Jazzforschung / Jazz Research 40 (2008)

150 150 International Society for Jazz Research

Aktuelle Tendenzen im Jazz
Lectures of the 8th Jazz Musicological Symposium
Spiegel unserer unruhigen Zeit” Der Jazz-Almanach
Anmerkungen zur Runkfunk-Sendereihe des NWDR Köln (1948–1952)

Inhalt/Contents:

Stuart Nicholson
Jazz in the Global Village

Zusammenfassung:
Die Globalisierung mit ihren nachhaltigen Auswirkungen auf die Weltwirtschaft war bislang schon Thema zahlloser Untersuchungen. Hingegen gibt es nach wie vor keine profunde Studie über die Konsequenzen der Globalisierung für das Jazzgenre. Der vorliegende Aufsatz beschäftigt sich mit den Auswirkungen der kulturellen Globalisierung auf den Jazz und fokussiert hierbei auch die Tatsache, dass die glocalization –als ein zentraler Nebeneffekt der Globalisierung – die nächste entscheidende Stufe in der Entwicklung dieser Musik darstellt.

Manfred Straka
Die letzten 25 Jahre aus der Sicht eines Jazzhistorikers

Summary
In the 25 years since 1980 Jazz has been tying up stylistically with earlier developed styles, mainly from the 1950s and 1960s. Some of these styles, such as Hardbop, have already exceeded their climaxes before 1980. In the field of Postbop more and more musicians have become aware of the harmonic innovations acquired by the pioneers of the 1950s and 60s and have translated them in a better and more skilled way within their music. As for the rhythmic sphere, both in solo and accompanying rhythmic, Jazz has become much richer and more complex. The means of expressing have widened by electronic instruments and the border lines among the styles have softened. Hardbop or Postbop musicians play without harmonic ties, Free Jazz musicians are now complying with conventional arrangements, Fusion musicians are improvising modally and „free“ too etc. Quite often we find pieces combined with different styles on one sound carrier. Very often the style within one piece is being altered, and thus the division into styles has become pretty sketchy in the past years, one can now speak about a style pluralism. Jazz music that has been booming in the last 25 years as hardly ever before has become more manifold, more global and more universal.

Philipp Straske
Wiedergeburt oder Weiterentwicklung? Das Erbe des Hard Bop im Jazz der letzten 25 Jahre

Summary
From the very beginning, the development of hard bop in the 1950s was characterized by a wide variety of musical influences. When listening to that music one can hear colours of bebop, swing, mainstream, cool jazz and of course rhythm and blues. With the emergence of free jazz, soul and rock in the 1960s, hard bop again opened up towards new influences. The development of hard bop has never been one of a single string with only one stylistic colour. Contrary to these symptoms of a multilayered growing, the development of hard bop from the early 1950s through the end of the 60s was always marked by continuity.

By the late 1960s, the rock explosion and its lasting influence on jazz inside the USA (as well as everywhere else) had pushed hard bop more and more into the background. Being put into high school classrooms and onto stages of European festivals, the torch of hard bop nonetheless never stopped burning. While during the second half of the 1970s there were still many musicians playing hard bop, the number of young musicians (initially influenced by funk and rock) who rediscovered the „music of their fathers“ was increasing. The crops of the effectively working jazz pedagogy in combination with hard bop revival in the 1970s led this style into the 80s and later on into 90s. The pluralism and stylistic confusing of that decade due to postmodernism can at the same time be observed in the further development of hard bop. Hard Bop might have ended officially in the late 1960s but its musical language became a major influence on the jazz idiom in general. At the beginning of the 1980s one could distinguish between five different categories. Their musical characteristics are mostly rooted in the language of hard bop:

  • 50s Hard Bop Revival: A continuation of the classical/traditional way of playing hard bop of the 1950s and early 60s by its originators, e.g. Dexter Gordon and other originals, sometimes mixed with younger musicians.
  • Modern 60s Hard Bop: Musicians like Freddy Hubbard and the Miles Davis rhythm section of the 1960s or McCoy Tyner who continue playing in a strong interactive and harmonic progressive way.
  • 50s Hard Bop Imitators: A regressive way of playing in the style of the early bebop influenced originators of hard bop by imitating them. Young musicians who were especially born in the 1950s may be put into that category.
  • Fusion Bop: This way of playing is strongly influenced by the sound of fusion music. The musicians often prefer the use of electrically amplified instruments as well as repetitive bass figures and rock-influenced drum grooves. The melodic and harmonic approach is influenced by the hard bop idiom and the musicians mainly play with a slight triple feel. The repetitive figures played by the rhythm section are often varied and improvised. The communication between the soloist and the group is more distinctive than in rock or fusion music.
  • Soul Jazz: Some original musicians like Horace Silver, Lou Donaldson, Stanley Turrentine or George Benson receive once again more attention for their bluesy and groove-orientated way of playing.

The intention of the study is to explain the different stylistic tendencies inside the development of hard bop with a focus on the 1980s , the 90s and the present. Where is the heritage of hard bop continued in a more regressive way and where can be found a more modern and innovative way of continuing the language of hard bop? What are the styles hard bop is dealing with today? Or does hard bop appear to jazz musicians as just one influence of many? The purpose is to give an understandable overview of the latest development of hard bop inside the USA as well as to find some descriptive charakterisations/categories that allow to decode some confusions about the pluralism of jazz styles in a more musically practical way.

Günther Huesmann
“Sanhedrin” – John Zorn’s Quartett “Masada” und die “Radical Jewish Culture”

Summary
In search of a new musical Jewish identity alto-saxophonist and composer John Zorn developed the „Masada Songbook“ – a cycle of hundreds of short compositions, designed as starting point for improvisations, first explored by his quartet Masada. A comparison between the recording outlet of the classic Ornette Coleman Quartet and the Masada recordings for the label DIW reveals the following differences: (1) In sharp contrast to the often cited influence of the classic Ornette Coleman Quartet, Masada uses in its musical discourses simultaneous improvisations of trumpet and saxophone as a prominent feature. (2) The quartet music of Masada focuses on the excerption of diverse and stylistically heterogeneous jazz elements on specific scales, which Zorn calls „Hebrew scales“. (3) The quartet music of Masada plays an important role in a socio-cultural context defining a new musical Jewish identity.

Michael Kahr
Curent Tendencies in Jazz Theory

Zusammenfassung
Die Theorien der Jazzmusik unterliegen, in gleichem Maße wie die Jazzmusik an sich, einem steten und rasanten Wandel. Dieser Artikel bietet einen kritischen Überblick über aktuelle Aspekte in der Jazztheorie und beleuchtet dabei deren historischen Hintergrund sowie deren Probleme und Diskrepanzen. Ein besonderes Merkmal der Jazztheorie ist ihr zwiespältiges Verhältnis zu den etablierten Theorien der allgemeinen Musik, das geprägt ist von der Relevanz klassischer Analysemethoden für den Jazz zum einen und von der Problematik hinsichtlich des vermeintlich kohärenten Erklärungsgehalts von Theorien der klassischen Musik gegenüber spezifisch jazzidiomatischen Strukturen zum anderen. Aktuelle Zugänge in der Jazztheorie beinhalten eine zunehmende Akzeptanz der, anfangs stark kritisierten, sozio-kulturell engagierten Ideen der sogenannten New Musicology-Bewegung, weiters die, vor allem in den USA, festzustellende Etablierung von Schenkerschen Theorien in der Jazzanalyse sowie die wachsende Funktion des Internets als Informationsquelle und Disseminationsfaktor in der Jazztheorie.

Franz Krieger
Zur aktuellen harmonischen Sprache in Popularmusik und Jazz

Summary
Starting point of the investigation on hand is the author’s observation that the portion of modal music in our daily radio and MTV environment is relatively high. For to verify this, the music of eleven Popular Music Charts (# 1–10 each) is analyzed harmonically. The results are compared with the harmonics of 248 jazz tracks stemming from two Billboard Jazz Album Charts.

Bernd Hoffmann
Regionale Struktur – nationale Perspektive: Die Rolle des öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunks
in den deutschen Jazzlandschaften

Summary
Jazz has taken an essential position in the scenery of public radio in the Federal Republic of Germany. While private radio stations radically ignore jazz as program contents, public radio – united by the ARD (Association of public broadcasting in Germany) – offers wide ranging forms of production and presentation for the different regional scenes in Germany. This essay illustrates the actual situation of radio jazz programs, describes the work of the eleven jazz editorial departments of the ARD and specifies next to the productions (such as transmissions and festivals) also initiatives in cultural politics like Jazz awards and the active support for venues that give essential impulse to German jazz scenes. Due to the structure of public broadcasting stations the regional jazz scenes are supported through festivals in the different federal states or those organized by public radio itself. The capacity of jazz programs on public radio has undergone a steady development and today enfolds about 370 hours of jazz program every month. Also have programs moved from their night time positions to timeslots before 8 pm. Venues and their programs as well as young jazz musicians are supported through projects like the „Venue Association“ or „WDR 3-Campus: Jazz“.

Herbert Hellhund
Jazz – eine Musik im Zeitalter ihrer pädagogischen Reproduzierbarkeit

Summary
The pedagogy of Jazz is a main factor of its international representation and economy. Four factors are discussed in this paper in order to desribe a system-immanent tendency towards standardization: (1) The „Conservatory Syndrome“ expresses the consequences resulting from an academical concentration on mostly established materials and grammar of modern Jazz’s language. (2) An „Endogene Factor“ is described as a result of the immanent attractivity, which Bebop and Hard Bop often means for older and very young musicians. (3) The desire to get to know more about it often turns out to be a way in without a way out – a material- or mainstream trap. (4) Use and overuse of established formulae can diminish the expressive content of music.

Gerd Grupe
Ethnomusikologische Ansätze in der neueren Jazzforschung und Perspektiven eines
interkulturellen Vergleichs am Beispiel Jazz und Gamelan

Summary
Two of the most influential contributions to the scholarly study of jazz published in the 1990s, Paul Berliner’s Thinking in Jazz (1994) and Ingrid Monson’s Saying Something (1996), aproach their subject of improvisation and musical interaction from an ethnomusicological perspective. The ethnomusicological aspects of these works are examined and one particular issue in current ethnomusicology, namely the intercultural comparative study of musics (Nettl), is elaborated upon by outlining some general features of improvisation in relation to extemporizing and performance practice or interpretation As an example, improvisational processes in jazz are contrasted with various musical practices found in Central Javanese gamelan playing. The paper argues that jazz research, if carried out according to accepted standards in current ethnomusicology, may contribute considerably to cross-cultural issues in this field of study and, thus, further our understanding of musics of the world.

Bernd Hoffmann
“Spiegel unserer unruhigen Zeit” – der Jazz Almanach. Anmerkungen zur Rundfunk-Sendereihe
des NWDR Köln (1948–1952)

Summary
The jazz scene in Western Germany grows immensely in diversity and vitality during the decade after World War II. Jazz musicians from the US touring through Germany offer jazz fans of all three occupation zones a live-impression of the fascination linked to improvised music and swing. People start playing their old jazz schellacks again, and seek the company of those who are also interested in this music. Jazz clubs and places for hot jazz open everywhere. Further, jazz is now also broadcasted by the new founded public radio stations in the three occupation zones. Slowly a jazz scene develops that is able to provide fans with access to information, recordings and concerts, making jazz continuously an element of public cultural life. Noticeable is also the growing interlocking between different local musicians‘ initiatives which, by the late 1950s, have a self-organised network at their disposal.

Concepts and perspectives of cultural politics are developed and driven forward by some personalities belonging tot he pioneers of West German jazz in the decade after World War II: Joachim Ernst Berendt, Werner Götze, Olaf Hudtwalker, Horst Lippmann, Gerd Peter Pick, Fritz Rau, Dietrich Schulz-Köhn, Werner Wunderlich und Dieter Zimmerle. All of them have in common that they continuously have transformed their voluntary work as jazz fans into professional careers: A sign for the growing professionalization of the jazz scene is the fact that jazz clubs and music clubs for hot jazz create honorary positions like the one of a president or a board member. Based on local musicians‘ initiatives many music clubs develop – yet surrounded by expanse of rubble – a functional relationship with other music clubs, establishing structures of cooperation. Intention of this work is to provide information to all members, specifically by presenting historic jazz recordings. Next to local activist forces the exchange of lecturers drawn from the circle of persons already named above, grows to be an important element of cooperation between the music clubs.

At a progressive rate, radio as a mass media coins this decade of enthusiasm for jazz music. An influential voice within this media landscape is author Dietrich Schulz-Köhn who in his lifetime wrote and presented about 30.000 jazz programs for radio stations in Germany and abroad. His first more extensive program Der Jazz-Almanach is presented by the Cologne Studio of the broadcasting union in North and West Germany NWDR (Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk), existing until 1956. The ninety preserved manuscripts of this program create a tessellate picture of West German jazz and allow – on basis of the 1.500 pieces of music broadcasted on the program – a detailed documentation of the use of radio in the field of jazz. This program series, named „mirror of our anxious times“ by the program magazine Hör Zu, joins some West German hot clubs and jazz clubs in their effort to supply a growing jazz audience hungry for information with facts, the lates news, and reports.

Like Schulz-Köhn most radio hosts dealing with jazz, gained their knowledge from extensive record collections. Actually Der Jazz-Almanach fell back on Schulz-Köhn’s collection, at that time counting already more than 4.000 records. Despite the overall positive attitude towards jazz in public radio, it is especially the Hör Zu magazine that impedes the idea of an earlier launch for jazz programs. The excessive respectability and pseudo-scientific attitude of the format are reactions to exclusive attempts of a conservative press. Also in terms of content the program’s orientation towards music that is primary assigned to the stylistics of hot jazz shows, that Der Jazz-Almanach doesn’t intent to accentuate latest trends in swing and bebop.

Planned as a program that airs records and is read our by a radio host Der Jazz-Almanach mainly presents portraits of Afro-American and white jazz musicians, but also illustrates the istrumental history of jazz, and – towards the end of the series –provides an insight into the jazz club scene in West Germany. The notable success of the program is based on the use of historical important but rarely played record material that is almost inaccessible to fans in the post-war world. The program’s orientation towards the jazz canon implies a focus on hot jazz material naming authenticity and originality as the characteristics of improvised music

The analysis of the list of presented jazz titles as initiated by Schulz-Köhn for the Düsseldorf Hot Club implies a clear accentuation of hot jazz musicians, when applied to the broadcast format of Der Jazz-Almanach, while bebop musicians are presented at a noticeable low rate. In his deficit hypothesis the author equates young listeners‘ preference for bebop with uncontrolled fan action, addressing with his moralistic attitude the jazz scene in West Germany. The Jazz Almanach’s academic tone and the constant use of terminology from the field of musicology, refer to late night radio discussion programs with a similar broadcasting time slot. Schulz-Köhn’s language, characterised by a high level of respectability, can also be interpreted as a concept for jazz-representation, influenced by the romantic understanding of the term genius, in which Afro-American musicians play an important role.

The jazz program that replaces Der Jazz-Almanach in 1952, is structured by far less complex and demanding, and is rather intended to be an invitation to jazz-party.