The Fire of the Fundamentals
Track list
01.Listen Jungle Blues
02.Listen Trinkle Tinkle
03.Listen Ellington’s Stray-Horn
04.Listen Hootie Blues
05.Listen Bolivar Blues
06.Listen Dahomey Dance
07.Listen You’re Mine You
08.Listen The Crave
09.Listen Flamenco Sketches
10.Listen Multi-Colored Blue
Wynton Marsalis, Marcus Roberts, Betty Carter, Kenny Barron, Jimmy Heath, Dr. Michael White, Jay McShann, Milt Grayson, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.
LINER NOTES
In more than a few ways, the techniques of jazz represent the kind of mediation that John Ford saw between literal policy and the practical policy that was improvised. As Peter Stowell observes in John Ford, “In film after film Ford demonstrated that the march of civilization is epitomized by tensions engendered in the spirit versus the letter of the law. Mediators are needed to bring the two into harmony.” Jazz musicians are such mediators. Their art allows the letter of the law that is composition made in the past to meet the spirit that is improvisation made in the present. They bring into harmony the past and the present, the known and the unknown, the familiar and the unexpected, the exotic flowers of the swamp and the universal crown of the stars.
We can better understand what jazz is within the context of our civilization by also looking at the way Ford used Will Rogers, the part-Indian actor from Oklahoma, an American of homespun intelligence and satire. Ford saw a man who could express the elements of this country in his own style and thereby embody the sort of Adam a new Eden needed if it were not to succumb to the decadent overcivilizing of Europe. By overcivilizing we do not mean anything other than the ritualized behavior, manner, and social vision that expressed not enriching discipline by decadent, prejudiced restriction.
Stowell’s description of Rogers fits jazz equally. We see a close relationship in spirit between the West and the world out of which jazz came if we think of the pioneer circumstances of the jazz band, where instrumental character was being redefined and American musicians were seeking to bring into the condition of aesthetic vitality whatever material they used, no matter its origins. Stowell writes of Will Rogers and the myth of the American West: “… he was a wanderer with a strong feeling for family and home; he believed in progress and traditional values; his comedy was serious, though he took nothing too seriously… He made people smile during the Depression, gave them faith in their youthful energy, got them to laugh at themselves, taught them to take nothing for granted, coached them in the joys of the vernacular… He wielded power without making it seem sordid.”
All right. There you have it. Jazz resolves the relationship between the individual and the community. Jazz is the work of both a comic and a tragedian. Sometimes, we hear a musical counterpart to the disruptive anarchy of the slapstick comedy given elegance by the physical genius of Chaplin. We witness in jazz the lyric acrobat whose daring sense of balance is equaled by the range of passion. The jazz musician can take our breath away and elevate our spirits. No matter how bad the surroundings might be, the true jazz musician, like the cowboy hero, comes galloping over the hill jut as the bad guys devoted to the dissemination of mush seem about to win the day. In no time, the jazz artist brings inspired form to the deadening circumstances of sallow feeling. The jazz musician wields power that is neither melodramatic nor obnoxious, achieving individuality through the collective affirmation of the swinging band, now and again meditating on the moment at the piano keyboard and orchestrating the individual consciousness through the paces of blues and swing.
In these performances, we hear all those aspects of jazz arriving through these various styles. Some musicians, like Wynton Marsalis, Todd Williams, Herlin Riley, Reginald Veal and Marcus Roberts, are heard in very different contexts, ranging from the music of Jelly Roll Morton to that of John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Others, like Betty Carter, Kenny Barron and Jimmy Heath come to smoke in their own styles, using the vocabularies each has become known for. All have in common, however, a deep sense of the fundamentals and how they can be adhered to or loosely adapted for personal purposes. Singing and swinging are the issues above all else.
From Kenny Barron and Marcus Roberts you will experience contemporary solo piano on as high a level as it gets, the former bringing his own personality to the languages of Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, the latter looking into the range of independent materials and meters that can be used in the music of Morton and Monk. “Jungle Blue,” “Hootie Blues,” “Dahomey Dance,” “Flamenco Sketches” and “Multi-Colored Blue” provide examples of how much is available within the blues or blues-derived material. In Betty Carter and Milt Grayson, the grand reaches of jazz crooning from two different perspectives are expressed with an attention to sound and weight we hear so rarely in contemporary singing. Jay McShann moves through his feature with the simmering, unsentimental confidence that gives the subject of romantic retribution such a timeless position in the blues.
The saxophone speaks from the gutbucket language of Morton to the Kansas City extensions of Charlie Parker and on to the space-age abstractions of Coltrane, finishing off in the enveloping world of Ellington by way of Billy Strayhorn. Whether we are listening to the clarinet of Michael White or the bass exchanges of Reginald Veal and Chris McBride, the alto saxophone of Norris Turney or Wes Anderson, the remarkably constructed piano improvisation on “Flamenco Sketches” or the elevated lyricism of Jimmy Heath, the music from these Jazz At Lincoln Center performances raises high the fire of the fundamentals and assures us that the chilling chaos of our times will not overcome the need for civilization, a need that the human heart addresses within symbolic structures of art, forever providing us with a past as vital as the pressure of the present.
Stanley Crouch
