Jazz is a bit of an enigma in some ways, it escapes easy definition. Which suggests there’s maybe something…

Jazz is a bit of an enigma in some ways, it escapes easy definition. Which suggests there’s maybe something being missed. And maybe that something extends to a lot of the problems we have around identity and politics. Bit of a 🧵. /1 https://t.co/kAa4lUFE4U

As the article says, a lot went into the melting pot at the origins of jazz. Obviously multiple streams of African-American music at the time, but also a cross-pollination with classical, through the influence of Creole musicians. Without question jazz was a new style or…/2

…genre of music, one developed by African-Americans. But I think it was more than that, in a way that makes it an even more significant invention. To use an example from rock music, Queen’s guitarist @DrBrianMay is always credited with developing ‘the Brian May sound’. /3

Without delving into that sound too deeply, it’s of course flattering to have a style/sound attributed to you by name. But in another way it downplays the achievement, May squared a few circles in rock guitar. Most importantly to reject the distinction…/4 https://t.co/nxaU0QGjxn

…between a clean and overdriven sound as some form of binary, and replace it with a continuum where you get the overdriven tone but with clear articulation of all of the notes, even with quite complex chords. And to get an almost infinite sustain, with a beautifully pure…/5

…single note tone, like a voice (May often describes his playing as trying to emulate a voice, which I think is a perfect description). So to get back to the point, while all of this is the ‘Brian May sound’, it’s much more than that, it’s major innovation in rock guitar. /6

And that innovation is often missed in attributing all of that to some form of idiosyncrasy instead, like it’s just a particular quirkiness of Brian’s, rather than a major step forward for all rock guitar. And sometimes jazz seems a bit like that, to me. /7

A major evolutionary leap in music itself, often marginalised as just another style or genre. I want to suggest that jazz is also just music, but music played better, by better musicians. It’s like a culmination of many streams of music, into a more sophisticated form. /8

Maybe most easily (and probably too simply) described as the convergence of composition and performance. Improvisation, such a core component of jazz, is that convergence I think. A great jazz musician composes in real-time, during performance. /9

It’s the pinnacle of music, to be able to do that well. It takes phenomenal talent and huge amounts of hard work to be good at it. I sometimes use the clip below when trying to explain this to friends, the extraordinary @bmarsalis playing with Sting. /10 https://t.co/9g6CFeBSTH

For jazz purists this maybe isn’t vintage Marsalis, but I like the example because it demonstrates the cross-genre argument. Listen to the lines Marsalis plays, they’re all counter-melodies to the main melody, effortlessly harmonising with that melody, with other melodies. /11

Melodies composed on the spot, by Marsalis, to play (literally playfully) against the main melody. Counterpoint, contrapuntal lines, like JS Bach. Counterpoint is sometimes considered the highest of all musical skills, a not small reason Bach is often considered the greatest…/12

…of composers. But Marsalis is doing it here, in real time, on the spot. When you listen to soloists in other traditions, or even less accomplished jazz musicians, the solos so often follow patterns and formulas that are familiar to the musicians, some scale pattern. /13

Patterns their fingers and minds know, rather than an artistic response to the moment. But here the solo is a melody, perfect in itself, but also at the same time playing against the main melody in ways that make them respond to one another, like a conversation. /14

That’s phenomenally hard. Genius. Reminds me of the story of how Horowitz, who was always intimidated by Art Tatum, composed a piece he thought would be difficult for Tatum to play. And then Tatum not only played it with relative ease, but also improvised on it, on the spot. /15

That’s not just ‘jazz’, that’s a genius musician. It’s music, played better, by better musicians. The work Marsalis and the rest of the Blue Turtles band did with Sting was another case in point. Sting’s songs of course provided the bedrock, but the jazz musicians took them../16

…and immediately and effortlessly transformed them into new songs, every time and every night they played them. A sort of continuous invention and reinvention of the songs, in real time, every time they were played. You can call it jazz or some hybrid fusion, but to me it…/17

…was music, but played better, by better musicians. The best musicians. You could have used country players, or classical, or whatever, and come up with a different interesting fusion. But it wouldn’t be that real-time continuous invention, that convergence of composition…/18

…and performance, that you get from jazz. Jazz takes other musical styles and transforms them into continuous invention. So while it is a style or genre too, it’s also more than that. Mozart for example loved to improvise, there are stories../19

…of him improvising in concert or for friends for 20 minutes or more at a time, with that same sort of endless invention you can hear in Marsalis’ playing. Genius does that. /end