SEMINAR SERIES | Tony Dudley-Evans on ‘British Jazz’ – part 2

continued from part 1

Things began to change in the 1970s with the emergence of players such as John Surman, Kenny Wheeler, who is Canadian, but based in London for most of his career, Norma Winstone and John Taylor. These players began to look towards other parts of Europe for inspiration and to work regularly in continental Europe and in European bands; John Taylor taught in Germany and John Surman eventually settled in Norway.  Similarly, the British free improvisers, such as Evan Parker, Trevor Watts and Derek Bailey developed an approach to improvisation that became influential in other European scenes.

This coincided with the development of the ECM label in Germany run by Manfred Eicher.

In a recent interview in London Eicher talked of his admiration for this group of British players  (see here) who he felt were developing a distinctive style.   The first British recording on ECM was in 1970 by The Improvisation Company with Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Christine Jeffrey, Jamie Muir and Hugh Davies (Brian Morton, Jazz Journal, February 2018), and, also from the 1970s Surman initially and then Wheeler, Winstone and Taylor recorded on the ECM label.  John Surman was described by the renowned British jazz critic Charles Fox as the ‘first Common Market jazzman’ (Brian Morton, 2018).  Although I would suggest that there is something characteristically British about the playing of these musicians, they developed strong relationships with other European players and I would argue that it is misleading to claim that they developed a ‘British’ style.  They are part of the European scene.

In this regard it is interesting to note that in the current ECM schedule of January and February five British artists are featured.  Two of these, John Surman and Norma Winstone go back to the 1970s generation; two, Andy Sheppard and Tommy Smith (who appears in a group led by the Norwegian bass payer Arild Andersen) are from the later 1980s onwards, and one, Kit Downes, is from the generation of players who came to prominence in the 2000s.

There is, however, another interesting trend in jazz in  Britain today: the group of players associated with the Jazz Re-Freshed promotions in west London, players and bands such as Binker and Moses, Moses Boyd’s Exodus, Ezra Collective and Shabaka Hutchings (who is actually part of a broader scene and plays regularly in different European festivals)).  Jazz Re-Freshed has developed more links with the USA than with Europe, especially with the Afropunk Fest  in New York, and the South by South West Showcase event in Texas and probably sees itself as part of the Black Atlantic collaboration.

 

Tony’s paper was delivered on 28 February 2018 as part of the BCMCR Seminar Series

SEMINAR SERIES | Tony Dudley-Evans on ‘British Jazz’ – part 1

British Jazz: Cross Atlantic Partnership or European Integration?

by Tony Dudley-Evans

I begin with the assumption that it is legitimate to talk of European Jazz as being stylistically different from American jazz and that it is more relevant now to talk of European Jazz rather than jazz of particular countries, e.g. Norwegian jazz, Swiss jazz etc.  This is not to suggest that there are not specific characteristics of jazz in certain countries, but rather that there  are so many bands based in Europe with members from different countries and also, that since many musicians have moved to centres such as Berlin or Amsterdam, it is relevant to talk of European jazz and of European bands.

My argument is that British jazz players have tended to draw their influences from the USA and for various historical, linguistic and political reasons still lean towards the US model.  It is only since the 1970s that certain British players have begun to take on influences from other European bands and players and see themselves as part of the European scene.

There are clear echoes in all this in the division in British society about the European Union.

In the late 1940s and 1950s British modern jazz players took their inspiration from the bop scene in New York, and many players played on the cross-Atlantic liners in order to have a day in New York listening to the pioneers of modern jazz, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk et al.  The growth of modern jazz in Britain developed from these visits and its players were invariably judged by how close they came to matching the American stars of the day.  Saxophonist Tubby Hayes was probably the finest British exponent of the bop/hard bop style and he was always acclaimed as being ‘as good as the Americans’.  Fans of Hayes were delighted when he eventually went to play in New York for a series of dates and received excellent reviews and the acceptance of the jazz community in the city.  Similarly, alto saxophonist Peter King is regarded as a player who would be considered a leading figure in the bop style had he been based in New York.

It is sometimes argued that a distinctively British style emerged with Stan Tracey’s Under Milk Wood suite that featured saxophonist Bobby Wellins.   While the compositions do have a distinctive voice different from the American style, I would argue the solos from Tracey and Wellins do still follow an American model and the overall impression is that the album is highly original but still essentially following an American model.

Saxophonist Andy Hamilton was a key member of the Birmingham and latterly the British scene, but his playing was in the tradition of the saxophone tradition of Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster.  In his later years he developed a strong musical and personal relationship with American saxophonist David Murray.  I have suggested this was partly due to a mutual feeling of a cross-Atlantic culture taking in Britain, USA and the Caribbean (Dudley-Evans, 2017).

Continued

 

SEMINAR SERIES: Jazz Studies | Translating Curatorial Practice

For the first seminar in the BCMCR Seminar Series, Fiona Talkington and Sid Peacock explored how curatorial practice might be understood in terms of cultural translation.

In this post, I’ll explore Fiona’s talk in a little more detail and tease out a couple of the questions that interested me.

Fiona Talkington (BBC Radio 3) – If Mountains Could Sing

Fiona presented a paper on her experiences curating Norwegian Jazz. She described how her passion for the promotion and circulation of Norwegian jazz began; and traced the journey it took, from the humble, self-effacing musicians she spoke to in Oslo’s jazz bars, to the intricate, highly creative musical collaborations she organized later in her career.

Among the collaborative highlights outlined in her paper, one stood out: Fiona set up the ‘conexions’ series wherein she brought together Norwegian and British musicians for live performances (you can see the Intro to the 2013 event here). The twist here being that in some cases they’d never played with each other before. The music they played or improvised together took on the characteristic of an informal dialogue, produced in the moment, and proved both culturally enriching and profoundly creative.

What struck me about Fiona’s account was her intuition that something about Jazz managed to transcend linguistic differences, at least to some degree. Fiona spoke of its capacity to move and affect the listener, and that the effects it produced in the listener were comparable between British and Norwegian cultures;  put another way, what she liked about Norwegian Jazz (rhythms, peaks, harmonies) was what Norwegians liked about Norwegian Jazz.

This gestures towards an interesting point about the translation of affect from Norway to Britain. It suggests that common or equivalent feelings might be produced and experienced via non-linguistic medium, even if the specific articulation of those feelings takes place in different languages. In other words, we might feel the same things (but  articulate those feelings in a different language, according to local and specific ways of understanding feelings, and so on).

I was also interested in the limitations to the cross-cultural movements of jazz. Money for jazz festivals, said Fiona, was in relative abundance when she first visited in the 90s, at least in Norway, but the shifting political and economic landscape had changed considerably since then and she reported that funding has begun to dry up. The consequences for the continued flourishing

Fiona also raised an interesting point about gender: a high proportion of the musicians that found prominence on the Norwegian Jazz scene were male, while those involved in managing festivals and setting up collaborations both in Norway and transnationally tended to be female. This gendered division of labour, at least to me, could be seen as gesturing towards broader structural patterns of inequality that shape the ways in which music is circulated globally. Certainly food for thought.