Jazz: From the National to the Universal
INSTEAD OF VIEWING ITSELF AS AN AGENT OF COLONIZATION OR CULTURAL DOMINANCE –AS MANY HAVE THOUGHT- JAZZ HAS PROVIDED MUSICIAN WITH A TOOL TO RECOGNIZE THEMSELVES WITH AND IDENTIFY LOCAL SOUND TRADITIONS
For a mighty long time, jazz was characterized as a typically American artistic expression, and the narratives built in relation to its history revolved around the future of the genre in the U.S., although from its beginnings it developed beyond the borders of the North American nation. What came to pass with this expression is an example of the transnational trend of cultural hybridity that has been going on from the very moment jazz saw the light of day.
In this area, today’s jazz performers have to be located within an international context of influences, borrowings, innovations and musical exchanges. It’s plain clear to me that at this moment of the 21st century, understanding jazz in its dual role of sociocultural strength and musical discourse cannot simply be construed as a national art, expression of experiences and characteristics of a unique territory, autonomous of considerations of global politics, cultural power and national identity.
At a time when the world is shrinking more and more, contrary to what some thought at a given moment, people who saw in jazz an agent of colonization or cultural domination, the genre –rather than sweeping the always-coveted and necessary diversity- in such cases as Cuba it has provided musicians with a tool to recognize themselves with and identify local sound traditions. A good case in point is the numerous works that our instrumentalists have carried out with a view to hybridizing danzon and jazz.
In a work authored by Spanish researcher Julian Ruesga Bono entitled "Looking into the new and not just young Cuban jazz", published in the Tomajazz magazine, he addresses the development of jazz by our countrymen, especially made in the course of recent years –which is by all means the one people around the world know the least about- the scholar expresses a fundamental idea to understand the process of continuity this sound expression has gone through among us. Due to its interesting approach, here’s an excerpt from this article:
“The public imagery forged around Cuban jazz is well determined by the past of jazz itself, above all by the historical brunt of the so-called Latin Jazz. The particular and powerful mythology that has been built over the years around its great musicians, conditions its reception and public perception. Chano Pozo, Mario Bauzá, Mongo Santamaría, Bebo Valdés, Cachao, Irakere seem to form an organic whole in the fan's imagery. However, there is a Cuban jazz present that, beyond its history, is as rich and polyhedral as its glorious past –and as hefty as it gets. It’s all about a present made up of a large number of excellent musicians who perform great quality music.”
No one who has truly delved into the Cuban musical scene of the last few years could ignore the good moment jazz is living right now, jazz made by our fellow musicians, both in the country and in the heart of the diaspora, and which the tremendous contribution made by the Jazz Plaza Festival, an event initially organized by a modest cultural institution from a municipality of Havana; and more recently what the Jo-Jazz Contest has chipped in to the genre’s advance on the island nation.
Quite recently, a foreign researcher visiting Cuba asked me about why the section of today’s breed of Cuban musicians that had penetrated the international market the most were jazz performers (although there are no conservatories on the island where they can study jazz and the possibilities of performing are not as good enough as they should be). And there were glorious examples of fellow musicians doing their stuff in counties like Spain, Canada and the United States, or excelling in competitions like the Grammy Awards and others of contests.
In the handful of reasons I came up with to answer the question, one of the ones I debated the most was just what the Jazz Plaza Festival has meant for the development of the genre, particularly during the 1980s, when the event enjoyed a particular hallmarked moment thanks to the participation of both professional musicians and numerous students hailing from music schools. This environment entered the 1990s and changed its course for the better, a move that in recent years has been livened up by the rebirth of the Jo-Jazz contests, a competitive event cut out for young jazz musicians who vie friendly for a chance to win prizes in both the Performance and Composition categories.
The historic development of jazz in Cuba bears out that throughout its history this genre has been a powerful symbol capable of shaking and forming identities. This provides support to theories wielded by such scholars of contemporary culture as Arjun Appadurai, Néstor García Canclini or James Clifford, who consider that the approaches to different types of music around us cannot be made as if they were only preexisting and compact sets in cultural systems, but rather as a result of a mixture that conveys their reception and reinterpretation.
Only from an approach like the one above we can understand the real scope of the multiple borrowings loans from everywhere that made the richness of jazz music performed by Cuban musicians possible. These approaches also point to something very suggestive: that the global history of jazz would be, to a large extent, just another way of understanding the history of the previous century. From the technological progress to local and postcolonial politics, through the development of the media and certain socio-political strategies, the contemporary world is connected with the history of how different music expressions (specifically in the case of jazz) have spread and globalized in recent decades.
We should also bear in mind that jazz today is subject to the disciplines of the economy and interacts with other cultural forms. Such reciprocity is neither horizontal nor equitable, because domestic and international connections meet in the crossroads, especially in the media scene. Such processes do not allow generalizations; they do not take place in the same socio-economic or cultural continuum, because they imply different development tendencies in each country or cultural space. Thus, Cuban jazz provides new perspectives on cultural processes and different visions of how the scenarios that give meaning to goods and symbolic messages are altered today.
A sign that underscores the good health of jazz among instrumentalists born in Cuba lies is in fact that a rewarding diversification of songs, written and composed by our fellow musicians on the island nation and overseas, is underway. Some of them not only perform within the boundaries of Latin or Afro-Cuban jazz, as researcher Leonardo Acosta likes to put it. Chucho Valdés simply calls it Cuban jazz. In such a way, for some time now there have been several record productions made by Cubans who use discourse codes from the electric jazz or jazz fusion, smooth jazz and free jazz, ways of expression in Cuba that, not too long ago, were poorly valued by the media, the public and the musicians themselves. However, beyond that healthy and growing stylistic diversity, the sense of root orientation does not change.
I think it is essential to zero in on the idea that the paths our jazz players are on right now are diversifying in an ostensible way. In my opinion, there are two main groups: those that start from the Cuban roots to reach out to jazz, and those who act in the opposite direction. Either way, there are different ramifications, though.
The work of today’s Cuban jazz performers, whether in Cuba or abroad, shows that an authentic cultural vision has to go beyond the narrow view of nationalism and the inflated vision of imperial effluvium. Those are follies we must run away from in an effort to metabolize the most dissimilar traditions and, with it, come up with a type of musical creation that remains as Cuban as it gets, though conceived from a universal discourse.
In keeping with this reality, jazz composed in this Caribbean neck of the woods becomes hybridizing music with multiple identities. Over time, it has been opening up to new influences, remains in motion and its future is associated with different musical forms it helps to enrich. With this, we can value it as an example of what the new Cuban culture is doing around the world, how it influences other cultures and the mark those other cultures have left in Cuba’s.
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