30-mins in 206

For a short blessed time of about 30 mins, I was able to listen to an insightful take on jazz improvisation by Joey Valenciano. He said that we, people of the college, are deeply rooted in western classical music orientation which has the dichotomy of performer and composer (thus the composition majors). But jazz improvisation is the convergence of performer and composer in one persona towards music that is as diverse and individualistic as chance music itself, or even more, as chance music is limited to a certain probability.

So in jazz, there is performer differentiation which is not as subjective as one's preference to a personal interpretation of another's work. Improvisation, being so individualistic, expands performer differentiation beyond the criteria of technique and sincerity towards expression that is unique per performer and even more per performer's performance. The performer, being the composer, does music which is solely his own and is unlikely to be duplicated by any other. Funny, maybe lack of ability to improvise reflects a person's weak sense of individuality or lack thereof.

Originally, jazz is a black man's music. A fusion of African and European musical traditions, it comes as naturally as African speech patterns. Void of all harmonic concept (or any scholarly ideas for that matter), jazz of the African-Americans became free music in a sense that it does not conform to any given theoretics which victimize many overanalytical educated musicians (goes to show that knowledge can, too, be limiting). It became more of a sensitive type of music-making, more of body music and what is instinctively pleasant, and is therefore more self-satisfying, more self-gratifying just because and not because it has to be.

*Kudos to Val for patronizing jazz and trying to drag me into it!