NO LOGICAL REASON (via Glenn Dryfoos):

The Body Eclectic: a review of Dave Douglas's Strange Liberation (David Hajdu, 02.03.04, New Republic)

Jazz is going through a new phase, and Dave Douglas seems to embody it neatly. For most of the previous two decades, a period anticipating the centennial of jazz's origins around the turn of the last century, the jazz world had seemed fixated on its history. A generation of young musicians, led by the gifted and charismatic Wynton Marsalis, challenged its immediate predecessors (as every musical generation tends to do, one way or another) by charging that the electronic experimentation and rock-oriented "fusion" of the 1960s and '70s had not advanced the music through innovation, but had debased it by forfeiting the musical elements that had made earlier styles of jazz feel jazzy--and also black: that is, the blues and the syncopated rhythm of swing. In the name of restoring jazz to its past greatness, honoring the legacy of its iconic masters, and preserving its identity as a mode of African American expression, Marsalis and his acolytes institutionalized a canonical approach to jazz, a jazz like subscription concert music, and as in all canons the music began to harden in that mold.

More recently, jazz has been refreshed and rejuvenated by many of the same external influences--pop and rock, world music, the Western classical tradition, the avant-garde--that classicists were disclaiming as corruptive just a few years ago. Cassandra Wilson is singing Bob Dylan and Robbie Robertson songs; Bill Frisell has made a bluegrass-style CD; the tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano has recorded an homage to Enrico Caruso, arranged in the vein of an Italian street band; the alto saxophonist Greg Osby is composing for jazz instruments and string quartet; and the pianist Danilo Perez has composed a suite inspired by the music of his native Panama. "The world is scattered--I think it's just the way things work now," Douglas has remarked.

He speaks and comports himself as he plays his trumpet, with seemingly effortless vigor. He is equally adroit at cooking up musical experiments and articulating their intent. "Everyone's looking for where is jazz going, where is music going?" he told me. "It's going up and down and in every direction at once. Everybody's doing a million different things. It used to be that you look at Coltrane's career or at Miles's career and they went from this to this to this and then to this, and it was kind of a progression. There's no logical reason other than me learning that I've gone from one group to a different one and then another different one. Having all the different bands and writing different kinds of music is me trying to not be in a trap. How differently can I play? How different can I make a new project? Without the pressure, what are you really doing?"

On general principle, we oppose "new phases" and difference for difference sake, but our jazz critic says he's quite talented.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 7, 2004 7:08 AM