By Pat Metheny
What a pleasure it is for me to be invited to talk to you all today.
I feel so proud to be a part of the jazz community. The life that I
have been able to lead as player and composer and improviser over
these years has been fantastic beyond anything I ever could have
imagined when I first started playing.
In a lot of ways, my own career has roughly paralleled the evolution
of the IAJE itself. I started playing music professionally in 1968
when I was about 14, growing up around the Kansas City area -- and
the IAJE, of course, was founded just next door over in Manhattan,
Kansas at right around that same time. And it is really just
unbelievable to see a few decades down the road how it has evolved
into this huge worldwide organization that has done so much to further
the music and, maybe just as important, as we see here today, to
foster a sense of community for all of us who are involved in the
evolution and study of this wonderful way of playing and thinking.
There is no question that jazz education is in better shape now
than ever. 30 years ago, in the small town that I grew up in out
there, although we had an excellent music program developed by
one of the best band directors in the state, there was no jazz
band, no jazz program at all; there weren't even any saxophones
in the marching band!
The fact that I can go back to Lee's Summit now, and see that
they have several ensembles available to kids that are interested,
is just one of countless examples that can be found all over the
world of the power and pervasive influence of this movement .
Nevertheless, as we stand here at the beginning of this new century
as jazz musicians, we find ourselves living in a culture that often
seems to be oblivious, if not outright hostile to musical creativity
as most of us in this room would define it. As millennium era
musicians and educators, we find ourselves with some major challenges
ahead of us, as a community, and as individuals.
But in spite of these challenges -- in fact, I personally believe
it may wind up being BECAUSE of some of these very challenges, and
the real pressures that they will put on us to redefine ourselves,
for even our very survival -- jazz will likely continue to thrive,
although possibly in unexpected ways.
It is jazz's very nature to change, to develop and adapt to the
circumstances of its environment. The evidence of this lies in
the incredible diversity of music and musicians that have evolved,
and lived and flourished, under the wide umbrella of the word "jazz"
itself from the very beginning.
Jazz is an idea that is more powerful than the details of its history
-- a concept bigger than any single one of its partisans could ever
hope to define.
However, as a participant in the cause, retaining one's optimism can
be a difficult task in a culture that often appears to be indifferent
to the kind of personal creativity that is embodied in the quest for
excellence in jazz. As I talk to other musicians and other members
of the larger community, it seems like I keep hearing these somewhat
gloomy forecasts for the music's future, as the sand beneath our
feet continues to shift in these changing times -- particularly
in the last couple of years.
But I feel that the apparent limitations of opportunity are actually
deceptive. Even though I do see certain disturbing changes taking
place among the traditional outlets for playing, for touring,
funding for school music programs, possible cuts in funding for
the NEA, PBS, etc., I actually also sense that an even more amazing
set of potentials is just ahead of us on the not too distant horizon.
We are on the verge of entering a world where the potential for
communication itself is about to explode beyond almost anything
we can even imagine, and jazz is about nothing if not the essence
of communication. On a very basic level that is sometimes easy to
forget or overlook, jazz is actually well suited to excel in this
new climate in many ways.
And as long as we, the purveyors of the form, are not discouraged
by the short term growing pains that appear to be inevitable in
changing times like these -- and most important, as long as we
keep our eyes on, and faith in, the long term power and influence
that is embodied in the very nature of the music itself and the
way that it is made -- we have the opportunity to remain engaged
in the collective research that is the lifeblood and uniting
element of our community: basically, the pursuit of trying to play
some great music, and to uplift and inform the spirits of the folks
who would come to hear it.
To accomplish this, we have to stay vigilant in our efforts to
address that most difficult task that faces each and every
generation of jazz musicians, regardless of their era or stylistic
bent: the task of coming up with musical goods that are challenging
and uncompromising, yet fully and utterly compelling to our audiences,
and even in this era of increasingly short attention spans, to CAUSE
listeners to seek out the musical universe that we are hoping to
hip them to.
And as long as we can come up with the music, music that delivers
on our promise of giving them something that they can't find
anywhere else something that enriches them the same way WE have
all been enriched by the musicians that have influenced and inspired
all of US to become players and teachers and students and fans, then
we have an excellent chance of not only surviving, but taking the
music to the people in a way that has historically been elusive.
In fact, I believe there is lots of evidence that this IS happening.
To me, jazz has been expanding and growing and broadening, stylistically
and in terms of the materials that it draws from as its sources,
steadily since its inception. The globalization of the music is now
fully underway and there are endless musical opportunities for musicians
in pretty much every corner of the globe to learn and address their own
musical issues through the prism of the jazz language.
One of the great beauties in the invention of this form, of this platform,
of this process, is jazz's almost unlimited capacity to allow human beings
to find out things about themselves and the culture that they live in
through the process of reconciling their own personal experiences with
the experiences of others through the blessing of improvisational and
organizational inspiration in sound.
In recent years, with the centennial of this music approaching and
the beginning of a new century, we have spent a lot of time basking
in the glory of the achievements of the masters in this form.
Tribute records, films, reissues, reissues of reissues, more tribute
records, tribute records in tribute to other tribute records ...
you name it! There are great things about that too, even a certain
comfort in that kind of activity, a sense of feeling more connected
to the past, a sense of genuine appreciation on all of our parts of
amazing accomplishments, and hopefully an always renewed awareness
of the incredibly high standards that have been set throughout jazz's
history. But I feel that to spend too much time doing that can also
breed a certain kind of complacency towards one of the major elements
that has historically been a primary ingredient in the success, and
survival, of this music.
There is an important and consistent element in the jazz tradition of
young people coming along and molding -- reinventing -- the nature of
the form itself to fit their times and their circumstances, as only
they could possibly know how to do. Whether it was the invention
and evolution of the drum set, or the impulse to expand the forms
and cadences of the popular songs of the day to accommodate new ways
of playing, or the desire to incorporate the newest folk instruments
of the time (like the electric guitar), or possibly even nowadays the
wild new sounds that permeate an entire culture, there has often been
a group of young musicians somewhere saying "what if" to the status
quo of jazz culture -- sometimes even saying stronger two word
phrases than that -- but always in the name, and the natural spirit,
of moving the music to a new place.
Myself, I have always, and somewhat actively, resisted the mythology
that says that we all need to "return" to some kind of a safe place
where the proverbial "tradition" resides, in order for jazz to be
considered "REAL" jazz.
CONTINUE...
