ria, this cat was one of the “best” sax­o­phon­ists I’d ever heard. So why did his play­ing ulti­mately leave me cold?

Dexter GordonBecause tech­ni­cal abil­ity is not the main cri­te­ria. Jazz isn’t track & field. Accom­plish­ment can’t be mea­sured empir­i­cally. If it could be, we’d have to rate Name­less as a supe­rior sax­o­phon­ist to say, Dex­ter Gor­don. After all, Name­less can play faster and cleaner than Dex­ter ever did.

Of course, such a notion is pre­pos­ter­ous. Gor­don had some­thing else. It isn’t only that he was a more orig­i­nal player than Name­less, although he surely was. As impor­tant, how­ever, is some­thing less quan­tifi­able – some­thing that can’t be explained by a solo tran­scrip­tion or a the­sis on impro­vi­sa­tional strategies.

It’s called “soul,” a term not much used in jazz crit­i­cism any­more, per­haps because of its sub­jec­tive nature; per­haps because crit­ics (most of whom are white) are squea­mish about pre­sum­ing to apply it (or a lack thereof) to the work of black artists. Soul is a real part of jazz, though. Dex­ter had it; Name­less, not so much.

Name­less is a very fine musi­cian in many respects. His play­ing is smooth, ele­gant, and obvi­ously tech­ni­cally bril­liant. In the end, how­ever, it’s glib. And glib­ness is the antithe­sis of soul.

Soul isn’t about black and white or blues and swing.  It’s some­thing that you might not be able to ade­quately describe, but you know it when you hear it. To ignore or down­play its exis­tence helps us under­stand jazz not a whit.

Charlie ParkerSoul is what Char­lie Parker was talk­ing about when he said, “If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.”

Soul is the rea­son that if offered the choice of a limo and tick­ets to hear Name­less at Carnegie Hall, or a Metro Card and a chance to pay to hear John Zorn at The Stone, I’d take Zorn every time.

Soul is some­thing you can’t learn at Jul­liard or the New School. It’s not about notes and the­o­ries. It’s sure as hell not about rote history.

Soul is liv­ing, lov­ing, and los­ing. It’s life’s tri­umphs and dis­ap­point­ments – the joy, the despair, and every­thing in-between – chan­neled through your music.

It’s the sound of blood pump­ing through your veins.

  1. this is because as a liv­ing art­form ‘jazz’ has run it’s course and con­tin­ues to be stomped to death by acad­e­mia and by demand­ing so much respect. these things are under­stand­able but have a very high price. ‘jazz’ has lost a lot of fun and ‘soul’ because it has become objec­ti­fied as a historical/museum cul­tural expres­sion. i’m a white guy say­ing this which, may mean that what i get out of ‘jazz’ is dif­fer­ent than some­one who is not white. some peo­ple may feel that these com­ments are racist but for me it is the very ‘holy­ness’ in which ‘jazz’ is now placed, which makes it untouch­able, and that is, for me, the prob­lem. ‘jazz’ can no longer change, it has become a cod­i­fied art­form, some­thing that it used to not be. i had the priv­i­lege of study­ing with Yusef Lateef in the early 90, at the height of ‘the young lions’ and he bemoaned that cod­i­fi­ca­tion. he never used the word ‘jazz’ because he sees it as offen­sive (just look up the def­i­n­i­tion) and instead used ‘impro­vised music’ or ‘the music’. for Lateef it was very painful to see that the tra­di­tion was being made into some­thing very spe­cific as opposed to some­thing fluid and evolv­ing. we live in a time where there is so much more music avail­able and that and because of all these polit­i­cal fac­tors, per­haps ‘jazz’ can’t ever really be ‘jazz’ in the way it used to be. from my seat, that’s too bad and i’ll just lis­ten to old ‘jazz’ and newer stuff that is some­thing else…

    Comment by dave gross — September 18, 2009 @ 3:35 pm

  2. The music is quite alive, thank you; only the com­bi­na­tion locks on the gates have been changed. Just a dif­fer­ent obsta­cle course, which does how­ever thicken the plot.

    Comment by patrick brennan — September 19, 2009 @ 1:36 am

  3. (To Mr.Gross)
    “the music” has NOT it’s course!! You have to know where to look and be will­ing to go find it since It’s not being pushed by “jazz media”,..In New York,.seek out live con­certs by Charles Gayle or Sabir Mateen,.and you will be able to see it still ALIVE,..CHI-town and Boston got some of this going down to I’m sure.There are peo­ple very much Alive who know what it really is and are prac­tic­ing the craft by any means necce­sary,.
    There’s a live quote from Albert Ayler saying,..“someday the peo­ple will get my music,.they WILL.”

    Comment by matt Lavelle — September 19, 2009 @ 11:18 am

  4. the music has not Run its course,..(line correction,sorry)

    Comment by matt Lavelle — September 19, 2009 @ 11:20 am

  5. I might add regard­ing live music, I’ve been video tap­ing my shows for every­one to see. Do stop by Youtube and look up “Marc Edwards & Slip­stream Time Travel.” Google.com video’s search engine is much bet­ter and it lists nearly all the videos I’ve done. If you have a page at Face­book, do visit it and you’ll see the links posted there as well. At the page at myspace, the videos are posted in the blog sec­tions. The music is very much alive and well. It’s not as widely pub­li­cized as Top 40 Music. We do our best but our audi­ence is still small. I believe things will get bet­ter in the future, being the eter­nal opti­mist that I am. Just check my page at myspace and my shows are listed there as well as men­tioned here at Facebook.

    Comment by Marc Edwards — September 20, 2009 @ 11:25 am

  6. well, for one, to say some vir­tu­oso player has no soul, and not name the per­son,
    is well, kind of soul-less in itself, if you can back up what u write about then name the names,
    and now that i think 0f it, i won­der what the blog­ger, of this post sounds like? have you ever read all the flak, the old bepop guys got?

    Comment by M.MALLOY — September 20, 2009 @ 10:37 pm

  7. […] Soul is some­thing you can’t learn at Jul­liard or the New School. It’s not about notes and the­o­ries. It’s sure as hell not about rote history.”, – writes sax­o­phon­ist Chris Kelsey. Read his full arti­cle “Bet­ter Red Than Dead”. […]

    Pingback by A Few Thoughts About Soul | Gaudeamus — September 21, 2009 @ 3:48 am

  8. Thanks every­one. I def­i­nitely under­stand where Dave’s com­ing from, but to me his frus­tra­tion seems to come from where jazz has been posi­tioned in the pub­lic eye by the tastemak­ers, which doesn’t resem­ble the real­ity on the ground. Matt and Marc are good exam­ples of artists in the trenches doing good work, and there are so many more … they just haven’t got­ten the ink and exposure. 

    The good news is that we have the power to change that – maybe not imme­di­ately, but sooner than we think. I sense the momen­tum building …

    Comment by admin — September 21, 2009 @ 5:45 pm

  9. I don’t name the sax­o­phon­ist because, num­ber one (and as I stated) there are so many who fit the descrip­tion, it’s unfair to pick on a sin­gle per­son. Num­ber two, I didn’t want the piece to be about whether or not a spe­cific artist “has soul” or not, which undoubt­edly would have hap­pened had I used his or her name. There’s a broader issue at hand …

    Comment by admin — September 21, 2009 @ 5:48 pm

  10. …and Patrick, by all means, he’s a won­der­ful player!

    Comment by admin — September 21, 2009 @ 6:15 pm

  11. Sax­o­phone seems to be an instru­ment which attracts a lot of tech­ni­cians. Per­haps because it’s “not rocket sci­ence.” To me, a dirty lit­tle secret about the sax (known to many clas­si­cal play­ers, though) is that it’s a frig­gin’ easy instru­ment to play. It doesn’t need the jazz school folderol or the prac­tice room anx­i­ety, and with that bag­gage will only come a cheap imi­ta­tion of top artists such as Parker and Coltrane, etc. The phrase “easy to play, hard to mas­ter” comes to mind. Gut­bucket, bar-walking, honk­ing tenor sax is easy as falling off a log. I pre­fer it per­son­ally, and I have a mas­ters degree in clar­inet. But— get­ting back to Kelsey’s premise— ya gotta have soul to do the easy stuff!

    Comment by michael pellecchia — September 21, 2009 @ 8:03 pm

  12. You nailed it, Michael! God help me, I had to play clar­inet in col­lege and it KICKED MY ASS! I have a vin­tage Buf­fet in the closet that only sees the light of day on Octo­ber 31 when I get dressed up as Squid­ward for Hal­loween. And you’re right – when it’s easy to shred, there’s more empha­sis on the incorporeal!

    Comment by admin — September 21, 2009 @ 8:46 pm

  13. mike,..check out JOHN CARTER,..Chris did a pro­file on him once,.outside of his blog.
    BIG time clar­inet CHOPS,..BIG time SOUL,..

    true gut bucket wail­ing is not a tech­ni­cal thing or any­thing you can practice,.but you do have to FEEL it,.and for some peo­ple these days,.that is some­thing harder to do than any etude that demon­strates supreme artic­u­la­tion and air control,.(like John Carter)..the bot­tom line is that peo­ple play what they really are,.what there nature is. clas­si­cal peo­ple play the music of their soul,..its just a dif­fer­ent man­i­fes­ta­tion of such.That music is who and what they are.
    Wyn­ton is the ulti­mate example,.no one remem­bers how DEEP he went with Classical,.performing and record­ing it quite a bit,.that was the music of his soul at the time,.and its a part of his music now.

    Comment by matt Lavelle — September 22, 2009 @ 3:27 pm

  14. I had a musi­col­ogy pro­fes­sor at CCNY in the ‘90s – a total clas­si­cal cat, but a guy who appre­ci­ated jazz – and he told me he felt Wyn­ton was a far bet­ter clas­si­cal than jazz player. I’ve always felt the same, although he’s with­out ques­tion a fine jazz player in his own way.

    Comment by admin — September 22, 2009 @ 3:35 pm

  15. John Zorn as the epit­ome of soul? When I saw him play live, he just bit his reed and squeeked. Very juvenile. 

    Name­less? my guess is James Carter.

    Comment by John McQueeney — September 22, 2009 @ 4:13 pm

  16. My choice of Zorn was meant to pro­voke; his ver­sion of “soul” is per­haps dif­fer­ent than that of an African-American musi­cian, but is no less real. And he can do a lot more than bite his reed, believe me. The guy is an extra­or­di­nary sax­o­phon­ist. Not for every­body, obvi­ously, but that’s part of what makes him special.

    Comment by admin — September 22, 2009 @ 4:31 pm

  17. great descrip­tion of JZ,.but the dig on JC by JM,.I cant get with that,.could be because Ive crossed paths with him in Person.JC is an original,.and he mos def has Soul.Try telling HIM you feel that way.meeting some­one in per­son can really tell you alot them,..and in this way,.Wynton is a soul­ful per­son in his own way.Everybody hears differently.Ive heard Joe Lovano bust out soul on the blue note record he did with Joshua Redman.Shit,.Ill even admit the europe jazz cats have soul,..I cant really hear what most of them are doing,.but there play­ing their songs and the music of their lives,..

    Comment by matt Lavelle — September 22, 2009 @ 8:40 pm

  18. I’m a Carter fan.

    Comment by admin — September 22, 2009 @ 9:00 pm

  19. man,..chris,.ill tell you a story when i cross paths with you about how JC dressed down this cat at sam ash for insult­ing a Mark 6 alto! it was deep!

    Comment by matt Lavelle — September 22, 2009 @ 9:20 pm

  20. Well,as to why the blog­ger doesn’t name the saxa­phon­ist is not a very good argu­ment! too many to name because of they fit the descrip­tion? now how do we know this? just because a per­son is a musi­cian? can we have audio or tran­scrip­tions to com­pare? see this is why such posts only do a dis­ser­vice to the music, and the artist, the only pur­pose is that the post does is to cel­e­brate the ego of the writer, who’s on the soul com­mi­tee, blood pumpin through your veins, i would bet that you don’t even com­pre­hend the heavy­ness of parker! oh yeah, he came up with all that crap when he was broke prob­a­bly, no grants around back then!!!!!!!!!

    Comment by M.MALLOY — September 23, 2009 @ 12:25 am

  21. Of course I dig the heav­i­ness of Parker! Maceo is one soul­ful cat … ;-)

    Comment by admin — September 23, 2009 @ 6:35 am

  22. Just try and get a grant these days,.enough adver­sity for just about anyone„but true,.no macarthur for bird..

    Comment by matt lavelle — September 23, 2009 @ 10:44 am

  23. I remem­ber one time when I was pretty young, maybe 15, I was invited to jam with a local altoist I’d heard was incred­i­ble. That guy played some of the slick­est bebop alto I’ve ever heard, incred­i­bly fast and pre­cise, seem­ingly every lick out there, with all the pas­sion of a guy shop­ping for socks. I walked away bizarrely depressed, think­ing, “Is that what jazz amounts to?” I hon­estly felt fin­ished with the music. Luck­ily, the very next day a CD arrived in the mail, “Good Deeds” by sax­o­phon­ist Char­lie Kohlhase (any­one out there know his stuff?). Now, he’s not a really tech­ni­cal player, or at least he wasn’t on that album, but he’s got ideas (rather than licks), a sense of humor, a crack band, and, yeah, soul. Hear­ing it at that moment helped me get my head on straight. My hope is that no mat­ter how intel­li­gent and search­ing jazz becomes, it remains a folk music in spirit — open to change and bor­row­ing from out­side sources, gritty and spon­ta­neous, and try­ing to make a gen­uine con­nec­tion with an audi­ence… no mat­ter how small.

    Comment by Steve Peterson — September 25, 2009 @ 3:08 am

  24. Nice, Steve. Yes, I know of Char­lie. He’s a player, fer sure.

    Comment by admin — September 25, 2009 @ 6:27 am

  25. indeed, i’m with chris. the tastemak­ers, aka wyn­ton marsalis, would not give charles gayle the time of day. that’s what i am talk­ing about. it’s funny that mr. marsalis’ right hand man is stan­ley crouch, a many who was a free jazz drum­mer in the late six­ties and early sev­en­ties and then rejected the music. that is some lame shit. and now he has the moral author­ity to diss elec­tric miles. that is bull­shit. that is what i am talk­ing about.

    Comment by dave gross — September 25, 2009 @ 10:11 pm

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