Learning Improvisation
In my humble opinion, music theory, harmony, and scales are not that important for learning how to improvise. Also, improvisation is not the character of jazz music. Remember, Bach improvised every Sunday Mass music.
Music is deeply connected to cultural backgrounds. Infants learn to speak by imitating the words spoken by the people around them. A child raised in the jungle without human contact may not be able to talk. Studying from books is pointless without a model. Infants instinctively know how to produce sounds with their voices, but when it comes to playing music, they must learn the correct way to play an instrument. Self-taught methods have their limits. Without the skill to freely control an instrument, there will be limits to the music one can express. In other words, technique is a necessary condition for performing music. One should learn as many techniques as possible from instructors. On the other hand, the most critical aspect of studying music, I believe, is learning from the performances of others by copying them and learning the music styles.
Until I started studying at US universities, no teacher ever told me to “listen to the recordings of your favorite performers repeatedly and copy them.” Playing without understanding the performances of predecessors runs the great risk of ending in self-satisfaction. If your teacher is your idol, you could copy them, but you must be extremely lucky to be able to take lessons from your idol regularly. When I study Bach’s flute pieces, I first copy the recordings of Marc Hantai. If there are no recordings of Hantai for the piece, I will copy Barthold Kuijken because I love their interpretations of Bach. Copying means imitating how they play phrase by phrase.
Copying is Everything
I think it was late Alan Dawson who told us about one of his students, the great Tony Williams, who changed the history of jazz music. When Tony was 10, he started to copy his idols, such as Max Roach, Philly Joe Jones, Art Blakey, etc., one by one. He copied everything from how they walked, talked, smoked, and dressed. By the time he finished copying five heroes, he had already built his own drumming style. Remember, Tony is the only one in the world who told Miles to practice.
Misinterpretation could offend others
Shortly after I moved to the United States in 1987, I was hired by a Brazilian band by chance. Although I knew nothing about Bossa Nova or Samba, I was fascinated by their grooves and time feel. I was completely hooked. Since my graduate studies focused on composition, I challenged myself to write a Brazilian Choro-style piece. When we played this piece, a renowned Bossa Nova pianist from Rio de Janeiro was clearly displeased, saying, “This is not Choro.” Moreover, while touring with Brazilians in one of the other countries, we once stepped into a club where Bossa Nova was being performed. One of the Brazilian bandmates said, “What have they done to our music?” I then realized the feeling is easy to understand if I put myself in their shoes. When foreign artists who do not know Japanese culture that well come to Japan and casually play famous Japanese songs in a non-Japanese way, it can make us uncomfortable. Similarly, many old Hollywood movies portray Japanese culture incorrectly, which can be offensive. It also feels awkward to hear non-Japanese Asian actors speaking broken Japanese in films.
We Japanese musicians can play something sounding Japanese even without studying traditional Japanese music styles. It is all about the cultural background. The relationship between music and culture is significant.
Although I have played Brazilian music with Brazilians for a long time and know a lot about Brazilian grooves and rhythms, I do not wish to claim I can play their music. The main reason is that I cannot speak fluent português and my experience performing in Brazil is limited to less than a month total in Rio de Janeiro.
Vocabulary Matters
When people ask me if I play Brazilian music, I respond by saying I play “Brazilian Jazz”. The word “Jazz” can be an excuse. The definition of jazz is to evolve by adding new elements. It can be anything. However, I personally cannot agree with calling jazz music when no jazz vocabulary is present. Jazz music has a deep tie with the history of Black Americans: the way of talking, the way of walking, the way of dancing. The music we call jazz began with bebop. Musicians like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie created the unique phrases and time feel that defined the music we call jazz today. The differences in musical styles can be understood as a dialect. Carelessly imitating a dialect can be offensive. If one lived in that area and mastered the dialect, even creating new words may not feel out of place. Of course, those with a talent for languages can learn from dramas and other media without living in the area. Similarly, there are many who have the talent to learn musical styles from the recordings. But the important thing is to know what to learn from them.
Lastly, but not least
As mentioned earlier, technique is a necessary condition. Those who say that technique is not important in musical performance are usually those who lack technique. Even if one masters vocabulary, it is useless if one lacks the technique to perform it. At age 15, Picasso presented “First Communion” (1896), making the world aware that he had already mastered traditional painting techniques. As we all know, he expanded above and beyond from there.
