Your favorite critic is too busy with his own woman to mind about the future of the music

I have to admit it: since I write only for passion, without any income – I don’t even host banners on this blog, because I hate when I try myself to read something through my laptop or telephone and all those bright squares appear abruptly – it is easy to write what I want, being also my own publisher. But tonight I want, while I listen to some good music like Oliver Nelson’s The Blues and The Abstract Truth and Pharoah Sanders’ Thembi, to remove some pebbles from my shoe.

Fact is that Italy is a strange place if you want to be a critic. In every musical genre, the mantra is always “you don’t like it, you don’t talk about it”. This way, a critic is not a critic anymore. The market is full of horrorful material and art places are, or better said were, full of horrorful concerts. But let’s start with some order.

First of all: the ego affair. I was attending a concert by pianist Vijay Iyer some years ago. I was part of the press staff, since I was writing reviews for an Italian webzine called Mescalina. That meant I had my own seat. In front of me an old guy, another critic, told litterally everyone in the (deconsacrated) church near him: “Let’s see if tonight I’ll discover a great pianist as I discovered Brad Melhdau many years ago”. I didn’t knew who the guy was. But this is a first problem.

Mr. Iyer was still discovered. Blow Up, an Italian magazine that is our version of The Wire – mine is a conservative country so we always copy everything from foreign countries, artistically speaking – still issued reviews of records and concerts by the New York based pianist and composer. There was no need to re-discover him. What the critic meant was possibly: Iyer need to be brought to the masses. I’ll do it. What the critic unconsciously was saying was: Iyer need to be brough to my ear because if I don’t know something, this something is previously unheard by virtually all those who matter.

And this is the ego affair. There’s no such thing as humility in the music world. Every critic – even me, for what it worths – has his own idiosyncrasies – let’s talk about mine: I can’t stand melodic jazz if played after bebop was born, with notable exceptions by singers like Nina Simone, but as far as pianists they have to beat it or prepare it, at the opposite if you’re a drummer and don’t own little percussions you’re out.

Obviously I listen to every styles of music, but when it comes to jazz it has to be as much distorted. I’m joking about myself, but if you don’t play free jazz in the present time you’re not adventurous enough for me. And this is a limit, because I heard a beautiful Italian singer dedicating a project, an entire CD, to David Sylvian few years ago and I didn’t even write about it because the arrangements were too smooth to me. See what I mean?

Now, let’s get over it. Every critic has his own idiosyncrasies, that was the main point. But every critic – even me? I’m asking myself right now and I don’t have so a proper answer – at least in my own country believes his own tastes are the only tastes that matter. That’s why it would be interesting to have other hands to strum that laptop keyboard for this blog other than me. But I’m a maniac of control as everyone else in this business. I think it as to do with the fear people would write with too much indulgency.

Now, let’s move forward to the second point. In this industry, you have to be controversial to be successful (and be paid). This is often misinterpreted for having your own vision. Let’s make an example. There was a guy, another critic, who now is one of the spearheads of a famous Italian jazz magazine. Before, he had his own blog as me. Being older, possessing a record shop and having more time than me to listen and read is a good difference. Another are his own judgments over my world, that of free jazz and improvised music in general.

Nothing against Coltrane or Ayler, but Dolphy as an example was not completely at ease with composition during his career for this guy – maybe I suggest because Dolphy died at an early age and always had few money in his pockets: why aren’t we talking about all the musicians that left the business to play litterally along the road like Giuseppi Logan or Charles Gayle? And the reason was? The business in itself, not giving enough money to the musicians and leaving the most part of it to the labels and their managers.

But the judgment about Dolphy was motivated in his dissertation about some recent re-releases of Chico Hamilton featuring the multi-instrumentalist, so I have nothing basically against it but that if you are a music critic you also need to be a little bit of an historian and an sociologist. Just a little bit, because you cannot always know everything, but it helps a lot. And what about Peter Brotzmann? This guy wrote in his blog many years ago that the German reedist was a “paper mache figure”, with no further explanation.

The guy also wrote and published a book full of judgement more argued and debated, but this is the tenor, more or less. Interestingly enough we had an email exchange in which I asked him why music and jazz also worldwide was, with notable exceptions, deteriorating. During those years the Turkish scene was exploding, and it was a good thing for the experimental music scene in general, but at the same time I heard in my country people whose attitude was really the one stigmatized by Mingus like, “fuck the school, I’ll play free”.

I was invited in person to attend at concerts where the musicians involved, releasing records also for their own little label, were not even able to LISTEN the one the other and react properly. Same in the world of contemporary music. So, I asked this now famous critic what were his thoughts about it, and he wrote me something like he was too busy with his own woman to think about this topics. I think he was saying I was loosing my time trying to separate the sheep from the goats.

This leads me to the third point: there’s no critic at all. An Italian musician once told to a friend of mine, that as me wanted to write about music: if [name of a famous American saxophonist] plays in a way you don’t like it, you can always write or say that he “played like it was”. This, with the other advice other people gave to me about “you don’t like it, you don’t talk about it”, it’s the end of my (unpaid) job.

It’s the end of the games, the end of the music also. No critic, no aspiration to create interesting, fresh and new music to be defined as such. No new music, welcome to the ego trip occupying the space originally devoted to creativity. I started with the last point, but now the cycle is complete I believe. Now. In Italy there is a horrible situation for music. In the world is the same. The old masters are leaving us, the young ones are interesting, sometimes very interesting – a couple names we discussed also here: Mary Halvorson, Patrick Shiroishi, Lao Dan – but none of them is renewing the palette bringing new colors to the light, at least this is my opinion.

Maybe it is not the right time: politically speaking this decade is worse than the 1980s. Economically and socially our civilization is in pieces. It is not a surprise we have great talents, but no innovators – I’d love to discuss this topic in the future with Anthony Braxton, after rereading some of his books – the real problem is that no one wants to talk about it. I lost an interview many years ago – my entry ticket to the press in my country on paper – because of my attitude, my need to define what’s good to me and what’s not, taking my own risks.

Because, if I look at what’s happening in my country, this is the scenario. On one hand, you have trap music dominating the hit parade, together or aside with Italian pop music. On the other hand, you have virtually nothing. People who are in their 20 years or less are not even interested in rock, alternative or experimental music. People of my generation, the Seventies, think ‘serious music’ is only Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin – or The Cure, or Depeche Mode – they don’t even know about Idles or Algiers, who are rock bands of the present time.

As far as music played live, it is full of 40/50 years old people playing that kind of rock music for old boring people as them. Young guys are interested mostly in people like Dark Polo Gang and their values: money and success. There is no such a thing as a counterculture in my country anymore. I truly believe this is also your future if you don’t pay attention to it. From where do we want to start, right now? 

 

 

Mary Halvorson “Code Girl” (Firehouse 12, 2018)

I've listened to Mary Halvorson in live performances two times in the past: once in a small theatre in Italy with friend and collaborator Jessica Pavone, then in London in a small but famous club (The Vortex) with her quartet The 13^th Assembly. Some years are passed, but her creative vein is still far from draining.

A long-time disciple and collaborator of the multi-awarded composer and reedist Anthony Braxton, and of other giants of improvised music like Marc Ribot, Halvorson has released a couple of albums this year. The first, issued in March by the label Firehouse 12, is titled “Code Girl” and sees Halvorson heading a quintet of musicians including bassist Michael Formanek, drummer Tomas Fujiwara (basically her Thumbscrew Trio), Ambrose Akinmusire on trumpet and Amirtha Kidambi on vocals.

Divided in two Cds, for a total lenght of 90 minutes, this issue is composed by 14 beautiful songs, a little bit obliques – they remind me of Robert Wyatt – where there's space left here and there for some little improvisation. Possibly one of the best output this year, “Code Girl” is composed by nice arpeggios, scales and solos on guitar driven by great grooves of the rhythm section, long melodic tirades on trumpet, some arcos on the bass and a great vocalist, usually trained in South Indian Carnatic tradition, but here completely at ease with alt-rock flavoured melodies.

An advice for all the fans of free jazz/improvised music: sound needs structure to make sense, and the AABA structure can be as interesting and smart as our beloved and chosen composition-with-improvisation scheme. Don't miss the opportunity to be enriched by this form of art, like any other art: you won't regret at all.