?Jazz Views has rapidly become one of the most important jazz websites in the UK.?
Provocateur Records
Jazz and science fiction In 1818, the young Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley while holidaying on the shores of Lake Geneva, spent a ?wet ungenial summer? writing the story of Doctor Frankenstein and his creation, a fictitious creature who, shaped by the revulsion and persecution of those around it, turned into a monster. In the real world beyond, her fellow Caucasians, heedless of revulsion and persecution, happily maintained the grim Atlantic trade in human flesh, feeding the monster of slavery. Both monsters, fact and fiction, exemplify pain in exile.Yet, unwittingly these two monsters were themselves to be instrumental in the birth of two popular and enduring art forms of the twentieth century. Dave Wood explains.  By the end of the nineteenth century the writer H G Wells, cosseted in the gentle landscape of middle class England, had penned The Time Machine (1895) and War of the Worlds (1898), stories which, when linked with that of Shelley?s, were to be seen as the templates for genre sf. While across the Atlantic, barber Buddy Bolden, in the harsh racist climate of the southern states of America, was blowing a trumpet which they said could be heard twelve miles away on a clear night, helping to shape the sound of music that was to become jazz. Thus we are at a unique viewpoint for this investigation of the intersection of sf and music.Science Fiction and jazz were born independently the bastard twins of a booming new century. They were both nurtured by innovative technology the new century brought to the American way of life; innovations that forever changed popular culture: the phonograph and the pulp magazine. It is not the intention of this article to cover the use of jazz as a plot device in sf writing, though such a scholarship might be rewarding, nor is there any intention to claim that the jazz musician is creating science fictional music (however ?alien? jazz may sound to the listener). There is nothing definitive about the titles discussed - they merely reflect examples from my personal collection of jazz music. So, this is a limited survey with no pretensions of an in-depth study; it covers only a fraction of the output of jazz music since its inception (I must admit that, I have searched in vain for any early touching of souls between jazz and sf; could find little or nothing in the first thirty years of recorded jazz prior to world war II, which reflects genre sf/fantasy). But, inevitably there comes a time when their paths do merge. By the nineteen forties both camps were perceived to be in upheaval. The editor John Wood Campbell and his group of authors were busy rewriting the framework for pulp magazine sf, and down town, alto sax player Charlie Parker with pianist Bud Powell and their disciples were rewriting the rhythmic ground rules of jazz. "I'm not really from this planet. I did something wrong on my planet and they sent me here to pay my dues" - Johnny Griffin (tenor sax player) Long before the ?spaced-out and stoned rockers of the 1960?s generation? there was a teenage generation, which got its kicks from a far stranger world and culture. In the forties and fifties popular music was largely the output of the Swing Big Bands and romantic crooners. So when the Afro-American innovators of be-bop with their drug based culture, outrageous dress and private language appeared on the scene the lure to belong was a magical potion for a teenage generation who had just endured five years of a war which had culminated in the birth of the atomic bomb. Here were music and musicians viewed with horror by the establishment; here was someplace to go to escape the shackles of parental control. This was their music, a music of the future. Soon their heads were filled with the sounds of ?Anthropology?, ?Glass Enclosure?, ?Cosmic Rays?, ?Zodiac Suite?, ?Things to Come?: the titles of the tunes they loved were echoing an sf/fantasy connection. Stan Kenton introduced the term ?progressive jazz? to the popular music world. It was a vapid term to describe the bombastic music he so often performed; a naive attempt to meld classic form with jazz rhythm. However, from this mish-mash of clashing styles occasional gems emerged. In 1951 Kenton premiered Robert Graetinger's The City of Glass, which the composer described as a neo-classic work for jazz orchestra. This is a compelling, if difficult work (both to play and follow). It uses strident dissonance, angular rhythms and unusual key signatures to create a picture of a vast sterile city of the future and is possibly the first real use of sf imagery in jazz. It certainly fed the angst of a youth culture growing up in the shadow of the dawn of the atomic age. Graetinger was ahead of his time and both he and his work plummeted into obscurity. In recent years there has been a revived interest in his work, particularly in Europe. Shorty Rogers, a trumpet player, writer and arranger from the Kenton ranks, must have seen the September 1954 issue of Astounding Science Fiction featured Fred Brown's Martians, Go Home. His 1954 number ?Martians, Go Home?, is a blues based number, featuring Jimmy Guiffre playing clarinet in low register. When you listen to it the dark-toned sound has an other-worldly quality that reflects the inspired christening of the number. Rogers?s titles were redolent with sf/fantasy themes and tropes ?Infinity Promenade?,? Tale of An African Lobster, Planetarium?,? Astral Alley?,? Chant of The Cosmos?,? Way Up There?,? Stratospheric?,? Sweetheart of Sigmund Freud?,? Dark Shadows?,? Martians, Come Back?,? Here's That Old Martian Again?, and ?Keeper of The Flame? - which if it wasn't ought to have been a story by horror author A Merritt or H P Lovecraft. Composer/bassist Charles Mingus in his autobiography Beneath the Underdog recalls that as a teenager he was a fervent reader of H G Wells and loved anything on the themes of ESP, the paranormal, the weird and the fantastic. It's possible to see the influence of these interests in many of the titles of his compositions. One of his early attempt to fuse jazz and poetry ?The Chill of Death ? had some fairly Weird Tales orientated lyrics. I knew she was coming, so I stood like a man She drew up closer, close enough for me to look into her face And I began to wonder, 'Hadn't I seen her some other place?' She beckoned for me to come closer, as if to pay an old debt I knew what she wanted; it wasn't quite time yet Mingus had a strong dystopian outlook on life. He held no great truck on the world becoming a better place. If you listen to his ?Pithecanthropus Erectus? from 1956 which is now recognised as an important step in the direction of freer synthesis in jazz, you get a strong sense of Mingus attempting to picture what he described as ?the story of mankind's struggle out of chaos, up and down the Freytag's Triangle of hubris and destruction, back to chaos? - Mingus was doubtless quoting a sort of watered down Spenglerism which was still fashionable in some quarters at the time. Other titles which reflect his reading interests include, ?Weird Nightmare? (1946) ?Possessed? (1951), ?Precognition?, ?Extrasensory Perception? (both 1952), ?Hallucinations?, ?Spontaneous Combustion?, ?Jack The Fieldstalker?, ?The Pendulum at Falcon's Lair? (all 1953), ?Fantasy? (1954), ?Reincarnation of a Love Bird? (1957), ?Oh Lord, Don't Let Them Drop That Atom Bomb On Me? (1961),?Moonboy? (1962). Composer pianist George Russell, who reworked the Lydian chromatic concept of tonal organisation (one of the "ecclesiatical modes" recognised in mediaeval music, which existed prior to the general adoption of the major & minor keys) into his jazz compositions, assembled a roaring big band to give us ?Jazz In The Space Age? (1960) with ?Chromatic Universe? and ?Waltz From Outer Space?. Don Ellis, a musician concerned with the freeing and expansion of tempo and meter, produced ?How Time Passes?; the impetus was his reading of books and articles concerned with the function of time, time relationship and the elasticity of time. Diligent searching will uncover ?Mu? and ?The Relativity Suite? with numbers including ?March of The Hobbits? both by trumpeter Don Cherry and drummer Ed Blackwell. ?Shangri-la? - from trumpeter Donald Byrd, ?Infinity?, ?Out of this World?, ?Interstellar Space? - by the great John Coltrane, Return to Forever - Chuck Corea, Exploring the Future - Curtis Counce, Zodiac Variations Suite - John Dankworth, ?Flight of the Foo Birds? - Count Basie, Captain Marvel - Stan Getz, Earthrise, Metropolis, Citadel/Room 315 - Mike Westbrook, Milky Way, I Sing The Body Electric - Weather Report, Atlantis - McCoy Tyner, Vision of the Emerald Beyond, Between Nothingness and Eternity, Apocalypse - Mahavishnu John Mclaughlin.  Duke Ellington was the most creative figure jazz has yet produced . His career spanned the years 1917 -coincidental with the first jazz recording by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band- to 1974 and during that time embraced all forms of music from the New Orleans jazz idiom, through dance halls and concert platform, to Sacred Music in Westminster Abbey. Ellington, a painter and writer, also ventured into the world of fantasy and science fiction. In the twenties and thirties he appeared at the famous New York Cotton Club performing what the musical press described as Jungle Music - though the fantasy floor show which accompanied him, with its half naked nubile dancers was more Sheena, Queen of the Jungle in context than any reflection of the composer?s Afro-American ethnic origin. In 1939 not long after he broadcast his Martian radio scare, Orson Welles suggested to Ellington that he write a stage musical. The concept was a fantastic allegory set in a Broadway musical form and featured jazz as a beautiful woman Madam Zajj. But the social climate was not right Broadway would not accept a Negro revue like this. However, in 1957 Ellington revived the idea, and through the medium of television premiered his composition A Drum Is A Woman. Madam Zajj starts life as an elaborately constructed African drum before magically transforming to a woman. The story line traced the history of jazz from its African origins through the Caribbean to New Orleans, Chicago and New York. A final section ? ?The Ballet of the Flying Saucers? - is set in the future when jazz reaches the moon. Other works reflect the sf/fantasy elements including the suite, Night Creature, which is based on Ellington's vision of 'that imaginary monster we all fear we shall have to meet some midnight', and as a welcome to the age of Sputnik: ?Launching Pad? and ?Blues In Orbit? (1958). Hit that jive, Jack, put it in your pocket till I get back, ain't got time shake your hand, going into space as fast as I can. - Sun Ra Herman Sonny Blount, pianist and arranger, is the true guardian of sf in jazz. Crackpot, genius, innovator, he was one of the first in jazz to use electronics, the electric piano (in 1953), the Moog synthesiser, and the rocksichord - an electric keyboard that combines the sharp attack of the harpsichord with the glossy, sustained sound of an electric piano. The story goes that in the late forties, Blount had a close encounter with a flying saucer. A deputation of aliens told him he was really Sun Ra, a Saturnian, and his mission on earth was to spread the music of the solar system (Karlheinz Stockhausen had a similar vision which led him to say:"It?s an inner revelation that has come several times to me, that I have been educated on Sirius, that I come from Sirius"). Immediately Blount assumed the mantle of Sun Ra and began spreading the message ("I've been sent here to help people. My mission is to try and save this planet" ) through his Solar Arkastra. By 1955 he was live on stage with his rampaging big band. It was a show to blow the mind, his musicians resplendent in weird and wonderful robes and dazzling space-age headgear, with jugglers, dancers and fire-eaters, all his shows mixed theatrics with collective improvisation, electronic atonality, layered counterpoint, bizarre pairings, dense orchestrations and massive percussion sections. An example of this can be heard on Black Myth/Out in Space, a recording from the Berlin Jazz Festival of 1970 (and recently re-released). The shock of the audience when the Arkestra responds to June Tyson?s opening vocals with a full-throttle atonal scream is almost palpable. His music and his stage presence was indeed light years ahead of the market. There are even fans who claim that the spaceship in Close Encounters was playing a Ra tune. An alien on his adopted planet he never had the ?commercial? success his work demanded. This was left to those exponents of modern popular music - Bowie (1969), Clinton (1970?s) - to reinvent his stage shows, and even as late as the nineties for acts like GWAR and Man or Astroman to usurp his myth and character. Sun Ra left us in 1993 aged 79 earth years: he always claimed to be over 5000 galactic years old. His legacy to us is a cornucopia of music laid down on over 200 albums all of which are an aural and visual experience. They are the most complete sf/fantasy influenced packaging of jazz you will come across. Look out for Jazz in Silhouette, Monorails and Satellites, We Travel The Spaceways, Visit Planet Earth, Interstellar Low Ways, for their superb sf artwork. The list is seemingly endless with Atlantis, The Magic City, The Sun Myth, Nuclear War - get up off your ass, or you can kiss your ass goodbye -, Cosmic Chaos, The Heliocentric World, The Nubians of Plutonia, Pictures of Infinity, The Solar-Myth, Other Times, Shadow World, The Band From Outer Space, Next Stop Mars, Outer Spaceways Incorporated, Outer Nothingness, Nebulae, Dancing in The Sun. Well, he's dead and gone now, back to where he lived in his music: you're outward bound, out among the stars, destination unknown. Destination un-known. Des-tin-a-tion un-knoooooooo-oown. Of course there is the question of whether aliens would be impressed by earth music and whether they might make incorrect interpretations with shattering effects caused by a possible/probable outcome of listening without a reference point. Maybe the jazz musician, as an improviser can hurdle the barrier that formal construction may erect. Take a tune (message) play it this way, take the tune and play it this way, take the tune and play it ........... well, one can dream, can?t one? |
Copyright ? 2002-2006 Jazzviews