The decade now ending happens to have been my first spent as a jazz critic (I started in 1999). So the simplest way to encapsulate my view is just to point to some of the things I’ve done.
My 2001 New York Times piece [pdf] on the resurgence of the Fender Rhodes — apart from my error in crediting Dave Grusin rather than Bob James for the theme from “Taxi” — stands up even better now than I thought it would. The Rhodes and other vintage electric keyboards continue as a major aesthetic force. Nicolas Masson’s new Clean Feed disc Thirty Six Ghosts, featuring Colin Vallon on Rhodes exclusively, is a choice example. So is Myron Walden’s Momentum. I know, Uri Caine moved away from Rhodes to acoustic piano when the Dave Douglas Quintet played the Vanguard last week, and the band sounded better for it. But I remain a pretty fierce Rhodes partisan.
On a complementary note, my 2005 Slate article on jazz and hip-hop tried to address the subtler musical aspects of that crossover, beyond the obvious inclusion of turntables, rappers and electronics.
Let’s see, then there’s my 2003 multipart piece for NewMusicBox.org on indie jazz labels — a two-part intro followed by profiles of the Thirsty Ear Blue Series, Palmetto, Winter & Winter, CIMP, Hipnotic, Pi and Playscape, plus an epilogue. Many of the specifics are out of date, but the core idea is the collapse of the major-label system and the ongoing ripple effects in the indie music world, surely one of the decade’s main stories. (The collapse of conventional media is another, and very much related, as any journalist can tell you.)
My 2005 New Republic piece on The Bad Plus [pdf] touched on the “audience” question and the “jazz wars” question in various ways. So did my reviews of Stuart Nicholson’s Is Jazz Dead? and Stanley Crouch’s Considering Genius.
Since I mentioned Kurt Rosenwinkel in my Slate piece, I want to note that guitarist’s seamless journey from the electronica (or “nu jazz” or whatever) of 2003’s Heartcore to the impeccably straightahead ballad focus of 2009’s Reflections. That these vastly different sounds can issue from a single artist in a single decade is probably a more eloquent comment on 2000-2009 than anything I can muster. Or the fact that Drew Gress can wail with Tim Berne one night and play sheer poetry with Fred Hersch the next. Or take Nasheet Waits, or Matt Wilson — the list of impossibly versatile and open-minded musicians goes on. More than anything, I’ve tried to keep to that sensibility in all my work, approaching all music on its own terms, refusing allegiance to any camp while recognizing what each has to offer as valid.
It’s a mistake — a big mistake — to write off new, non-swing-based music as haughtily as Stanley Crouch does. But Stuart Nicholson’s dismissive “bebop is bad for you” stance I find just as frustrating, not to mention ill-informed. Jumping off Peter Margasak’s year-end wrap here, I’d insist that we need Eric Alexander and Tyondai Braxton and Vijay Iyer. And if we fold our arms and turn away from an Eric Alexander because he’s not knocking us out every minute with newness, we’re doing a whole class of players (and listeners and readers) a disservice.
Then again, I would think that. I came out of a staunch bebop background, and since I started reviewing in 1999 my tastes have radicalized enormously. (For more, read the end of my recent Z Word essay on jazz and protest.) But I never saw it as a matter of changing horses.
One last thing: It is of course a professional necessity for jazz writers to be open to, and informed about, other genres of music. I will always deny that I’m a jazz snob. I love all music that’s done well. When I pick up the guitar these days I’m playing nothing but R&B, soul and ’70s pop. On a purely pragmatic level, however, I’m finding it unthinkable to cover multiple music scenes at once. (That is, unless you count the jazz scene as multiple music scenes.) Much as I admire the genre-hopping work of my friends Nate Chinen and Ben Ratliff of the NYT, I have no clue how they do it, and I’ve become more of a believer these days in specialization. Does anyone care what I think about Lady Gaga? (I prefer Lady Caca.)
It used to bother me that the NYT had a good five or six full-fledged classical music critics, but not a single one who focused exclusively on jazz. I’m over it. Someone who eats up Nate’s reporting on Grizzly Bear will probably want to read him on Henry Threadgill too. A year-end list from Nate or Ben that covers pop and jazz sends the message to pop fans that jazz should be part of their world. And vice versa.
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