Mediocre pop masquerading as jazz

Maliq & D’Essentials perform at a 2007 JakJazz stage. (JP/J. Adiguna)

It seems to always be the case that when a certain genre of music slips into the mainstream, the purists start to argue that it has lost its soul and adapted to pop sensibilities.

Admittedly, I happen to be one of those purists, especially when it comes to jazz.

It is natural for a certain genre of music to evolve over time, as the need to evolve is inherent in every art form.

However, once a musical style evolves in such a way that it no longer resembles its roots, it should not continue retaining its original classification.

Rock, for example, is a very wide category. Under this umbrella you can find any number of acts from The Doors to Bon Jovi.

But what happens when elements of electronica are introduced? When samples and synthesized sounds are brought into the mix? This evolution, which started with the introduction of digital technology into rock, led to the birth of new genres such as New Wave, Synth-Rock, Dance-Punk, and Industrial.

With the birth of these new classifications, would it be fair to lump Nine Inch Nails into the same category as ZZ Top or Aerosmith? I think not.

This is why I feel the need to discuss what I consider to be a rather dangerous musical misconception -- that all jazz is the same -- circulating among the general music-buying public and exacerbated by the current marketing of pseudo-jazz groups as the real thing.

The argument about what jazz is and more importantly, what it is not, has been debated in the past. This battle of definitions has been raging since the late 1970s and early 1980s with the emergence of "fusion", which introduced rock riffs and long-winded guitar solos into live jazz jam sessions.

This experimentation spawned a heated debate over whether the subsequent "jazz fusion" domain deserved to bear the epithet "jazz" at all because it had become a distinctly new artform.

This argument took on an even nastier tone in the mid to late 1980s and early 1990s when "fusion" began to veer into the realm of pop via rock through such abominations as Level 42 and Kenny G.

What all of this boils down to is that the difference between jazz and fusion (and everything else of that vein) is not a matter of apples and oranges, but rather the difference between a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and something produced from a packet of Nutri Sari or Tang.

Even the smallest child can tell that Nutri Sari is not orange juice, not by any leap of the imagination.

What's been happening in Indonesia in the last few years, and felt perhaps most strongly this year, is that what has been introduced and marketed as the robust orange essence of Jazz is actually little more than the watered down sugary yellow stuff best defined as pseudo jazz.

Imagine the reaction of somebody who has been lulled into listening to pseudo jazz without ever hearing the real thing. Having performed this experiment, and observed people listening to the genius of Miles Davis or John Coltrane for the first time, I can tell you that their most common question is, "What is this music? This isn't jazz."

"Yes it is," I reply. "The tunes by Maliq & D'Essentials you have been listening to are not."

(JP/J. Adiguna)

The aforementioned Maliq, along with acts such as Ecoutez, Parkdrive, Soulvibe, and Tompi, are the main culprits in this mass confusion over what jazz really is, along with the new acts from the fringes of the genre.

What these groups offer is prepackaged, formulaic pop confections with injections of funk guitar and lounge melodies.

The problem is not so much that the uninitiated mistakenly understand this to be "the real thing" but that they are being told that it is "Jazz" by the pseudo jazz acts, festival and concert promoters and record labels.

It would be different if there was any effort being made to introduce them to the roots from which jazz grew.

Just look at the lineups at this year's Java Jazz, Jak Jazz and UI's Jazz Goes to Campus festivals: The bulk of the bands, both international and local play fusion, the so-called "nu jazz" and/or poppy pseudo jazz.

In fact, 80 percent of Indonesian bands fit into the latter category, with Maliq appearing in all three of the aforementioned events.

No wonder Jazz maestro Indra Lesmana and music critic Denny Sakrie raised their voices in dismay at the minimal space being allocated to traditional jazz in the festivals and on record labels.

"Even if 'jazz' continues to exist on the surface, you can be sure that it is not the genre of jazz-with-a-capital-J. Rather, it will be the kind of jazz that does nothing more than entertain. Just look at the outbreak of lounge jazz and nu jazz acts. They are little more than the rehashing of acid jazz from a previous era," Denny told the participants of a Media Workshop on jazz in Jakarta in February this year.

"It's not jazz! Such bands have no background in jazz. They are usually just pop bands who have listened to some jazz, and use elements of it so their music sounds a bit different than the run-of-the-mill pop," Indra Lesmana said.

Indra said although this pseudo jazz music is easily accepted by the public, it is also twisting the definition of the genre.

"The music they are making is light years away from jazz, and although their spirit of musical exploration may at times come close to the origin, they are actually giving birth to new rhythms that have nothing at all to do with jazz. What they are really exploring are the territories of soul and funk," Indra said.

"That kind of music will reach a certain point, then grow old and be replaced by another new trend, because that kind of music is very industry driven and the industry is always looking for something new."

It is high time the music industry, including festival and concert promoters and acts themselves, woke up to the fact that it is always wiser to expand the knowledge of the audience -- and in turn enrich the market -- by exposing them to the entire spectrum a certain genre, not just the side that will be sure-fire commercial hit.

-- Paul F Agusta writes a music column Underground Hum at Sunday Post and runs a blog www.undergroundhum.blogspot.com