meditations on doing yesterday's music today

[Fletch]

An early classic of swing music is Duke Ellington's It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing), first recorded by his Famous Orchestra in 1932.


Especially interesting to us musicians - and perhaps to musically oriented Loungers - is the chance to contrast the recording with a note-for-note transcription played by Michael Law's Piccadilly Dance Orchestra in 2011.


Though a high-quality, feeling rendition, there are inevitably touches they didn't re-create from 1932. Unison saxophones playing with vibrato isn't considered good musicianship any more. Really good bass players don't slap, and few trombonists care to play plunger mute style way up in the trumpet midrange. And that weird Sonny Greer style of drumming - that you feel but don't quite hear - probably couldn't be done today, because let's face it, the beat and rhythm of swing music is now standardized.

And the meaning, context and use of the music have all changed. 80 years is forever in terms of living cultures, and there is almost no "early performance practice" for jazz. You can hear the change most tellingly in the character of the beat - just listening to first few seconds of rhythm section.

- In 1932 swing was a new music, not yet defined. (Despite the song title, it didn't even have a name.) Every pioneering ensemble played it a little differently. And it was made to dance to, because people danced by the millions then. The 1932 beat has a crisp energy and a percussiveness that makes you want to move your whole body. It's a little bit raw. It's fresh.

- In 2011 this music stood in for a whole era. It's a tribute by and for people who mostly do not dance - at least not as people did in 1932. The 2011 beat is standard swing, with a light theatrical lilt. It could be danced to, but it's for snapping a quiet finger, perhaps rocking back and forth in your seat, in a club or concert hall. It's a little bit polite. It's classic.

The difference is to be expected, really. There are great musicians and groups - very few of course - who try to recreate the color and flavor of old jazz. But the point usually, as it is here, is to honor a classic recording and improvised passages as a text, without anything that could be classed as imitation.

Written notation is traditionally the highest form of transmission for classic music (even if it's not "classical music"). It pays tribute to the arranger and improvisors on the classically highest level, as composers. As long as there's a balance between feeling and faithfulness, the performance won't be a lame travesty or a stale museum piece. And that's about as good as it gets.

[LizzieMaine]

And the moral of the story is -- Paul Whiteman was right all along.

[Fletch]

About what exactly?

[LizzieMaine]

That the way to preserve jazz was thru written arrangements. A music based on improvisation and only improvisation is as evanescent as the wind.

[Fletch]

Of course, that closes the door on learning anything from recordings - which is, and was, considered unprofessional, because it doesn't give written notation the privilege it's traditionally enjoyed. Jazz students today learn to transcribe recorded solos, but the idea is to play them from the sheet, not from memory.

But how else could (say) a rhythm section study and pick up the feel of Ellington's rhythm section? We create a situation where certain things you hear in the music not only can't be taught - they can't even be learned.


Take Freddy Guy, Duke's (nearly) silent partner. He's playing what I think is a banjo on the 1932 cut. (He definitely plays it on other Ellington sessions that year.) But there is nothing audible to casual, modern ears, that would suggest the brassy, plonky sound we think of as a banjo. Let alone how a banjo player today could get such a subtle sound (if it even is a sound). Maybe fit gut strings? All right, what then?

Freddy and his banjo are below the noise level - of Brunswick's mic, of Ellington's band, maybe of history itself. But they are part of what we hear, even if they can't quite be heard. The question is, when you're trying to play this stuff, does it pay to try to capture the feel? Or are you just imitating, chasing the aura and not the music?

Maybe it's actually better to swing it in the timeless style. At least listeners and dancers will nod familiarly, and sway a little in their seats. Even if you could give them something new (to them) in the way of feel, wouldn't it be so subtle that they'd miss it, and just wonder why the music lacks the signifiers of swinging?

[Undertow]

Fletch, at this point, the "Swing" era has passed and cannot be grasped between our fingers again. Anything and everything is emulation now. Just as one cannot truly recreate the Art Deco movement, no matter how true they are to the style.

I don't think that's a bad thing. It's the miracle of human mortality, life, history, and all that stuff. We're a collage of our experiences, and we can never do something a second time that happened so naturally. If we try, it's simply an emulation, a reproduction.

[V.C. Brunswick]

A music based on improvisation and only improvisation is as evanescent as the wind.

And the end result often sounds more like breaking wind.

[Fletch]

Fletch, at this point, the "Swing" era has passed and cannot be grasped between our fingers again. Anything and everything is emulation now. Just as one cannot truly recreate the Art Deco movement, no matter how true they are to the style.

I don't think that's a bad thing. It's the miracle of human mortality, life, history, and all that stuff. We're a collage of our experiences, and we can never do something a second time that happened so naturally. If we try, it's simply an emulation, a reproduction.

But something can always be learned by trying, if it's expressive and it touches us. As a musician, though, I know that there are some kinds of expression that are considered valid and some that aren't, and it doesn't always have to do with what touches us, but what is valued culturally or educationally or whatever by the community you are part of.

If I were (say) an alternative rock musician doing basically a postmodernist, junk-heap esthetic, it wouldn't be nearly the issue it is since I play jazz. Jazz is modernist: ie, you don't go chasing inspirations from just any old period, but must be progressive and embrace only what's innovative and has lasted.

[dhermann1]

Oh, man. The second version is so TEDIOUS by comparison! These guys suffer from the general disease of TRYING to be cool. Very selfconsciously hip. NG. No excitement! No aggression. Pfffttt.
But I HAVE heard contemporary bands that have that same pizzazz. When you come to NY I'll turn you onto my buddies Drew Nugent and Matt Musselman. They both have bands that have kick ass energy, AND play the music the way it was intended.

[Undertow]

But something can always be learned by trying, if it's expressive and it touches us. As a musician, though, I know that there are some kinds of expression that are considered valid and some that aren't, and it doesn't always have to do with what touches us, but what is valued culturally or educationally or whatever by the community you are part of.

If I were (say) an alternative rock musician doing basically a postmodernist, junk-heap esthetic, it wouldn't be nearly the issue it is since I play jazz. Jazz is modernist: ie, you don't go chasing inspirations from just any old period, but must be progressive and embrace only what's innovative and has lasted.

But in the end, even if something is learned, and regardless of how present society values this expression, isn't it still merely emulation?

I'm not trying to invalidate Jazz musicians, or any era-specific musicians. In fact, I've had a question in my head for a while now along these lines.

What if we had a bomb shelter sealed off from the rest of the world. Inside was a child prodigy who listened to nothing but 1950's rock and roll. When he finally stepped out into the present day and decided to record some music (and assuming he wasn't just replaying the same 1950's rock he'd grown up with), what would it sound like? Would it be the same kind of music that dominated the 1960's? Would it be "genuine" since the kid wasn't tainted by the progression of music around him?