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What is jazz?

Many people in jazz have no real definition at hand as to what jazz is. Try asking a group of assorted jazz students. There will be initial confusion - 'Is this a trick question?' 'We all know what it is, so why is he asking?' - followed by even more confusion as they wrestle to find a satisfactory definition for something that they are intending to devote all, or at least part, of their life to.
That's as good a reason as any for requesting a definition. When the answers are 'freedom', 'the ability to express yourself in music' and so on, one realises how amorphous the subject is. What is jazz?

Even today, many people take the stance that because they cannot understand jazz or appreciate its sounds, it is rubbish

Many will ask why it has to be defined; indeed, whether these problems beset other arts. Is the devotee of painting ever expected to define what it is? Do classical musicians sit and debate a definition of their music? Film makers? Novelists? As far as I am aware, there may be some academic discussion at the edges but there does not seem to be the over-riding desire to define what it is in other arts that there is in jazz. Why is this?
The reason might be historical. As a new kind of music, it had to be defined to distinguish it from other music and to have the question asked and answered as to whether one liked it or not. Even today, many people take the stance that because they cannot understand jazz or appreciate its sounds, it is rubbish. Jazz was, and is, and should be, an unusual music, very different from light music or classical. It stuck out and continues to do so. It was always a maverick and, even though it has moved towards and away from classical mores at various times during its history, it has essentially stayed a maverick.
Writing about Ellington in The Bookman in 1929, Abbé Niles spoke of 'the strangeness, the bitter, salty wit and humour, and the flashes of defiant, unwilling beauty which characterise good jazz; by hearing [Ellington] anyone who will take the trouble may learn whether he likes jazz or not' (found in Mark Tucker's Duke Ellington Reader). That definition still stands, but only up to a point. Many young people who like certain areas of the music today may never have bothered to listen to any Ellington. And if they did they might well find it so far removed from their own packaged product that they won't actually see the connection! Similarly, the person who has been listening to Ellington all his or her life may fail to see any connection when they are exposed to some avant-garde jazz. The salty humour and unwilling beauty may be apparent, but if their ears are closed to the sounds that they are hearing then they will say: 'That isn't jazz.' And, to them, it isn't. It doesn't conform to the sound-palette and, let's face it, comfortableness of what they are used to calling jazz.
Most arts are self-defining, they have their own inbuilt individual characteristics. Cinema uses film to create a repeatable artefact; theatre uses actors to create a live performance; painting uses paint and canvas to create an artist's ideas. Some of these limits have been stretched considerably but, in the bulk of each particular art form, the essence remains.

Perhaps it is for this reason that jazz feels it has to define itself as a music closely linked to western European art music in its language

With music, though, the same ingredients, instruments or voices creating sounds produce different results. One can start to separate them into genres, of course, but jazz shares much of its sound-world with what Conrad Cork calls WEAM (Western European Art Music). Although it is not a particularly new issue, Cork stresses in his book, Harmony with Lego Bricks, that for many in our culture WEAM is aesthetically and qualitatively predominant. He goes on to state that this is a very self-centred viewpoint. Perhaps it is for this reason that jazz feels it has to define itself: as a music closely linked to western European art music in its language, its use of the same instruments and often the same kinds of sounds, there are grounds for confusion and a case to be made that, as a music with its own identity, that identity needs to be stressed.
However, although one wouldn't mistake a symphony orchestra for a jazz trio, one might mistake a modern chamber group for the Jimmy Giuffre trio or an orchestra playing Claus Ogerman with one playing Bartok. At times, the languages can seem similar. In fact, at times, with many jazz musicians continuing to ape their classical counterparts, the languages are very similar. So why can't we just call them both music and be done with it?
Do we define jazz because we have to - or because someone else always does it for us? Record companies, funding bodies and the media all like to pigeonhole. They collude to create a huge area called classical music, a huge area called popular music, and some stuff on the side that is called jazz. Newspapers, at least in Britain (and I doubt that it is much different elsewhere), review concerts and records in nicely isolated boxes for classical, popular and jazz. But look at what is in these boxes. Classical music critics cover the avant-garde concerts in town and review the records. But many papers also have a jazz critic who thinks it is their sole remit to cover clones of Coltrane et al without paying any heed to the immense amount of creative music that is produced in the name of jazz.
Is that part of our definition, then? Creative music? I guess that depends where you're standing, which is the problem with the definition game.
Do we define jazz because we want to or because we have to? We have to in order to answer the questions from those outside the music: 'But what is jazz? How would you define it?' is a question often asked of many in the business. We need to define jazz in order to deal rationally with statements such as: 'Who else is creating good jazz today? Apart from Louis Armstrong, of course,' (a question asked of me in the 1960s) and: 'I love jazz, I have all of Kenny G's records' (a statement made recently to a student by a friend's mother).
But there's the rub. To many ears Kenny G is jazz; Louis Armstrong is still a creative force. How do we discuss - and define - a music that encompasses those two artists, all the clones you can shake a lick at and, thankfully, much much more?
We must draw the threads together of the common areas between Duke Ellington and Pat Metheny, Miles and Wynton, and Louis Armstrong and Kenny G. I would plump for the statement: 'individual expression through improvising'. Then comes whether I like it or not. Even if I don't particularly like it (Metheny for me) I can recognise his particular talent. (I do, Pat. I do.)

As the painter Clyfford Still once said: 'How can we live and die and never know the difference?'

We must also try to show the differences in accent of a creative Louis Armstrong in the 1920s and 1930s and the pale shadows seen in his work in the 1960s and the quality difference between a Kenny G and a Kenny Garrett. We won't win them all: Kenny Garrett is less pleasant to listen to, moves outside the comfort zone more often, than the other Kenny and that means a lot to many people; Louis's work in the 1930s and the 1960s will sound the same to many whose ears are not open enough to hear the difference. Is that part of a definition: that as an individual music it must be appreciated in an individual way: but that all of us should be able to tell the difference between good and bad? As the painter Clyfford Still once said: 'How can we live and die and never know the difference?'
And we must select our own definition of jazz. My attempts to do so in Interaction - Opening Up the Jazz Ensemble (Advance Music, 1996) were, seemingly, the most controversial part of the book. The definition of jazz in the introduction was the section most commented on by the critics (who managed to avoid most of the really controversial issues expressed in the book).
While inviting comments, which we will publish, on how jazz should be defined, I close not with my own definition (I wish to avoid a similar bruising), but with one of my favourite quotes on jazz. It is part of a letter written by Malcolm Lowry, author of Under the Volcano, in which he compares literature and jazz. It's not so much a definition of jazz as a pointer to a way of life, but that is its strength and I am happy to live with that.
'But where the heck, in what passage or movement of prose can I find the selection, the discipline, unselfishness, spontaneity, freedom, and final concision, and form of this darn thing?'

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