A reminder: Discussions are not finished artefacts but 'works in progress' which roam around a specific topic. New material can be inserted and will be marked with a credit and a date in the body of the article and in the index. References to Footnotes will be found at the end.

That much, at least, is a given: I'm not an American, nor, as would be obvious if you could see me, am I an African American or black. The distinction at the end of the sentence is not included for semantic reasons, rather to point, briefly, towards another aspect of this discussion. Namely, do black non-American jazz musicians have an advantage when it comes to playing jazz over their white counterparts? A question which became relevant in England some years ago and made me wonder at the time how the pecking order works and how far down it you have to be before you're beyond the pale and would be better off taking up knitting.

I do have one advantage. I am male, although my being gay takes the edge off that for many observers.

These are serious issues, made more pointed by the increasing discussion in jazz magazines on American versus European jazz, women in jazz, black audiences for jazz and whether, in Stanley Crouch's offensive question, gay musicians like Cecil Taylor can swing. But first a brief history lesson.

Until the late 1950s there had been, in the main, one way of doing things. The New Orleans style, predominant up until the late twenties, was superseded by swing which dominated in the thirties. In turn swing was succeeded by bebop in the mid forties and hard bop in the early fifties. Although there were offshoots of these different styles and some interesting tributaries emerged, the majority of musicians were playing in one style and, usually, following one leader.

The most obvious of these was Charlie Parker, the great influence on musicians of the forties. Even today, almost sixty years on, many musicians owe their style and their whole mental approach to jazz to their first discovery of his music, which is predicated on improvisers dealing with complex melodic lines and harmonies within generally fast tempos.

This approach has of course produced much good music. Yet, however much the reliance on technique is impressive - particularly to other musicians - it is only one part of jazz. That it has been allowed to dominate, though not, of course, exclusively, has I feel had an adverse effect on the true potential of the music.

Although the seeds had been sown earlier in the fifties by musicians such as Lennie Tristano and Charles Mingus, much of this potential was realised later in that decade in the music of Miles Davis, particularly on Kind of Blue, and Ornette Coleman. The 'one right path for jazz' approach, which had become the norm, changed to a situation where, because of the freedom inherent in these players' approaches, everyone is allowed to be him- or herself and the language available to both improvisers and composers has been greatly extended.

This revolution in jazz thinking has had a profound effect on the music, greatly opening up the possibilities of jazz and jazz composition, and having deep repercussions on the way it is seen by audiences, critics and musicians. Because of the nature of that change, it would seem impossible for such a major change to ever happen again.

End of the history lesson but what, then, has this to do with not being an American? Everything and nothing.

Everything, in that now the music is open to all comers, now that everyone can do their own thing, now that a Norwegian - Jan Garbarek - has become one of the best known jazz musicians in the world. Nothing, in that no matter how good one of Garbarek's fellow Norwegians may be, without the backing of a major record company and the international jazz press, he or she will be very lucky if they are known outside their own country. (See 'Deepening the Game' for some words about the amazing Norwegian trio Jøkleba, who few will know of.)

The widening of the 'stream' of jazz to encompass all this individuality has meant that someone with Garbarek's individual approach can become famous - with the help, of course, of his ECM record contract. The downside is that audiences have become confused by the sheer variety of music now presented under the name of jazz and the increasing volume of CDs being released. Not surprisingly, many give up and concentrate on the past and, possibly, a few of the names they see or hear in a jazz media increasingly dominated by advertising. Paraphrasing a quote used in the Appendix, 'who can we trust to tell us who we should listen to'.

These problems are explored further, but not resolved, in 'Deepening the Game' elsewhere in this project. What concerns us here are the aspects of not being an American working in what many still consider to be almost an exclusive American - or, some would say, African-American - enclave.

Writing about the rise of abstract expressionism in America at a time when art was seen as European, critic David Sylvester wrote, 'In the search for the absolute and commitment to the new, it was advantageous not to be a European, not to be steeped in a tired culture.' He quoted one of the great painters in that style, Barnett Newman, as saying, 'I believe that here in America, some of us, free from the weight of European culture ... are creating images whose reality is self-evident and which are devoid of the props and crutches that evoke associations with outmoded images, both sublime and beautiful. We are freeing ourselves of the impediments of memory, association, nostalgia, legend, myth, or what have you, that have been the devices of Western European painting. Instead of making 'cathedrals' out of Christ, man or 'life', we are making it out of ourselves, out of our own feelings.'

This point is nicely developed by Sylvester, who says that Newman was influenced by Europeans such as Matisse and Giacometti but 'it was they who had to deal with the weight of European culture. It was because Newman was free of that weight that he could deal with Matisse and Giacometti and go on from there.' Sylvester also quotes painter Willem de Kooning saying, 'It has a certain burden, this American-ness. If you come from a small nation, you don't have that ... I feel sometimes an American artist must feel like a baseball player or something - a member of a team writing American history.'

As another art critic, Clement Greenberg, said, 'The international recognition American painting won in the fifties has not been an unqualified benefit. Without it there would still be conformism, no doubt, just as there was conformism before, but the conformism wouldn't be so aggressive, as confident, as loud. Young artists quail and fail under it in New York; art students quail and fail under it in the Midwest.'

We can see connections here with other arts too. Literature was seen by Americans as 'European' but was looked at afresh by writers such as Faulkner and Hemingway. Cinema was 'American' but came to be looked at afresh by Europeans like Buñuel, Fellini and Godard.

Jazz, too, was born in America - and has been looked at afresh for many decades by non-American musicians. But there is a distressing trend among some musicians and critics to think that America, and, often, specifically 'black' America, still 'owns' jazz, and that what is played elsewhere is something different and not as good.

When asked 'What do you think about European jazz?', Wynton Marsalis answered 'If it is swinging and has some blues in it, I love it,' an answer which proves how little he knows about the subject. Those with more open attitudes are aware that things have changed, both in the kinds of jazz that are played, and the attitudes to the music which are found elsewhere. As Quincy Jones says, 'The Europeans at this point are ready to say, "Hey guys, we'll just take jazz from here. You don't know what the hell to do with it." That's the way Europeans feel now. And I remember when they were just drooling over Bird and Diz and everybody. And now they have some amazing musicians over there.'

In looking at what music is produced in the name of jazz we can, I feel, apply David Sylvester's point that the creators of an art form may be carrying too much baggage from the past, and that newcomers to it may be able to dispense with all or most of that and, in so doing, shed new light on the subject. In the late fifties, as I say above, the music changed radically, allowing every musician to be himself. It is, I believe, no coincidence that many non-American players, Garbarek for one, took much greater advantage of the newly exposed potential of jazz than many Americans did. The baggage had been shed by Miles and Ornette, but it was often the non-Americans who learnt from that.

The baggage that was shed was the seeming necessity to regard bebop as the language of jazz (and jazz education) and thus the real basis for all the music. Much American jazz missed this epiphany and continued - and continues - to create music which perhaps could best be described as 'hard bop moderne'. American musicians generally feel the great weight of jazz history behind them and feel the necessity to deal with that. To get it out of their system or, often, to include it in their system (pun intended).

When referring to non-Americans the jazz world usually means Europeans, although there is good jazz being created around the world. Non-American jazz sometimes takes in local influences that would not occur - and would not be appropriate - in much of American jazz. And, dangerous ground here, it can be more personal. Echoing painter Barnett Newman's stance, saxophonist John Surman, in typical self-deprecating fashion, says, 'I quite rapidly discovered that I was totally unable to play any of that clever shit that other people play, and I had to find something of my own to play ... You look inside yourself and see what it is that you can do ... I've worked on those so that I can present my view of the world ­ rather than something that sounds a little bit like somebody else.'

Take the work of the big three Americans in jazz composition today, Jim McNeeley, Bob Brookmeyer and Maria Schneider. Their compositions are dominated by the weight of the big band tradition and its somewhat more recent tendency for enhanced technical challenges. Solos are included as a respite or as colour rather than for any meaningful reason. The end results are hard to play but, 'Hey, we've achieved something.' If that's all that's expected then fine but for me it misses the point of jazz. It sounds almost the same on every performance and fails to 'lift off the ground'. Some non-Americans who go against that tendency are Paul Grabowsky (whose stunning version of 'We'll Meet Again', perhaps the least likely tune ever to attract a jazz composer, is discussed in 'Deepening the Game'), Jon Balke and Christian Mühlbacher. More are named in the Appendix. The work of such writers is open and fresh and develops from the tradition rather than staying locked inside it.

All jazz composers are, of course, influenced by Duke and Gil and Mingus, but it seems it is usually the non-Americans who feel no need to carry the baggage of a big band tradition. Even during my time at Berklee I was rapidly trying to get away from that. I wanted to express myself as a European, and, importantly, as a European jazz musician, not influenced by the European classical tradition. (There is an odd dichotomy that the European classical tradition comes into many aspects of jazz, particularly in America: classical training, classical influences and so on. There are sometimes good reasons for this but I have a more than sneaking suspicion that much of it has to do with a misplaced inferiority complex among many jazz musicians.)

All of this simplifies the arguments about differences between non- American and American jazz. There are so many exceptions that one could hardly posit a rule, but to generalise wildly, one could say that American jazz is note oriented and European jazz is space oriented. But it might be safer to stick with what critic Bill Shoemaker said when he got involved in a spat with British journalist Stuart Nicholson, an uncritical booster of most things European, 'the argument/discussion is not so much America versus Europe as real jazz versus pap'.

As I said above, there are other aspects we can bring into this discussion. To On not being an American we can add On not being black, On not being a man, and On not being a straight man.

The addition of the words 'in a macho world' to the last two will be taken as a given. Adding those words to On not being black raises complex societal concerns.

Critic Stanley Crouch's remark that Cecil Taylor couldn't swing because he is gay is fascist in the extreme. Try replacing gay with white or female, or invent the phrase of your choice with black as the adjective. Crouch also made another highly offensive remark - quoted in Atlantic Monthly magazine, of all places - when he said that Wynton Marsalis was envied by critics because he 'had access to a far higher quality of female than they could ever imagine'. These remarks paint a less than flattering picture of Mr. Crouch. Who is, if it needs to be pointed out, black. Who should know about unfounded prejudice. Who is part of a music which, on the surface at least, prides itself on being open.

That jazz is often not welcoming to women, gays, even whites at times, is something of a truism. In a recent seminar on Gays in Jazz, moderated by Francis Davis at The Village Vanguard, Grover Sales once again peddled his line (originally published in Gene Lees' Newsletter) that there were very few gays involved in jazz at all. His discovery that 90 per cent of the audience at a Judy Garland concert was gay is unlikely but that certainly doesn't mean that all gays like her - or, seemingly, want to dress like her. How can he tell the sexuality of an audience at a jazz concert anyway? Another noted jazz critic, aping Bill Clinton's rule about the army, said that he didn't ask or care whether his interviewee was gay, unfortunately he went on to say that he also never enquired whether they were a paedophile or beat their wives...

The story of many women in jazz is not much better. Even ignoring crass anti-feminism from figures such as Crouch, one still hears stories of women jazz musicians facing prejudice solely because of their sex. The reasons for the lack of women in jazz (performers and audience) have been well rehearsed and, as society changes and as the music changes, some at least of the many excellent women musicians are attracting attention. Usually the singers, it must be said, and, unsurprisingly in our macho led society, women often seem to attract attention because they are 'prettier on an album cover'. But, strangely enough, the same could be said of the many good looking young men who get record contracts and are also seen posing in advertisements or on their CD covers. I know 'it's the market, stupid', but what are we peddling here? Glamour Girls and Beef Cake?

'I think the feeling of being outside the society is the ultimate inspiration ... I just think the feeling of being conscious of yourself as part of a people that are both totally necessary to a society, only no one admits that, and totally reeling from it is the ultimate inspiration for doing something totally different.'

That remark by clarinettist Don Byron, discovered in Ingrid Monson's Saying Something, Jazz improvisation and interaction (University of Chicago Press, 1996) is, sadly, typical of many comments these days which exclude rather than include. Byron may see 'being outside the society as the ultimate inspiration', but it is his implication that one has to be in that position to do something totally different that doesn't ring true. If he means that those of us who aren't, can't, then to me that's a racist remark. And palpably untrue.

Monson herself takes this further. 'Since whiteness tends to be a sign of inauthenticity within the jazz world the appeals of white musicians to universalistic rhetoric can be perceived as power plays rather than general expressions of universal brotherhood.'

She asserts that 'whiteness tends to be a sign of inauthenticity within the jazz world'. Possibly among some African-Americans - but even they might well make exceptions for Bill Evans, John McLaughlin, Bix Beiderbecke and some others. The rest of us take authenticity to be something we try to recognise as individuals, from what is offered by individuals. For me there is authenticity in Wayne Shorter but not George Benson, in Jimmy Giuffre but not Dave Sanborn.

Also what of Michael Brecker, Dave Liebman and Dave Holland - the highly praised whities (by many blacks also)? In whose jazz world are they seen as inauthentic? If one accepts that there is a parallel jazz world where a lot of good stuff is going on - in Europe and elsewhere - that jazz world certainly doesn't regard whiteness as inauthentic. Unfortunately, Monson seems to be assuming that there is a specific 'jazz world' (African-American, of course) which has these powers to include or reject.

Ingrid Monson continues '... the appeals of white musicians to universalistic rhetoric can be perceived as power plays rather than general expressions of universal brotherhood.' By universalistic rhetoric I am supposing she means statements about jazz's acceptability by different people - its universal appeal. To regard them as necessarily 'power plays rather than general expressions of universal brotherhood' shows a breathtaking level of condescension. Why can't they be the latter? If Dave Holland says something about universality does that mean he's making a power play to take over jazz? Surely all he is doing is making a general expression reflecting universal brotherhood. Which means including, not excluding.

Statements like the above from Byron and Monson - and many others one could come up with - are, for me, racial blindness and bullshit. One could not, and certainly would not want to, deny the African-American claim to jazz's history but claims that jazz is still only an African-American music don't stand up any more. One could not, and certainly would not want to, deny the American claim to be the birthplace of jazz, and the place where it began to develop, but claims that jazz is still only an American music have as little validity as saying that literature is still only European, or that film is still only American.

Jazz is now a universal music. The main point of change was in 1959, when Miles Davis's Kind of Blue and Ornette Coleman's music showed the possibilities of open-ness, that new things, often within simple frameworks, could be created. This opened up the music so that 'authentic' jazz is in the playing, rather than the skin colour, in the sounds rather than in any specific country. Isn't it much better for the music to include what non-Americans offer, what women offer, what gays offer? With any luck all this will drive Stanley Crouch away. Which actually is what has recently happened, as even Jazz Times, which in my opinion gave space to his rancid views for far too long, has finally seen the light and fired him. It seems that, as well as his fascist views, he couldn't even get his copy in on time!

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