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Wednesday, 9 January 2013

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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.'

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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