Peter Brötzmann & "Fire Music"

An article by Adam Hill at One Final Note prompted much discussion at Bagatellen. The whole piece is ridiculous, but Hill's discussion of Peter Brötzmann's music was particularly disturbing to read in a publication that generally has some decent, informed writing about jazz & improvised musics. Hill asserts:

Brötzmann still enjoys playing [the sort of free music that come off as little more than brutal balls-out blasting] even though this bombastic and dense style has by now congealed into little more than a cliché. To so brazenly forgo subtlety as if it’s little more than sentimentalism, and subsume it with histrionic pyrotechnics, is far too easy a refuge. It’s low art blown big with hot air.

I posted the following response at Bagatellen:

To characterize Brötzmann's music as only about "overblown," "screaming," "raucous", "wailing", "bombastic", "histrionic," "simplistic," "angry", "hectic" or "abrasive" sounds (maybe Santa will replace that worn-out thesaurus) seems to miss almost everything about his music. His musical language incorporates certain techniques and sound elements -- hyper-visceral sounds which, yes, to some degree had to do with a certain time and place, i.e., the 1960s European art scene and counterculture. But he uses those elements as part of what he does as an improvisor, in exactly the same way that Johnny Hodges incorporated his "searing tone and slithery motion" (per Kevin Whitehead) in his improvisations. I wonder if Adam Hill would dismiss Hodges for anachronistically repeating his "cliches" and ignore the consistent creativity of Hodges' improvisations in the manner he has dismissed and ignored Brötzmann. How 'bout Sonny Rollins or Max Roach? Is an artist expected to create a revolutionary new style every few years? If someone like that exists, I'd like to know his/her name. Off the top of my head, among 20th-Century artists, only Picasso exhibited that kind of capacity from decade to decade (or from day to day). (Duke, Miles and Trane covered a lot of ground, but not to that degree.)

Writers like Hill tend to take music(ian)s which provide some initial discomfort, reduce them with the labels of "shocking" and "avant-garde," and then later, once their own discomfort has faded, criticize those music(ian)s for failing to provide what they had perceived as its only worthwhile quality, ignorant of the fact that the music(ian)s were never as one-dimensional as they thought, but were very much, dare I say, part of a tradition. The more I hear Brötzmann -- who I've heard on average once a year since the mid-1990s -- the more I hear the spirit of Coleman Hawkins.

Again we're faced with the huge deficiencies in perception and understanding of the visceral and structural elements of improvised musics. For the moralist with regard to sound (as Hill appears to be), the criticism seems to be about what sounds are proper material for "music". That's fine, but just state that up front ("I don't like Brötzmann's tone/volume/vibrato/whatever") rather than complain about cliches or irrelevance while ignoring the experience of listening to the music. Or just admit "I don't get it". (It's not hard. Here, I'll start: "I don't get Keith Jarrett." Now you try.)

Part of the problem may be that Hill is using reproductions of performances rather than live listening experiences to draw his conclusions. I treasure my records as much as the next guy, but we're dealing with a living music, people.

But even regarding Brötzmann's recordings, there is an astonishing diversity among just his solo, Die Like a Dog, and Chicago Tentet projects, and duets with Walter Perkins. Still, it's impossible to overstate the error in mistaking his records for the entirety of his activity as an artist -- not just in music but in visual arts as well, as evidenced by the work included in the current exhibition at Corbett vs. Dempsey: http://corbettvsdempsey.com/

Adam Hill's writing is a sobering reminder about the oppressive, pre-Cagean attitude towards what types and qualities of sounds are proper materials for "music" -- and for that matter, towards the purpose(lessness) of art-in-life. Unfortunately, this reactionary conservatism is a sign of our times. Four more years!
(Speaking of which, I can't describe how life-affirming it was to hear Brötzmann "bark 'n bite" in duo with Robert Barry this last November 3. Gustafsson was "ferocious" with a different group that night as well.)

-Jason