One of the toughest questions to crack in American music history
has always been, “What is jazz?” Jazz music has been
continuously evolving since its beginnings. The problem is that a
moving target is always harder to hit than a sitting one; today
especially, the genre has become increasingly difficult to define,
with many musicians fusing musical genres and claiming the coveted
label of “jazz.” Modern jazz festivals often present
artists from more popular genres who are
“jazz-influenced,” or fuse jazz with more popular
musical forms to increase ticket sales.
The majority of artists performing on the Jazz Day during this
weekend’s two-day UCLA Jazz Reggae Festival, a 19-year-old
student-run tradition, are usually considered part of the neo-soul
and R&B movements. These artists include headliner India.Arie,
newcomer Dwele and songstress Sheree Brown. Another group, the
Unwrapped All-Stars, performs covers of hip-hop hits with a hint of
jazz.
“It’s probably a stretch to really call them
jazz,” UCLA Jazz Ensemble professor Charley Harrison
said.
Harrison’s ensemble will provide the lone performance of
straight-ahead jazz on the intramural field on May 29. Even
critically acclaimed jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove will be performing
music fused with R&B and hip-hop from his album “Hard
Groove,” on which neo-soulers D’Angelo and Erykah Badu
and rapper Common contribute.
Other jazz festivals around the world have also featured R&B
and neo-soul artists. Arie headlined at the 2003 Newport Jazz
Festival above jazz guitar legend George Benson, and the Unwrapped
All-Stars played at the St. Lucia Jazz Festival two years ago.
“Jazz, to me, it’s like the grandparent of all
music,” said Unwrapped All-Stars guitarist Dennis Nelson.
Nelson equates his group’s jazz-tinged hip-hop song covers to
how John Coltrane and Charlie Parker turned songs from Oscar-winnng
movies and television shows into jazz standards.
Event organizers feel strongly that the performers for Jazz Day
keep in tune with the jazz tradition.
“I would say this show is 100 percent jazz, and I say that
because each of the artists that we have, they go back to the
foundation of jazz,” said UCLA Jazz Reggae Festival director
Todd Hawkins. “We had talked about maybe changing the name of
Jazz Day, and we didn’t want to do that, because we felt,
“˜Why? It still is jazz.’ This is a huge mix of music
that is inspired by jazz.”
True, the artists on the bill for Jazz Day have cited jazz
greats like Miles Davis and McCoy Tyner as influences, but for
some, that doesn’t necessarily qualify the performers as jazz
artists.
“Almost every genre that has appeared since jazz has been
influenced by jazz,” Harrison said. “So that really
doesn’t hold water for me, because rock was influenced by
jazz. Do we then look back at Woodstock and call it a jazz
festival? No.”
Festival organizers have incentive to headline artists from
musical genres more popular than jazz simply because they draw in
larger crowds. The challenge for Jazz Day organizers in the past
has been attracting a large audience for a musical form that is not
highly popular. But more specifically, the challenge has been
attracting the college crowd, since most college students
don’t listen to jazz avidly. The artists on this year’s
bill, the organizers say, can help overcome these challenges.
“The neo-soul sound is creating a whole different genre of
music that young adults can actually get into,” Nelson said.
“They maybe feel like they don’t like jazz, but they
like hip-hop. Neo-soul plays a big part in bringing the
demographics together.”
The pressure to increase attendance for the jazz portion of the
festival has risen in recent years, with the falling attendance of
Jazz Day and the increasing success of Reggae Day, the second part
of the festival. Last year, Jazz Day had barely one-fourth of
Reggae Day’s 20,000 concertgoers.
But Jazz Day organizers have aimed high this year, calling the
highly successful Playboy Jazz Festival their competitor. The goal
this year, according to Hawkins, is to raise the attendance level
of Jazz Day to that of Reggae Day, a fairly ambitious goal for a
festival that started out as a small jazz show exclusively focused
on talent from the UCLA jazz studies program.
“This year, we expect the show to sell out,” Hawkins
said. “We’re expecting over 20,000 on each day.
That’s one of the reasons we booked India.Arie. It was to
make sure we would bring in that crowd, because jazz has a very
distinct audience. People love jazz, but a lot of people
don’t like hardcore jazz. So now it’s fusion jazz
that’s really bringing people into jazz more.”
But the festival’s lineup has rattled some people’s
cages and once again raised the question of what exactly
constitutes jazz.
“It really confused me, because we’ve had this for
19 years and it is called a jazz festival,” graduate student
Omid Toloui said. “And although soul and a lot of different
types of music have their roots in jazz music, you’d think
that the majority of artists at a jazz festival would actually be
jazz musicians.
“If they want to make a fundamental change in what that
weekend is all about, maybe they should think about changing the
name. It hurts the credibility of the whole event when you
advertise one thing and people show up and are disappointed because
they’re not getting what they thought they would get.
It’s like going to the Festival of Books and having it be all
about DVDs.”
Perhaps the definition of jazz, like any other controversial
topic, really depends on individual interpretation.
“There’s no right answer to that question (of what
jazz is),” said third-year ethnomusicology student Matt
Carroll. “Anyone can say what they think jazz is and
they’re basically right. It’s all just a matter of
perception. There’s no authority. Many different people have
used the word to describe all these different kinds of music, and I
would say that it’s never been clear. It’s not like you
can go into a dictionary.”