The Globalisation
of Jazz –
Opportunity or Trap?
By Wolf Kampmann
The King & Carter Jazzing Orchestra © The Robert Runyon Photograph Collection, courtesy of The Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin
J
azz is a frequently used term –
and yet it stands for a multitude of different, sometimes
even contrary and mutually
exclusive things. Everyone thinks they
know what others mean when they
talk about jazz, but it is rare for two
opinions to match. This is both one of
the greatest weaknesses of jazz and
one of its greatest strengths. It is precisely the abundance of its interpretations which keeps jazz alive and allows
for ever new varieties. Jazz is the only
form of music which is always what
it wasn’t only a moment before.
Jazz is always especially exciting when
it manages to combine tradition and
avant-garde in the present. Pure revivals, of which there are plenty, remain
stuck in the past and lose touch with
the realities of their listeners’ lives.
On the other hand, most attempts at
flouting the canon without considering
tradition in some way or other, trickle
off into structural apologetics sooner
or later – and have little to do with the
spirit of life either. But then: what is
jazz? Until a few decades ago, the
general consensus held that jazz was
a genuinely American form of music.
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The lines leading straight from New
Orleans marching bands, Saint Louis
ragtime and the cabarets of Chicago
and New York to free and electric jazz
were stringent and traceable in both
directions.
But that is not to say that jazz was
not always open to idioms from outside the US. In distant memory, the
Afro-American style evolved in New
Orleans’ Congo Square from various
African elements. Classical European
piano traditions were essential for
ragtime and stride piano, as was the
unceasing influx, especially of Italian
musicians, for jazz in New Orleans.
Duke Ellington took inspiration from
Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy,
Benny Goodman asked Paul Hindemith
and Béla Bartók to write music for
him, and Woody Herman commissioned the “Ebony Concerto” by Igor
Stravinsky. Bebop tapped into Caribbean music, free jazz expanded its stock
to include Africa and India, and jazz
rock was based on the achievements
of the British rock music scene. Jazz
always was and remains the most
global music form around.
But there is a paradox: Until 1970,
this globalisation only occurred on
US-American soil. The rest of the world
was zealously playing what the States
prescribed. There was jazz in Europe,
but there was no European jazz.
The Euroean enthusiasm for American
jazz started immediately after the end
of the First World War. James Reese
Europe and the Harlem Hellfighters
left an enduring impression in France.
And soon, a veritable jazz euphoria set
in, not only in France, but also in Germany, England and the Soviet Union.
Numerous American musicians, like
Sidney Bechet or Coleman Hawkins,
settled in Europe. The first joint performance of black and white musicians
after 1900 did not take place in the US,
but in Germany. And yet, there was no
genuine German, French or Russian
jazz. The only alternative to jazz made
in the USA, even though it was not intended as such, was Django Reinhard’s
and Stéphane Grapelli’s Manouche
jazz. As became apparent when Ellington invited Reinhard to the States, it
was not at all compatible with the developments in local jazz music there.
There can be no doubt that European
jazz was dominated by American musicians in the first decade after the
Second World War. Jazz musicians
from New York flocked to Paris and
went on to lead bebop to new heights
there. Kenny Clarke, Bud Powell, Don
Byas and Dexter Gordon are just the
most famous among those who settled permanently by the banks of the
Seine. European musicians formed ensembles and studied the music, but for
the time being, they remained mere
onlookers. Strangely enough, those Europeans who were attested a distinct
sound of their own preferred to leave
their homes and move to America, as
evidenced by the examples of Jutta
Hipp, Joe Zawinul, George Mraz, Gábor
Szabó, Karl Berger, Attila Zoller or
Krzysztof Komeda. And so it was small
wonder that the first genuinely European jazz album was recorded by an
American. It was Art Farmer, who released “From Sweden with Love”, an
entire album of jazz interpretations of
folk music made in Europe.
T
he development which we now
perceive as the globalisation
of jazz did not begin until the
late 1960s. Countries like Great
Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland,
Poland, Norway and West Germany,
followed soon by East Germany and
France, had developed national jazz
habitats with completely novel approaches that were to enhance the
music. In the 1970s, the term Folklore
Imaginaire did the rounds. In London,
a South African enclave gathered
around musicians like Chris McGregor,
Louis Moholo and Harry Miller; Fela
Kuti and his Afrobeat fostered the
rise of Pan-Africanism. Keith Jarrett
demonstrated that under European
parameters, a successful American
jazz musician was capable of playing
completely different music than in
the motherland of jazz. It was still
jazz, but it had shaken off all traces
of American hegemony. Maybe this
was a collateral consequence of the
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irreversible facts that rock music had
pilfered some of jazz’s core competencies, such as improvisation and social
participation, and that jazz musicians
from all over the world had managed
to transcend the boundaries of the
narrow canon.
Jazz now went global. Groups like
Codona (featuring the Europe-based
American Don Cherry, Brazilian Nana
Vasconcelos and Collin Walcott, who
studied music in India), the trio of
Norwegian Jan Garbarek (featuring
American Charlie Haden and Brazilian
Egberto Gismonti), the bands of Norwegian Terje Rypdal, American Jack
DeJohnette and Czech Miroslav Vitous
and – not least Keith Jarrett’s European
quartet, would have been inconceivable only a short time before. What we
take for granted today was the result
of one of the most incisive transformation processes in the history of jazz.
The globalisation of jazz was achieved
over a lengthy period of time and
opened up a plethora of regional idioms, resulting, for example, in the
Balkans Boom of the late 1990s and
the stylistic variety of Radical Jewish
Culture.
D
etached from the topic of jazz,
however, the term “globalisation” has long since lost its positive overtones. From a critical
perspective, globalisation is seen as
the elites’ worldwide strategy to maximise their profits at the expense of
those who are unable to participate
socially or economically in the global
expansion of markets. The streams of
refugees we are currently experiencing
all over the world are among its inescapable consequences. As are phenomena of partitioning. In its most innovative phases, jazz was never music
of the elites, and yet we can observe
both these tendencies in jazz, too.
As far as the element of migration
is concerned, this is not necessarily
a bad thing. Jazz musicians have
always been nomads. They have
always pitched their tents wher­
ever they found the best working
conditions. They moved from New
Orleans to Chicago, from there to
New York, and on and on. Global
exchange of inspiration has never
been as easy as it is in our times of
cheap airtravel and the internet.
A scene is no longer defined by
the fact that a group of musicians
grew up at a certain time under
comparable social and cultural
conditions, but rather by the transient infrastructure of a given
place. The advantage is that musicians no longer inevitably grow
into a particular tradition or attitude. They are far more confident
of their access to a freely chosen
artistic context.
B
erlin’s jazz hype shortly after the millennium is a good
example of such a development. The city had a high
density of clubs, labels, festivals
and connections to the art- and
theatre-world – combined with
comparatively low costs of living.
Space to live and work in was so
reasonably priced, in direct comparison with New York, London or
Paris, that musicians from all over
the world arrived in Berlin. But
unlike Paris in the 1950s, Berlin
remained a short stopover. Since
many musicians only stayed in
Berlin for a short time, a kind of
Berlin jazz diaspora evolved, which
would later spread out over all the
continents. Art was followed by
money, and after 2010 at the latest,
rents rose as rapidly in Berlin as in
every other metropolis. For five
Don Cherry, November 6, 1972 at the Berliner Jazztage in the Philharmonie © ullstein bild – Binder
short years, the German capital was
the migration centre of global jazz;
and afterwards, the city remained
the virtual synonym for the economic
and artistic independence of a stylistically varied and open scene – which
was, unfortunately, no longer a true
reflection of its reality.
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Of course, in the times of Soundcloud,
YouTube, Facebook and other portals,
the visibility of individual jazz musicians has increased significantly
when compared with the analog age.
The downside, however, is that their
chances of being recognised at all in
this concentrically growing mass of
information is decreasing in proportion to their visibi­
lity. The task of
visualisation has
fallen to export offices, networks and
showcase festivals.
From their national
or international
perspective, they
generally regard
musicians as clients
rather than as creative personalities.
Their job is to position their clientel
against their competition on the
market. This has
turned out to be
less of a healthy exchange of comparable idioms under
the parameters of
quality, originality
and attractivity –
like we saw in the
first boost of globalisation around
1970 – and more of
a truly cutthroat
competition.
emerging, which is big enough to be
self-sufficient. Standards of quality,
however, can only be kept up in a
world-wide exchange.
I
The European
market has taken
to organising itself
in networks which
equip the line-ups
of festivals with
increasing success, excluding the
competition from overseas. In simple
terms, the system works like this: “If
you take one of my musicians, I will
take one of yours. And if you take two
of mine, then I will take two of yours.”
Under globalised conditions, a controlled interior European market is
f the first attempts at globali­
sation on American soil before
1970 were full of contradictions,
the basic tendencies of the
current market are no less paradox,
whether in the fields of recordings or
live performances. The transatlantic
jazz divide is deeper and more unbridgeable at present than it has been
for 45 years. On the German music
market especially, the latest developments in American jazz barely figure.
Great jazz labels like Blue Note, Concorde or Impulse are defined, apart
from certain jazz spearheads, mainly
by mediocre adult rock, and the independent jazz scene, currently more
vibrant on both coasts than it has
been for a long time – barely makes
a mark on the European perception.
It doesn’t make much sense to point
out that the American market does
not take its inspiration from European
jazz either. American culture has always had a special relationship with
its own roots and in the US, jazz is
considered to be genuinely American
music. Didactic approaches will hardly
be helpful here.
The future challenge will be to create
an organic balance between globali­
sation and individualisation in jazz –
across all continents and niches. To
be clear: Administrative work for and
with jazz musicians is positive and
important. But we have to make sure
that European jazz networks don’t
turn into an informal cartel that
leaves the others out in the cold.
Otherwise, the consequences for jazz
music will be immeasurable.
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Wolf Kampmann lives in Berlin and works as
a free author and jazz journalist.