Sorry to return to the Mercury prize for a second week, but this is only a passing spin-off from that much-discussed event. Observer music critic Kitty Empire, one of the Mercury judges, described the shortlisting process in a recent article and included among the difficulties the challenge of comparing “the merits of Empirical's trad jazz against Benga's dubstep".
The collective snort of derision about this in the jazz world has made a trombone section sound like a solo flute, and Empirical will undoubtedly have been astonished to be considered a trad jazz band. They're a quintet of early-twentysomethings who cite among their influences artists from Herbie Hancock to Ali Farka Tour and even Olivier Messiaen, and can splice hip-hop beats into jazz grooves so deviously that listeners of all ages shake their heads in disbelief. For indignant jazz fans reading Kitty Empire's description, the term “trad" has a specific meaning: revivalist bands reproducing the early-20th-century proto-jazz of King Oliver, Louis Armstrong and their New Orleans contemporaries.
But if this is a piece of historical information a contemporary music critic probably ought to possess, us older jazzers perhaps need to take a second look at what we take for granted as well. “Trad jazz" was a term in widespread use in the 1950s and 60s (a hybrid of the style even generated chart hits, like Kenny Ball's Midnight in Moscow or Acker Bilk's Stranger on the Shore) but you hardly ever hear it used in that sense outside the cognoscenti now. Some jazz insiders might refuse to believe that anyone with half an ear open could possibly confuse, for instance, the 20s sound of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and the 60s one of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers - but it's not only possible, it's happening, just the same way that Bach's and Rachmaninoff's works might all sound like “classical music" to someone who's never listened closely enough to figure out they're 200 years apart.
The collective snort of derision about this in the jazz world has made a trombone section sound like a solo flute, and Empirical will undoubtedly have been astonished to be considered a trad jazz band. They're a quintet of early-twentysomethings who cite among their influences artists from Herbie Hancock to Ali Farka Tour and even Olivier Messiaen, and can splice hip-hop beats into jazz grooves so deviously that listeners of all ages shake their heads in disbelief. For indignant jazz fans reading Kitty Empire's description, the term “trad" has a specific meaning: revivalist bands reproducing the early-20th-century proto-jazz of King Oliver, Louis Armstrong and their New Orleans contemporaries.
But if this is a piece of historical information a contemporary music critic probably ought to possess, us older jazzers perhaps need to take a second look at what we take for granted as well. “Trad jazz" was a term in widespread use in the 1950s and 60s (a hybrid of the style even generated chart hits, like Kenny Ball's Midnight in Moscow or Acker Bilk's Stranger on the Shore) but you hardly ever hear it used in that sense outside the cognoscenti now. Some jazz insiders might refuse to believe that anyone with half an ear open could possibly confuse, for instance, the 20s sound of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and the 60s one of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers - but it's not only possible, it's happening, just the same way that Bach's and Rachmaninoff's works might all sound like “classical music" to someone who's never listened closely enough to figure out they're 200 years apart.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
