Words
As a lover of words and all related discussions, I highly recommend this read from Peter Hum’s latest post. Besides an interesting dissection of the connotations of some of jazz’s most frequently used terms, the post gets to the core of the issues, questioning the meaning of using such words at all.
About three quarters of the way down the page you’ll notice the words “Authentic” and “Real” are discussed:
“Some people use them to say that a musician is playing according to the idiomatic markers and sensibility of a given jazz style such as bebop or modal jazz. I’m more inclined to use “authentic” or “real” in a philosophical or psychological sense, ie, to signify that I think a musician is playing with clear personal intent, good faith, lack of inhibition etc.”
I’m not sure what “good faith” means, but I definitely like the idea of “clear personal intent.” This of course brings me back to my original post on authenticity, in which I used Matt Wilson as a jumping off point for a discussion about the concept as a whole. I should like to clarify that, as Jason Parker pointed out, Matt has produced much authentic music in his lifetime, and that the video I referenced was a small fraction of his musical identity. Still, I don’t take back my evaluation of that video itself, and furthermore, if we’re discussing musical authenticity as a philosophical value, we can hardly limit the discussion to one reference.
Ok, so what is authenticity? What is real? I attempted to at least get people thinking with my initial post, but I didn’t come close to answering that question beyond “you know it when you hear it.” So for the record, I like the clear personal intent idea. It implies that you are writing and performing music as a means of expressing something in particular, which, because of the nature of attempting to do so, typically translates into good sounding music. Even if your goal is to express nothing, well, that’s something, isn’t it? Conversely, if your goal is to have fun and goof off, or to play music that’s full of tricky concepts (an extension of the idea of learning to play your instrument well because you want to be the best, rather than wanting to make music), typically that translates into pretty bad music. And I don’t think I have to analyze why.
There are plenty of artists out there (especially in the jazz realm, where instrumental virtuosity is almost a prerequisite for a high-profile career) who fall into the latter, sadder category, but I’m not here to name names (least this once again break down into an argument of a particular artist’s merit). I will however call out one artist whose (thankfully) controversial remarks about hip-hop have once again been recently reasserted in the media:
Mr. Marsalis, if you approached your music with the same intent of expression as many of the hip-hop artists you criticize, your admittedly beautiful trumpet playing might become more relevant than its current role as a beacon of some kind of righteousness allows for.
