Eurojazzland: Jazz and European Sources, Dynamics, and Contexts

503 Pages·2012·2.53 MB·English

by  Luca Cerchiari

EUROJAZZLAND
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Jazz and European Sources, Dynamics, and Contexts
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E d i t E d mb Ey r
& F r a n z K E r s c h b a u
L u c a c E r c h i a r i, L a u r E n t c u g n y,
northeastern university press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
An imprint of University Press of New England Publication Data
www.upne.com Eurojazzland: jazz and European
∫ 2012 Northeastern University sources, dynamics, and contexts / edited
All rights reserved by Luca Cerchiari, Laurent Cugny, and
Manufactured in the United States of America Franz Kerschbaumer.
Designed by Eric M. Brooks p. cm.
Typeset in Parkinson Electra Pro and Includes bibliographical references and
TFHotelmoderne by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. index.
isbn 978-1-58465-864-1 (cloth: alk. paper)
University Press of New England is a member
isbn 978-1-61168-298-4 (ebook: alk. paper)
of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in
1. Jazz—Europe—History and criticism.
this book meets their minimum requirement for
I. Cerchiari, Luca. II. Cugny,
recycled paper.
Laurent. III. Kerschbaumer, Franz.
For permission to reproduce any of the ml3509.e9e97 2012
material in this book, contact Permissions, 781.65094—dc23
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or visit www.upne.com
‘‘March of the pilgrims singing their evening
prayer’’ by Valerio Magrelli reprinted by
permission of the author.
Autumn Leaves
English lyric by Johnny Mercer
French lyric by Jacques Prevért
Music by Joseph Kosma
∫ 1947, 1950 (Renewed) enoch et cie
Sole Selling Agent for U.S. and Canada:
morley music co., by agreement with
enoch et cie
All Rights Reserved
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard
Corporation
CONTENTS
Introduction
luca cerchiari vii
part 1 / europe as a source of jazz
1/The Influence of Celtic Music on the Evolution of Jazz
franz kerschbaumer 3
2/Beyond the ‘‘Spanish Tinge’’:
Hispanics and Latinos in Early New Orleans Jazz
bruce boyd raeburn 21
3/Why Did Art Music Composers Pay Attention to ‘‘Jazz’’?
The Impact of ‘‘Jazz’’ on the French Musical Field, 1908–1924
martin guerpin 47
4/Violin and Bowed Strings in Jazz: A French School?
vincent cotro 81
5/Sacred, Country, and Urban Tunes:
The European Songbook; ‘‘Greensleeves’’ to ‘‘Les feuilles mortes’’
(‘‘Autumn Leaves’’), ‘‘Gigolo’’ to ‘‘’O sole mio’’
luca cerchiari 98
6/Across Europe:
Improvisation as a Real and Metaphorical Journey
arrigo cappelletti 123
part 2 / jazz meets europe
7/Cross-Cultural Links: Black Minstrels, Cakewalks, and Ragtime
rainer e. lotz 143
8/Benny Carter in Britain, 1936–1937
catherine tackley parsonage 167
9/‘‘A New Reason for Living’’: Duke Ellington in France
john edward hasse 189
10/Cool Jazz in Europe
manfred straka 214
11/Orchestral Thoughts: Jazz Composition in Europe and America
(An Interview with Composer-Director Giorgio Gaslini)
davide ielmini 235
12/The New Orleans Revival in Britain and France
alyn shipton 253
13/The European Jazz Avant-Garde of the Late 1960s and Early 1970s
Where Did Emancipation Lead?
ekkehard jost 275
part 3 / the circulation of eurojazzland
14/Did Europe ‘‘Discover’’ Jazz?
laurent cugny 301
15/European Jazz Developments in Cross-Cultural Dialogue with the
United States and Their Relationship to the Counterculture of the 1960s
jürgen arndt 342
16/Europe and the New Jazz Studies
tony whyton 366
17/Revisioning History Lived: Four European Expats, Three Men and One
Woman, Who Shaped One American Life in Two American Cultures
mike heffley 381
18/Utopian Sounds: Mimesis and Identity in European Jazz Technologies
gianfranco salvatore 407
19/Roots and Collage: Contemporary European Jazz in Postmodern Times
herbert hellhund 431
Contributors 447
Index 449
luca cerchiari
INTRODUCTION
I
t is curious that a comprehensive book on jazz in Europe still doesn’t exist.
There are hundreds of titles dedicated to the history of jazz and African
American music in the United States, but none to its European counterparts.
Some recent jazz histories also deal with Europe (and others with Asia, Af-
rica, and Oceania, in that jazz is correctly regarded as an international sonic
language), but just in a brief synthesis. In fact, the subject matter is so broad, in
historical, geographical, and cultural terms, that such an enterprise would require
years of research and an international committee of authors. The bibliography on
regional histories and single musicians is quite a rich one, with more or less one
hundred titles (among biographies are represented some of the most important
European jazzmen ever—Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli, Martial Solal,
Jean ‘‘Toots’’ Thielemans, Jan Garbarek, George Shearing, Ian Carr, Joachim
Kühn, Albert Mangelsdor√, Gorni Kramer, Giorgio Gaslini, Enrico Rava, Joe
Zawinul, Willem Breuker, Tete Montoliu). Almost every European country has
produced a serious book on its own jazz history, and in some cases (France,
England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia) more than one. A major problem is the
language: whereas in the United States the common ground is English, in Eu-
rope, though English is also the language of the jazz community, almost every
country speaks something di√erent. Europe has also recently become, in geo-
political terms, a larger entity: the European Community, at present, includes
twenty-seven countries, while new nations are waiting to be admitted to the
Brussels-Strasbourg organization.
In any case, be it the result of the research of a committee of authors, or the
e√ort of a single scholar, the history of jazz in Europe has yet to be e√ectively
written. For the present publication we have chosen a di√erent approach, a
theoretical one. The idea of this book—not a history of jazz in Europe, but a series
of essays dedicated to the complex, broader subject of the relations between
Europe and jazz—came to me in 2008, when I invited my French colleague
Laurent Cugny, professor at the University of Paris IV, to lecture at the University
of Padua. We then met with our third editor, Franz Kerschbaumer, professor at
the Austrian Graz University of Music and Dramatic Arts, and approved our
project, which intended to co-opt several scholars, both from Europe and from
the United States. Thanks to Friedrich Körner (and then to Kerschbaumer),
Graz has become, since 1969, an international center for jazz research, besides
o√ering a jazz program for instruments and related musical disciplines. In fact,
courses in jazz musicology and history, since the seventies—sometimes in con-
nection with disciplines like ethnomusicology, anthropology of music, or popular
n music, sometimes not—have been proposed and taught by an increasing number
o
cti of universities and conservatories, not to mention private seminars, schools, and
u
d
ro associations founded all around Europe, a list of which, and their related courses,
nt
I would probably amount to a surprisingly high number. This academic network,
or, better, these separate entities, sometimes connected and sometimes not, have
so far produced a meaningful amount of research, developing with scientific
purposes and methodologies a field that was at first approached, in the late
twenties, by jazz critics both in Europe and in the United States, in some cases
with relevant results (historiography, criticism, discography), in others with a limit
of perspective that for a long time confined jazz to a status of lesser importance,
unrelated to general musicological matters and to other cultural disciplines.
The many di√erent relations between Europe and jazz can be divided into
di√erent categories, as we have done, choosing three main ones for the organiza-
tion of this volume. The first concerns Europe as a source of jazz. Jazz has always
been regarded as a typically twentieth-century expression of the broader African
American contribution to world music history. The African and American roots
of jazz have been thoroughly investigated; the European ones much less, al-
though few current books have not forgotten to quote the European contribution
to this music. Some relevant exceptions are such brilliant and innovative volumes
as Origins of the Popular Style, by Peter van der Merwe (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1989), The Cambridge Companion to Jazz, edited by Mervyn
Cooke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), and Cross the Water
Blues: African American Musicians in Europe, edited by Neil A. Wynn (Jackson,
MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2007). Perhaps this situation is due, on one
side, to the abovementioned limits of perspective of early jazz criticism (see, in
this book, Laurent Cugny’s contribution to this field) and, on the other, at least in
part, to the so-called Afrocentric point of view. It is perplexing that white Ameri-
cans have neglected for decades a meaningful part of their own roots, which
include, in essence, the whole tradition of written and orally transmitted musics
of the entire European continent. Melody, harmony, scales and modes, notation,
rhythm, timbre, form, and even improvisation have much to do, in jazz, with
European musical roots, as do instruments. Besides the banjo and the xylophone,
which come from Africa, and the drums, which are the result of an American
‘‘assembly’’ of previous elements, all the most popular instruments in jazz are, in
fact, European instruments: the saxophone, just to name one of the most popu-
lar, was patented before the second half of the nineteenth century by Belgian
instrument maker Adolphe Sax. Some have been ‘‘reinvented’’ by jazz in terms of
viii solo performance (winds and reeds, cornet, trombone, bass, harmonica), while
others have been developed by this music in terms of peculiar performance
techniques and styles (piano, guitar, trumpet, violin, flute). Some of the Euro-
pean instruments have been employed in a typically European way by European In
jazz (accordion, bass, violin; on bowed instruments, see Vincent Cotro’s contri- tro
d
u
bution). A specific tradition, in jazz, is the orchestral one. The so-called modern ctio
jazz big band, as we know it, is a new kind of instrumental entity consisting of four n
sections (trumpets, trombones, reeds, and the rhythm section) conducted by a
director-arranger who is in general a piano or wind player. European jazz has
contributed in its own way to orchestral jazz, either with specifically ‘‘European’’
arrangements and musics or with directors whose styles, performance attitudes,
and gestures often di√er quite a lot from those of their American colleagues (Eu-
ropeans such as the German Alexander von Schlippenbach, the Swiss George
Gruntz, the Italians Gorni Kramer and Giorgio Gaslini—Davide Ielmini’s chap-
ter in our book is devoted to Gaslini—the Austrians Mike Mantler and Mathias
Rüegg, the British Mike Westbrook, Mike Gibbs, and Graham Collier, the
French André Hodeir and François Jeanneau. These European orchestral con-
tributions sometimes involved theatrical elements, o√ering a new, fascinating
approach to the sonic theory and practice of jazz performance, at the same time
evoking ideological debates and sociological values. As Joachim Ernst Berendt
correctly pointed out in his world-famous Jazzbook, our continental jazz or-
chestras expressed a typically European feature, the idea of ‘‘collectivism.’’
Concerning musical cultures, every single European country has contributed
to shape American jazz, which is—as we know—the result of many diasporas. We
do not only have a Latin tinge (see Bruce Raeburn’s essay), but also a British one
(see Franz Kerschbaumer’s chapter on the Celtic musical roots of jazz), an Italian
one, a French one, a Mitteleuropean one, a Northern European one, a Balkan
one, a Mediterranean one (and what about migrating cultures, strongly related
with Europe, such as the Jewish and the Gypsy ones?). This aspect is also re-
flected in the European side of the jazz repertoire (see my chapter, in the book), a
small but really meaningful body of work, consisting of several ethnic and urban
melodies. Some have survived for centuries and circulated through publishing
and sub-publishing means and exchanges (or, later, through discographical trans-
mission); some were picked up by American musicians touring Europe in the
twentieth century and brought to success in the United States, where a few
became standards (Louis Armstrong has been, in this, a major ‘‘collector’’ and
interpreter). Other melodies belong to the pre-jazz period and were absorbed by
both secular and sacred African American styles and genres. These dynamics
refer to the so-called popular style. Of course, American jazz, but especially
European jazz, has much to do with European ethnic music, or folklore. A com-
plete or even partial study of ethnic sources, in European jazz, has yet to be ix