Jazz continues to hold on as music machine keeps turning
Jazz continues to hold on as music machine keeps turning
By Devi M. Asmarani
JAKARTA (JP): It is an era when being a musical purist is out
of the question.
Rock bands bring an orchestra on stage with them, rappers hip
hop to acid jazz and Bob Marley, and a lithe, transparently-clad
female violinist rocks MTV audiences with a techno-fused Bach
concerto.
This confusing trend started way back. In fact, the marriage
of genres is the motor spinning music's evolution.
In jazz -- a genus that long ago handed over its public and
commercial spotlights to pop and rock -- this is even more
apparent.
Every decade, jazz musicians inject new styles to the existing
ones, breeding an often controversial new species.
Thirty or 40 years ago, jazz was a universal treasure, but the
music has gradually turned into something enjoyed only by an
elite.
To play jazz these days seems irrelevant, like opening an ice
cream parlor in the dead of winter.
Perhaps this fear of being superfluous was what made musicians
at last week's JakJazz here exclaim proudly that they were free
of the leash of jazz purism.
It seemed the more non-jazz a band was, the larger crowd it
gathered.
Is it the death knell for jazz?
Keyboardist Jeff Lorber, one of the musicians who performed at
the three-day event, quickly denied it.
"Jazz is as alive as ever," he told The Jakarta Post after his
gig.
Excusing the organizer's affinity for more pop-oriented bands,
Lorber said: "What they're trying to give here is a package that
would entertain people."
Lorber said it was healthy to incorporate a little influence
of other music into jazz.
"Even us, we're not all jazz," he said.
Lorber was backed by jazz pianist Ramsey Lewis, who
participated in the event with keyboardist Michael Logan,
guitarist Curtis Robinson, bassist Chuck Webb and drummer Steve
Cobb.
"Jazz is like a sponge," Lewis told his audience in the full-
house basketball hall last week. "It absorbs all kinds of music."
He demonstrated that his band could turn a lullaby into a
jazz number, after which he threw in an uplifting adaptation of
spiritual Little Walter.
Lewis is living prove of his remarks.
An excellent pianist, he embraces both bop-oriented jazz and
communicative rhythm and blues.
At the festival, the band performed about 13 songs, ranging
from several mainstream numbers and easy-listening
interpretations of pop songs, to tango-flavored Calzione, which
has the solemnity of Miles Davis' Solea from his Sketches of
Spain album.
The Ramsey Lewis band was perhaps one of the few groups
performing at JakJazz with strong jazz roots. In their same ranks
were Japanese trio Jimsaku and Watanabe, and the Jeff Lorber band
from the U.S.
These remarkable bands were used as side attractions to the
crowd-magnets Dave Koz, Incognito, LA All Stars and Total Touch,
all of which oozed pop and R&B, and all of which got to perform
on the main stage.
Ironic, since the festival was originally created as a venue
for local jazz fans.
Even playing on the second stage, and with Dave Koz's music
resonating from the soccer field behind him, the Jeff Lorber band
managed to charm its audience.
Lorber, saxophonist Gary Meek, bassist Nathaniel Phillips and
drummer Sergio Gonzales offered a fusion of bebop, soul, blues,
latin, and rhythm and blues.
It was like an oasis for the jazz-thirsty audience, a solid
performance marked with skillful and uniquely talented band
members.
But they, too, were not flawless.
One of the mistakes in a truly good fusion band is writing
mediocre lyrics for an outstanding vocalist.
The result is usually another trite love song.
Perhaps this was one of Lorber's ways of saying he is not all
jazz.
Even a serious band like Ramsey Lewis' had to bring on a
vocalist, Phil Perry, to keep the audience in their seats. The
Lewis-Perry duo is not new to Jakartans as they have played here
several times.
For Jimsaku's violinist, Tetsuo Sakurai, jazz is alive and
well, although he concedes audience numbers are not what they
once were.
"Jazz is a trial, our music may not be successful
commercially, but the important thing is to keep going."
Sakurai and his band mate, drummer Akira Jimbo, both former
members of Casiopea, are part of progressive jazz which matured
in a low-key approach, although not without the hipness of
underground music.
When the duo joined with stunning guitarist Kazumi Watanabe at
the event, they literally rocked the stage.
Their music is brilliant combinations of long improvisation
and tight, fast beats on some numbers, and reggae and samba
influences on others. It stimulated the audience, making the
prior performance of the Jeff Lorber band seem rather old-
fashioned.
In a solo drum routine, Jimbo fed the intensity of some 300
audience members, warming them up for Sakurai to enter into a
duet they called Catastrophe of the Rhythm.
It reaffirmed that the intensity of a live jazz show can lead
audience members into a feverish, almost orgasmic state of
excitement.
Sakurai showed this as he unleashed himself and oozed a Kurt
Cobain aura. It drove the audience wild.
Pure jazz may have died ago, but its spirit, as Sakurai
showed, still survives.