AFTER BRUBECK :
A loss of musical innocence
What Joe Morello did for the Dave Brubeck Quartet was to project its
music into a new dimension of vitality and dignity. It was as if the
musical picture that the piano and the saxophone painted with the
background of the double bass had been provided with a frame which,
whilst presenting the painting in the best possible light, impressed the
beholder with its own beauty.
This was not only because of the amazing dexterity of Morello's
drumming but because of his exquisite touch, taste and timing. The
effect he had can best be conveyed by comparing it to that which a great
tabla player has on the the performance of a great sitarist.
The tabla becomes not just the foil but the complement to the sitar
as the shore to the ocean. The powerful display by the tabla does not
compete with the sitar but inspires it to the fullest display of its own
power.
And if Zakir Hussain's unique technique makes him unquestionably the
greatest of tabla players the very same can be said of Morello as a jazz
drummer. Dave Brubeck himself referred to him as the world's greatest
drummer and one who could do things with his drums that no other drummer
could. Steve Race, who presented the Quartet on his BBC 625 programme,
spoke of Morello as 'that miraculous drummer.'
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Dave
Brubeck Quartet |
Morello's technique had a lot to do with the highly developed
independence of his left hand. His left drumstick could play
accompanying patterns which were entirely independent of the rhythmic
beat of his right on the cymbal. Introduced freely but judiciously these
interjections had an effect similar to that of a tabla player's left
hand when he slides the heel of his palm along the 'bayan's' surface to
produce tonally varied emphases to the rhythmic 'theka' played by his
right hand.
The more accomplished the player the more subtle and expressive these
effects. Morello's left hand thus enabled the further elaboration of the
syncopated quality of the music by introducing a diversity of off-beat
emphases that were entirely apposite. He could, incidentally, in his
solos produce the equivalent of a two-handed roll with his left hand
alone.
The Quartet seemed to have taken chamber jazz to the acme of its
development with its fusion of modern classical harmony and counterpoint
with swing and improvisation and its infusion of a lyricism redolent of
the American countryside. After it disbanded in 1967 there has been no
group to match it or to develop the musical form and language it had
established. This seems strange when one considers the corresponding
situation in classical music.
Beethoven seemed to have developed the classical symphony, for
instance, to a new level of expressiveness. None of his successors were
able to match this achievement but it was not for want of trying. Many
of them came up with their own version of the Ninth Symphony - vide
Schubert's 'Unfinished', Berlioz's 'Fantastique', Dvorak's 'New World'
and Sibelius' Second.
None of these could vie with Beethoven's but at least the great
tradition of classical music was continued and developed, and brought
eventually to such achievements as those of Debussy and Stravinsky. Why
was there no comparable continuity and development in the field of
modern jazz?
Some have said that Brubeck and his group were inimitable. Their
musical comprehension and performing skills were simply unmatchable.
This could be true, but only partly so. The real reason is more
sinister.
It lies in the emergence in the later fifties of Rock and Roll and
the damage this did to American musical taste. This new genre could be
described as an aberration from jazz. It halted the flowing rhythm of
jazz by sounding or filling in the silent or rested half notes of the
first and third beats in the same way as done only for the second and
third beats in jazz. The resultant rhythmic repetitiousness throughout
the bar had the effect of removing the swinging style of jazz whilst
retaining its basic syncopation.
Until then the swing of jazz had exerted a beneficial influence on
popular music. This could be heard, for example, in the style of the
outstanding singer of the time, Frank Sinatra. Even popular dancing was
jazz-influenced as in Jive. In turn, jazz musicians resorted freely to
popular melodies for jazz rendition, Cole Porter's “It Was Just One of
Those Things” being an especial favourite. Because of this lively
exchange between jazz and popular music, the former benefited from
audiences primarily attracted to the latter.
In fact, Brubeck himself had great success in touring the
universities, a major market for popular music, and some of his best
music was produced at such concerts, viz. the 'Jazz Goes to College' and
'Jazz Goes to Junior College' albums. Desmond's long saxophone solo in
“These Foolish Things” from the latter probably represents his greatest;
it is a masterpiece of improvised thematic generation. But such
audiences now began to fall away.
And it was the art of improvisation that suffered most as Rock and
Roll swung popular taste away from the swing of jazz and its derivatives
in popular music and dancing.
The more pounding form of syncopation that came into vogue meant that
audiences became increasingly desensitized to the creative aspect of
improvisation and impatient of the attention it needed for its
appreciation. What they demanded was the undemanding delirium that the
new music afforded. The occasionally quasi-improvisational passages in
the music of such as Bill Haley and His Comets was of an entirely
stereotyped nature.
And then, with the Beatles making their presence felt in America as
well as in England, and Rock taking over from Rock and Roll, the
unthinkable happened. Syncopation itself disappeared from popular music.
All four beats of the bar were now given equal time value and equal
emphasis.
The pounding delirium of Rock and Roll degenerated into the
mechanical hysteria of Rock. Drumming came into greater prominence not
on account of the skill required, which was minimal, but because of the
need for the thudding beat to be produced with the maximum ferocity.
Improvisation vanished completely, to be replaced by the repetitious
refrains that underlay the constant chants and slogans that purported to
be lyrics. The appearance of the musicians became more and more
grotesque to emphasise the spirit of self-indulgence that Rock promoted.
Thus Rock proved the final nail in the coffin of jazz. There was
little interest even in the music of popular favourites like Sinatra.
Singers like Streisand weathered the storm by adroitly imitating the new
style and through sentimental revivals of their former styles for older
audiences. Jazz musicians made comparable efforts to survive. Some
developed what came to be called Jazz-Rock, others clutched at
Latin-American music to produce Latin-Jazz.
Brubeck, having disbanded his Quartet, turned to composing clasiscal
and religious music with occasional infusions of jazz. He also kept
playing jazz piano and small-group or chamber music to cater to the
remnant of Brubeck enthusiasts. But without the stimulus of his former
partners and the larger audiences of old, he was unable to develop the
great new school of jazz that he had established any further.
It is sad to contemplate the American musical scene today. With the
best of modern jazz as its centre-piece and popular music influenced
thereby, American musical taste had for a time been enhanced to a level
in keeping with that of the past. But with advent of Rock and Roll and
the subsequent dominance of Rock and its ever-increasing but
ever-degenerative subdivisions, the decline has been swift and deep.
It seems that American music began to lose its innocence, its
positive and creative spirit, when it disposed of swing and lost it
completely when syncopation followed suit. The prospects for a
regeneration seem remote. The annual search for an 'American Idol'
produces a motley concoction of imitative styles but little that augurs
for an upward swing in musical taste and creativity.
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