Salon writer Gary Kamiya begins his very interesting February 19th opinion piece by posing the following question: Do the genres of jazz and rock have anything to say to each other. This is a great question, and the answers that Kamiya mines from his own experiences are quite out of the ordinary.
The way Kamiya gets there is to look at how he came to be a jazz fan. It's an oft-repeated story with many of us. We begin musical life as fans of rock. Then we start to dabble in a little bit of jazz. The records are sort of intriguing, but the process and meaning remain opaque. It takes a lot of listening "practice" before the structures unlocks themselves.
But that's not the whole story. There's still this rock and jazz intersection to deal with.
The obvious place to look is fusion. Musicians such as Miles Davis, John McLaughlin, Return To Forever, Jean-Luc Ponty, Stanley Clarke, and Billy Cobham produced music that was far louder and more aggressive than most traditional jazz. This was something that the rock fan could latch onto. Lots of driving rhythms and loud guitars to keep rock in the field of view.
The problem is that it really wasn't all that interesting. Oh sure, a song here and there could be quite exhilarating but much of it only put out shallow roots for the casual listener. To get some deeper roots growing, another element had to be identified. What Kamiya discovered was that much of the jazz he really liked had, as he puts it, an "odd kinship" with rock. This connection had to do with drama — music that had a concept that avoided the plain "solos over chord changes" approach in favor of a grand theme.
To me, this sounds like the jazz equivalent of a pop hook. While the harmonic structures might be more complicated than your average rock or pop tune, the musical idea is to present a concept that draws new ears in. A concept devoid of the traditional II-V-I chord progression.
The Lounge Lizards are where I'm placing my bets this morning. John Lurie is the master of subtle (and not so subtle) jazz riffology. A tune can seem 'normal' one minute and completely out to lunch the next. I suppose titles like "Monsters Over Bangkok" and "John Zorn's S&M Circus" kind of telegraph this. Obviously, the music won't be to everybody's liking and that's OK. Rock fans with a sense of adventure owe it to themselves to investigate because that question — "Do rock and jazz have anything to say to each other" — it's being asked and answered right here.
.jpg?t=20120209092158)
Article comments
1 - Michael J. West
How 'bout Zappa?
2 - Mark Saleski
Zappa's a good one, simply because his thing was all over the place...rock, jazz, classical/new music, etc.