The music that made me: jazz

Jazz. It’s that annoying genre you sigh at when someone raises it in conversation. The music that is forever associated with study music, cocktail bars, dinner parties and, fatally, lift music. For others, it is pretentious. It is a genre for those people you meet who consider themselves intellectually superior because they claim to ‘understand it’ . So why bother trying to convince you that it is something else? In short, because it is brilliant. It transcends genres, it evolves, and it is the backbone of all modern music.

Back to those people who think you’re stupid if you don’t like jazz. Why do they think that? Why do they sometimes belittle you for not ‘understanding it’ ? I think it is because the common perception of jazz is that it is a more complex form of music. You would be wrong to think that. In reality, jazz, like any music, is as complex as you want it to be. Most of us do not care about the chords or the notes or the harmonies or whatever else when we listen to our favourite song; that’s normal. So why should we when we listen to jazz? Why does a knowledge of music theory both stifle and enhance the listening experience? When listening to jazz, even as a newbie, it is obvious when someone plays a difficult melody, even without understanding a lick of music theory. I still understand very little. I cannot claim to have perfect pitch. I cannot pick out a chord from thin air and triumphantly claim, ‘That’s an Aflatsus4 chord’. But just as people listen to Tchaikovsky, Chappell Roan, or David Bowie, I listen to jazz, and I do so probably for the same reasons people listen to the above. It resonates with me on some level — and it can resonate with you!

Jazz is the Swiss army knife of music

Jazz is the Swiss army knife of music. You can dance to the tunes of Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman of the swing era or the more modern house/jungle/pop fusions such as those by Berlioz. In Hip-Hop jazz tunes are a dream for samplers. Listen to ‘The World is Yours’ by Nas and then ‘I Love Music’ by Ahmad Jamal, or ‘Raid’ by MF Doom and then ‘Nardis’ by Bill Evans. Listen to Kendrick Lamar’s ‘For Free?-Interlude’ and appreciate the song’s jazz foundation. If you often stay awake until 3am questioning life, Chet Baker is the perfect soundtrack. Just had a breakup, whack on a bit of Miles Davis, that will cheer you up…. Going for a stroll amongst the ‘Autumn Leaves’, there is a song for that. And at Christmas, it would be rude not to play Frank Sinatra, Michael Bublé, Nat King Cole – or my personal favourite – the Vince Guaraldi trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas [2012 Remastered & Expanded Edition].

Now I realise I am probably beginning to sound like the pretentious jazz aficionados I mentioned earlier, but I believe that one of the biggest issues when it comes to the genre is people do not take the time to truly listen to it. Someone might have once played ‘So What’ by Miles Davis or, terrifyingly, something from John Coltrane’s ‘free jazz’ spell and in that moment, you had a visceral reaction and developed a permanent hatred for jazz, but I implore you to move on. Listen to Coltrane’s version of ‘My Favourite Things’ and do not be put off by the 13-minute run time. Or, if you want something more modern, listen to anything by the Ezra Collective. Or move towards funk or the fusion tunes of Herbie Hancock.

I am not going to tell you as Sebastian does in La La Land that “jazz is dying”

My own reasons for listening to jazz are varied. I feel I have always listened to Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, and Frank Sinatra, and I would hazard a bet that most of you listen to at least some of their tunes. From them, the path down towards more ‘traditional’ jazz was not always inevitable. I do remember asking my Dad to turn off jazz music when on a car trip. Admittedly, it probably helped that I play a few instruments and did a Music GCSE. But in truth, I can’t remember a single revelatory moment where jazz just clicked with me. It just became the logical conclusion of my listening habits. To give one example: through Frank Sinatra, I listened to some of the other great jazz singers, and I came across a particularly amazing album called Chet Baker Sings. Baker, whilst a great singer, was an even better trumpet player, and eventually, I decided to listen to his songs where he didn’t sing. I realised the lack of singing didn’t put me off his music at all, and why should it, his trumpet playing was just as agreeable as his vocal lines, particularly his version of ‘You Go To My Head’. From here, the ‘pure instrumental jazz’ of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Dizzy Gillespie and others, which tends to frighten people off, was suddenly not so scary. Instead, it became clear that they were capable of beautiful and complex music, so why not give it a go?

Why am I asking this from you? I am not going to tell you as Sebastian does in La La Land that “jazz is dying”— I would argue it is not, and La La Land’s success is probably evidence of that. But it does not have the spotlight it once did, nor do I necessarily want it to. What I want, I guess, is for jazz to become somewhat respected among the masses. I want people to stop thinking internally in their head, ‘Oh, this guy listens to jazz, he is probably stuck in the 50s’, or ‘Jazz is so dead’ when they listen to rock, rap, or pop, which owes a significant amount of its existence to their jazz and blues predecessors. I want you to experience a genre that is often only partially acknowledged, and I want you to acknowledge it.