Talk about improvisation
There is a natural urge to improvise,
buried deep in the subconscious. I believe the roots of this are to be
found in the evolutionary past of our ancestors. Improvisation in the musical
sense, extemporisation, or inventing or on the spot, is closely related
to the other meaning of the word, coming up with something for an urgent
practical need and requires imagination. The urge to improvise is to do
with the exploration of thought and feeling and I am sure the species that
survived the harsh realities of primitive development were those species
with the imagination to explore ideas and invent concepts related to surrounding
world.These were beings that had the capacity to explore the feelings of
themselves and those around them. As the mind became more sophisticated,
so did communication and the expression of ideas in what we call the culture
and the arts, whether by speaking, writing, painting and sculptoring, dancing,
and making music. Music cannot be defined or even described satisfactorily
except in its own terms, but to me it is most analogous to speech and like
speech is about communication. Speech has many forms but most relevant
to this discussion is conversation, either intimate, or a noisy social
interaction.
Great music, perhaps some
of the greatest ever, has been written down and is performed by highly
trained ensembles of musicians who, under a fine conductor can create memorable
and deeply moving experiences, experiences that make life significant and
worth living. Until quite recently in the present Century (but not previous
centuries), improvised music was considered primitive. The situation is
beginning to change, but elitism, and surely that is what is involved here,
is rooted deep, in some places in the world more than others and changing
entrenched ideas takes time; the promotion of improvisation as a genuine
form of musical expression needs constant attention if it is to become
a significant part of musical culture. There is another reason, and I reminded
of a remark by Maynard Ferguson, trumpeter, band-leader and educationalist,
"....put an alto-saxophone or trumpet in our youngsters hands..... Rather
than a hand-gun!" That remark speaks for itself, but the current age is
tarred with mediocrity, which itself breeds violence. The prevalence of
mediocrity, undoubtedly encouraged by a universal obsession with commercial
greed (I,m talking about big business which denies humanity and reduces
people to numbers to be manipulated, like the 0s and 1s in this computer),
and ultimate lack of concern in our social systems for our fellow "humanoids,"
as Maynard Ferguson would say, is even more reason to develop artistic
expression of all kinds in our youngsters. Improvisation as a natural activity
should be one of those.
When talking to people we
do not use a score, nor do we repeat the same memorised script to those
around us, unless like a politician we want to be utterly boring. We can
all think of someone who does actually converse like that! If there
is any merit in the analogy of improvisation to speech, then it would seem
reasonable that musicians might communicate with each other by improvising
within a musically structured environment which could take many forms;
one might hopefully expect some bystanders to listen, as to a conversation.
This imaginary format could cover many situations, from a room at home
to a concert hall, where the number of bystanders would have increased
somewhat! Improvisation in Western culture is most often associated with
one of the many forms of jazz and if one were to ask a jazz musician what
format he or she prefers, then answer would invariably be the jazz club.
Here the musicians work within a flexible framework and the bystanders
are free to listen, talk to each other, drink or whatever else; communication
in the club is both spoken and musical. If the music is particularly good,
there will be less talking and more listening; sometimes in these situations
there are cries of "shut-up!" It would have to be said that enforced silence
or enforced anything else is against the spirit of jazz. In the early sixties
I heard both Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk playing in clubs in America,
but there was always a good measure of conversation in the background and
of course one can hear this on almost every live club recording. (Those
who find it really painful can always buy the CD!).
The music of the concert
hall and the recorded song has its spoken counterpart in the theatre and
other media but to neglect musical improvisation as a natural and spontaneous
means of communication would seem to be a loss both for musicians and listeners.
To push the analogy to the extreme it would be strange if an Olivier was
unable to hold a conversation with those around him! Think back to the
Middle Ages and earlier; serious music belonged to the Church in the form
of plain chant and was strictly controlled in style with certain intervals
forbidden, (interestingly there is good reason to believe that plain chant
itself with its small singable intervals arose naturally by people making
up folk style tunes); secular music on the other hand was performed by
people singing songs, by wandering troubadours with primitive but serviceable
stringed instruments, and improvising musicians of all types. The really
interesting thing in the European scene is the influence of the Middle
East and beyond. 'World Music' is not just the prerogative of today, the
improvised sounds from the bazaars of North Africa had made their way through
Europe and were being taken up by skilled practitioners and used in music
for work or pleasure, just as today's Western musicians, improvisers and
composers, are being influenced by serious and popular music around the
world. It must have been great to listen to some of that music. It was
resurrected in our own day by enthusiasts like David Munrow, who died tragically
young and was a pioneer in the realisation of Early Music, bringing life
and rhythm to what was considered by many to be merely an academic curiosity.
The key word is rhythm, the driving force behind all music and almost certainly
predating song and melody as we know them today. I believe that this rhythm
has evolutionary roots and is thus fundamentally at the heart of the emotional
force of music. In Early Music, the Eastern influenced rhythm-sections
layed down a pulsating carpet of sound upon which horns, (crumhorn, cornamuse,
sacbut, schalmei and many others) played regular and also totally improvised
lines. Was this the earliest jazz music? Even before the blues? I suspect
that the spirit and feeling of jazz has been with us long before modern
America. But perhaps all of these improvised forms including those in the
farthest corners of the world originate in Africa, the home of rhythm,
and the home of humankind.
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