The Circulating Energy in Jazz Music
If you have been to a local jazz club, you may have noticed the intimacy of the atmosphere. Not one of those high class fancy jazz clubs that serve a full course dinner, nor a classical concert that limits you from making the slightest sound as a cough, but a cozy, local jazz club which was around every block in the 40’s to 60’s. This said-to-be dying American culture (I do not approve of that) called Jazz music has one of the closest relations between the audience and performing artists, both mentally and physically. Musicians stepping in and out of the stage, audience members making crazy sounds and getting tremendous response from the performing musicians, and the ridiculously close physical distance between the performers and audience where a horn player is blowing right in your face, is the compressed musical environment of jazz. This proximity between performers and the audience result in the sharing of atmospheric energy from the music and giving each other much more gravity upon the influence of one another. In other words, in jazz music, the audience and performers are both part of the music.
The Roots of Jazz and Its Evolution
Before we go in to details of jazz performance, I would like to give a short briefing upon how jazz came to its unique form. Jazz music is recognized as “music born from the encounter between African American people and European music in New Orleans.”¹ New Orleans in the era when jazz was born was full of various cultures and various races. Among them, many African American slaves were brought to New Orleans as forced labors from other parts of the South in the United States. Because of this circumstance, they brought a variety of music, such as “Work Song” that they sing when they work, and “Spiritual Song” that has religious content. There were also people in New Orleans called Creole, born between French or Spanish settlers and African Americans. Creoles, who were relatively wealthy and lighter in skin color than African Americans were given the same status and education as Caucasians. They played a role in bringing European classical music to other African Americans. According to such an interesting situation, African music and European music met and fused, it became the mother of jazz.²
Call and Response
One of the elements African music contributed in to forming jazz, is the style called “Call and Response.” It has traditionally been popular in the African region as a means of communication to announce gatherings and religious ceremonies. Basically, in this style, when people were sung a song, the first few lines were sung by the leader and the latter lines were chorused in response according to the group. Besides jazz, this style has also been adopted in gospel, blues, and other types of music genres.
As an example, this is the beginning of “Oh Happy Day” in gospel. After the lead vocal first sings “Oh Happy Day” (Call), the chorus sings “Oh Happy Day” in a way that answers (Response). We can visually observe the “call”on the top bar, and the “response” on the bottom to create an iterative flow like a playing catch.
Here is another example of a call and response based tune from jazz, originally written as an instrumental, “Moanin” by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. We can clearly see the call (melody) and response being a rhythmic hit by the band (later jazz vocalist John Hendricks started singing with the lyrics). Again the lead melody and responsive melody collaborate in exchanging phrases, creating a circulating energy flow.
Evolving relation of melodic exchange by Bill Evans & Scott LaFaro
Here is a transcription from one of the most famous recordings of the tune “Autumn Leaves” (album “Portrait of Jazz” -1959) by Bill Evans on piano, and Scott LaFaro on bass. What you see is right after the head (Jazz tunes usually play the head, or melody, then move on to improvised solos by each/selected musician(s), then ends after the head is played again). After the head LaFaro (Bass) starts to play a solo without any accompaniment for 8 bars. Then Evans (piano) joins in with a short descending arpeggiated phrase (bar 2) which still can be considered accompaniment due to the shortness of the phrase and it being an extension of the harmony/chord at the moment. However at the end of bar 4, he plays a arppegiated phrase followed by a bebop-like lick that goes on a total of 3 bars, and that certainly does not fit the category of regular accompaniment. Evans is clearly taking a leading part in the music, that is in counterpoint-like relations with LaFaro’s phrases. We can see in the transcript that each of these two musician’s phrasings are responding to one another and not just playing whatever they feel like. Evans listens to LaFaro and plays a response and LaFaro listens to Evans and plays his response, all happening in an improvised environment. In Jazz there is a setting called 8/4/2 bars meaning taking turns soloing each 8/4/2 bars, but it does not apply in this case due to unequal bar dividing between their phrase trading. Their phrases definitely are not on a systematic basis of trading 2 or 4/8 bars each. Their response/phrases have more spontaneous freedom over time, as a natural conversation would have.
That said, I believe that in this kind of interdependent improvisational music, the performing artists are ultimately the closest listeners/audiences of the music happening in the moment. Evans could not have created this music without listening to LaFaro’s phrasing at the moment, and that goes the same for LaFaro. I have earlier mentioned there is a circulating environmental energy that flows between the performer and audience, but I believe the relationship between the two musicians here, LaFaro and Evans are equivalent to it. As the audience would impact the performer with a cheer (or the other way around), LaFaro and Evans would impact each other with their phrase, but maybe with a heavier velocity of effect. In other words, in Jazz music, musicians are the closest audience in the music.
Acoustic and Space environment of live jazz music
Sound is vibration of air. When people play a musical instrument, the element of “space” is an important point, because the sound can drastically change depending on the size of the room, the density of the population, the distance between the audience and instruments, climate and humidity, and much more. In other words, it appears in the sound of the performer as a characteristic unique to that space. How about jazz? The jazz music space has a very concentrated setting. The distance between the musicians playing on stage and the audiences is very close. Audiences can feel the passion of musicians more directly through their tones and breaths. Musicians can also feel, see and hear the direct reaction of the audience up close, so they can absorbed the energy and respond with their performance. Thus, it’s like they are making music together.
Looking at this video of a Jam session at Smalls jazz club, we can observe the audience responding with a praising “Yeah!Woo!”(6:50, 7:30) while the saxophone solo. This shows that the audiences sends cheers to the musicians that the musicians and the audiences circulate and correspond energy with each other. Also the guitar player makes a remark “Aww!” out loud after the saxophone lays out a meaningful phrase. (6:32) I think this is very interesting moment. The guitarist has finished his solo and isn’t even comping (accompanying/playing with the band), but he is still up on stage. Now at this specific moment, maybe he can be considered an audience, because he isn’t playing at all, and he clearly made that remark out of joy, listening to the saxophone player’s phrase. This represents the intense closeness or borderless-ness of jazz music’s audience and performers. Not only that, but the physical amount of distance between the audience and performers are insanely close. The front row of seating in the video (difficult to observe in this one) is about 3–4 feet from the saxophone player. You can hear, feel, and even smell the heat of music happening at a distance where a horn players spit or sweat can hit you. (Meant in a good way).
As indicated, the energy and atmosphere in jazz music, is created with many elements as, physical space, acoustic components, and of course the music itself, all playing an important roll of building a circular energy flow. Throughout the performance, musicians follow each other from such rough things to the finest sounds, and sometimes to the nuances of silence. At the same time, the musicians become one of the audiences in the space, creating the atmosphere with others. Therefore, both musicians and the audience circulate each other’s energy, generating an improvisation based musical atmosphere that only happens at the moment. When you go to jazz club next time, feel this experience for yourself!
[1] Stefano, G. (2019). Sonic Affinities: Sicilian and African American Musical Encounters in New Orleans. Italian American Review, 9(1), 68–86. doi:10.5406/italamerrevi.9.1.0068
[2] African American Song. [Online Text] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200197451/.
