Frågorna är på sätt och vis självklara men samtidigt inte. Om ni förstår vad jag menar. Visst är musik bara musik och den ska upplevas på det sättet. Men samtidigt måsta man ha respekt för historien och dom människorna som skapade musiken. Och visst kan man inte och ska inte förbjuda människor att lyssna och spela inom vissa traditioner. Men återigen så måste man måste respektera människorna och kulturen. Annars tror jag att man väldigt lätt kan komma in i en ond cirkel av historielöset som kan leda till rasism och även att man förlorar kärnan och styrkan i mycket av den musik vi har idag.
Jag publicerar en artikel som min vän Bankole Irungu har skivit om ämnet. Han lever i politisk exil i Europa efter att ha blivit förföljd i sitt hemland USA. Han har varit politisk aktivist och kämpat för svartas rättigheter och är gift med sångerksan och pianisten Aisha.
Who Put The Swing In Sweden?
The Africans in America created a music known by the derogatory term "Jazz" a little over a century ago. This artform as played by the people has influenced musicians all the way to the far reaches of the world. The core of the music is spontaneous improvisation. This is rooted in expressing the feelings that an African artist in America develops while confronted with oppression. As great as this, one of several cultural jewels is, it’s unknown to most people: its origins, brilliant cultural meaning, the exploitative marketing and definition of it by forces set on racist confusion.Among musicians of world class, Rex Stewart, the cornetist and Louis Armstrong of trumpet fame, emerged onto Swedish bandstands in the early 1930s. These were accomplished artists but also young men who made such an oceanic journey (weeks on the rough Atlantic) to avoid serious racial discrimination in America. Louis’ first European and Scandinavian tours were to escape the White mobsters who took a good deal of his income and insisted on his silence in the face of rampant violence. The famous Swedish trumpet player Rolf Ericson was not the only one to give up his classical trumpet lessons after hearing “Satch” in Stockholm in ’33. He emulated Louis. A stream of authentic musicians to Sweden continues to this day. The difference now is that Swedes, or even Japanese or Czechs have a better chance at playing the music Rex and Louis brought to Sweden than African so called Americans.
Academies of Omission
Although the IAJE International Association for Jazz Education profiled an emphasis on “Nordic Jazz” at its 2006 conference in New York City, USA, there is no reference to the African so called American heritage of this music. Not in its website Mission for being, or in the extensive Nordic showcase page indicating dozens of Danish, Finnish and Swedish musicians, festivals, record labels and “learning institutions” does this appear. This mirrors the nationwide trend in Sweden regarding African American musical artforms in that there is a view that “jazz just dropped out of the sky”. More than 100 nightclubs and venues, and numerous academies and universities participate in the fabrication. In Poland, Scotland and Austria, they will say Polish jazz, Scottish, etc. As has been begun all over the West, but only for 3 or 4 decades intensively, Swedish "Jazz" academic courses turn out people repeatedly trying to perfect a Bud Powell or Charlie Parker recorded solo. Charlie has been dead for 52 years, Bud for 41. They admired Debussy but they could never be Europeans.
Esbjörn Svensson Trio (EST)
In the highly profitable economy of industrial produced music, Sweden leads the pack. Pop music fortunes grew with ABBA and innumerable current "acts", many Swedes painstakingly imitating English lyrics and singing. But, even on Radio Sverige, the state radio, they are sometimes presented, even though they are unable to speak English well. The youth flourish in the small market of the nation's 9 million residents and abroad. Sweden's “EST”, composed of European Classically musicians, expressed the idea of doing rock-jazz-pop-fusion music in a recent BBC radio interview.
There is little Svensson and his partners can do wrong according to the critics, the fans and of course, Universal, the corporate industry giant to whom they are signed. In terms of venues, from vast US stadiums to baroque halls of ancient Europe, 10-year-old EST is the savior of everything, it seems. But a couple of listens to the efforts that they make on mp3 expose yet more mechanically driven and forced technique. True, the website states that it is a pop band that plays jazz. Underpinning much of the playing is what is classic to Europe. That is where reading chords and music notes, even in "Jazz" is required.
Africans from America displayed the soulful yearning of a people with a mine of cultural treasures to the outer world beyond North America 75 years ago. The possibility of a grand cultural exchange existed once in Sweden and Europe. James Moody, John Coltrane, Tommy Flanagan and those who made Swedes ecstatic might have shared in the money more than an employer/employee relationship. Did the Swedes dare to go up against the American-based industry?
Art Taylor, Don Cherry, Jimmy Woode, Sr. and Jimmy Woode, Jr., Benny Bailey, Nina Simone, Herbert Lee "Peanuts" Holland, Oscar Pettiford, Sidney Bechet, Sabu Martinez, Dexter Gordon, Adelaide Hall, Kenny Clarke, James Reese Europe, Ben Webster, Valaida Snow, Ernie Wilkins, Ada Bricktop Smith, Ray Copeland, Don Byas, Coleman Hawkins, Mal Waldron, Eric Dolphy and countless others who held forth and who Swedes and many other Scandinavians learned from are gone now. Yet a few still hold musical court in the corners of Stockholm's Tunnelbana stations and street corners. They can never be teachers at “Kulturama” or even students there, though they have gigged with Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis and Freddy Hubbard. The “Afro-American” Music Course has been known to refuse admission to African-American teaching staff and even students.
Ted Curson (Finland), Johnny Griffin (France) Joe Lee Wilson (France) and others who have played and taught will not be around forever. But the people are still around, the culture of a people can only be gone if the people are gone.
Bankole Irungu
27 December 2006
Bankoles blog
Aishas hemsida
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