Jazz, Jazzy, Jazziest

December 9, 2010 at 2:45 am | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment
Tags: Essay, Jazz, Music, Philosophy

I cannot stand the word “jazzy.” Quite honestly, “jazzy,” along with perennial barf-inducing phrases “jazz hands” and “jazzercise,” makes me cringe at the thought of identifying myself as a “jazz musician.”

Allow me to try to explain: For me, the noun “jazz” has always had two overlapping definitions. One is a philosophical definition – jazz is a music rooted in improvisation. Nearly any style of music can involve extemporization, but jazz grows out of the soil of complex spontaneous creation and interaction.[1] Jazz is music of the inchoate, of perennial becoming, of constant growth and reshaping; this is why it’s an unbelievable experience to hear jazz musicians create something together. Conversely, jazz is also a musical style, one that’s very difficult to define because it aggregates a variety of genres from Dixieland to jazz-rock. I’ve created a definition that I think encapsulates the vast majority of these styles – “any music stylistically similar to the music of Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis, or any of their prominent collaborators.” Although this definition functions like “six degrees of Kevin Bacon,” it actually does a decent job of labeling a lot of appropriate works as “jazz” (and keeping out the non-jazz flotsam). [2]

These two definitions – in my opinion – need not both be met for an album or a group to be considered “jazz.” They overlap like a Venn diagram whose shared area boasts a core that’s inarguably jazz, but has plenty of other music – jazz or not, you can decide – lurking on its outer circles.

Which gets us back to “jazzy.” First of all, “jazzy” is grammatically unnecessary because “jazz” acts as a noun and an adjective; you can legitimately request a “jazz number” from your local “jazz band” and be a verifiable “jazz head.” So what extra meaning can “jazzy” provide? “Jazzy” indicates music that sounds like jazz but isn’t – music that meets the second definition, but probably not the first. The first definition, based on the performers’ methods is rendered unimportant whereas the second definition, which prioritizes the listeners’ experience, is given weight. The word eliminates the notion of musicians investing themselves in the process of creating music and requires only that they play something that the audience knows and recognizes as jazz. By initiating a musical experience dependent upon the listener, the scope of the performer’s repertoire is significantly limited by society’s perception of what constitutes “jazz,” extremely limiting the scope of the second definition.[3] “Jazzy” music suggests imitation of a known sound, the exact opposite of what the “spirit of jazz,” on-the-spot musical reinvention, should entail.

Admittedly, the word is perhaps more offensive to me than most, because I consciously ascribe to only the first of the two definitions. Jazz interests me because it provides a means of direct self-expression, but the style or tradition doesn’t concern me.[4] By disregarding the dynamic way that the music is made, the word “jazzy” nullifies the spirit of the music that I (and many others) find electric and ineffable, while recommending music that is often consciously antiquated and imitative.

So, remember, requesting a “jazz tune” earns you an appreciative nod from a band whereas requesting a “jazzy tune” earns you a roll of the eyeballs – or worse, if there’s no tip. And all that jazz.

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[1] Certainly not all of what we call “jazz” has been based around improvisation – big band music, most prominently, comes to mind as a staple of the “jazz” idiom in which improvisation serves as something of a sidebar.

To be more theoretically specific, “jazz” can also be defined as “music that includes harmonically complex improvisation.” By “harmonically complex,” I mean that – if in a tonal context – the improviser includes upper extensions or altered tones other than those found in the traditional blues scale. More on this, if you’re interested.

[2] This second definition presents an interesting theory of why the genre is at something of a crisis; because so many Miles Davis collaborators have either passed away or are approaching old age, the genre – as defined here – needs different ways to define itself. As the link to the purported defining epicenter of jazz becomes more tenuous, the jazz community may have to (subconsciously) recalculate the core criteria for the genre.

[3] Cynically (and therefore completely unscientifically), my definition would be “anything sung by Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, or Nat “King” Cole.”

[4] And, to be honest, I feel somewhat alienated by a wide-range of social aspects that are part of the “jazz tradition.”