09-12-2013, 04:31
SteveO Wrote:Can you clarify this statement - " For this reason, we say that jazz is very existentialist."
In existentialist thought, you are a free agent in an indifferent perhaps even hostile universe--most of the workings of which are a complete mystery--and you have free will to do as you please but must take responsibility for those choices even though you can't say for certain whether that those choices were ethical. Jazz is improvisational in nature so the musician exercises his free will and is therefore responsible for the tone and mood of the music which is dependent upon the choices he or she makes. In existentialism, the moment is of the essence because free will implies making a choice and acting on it on the fly. Once it's done, it's done and nothing can change it. In jazz improv, the musician plays what is in his or her heart at that moment. Once it's done, that's it. The next time the musician plays it, it will be different. In jazz, it is bad form to play the same piece the same way all the time. Other musicians will look down on you if you do that. It means you're either not confident enough in your abilities to be a true jazz cat or you're not playing from the heart in which case you do not have the spirit of jazz in you.
The irony is that most jazz musicians since the 20s have been classically trained but classical music is not existentialist--at least not in my opinion. I know classical musicians, for example, who are slavishly devoted to what is on the written page. Jazz musicians have little loyalty to and rarely ever use fully written out sheet music. Most of the time they use a one or two page chart minimally marked up to allow for improv. But classical technique is essential to playing jazz these days so the jazz cat has to learn classical music. In fact, you'd be surprised what scholars of classical music many of the greatest jazz musicians were such as Charlie Parker and Charles Mingus (who actually considered the cello his main instrument rather than the bass) or Bud Powell or Bill Evans. But jazz cats take that classical base and do entirely new things with it--things the old composers could never have dreamed of--by applying an existential mindset. Are the jazz people consciously existential? In some cases, yes. Many jazz dudes are some very philosophical cats, but most probably are not. Their existentialist bent is more implied.
