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Saturday, January 2, 2021

Alone and Together in Jazz

From time to time jazz music is depicted in movies. The last time I complained about it was regarding "La La Land." Someone's comment that the new Pixar movie "Soul" is a "mutated La La Land" kind of gave me a zap and explains why I also dislike how jazz is depicted in this animation. 


The music in the movie is very nice, of course, except the climatic piano solo when the main character, Joe Gardner, achieved enlightenment. When that tinkly, empty, vanilla, forgettable, sugary pop tune came up, the unpleasant association with the theme music from "La La Land" came to mind. Riiiiiight. This is a character that lives, breathes, and oozes traditional jazz, and at the moment of his emotional epitome, you give me this ... thing? You've got to be kidding me. 

There are a few other jazz-related scenes that bother me. For example, the audition scene. Joe got into his own "zone" of playing piano and forgot about everyone around him including other members of the quartet. When he "woke up," the saxophonist and leader of the band, was so impressed with his playing that she gave him the job on the spot. 

I am not a musician of any kind, but I find this scene not only unrealistic but distasteful. I cannot imagine any musician, unless he is playing solo, would forget to listen. 

Yes, to listen. It is a skill almost as important as to play, or perhaps more important. 

The movie's standard of a good musician seems to be entirely individualistic, with no room left for collaboration. I don't need to be a musician to realize that it's absurd. I don't know anything about classical music, but it is obvious that a member of an orchestra has to watch the conductor and listen to his or her colleagues all the time. Has any musician ever played solo all his career?

Unlike classical music, jazz requires extensive improvisation. If band members do not listen to and respond to each other using their utmost attention, a jazz band would end up like the school band being ridiculed at the beginning of the movie --- a screeching mess. However, we see no collaboration whatsoever in the movie. Joe and the other band members hardly exchanged a look, much less a word, during the audition, before he was hired on the spot by the band leader and told to come back to perform that night. No rehearsals. No jam sessions. No preparation. What's worse, all it took for the band to deliver a fabulous performance on that night was for Joe to wear a good-looking blue suit. 

Well, OK, I guess it's not really a movie about jazz music or musicians, despite the soundtrack and the photographs of Nina Simone and Duke Ellington on the wall. 

Thinking about this some more, I realize that it is the underlying value system represented by the movie that bothers me the most. First, the filmmakers seem to imply that excellence does not require hard work. All you need is "flow" or being "in the zone" or, put it more plainly, having talent. Much has been written in educational psychology that American children are put in a disadvantage relative to Asian children, because they are taught almost all the time that talent and intelligence determine their success, while hard work is considered a shameful mark of being dumb. Only stupid children have to work hard, right?

Second, and perhaps more pertinent in today's world of global connectedness, is the extreme individualism. Or shall we call it the mythology of individualism? Michael Lewis observed in his book "The Undoing Project," which chronicles the history-making friendship and collaboration of Kahneman and Tversky in behavioral economics, that the American culture worships individual "heroes" and has zero recognition of or interest in collaboration of multiple persons or a group. What is curious is that the culture not only does not value collaboration, it no longer sees it. The only visible figures are individuals and their individual talent and achievement. 

Back to jazz. The freedom it affords individual band members to play and riff exists simultaneously with the requirement for the band to play together. Members of the best jazz ensembles embrace each other's performance with organic and telepathic togetherness. They stimulate and inspire each other to create something much larger than the sum of their individual contributions. That's why jazz is irresistible. 

I am by no means a jazz aficionado, but it is sad to see it being portrayed by people who care about jazz even less than I do. 

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