ometimes what we say and what we do are mutually exclusive. In many ways, this adage is appropriate for last Thursday’s performance at the Hop commemorating Blue Note Records’ 70th anniversary. In fewer words: there was something about this ostensibly celebratory show that seemed, in a way, elegiac.
The night’s cast was, by all definitions, an all-star one: pianist Bill Charlap, joined by saxophonists Steve Wilson and Ravi Coltrane (yes, John Coltrane’s son), trumpeter Nicholas Payton and guitarist Peter Bernstein, alongside drummer Lewis Nash and bassist Peter Washington. To discuss the discography of each musician would be to recount a fair slice of jazz’s history over the past two decades; to describe this performance as anything but masterful would be disingenuous.
Per the occasion, the group played a selection of compositions originally written by some of Blue Note Records’ most historically prominent musicians: Thelonius Monk, Dexter Gordon, Kenny Dorham, and Freddie Hubbard, among others. Almost all were active during the’60s and 70s, Blue Note’s heyday and the time during which its signature (and best-selling) hard bop sound was developed. Characteristic of this music was the insistence and complexity of bebop, paired with a harder-driving, more model, and oftentimes more overtly blues-oriented sound. Save for romps through two Monk tunes, the group deviated little from this aesthetic, and, if anything, erred on the side of faithfulness to history.
Blue Note Records is, simply put, really, really famous in the jazz world. Over the last 70 years, it has issued albums not only by well-known figures like John Coltrane and Bud Powell, but also by scores of innovative musicians who’ve fallen, and continue to fall, below the radar of mainstream taste. Paternalism — really, though, “maternalism” may be the better word — seems to flow through the label’s veins. Not only have figures in the company, like label co-founder Alfred Lion and the legendary sound engineer Rudy Van Gelder, had a strikingly prescient ear for talent, but they’ve also exuded a sweetness that makes Blue Note history the stuff of legends. Lion, it’s said, used to drive musicians to and from his New Jersey studio, and, according to the label’s CEO, buy “food and liquor” for them in times of need.
All of this wouldn’t mean much to the performance, obviously, had it not been preceded by a forum on jazz and class (part of an ongoing Hop discussion series devoted to the latter). After all, jazz is a music that arose from the margins of society, a Horatio Alger story in its purest form. For the African-American musicians who constructed their music by virtue of raw creativity, achievement was a form of empowerment and defiance. As critic Howard Mandel pointed out at the event, jazz has long offered a kind of meritocratic haven not only to blacks in a pre-Civil Rights America, but to all who sought to dip their toes in the medium.
Times have changed, though, and so has the source from which jazz once culled so much of its vitality. Blue Note may still draw music, and musicians, from the margins of artistic culture, but no longer does it draw them from the margins of society. That’s what lent Thursday night’s performance such a strange quality, something pristine and almost museum-like that spoke to the music’s increasing distance from tradition.
As one of the ensemble’s saxophonists, Steve Wilson, pointed out in a discussion with Mandel, the music’s culture is something separate from what it once was. Jazz has moved from neighborhood to university, and ninety-five percent of the students now studying it are white and, presumably, middle to upper-middle class. It bears a striking resemblance to the study of classical music.
Sure, this isn’t an altogether bad thing. It’s in large part responsible for the level of artistry, virtuosity, and complexity that’s now standard to the genre. Nor is it fair to ignore the accessibility and the democratization that comes with systematized education. Yet the nostalgia on display at Thursday’s concert underscored a striking tension in the music’s history.
Sure, the performance was wonderful in so many ways: the playing stellar, the songs engaging, the crowd engaged. But the night’s flaws were instead flaws of omission, flaws of suggestion. The music was historically static. If the concert really was a Blue Note retrospective, where was a nod to less widely known but similarly titanic label-sponsored artists like Andrew Hill and Ornette Coleman? Where was a composition by one of the group’s own members, or by a young, progressive musician like Greg Osby or Aaron Parks? Where was a model of group interplay that focused less on themes and solos and more on compositional depth? Where was a more progressive understanding of tradition and history?
If only out of respect, it’s worth repeating that the concert was great: inscrutable, really, on a number of levels. But it was not forward-looking, and it was not vital in the way jazz must be if it’s to remain relevant – and therefore capable of engaging people who are not old, white, and educated. The music is in historical limbo. It faces death by abstraction, something modern classical music has long struggled with. And it’s threatened by such ritual adherence to, and idealization of, tradition.
