Jazz Workshop: Out of Context - Page 2

I don't lightly write this kind of strong dissent from Gary Giddins. He is the writer who made me want to write about jazz; his book Visions of Jazz is, in a sense, my Bible. (Or my Book of Common Prayer, anyway.) In September, I will for the first time be published in JazzTimes, in which Giddins' current column is published. To share a masthead with him is far, far more than an honor.

Obviously I hold him in high regard. And it's bewildering to me that someone I hold in such high regard could be so terrifically wrong.

When, for example, was the first time you heard Beethoven's Fifth Symphony? Did you already know who Beethoven was and about his character? If not, did that lack of knowledge on your part make the work less viable? Granted, knowing Beethoven's life story would certainly add a new dimension to your appreciation of the music. But can you honestly suggest that the music was meaningless before you knew about Beethoven?

What would it say about Beethoven if you suggested that a person who was playing his music was doing it wrong if they didn't assert Beethoven's personality into their interpretation? It would say that Beethoven's music had neither the depth nor the quality to stand on its own merits--it would say that Beethoven was incapable of writing music that could stand on its own merits. And suggesting that Mingus's music has the same shortcoming says the same about Mingus: that he was an inferior composer.

As for the jazz tradition? For this I'm going to turn to one of the great literary critics. Joseph Addison, who with Richard Steele published The Spectator (a journal of literary thought and criticism), did a series in 1711 about the notion of wit: what counted as "true" wit, and what did not? Puns, he asserted, did not, as they counted too heavily on the treacherously vernacular castings of a particular dialect or language. His suggestion:

The only way therefore to try a Piece of Wit, is to translate it into a different Language: If it bears the Test, you may pronounce it true; but if it vanishes in the Experiment, you may conclude it to have been a Punn. In short, one may say of a Punn, as the Countryman described his Nightingale, that it is vox et praeterea nihil, a Sound, and nothing but a Sound. On the contrary, one may represent true Wit by the Description which Aristinetus makes of a fine Woman; when she is dressed she is Beautiful, when she is undressed she is Beautiful[.] (emphasis mine)

Consider, for a moment, how true that is - and how completely it applies to other forms of literature. If you were presented with a novel, for example, and told that it was a work of art, but only in English, what would you think of that? Would it strike you as worth the trouble of reading? (Folks, even Finnegans Wake, that most specialized and hypernuanced work of the English language, has been translated into at least 10 other languages.)

Article Author: Michael J. West

Michael J. West is a writer, editor, and dilettante jazz critic in Washington, D.C. In addition to BlogCritics, he writes for JazzTimes, Washington City Paper, and AllAboutJazz.com. He occasionally writes at Pop Musicology, too. He's very cute. …

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