About the author :
Loic Sanlaville is a musician , composer and sound engineer born in France but considers India to be his spiritual home . He plays a broad range of styles- jazz , Blues , Hindustani classical & world music , as a soloist and band musician with Zuper Fast Trio , Luis Trio , Borders , a quintet with Funkoffenado , and World Ethnic Music Ensemble . He has performed at several venues including the Kala Ghoda festival in Mumbai , Kamani Auditorium , and Lalit Kala Akademis International Kala Mela 2018 in Delhi , The Piano Man , Alliance Francaises music festivals , International Jazz Festival in Madras and Pune , Kumbh Mela in Ujjain . He is currently heading the Guitar Department at The True School of Music , Vijaybhoomi University .
Lage Lund is a Norwegian Jazzman based in New York . While everyone considers him as one of the best of his generation , he will humbly explain how he will only be able to speak Jazz with an accent since he is not originally from the U . S . He speaks with the accent of his cultural background . There are so many ways to speak English , and there are as many ways of speaking Jazz .
Let ’ s have a look of those variations around jazz music . How does our own culture make us understand the same thing slightly differently ? In the other way around , how can our own culture interact and influence Jazz ?
At the origin , the meeting between American and African culture , the Western harmonic system and the rhythm of Africa , explains why Jazz is naturally inclined to meet and interact with other cultures . As a Jazz guitarist , I ’ m always amazed how jazz sounds different from one country to another . While going to a jazz club in France , you ’ ll hear a Jazz which is slightly different . Attached to the tradition of Swing , and very , very romantic . You can hear the heritage of Django Reinhardt and his Gypsy Jazz , and the violin of Stephane Grappelli . The instrumentation is different , more acoustic , with the Guitar as the star of the show .
Some cultures match so well with Jazz that it becomes a new genre . The influence of Brazil , the Caribbean and Cuba is what we call Latin Jazz . In its earliest forms , it is a fusion of Afro Cuban Clave-Based rhythms with jazz harmonies . The dialogue goes back and forth and seems to influence jazz itself . Frank Sinatra ’ s and Antonio Carlos Jobim ’ s version of The Girl from Ipanema shows the proximity of those two musical cultures . Brazil has a lot of music in its culture , dance and the relation to the body . Jazz gets a rhythm twist there , using the warm tone of a classical guitar to highlight the story .
Jazz is very open to influences , rhythm can be modified , the melody can be sung in different languages , the instrumentation can be electric or acoustic . Is it still jazz ? For some it ’ s not , but the sure thing is that Jazz was a base for it . NuJazz is another great example of a different understanding of Jazz . Scandinavian European countries are well known for their creativity and social experimentation , while the rest of Europe is generally more conservative . The music scene follows the same cultural tendency of trying new things . Sometimes it is very far from the original version of jazz . Duke Ellington said , “ If it doesn ’ t swing , it ’ s not jazz .” But I think that it can still be connected
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