[Dixielandjazz] A Musician's Thoughts about "Jazz"

[Steve barbone]

A snip from Fred Jung's interview of Les McCann circa 1998.

Cheers,
Steve

FJ: How do you define jazz?

LM: I like my definition of it better than any other. Fred, I don't know if
I can even remember it because I haven't said it in so many years. I define
jazz as an expression of feelings, musically through spontaneity, period.

FJ: Do you find that spontaneity is missing right now?

LM: Oh, yes. Definitely. The creativity still is there in the whole package.
But the creativity is not in the song and the next time you hear the same
group playing it, they are playing it exactly the way they are playing it on
the record, solos and everything. In fact, I watched these groups, some of
them, their solos are completely written out, worked out, and how do they
call that jazz. How can you be a jazz musician and play on records, and
you're creating and you're spontaneous and you don't ever make mistakes.
That's impossible. 

FJ: Where do you see jazz music going to in the next millennium?

LM: It's going to go wherever I take it. I can only speak for myself and can
only speak for what I do. Jazz is not something that can be defined. That's
the beauty of the music itself. Once we define it, which we did when we
called it Dixieland, look what happened. It's now history. It's now
something that seems ancient. I don't think the musicians feel like that,
but once they name it and put it in a groove, bebop, bebop is old now. To me
creativity is boundless. It never ends. It's like life itself. To me also,
the beauty of jazz is that every group you hear will be totally different.
But, you listen to the radio and you think, every group is the same. They
all play the same. I call it the 'wave sound'. I hear young musicians, and I
said, 'Is this your record?' They say, 'Yes.' And I say, 'This is not what I
heard you play the other night.' And they say, 'Well, we're trying to get it
played on the radio so we're trying to make it sound like the things you
hear on the radio.' But that's what it's come to. It is the stages that many
of us have to go through in order to finally wake up one day and say, 'Damn
it! I'm going to be me.' And then you rejoice, and you smile, and you let
go, and breathe out. You say, 'Man, there's hope for me.'

FJ: What would you like audiences to take away from your music?

LM: A sense of joy, uplifting, release, and to feel something. I'm not
selling a technique of playing. I'm selling feelings.