On the Fringe of the Jungle, Duke Ellington

Hi! Thanks for dropping by. Rather than starting with a lengthy manifesto, I'm going to jump right in with a kind of post that I'm intending to be the bread and butter of this blog: a song, some history, and a smattering of my own thoughts. In general, I intend this this blog to be fun, great listening, and a way for readers to crack through the sometimes impenetrable crust that encases jazz music. That crust is made up of a lot different ingredients, which we'll talk about over time. But first, some music, and a quote:

"Not the autocracy of a single stubborn melody on the on hand, nor the anarchy of unchecked noise on the other. No, a delicate balance between the two; an enlightened freedom." -Johann Sebastian Bach

If any statement is a manifesto for me for music, this is it. On the one hand, there is dissonance, a chaos of tones that don't relate in a harmonious way to our ears. When used well, dissonance creates a frisson in the brain that challenges it to make new connections. When used poorly, it is cacophonous, painful and annoying.

On the other hand, pure melody can be just as annoying. A cloying melody can feel insulting, like someone is trying to lull you into a compliant stupor. The Theme for Titanic comes to mind. Melody can be infantilizing- think of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," which is the purest distillation of melody. Hear it in your head. You don't hear anything besides a piano banging out one note at a time, do you? Twinkle, Twinkle defies accompaniment; it doesn't swing, or call out for harmony, or anything. What it is is memorable, and easy to digest.

So music gets interesting to me when it explores the middle ground, challenging the listener to make new connections while simultaneously soothing the brain with a catchy tune or a groovy beat, like a vitamin covered in peanut butter.

It appears I couldn't help myself on the manifesto front, but the balance of dissonance and melody are going to be essential to what I'm exploring here in the caverns of jazz. So, ahem, back to Duke Ellington and "On the Fringe of the Jungle."

I picked this tune to kick things off because of the bare simplicity of the arrangement: piano, bass and an unseen, subtle drummer. Duke is a big hero of mine, and a great place to start if you're interested in going deeper into jazz. You can't go wrong with the Duke. His reign stretched from the early era of Harlem "jass" up to his death in 1974. What I love about hearing him play in this era (and I'll certainly be playing some of his collaboration with Charles Mingus and Max Roach later) is the way he takes a simple blues/gospel song structure and pushes it out into something playful and intellectual. Duke was a very percussive player- you can hear that in the that almost Middle Eastern sounding "Brrnnnp" he does throughout, a jarring reminder that hey, you're listening to some real music! It punctuates the pretty, tripping melody that comes in alongside it. The two approaches bump into each other and marry into a new thought, melody and dissonance. Meanwhile, the drums backpedal, playing no bass-y thumps until much later in the piece, tickling the edges of the snare and the rims of the whole set.

The other thing I love here is that while each instrumentalist does take a turn with a solo, they don't feel like, "Hey, look over here! Pay attention to me now!" I get so turned off by the standard jazz formula, where the whole band plays a melody together almost like it's a formality, then the song disappears completely and the instrumentation falls into a hole while the sax player gets to express their supreme wankery. More on solos later, I'm just getting warmed up on this one.

SO, this is the deal. The Jazz Spelunker. As it turns out, according to Wikipedia, Duke Ellington didn't like to call his music "jazz": he called it "American music." That's fitting- I'm going to be playing a much greater range of music than will fit in the category of jazz, even though that's a pretty broad definition on its own. But there's a lot in jazz that I truly dig, and still a lot that I don't know, so this blog will be a forum for learning and listening and esoteric ruminations.

C'mon by again, and let's hear your own thoughts and comments!