Friday, April 12, 2019

Unpacking Big Ears, Part VII: The Masters


We need to get things moving in this Unpacking series - we're already up to Part VII and have only covered the first day and a half of Big Ears 2019.  Considering that The Masters golf tournament is going on as we type, and considering that it's Friday, the day formerly set aside for our Dreaming of the Masters posts, it seems appropriate to cover all of the Masters that we saw and heard in Knoxville in one big post.

We established in our last post that while an exciting and creative performer, Shabaka Hutchings' music isn't jazz but a mixture of rock and EDM played on a saxophone.  This brings up the question, though - what is jazz? - and the next band we saw after Hutchings' The Comet Is Coming was a new quartet that debuted at the festival, but not only did they not answer the question but they blurred the lines defining jazz even more.

ABSÎNT (Aurora Nealand, Bill Frisell, Tim Berne and David Torn)



Just like with the Japanese bands that we heard on Thursday, we had absolutely no idea what to expect from Absînt until they played the first notes of the first song of their set.  This was a jazz supergroup of sorts - renowned and eclectic jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, avant outsider musicians David Torn (guitar) and Tim Berne (sax), and New Orleans provocateur Aurora Nealand.  Each has their own style and as soon as they started, we realized that each was going to play in that own style of theirs, without regard for the others.  In other words, the two guitarists were improvising away without any apparent attempt to sync with the other, Tim Berne was laying atonal sax screeches and skronk over, under, and around the two guitars, and Aurora Nealand was doing whatever it was that she was doing, which we couldn't tell because she sat on the floor for the entire performance and given that we arrived late and were at the back of the standing crowd, we couldn't see what it was that she was doing.  With no drummer or bass to provide rhythm, the music just honked and beeped in seeming random time.

This was as free as "free jazz" gets, without any constraint by melody, rhythm, tone, mode, structure, or anything.  Just four musicians, randomly playing random sounds, all independently of the others. This is nothing new to jazz - The Art Ensemble of Chicago has been doing this for decades.   The entire set was one long improvisation - without structure or composition, there was no way for a "song" to start or stop, so the performers just kept jamming until the time ran out.

To be honest, it got tiring after  a while.  We've talked about the mind's sequential and the veridical modes of processing music before (the veridical enjoys hearing what's familiar and known, and the sequential likes finding the patterns in sound that makes it "music").  But there was nothing familiar played for the veridical to groove on, and the sequential got frustrated in trying to find anything that could be followed in the set.  With neither system firing, the set became something to endure more than something to enjoy.

The initial audience was a full house - the place was packed - mostly by what we assume were Bill Frisell fans.  Frisell played a lot of sets at this year's Big Ears with a lot of different ensembles, and unfortunately this is the only one we caught, but we were told the rooms were packed at every set he played.  However, this kind of dissonant free jazz is not what Frisell is known for or what his audience expected to see, and many of them walked out throughout the set.  At the beginning of the set, we were all the way in the back, but as the audience thinned out we were able to move our way  up, and by the end of the set, we were like three rows of standing people back.  Still couldn't see Aurora, though.

For what it's worth, Bill Frisell looked lost for much of the set, meekly strumming a single chord over and over while everyone else was improving all around him.  It appeared like he was looking for a point to jump in and do something, anything, but couldn't find a seam in the wall of sound being produced by the others.

So, was this jazz?  If we used the definition that we applied to Shabaka Hutchings - improvised music to a syncopated beat - it wasn't; there was no beat at all, much less syncopated (although there was mucho improv).  Yet, we still consider this jazz, at least the outer fringes of free jazz, even though it doesn't meet our definition of the word "jazz," but we don't consider Shabaka Hutchings' music to be jazz. Why the double standard?  Our only guess is that with some effort we can fit Shabaka's music into other categories, "rock" or "EDM," but we have nowhere else to put Absînt, so we might as well leave it under "jazz."

But who needs labels anyway?

Fire!



Later that day, after hearing the vocal chorale Roomful of Teeth and a couple  of electronic artists (more about all of them in a later post), we saw Matts Gustafsson's band, Fire!  Gustafsson's set at last year's Big Ears with the electronic musician Four Tet was not only the highlight of that festival, it was one of the best sets of live music we've ever experienced.  There was no way we were going to miss this set, even if it did start at midnight at the end of a very long day of music.

We were not disappointed.  Gustafsson's playing was just as energetic and just as exciting as last year's set, and while nothing may ever top that collab with Four Tet, this year's set with Fire! left one wanting nothing.  For an idea of what it was like, imagine being sung a lullaby by a bull elephant that can periodically go into full must at random moments.  Here, let us show you:


The set was an uplifting and almost spiritual experience, a cathartic release not unlike screaming into gale-force winds. At the end of the 60-minute set, the audience was all smiles and bro-hugs, all of us having experienced a communal release of pure endorphins.

Is it jazz or not?  Who cares?  At one point, Gustafsson referred to it on stage as "this Swedish bullshit music," so apparently he's not hung up on labels.

Wadada Leo Smith



Among his many other accomplishments, trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith recorded an album in 1978 called Divine  Love with one of the greatest trumpet triumvirates ever assembled - Kenny Wheeler, the Art Ensemble's Lester Bowie, and Wadada himself.  Bowie and Wheeler have since passed, but at Big Ears, Wadada attempted to perform the album with surviving members Bobby Naughton on vibraphone and Dwight Andrews on woodwinds.

"Attempted."  Something clearly went wrong with the performance.  The trio started off playing some abstract but still accessible free jazz, but Wadada's single trumpet couldn't play all the parts for the three trumpets on the LP.  At one point, it seemed he wanted to explain something to the audience, but none of the microphones on stage worked, so he just quit trying.  A little later, a tape kicked on of the other two trumpeters dueting, but the trio on stage just stood there doing nothing while the tape played.  We think (but we don't know) that the intended concept was for the trio to play on stage to the accompaniment of the session tapes of the other two trumpeters, but the tapes didn't come on when they were supposed to, and then later came on when no one on stage expected them.  After about 20 minutes and with no explanation or even a "goodbye,"  the band simply walked off stage and the house lights came on.  Show's over, folks.  Have a good night.

We don't blame Wadada for the set.  We think (but again we don't know) that some off-stage technician was supposed to switch on the tape at the appropriate point in the song, which would have been way cool - a live band of seasoned Masters playing on stage along with the taped performances of their departed brothers.  But the tech was either unfamiliar with the music or simply didn't recognize the cue in the free jazz of the first set, and threw a monkey wrench into the whole thing.  Wadada wanted to explain what was wrong but couldn't find a working mic, and finally the band left in frustration - the magic just wasn't happening for them that night.  Bummer.

Here's what it could have/should have sounded like:



Well, we were planning of discussing three other Master's sets in this post, but this whole thing is rambling on longer than we anticipated and probably past your patience to read.   We'll wrap it up here and talk about Masters old (Carla Bley), new (Makaya McCraven) and in between (Nik Bärtsch) in another post at another time.

There's nothing we can do about it - this is all going to take a while.

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