Jazz tradition - Is it music that is still 100% alive, or does it serve only as a study material now?
What is there to add to the jazz tradition (swing, bop etc), that has not yet been played or created?
The great masters have played this music and kept creating new and new melodies, chord structures, licks, rhythmic devices, all of it, but has there been a point, where this style(s) became saturated? Are the stories not true, that even the greats, in their late years, started to lack the innovativeness, started to repeat themselves?
Sure, there have been people like Miles, Trane, Sonny etc, who kept finding and changing their style to always a new branch of jazz, that has been just created, but that meant that they left the old behind;
After the 50's, Miles refused to play My Funny Valentine, sayin' he can't look back,
Trane kept coming up with completely new approaches, to a point where he asked Elvin "not to swing",
Sonny switched to funk, soul, rock, R&B, calypso latin music, where he stopped applying the bop language that he previously used and started playing new.
I don't want to say that they abandoned their roots, because that is not true - what I want to say is that when they felt that it the swing and bop approach everything has been said, that they cannot add/create anything really new within this approach, they had to abandon it in a way to create something new. Turn the page, end one phase.
I guess the music really has to go forward - everyone says:
"You study the great old masters, just like everyone in the music field (and pretty much in any field in life) has, but you still have to walk your own path. You can't just copy, you have to create, which means that you have to go forward..."
In the tradition, there is still less and less that you can create (which in new and still traditional) and after a while, if you don't want to be a copier, you start feeling restrained and you start studying modern and "new way" and you go forward and you exploit possibilities, and you keep trying something new - new rhythms, harmonies, metres, sounds, instruments...
Everything keeps going forward and forward, unfortunately (besides a few exceptions) further and further away from the tradition.
And what makes me sad is this: What am I supposed to do, I, who simply like swing and bebop, not just like a study material, but as a beautiful music that is pleasant to ear, music that I want to keep playing?
I love Ben Webster, his beautiful, simple, but yet amazing melodies, the old breathy tone, relaxed swinging time and phrasing, melancholy and peacefulness, playfulness, crying, the biggest heart...
I love the young Sonny Rollins, his strong sound, reminiscent of Coleman Hawkins, bopper from deep within his heart, young and eager to create a hole in the world, the laid-back, but still driving rhythmic aggressive phrasing, yet beautiful tonal melodies, harmonic thinking that was both modern but still very very traditional and bop-like...I love Count Basie big band, with Lester and Herschel on tenors, Sweets Edison on trumpet, the great rhythmic section, Walter Page, Freddie Green, the great Papa Joe Jones, and the best from the best, Basie's playful piano, so in contrast with the strength of the big band...
I love Ellington's harmonies, the color of his big band, which only he alone was able to create...
What am I to do, to keep playing this beautiful music, but still find my own voice without copying anything that has already been played by someone..? Is there still enough space to create something new even without these boundaries of swing and bebop? Has it not been all said already?
Sometimes I wonder why I spent the lonely nights, dreaming of a song...
A melody that is both old and new, a voice of a nightingale that has never been heard before...
Sometime I wonder...
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