A Guide to Breaking Music

What is “Dead Jazz”?  The term refers to an approach to music based on improvisational performance elements framed by an atmosphere of decay, decrepitude and faux/real ineptitude.  Think of it as “music for the undead”.  The objective of each composition is to create a separation within the music by pulling apart the instrumentation like pulling apart well cooked pork.  The trick is to create this separation without completely disintegrating the composition.  The “meat”, while separated, must still retain some connection to itself and the whole of the piece.  In this regard, the term “keeping it loose” is most appropriate.

Why “Dead Jazz”?  With the widespread dissemination of digital music technology permeating all of contemporary popular music production, there has been a decided move to lock step into a “perfectionist” methodology in music making.  Mainstream and even most so-called “alternative” music has become completely conditioned to the common usage of digital tools for “perfecting” music.  Pitch correction, quantization, click tracks, sequencing and editing are the means to this end.  No performance element is immune from such tinkering.  While there was once a novelty factor within electronic music resulting from the exactitude of these tools, their use has now become so widespread as to become ubiquitous.  The end results can be heard wafting from the speakers of every music system one may encounter.  The effect is easily perceptible as a general lack of feeling and essence within popular music, more so than has ever been the case in the past, regardless of the presence or influence of exploitive, oppressive or restrictive commercial interests.  With the click of a mouse, every flaw can be seamlessly wiped away.  And with them, every bit of character as well.  But what is so wrong with character?  Why must it be scrubbed away?  Perhaps it is time for a bit of an “antidote”.  Herein lies the purpose of “Dead Jazz”.

It’s time to put the warts back on and draw some wrinkles on the face of music.  It’s time to let the skin sag and not go running to the nearest cosmetic surgeon for that “nip & tuck”.  “Ugly” may not be “beautiful”, but it can sometimes be a lot more interesting and let’s not forget that these appraisals often result from the most subjective of perspectives.  Let’s be sloppy again!  Let’s savor those “sour” notes like sucking on a lemon after a shot of Tequila!  Let’s stagger with those wobbly meters like a drunk reveling on New Year’s Eve!

Any musician of any competence and experience with improvisation knows that there is no such thing as a “mistake” in the right hands.  Like a genetic mutation resulting in a new species, these “detours” are really an opportunity to branch off into a new form which could never have been consciously conceived.  These are the “gifts of the gods” which popular culture has forsaken, tossing these pearls into the mud while the consuming “swine” obliviously continue their wallowing.

“Dead Jazz” chooses to pluck these “pearls of imperfection” from the muck, polish them off and set them in a string for those with “soul” to appreciate.  As lumpy and misshapen as they may be, they are still worthy of appreciation and offer so much more than the bland precision we’ve been tastelessly choking down of late.

In music, there are no “accidents”, only opportunities.