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by Hayden Chisholm
"Thereīs no more revolution
Our fathers missed the train"
Asked to give a musicians perspective on the proposition that
Improvised music has lost its political relevance and hence last yearīs
audience reactions at the (German) Moers Jazz Festival were somewhat
subdued, these two lines of a song I once wrote came to mind, along
with a few other ideas that I will write about now. To deal briefly
with this theme we need to look at why in my view there is no more
social or musical "revolution" as we once knew it but rather only a
"personal" one, and why the idea that music needs political relevance
to succeed at all is outdated and debunked.
The
short history of Jazz and Improvised music in the last century also
coincided with the collapse and failure of countless political
projects though none of these structures, whether communism, fascism,
or racial segregation were taken down directly by blue notes or scat
singing. Instead "our" music has been more of an ongoing social
commentary within which voices of protest could be heard loud and clear
at certain times, perhaps even clear enough to set certain forces in
motion. Who can underestimate the effect of Billie Holidayīs "Strange
Fruit" in the psyche of a nation split down the middle at that time in
American history? But times have changed since then.
The
development of Jazz and Blues is without a doubt closely tied to the
struggle of civil rights and the freeing of the social injustices. Back
then there was clearly something to protest against, to free yourself
of, to escape from in the music with your listener. Even up to the 60īs
the enemy could still be seen though he was beginning to morph and take
on elusive forms. Writing now in 2008 it is not so easy to pinpoint the
foe, I would even go so far as to say the foe is not an external one
but rather within ourselves in the form of ignorance, conditioning, and
a whole host of inbred neurosis.
We just came out of the
bloodiest century in recorded history and to be perfectly frank, this
next one will not be much rosier. We are told that terrorism and
fundamentalism are the enemy and that security is one of our prime
concerns. You, dear reader, as well as anyone on this planet will to
some extent believe these propositions. We live in a time where not
only can politicians get away with the likes of "you are either for us
or against us" , a vast majority of us buy in to to these violations
of our otherwise rich language and assimilate them into our thinking
patterns. Linguisticllay we are more conditioned now than ever before,
George Orwell would have had a field day. A political culture of lying
on a grand scale has been implanted and achieved through dubious means
and getting up to march on the streets will no longer change it, nor
will an improvisation on a Jazz festival stage against the Iraq war.
For
the world is not simply good or evil, hawks or doves, black or white,
or whatever other divide they can come up with, but rather infitely
more complex and with endless shades of grey between. Another reason
making it improbable to determine an external foe against which we
musicians should "protest" or take a stand against. But let us
backtrack a few decades to a not so distant age of innocence.
When
exactly did our fathers "miss the train"? What happened after the
social revolutions of the 60īs, the hippies and psyconauts, the 68īs
with their little Mao Bibles, the belated backlash against fascism and
imperialism, all the sound and fury on European Festival stages? From
my perspective in backwater New Zealand growing up in the 80īs nothing
at all happened, and long before I came to europe in ī92 everyone had
been lulled back into their easy modus operandi and Capitalism had
gently won the battle hands down. I would say this period was one of
many trains that were missed. The grand "Spectacle" we now see today
where ever we look in which illusion is sacred and truth profane
triumphed and I donīt think anyone can dispute that. I say "Capitalism"
or the "Spectacle", you could choose from a host of other terms, each
one making the external foe even more difficult to pinpoint. I donīt
see why we should fight a battle on stage already lost by our fathers
when we have enough to worry about in preserving our frail culture of
sound.
So now I come to the music. It has been suggested we need
more voices of protest, we should take more of a stand, our saxophones
should be like a cry to battle, in which all the anger of the world is
contained, and that this is what would really animate our festival
audiences. Well, Iīm sorry but itīs a bit too late now. Itīs all been
blown and shouted out before on stage and when you play like this
today, it tends to have the opposite effect. Aggressive playing is no
longer a reaction against anything but rather a gratioutous flirtation
with surplus testostorone. The "hard-core" improv. scenes of recent
decades now seem pallid and watered-down, even cute in their
intentions, dimensions, and effects. If anything, they play into the
foeīs hands.
When we took down all the forms of "our" music with
movements like free Jazz we were reacting against and breaking away
from something. Now there are no more to break down, no more more to
react against. This is why you can forget about much revolution
happening in todayīs improvised music. At the moment there is more
innovation in singer-songwriter scenes than in improv. because their
forms are clearer and their message succinct. Truly revolutionary music
like Parker or Coltrane took place within the forms, they stretched and
twisted them to breaking point. We donīt have any left to break
through, so it is left for us to slowly and carefully put together some
of these broken pieces and develop a new language for our own troubled
times. When we try too hard to do this, when we shout out, cry out for
freedom and justice (and how about democarcy?) through our horns, we
tend to lose the plot and have to start all over again. If this is what
our listeners really want (and somehow I doubt they really do), then
they should perhaps look somewhere else for the voice of protest, how
about inside themselves?
We "improvisors" are constantly
searching for a language in which we can speak anew, even though our
forms have been ripped down (by ourselves, and that neednīt be a bad
thing in the long term) and our listeners lied to, softly conditioned,
and coerced their whole lives by the known forces we are now expected
to speak up against and the unknown ones (which we should perhaps
simply ignore?). It almost feels like making the soundtrack for a
sinking Titanic, but thatīs fine by me because if we go down, we go
down down playing.
What is valuable in improvised music is the
ongoing search for new expression within this car-infested, neo-
nuclear age and having you, the listener, share in our struggle which
in itīs own modest way, is a desperate call to revolution from "within"
(if thatīs really what you want ) , when all the other external
attempts have failed and left us reeling.
"Thereīs no more revolution
Our Father missed the train
But not the end of evolution
Though we play the same old game"
Hayden Chisholm 2008
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