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For jazz artists, the classroom's not the club

By James P. Miller
Daily Arts Writer

Jazz is unique in music in that it is controlled by the individual performer more than the composer or director. For that reason, jazz is influenced by performance and performers more than the printed page. Consequently, trends that change the way musicians play can change the entire landscape of the music. Over the past 20 years, jazz has seen a fundamental change in its musicians. It is the rise of the conservatory sound.

In its infancy and adolescence, jazz was a wild and forbidden form. Condemned by intellectuals as gutter music played by talentless loons, it was very much an underground music. Like the African oral tradition that spawned it, jazz was handed down from artist to artist, either by one-on-one teaching or by ear. Miles Davis learned volumes on jazz by following Bird around New York, listening to and learning from other musicians; not from his classes at Julliard. Even compositional geniuses like Charles Mingus and Ron Carter learned their craft by ear, playing in groups. The club was the classroom.

Through the '70s and '80s, jazz began to earn its rightful place as a serious and meritous art form. Colleges and high schools began to teach jazz as they would any other kind of music. Knowledge that formerly could only be gained by living the life of a starving itinerant musician could now be gleaned by attending classes. The classroom is now the club.

This is not entirely a bad thing. Much of early jazz (and especially the blues) suffers from technical holes and substandard musicianship. Without a doubt, today's player is, on the average, better equipped technically. Besides, many jazz musicians with mountains of soul had classical backgrounds, like Nina Simone (another Julliard alum), Keith Jarrett, Marcus Roberts, Wynton Marsalis and Bill Evans.

But this education was tempered with practical experiences. Jazz cannot be learned in a vacuum, as these musicians prove. No matter how sterile their training seems, the fire of the blues is never absent from the music. There is always a pursuit of the knowledge and skills that cannot be learned anywhere else but on the battlefields. A musician who goes right from college to a recording career is missing half the recipe. He may have the hands, but the heart is more important.

You know when you're listening to the lifeless conservatory music. It has no motion, no purpose. It isn't saying anything. Even the most silly, old school Louis Armstrong pop tune has feeling and depth. Conservatory jazz consists mostly of flabby lines of eighth notes that have no purpose other than following the changes. It's crammed full of so many influences that it cannot express the vision of any of them: no blues, no gospel, no Latin. It's musically overeducated. In fact it's rare to hear that blues flourish. Many conservators regard it as too common and stilted to be a serious well of inspiration.

Jazz is the music of life. A life half lived will produce music half played. Jazz is music unlike any other in that your development as a person has more of an influence on your music than any other single force. The Miles Davis of the '50s is worlds away from the Davis of the late '70s. People who learn jazz as a totally cerebral art are missing out on its most powerful asset. No other form allows for such devastating personal expression. It is the music of each individual player. The most profound learning does not take place in the classroom.