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Dave Liebman Interview (1/99)
Richard Kessler, Executive Director of the American Music Center, talks with Dave Liebman.
1. Jazz in the 1990s
RK: How do you feel about the recent growth and interest in jazz?
DL: It's a double-sided coin. By appealing to the wider public, jazz gets watered down by necessity. What people consider jazz -- which ranges from the commercial type you hear on easy listening stations to a lot of nostalgia-type jazz -- is not, for the most part, the jazz I consider artistic.
In order to have more people like something, the language has to become more common, and in that watering down, you're going to lose a certain depth of what was there in the first place. It's funny in a way, because when jazz started out it was entertainment. The reason jazz was popular in the '30s was that it happened to fit with what people wanted to do: dance and listen to the radio and so forth. That changed, of course, and became much more of an esoteric thing in the '60s and into the '70s. Now it's swung around the other way to become another arm of the entertainment business.
The positive side is that more people are aware of it, the negative side of it is that what they're getting isn't the real deal. On the other hand, there's always the potential for those who are getting into it to go further and become more educated and more sophisticated in their tastes, and that's the hope we hold out for as musicians.
RK: I read with great interest your thoughts about the pressures that commercial entertainment interests can have on art. What are your thoughts and concerns about the growth of corporate sponsors and global entertainment in jazz?
DL: I think it's a terrible thing. I mean, most jazz musicians' lifestyles in the early days, if anything, were not part of ordinary middle-class life, and for them to be controlled financially by the system is probably the worst thing that can happen to the art. And it's going on even in the education system. We're having a big debate now in some of our journals about the record business getting in on the International Association of Jazz Educators (I.A.J.E.) convention, and how they've taken over a couple of the evening's performances. But we're just catching up with the rest of the world. This is happening everywhere. It's an unfortunate by-product of the age we live in.
RK: I think to some extent what you're talking about is deeper than some people even see. It's the issue of for-profit education, of a financial market seeing education as one of the next great frontiers of investment and earnings, and that's a potent force that can change things. I'm not sure if it's good or bad, but a lot of people find it disconcerting at least.
DL: Well, definitely some of us middle-aged dinosaurs remember jazz not being institutionalized at all. I'm one of the last of a generation that didn't have jazz education in the school system as a matter of course. From the '70s on, everybody had it, and for the last 30 years we've accepted it. But we all need to be part of the education system. All the musicians you talk to are teachers somehow, and many of us are making a good part of our living by doing it, so we can't debunk what we've become. The thing we need to consider is that when it gets into the institution, it becomes academized. And once that happens someone says, "Oh it's a package, let's just take it over." One thing definitely leads to another. It's an inevitable cost and I don't see how we can get away from it.
RK: Do you think it's changing the way people play, the fact that there's sort of a jazz education institution as opposed to let's say, a Charlie Parker learning to play jazz in the Jay McShann band?
DL: I talk about this all the time, this question is usually put this way: What do you think of the so-called "Young Lions" movement that occurred in the '90? The recording industry took these guys and raised them up to the pinnacle of fame (and often to the detriment of people of my generation, who were right in the middle - not old enough and not young enough). My answer is: You can't blame these guys because they're a product of the conformist society we've been living in since the '70s and '80s. It used to be when you recorded on Blue Note or any of those labels in the '60s and you had your first record, the unspoken pressure was to do something different. And now the unspoken pressure -- and even spoken -- is to do something like. So therefore, in that respect, it's obvious that younger musicians are attempting to join the crowd rather than fight it in order to be whatever they have to be.
This whole institutionalization has resulted in conformity, which in an art form that especially prides itself on its individuality is probably the worst thing that can happen. Individuality is the most important aspect of jazz; to be yourself is the whole point. From the first note, you're supposed to be able to tell that it's John Jones rather than John Henry. And now, with that not being the value system, we kind of lost the whole essence of jazz in a certain way.
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