Community: Global and Musical

As a traveling musician I get a perspective on world events that many Americans miss, especially if all they do is watch CNN or read the domestic press. Across the globe there is a growing gap between the wishes of the world's citizens and their leaders. And in the US I don't think we've ever been more split as a population than we are now. I think about where the political debate in our country is centered especially when events are portrayed in such a sensationalized, superficial and polarizing manner. It's in this context that I wonder about current events as they relate to the idea of community; global, national, local and even musical. Comparing the music world to the global situation may seem trivial but increasingly I believe in the idea that each person gives to the world in the many small yet important ways that are often taken for granted and that music provides a very necessary ingredient to our lives. In fact, it provides a reason to live.

So when I consider the state of music, music criticism and the idea of musical community (or lack thereof) I increasingly feel the need to connect our musical scene to the world at large. I've never been one to ascribe "meaning" to music nor have I ever felt comfortable with the idea that musicians and artists must fulfill a particular function beyond what their own personal drives motivate in them. It's not that "music is..." or "music should be..." but that "music can be...". It can be anything you want it to be. On the other hand there is no avoiding the fights and arguments over just these sorts of issues. We know it's largely a matter of taste and opinion yet we persevere in pretending there are absolutes and couching our language in absolutist terms.

Kyle Gann, a writer on new music, recently wrote an article in which he asserted that the current musical world ought to foster more debate on which direction music should take. He describes the current situation as fostering "a dull acquiescence in everything, and a lack of community." I'm intrigued about the idea of fostering musical community yet I don't agree with the first part of his description. It is the idea of acceptance that I think is at the center of any assessment or criticism of music. Without it we only foster misunderstanding and alienation.

While I promote acceptance in general I don't promote a pollyanna approach that makes no distinctions in what is created by musicians and artists. I'm speaking of acceptance of music for what it is, a record of human existence, an artifact, a chronicle of events. I think we ought to suspend our personal tastes and biases long enough to at least start with a dispassionate view so as to more clearly see and hear what is going on before clouding the picture with our own autobiographical issues. Of course we all have our likes and dislikes but why be a prisoner of them? Some folks go so far as to display a certain pride in the fact that they do not like a particular artist or music. They're entitled, but it's their loss, I say.

I do think it is possible to discuss what we hear in music, it's role in our culture and the perceived qualities that each of us hears differently than another without instantly taking a pro or con attitude. I know it may sound trite but I recently discovered that the role of compassion in listening can have a pronounced effect on how one perceives music. For example, I was recently going through a bout of reassessment of my own playing and for a period of some weeks was unable to hear my recorded work in a positive light. After some time I decided to listen to the recording as if it was someone else playing, not me. Almost immediately I noticed that I was hearing more in the music that I was before and that I enjoyed listening to it with much the same sense of joy that it was created in. Criticism has the effect of narrowing the ear to certain specific issues. It also tends to concentrate on what's not there as opposed to offering a clear channel into what is there. Once I experienced this I realized that I was being so tough on myself that I was actually clouding my perception of the music with my own psychodrama.

So back to community...I agree that there is a need to create and support community within the music world but without some awareness of the role of music outside the realm of polemics and theory I'm not sure what kind of community could be created or whether I'd even want to be a part of it. I find the prospect of arguing about the problem of one "'ism" or another as being rather dull and tedious in this day and age.

Personally I've always felt that I existed outside of community, always on the fringe of this or that, not fully in or out of any particular group. I've found this to be both a positive and a potentially negative situation. There are rather few people that I feel well aligned with aesthetically. That's not a bad thing in that it allows me to combine often disparate musical elements in a unique way and forces me to look at other points of view in a positive light given the need to cooperate with other people to create music or to simply understand the world around me. On the other hand it can be a little lonely.

I've written many times about the fragmentation in today's music scene as being a positive thing. The fact that there is no dominant trend allows us a freedom to do as we please. But it also creates a need for us to devise and create community or at least look at community in a different way. It requires that musicians work harder at checking out what others are doing. It means that critics need to shift from the "next big thing" mentality, stop looking for the new jazz messiah and start reporting on the scene as it is, a vast network of musicians who interact with each other in often tangental ways rather than within trends. And we need to recognize that the question of "is it jazz" really isn't going to net very profound results when used as a litmus test in assessing improvised music these days. Jazz and improvised music is morphing and changing exponentially, going in many directions at once and extending well beyond American shores.

And so when I return home from one of my sojourns across the globe I'm often struck by the aforementioned sensationalized, superficial and polarizing mode of reportage that characterizes not only much of the political discussion at large but also the discussion concerning music in our culture. And within our sphere of the music world I often find either a strange emphasis on polemics that seems based on old notions of the "one true way" on the one hand or criticism that takes culture completely for granted and rates music more like a sporting event. If we want to generate a greater sense of community we are going to have to see our culture for what it is, not what it was, and move on from there. Otherwise jazz and improvised musics are going to represent an increasingly irrelevant endeavor in the world.

Ellery Eskelin
New York City

Ellery Eskelin is celebrating the ten year anniversary of his band with Andrea Parkins and Jim Black in 2004. Check out the events planned here:
http://home.earthlink.net/~eskelin/10year.html