As it’s probably become clear by now, I have conflicted feelings toward tradition, especially as it relates to jazz. Part of the music’s appeal for me has always been its history: the way its ideas and their expression have evolved over the course of a century, the stories of its great personalities, and the way in which it has interacted with the larger culture and society. As I said in my first post, I love the fact that you can hear today’s jazz musicians play standards like “All The Things You Are” and “Body and Soul” because it allows me such a clear way to witness the music's continuing growth. When jazz musicians play those tunes, they aren't just expressing themselves, they’re adding a new chapter to an ongoing American project. Few other art forms promote such a clear view of generations of like-minded artists carving, like Italian stonemasons, new details onto the walls of a never to-be-completed cathedral.
Tradition is beautiful, but it can also paralyze. One of the most common criticisms of jazz over the last, say, 30 years is that it’s been so intimidated by its ghosts that it’s been too scared to say anything new. Going onstage conscious of the legacies of Armstrong, Ellington, and Coltrane coloring every note is going to spook a lot of musicians into copying them; It’s a lot more manageable to play your own stuff and to ignore your place in one of American art’s great epics.
The best jazz musicians realize that the real tradition of jazz is experimentation, innovation, and daring—the greats have always taken risks—but that doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to escape the music’s long shadows. As jazz wrestles with a way to end its marginalization, there’s no more crucial issue than finding the right balance between tradition and change. Err too far on the side of tradition, and you have an inert niche product geared toward the kind of nostalgic hobbyists who collect model trains. Err too far on the side of change, and jazz risks losing the very qualities that make it special.
Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, an 18-piece Brooklyn-based big band, has discovered a way to honor jazz’s history while remaining proudly, defiantly current. Argue defuses the often-explosive question of tradition v. change with a wink, calling Secret Society a “steampunk bigband,” after the literary genre that imagines Victorian-era machines in a science fiction future. (Think of the striking visuals—and not the plots—of recent movies like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and you’ll get the idea.) In Argue’s formulation, the big band itself is the out-dated contraption, and his music the future that it should have never reached.
Argue uses the tremendous possibilities that one gets with 18 instruments to incorporate many of the electronic effects that have been a large part of studio-produced pop and rock for the last twenty years. Jazz, which is still primarily small group acoustic music, has pretty much ignored this sonic vocabulary because it’s often not possible to replicate with four or five musicians. By aligning his small army into a host of different formations, Argue has been able to mimic digital delays, static distortions, and the electric guitar pass filter. Most jazz covers of rock have been merely jazzy versions of rock melodies. Throw a couple minor 7s into "Stairway to Heaven" and you're there! Argue, however, has mined deep into the vernacular of pop and rock, taken the parts that interest him, and put them to work at the core rather than the surface of his music. Secret Society plays music that is unmistakably jazz but that makes sense to people who listen to a lot more Grizzly Bear than Joe Lovano. (At least, I think it does. I, admittedly, listen to more Joe Lovano than Grizzly Bear.)
On Monday night, Argue hosts the Brooklyn Big Band Bonanza at the Bell House in Gowanus, a night that will feature the likeminded Bjorkestra and Industrial Jazz Group. I tried to get a piece into New York to preview the event, but, alas, it was delayed. If you want to hear three very promising takes on the present and future of jazz, the BBBB is your $15 ticket.
More on DJA and Secret Society:
My piece on the making of Secret Society’s debut album Infernal Machines
Patrick Jarenwattananon’s interview with Argue, which was conducted in March but didn’t air until this week. (Seems like I wasn’t the only one who had a DJA album preview in the spring killed or delayed.)
Excerpts from Patrick’s interview that didn’t make the radio cut are here.
And, if you haven't clicked on it already, here's DJA's excellent blog, which features all of Secret Society’s concerts in streaming audio and excellent commentary on music, art, and politics.
Update:
The New Yorker gives props to DJA and the BBBB in its "Goings on About Town," highlighting it as the magazine's nightlife pick of the week.
