Marsalis has created an institution that seeks to educate and perpetuate the music that he knows and loves. He calls the music jazz and it is clearly defined in his own mind. His outreaching and educating is an admirable endeavor and, as with any subject that is taught, he has necessarily developed his own definition of what jazz is. His lineage of jazz history is what has become the norm in jazz education classrooms across the country and he represents this dogma as the face of JALC and what the general public knows as “jazz.” He has seemingly succeeded in educating a great deal of Americans about a uniquely American artform by stripping it down to a simple lineage with defined styles and standard works. And this is why he gets so much flack.
By creating this definition of jazz, Marsalis has alienated a huge group of modernistic, avant-garde, improvisational, post-modernistic, and even pop musicians who would describe their own music as falling into the category of “jazz.” In “The J-Word”, Iverson lists 5 large groups of musicians that all create very different music that are “not embraced in the Wynton Marsalis vision of jazz.” He also calls this a “partial” list, insinuating that there are even more, different styles or theories of music that might want to be included under the jazz umbrella. Basically all of the styles that Iverson cites have only been in practice since after Marsalis’ lineage ends with Miles Davis before his electric music and John Coltrane before his rubato music.
At that point in time, music began to take many more forms than it ever had before. With the advent of all these new forms, it becomes pretty difficult to draw clear lines of what came from where and what any of it should be called. For example, “fusion” may stake its roots in jazz, but it is not jazz, simply because it is fused with another style of music, by definition. What we knew as jazz before had progressed to the point of explosion and a myriad of styles were constantly springing up.
From there, it would only make sense to go back and harness some sort of lineage. This is why the history of jazz is currently being taught the way it is. As with anything that is taught, there must be parameters within which to teach it. A clear line can be traced from New Orleans Jazz to Bop before things get fuzzy. The progression and influence can be seen and is well documented. Whether or not what comes after this history is influenced by, has progressed from, or has any roots in jazz is a moot point in the terms of Marsalis’ canon.
I’m not saying that the History of Jazz just ends sometime in the 1960s, I’m just saying that it becomes very difficult to track what has grown out of jazz as we know it from the first half of the 20th Century. Many musicians created some very complex and interesting music that is very artistic and enjoyable. However, Marsalis just doesn’t dig it nearly as much as the stuff he plays. This is why he plays and teaches what he does: because it’s what he likes and thinks is the best. It’s his opinion, and he’s entitled to it. He’s just a guy who happens to be immensely talented and well liked by the media and general public. As to a responsibility to recognize and support other types of music, I don’t see him as having one if he doesn’t see them as falling into his own category.
I think what we need to realize is that just because Wynton Marsalis and JALC say something is jazz or isn’t jazz, doesn’t mean it is good or bad. It’s just one institutions opinion and the general public seems to like it. If other styles of music want to stake their claim as the rightful heirs to jazz, they need to get out there and prove it to the audience and support their beliefs with conviction. So Wynton isn’t all that bad of a guy, he’s just doing what he likes to do.
Marsalis is well within his rights to advocate for “jazz” that he believes in, with boundaries drawn as he sees them to be. I don’t think Iverson expect anything else of him. The point he’s making is that the linear jazz history of the jazz canon, its focus on a select few “great men”, and its terminus somewhere around 1960, doesn’t tell the whole story. Marsalis, like Ken Burns, claims to speak for the totality of jazz. History, as the saying goes, is written by the conquerors. A major project of contemporary jazz scholarship is to restore some complexity to the picture.
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point when you suggest that musicians who wish to be recognized as stakeholders in the history of jazz should argue forcefully for their convictions. Do you think, though, that the obvious power imbalances – compare, for example, the annual operating budget at JALC against that of the AACM – might have something to do with the fact that we don’t hear their voices?