Francis Davis's Bebop and Nothingness
George Klein
I just finished Bebop and Nothingness. It's ok. Pretty good, in fact.
Francis Davis is a fine writer who generally seems reasonable and fair.
But I do have a big complaint about the book.
It's a collection of a lot of short pieces that appeared in various
publications over the last five years. Nothing wrong with that. I
hadn't seen most of them before, and I learned something new about a lot
of musicians. But the jacket -- and worse, his own intro -- convey the
impression that this book really is a book, that there's a unifying theme
and all that. There isn't. Worse yet, this phantom theme is
hard-hitting, controversial, and important: that the neoconservative
emphasis has made jazz sterile and and new innovation rare. He comes on
with guns blazing in this intro, taking aim at Wynton and his followers
for making a restrictive definition of jazz and a narrow canon, etc.
Clearly anti-neotrad. As I read this I expected a searing expose of the
stultifying aesthetic of Wynton, Joshua Redman, Nicholas Payton, Roy
Hargrove, etc. But it's not there. Nothing more than an occasional
reference. His first section is entitled "Mainstream," but the essays
are about Benny Carter, Dizzy, Pres, Bird and Art Pepper, Miles,
Grover Washington, Mel Lewis, Art Blakey, and Mingus' "Epitaph." Not
what I was expecting.
The next section, "Fringes," deals with such varied performers as Loren
Schoenberg, Ruby Braff, Braxton, the Tristanoites, Muhal Richard Abrams,
Dave Burrell, Sonny Sharrock, Roswell Rudd, Allen Lowe, and Charles
Gayle. That these different exponents are not better known may be due to
the dominance of neotrad, but the point is largely implied. Not what I
think of as a unifying theme. The next section is called "Mischief."
There are pieces on Sun Ra, Lester Bowie, Don Byron, Zorn, Bobby Previte,
and Les Paul. Same situation applies here. The final section wanders
into pop, Broadway musicals, Kerouac, and rap.
This is clearly a mixed bag of very different short essays for
periodicals. Some are brief profiles, some are mainly record reviews,
some delve deeper into character analysis. All of them are well written
and informative as individual essays. But this attempt to string them
together into a "unifying theme" strikes me as cheesy and deceptive. But
I guess it's not ok in the publishing business to just say "Here's some
stuff I wrote in the last five years."
A final quibble. Davis takes what I think is a cheap shot at Thad Jones.
He interviewed an ill and bitter Mel Lewis shortly begfore his death.
Lewis attributed Jones' decision to leave the Jones-Lewis Orchestra to a
lack of loyalty and a blatant character flaw, which Davis takes at face
value and assumes to be true. No indication that Jones might've seen the
situation differently. But this is a rare lapse.
Loved the essays. Hated the book.
George
Matthew C Weiner
George Klein (ced_...@online.emich.edu) wrote:
: I just finished Bebop and Nothingness. It's ok. Pretty good, in fact.
: Francis Davis is a fine writer who generally seems reasonable and fair.
: But I do have a big complaint about the book.
: It's a collection of a lot of short pieces that appeared in various
: publications over the last five years. Nothing wrong with that. I
: hadn't seen most of them before, and I learned something new about a lot
: of musicians. But the jacket -- and worse, his own intro -- convey the
: impression that this book really is a book, that there's a unifying theme
: and all that. There isn't. Worse yet, this phantom theme is
: hard-hitting, controversial, and important: that the neoconservative
: emphasis has made jazz sterile and and new innovation rare. He comes on
: with guns blazing in this intro, taking aim at Wynton and his followers
: for making a restrictive definition of jazz and a narrow canon, etc.
[details snipped]
I think you're absolutely dead right-this book comes on like a unified
polemic but is really a bunch of essays. However, I was *glad* to
find that it was a bunch of essays. A whole book arguing the thesis
that neo-bop had become a stultifying orthodoxy would be dead boring;
either you agree or you don't. As it is, we got a bunch of interesting
articles-the Sonny Sharrock interview I found particularly priceless,
and it made me even sadder that Sonny got so few ideal musical settings.
BTW, Davis *likes* Wynton-his article on Wynton's Ellington settings
is pretty complimentary-partly because Wynton's doing more than bop.
He doesn't like Wynton's definition of the canon, though.
So, liked the book... or the fact that it wasn't the book it made
itself out to be. But the emptor should definitely caveat its true
form.
Matt