Playing and composing jazz has been my passion and career for a number of years now, but the chances of me ever falling in love with it must have been almost infinitesimally small. While I eventually connected with a small handful of musical compatriots, my pursuit of music in my hometown (Canberra, Australia) felt mostly isolated, self-driven and self-directed. During that time, I hadn’t really reflected on the ways in which those experiences shaped me into the musician I am. But when I eventually made it to the US and engaged with the music in the country in which it was born, I felt my relationship to the music I play immediately shift as I began to ask myself a then-new question: what do I have to contribute to any of this as a non-American?
Let’s zoom out for a second. Jazz has always been, and always will be Black American Music. It was born of a very specific socio-cultural circumstance in North America, where its creators interwove disparate cultures (European/Western Art Music and music of the West African diaspora) with their shared experience as slaves, in an honest, potent expression – which in itself was a form of protest. Jazz is a crucial part of American history, and can be rightly claimed as ‘America’s great artform’. But as early as the 1920s and 30s, jazz had already set sail and spread across the world.
Today, the most well-known jazz scene outside the Americas exists in Europe (perhaps most well-known for the ECM record label), but jazz in Australia also started at a similar time. Because of our distance from the US, Australian musicians seldom had first-hand experience of American jazz, besides a few rare instances (my research cites visits from the Ingenues and Artie Shaw’s band as particularly impactful). Instead, listening to records was the predominant means of education for Australia’s first generation. Big band music, whilst enjoyed, was normally performed at much-reduced instrumentations due to economic reasons, even during its concurrent golden period in the US. As jazz musicians of Europe began to forge a unique identity in dialogue with Americans during the 50s (one early example is ‘Dear Old Stockholm’, a Swedish popular song recorded by Stan Getz, Miles Davis and John Coltrane), Australians spent most of the decade getting their heads around bebop. While the Australian scene has produced a number of (internationally under-appreciated!!) greats like Don Burrows, Bernie McGann, Linda May Han Oh, Barney McAll, or Andrea Keller, it’s clear our culture of jazz is wildly different from America’s or even Europe’s. Different in terms of its popularity and accessibility, but also in terms of its relationship to Australian culture and life more broadly.
So, what makes Australian jazz culture tick? Is it possible to identify what makes ‘Australian jazz’ ‘Australian’? Well, not really – but strangely, that might be one of its most defining characteristics. When I first started asking these questions as an Australian at an American jazz school, part of me hoped that there was an easily identifiable answer, but time and time again I came up short. Even as I checked out more and more important figures of the Australian jazz scene, I couldn’t find hardly anything that linked all their playing or composition. Instead, what I found was a smorgasbord of distinct personalities that clearly had very individual understandings of place – whether their playing was informed by early jazz or more modern aesthetics (or both), by American icons or the burgeoning European scene (or both), or something else entirely. Of course, jazz everywhere has always been about developing one’s own voice. But it seems like Australian jazz doesn’t even have a stereotypical sound or approach to point to, (arguably) unlike their European or American counterparts.
There’s a couple reasons this might be the case. Firstly, the absence of a (comparably) fully formed or supported performance practice meant that we were left to our own devices a lot more, with little interruption or instruction (similar to my own experience). Australian trumpeter Phil Slater says our ‘freedom to explore, to experiment and to fail without much punishment means people with certain individual quirks can actually develop them into a style; fashion it into some sort of language’. Secondly, our distance from jazz’s cultural and performative hubs meant that we were less connected to jazz’s original context: pianist Mike Nock says: ‘One of the things that I found in America is that people do tend to be a little bit more respectful, which can be a bad thing. They can be told, ‘This is how you do it’. Here they say, ‘Well, I can do that’.’ Australian musicians weren’t ever thinking in nationalistic terms, or looking for an ‘Australian sound’, but moreso simply chasing their individual muses, often from vast geographical distances. Australia’s stereotypically rugged outsider-culture of ‘mateship’ where we fight for the ‘underdog’ (thanks Wikipedia) probably further contributes to this state of affairs.
Knowing all of this, as well as one other key thing, is what finally answered my question (or at least it’s what I tell myself when I begin to question my own legitimacy!). It’s clear that these musicians concentrated on self-expression above everything else. Respectful, historically informed self-expression, but self-expression nevertheless. The final piece of the puzzle was my realizing that self-expression was all this was ever about. All I can do is speak for myself, and to do anything else would be inappropriate. In this way, thinking about my ‘contribution’ is meaningless – the problem is less about I’m going to say musically, and more about whether I said it honestly and respectfully. ‘Authenticity’ in the jazz world comes from this, not attempting to musically speak for anyone else, and citing other musicians and cultures where it’s needed.
With this being said, it’s crucial that Australian musicians keep in mind that aforementioned cultural context in which this music was born. But as long as we understand, acknowledge and respect the roots of the music, I’d argue that it’s almost more fitting to honor jazz’s masters by allowing their approaches and philosophies to inform a new expression. In a way, when it comes to expressing one’s self, it might be more honest and therefore respectful to sound different than others, in my opinion.
So overall, while Australians may (very generally speaking) falter a bit when compared to the impeccable craftsmanship, or deep knowledge and connection to jazz’s history that students in America’s best institutions inherit, we’re well equipped to make up for this through creativity, adaptability and a rugged DIY-style approach to developing our own voice. Or at least that’s what I told myself as I confronted my weaknesses at jazz school! When I first arrived in the US, I was self-conscious of my musical upbringing and experience as a differentiating factor and potential weakness. Over time though, I’ve become more cognizant of its positives as well as its negatives, and have slowly learnt to be more comfortable leaning into what makes me the musician I am, while acknowledging its shortcomings as I continue on my musical journey. I wouldn’t say that I consciously wish to express an ‘Australian’ identity through my music, but I do want to express myself as honestly as possible – so I’m sure in one way or another it manifests itself every time I play. And somewhat counter-intuitively, it helps knowing that I belong to a multi-generational community of Australian musicians that remain staunchly un-unified in their musical approaches. Their successes give me the security of knowing that I too can bring value to the national and international music community simply by learning to be myself. And what could be more jazz than that?