[Dixielandjazz] Jazz? Improv or Rhythm?

[Stephen Barbone]

What a question. No matter which way you go, you are?

Many questions need to be answered before you can consider answering
whether jazz must be improv, or whether jazz is really defined by the
rhythm.

Examples: (two of many)

1. How many OKOM tunes were composed and written as "Jazz" tunes?
2. What about bands like ODJB, or Downtown N.O. or the Bob Cats which
used written scores?

Etc., etc., etc.

And just to muddy up the issue, over the past year I have gone to NYC
about 15 times to listen to some of the young lions of "modern jazz" do
their thing in some small, cutting edge, clubs there.

In about 70% of the performances, these small group combos, quartet or
quintet, were reading the songs from start to finish with absolutely no
improvisation space. This is one of the newest jazz forms out there
according to them and the audience they reach. (BTW the musos were
virtuoso to a man)

However, don't you "it must be the rhythm that defines jazz" guys get
too smug. The rhythm in these groups is decidedly not like anything
you've ever heard either.

So, for them, neither rhythm nor improvisation is important in jazz.

So, what is important to Jazz? I like Gunter's (I think) comment. "I
can't describe it, but I know it when I hear it.", or one of Louis
Armstrong's many statements, "Jazz Is What You Are."

What does that mean? That the most important element of jazz is you,
what you think, as an individual and then as a group, like in
"audience".

So, nerds, like Kenny G., rule jazz at the moment. :-) VBG

Cheers,
Steve