|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jazz is democratic in its approach; a diatribe, a lament, a sermon, an ode, a cry, a yearning and wry humour — all are woven into its musical vocabulary to be savoured afresh each time one hears it. At its heart lies the incestuous imagination of improvisation. The choice of accents and syncopations in rhythm, melody and harmony unleashes limitless musical expression. From the traditionalists, who preferred the New Orleans energy of the pre-War diatonic blues to the hard-bop sound of the Thelonius Monk and the Charles Mingus era, to the Afro-Caribbean-Cuban influences combined with Calypso and classical elements, jazz mesmerises the ear, stirs the soul and marries the mind in an unpredictable relationship of craving and depraved fulfilment.
The key ingredient of jazz is the spice of life itself. Life as it exists in the back-alleys, with stevedores, with drifters, with those who sell their bodies and those who sell their souls for survival, it offers solace, joy and passion through music — both heady and earthy at the same time. Even as the guitar quickly replaced the lead previously rendered by banjo, piano, saxophone, trombone and trumpet, jazz music embraced it — allowing for a seamless inclusion of rhythm, melody and harmony. Jazz fusion Musically, perhaps one of the most sophisticated, demanding and rewarding styles, jazz and electric rock generated a fusion of sounds adding form and funk to soul. At the core of this pulsating expression, powered by skill to rule the fret-board, is improvisation laced with innovation. It is what a painting is to a cubist — exploring voids and volumes of societal construct with its wanton wand.
With the induction of psychedelic rock of the 1960s, electronic amplification of sound ruled fusion. Miles Davis morphed elements of jazz with rock in his incredible album Miles in the Sky in 1968. This was followed in quick succession by an all-time classic Bitches Brew a year later, which incorporated electrical twangs of Herbie Hancock. John McLaughlin, Joe Zawinal, Chick Correa and Larry Young carved new inroads into the cerebral mix of technique and sound. It was taken to a feverish pitch by the likes of incredible lead soloists like Jeff Beck, Stanley Jordan, Eric Clapton, Frank Zappa, Al di Meola, and in the 1980s by the likes of Mark Knopfler of the Dire Straits. Even as Joe Zawinal and the band ‘The Weather Report’ towered over the fusion world, an innovative, fretless bassist Jaco Pastorius stormed across the fusion spectrum with an album titled Heavy Weather. The album has the capacity to hit the listener across genres and cultural cross connects. Carlos Santana brought his own lilt of blended Latin, salsa, soul, blues and rock to jazz juxtaposed with vocals. With smooth jazz of the David Sanborn, Chuck Mangione and Al Jarreau school, there seemed to be a counterpoint to the acidic high of eccentric creativity that made room for sustained as well as sporadic exploration of emotions. Jazz-Yatra: Indian influence Contrary to common belief, jazz has been in the Indian musical strains since the 1930s. While the Mickey Correa jazz band visited the Taj in 1939, legendary Dave Brubeck, whose quartet immortalised Take Five, gathered Indian musicians, including sitar maestro Abdul Halim Jaffer Khan, one April evening in 1958 in Mumbai and let loose the spontaneous energy of jazz mixed with Indian classical and folk tunes.
The Indian classical music was beginning to imprint many compositions by John Coltrane and was audibly discernible in the overlay of Yusef Lateef in the 1950s. Upscale restaurants in Mumbai, Shillong and Kolkata often invited Quartets and Trios from the United States to play on special events. Railways, Army brass bands at cantonments, navy and private clubs started training bands with snare drums, trombones, trumpet and sax to play and test the acceptability of jazz as a blended form of inclusive music. Hindi cinema was quick to adopt the saxophone in many of its memorable musical hits. In the 1970s, a group of jazz lovers in India started Jazz-India, a movement that invited artistes to play from India and abroad, culminating in a Jazz-Yatra in 1978. The 1980s saw the birth of Indian jazz festivals in metropolitan cities of Mumbai, Delhi and Mangalore with the Capital city hosting the first jazz festival in 1984. In the decades that ensued, audiences were electrified by the virtuosity, variety and prowess of the likes of John McLaughlin, Stan Getz, Stephan Grapelli, Jan Gabarek, Talvin Singh, Amit Heri, L. Subramanian, Eberhard Weber, Shawn Lane, Freddie Hubbard, Zakir Hussain and Trilok Gurtu. Popularly known as Jazz Yatra, the journey evolved into its present annual avatar Jazz-Utsav, with musicians coming in from Austria, the UK, Norway, Brazil, Spain, Sweden, Italy, Hungary and France, in addition to the birthplace of jazz — the United States.
Transcending time With the all-pervasive power of digital music, everything seems to be broken down to its anatomical atoms — bits and bytes of sound clips on laptops have the power to drown and influence creativity at so many unimaginable levels of production and premix, often devoid of any organic context. The notion that this innovated self is the new natural that personifies the musical magna carta of our times endangers jazz. What keeps jazz a cut above what one expects from music is the unexpected. Changing pitch, lyrical lilt, a-rhythmic percussion and improvised chaos that flies in the face of easy listening and its ability to imagine, innovate and improvise, makes jazz timeless in its rendition and rationale.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
