A quick rant

It's not that I've forgotten the matter in hand (insofar as it was ever, y'know, "in hand" to begin with), but some people are fond of saying that "every day's a school day"*, and yesterday I learned... that Iain Ballamy and John Dankworth are "greater" saxophonists than (for example) Anthony Braxton. Wait... what?! Let me explain.

I happened to be listening to the Tim Berne CD The Sevens, and was curious enough about the details to try looking online - which didn't really answer the question, but in the meantime it took me to Berne's Wikipedia page (which, annoyingly, repeats the famous and clearly-not-true story about Berne's making a pilgrimage to NYC in search of Julius Hemphill**). What happened next, in a few quick clicks: Berne's Caos Totale group featured (once-uber-trendy*** British jazzer) Django Bates at one stage; Bates had first come to notice via the Brit collective Loose Tubes; another musician who first became known from that lot was Iain Ballamy. Oh, and according to the latter's Wikipedia page, he is "considered one of the greatest modern jazz saxophonists". Really. I had to read it twice myself, just to check it actually said that - which it does, right there in the (very brief) introductory paragraph.# Even Ballamy - whose renown does in fact extend beyond these tiny and barely-significant ## borders - would surely hesitate to think of himself in such hyperbolically lofty terms. 

- Of course, one of the good things about Wikipedia is that any such assertion is supposed to be backed up, and sure enough there is a footnote, linking to this little nugget of nonsense (which lays out - for the benefit of readers who probably have almost zero interest in jazz to begin with - the, ahem, "25 greatest jazz saxophonists of all time"). Now, it's been so long since I listened to BBC Radio 3 that it took me a few minutes to remind myself who Geoffrey Smith is (was?), but it did eventually come back to me: a US-born, UK-based jazz journo left over from a bygone era, who used to present a programme called Jazz Record Requests (he even played a record for me once, albeit not the one I'd actually asked for...). Having been over here for (I presume) years and years, he will have built up a bizarrely-skewed vision of what the jazz world looks like - for these older Brit hepcats, the jazz world was centred not in New York, but on Ronnie Scott's. In this warped looking-glass land, Humphrey Lyttleton is a major name, Anthony Braxton a mere footnote; Berne might not even merit a mention, whilst Hemphill would, but only in passing (as a member of WSQ). It's a strange place indeed, and not one where I have ever wanted to spend any time at all.

So, once I realised what the article was, I didn't waste any time actually reading it; indeed I didn't even really bother to find out who is on the list, since I never got beyond the first page (these things are invariably spread across several pages, usually in the hope that confused readers will accidentally click on a sponsored ad while they're poking around for the link to the next page). However, it's an alphabetical list, so I know just from skimming the first page that B. is not included; and let's be clear about this, I wouldn't expect him to be. The article is aimed at Brit classical snobs, many of whom only ever mention jazz at all in the context of its being "proper" music's inbred country cousin; presumably this was aimed at the small proportion who have a passing curiosity but no familiarity, and is a "start here" guide. Nobody would expect to see B. on such a list, even if he did record the first album of solo saxophone (but who the heck would want to listen to that? Everyone knows that jazz is happy music which makes you tap your foot). And these lists are always complete bullshit anyway, however well-intentioned some of them might be; they invariably conflate two different agendas: they will always reel off names of actual all-time greats (represented in this case by Bechet, Coltrane, Parker, Hawkins, Young...), then attempt somehow to factor in whatever temporary, context-specific names the target audience will expect to see. ###

In this case, that means that in addition to the players who actually belong in the pantheon by right, we have to expect "giants" from the British jazz scene - purely because the article was written by a UK-based journo for the presumed edification of an ignorant UK-based readership. Not surprisingly, the list is ludicrously lopsided, featuring genuine titans of the music next to players whose musical significance does not leave these narrow, provincial shores at all. At least Ballamy is recognised as a player outside the UK, and maybe around the world (even if nobody apart from his dear old mum would consider him one of the all-time greats). But Dankworth... look, in certain localised (and increasingly outdated) circles he may be considered a very notable bandleader; I really wouldn't know and I really don't care. But his reputation as a saxophonist, globally speaking, is - not trivial, not even negligible, but basically non-existent. The stupid thing is, Smith does not even attempt to demonstrate otherwise: this was the one part of the page I actually read, and it concentrates entirely on Dankworth's being the man who discovered/accompanied Cleo Laine. To British readers - at least, readers over a certain age - it is so self-evidently "true" that Cleo Laine was a goddess among mortals that the man who fostered her career is "great by association"; since he played saxophone, this apparently makes him one of the Greatest Jazz Saxophonists Ever. It's ridiculous, yes - but more than that, it's embarrassing.

- Because I do feel downright embarrassed to be British, at such times; the pathetic, myopic parochialism which underpins such frippery makes me feel like lying about my own nationality. I don't really feel any more than a fleeting need to defend B's reputation, for his not being included in such a dipshit list; I mean, who cares? But this national failure to decentre... it really is an embarrassment. Of course people who have been closely involved in a given scene will feel great affection for that scene, and for the people in it; what is deeply problematic is the complete inability of such chroniclers to step out of their own inward-facing circles and to realise that outside this country, hardly anybody cares what goes on here. Do they not know that journalists in France, Germany, Holland, Denmark, Poland... Canada, South Africa, Japan... anywhere... will look at their own national scenes in the same way? (And bear in mind, some of those countries - unlike Britain - have regularly produced players capable of making lasting contributions to the music on a global level, not just provincially.) Do they tacitly assume that a French journalist drawing up the same list would substitute French names for the British ones, while retaining the others? or are they really so deluded as to think that the rest of the world cares about British jazz the same way that they do? The saddest thing about this tendency is that when Britain does produce musicians whose playing and influence have global significance - Derek Bailey or Evan Parker, for example - these same journos disregard that because, well, those aren't proper musicians: they don't write or play pretty tunes. (Smith probably thought he had been super-audacious by including on his list Ornette Coleman - even though he could hardly have been left out of a list being drawn up any time after the mid-1960s^ - and Eric Dolphy; indeed, the latter actually is an eyebrow-raising choice, and a smidgen of kudos is due to Smith for that. Trouble is, that's well and truly cancelled out by some of the other inclusions...)

Rant over. I don't actually like writing this sort of thing - but it did feel as if I needed to write it. And hey, it's not as if more than a handful of people will actually read it... 

* In my current job, people really do say that all the time - it's like a maxim. (In fairness, I work now in an environment dealing with an awful lot of highly-specialised information, and no one person could possibly know all of it.)

** I was a bit surprised (irritated) to see this romantic nonsense repeated in what is supposed to be a factual biog. Yes, that is the story "they tell" - of how the young Berne heard Dogon A.D and was immediately converted to an interest in jazz, music which until that point hadn't interested him - all that is true enough, as I understand it; and lo, he then embarked upon a journey unto the magical kingdom of New York City, there to seek the magus known as Hemphill, for to partake of his great wisdom blah blah etc. The obvious problem with that story is that (again, as I understand it) Berne had no idea that Hemphill was even in NYC at the time; nor would he have suspected that he might be, Hemphill being strongly associated with the St Louis creative arts scene. Berne presumably headed to NYC as the capital of the jazz world, and when he got there, he ended up having lessons with... Anthony Braxton. But this was 1974, and shortly after Berne commenced his studies, B. landed his Arista deal and had to cut right back on his teaching commitments; it was his idea for Berne to give Hemphill a call, and supposedly he had no idea of what that might mean to the younger man. (I had better clarify here that this is the story as I have absorbed it, and remembered it; what I can't presently recall is where I got that account in the first place. And it's not such a good story - but it does seem a lot likelier to be accurate.)

*** I feel obliged to point out that I really have no opinion on Bates as a musician - on the other hand I have long been turned off the idea of him thanks to his (former) cachet among the British chattering class. (And who the hell calls themselves Django?! that's outrageous)

# It's only Wikipedia... and I am aware that, in principle at least, there is nothing preventing me from rewriting the article myself. In practice I have never fancied this sort of thing. Someone else will have to do it.

## Barely-significant, that is, in terms of its jazz scene - among other things. Britain still likes to think of itself as the centre of the universe... and struggles mightily to assimilate any evidence to the contrary.

### This is why lists of "greatest musicians" for a wider, more pop-oriented readership always end up trying to include members of The Beatles. "Everyone knows" they were the "best" band ever, so that means their musicians must have been among the best instrumentalists ever, right? Paul McCartney played bass, so he must have been one of the best bassists of all time - well, no, because the context in which the music was created has basically nothing to do with instrumental virtuosity; but the target audiences for such articles will seldom be capable of making such distinctions; fuck, half the time the people who write these things are incapable of making such distinctions. The resulting lists, inevitably, are totally worthless.

^ That is to say, any time after it became clear that Ornette's influence wasn't simply going to go away. Prior to that, there were all too many writers who refused to recognise what he did as valid; actually, those guys existed (in decreasing numbers) for years afterwards, but it would no longer have been excusable to leave him off such a list because of the seismic shift he initiated. Of course, if such a list does include Ornette, where the hell is Ayler?! (but one has to be realistic...)