Overview
While history is inherently polemic, recent jazz history is even more so, because it lacks a linear stylistic evolution and, as such, departs from characteristic developments in jazz during the first 75 years of its existence.
It’s no surprise then, that the decades since 1980 have been the most diverse and controversial in the history of jazz. Over this time, there has been a proliferation of artistic approaches and a host of superb musicians that made them happen, keeping in mind that it is difficult, if not impossible, to single out a single towering figure in jazz among Morton, Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Gillespie, Monk, Davis, Coltrane, and, some would argue, Mingus, Coleman, and Ayler.
In this section we will focus on those artists who came to prominence in the late 1970s and 1980s. Admittedly, the grouping of these musicians is somewhat arbitrary, given the lengthy careers many of them enjoyed. Accepting, then, that no survey of the past three decades can be completely satisfying, we offer these artists as among those deserving of our attention.
Objectives
Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to do the following:
- Appreciate postmodernism as it relates to jazz
- Appreciate neo-classicism as it relates to jazz
- Identify leading postmodern and neo-classical musicians and their contributions to jazz
The Philosophy of Neo-Classicism
The critic Stanley Crouch was (and continues to be) a friend and mentor to Wynton Marsalis. He is considered by some to be responsible for Marsalis' conservative views regarding jazz. In the liner notes to Marsalis Standard Time, Vol. 1, Crouch presents his underlying artistic credo, which could substitute for a treatise on neo-classicism, even italicizing a key sentence for maximum impact:
Whether due to Crouch's influence or not, Marsalis chose a distinctively conservative stylistic trajectory, even as the larger public enjoyed his most progressive live performances from the Live at Blues Alley recording. And his playing is masterful, as Crouch attests (again in the album's liner notes):
Marsalis' quartet, for its part, delivers the goods. On an album devoted to "standard time" and jazz standards (Marsalis Standard Time, Vol. 1), Marsalis and his band explore time itself—through a broader metric conception and personal innovation—rendering such classic tunes as Caravan ♫ (first made famous by Duke Ellington) with a fresh harmonic vocabulary and a wealth of interactive, complex metric counterpoint.
The piece is a 64-bar AABA song form (0:16-1:34), and the group is true to the piece's original spirit — that of a journey in a far-off, exotic land. When Marsalis begins his solo (1:34), he starts with a tritone descent from B-flat to E-natural, taking him all the way down to the trumpet's lowest note — which sounds for a fleeting moment like trombone! Over the course of three choruses, Marsalis explores sound, space, and register, creating a broad melodic arc that lands him close to his point of departure. Roberts follows with his own well-shaped solo over the next two choruses (4:12-6:48) before the band returns to the headA synonym for melody. .
The song "Take the A Train" has been used in several movies including Paris Blues (1961) and Catch Me if You Can (2002). It has also been used in four different musicals.
