Non-Canonical Music Criticism
Earlier this week I read Gary Tomlinson’s essay, "Cultural Dialogics and Jazz: A White Historian Signifies." (pp. 64-94 of Disciplining Music: Musicology and its Canons, which I mentioned in an earlier blog).
Tomlinson explicates the practice of 'dialogical knowledge', cohering with Derrida's admirable imperative to 'speak the other's language without renouncing [our] own'. Dialogical knowledge is decentered, arising from the recognition that all points of view have something to share, and that no point of view should be privileged above another. Tomlinson criticizes the 'monologic knowledge' that results from canonical thinking, namely, the kind of jazz criticism that assumes a particular 'canon' of what constitutes jazz.
Applying this critique to a concrete situation, Tomlinson turns to the reception of Miles Davis' 1969 album, In A Silent Way. This was the album that anticipated the major changes of the 1970 watershed, Bitches Brew. It is arguable which of these albums was the first jazz-fusion album, but the honor would certainly go to one of them and not to anyone else.
Miles Davis, In A Silent Way (Columbia: February 18, 1969)
The author quotes four harsh critiques of In A Silent Way's contribution to jazz, then condemns them for the "stark inability to hear Davis's fusion music except against the background of what jazz was before it.... Instead they hear only a departure from the canonized jazz tradition of their own making."
Tomlinson then puts forward his own assessment of Davis' fusion of 1969-74: as "a compelling expressive force created by his unflinching facing of the dialogical extremes of his background and environment." Davis's fusion music is dialogical knowledge in action, bringing together disparate elements into a cohesive whole. In A Silent Way bridges difference without alleviating it: jazz music and rock music; art music and popular music; acoustic music and electric music; black musicians and white musicians.
Making this theological, albeit in a very quick way, one could relate fusion to the postmodern Christian project of Milbank et al. Particularly the idea that a Trinitarian Christianity presents the best way to affirm difference without destroying it. Thus the Christian worldview becomes not just a metanarrative, but a meta-metanarrative. I've yet to determine whether I buy that claim, but I must say it's attractive. And chique, at the moment. (See John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory (Blackwell, 1990; pp. 278-379), The Word Made Strange (Blackwell, 1997; pp. 171-93), as well as his essay in The Postmodern God, "Postmodern Critical Augustinianism" (Blackwell, 1997; pp. 265-78).
But getting back to Tomlinson's essay, I agree with his assessment of fusion. It is something I have thought about for quite some time, ever since experiencing the powerful relational dynamics of fusion music. My time in both BlueBeat Revue and A Lo Hecho Pecho taught me about the ethics of performance: how to hold back and support someone else when they are soloing; how to accent particular rhythms or melodic phrases; how to have meaningful and successful 'conversation' on stage or in the practice room; and, most fundamentally, how to listen. And I’m not just talking about a passive listening, but the kind of listening that actively engages the voice of the other. The kind of listening that allows the other to be more itself as it speaks in a distinctive relation to you.
As I make a mix CD to introduce fusion to a friend of mine, these are my reflections.
Postscript: Tomlinson’s essay lends a curious interpretation of my current musical collaboration in St Andrews: ‘The Canonical Approach’. Although our name comes more from the biblical hermeneutics of Brevard Childs than musicology.
Earlier this week I read Gary Tomlinson’s essay, "Cultural Dialogics and Jazz: A White Historian Signifies." (pp. 64-94 of Disciplining Music: Musicology and its Canons, which I mentioned in an earlier blog).
Tomlinson explicates the practice of 'dialogical knowledge', cohering with Derrida's admirable imperative to 'speak the other's language without renouncing [our] own'. Dialogical knowledge is decentered, arising from the recognition that all points of view have something to share, and that no point of view should be privileged above another. Tomlinson criticizes the 'monologic knowledge' that results from canonical thinking, namely, the kind of jazz criticism that assumes a particular 'canon' of what constitutes jazz.
Applying this critique to a concrete situation, Tomlinson turns to the reception of Miles Davis' 1969 album, In A Silent Way. This was the album that anticipated the major changes of the 1970 watershed, Bitches Brew. It is arguable which of these albums was the first jazz-fusion album, but the honor would certainly go to one of them and not to anyone else.
Miles Davis, In A Silent Way (Columbia: February 18, 1969)
The author quotes four harsh critiques of In A Silent Way's contribution to jazz, then condemns them for the "stark inability to hear Davis's fusion music except against the background of what jazz was before it.... Instead they hear only a departure from the canonized jazz tradition of their own making."
Tomlinson then puts forward his own assessment of Davis' fusion of 1969-74: as "a compelling expressive force created by his unflinching facing of the dialogical extremes of his background and environment." Davis's fusion music is dialogical knowledge in action, bringing together disparate elements into a cohesive whole. In A Silent Way bridges difference without alleviating it: jazz music and rock music; art music and popular music; acoustic music and electric music; black musicians and white musicians.
Making this theological, albeit in a very quick way, one could relate fusion to the postmodern Christian project of Milbank et al. Particularly the idea that a Trinitarian Christianity presents the best way to affirm difference without destroying it. Thus the Christian worldview becomes not just a metanarrative, but a meta-metanarrative. I've yet to determine whether I buy that claim, but I must say it's attractive. And chique, at the moment. (See John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory (Blackwell, 1990; pp. 278-379), The Word Made Strange (Blackwell, 1997; pp. 171-93), as well as his essay in The Postmodern God, "Postmodern Critical Augustinianism" (Blackwell, 1997; pp. 265-78).
But getting back to Tomlinson's essay, I agree with his assessment of fusion. It is something I have thought about for quite some time, ever since experiencing the powerful relational dynamics of fusion music. My time in both BlueBeat Revue and A Lo Hecho Pecho taught me about the ethics of performance: how to hold back and support someone else when they are soloing; how to accent particular rhythms or melodic phrases; how to have meaningful and successful 'conversation' on stage or in the practice room; and, most fundamentally, how to listen. And I’m not just talking about a passive listening, but the kind of listening that actively engages the voice of the other. The kind of listening that allows the other to be more itself as it speaks in a distinctive relation to you.
As I make a mix CD to introduce fusion to a friend of mine, these are my reflections.
Postscript: Tomlinson’s essay lends a curious interpretation of my current musical collaboration in St Andrews: ‘The Canonical Approach’. Although our name comes more from the biblical hermeneutics of Brevard Childs than musicology.
posted by Andy at 1:26 AM
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