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Dave Liebman Interview (1/99)
9. The International Scene
DL: I'm at a point where I've been around for a while. I'm an "established" artist, at least among those who know, and you have to be careful not to be sour grapes on anything that comes after your time. It's like your father's stuff: "Well, you know the good old days." You start talking to your kids like that: It's not the same, therefore it's less. I think about that all the time when I get these kind of questions, about the way it's changing, and the demographics and the corporate stuff and all that which we spoke about. It's terribly negative from the standpoint of what this art form purports to be, of what people like us are trying to do.
On the other hand, I really have to try to come up with the positive side, which as I mentioned, is influencing the world. The education thing has to be good in the end. People knowing something have to turn out better than not knowing something. So I'm always tempering my remarks about the loss of individuality and of standardization and everything with the fact that we live in an incredible period of openness and communication and availability of knowledge. Maybe things aren't right now, but someday the scales will balance the negative side of this period we're living in. And I think that's important to everyone. When we get negative and say, "Where are the good old days?" or "Nobody's really playing it like that anymore," we gotta remember that the other side of that is an incredible explosion of knowledge and opportunity. I must say the most positive thing I've done has been the teaching.
In 1989, I founded an organization that we named International Association of Schools of Jazz. (It's on my web site.) After all my traveling and teaching (...I did so much of it in the '80s...), I saw that so many people were doing the same thing, especially in Europe, and the boundaries, borders, were really separating people. It was amazing that they didn't know each other two hours away from Germany to France. And I took it upon myself to put these people I knew together. In 1989, we organized, and 10 years later we have this wonderful association. We have schools from 35 countries -- I mean Slovakia, Lithuania, Japan, etc. -- that meet once a year. We have a meeting where students come. We have a newsletter, a magazine. My point is that by my exposure to these teachers and students from all these countries I really see that the future of jazz is outside of America. It truly lies in those places where it's still considered a new thing. That what's going to revitalize (or let's say continue to vitalize), this music: input from cultures that you would never think would have anything to do with jazz or western music as we know it. It's happening in pop a little bit, and I really believe that in jazz it's going to be a little purer, on a higher level. I really think that that's the future.
It's not that America is over, or finished, but the truth is that the birthplace of the music has had its time. It had its hundred years, or whatever, and the innovators were here and are done. But for this music to exist and go on, it had to get infusions from other cultures and other peoples, and it's happening. A lot of people in America are not aware of it because they're insulated and they don't get out, but people like myself, and people who travel to a lot of countries and teach, are. There are young people who are really for the most part optimistic because they are bringing something to it. It may be a Danish folk song in a jazz style, but it's an attempt to bring what they have to the music they're learning. And I think that's a very positive thing.
RK: I'll tell you, I was in Vienna last week at a conference for the International Association of Music Information Centers and we went for a day trip to Bratislava where the mayor had us to lunch. We got to the town square and a jazz band was playing "When the Saints Go Marching In." I mean there's a trip: you're looking at a place where Liszt lived and all of a sudden you walk into the square and hear this. And it's a good band too!
DL: And probably in a school down the street, somebody's talking about Charlie Parker. This thing is happening. People here are just not aware of it because America is a fortress. But this is happening, I see it through this organization. There's attention towards internationalization of this music. I mean, we're working with UNICEF. In the mid-'80s I was so blue about the business that I was applying to law schools to get out of the whole scene. But I realized that what would make me personally feel good was not so much just the music (...'cause I'd already understood that music was a very personal, egotistical self-entertaining thing...), but something that could be international and that could use the power and energy of the music for communication. It's very simple. And that's really what propelled me into this teaching thing in the '80s. If there's one thing that makes me feel optimistic about this situation we discussed earlier, it's the internationalization of jazz on a level so unprecedented that you have no idea how much is going on. It's really incredible.
RK: These are terrific sentiments. Thank you for your time and the candid thoughts.
Liebman Interview
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