Couldn’t Survive without Music

“I couldn’t survive without music”, says fifteen-year-old Steve. In the morning Steve wakes up to his favorite radio station. He listens to rock on the radio while he eats breakfast. He puts on his personal stereo before he leaves the house and listens to cassettes on the bus to school.

“Last week I put my headphones on in the maths class”, admits Steve. “The teacher was really angry. She took my headphones away and I couldn’t use them for a week. It was terrible”.

At home Steve does his homework to music. Loud music.

“My mother always shouts “turn it down!” says Steve. “She can’t understand how I can work with music on, but music helps me to concentrate”. Steve would like to make music himself. “I’m learning to play the guitar. Actually, it doesn’t sound too good at the moment. But I’m going to keep practicing!”

For teenagers like Steve, music is a very important part of life. Music is social, it brings people together at discos, parties and concerts. Fast, loud music is full of energy, it helps people to forget their problems and have fun. Music talks about love, freedom and imagination. There are always new songs and new styles.

But there can be a negative side to rock music. Dr A. Handforth has some serious concerns.

“Music on personal stereos is often too loud”, she says. It can damage your hearing. Also, other people on buses and trains may not want to listen to your tape of “Take That”. Personal stereos stop you noticing the world outside. Headphones make you selfish. And of course the biggest problem is drugs. There is a strong connection between some kinds of music and young people taking drugs.”

Steve’s mother agrees that music brings some problems. “Steve is a sensible boy”, she says. “I don’t think he would ever take drugs. But I do worry about his hearing with all that loud music. And it drives me crazy!”

 

8. Read these statements and decide if they are true or false. Discuss these questions with other people.

1. Personal stereos stop you noticing the world outside. Headphones make you selfish. Is this true in your experience?

2. Dr A. Handforth thinks that there is a strong connection between some kinds of music and people taking drugs. Do you think that is true?

 

9. Get into groups of four people. Half the group are going to be rock stars. The other part are reporters working for the TV music channel, MTV.

 

Rock stars

Think of some information about your group. For example:

a) Think for a name for your group.

b) Decide which instrument each group member plays.

c) Decide what kind of music you play.

d) Decide where and when you met.

e) You have had at least one hit song. Think of a name for it.

f) You have made a new album – you want good publicity for it. Make sure you can tell the journalist plenty about your new songs.

 

10. Read the texts about different styles of music.

Jeffrey Swann and Jack Logan, Ph.D.

... There is so much talk about music, and yet so little really said. For my part I believe that words do not suffice for such a purpose, and if I found they did suffice, then I certainly would have nothing more to do with music. People often complain that music is ambiguous, that their ideas on the subject always seem so vague, whereas everyone understands words. With me it is exactly the reverse – not merely with regard to entire sentences, but also as to individual words. These, too, seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so unintelligible when compared with genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words. ( To get a sense of what Mendelssohn is saying, visit the web site of Joshua Bell, the American violinist; then, simply listen to the music.)

--Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, from a letter to Marc-Andre Souchay, Lubeck (October 15, 1842)

 

The history of jazz

It all started in New Orleans, where Dixieland jazz was born out of a mix of Afro-American blues, Creole music and Ragtime (syncopated piano music – think Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf" Rag' or the kind of stuff the pianist in a western saloon might play just before someone crashes through the window). Cornettist Buddy Bolden (1877-1931) is generally regarded as the first 'jazz' musician (though there were many claiming to be the first); he was never recorded.

A second wave of musicians (spread over New Orleans, Kansas City and Chicago) developed what came to be known as 'hot' jazz; small, brass-led groups playing a faster, more elaborate version of Dixieland. Among them were King Oliver, Kid Ory and Jelly Roll Morton. Most important to the spread of the music was the invention of the phonograph. Former Oliver sideman Louis Armstrong recorded what many see as the definitive jazz recordings with his Hot Five and Hot Seven lineups. Meanwhile, Earl Hines was busy reconfiguring the role of the piano in jazz with his dazzling solo flights.

The 30s saw the first big bands emerge under the leadership of innovators such as Duke Ellington and Count Basie to herald the age of Swing. Ellington's band's residency at Harlem's Cotton Club entered into legend. This was the 'Jazz Age' writ large, with bandleaders such as Benny Goodman and Fletcher Henderson taking America's dancefloors by storm. The previously neglected saxophone emerged as a lead instrument, courtesy of Ellington stars like Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins and maybe most importantly Count Basie's Lester Young (always refer to him as 'Prez' for extra jazz cred).

Dating from the mid 1940s, Bebop (no one's clear where the name came from but it is the title of a Dizzy Gillespie tune) is the bedrock of modern jazz. The music was shaped at after-hours jam sessions populated by players keen on taking risks, pushing their own boundaries and showing off their instrumental prowess in what were known as 'cutting contests'. Standard songs like "How High the Moon" and "I Got Rhythm" were stuffed with extra, really complicated chords and accelerated to tempos that could exhaust the hardiest dancer in minutes, leave trumpeters missing teeth and double bass players nursing fottball sized blisters. Charlie Parker's phenomenal alto technique shaped the new music into technically dazzling displays. It was a revolutionary sound that upset some...Duke Ellington claimed that "playing bop is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing". Small groups were the order of the day. Notable Beboppers include Charlie Parker (Bird), Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk.

Originated on the West Coast (not Swansea) in the 50s. Tempos were slowed, pianos were often dispensed with (radical!) and the music was characterised by a more 'cerebral' approach to playing, inspired by Lester Young's laid back, lyrical stylings. Though midwifed by Gil Evans and Miles Davis (with the Birth of the Cool album), Cool (or West Coast) Jazz became the province of mainly white musicians like Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan, Paul Desmond, Stan Getz and Lee Konitz.

Hard Bop was funkier and more direct than bebop and had more of a bluesy, dirty feel. Much of the 1950's Blue Note catalogue could be termed 'hard bop'; records by Hank Mobley, Art Blakey, Sonny Clark and many more. Alongside grew a soulful, gospel influenced strain of bop termed 'soul jazz' (Horace Silver, Jimmy Smith). This music was the soundtrack and inspiration for the London dancefloor jazz revival of the early 1980s; this was the scene that fired the careers of DJs like Paul Bradshaw and inspired the shortlived Acid Jazz movement...

This is where things got weird. Lennie Tristano's ventures into 'free' improvisation (music without any preplanned ideas of rhythmic, chordal or melodic content) in the late 40s hadn't really seeded any further experiments. But still there were those committed to pushing the music as far as it could go. Ornette Coleman's quartet dispensed with chords in the 1950s, eventually concentrating on an approach to collective improvisation he would later term 'harmolodic' (it was Coleman's album Free Jazz that gave the movement its name). In the mid 60s many musicians (inspired by the increasingly adventurous and uncompromising music of John Coltrane) discovered the joys of mind-expanding drugs, kaftans and playing very loud for a long time. Eventually the drummers stopped playing time and musical structures were out of the window too. Spiritually fuelled and often politically motivated, the free jazz or 'The New Thing' movement was spearheaded by John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders and Cecil Taylor; other notable exponents include Anthony Braxton and The Art Ensemble of Chicago.

Some jazz musicians (well, those with money anyway) had begun to use electric instruments in the mid to late 60s. Though rock and soul rhythms had crept in to a lot of late 60s jazz, it was Miles Davis (again) who fused jazz improvisation and rock grooves rather than just bolting them together and hoping the results might sell a few units. The recordings In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew kickstarted the whole fusion movement, quickly followed by key records from Weather Report, Lifetime, and Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi group (all of which were led by Miles' sidemen). Suddenly, everyone had an afro, a Fender Rhodes piano, a couple of Sly Stone records and a wah wah pedal. European musicians took up the challenge too, though normally passing on the afro. Later, fusion either shifted into funk/disco hybrids (triggered in part by Hancock's adoption of funk in the Headhunters) or excessive displays of flashy musicianship, though bands like Steps Ahead, the Yellowjackets and Tribal Tech kept the fusion flag flying through the 80s and 90s.

Birthed by Creed Taylor's CTI Label, which marketed polite early 70s soul-tinged fusion as lifestyle accessory (complete with very nice album covers). Smooth Jazz is seen by many jazz fans (generally those with beards) as the enemy, though it does sell a lot of records and provides the soundtrack for pizza eating and latte drinking in tastefully lit establishments throughout the western world. The music is characterised by an emphasis on melodies and arrangements rather than improvisation. UK radio station Jazz FM's name switch to 'Smooth FM' is perhaps the movement's biggest achievement. Personified by the likes of Bob James, Chuck Mangione and Grover Washington.

Pretty much a genre in itself, this German record label has been a home to adventurous jazzers since the late 1960s. As well as breaking the solo careers of American post-fusion players like Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell and Keith Jarrett, ECM has nurtured many Nordic and British musicians like Jan Garbarek and John Surman. Taking its cue from the chamber jazz of Jimmy Guiffre and Paul Bley, ECM music is often minimal, folk tinged and atmospheric, with very tasteful sleeve designs...

Blue Note and CTI samples littered drum n' bass records in the 90s and once again Jazz wasn't such a dirty word anymore. Very gradually, jazz musicians have woken up to the possibilities of digital technology, fusing electronic beats and samples with live playing with varying degrees of success. Likewise electronic artistes like Matthew Herbert and Kieran Hebden (aka FourTet) have been hooking up with jazz players. Such collaborations mean that though jazz may no longer be eating everything in its path, at least it hasn't quite been eaten itself...

Like flared trousers, Japanese food and mini-skirts, Jazz creeps back into fashion every few years. The early 21^st century has seen a revival in the music's fortunes, headed up by singers like Jamie Cullum, Michael Buble and others who flirt with what might be called 'lounge music'. At the other end of the spectrum, bands like Acoustic Ladyland and the ranks of the F-ire Collective are pushing a more radicalised, eclectic jazz, while Soweto Kinch, Denys Baptiste and others continue to explore some of the paths opened up by Courtney Pine. But as pianist Stan Tracey remarks; "every time someone talks about a jazz revival, I can tell you that the phone's not going to ring..."