Wait, haven't I seen this before?

Whenever I teach middle schoolers the wonderful art of jazz improvisation, I always start by crushing all their dreams and telling them that there is no conceivable way that anything they do will be regarded by anyone who listens as anything other than derivative crap. Saxophonists, that obnoxious yet innovative group which happens to include me as a member, have this problem in spades. Play lots of notes in key? You are officially a Charlie Parker clone (or a Cannonball Adderley clone, who is essentially a Parker clone with a darker tone and less reliance on "I've Got Rhythm" changes). Don't play so many notes, but are still willingly playing within the chord changes? Then you must have erased everything recorded after 1950 on your iPod - I'm guessing you transcribed a lot of tenor players whose day gigs consisted of getting high/drunk and playing for one of the "big four" big bands (Glenn Miller, Woody Herman, Ellington, Basie, Benny Goodman - wait, that's five. So, "big five," then), unless your tone is so whispy the audience thinks you're using tissue paper instead of a reed, in which case you might as well be Stan Getz. Play lots of notes, but aren't so keen on playing the changes as they were intended on being played? Generic saxophonist, meet John Coltrane. Sporadic notes, no changes? Ornette Coleman. Going for your own sound? You will inevitably be compared to any one of a dozen saxophonists gigging today, who were in turn directly influenced by one or more of the preceding groups. Everything's already been done before, which is sad considering that jazz has reached this conclusion barely 100 years after its inception. And some 12 year old who discovered the joys of a 12-bar blues three weeks ago is supposed to turn the heads of the editors of Downbeat? Pssshhh.





Before you mistake me for a someone completely void of human emotion, there's a good, sound reason for lowering the expectations of budding musicians, and it's because coming up with earth-shattering ideas is hard work, and in order to succeed one essentially has to invent a new sub-genre consisting solely of one great technique/song/group/musician. Sticking with the jazz analogy, it's going to be very difficult to be a "ground-breaking" big band if your major influences are Sammie Nestico and Neil Hefti, two writers synonymous with the Count Basie Band. Inevitably, all your compositions aren't going to sound like original charts as much as Nestico charts that have been lost in the vault for 50 years. Unless you turn into, say, Maria Schneider, and turn your big-band influences into a completely different, almost orchestral sound, you're never going to be truly original. Kids don't need to worry about becoming Maria or John Hollenbeck. In sixth grade, they need to worry about how many sixteenth-notes are in a 4/4 measure, or how to tune to an ensemble. Get their heads out of the clouds now, and maybe they can go back someday when they know what they're talking about.

But, then again, I'm coming from the vantage point of someone who doesn't necessarily think it's a good thing to be a direct copy of something else. Our culture seems to think otherwise, that everything needs to be homogenized, then cloned, then cloned and homogenized again for good measure. Don't tell me it's not true -- it's everywhere. Why else do we have nine thousand versions of CSI or Law and Order on TV (not even counting the de-facto clones not actually named CSI or Law and Order), or legions of minors and girl bands with a collective IQ lower than their collective age swarming the Billboard charts? Why do one in three countries have their own version of Deal or No Deal or Big Brother? Why then, did we let Harry Potter give way to werewolves and vampires and Team Jedward or whatever the hell it's called? Dan Brown writes some crap about Jesus, and now the Pope himself is under fire. Coincidence? Even the people who are trying to be OUTRAGEOUS tend to remind me of someone else (and please tell me I'm not the only one who thinks Lady Gaga is essentially Madonna as a transvestite).

Of course, in this (cliché alert) media-driven global society (wow, that was a big one), it seems only obvious that we're going to paint our international portrait with sometimes unbearably broad strokes. If half the world's population understands who Lady Gaga is, or how the Deal or No Deal "game" works, and I talk about that in my writing (thereby perpetuating the notion that it's "popular" and therefore worth giving a crap about), then I'm theoretically going to reach a larger audience than if I spent this space, say, to make semi-obscure jazz references (oops) or wax poetic about the hilarious episode of BBC Radio 4's The Unbelievable Truth I heard yesterday --  I say "theoretically," because in practice about three co-workers and my room-mates read this blog, and that's mostly to make sure I'm not drinking myself into a stupor alone in my bedroom (which is a joke, in case Mum or Dad happen to be reading -- joking!). And it's not enough to be well-liked among your room-mates and co-workers anymore; if your insane ramblings aren't read by at least 30 people in five different countries (arbitrary numbers), then what the hell are you wasting your time writing for? And, as any fourth-grade math class has told you, when trying to divide rational numbers (or irrational people), you must find the common denominator.

Sometime in the near-future, though -- global community be damned -- it's all going to get a bit thick, and I don't mean dividing fractions. I remember reading somewhere sometime (National Geographic six years ago? Ranger Rick 20 years ago?) regarding the new problem facing the still-endangered cheetahs. After setting out to repopulate the cheetah population after setting more stringent poaching laws in their natural habitats, scientists and zoologists found that the remaining gene pool was so small that restoring cheetah populations to their original sizes would produce hoards of cheetahs, but also hoards of inbred cheetahs. I already see it happening today - we are in an unprecedented age of knowledge and learning, but it all seems a bit retarded, like all the facts of today are fifth-generation incestuous myths of the 1950s.

I'd go on, but frankly when I read this back to myself, I find myself sounding like at least four distinctly "not me" people, which isn't exactly a good sign when I'm railing against the exact thing I've just exposed myself as being. I'm probably only talking about this because I read about it somewhere in the Guardian somewhere. God, I'm pathetic.