For a composing musician, genre can be a sensitive subject.
Take ethnomusicology graduate student Martha Mavroidi, whose
Balkan jazz ensemble will perform tonight at the Fowler Museum.
Although the performance has been clearly labeled as a particular
style, Mavroidi still hesitates when asked to categorize her
music.
“You know musicians hate speaking about genres,”
said Mavroidi after struggling with the question for some time.
Musicians today are fusing every type of music, from acid jazz
to funk metal, but are often uncomfortable and reluctant to assign
their music to a specific genre. Labels not only impose creative
limitations, but the increasingly blurred lines between genres make
it difficult to specify them.
According to Balkan jazz ensemble singer Angela Rodel, the
fusion of different genres of music often comes very naturally, so
it sometimes isn’t so much a conscious effort.
“I wouldn’t really say (Balkan jazz) is a genre unto
itself,” Rodel said. “What we’re doing is kind of
experimental in that it’s not really any kind of set genre.
It’s just like, “˜Hey, we play this music, you play that
music. Let’s try and play together.'”
“We” Rodel refers to includes Mavroidi on the lafta
(Greek/Turkish lute) and vocals and ethnomusicology Balkan music
student Eva Salina Primack on vocals. “You” refers to
fourth-year jazz pianist Jeff Goodkind and first-year jazz bassist
Noah Garabedian.
The group has been polishing a unique blend of Balkan and jazz
music, with irregular rhythms like 7/8 and Balkan folk melodies
with jazz harmonies over lyrics sung in Greek, Bulgarian, Albanian
and Romani. The group will also feature a Balkan drummer playing
the tapan, a double-headed drum.
Mavroidi sees the fusion of music as a natural result of modern
society.
“It’s a sign of the complex society that we live
in,” Mavroidi said. “If I was brought up in a tiny
little village and all my soundscape was nothing but folk music, I
guess it wouldn’t come up. But when you’re brought up
with the thousands of kinds of music that you can hear nowadays, it
comes up naturally.”
Goodkind has experienced this massive exposure to world music as
a student in the ethnomusicology department.
“Taking those classes, I’ve been exposed to a whole
bunch of music that I probably wouldn’t have thought about
listening to,” Goodman said. “Just by exposure to that
music, it goes into my ear and it affects the way I play, and that
ultimately affects the music I compose, my improvisation,
everything.”
Balkan jazz, according to Rodel and Mavroidi, has been around
for quite some time. Rodel named jazz bandleader Don Ellis, who had
a Bulgarian keyboardist, and Mavroidi cited Theodosii Spassov, a
kaval (Balkan folk flute) player in modern jazz, and Ivo Papasov, a
Bulgarian clarinetist who was famous in the ’60s and
’70s in the Balkans.
“It’s a Balkan trend now to fuse Balkan folk
instruments with jazz music,” Mavroidi said.
Both Balkan and jazz music emphasize improvisation, but it was
the differences between the two styles that spearheaded the
collaboration. For the jazz musicians, it was the abundance of
irregular rhythms in Balkan music that attracted them. For the
Balkan musicians, it was the jazz musicians’ technical
expertise.
Mavroidi explains that perhaps she was attracted to jazz
musician by the challenging irregular rhythms characteristic of
Balkan music.
“(Jazz musicians) are really fast and really flexible in
integrating new kinds of musical elements in their music,”
Mavroidi said. “So Jeff and Noah, they have never played 7/8
rhythm in their lives, and they’ve managed to do so in a
couple of weeks, which is pretty amazing.”
Likewise, Goodkind agreed to play in the ensemble for the exact
same reason.
“In my experience in jazz, I haven’t had to play
irregular meters very often, only once in a while. I was very
interested in learning about the irregular meter and learning the
groove,” he said.
For both, the collaboration has been a chance to learn from and
share their diverse musical backgrounds.
“Fusion is a natural result of any collaboration,
period,” Goodkind said. “Each person is unique, as
different as I am from you. You’ve heard different things,
you’ve had different life experiences, and that’s
fundamental to music.”