The Human Jukebox and the Unfamiliar

I went to a concert that was a first for me last night - a mainstream stadium pop concert. Paul Simon played at the O2 arena in Dublin and my good friend and great percussionist Jamey Haddad was playing in the band and comped me.

I should say at the outset here that I have absolutely no feeling for pop or rock music whatsoever – of almost any type. Somehow (probably because of my childhood, surrounded by jazz and classical), pop music passed me by. In my late teens I had a fleeting interest in Cream, and then progressive rock for a while (King Crimson mostly), but otherwise no interest, and certainly nothing that lasted. Between cassettes, LPs, CDs and Mp3s, I have over 3000 recordings in my home and not one of them is a pop or rock music recording. It does nothing for me and even the guys that a lot of jazz guys like – Sting, Bowie etc etc – leave me cold.

I do like the Beatles and admire their craft and the originality. And, (much to the surprise of many people who know me when they find out), I also like Burt Bacharach, whom I consider to be a real craftsman with a very original and identifiable style. But otherwise pop music does nothing for me. It’s not a value judgement (though sometimes it is – Justin Bieber! Lady GaGa!), it’s just personal. Pop music has no meaning in my life, doesn’t remind me of my youth, doesn’t connect me to people or places or things etc. etc. in the way that it does most people.

So, given my background and lack of empathy with all things pop and rock, it was hardly surpassing that this was my first time at a concert on this scale  - 14,000 people packed into the venue, seat prices starting at €56 rising to over €150 for the seat I was in, close to the front of the stage. And I must say I found the whole thing to be very interesting - I felt dispassionate, (if admiring of the professionalism and skill of the musicians), about the music, but interested in the vibe and general demeanor of everyone.

First of all it has to be said that Simon surrounds himself with very good musicians, most of whom play more than one instrument very well. Secondly it has to be said he does put on a very good show - the pieces go seamlessly between each other and clearly a lot of thought is given to pacing and making sure the show keeps rolling along. And it's a long show too - over two and a half hours without a break, and Simon has great energy and stamina which belies his 70 years. He's also a total pro - never slips up once, sings both in tune and pretty strongly for the whole concert. His only mis-step is when he occasionally breaks out some ill-judged dance moves, reminding one of an embarrassing elderly relative doing some 'hip' dancing at a wedding........

The music itself is a parade of his hits spanning almost 50 years, and of course the audience lapped it up. I was fairly familiar with about half of the pieces, less familiar with others, and totally unfamiliar with  the rest. In the first section of the concert, (before the African contingent arrives for the 'Gracelands' section), I'm struck by the amount of Americana in the music - overtones of country music, Cajun, blues etc. Simon seems to use all of these influences as backdrops to his songs, just as he does with the African music in the latter part of the concert.

Again, though I'm impressed by the professionalism, I'm unmoved by the music, but quite honestly, I was never expecting to get into it, and as someone with no familiarity or empathy for this kind of music, I'm not in any position to say whether this was a good performance by Simon's standards or not. I suspect, that as someone who has spent so much time at the top of his end of the business, he delivers a similar professionally well paced show every night.

But in my lack of response to the music, I was clearly in a minority of one in the auditorium - the audience adored it, cheering the opening bars of every familiar tune, singing along at certain points, and rushing the stage at the end when the opening chords of 'You Can Call Me Al' break out. But it's all quite sedate stage rushing, as the audience age profile is not one that would encourage any kind of physical activity that might create a need for a hip replacement after the gig......

And as I watched the adoration of Simon and the songs, I realized again, (and this is really the point of this blog), that what 99% of people want is something they know, and preferably something they can sing along to. What they don't want is the unfamiliar. The audience may all have loved Paul Simon, but if he had gone out there last night and played a whole evening of new music they probably would have rushed the stage. What most audiences want from a  concert, ultimately, is a human jukebox - someone who will regurgitate the hits, and give everyone a good night out and a sing-along. And there's nothing wrong with that.

But where does that leave those of us whose milieu is improvised music? In a tiny minority, that's where. One thing I realized a while ago, is that most people, as far as music is concerned at least, don't really like improvisation. They like what they know, not what they don't know. In most music performances audiences want a confirmation of what they like, a parade of familiarity - it's comforting and often celebratory, particularly so when (like the Simon concert I was at), it's experienced with a large crowd of others, all of whom are equally enamored of the music on display. But in improvised music, the audience is invited to participate in the unfamiliar, to experience the process of music creation rather than be presented with a comfortingly familiar result.

It should be noted that this love of the familiar is not confined to lovers of pop music, it's part and parcel of classical music too (where not even one note can be changed by the performer), and is not unknown among jazz fans. Jazz fans, and musicians, can also make demands of performers that they conform to some agreed norm that reinforces the audience members understanding of what jazz is. The comfort of the familiar is a requirement of some jazz listeners too -  improvised music doesn't always have the automatic support in the jazz community that one would imagine

Improvised music will never have the support and popularity that non-improvised music attracts, but it has qualities too that non-improvised music will never have. Last night at Paul Simon's gig everything was as carefully choreographed as any classical performance, there was no room for the spontaneous creative input of the musicians - everything was at the service of Paul Simon's songs and the requirement of the audience to hear the familiar. And I missed the creative input of the musicians, the sense that anything could happen at anytime, which is a quality I find tremendously attractive in music. At a pop or classical concert, you will never experience that moment where you know something has happened that never happened before and will never happen again in that precise way. This is the unique quality of improvised music, for both musician and listener, and has tremendous value, even if most of the 14,000 people in the O2 arena last night wouldn't have thanked anyone for it had it happened.

The human jukebox may be a comforting place to be for both performer and listener, but it's a place where you will never experience anything like this........

More Thoughts on Jazz Education, Art, Craft, and Entitlement

(Dave Liebman speaking to students and teachers at the IASJ Meeting in Graz)

Some recent thoughts on jazz education, prompted by attending the 2012 IASJ Meeting

I’ve spent the past week at the International Association of Schools of Jazz annual meeting in Graz in Austria. I’ve written before about what goes on at the IASJ meetings and what a buzz it is, and this year was no exception. Last year it was in Brazil, and this year in Austria so naturally the vibe of the location was quite different, but the camaraderie of the musicians – teachers and students alike – was as strong as ever. At a time when institutionalised jazz education as an idea is again under scrutiny, it was interesting and thought provoking to be part of this meeting and once again my feelings on the positive benefits of jazz education were both confirmed and reinforced.

I attended the meeting that saw the foundation of the IASJ  - an organization which was the idea of the Artistic Director Dave Liebman – in 1989, and have attended 20 of the 22 meetings so far. Being part of the IASJ was invaluable to our school in Dublin, which at the time of the foundation of the IASJ, was just beginning to take its first steps towards putting in place some fulltime jazz programmes, which culminated in us offering a BA in Jazz Performance, and a 2-year fulltime programme with transferring credits in Berklee College of Music in Boston. Being part of the IASJ and attending the meetings gave me an insight into what was involved in the setting up and running of a real jazz programme, the kind of subjects which should be covered, how the materials were most effectively taught, and the pedagogical philosophy underpinning the teaching of jazz. The meetings themselves, in which teachers and students from all over the world come together to play, hang, and discuss music, are fantastic giving everyone involved a great fillip and a chance to meet their colleagues from all over the world.

During the meeting there are regular meetings between teachers and school administrators that discuss pedagogical issues  and current issues related to the teaching of jazz in institutions. Usually these meetings catch the zeitgeist of current concerns among the jazz community as it relates to education, and this year was no exception.

 (Outdoor student concert in Graz)

Art, Craft and 'The Gig'

This year there was much discussion of the employability, or otherwise, of graduating students from jazz programmes. In the US in particular, the financial practicality of undertaking a jazz education in an institution is definitely an issue – how can someone who spends more than $100,000 on their education have any hope of making that back? The situation is somewhat different in Europe in that education is much cheaper so the ratio of education cost to possibilities of recouping that cost is more realistic. But it’s tough for jazz musicians in Europe as well and questions of how and what jazz schools should be teaching are both timely and apposite.

But despite agreeing with the principal of helping students to equip themselves with the tools to operate as professional musicians (music business courses, technology courses, entrepreneurship courses etc.) I feel we are in danger of losing sight of what it is that we (high level jazz schools) do best – teach the art and craft of playing improvised music. The economic situation being what is, jazz schools are under more threat than ever before from both market forces, and pressure, (from the school authorities themselves) to respond to market forces. The response to this has in my opinion, begun to become skewed in that I notice a trend to almost apologise for teaching jazz, and a trend towards viewing the business aspects of the programme as being the most valuable thing you can teach.  

But the reality is that many non-jazz schools offer music business and technology courses, and the vast majority of private music schools focus on the more commercial and business related aspects of music education.  For example, here in Dublin my school is the only one that offers full time jazz education and high level training in non-classical music performance. If we were to change our focus to offer separate courses in music business, music technology or writing for Gaming, then we’d immediately be in competition with at least 10 other schools in the Dublin area alone.

It’s the high level performance training that set jazz schools apart from all the other music schools. Only classical conservatoires offer similar high level performance training, and they are far more specialised than jazz schools, training musicians who are unsuited to almost any other form of musical employment other than classical.

 (Final student concert at the IASJ Meeting Graz)

I’m a firm believer in the teaching of craft despite the constant decrying of the amount of musicians being turned out by jazz schools. As far as the (incredibly inaccurate) received wisdom goes, jazz schools are anti-creativity and have a negative effect on the jazz scene. Bullshit. Jazz schools are, in my opinion, like Architecture schools – they teach a high level craft in a milieu which is also artistic. In architecture, most architects spend their professional lives designing functional buildings, some of which will be artistic, some less so. Occasionally brilliant architects will appear and their creations definitely occupy the artistic realm. But the architecture schools are not responsible for which of their students are more creative and artistic. All they can do  – is teach the craft of architecture, teach and show the history and work of great  architecture, and hopefully teach and inspire a new generation of great architects. But even if an architect only ends up designing a post office, they still need the craft level to make sure that the ceiling doesn’t come down on the head of a customer!

Similarly jazz schools should teach the craft of jazz (and related musics  as desired), introduce the students to the rich creative history of the music, encourage students towards creative goals and provide them with an environment in which they can fully benefit from both the knowledge and experience of the teachers and the creative energy of their fellow students.  A school that teaches high level craft, encourages creativity and supports a strong musical community is something to be proud of, not something to be slightly ashamed of just because some jazz critics, who don’t know their arse from their elbow, make brainless pronunciations on the negative impact of jazz schools.

 (Countryside outside Graz)

Anyone who attended the last IASJ meeting (or any jazz camp, workshop, summer school or similar) would attest to the happiness and excitement of the young musicians who attended, and could attest to the high level playing skills displayed by all of them. How could this joy in playing together and high achievement in performance be a bad thing? Some critics say that only the most talented and creative should be educated – but who is going to choose who has the benefit of an education and who doesn’t? The critics? Jesus, the day that happens we might as well all pack up and go home…………

Entitlement..........

Another thing that was discussed at this meeting, (mostly informally among the teachers), was the sense of entitlement among many students these days…… There definitely seems to be a trend towards the idea that a student deserves a high grade regardless of the effort put in. There’s no doubt that in this time of instant gratification the connection between effort and reward is less understood than ever before. In a field like jazz, where there are no shortcuts to high level achievement, there is no substitute for hard work, single-mindedness, and dedication. But more and more, we in the schools are starting to see a greater unwillingness among some students to put in the flying hours necessary to become an international standard jazz musician. Yet we are facing demands from these same students for high grades which they clearly haven’t earned. A sign of the times I think….. I hasten to add that not all students are like this, but there’s definitely a growing trend in this direction.

And the delusions of some of these students about how the music world works is not helped by the attitudes of some teachers and administrators whose indulgence of students, regardless of achievement, are bound to feed into the idea that you can be half-hearted about your commitment to the music and yet achieve a high standard of achievement. I heard one administrator recently, (at a different meeting to the IASJ), say that our job was to ‘get out of the way of the students’. Really? If a student really wants teachers out of his or her way, then surely the best way would be not to come to the school in the first place? If a student comes to a school, they should be there for the following reasons:

1 To be in a community of musicians

2 To take part fully in the musical life of that community

3 To take all they can from the experience and knowledge of the school’s teachers

The school’s job is:

1 To provide a place where this community of musicians can flourish

2 To provide an environment where creativity, craft and high achievement is valued among both students and teachers

3 To give the students the benefit of the experience and knowledge of the teachers

I didn’t come through the jazz school system myself, yet I am completely a believer in the value of these schools. Of course they’re not perfect – in the same way that democracy has its flaws but is the best system we’ve got. The community of musicians around which musicians learnt their craft in previous times, doesn’t really exist any more. Until or unless something better comes along, the best way to get the information you need as an aspiring young jazz musician is to go to a good school and partake of the life there -  for a while at least.

Here's an example of what great things young musicians can do when given the kind of opportunities attending a jazz school can bring. This is a student concert from last year's IASJ meeting in Sao Paulo

Barry Donohue's 'Anti-Matter' at the IASJ... by NewparkMusic

A Week in India with George and Carlos

An account of our recent trip to Mumbai and Delhi and some thoughts thereon

Being awoken by the Muezzin’s call to prayer at 5.30 am suggests to my sleep-drugged mind that I’m in a different place. Waking up several hours later to see a hawk fly past my window in the hot sunlight confirms it. I’m in Mumbai, for the first time in fifteen years, with my good friends and great musicians George Kontrafouris and Carlos Ezequiel. This my sixth time in India, and it’s one of my favourite places on earth – the food, the people, the colour, the intensity, the sheer difference of it, make it an extraordinary place to visit, and I’m always glad to be back.

Apart from anything else, India always affords one the kind of good natured, yet baffling conversations that a seemingly simple request can generate. Like this morning when I went into the hotel coffee shop to get a coffee and something sweet.

Waiter: Good morning sir

Me: Good morning – could I have a coffee and something sweet – anything.

Waiter: A coffee sir?

Me: Yes, a coffee – and something sweet to go with it

Waiter: A sweet coffee sir?

Me: No, a coffee, and something like a biscuit or a cake or something

Waiter: Ah – a coffee with sugar sir!

Me: No, a coffee and something sweet to go with it

Waiter: Just a moment sir – (consulting a folder) what is your room number?

Me: 405

Waiter: But there is no booking for lunch for 405 sir

Me: I don’t want lunch, just a coffee and something sweet to go with it

Waiter: (With a baffled expression….) Just a moment sir.

He goes off and comes back with three more people, all consult in Hindi while looking at booking folder

2nd Waiter: You want lunch sir?

And off we go again…………

Eventually it gets sorted out and a coffee and some biscuits are produced, but every time I’ve been in India I get involved in these kinds of conversations regarding seemingly simple things, but in which both sided become increasingly baffled.

Having all made long journeys to get here, we take it easy on the first day, rest a lot and then go and see the Gateway of India, Mumbai’s famous monument and tourist trap, braving the touts, admiring the sea view and watching the throngs of happy Indians enjoying their Sunday off. The day finishes satisfactorily with a visit to a renowned North Indian restaurant for expensive, (by Indian standards), but delicious food.



The next day’s plan to head out on a trio excursion is stymied by George being sick. Not very sick but sick enough to make him a non-starter for the trip so Carlos and I go on a truncated version, starting with the extraordinary Mumbai Railway Station, built by the British and showing every sign of Victorian confidence in Queen and Empire. It’s a large building, and inside, a fascinating throng move endlessly through the station, each person intent on their own mission, but the whole looking like some giant organism, eddying and flowing to and fro. All main railways stations are hives of activity, but Indian ones are even more so – India Rail employs 1.3 million employees making them the one of the largest employers of human beings in the world. Whole support systems spring up around the stations, including families who live there. It’s an extraordinary scene – chaotic yet ordered.

To walk around the city is to be reminded again and again that the words ‘health and safety’ do not mean much to Indian society at large. Walking out on the street you can witness dozens of acts of hair-raising recklessness within minutes. Cars make U-turns with no warning, bicycles dash between buses and trucks, pedestrians walk straight into oncoming traffic, pillion passengers on motor scooters carry huge unsafe loads, families of 5 squeeze onto a Honda 50, people in cars balance two children on their knees in the front seat. To witness street life in Mumbai, (or pretty much any Indian city) is to watch a seething maelstrom of potential accidents.

And accidents DO happen – all the time. Yet the newspapers seem much more interested in the antics of teenagers, and the machinations of the Pakistanis than they do on the everyday carnage on the streets. For example, while I was in Mumbai the papers were full of an incident in which 6 teenagers crashed their car and one was killed. There followed four days of newspaper articles, much hand-wringing over the state of the nation’s youth, police promises to crackdown on bars selling alcohol etc. – yet in the same newspaper there was an article about the railways in which it was casually mentioned that 195 people had been killed on Mumbai’s railway network in January and February. 195 people killed in 8 weeks! That’s three per day…….



Over 1500 people were killed on Mumbai’s railways last year (mostly run over on the tracks), and yet the media were much more interested in this one car crash in which one person had been killed. Why? Probably because most of the people who died on the railways were poor and the teenagers were from the burgeoning middle class. But any society that accepts that level of carnage on its rail networks is one in which the idea of personal safety is not a priority.

I must admit that on one level I enjoy the madness on the streets – it’s street theatre writ large, you can stand on any street corner and see something amazing, startling and visibly arresting at any time. On the other hand there’s no doubt that this chaotic panorama that give Indian cities their unique visual impact, does come at a great cost to many people.

Carlos and I leave the railway station, take a wrong turn and instead of gazing at Mumbai’s Victorian architectural heritage, end up instead in a seething street market in Mohammed Ali Road, a Muslim area of the city. Although it presents us with another amazing tableau of Indian city life, the cacophony of car horns, dust, 35 degree heat, and sheer press of humanity drives us to seek air-conditioned shelter in a local restaurant where I have a refreshing dish of Khir (cold rice pudding), washed down with a Coke. We then take a taxi down to the Victorian section of the city, have a look around have a brief lunch and head back to the hotel. Fortunately George has now recovered and we eat in an excellent Hyderabadi restaurant attached to the hotel. Hyderabadi food should be much better known in the west than it is. In Europe and the US Indian restaurants are dominated by the same North Indian staples, which though good, don’t come close to representing the culinary diversity of India. Hyderabadi food is rich, but generally spicier than North Indian food, and with all kinds of different dishes which were developed during the Nizam period.

The next day, after a morning trip to Chowpatty Beach, we undertake the first performance at the Blue Frog. The Blue Frog is a very modern club that is breaking new musical ground in India – it’s very well equipped and has a lot of western music - mostly various offshoots of modern pop music, hip-hop, electronica etc. – 7 nights a week. Emmanuelle, the artistic director, once worked in Dublin for the Improvised Music Company, and I’d used that contact to make the initial connection. Emmanuelle made it clear to me at the beginning of our discussions that there was no point in playing acoustic jazz for a quiet listening audience there, since this audience didn’t really exist in India. So we arranged a programme of more funk oriented music which was still fun to play, but which we hoped would appeal more to local tastes.


(The Blue Frog, Mumbai)

The gear was fine, though Carlos had to re-skin the drums, and the sound guys were very good – they got a good sound very quickly, if only all sound engineers were like that……..


So, decent gear, good sound, appropriate music everything was set for a fun gig that night, but…………. Unfortunately the audience was terrible! There was a decent crowd of people in, but they had absolutely no interest in the music whatsoever, treated the whole event as a social evening, played with their iPhones, talked incessantly and some even stood with their backs to us. Each piece was greeted with lukewarm applause, some people seemed startled by the applause, and looked over their shoulders to see what was being applauded, as if surprised that the music wasn’t just coming from a hi-fi system.

I hadn’t expected much in the way of audience appreciation – I know jazz is an unknown quantity in India – but I must admit to feeling irritated by the audience. They’d paid a lot of money by Indian standards to come into the gig and no doubt felt they were cool and hip people by virtue of being in a place like the Blue Frog, but in the end their complete lack of appreciation for the music belied their self-bestowed hipness. I’m not saying that anyone who doesn’t like our music is unhip per se, but what bothered me wasn’t that they didn’t like the music, it was because they clearly had no interest in ANY music – it fulfilled that dreaded ‘lifestyle’ category, along with the iPhones and designer sunglasses and designer clothes. Anybody could have been up there on the stage – good or bad they would have all got the same reaction, whether they played well or not.

But we had fun playing for ourselves at least, and the Blue Frog people looked after us very well and that’s always nice. The next morning we set off for Delhi, for the second gig.


(At the Blue Frog, Delhi)

Delhi’s traffic seems almost worse than Mumbai’s , hard though that is to believe, and the hotel was on the edge of a busy road with traffic roaring past. But the hotel itself was very nice, rooms were great and the food in it was great. I really thought we’d found a gem of a place and made a mental note of it for future reference and trips to Delhi. I was later to be sadly disillusioned about the place, but for now we were very happy to be there.

Off to soundcheck at the Delhi branch of the Blue Frog, and it’s a similar looking place, with again very good equipment and nice and efficient people running the place. Carlos did a bit of surgery on the drums (as in taking the foam padding out of the bass drum so he could get a sound out of it), George figured out the idiosyncrasies of the keyboard, and I was very happy with a Markbass stack – I’d been using Markbass amps at home and to get one here was a great bonus.

The gig that night was a lot better, there were more musicians there and the audience was far more attentive, and consequently we played better too. We chatted afterwards to several musicians had a post-gig drink and went back to the hotel very satisfied with ourselves.


(George at the Red Fort)

We had a day off the next day and we filled it by paying a visit to the Red Fort – a Moghul Palace, still in great condition – a trip to Chandni Chowk, the extraordinary market in Old Delhi, and finally a visit to the Nizamuddin Dagar, a Sufi shrine.

The Red Fort was impressive, although I always find that once you’ve gaped at the huge and beautiful red sandstone walls, its a bit lifeless , and there’s not a lot more to see. Chandni Chowk on the other hand is bursting with things to see – cycle rickshaw guys carrying impossible loads, hawkers shouting and importuning, food sellers on the side of the street doing a roaring trade in Jallebis and Puris, shops selling everything from Pashminas to rifles, Sikh temples and mosque etc. etc. – all human life is there, and I always go to the Chowk every time I visit Delhi.

Here's a few minutes of footage from the Chowk, to give you a flavour of the scene......



We finish with a visit to the Nizamuddin Dargah, a famous shrine of a Sufi saint where the faithful come to pray and ask the saint to intercede on their behalf. On Thursdays, at sunset, the Qawallis – a group of singers and musicians who sing at these shrines, (the most famous of which would be the late great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) – sing their devotional songs beside the tomb of the saint and we were determined to see this. I’d seen Qawalli music before but always in concert halls, never in its proper setting.















(Qawalli Singers at the Nizamuddin Dargah)


The scene was extraordinary – thousands of people, many dressed in colourful garb, from many parts of the Muslim world, all worshipping at the shrine, but also buying food, buying offerings for the saint’s tomb, and surrounding the Qawalls as they sing their devotional songs. There’s a huge crush and constant movement. From a musical point of view (or at least my musical point of view) it’s a disappointment in that the noise of the crowd is so great, I can’t hear the musicians well at all. But although it’s disappointing musically, the scene itself is fantastic – it really felt like a privilege to see it.

Unfortunately the evening was to end on a sour note – I had my pocket picked on the way out and had my wallet taken…….. We were putting on our shoes and there was a small group of boys poking at us and begging, and it was in this melee that they managed to take the wallet. I realized immediately it was gone, but it was too late to do anything about it. We went back to the hotel to cancel my credit cards when we went back to the hotel to cancel the cards etc. the desk clerk wouldn't give me a key card to get back into my room until we paid him 300 rupees as a 'lost card charge'. The fact that I'd been robbed and had no money didn't make any difference to him, so I had to borrow the money just in order to get back into my room. That hotel is very nice, lovely rooms etc. - but I couldn't believe the lack of sympathy and customer service they showed in dealing with this. So beware this hotel – it looks good, but the management are a bunch of grasping sods. The name of the hotel is Saket27.

But although this was a bad way to end the trip, the whole thing was another great Indian adventure. India never lets you down – it’s always spectacular, and extreme, and intriguing, and annoying, and exasperating, and hilarious, and thought-provoking and many more things. This was my 6th time there – can’t wait for the 7th!


(The Last Supper!)

What is Your Music For?

In an interview I saw with him, the great Sufi singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, when asked how important the audience was, replied (and I’m paraphrasing here), that since he (Nusrat) needed people to share his music with, the audience was important. But, he added, he principally sang to ‘the singer inside myself – because if I feel he can hear me, then ultimately the listeners will too’

I thought of this wonderfully insightful comment recently when once again the whole question of who we’re playing for – the audience or ourselves – came up via an interview with Greg Osby where Greg was making the point that we need to stop playing for ourselves, (or for other musicians), and play for the audience. In the current economical and musical climate, and when we see Robert Glasper and Esperanza Spalding doing so well, it’s hardly surprising that these kinds of questions would rise to the surface again. Should we be playing for an elite few aficionados, or should we be tailoring our music in order for it to connect with more people?

For me, it depends on what you see your music as being for. If you see your music as functional – i.e. being used for a specific purpose which is not necessarily connected to the music itself – for example a wedding, or providing background music for a corporate event – then clearly you must tailor your music to suit the public. In all of these cases your music has a functional role, a predetermined slot into which it must be fitted. And as a musician you are being paid to fulfil that role, so the contract is clear: successfully fulfil the role and receive X amount of money in return.



The vast majority of the music played in the world is functional – and always has been. Down through the ages, the musician has played a functional role – Troubador, accompanist to rights of passage, dance music provider, herald of sporting events etc.If you see your music as functional, and your role as primarily functional, then you must tailor your music to suit the event and the audience.

There is however another reason to play music – to express an idea, or to express an aspect of the personality or emotions of the performer. This is a very different musical philosophy to that required of the functional musician. In this, the performer (or composer), rather than fulfilling a preordained role, is trying to express something of him or herself through the medium of music. In order to do this you need ultimately to play for yourself first and the audience second. Not through any selfishness or self-indulgence, but because it’s only by being honest with and to yourself, that you can truly be honest to and with the audience. If you don’t believe in your own music – and believe in it absolutely – then how can you expect anyone else to? You’ve got to absolutely believe in your music and do everything you can to express that belief in your music (such as developing the tools for expression through practice and technique), before presenting it to a listening public. If you’re not getting off on it, then why should anyone else?

Greg seems to suggest that from now on he will be tailoring his music to suit what he believes the audience will enjoy. But will he still believe in the music as deeply as he did before effecting this change? If so, fair enough. But again, if so, then why wouldn’t his own artistic instinct have taken him in this direction before now? My own feeling on Greg’s music is that he is a real individual, a distinctive voice, who has made a fantastic contribution to creative music over the past 25 years. I can’t help feeling that if, when he was starting out, and he’d thought of audience first, and his own instincts second, that we wouldn’t have heard the musical riches that he has given us. His expression of his own unique personality through music is what makes his contribution so valuable – not whether huge numbers of people liked it or not.



In the end, with this argument, we are dealing with the difference between putting art and creativity first, or functionality and accessibility first. And this is not about art = good and functionality = bad, it is just a recognition of the difference between the two. Each has their role to play in music. All I’m saying is that if your primary goal is to express yourself through music, then you’ve got to be honest about it. If what you love and do well is play funk or hip hop, then this is what you should be presenting to an audience. If what you love and do well is play contemporary improvised music, then this is what you should be presenting. Any deviation from honesty will never be as effective. Jazz musicians often think they’re such good players that they can play anything well – which is simply not true. There have been so many dreadful attempts by jazz musicians to play what they see as more commercial music, they think they can intellectually and technically reproduce what others do by instinct, but this approach is always doomed. The music is never good since it’s not really played with any conviction. The players don’t believe in the music itself, they just believe that audience will like it. Which is very insulting to the audience, since the players are playing down to them.

And if you’re playing creative music, but your concerns are primarily for the audience and what they might like, what do you really know about them? How can you go into a room and know what the expectations, history, demeanour, and attitude of 200 strangers is? How can you know what kind of day they’ve had? Whether they like your music, or hate your music? Whether they're there because they read about you in the paper, because their friends dragged them along, or because they know every recording you’ve ever made? You can’t know any of that stuff. All you can do is be honest – play the music YOU believe in to the best of your ability and try and share something with the audience.

I believe that if you’re a creative musician, and you start to tinker with your music to fulfil what you believe are the expectations of others, then there is no way of avoiding producing worse music than if you simply played what you believed in. If you want to be more popular then play functional music, but it’s misguided to think you can have one eye on your creativity and be counting the house with the other.......

Here’s Nusrat, doing what Parker did, what Armstrong did, what Coltrane did, what Miles did – singing to the singer inside himself



Addendum: Thinking about this again, there’s one other type of musician whose role is almost a genre of its own – being a classical musician. Interpreting the music of great composers, developing the huge technical skills required for this, and presenting it to a listening audience is a unique role for a musician. It’s not creative in the way that say Monk was creative, but at times the level of interpretation involved (on the part of soloists and conductors), does require a creative mind and approach, and musicians such as Gould, Horowitz, Menuhin, Richter and Perlman are among the greatest musicians in any genre.

Filesharing - The Reality

My recent diatribe against filesharing drew a mixed response, with some people, (nearly all musicians), being sympathetic to my stance, and others (nearly all not musicians), not. But for those who still think illegal filesharing is cool have a read of Ethan Iverson's post relating how Billy Hart's new album on ECM, which hasn't even been released yet, is already up on filesharing sites. What chance do we musicians have when we're faced with this kind of thing?

People might argue that the selling of music is finished, and a new way to distribute music must and will be found, but until such time as we the musicians agree to give our music away for free,the guys who upload this stuff are thieves and fences, and the people who download it are thieves.

F**k The Filesharing Websites (and their apologists.........)

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the internet and piracy and SOPA and government and big corporation collusion to censor the internet etc. And while quite frankly I don’t know the ins and outs of the whole SOPA thing, I must admit to a feeling of cynicism about a lot of the views expressed on behalf of, and in support of the file sharers.

I must say I still can’t see this illegal file sharing thing as anything other than thievery. In my opinion there’s a piece of convenient moral myopia going on regarding the illegal downloading of music (and films for that matter). In a weird parallel moral universe it seems to be that theft is not theft in so many people’s minds, simply because so many people are doing it. The kind of moral dancing on the head of a pin that people are doing to justify illegal downloading of other people’s property is quite frankly bullshit. It’s self-serving convenient bullshit that suits the people who are stealing the property so they don’t have to feel bad about themselves, or so that they don’t recognise themselves as being thieves.

And they are thieves.

All the arguments put forward in support of illegally downloading are self-serving at best. You cannot get away from the simple fact that the illegal downloading of files is theft.

If I own something and you take it from me without my knowledge or permission, you have stolen it. It’s that simple. The fact that I may be helpless to do anything about it, or not even know that you’ve stolen it doesn’t make it any more morally right on your part to take it. In fact it’s arguably even worse.

The fact that it’s possible for you to steal it doesn’t make it right either. If you saw a car door open, and the keys of the car were in the ignition, would you steal it? If the answer is yes, then there’s nothing more to talk about, but if the answer is no, but you would take an online music file illegally, then maybe you need to have a rummage around in your sense of morality and see what you come up with.

The fact that everybody does it doesn’t make it right either. If I have an item of value in my house and someone comes in and steals it, that person is a thief. If I have a thousand items of value in my house and a thousand people come in and each steal one of my items does that make each one of them any less of a thief than the solitary thief? Does the fact that so many of them are involved in the theft make each one of them less morally culpable?

At what point does the mass theft of someone’s property cease to become theft? How many pieces of music must be stolen by how many thieves before the thieves become no longer thieves, but people who just ‘love music’? Is there a tipping point? Is 100? 1000? 10,000? A million? At what point does morality change because of the numbers involved? Because I’m damned if I know!



Big Companies Are Fair Game

And this whole argument that goes - ‘this is just the big record companies trying to protect their big profits while exploiting their artists’ is, on moral grounds, also complete bullshit. So it’s OK now to steal from a big company because they are a big company? I have no love for Verve, or EMI, or Sony – none of these companies would give me the time of day if I were to try and get them to release my music. Are they, or have they been involved in the exploitation of their artists? In some cases, certainly. Does that make it OK to steal their products? No!

If it’s OK to steal from Sony or Universal because they are a big company, then fuck it, let’s steal from Apple! Let’s steal iPads and Powerbooks and iPhones. Apple are a big company, (they recently announced $6 billion profit on sales of $28 billion), they’ve been allegedly involved in dubious work practices with their workers in China, and they’re interested in protecting their profits. So by the logic of the argument used regarding stealing from big record and media companies, it should be OK to steal from Apple too – right?

This ‘big companies are fair game for theft’ argument is unsustainable from any standpoint other than self-serving hypocrisy. The thing that bothers me the most about all of this is that there seems to have been some kind of moral bypass brought into being. Nobody has yet managed to explain to me how illegally taking somebody else’s property is not theft. Perhaps, in the case of music and film downloading, it’s because the tracks or movies themselves have no physical manifestation – there’s nothing you can hold in your hand unless you burn it to a CD or DVD. Perhaps if the music or film were a physical entity people would be less likely to steal them, or , it might be more accurate to say, people would be less able to ignore the fact that they were stealing them. Because it takes only the smallest amount of reflection to see that illegal downloading of copyright material is theft.

It doesn’t suit most people to admit that, because you know what? Then they’d have to pay for music!! The horror! And you know what else? How could they possibly afford to put 3000 tunes on their iPods if they had to pay the people that produced the music? I mean – is it fair that all these listeners should have to pay for the pleasure they receive from this music? Is it fair that the people who actually created the music and/or paid for the cost of producing it should be demanding some small payment from the people who use this music for pleasure? The nerve of these musicians and film makers – demanding money for the use of their work! How selfish can you be!?




The Candy Bar Comparison

Someone recently said that legally buying a track on iTunes costs less than a candy bar, and a candy bar only lasts 5 minutes. Yet people will happily pay out the money for a candy bar (and most people would never contemplate stealing a candy bar....), but they balk at the idea of paying for a piece of music that will potentially give them endless pleasure. How did we arrive at this point where music, films, software – all the products of creative minds – are items that people not only will happily take without permission, but will actually resent the idea of having to pay for? I’ve noticed that when you ask people if they’ve paid for the music/film/software they’re playing/watching/using, they’ll look at you like you’re crazy, or even become indignant at the very idea of being asked to pay for these items.

I’m not coming at this from a holier-than-thou perspective – my own feelings on intellectual property is that it should be the property of the person who produces it, but I’m not a great believer, for example, in this intellectual property then passing on to the descendants of the original artist, so they can make money out of it, despite having no hand act or part in the production of it. If someone copies a recording from a long dead artist it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. It’s still illegal, but morally, (in my opinion, and I accept that others may differ), it’s in a completely different category to stealing from the living artist who’s trying to make a living from his or her art. Have I ever been given a recording of something by a living artist that I haven’t paid for? Occasionally, yes I have – but in general I will always try to buy the recording in order to support the artist. And this is especially true if I admire their music. And at least I’m not trying to fool myself – I know it was wrong to have taken it, and in general I steer clear of this stuff. It doesn’t feel right at all. I have never deliberately illegally downloaded a music track or a film – and I never will.

The worst thing about the free-for-all of music downloading is that in the end, the biggest victims of this are not the Lady Ga Ga’s or the REM’s or suchlike, but the musicians who are trying to exist on the margins. In jazz it was always difficult to make small record labels work economically – now it’s impossible. Small independent jazz labels are dropping like flies – the return on any investment in the music is so small that it’s not worth doing any more. That’s if you get any return at all. The few labels left will make impossible demands of you. Recently I had a recording of mine turned down by a European jazz label, despite the fact that it featured John Abercrombie, and the owner really liked the music. The reason he chose to go with a different artist was because that artist had given him the publishing rights to the music on his CD. That’s how desperate people are to get their music on CD – they’ll give away the publishing rights to the label.



Stealing From Our Heroes

There has always been precious little profit in making jazz CDs but whatever was there before has now disappeared thanks in no small part to file sharing. Young jazz fans, (and most young people in general), don’t seem to believe in paying for music any more. They’ve got used to acquiring music for nothing and see no reason why they should pay for a commodity they see as being their entitlement. I find this illegal sharing particularly baffling in the case of young aspirant jazz musicians. These are people who allegedly revere their heroes, yet see no contradiction in stealing from them.... If there are any Kurt Rosenwinkel or Brad Melhdau devotees reading this, I ask you – have you ever copied a track from a commercially available CD of Brad’s or Kurt’s for free? If the answer is yes, then how do you justify stealing from someone whom you regard as a musical hero and an inspiration? For every CD or track legally sold, these guys (and any artist) will get some kind of return – even if it’s only in the form of the company agreeing to release another recording. Conversely, for every track illegally copied or downloaded, these same people will not only get nothing but will find it more difficult to get recordings made in the future.

If you understand that even your small contribution could impact negatively or positively on your musical heroes, surely you’d want to be on the positive side? And let’s face it, it’s not as if musicians aren’t already giving away huge amounts of music for free anyway. Everybody has free downloads on their websites – so would it kill the rest of you to pay for the small amount of stuff that these artists are trying to sell in order to make a living? Is that too much too ask?

A student of mine recently sent me an email and asked me if I could send him a copy of my rhythm book as a PDF and mp3........ I didn’t even ask if he was looking for it for free (probably because I didn’t want to hear the answer....), but I can imagine what would happen once I started emailing the book and accompanying recording in those formats. That would be the end of whatever small sales I have.

And these are musicians who hope to be in the professional world in a short time. If even they don’t see the damage that illegal copying and downloading is doing, then what hope for the rest of the world? I guess they’ll understand soon enough...........

I’m a realist – I recognise that the genie is out of the bottle and can’t be put back. I don’t think the illegal downloaders realise the damage they are doing to the art forms they profess to love (why will anyone bother to record in the future when it just ends up costing you money? That’s a discussion for another day), and I don’t think it’s possible to change how they think. But although I know there’s not much to be done in terms of changing things, I’m damned if I’m going to go along with the apologists for thievery, and the mealy-mouthed crap spouted by supporters of ‘filesharing sites’. These people are running nothing less than online warehouses full of stolen goods – they are thieves and fences. So fuck Megadownload/upload, Pirate Bay and all of the other robbers posing as free spirits serving the needs of music and film lovers. We musicians may be screwed thanks to the likes of these guys, but it would be of no small satisfaction to me to see them in jail for what they’ve done.

A Musical Week in Paris

‘Paris! Paree! What pictures of gaiety those two cities conjure up..........’ As Spike Milligan said – and he was right, at least about the city conjuring many images. Paris is truly a great city and probably the city with the most stereotypes applied to it – but as is so often the case, there are kernels of truth in the Parisian stereotypes, it is a physically beautiful city, it has lots of art and culture in it, it is full of great food. I’ve always enjoyed being there and is probably the city I’ve visited the most over the years, both as a musician and also simply being a tourist. Recently I got an opportunity to spend a musical week there involving three different activities, teaching, rehearsing and performing – an opportunity I grabbed with both hands.

Sometimes things work out really well and this opportunity to visit Paris was one of those times – the great bassist and head of the jazz programme at the Paris Conservatoire Riccardo Del Fra contacted me and asked me to to come and teach at the Conservatoire for three days, and then shortly after that I got a call from the wonderful Sheila Pratshke, director of the Centre Culturel Irlandais asking me would I be interested in performing at the Jazzy Colors Festival in Paris towards the end of the same week. Taking advantage of being there for these two events, I managed to hook up a third, a long-discussed chance to try out some new music with three great French musicians – the altoist Stéphane Payen, the violinist Dominique Pifarély and the drummer Christophe Lavergne.

But first up was the three-day stint at the Conservatoire – I arrived on a Sunday and had a fantastic dinner courtesy of Riccardo at the Au Boeuf Couronné, one of the last restaurants remaining from the era when the area (which includes the Conservatoire) was the main meat market of Paris. Needless to say they specialise in meat, and equally needless to say they really know how to prepare and serve it. A wonderful meal with good company and a great, and very Parisian way to start the week.




And a fun three days with the students it was too. As one would expect from such a famous school, the playing level of the students is very high. I was working with students from both the BA and Masters programmes, and all of them were very good, all playing at an international professional level (at least technically), and a pleasure to work with. The nice thing about working with young musicians who play at this level is that you can really talk about interesting conceptual and aesthetic things instead of just technical issues. I was there principally to do my rhythm thing – talking about how to develop your rhythmic technique, your time, odd metres, metric modulation etc. etc. - the thing I’ve been doing for years now and am perhaps best known for. So we did some work on that and I gave them some exercises for working with rhythm that are both very simple and also very difficult to do well. There’s a big difference between simple and easy, and often the simplest things are the hardest, (try playing a REALLY slow walking bass line over changes!). If your rhythm in general, and time-feel in particular, is not good, then even if you can play Giant Steps in every key at 360BPM, you’ll still sound terrible.





















(At the Conservatoire, if you were ever in any doubt as to the fact that you are in a heavyweight classical school, the names of the rooms will soon set you straight....)

But apart from talking to the students about rhythm we also got to talk a lot about the ‘why’ of what we do. I feel that jazz schools tend to spend their entire focus on how to do everything, but rarely discuss the whys – why should be play this music? Is it important to play this music? If so, to whom? Us? Society? What artistic responsibility do we have? What are we trying to express? Is it important to be different? Should we be trying to innovate? What is our relationship to the audience? Do we have a responsibility to them, or is our primary artistic responsibility to ourselves? What should we be thinking about when the inevitable decision has to be made between playing this music or moving into a more commercial area of the business?

This kind of philosophical discussion is an important one to have with young musicians and particularly important when you’re talking to very talented and highly skilled musicians such as the ones I was working with in the Conservatoire, who are on the cusp of becoming professionals. The students were not only fine players, but great too in terms of their personal attitude, and we had a very nice time working together over the period I was there.



On the Monday I got a Facebook message from my friend Marcelo Coelho in Brazil – I had posted the fact that I was in Paris on FB, and he wrote to let me know that the unique Hermeto Pascoal would be playing in Paris that night. Sometimes the internet is really an amazing invention – a Brazilian guy in Sao Paulo sends a message to an Irish guy who happens to be in Paris for a few days to let him know that there’s a concert he really should go an see while there. You get used to the internet but every now and again you (or at least I) shake your head at the extraordinary things it can do!


So, tickets bought courtesy of Stéphane, he and I set off to see Hermeto that evening. Hermeto was playing at the renowned New Morning club with his ‘Grupo’ a band consisting of a saxophonist, bassist (the great Itabere Zwarg), percussionist, drummer, vocalist, and Hermeto himself on various instruments. As always, the guy is a phenomenon – if you don’t know his music (and you should!), I can say that’s it totally unique, complex yet joyous, brilliantly structured, with a unique sense of harmony, great sing-able melodies and killer rhythms, derived from Brazilian music yet rarely conventional. If you want to hear the kind of thing we heard have a listen to this

This was the second time I’d seen Hermeto and though his genius is undiminished (he did a call/response thing with the audience of over a set of moving changes that was unbelievable in terms of his ability to hear ahead and know what was going to work over the upcoming changes by the time the audience was singing their part), I did notice that he played much less than normal, only took a couple of solos and when he played those solos, the formerly fearsome technique had become ragged. So I’m not sure if he just wasn’t well that night, or whether it’s more a thing related with his age (he is 75 after all!), but it was strange to see this musical dynamo be quite subdued, by his standards at least. But still, the music was fantastic, the band was killing and vibe was as always, joyful and wonderful – I always feel that when you see Hermeto, you’re seeing music the way it should be played, as part of the life-force.


Three very satisfying days at the Conservatoire and then it was on to the next part of the trip – putting together some new music with Stéphane, Dominique and Christophe. Stéphane, Christophe and I had played before and enjoyed the experience very much, and I had played a couple of times with Dominique in a project called Simulacrum a few years previously. I had talked frequently with both Christophe and Dominique about playing together again and my stay in Paris gave us the opportunity to do this.

The music was written by Stéphane and I, and we were just trying out material to see what would work, with a view to developing it further later. It's such a luxury to be able to spend time playing through music without having a specific performance in mind - you can try things out, change things, develop things and have the luxury of time - the one commodity (apart from money...) that's in really short supply in the professional music world.

Stéphane's music and mine is quite different, but compatible. The one common denominator that both musics would have is the extensive use of rhythm as compositional and improvisational devices. Stéphane's pieces tend to be shorter than mine but each section of his pieces usually are capable of being played in several different ways and the music evolves through these variants. Mine tend to be longer and maybe more prescriptive in terms of what goes on - or at least the order of what goes on. But I think the music we both write complement each other and you can hear that we both operate in a similar musical aesthetic. As I mentioned previously Stéphane, Christophe and I had played as a trio before but adding the violin gave the music a whole other sound - the blending of the alto and violin creates a very nice sound, light and flexible. And Dominique is such a great player, easily able to negotiate the rhythmic complexities of the music and immediately understands the conceptual ideas underpinning the pieces.














(Christophe Lavergne)








We rehearsed in an industrial space that some Parisian musicians rent between them - a great idea to have a space like that where you can go and rehearse whenever you need to. So, we worked on the music over a two day period and got a good feeling as to how we could progress it - that was the easy part,now for the more difficult one - getting some gigs and recording!




We don't have any recordings yet of the quartet but here is an example of the trio in action from a couple of years ago......... For music by the quartet - watch this space!



So, the final act in this musical week was the concert at the Irish cultural centre, and on Friday the members of my own group - Michael, Matt and Chris - arrived. I met up with them after the final rehearsal with my French colleagues and we went out for dinner, enjoying the vibrant Parisian eating-out-on-a-Friday vibe. Earlier we'd had a look at the room we'd be playing in and decided that there was no need to get everything set up until late on the following afternoon, which meant a free morning to have a walk around Paris and enjoy the atmosphere and take in the physical beauty of the city. This we duly did, walking around the St Germain district (which,it being November, wasn't too crowded with tourists), and even spending some time in Notre Dame - something I'd never done before even though I've been in Paris so many times.






Chris, Matt and Michael take in the sights.......












The gig that evening was in the Centre, a beautiful building which has a history going back hundreds of years.





I'd played here a couple of times before, in duo with Stéphane and also with the amazing Nguyen Le. It's a wonderful place to play - right in the middle of Paris (near the Pantheon) yet has a tranquil almost isolated feeling. The Centre hosts artists of various kinds, mostly Irish, doing residencies in Paris and there are certainly worse spots you could be in....


And worse places to play too! This gig was far from the poky over-priced Parisian jazz club-type venue - it was in a very nice room at the Centre that had previously hosted an art exhibition. We had to do the usual checking of the acoustic to make sure it wasn't too reverberant and we were pleasantly surprised by the warmth of the sound - often these old buildings can be a bit cavernous and boomy. We did a quick check of the sound, went back to our rooms to change (what a luxury to be staying in the same place we were playing..) and then it was time to play.

And unusually for a jazz gig these days, it was packed. So packed that they had to bring in extra seating - usually they're taking the seating out! So it was really nice to play to a full house and an appreciative audience. The music went well too - we'd done a few warm-up gigs in Dublin in the preceding weeks and this really helped with knowing the music and being able it confidently and feel loose and creative. The audience were terrific, the sound had changed a lot since the soundcheck (it's amazing how much different full room sounds in comparison to an empty one), and we had to alter things a little, but once we got that going everything was fine and we, and I think the audience, had a lot of fun.

Here's our last piece from the evening - a piece of mine (very) loosely based on Scrapple from the Apple'



We played one long set, plus an encore, packed up our stuff and headed out for a late dinner - more great food, more great company.

And that was it - a great week for me, lots of good music, working with talented students, seeing one of music's great geniuses live again, exploring new music with wonderful musicians, playing with my own band to a full house, lots of good food, some great conversations........... Sometimes being a musician can be OK.

Here's to the next time......