Improvisation

This fine article in the New Yorker is exciting, and a relief to read, because classical music needs to rediscover improvisation of every sort. I like this:

[pianist Robert] Levin, the Harvard-based musician who for decades has been the chief guru of classical improvisation, believes that performances need to cultivate risk and surprise. Otherwise, he says, music becomes “gymnastics with the affectation of emotional content”—a phrase that sums up uncomfortably large tracts of modern music-making.

I hear a lot of popular music--from instrumental jazz to all manner of pop groups--as being “gymnastics with the affectation of emotional content”. That's a very poignant phrase.

If music is to be more than a person's accessory, more than just what you listen to in order to demonstrate to people who you are, it has got to cultivate risk and surprise. I want to craft a style of music that takes risks in the content of its rhythm, harmony, and lyrics--all at the same time. I want those risks to pay off by invigorating the listener, and compelling them to make a change for the better in their own life.

Improvisation should be just as central to the education of any musician as ear training or a firm sense of rhythm. One reason classical music can sound stale is that you're hearing a lot of musicians (probably not all of em, I'm not quite saying that) who have barely ever tried to improvise.

Just so you know that I'm willing to take my own medicine, I'll tell you that these days I'm starting to scat sing.

Renegade Minstrels Ramble Forum, Part II

In Monday night's band meeting, the happiest moment for me was when Jon, our stalwart and funky fresh trombone maestro, announced that he wanted to take more of an active roll in shaping the sound and direction of the group. He opined that we should take the band in the direction of a whole lot more Um-Chicka Um-chick uptempo shoulder boppin type rhythms (I'm paraphrasing here, believe it er not) crossed with Squirrel Nut Zippers-type slinky tunes in the mode of our song "Drill Sergeant's Ditty." One word that I remember Jon used repeatedly was "sultry," and I dug that deeply.

In fact, I was wholly delighted, not just because I'm always seeking new ways to engage my bandmates in our pursuits, but because Jon's vision lined up quite finely with mine. I had written down in my notes for the meeting that we needed to go toward "rump shakin blues stomps and swing." So what he said was right up that same red light district alley.

Fear not, folky fans, for folk songs such as Hobe Kytr's Tillamook Burn will still have a place in this music--that song's easy to swing.

Luke's contribution to the discussion was this: "We always play from chord charts--why don't we do more with Line (all of us playing a riff in unison-type grooves)." I thought that was a wise idea as well, so expect to hear more of that sorta thing in future compositions and arrangements.

Jon's other suggestion, which I was also immediately onboard with--but hadn't thought too much of before--was that I play up the lead singer / harmonica player role more and just play guitar when necessary. I like this a whole lot cause it allows me to focus on shaping the delivery of the lyrics and the dynamics of the performance.

After this lovely little Minstrel symposium, we played a few tunes to try the new ideas out, and Lo, the feeling was grand.

Now if we can only get plenty More rehearsal time to make all these ideas happen...

Renegade Minstrels Ramble Forum, Part One

We had a very fine band meeting last night with the five members of our five piece ensemble all in attendance. First thing we had to figure out was bassist-duties. Since our main man Luke Dennis has gigs with some other bands going on for the next few weekends, you'll be seeing a varying cast of bass players in his place. That starts this Thursday, when our dear friend Willy Gibbs will be holdin down the low frequencies on his 100 year old upright bass.
However, for the next few weeks we'll mostly bring in Luke to rehearsals as an arranger. Luke has better instincts about how to shape the dynamics and structure of a song than most any other musician I've played with. So in a fundamental sense, his imprint will still be heard on many of the songs we play, even when he's not there.

Self Marketing

Dylan is considering a new kind of recording career: giving you directions as a voice for satellite navigation systems. Bob watchers like me can't even get surprised by this type of thing. He has continued with his distinctly quirky choice-making n taking of commercial licensing agreements. Remember when he played guitar in the middle of a bunch of scantily clad women for a Victoria's Secret commercial? Selling out? Not so much, I think he's just sculpting his image as he's always done.

"more Mark Twain."

This points out a few interesting issues:

"You knew [Woody] wasn't some dark, dark agitator angry leftist guy. He was more Mark Twain."

First of all, Nora Guthrie is right on about her dad--his faith in people didn't force him onto the side of any one party or clique, he simply told it like it was from the outside, from a place where he could survey the whole scene honestly. Second, Woody's legend and image suffers in much the same way that the upheaval of the 60s suffers--it gets muddied, romanticized, and blurred with oversimplifications. Here was a man with communist sympathies who joined the merchant marine and wrote songs for hire to promote practices of the largest capitalist society in existence. Woody's perspective wasn't simple, and he was no populist simpleton. He was a deeply complex artist and person.

At the end of the article, Nora says,

"I think we're kind of slowly, with technology, inching towards really hearing Woody Guthrie for the first time, in a way."

This fascinates me because while I studied at the Woody Guthrie Archives (where Nora is chief overseer of the rights to Woody's songs, writings, and legacy), the archivist there told me, "If Woody were alive today, he'd have a blog." I soon agreed with her once I began reading over thousands of pages of Woody's various writings. What Woody would have done with the internet is delicious to wonder about.

I find it stupendously fascinating that Nora seems to be saying, "Digital technology is allowing us to hear Woody in a way we never have." One thing I most dig about Woody is the unpolished nature of his voice and of the quality of the recordings made of him. I believe that time transforms the way we hear Woody, not technology. And by "time" I mean the transformations wrought by time upon the relationship between imagination and reality. But saying that makes me realize that Nora is actually right: technology is the major factor in recent alterations of this relationship. The internet has made our relationship to recorded music entirely different, and the populist nature of the internet prompts the question of what mighty populists such as Woody would do given this radical tool.

If there's one thing we can use today, it's more voices with a wry edge, that tell it like it is with a sly slant of some sort. Let's all be a little more Mark Twain.

# # #

This post makes me realize I need to write another post later on about how the Internet changes the role of the folklorist in society. Also, I need to explore how it changes the relationship of people to recorded music.

'Jazz'

Duke Ellington was quite ambivalent about the term "jazz." (He's got a great interview including this, that I suspect might be him interviewing himself, in his book Music is My Mistress). Now here's the NY Times addressing some new stats that Jazz is on the decline. However, they point out that surveys about attending a jazz concert don't necessarily include groups like the Bad Plus (an utterly top notch jazz trio that covers pop songs with multiple stylistic flavors), whose music reflects the rampant cross-genre saturations of intriguing music today. You and I might not go to a Bad Plus show thinking "we're going to hear jazz," but without jazz the group wouldn't really exist.

So I find the fretting about "the decline of jazz" to be quite beside the point. Jazz is one of the many offshoots of American blues music--the thing that makes it most distinctive is that it is the offshoot that demands innovation and fusion more than any other. So, melody-solos-melody to a 4/4 swing beat will probably keep dying out slowly slowly for a very long time, but that don't mean jazz is dead. Jazz is the most radical musical language in the English speaking world, a language of adaptation and transformation. It was made to change--continuously, rapidly, for as long as it lasts.

That assertion prompts the question, "Well, ok then, what is jazz if what I'm hearing isn't recognizable as jazz?" The answer to this brings us back to Sir Duke--he chafed at labels for his music because his music was so many things, it wasn't united by anything but an incredibly special spirit. Listen to Master Jelly Roll play "Black Bottom Stomp" with his Red Hot Peppers, hear Satchmo blow some "Basin Street Blues," then listen to The Duke's "Mood Indigo." Your iTunes tells you that's all jazz, but it ain't quantifiable just why that is. But feel that spirit that weaves through all three? That's jazz.

# # #

I am forced to grapple with the issue of musical categories all the time: telling people I'm in a band they routinely go, "Oh, what type of music?" So last week I'd say "art blues" this week I'm changing to "Blues Stomps and Swing." I am continually maddened by the folks at my local jazz station, KMHD, because of all the DJs there, only one will give our band airplay. Click here and listen to "Swing n Friction." Then tell me what type of music you'd call it, if not jazz.

Apparently, most folks at KMHD want to keep their shows pure with 4/4 swing tunes and accepted "jazz" artists, with rare instances of local talent thrown into the mix. They call what they do, "Jazz, Blues, and NPR News." I don't know what our music is but the first two.

Anyways, I don't like ranting on about KMHD, they still play better music than the rest of the radio stations in Portland 90% 'o the time. Surely some DJ there will read this and then scramble to put my song on the air to make amends.

Mike Meyer is the one KMHD DJ who showed us love. He's got a show called "Mississippi West," and did us the favor of having me on the show for an interview just before we did our record release party, and he played "Swing n' Friction" on the air. That was fun. Hope to go back on there sometime.

Anyways, all you other KMHD DJs can ignore me forever, but do us all a favor and play at least 1 song by an lesser-known NW-based artist every half hour. 4/4 Swing tunes are great, but they are just a fraction of what makes jazz Jazz.

'Blues', 'Folk', n Songs

When you learn and sing and marinate upon the earliest recorded American folk & blues music, you quickly realize that blues music is folk music, and that even the purest of the folksters--such as the Carter Family--draw deeply n freely upon blues tradition. There is no difference between "blues" and "folk" music in America: each is the other. There is a difference between blues and folk musicians. The difference between blues and folk musicians is that, while they draw on a lot of shared material (three chord songs, call and response forms, common vernacular such as "worried mind" or imagery such as the railroad train are but a few examples), each has a different relationship to that well of material.

The folk musician is a museum curator--and the art is her songs. She seeks to absorb as much of the music as possible and keep it intact, sharing it without comment, confident in the belief that if she lets the song shine through her, the material do its work. The folk musician is a preserver and purveyor of tradition, they aren't too inclined to alter what they inheret. Any alteration they do make to the material is inadvertent, it happens by a slip of memory.

The blues musician continuously alters his material, he couldn't stick to the script if he tried. He'll take a verse from here, a vernacular phrase from there, and an original verse of his own and mash them up without compunction until the traditional elements of his material are transformed by his personality or persona. He freely inserts his ego into the music, making his lyrics and melodies into opaque windows that refract his soul.

There's no way to draw a firm line between who's a blues and who's a folk musician. Everyone is both, to some degree or another. Most days I tilt more toward the bluesman than the folkster, but I revere both archetypes, and respect the role that each plays in enriching the music.

Bob Dylan, past the age o' 50, said, "The world don't need any more songs." He was both wrong and right. Many many of the feelings you or I feel already have plenty of songs reflecting those feelings. And a well constructed song like "Angel from Montgomery" or "Crossroads Blues" is going to do what songs do for those feelings for a long old time to come.

But I got feelings and thoughts and ideas that just aren't in any songs, and so I must write songs so that I can sing what I see is urgently needing to be heard. Many times I'd rather it was otherwise, that I was satisfied with covering tunes, but it won't do. Writing songs is damned difficult, even harder than making a decent recording of a song. And as fulfilling as it can be to hear a song you wrote come off well, that fulfillment ain't equal to my restlessness for the next one.

If there's one thing that sets me apart from the legions of people like me striving to make their songs heard, it's that I know more of the tradition than most of those my age, and I smell and think and feel and breathe songs that aren't merely made to make you feel good, distract you from your blues, or comment on what's in the news.

The only reason I will sing a song is because I need to hear it, and that I believe it could do your inmost soul some good to hear it.