What is Jazz?
The Simple Truth
is but a
Complex Vibe.
Tonight I am going to visit a squat. I was supposed to be off to the casino to catch up with some old friends and partake in a spot of honest gambling but I’ve been told there is an evening of exactly my type of entertainment to be found in the squat. Surprised? You find it difficult to believe that a man of my punctilious integrity would go seeking diversions in a squat? Well I find it surprising that you are so shallow in judging squatters so unjustly! Why should a gentleman not spend an evening with a group of radical thinkers living alternative lifestyles? I would have no qualms whatsoever about an evening of merriment with a bunch of squatters; that is, of course, if they didn’t all stink so au naturel and wear such bloody awful clothes. I’ve never understood why it is thus: just because you have a radical conscience you’re obliged to dress as if you’ve just fallen out of a dust bin. The modern Anarchist is a very different breed to the sort who went off to fight Franco in the 30s, such as Garcia-Lorca or Hemmingway, armed only with a fashionable necktie and ironic facial expression. No, I’m not here to frolic with the disgruntled and disaffected. I’m here to listen to some cutting edge, avant-garde, improvised jazz.
What’s that you say? A musical genre of such civilised sophistication - considered by many to be classical music’s evil twin – being performed in a squat? Well you must understand that experimental improvised jazz ensembles lack the sophistication of say Maxi Priest, The Slackers or The Arctic Monkeys (all of whom are playing at some of Amsterdam’s more prestigious venues this week) and there is also the question of money. Avant-garde music is just not popular (yet) so the artists have no choice but to play in the cheapest venues available - and the cheapest quality venue available in Amsterdam is Studio 301! It’s a squatted theatre and the acoustics here are as good as anywhere else. There are plenty other struggling avant-garde art forms taking advantage of this venue of varying degrees of artistic integrity and it is certainly worth a visit. When visiting Amsterdam try to keep an open mind. Remember, we live in a time where criminal gangsters rule the radio waves whilst the truly talented are left flipping burgers.
On walking through the entrance I’m greeted by a plethora of astonished looks, all loaded with varying mixtures of contempt and amusement. I’m a little bewildered by this; tonight I took the precaution of dressing down to fit in with my surroundings and opted for a pair of cheap cufflinks – a pair I received from a poor relation of mine a few Christmases ago and thought I would never wear – yet still they stare as if I’m the Marquis de Sade turning up to a puritan convention. Gosh, these free thinking radicals can be quite partial sometimes and it’s only now that I realise how uniform they all look in their attempted expressions of individuality.
 To be perfectly candid, I didn’t really care much for experimental jazz until quite recently. I always assumed improvised jazz was a musician’s type of music, that it was beyond my grasp of understanding and that the only people who actually enjoyed it were the people who played it. How wrong I was. Not just wrong but ridiculously clichéd in my assumptions. How I look down superciliously on the stranded fools who hold this opinion now, each one imagining they are being tremendously witty and original with their prejudices when, in fact, they are just being tremendously drab with their trite remarks. It wasn’t really until a friend of mine took me along to one of these jazz sessions that I realised just how truly remarkable this branch of music is. Jazz is alive, like a living species, race or civilisation: hybridising and evolving, with freak genes and selfish genes. Experimental jazz sessions are the nursery where new forms are created, like nebulas in the jazz universe. An improvised jazz session is born then dies, never to be exactly re-created again but genetic strains of jazz provide musical DNA for the next generation and a man who has given a pulse to many a genus and sub-specie alike is Meinrad Kneer: Producer, Double Bassist, leading exponent of the Dutch Improvised Jazz Movement, and he’s playing here tonight.
You can’t believe what a thrill it is for me to meet this man. If you enjoy improvised jazz as much as I do, then meeting Meinrad Kneer would be akin to a death metal fan meeting Charles Manson. I waste no time in making his acquaintance, marching straight up to him and offering a drink. He asks for a glass of water. ‘Water?’ I think to myself, ‘Water isn’t a drink!’ I acquiesce with his wishes for now - I don’t want this chance of an audience with the man to slip through my fingers - and, just to show my respect I order some water for myself… with a little lemon juice… a mere hint of gin…And just a dash of cherry brandy. Egad, I’ve inadvertently created a Singapore sling. Splendid!
The first thing I would like to hear from Meinrad is his opinion on why so many people dislike improvised jazz. 'I don’t believe people actually dislike improvised jazz,' he says. 'I think the music just frightens them. Many people find it too demanding, as if it’s too intellectual or sophisticated for them to fathom, yet this is just simply not the case with the music. There is nothing there to understand. The music is just there to be enjoyed.' And this is absolutely true! There is no special secret to enjoying improvised jazz, yet because people can’t find a meaning that just isn’t there in the first place, they immediately go on the defensive and form derogatory opinions to try and avoid looking stupid.
 I’m also curious to find out what made him fall so deeply in love with this music in the first place, to the extent where he would devote his entire life to the movement, for although listening to the music is in no way demanding it takes a highly intellectual and sophisticated person to play it. Of course, mild mannered Meinrad tries to deny this but he did study jazz for a very long time. There are rules in jazz, some very delicate rules, and the type of music you play depends very much on the person you study under - like a spiritual Guru passing mystical subtleties of deft - cosmic wisdom onto a disciple. So what made him want to go through such a demanding learning curve? ‘I fell in love with jazz when I was a child, I heard the music and a whole new world opened up to me, my imagination just started running wild, I closed my eyes and a whole epic began to unfold, it was like watching a movie.’
I remember a similar situation when I was young, whilst looking at clouds with my Uncle Herman. He was pointing out comic book faces, ferocious wild animals, train stations, molluscs, caesarean births, amputated feet, pig farmer sorrows, and cowboy jeans. This is perhaps because Uncle Herman was strange and he wasn’t really allowed to be around children - but this doesn’t matter - because his wise words enlightened me to a higher level of imagination. I would try very hard to find things similar, I would force my imagination to work but all I could see were clouds! Then my Uncle Herman said ‘The art of looking for clouds can only be attained when you don’t know exactly what it is you’re looking for.’ This baffled my tiny mind, I didn’t bother trying to work it out and I just switched off and lay on my back staring aimlessly into the sky… Then it happened like a revelation. One of the clouds turned into the most detailed sculpture I have ever seen of a man’s face - and not just any man - but the face of the great, German eighties tennis star Boris Becker. And so it is with jazz, you have to ‘not’ think to get the mindset! Don’t try to get it, let it get you! Don’t force it, feel it! Don’t go running off in search of Boris Becker. Let Boris come your way!
This type of music is a catalyst to galvanise your brain cells in the remotest corners of your imagination. What you experience is better than any movie you could see in the theatre, as it’s a movie that shows all the plots and twist you crave for yourself, because this movie is your own. So this being the case I try to ascertain what he would like to achieve with his music and what kind of a response he wants from his audience. ‘I’m not really trying to achieve anything and I ask for nothing from my audience,’ he replies. ‘Like any artist I do what I do because I want to. Not all painters paint for the response they may get from the public; they paint because they must. It’s a compunction and I can do nothing about it but play.'
So how would he describe his own music?
‘I can’t really answer that in a simple sound-bite, I play with a whole spectrum of musicians, from classical musicians to punk, and our music is always original. There’s a lot of rubbish in there but there’s also a lot of great music too. Some musicians can be rude and obnoxious in their style - all trying to make a statement at the same time. Other musicians can be too polite and obsequious. I always try to find a balance but sometimes it’s just not possible because the music is just a mirror for our daily lives. Sometimes you just have bad
days and there is nothing you can really do about it and it is the same with jazz. But what I’m basically trying to do is tell stories with my music and the challenge lies in trying to find the right musical form to do this with. The stories I tell are usually completely subjective. The story I create is probably entirely different from the one which any given person shall experience from the music.’
There are exceptions to this in Meinrad’s work: one exception is the arrangement to which he contributed titled President of the Globe. This is a semi-prepared work based on the poems of the Russian Futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov. What you receive from this work, I believe, is pretty much the sentiments that the poet wanted to convey to you. This is a fantastic example of just how hard jazz musicians work. In this piece it is the musicians doing all the deciphering of the poem’s polysemous intrigue so that you don’t have to. Take the piece Wenn Ferde Sterben or When Horses Die in English. The poem itself is, on the surface, really quite simple…
When horses die, they breathe
When grasses die, they wither,
When suns die, they go out,
When people die, they sing songs.
But peel back the skin and you’ll find a turbid brewage of epic proportions and the music conveys this masterfully. You experience the drama of the poem without having to think. You experience the poem without comprehending it. The music expounds and interperates the poem for you. It’s a nice way to feel clever whithout actually being so.
Meinrad tells me it is time for him to play and I’m looking forward to this tremendously. I have a few of his albums at home, all from the ‘Evil Rabbit Records’ label, a record label created by Meinrad and pianist Albert Van Veenendaal, and if you’re not sure you want to risk spending 10 euros for what I’m advising you to be truly remarkable pieces of music, you can go to the website and download individual songs for a mere euro a piece. The address is www.evilrabbitrecords.eu
It’s not long before the music starts. We have drums, double bass, saxaphone, clarinet and violin. It isn’t until you experience jazz live that you really appreciate the skills involved. Improvised jazz must change in form every thirty seconds or so, it’s an unspoken rule, so the quality of the music depends largely on the legerity of the musicians. Meinrad’s intonation displays an exactitude that would require a million decimal places to define the point at which he places a note on every optimal point of impact. His timing really fuses together the other instruments on stage yet at the same time flies off into fanciful flurries of flowery frivolity. His style both holds the music together, yet embosses it decoratively with fingers or bow. I find it astonishing how he transforms the bass from a monotonous grafter into an instrument of paradoxes. At once bluntly squirting thick, pumping jets of jazz blood through the music with a heartbeat of insistant repetition before switching to animated, whimsical, dancing glissando with a nuance of light-hearted bouyancy, all accomplished with strength and resilience. Whenever I come to one of these gigs I do focus in on the double bass somewhat; it’s simply because this was the instrument I played in music class as a child. The other instruments contribute just as much to the sound-scape but I wouldn’t know how to begin judging the musician’s merit. Thankfully, for me, their music is still a sweet mystery at which one can merely wonder. The music goes on and on, I know not for how long for I’m completely in ‘the zone’ and before I realise it, the jazz is over, the music has gone sour and the room has completely filled up with vagrants. I think it’s time I left.
It’s still quite early so I hop into a cab and make a dash for the casino; perhaps my friends are still there? Unfortunately they’ve gone and I feel it would be wrong to call them after foresaking them all for jazz. I try my luck at craps, lose ever increasing amounts of money before moving onto the roulette table where I again lose several times in a row. I try every card game in the house with not a single return, every table sucking out holes from my bank balance. It’s not long before I decide to cut my losses and run. Beng a gambler I am very superstitious and decide it was the exposure to squat poverty that ruined my luck. Next time I decide on a night of jazz i’ll call ahead and make sure the bar sells champagne!
Outside the casino there is a girl playing violin for money on the street; I’m guessing that she’s a classically trained musician by the buttery smoothness of her resonance and the passion with which she plays. I’m absolutely mesmerised and I recognise the song. She is playing Tango from the composer Goran Bregovic (from Bosnia and Herzegovina) and it’s one of the most delightful pieces of string music created for a very long time, a melancholy piece of music just dripping with amorous sentiment. The music ends and I’m about to throw a very generous handful of cash into her violin case, but before I do I strike up some conversation; I’m bored and feeling a bit lonely now that a large quantity of my money has left me. It turns out she is a fully qualified, classically trained musician. She, like Bregovic, is also from the Balkans and has turned up in Western Europe hoping to find a little fame and fortune. It breaks my heart - another musical genius busking on the hard, cold street whilst Djs play records for millions. There is something deeply wrong with the world. I think it was Tolstoy who defined the difference between low art and high art, low art being something that everybody likes just a little and high art being something that just a few people like a lot. I guess that explains why it’s always the most banal music that makes it to the top of the charts. We chat away for a while and eventually I am completely captivated by her, I think ‘to hang with it’ and ask her if she would like to accompany me on a night of frivolity, ‘I’ll pay for everything, you just say where you would like to go’. Her answer is instantaneous: ‘Pop Trash’! The name of the club I think sums it up. She has some girlfriends going there tonight and was trying to make enough money this evening to join them. Pop Trash! Ah well, sometimes, in these modern times, I guess you just have to join the herd and go with the flow. Besides, the visceral rips of dirty electro do have a certain charm. Oh yes, I did mention at the start of the article I was going to answer the question ‘what is jazz?’ Well that’s easy: Jazz is a temporal multiplicity spanning out through psychic life. Everybody knows that!
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