The wine has ’swing’: or, wine as jazz and vice versa

Posted on | January 4, 2006

I recently came across this interesting analogy entitled ‘Does jazz rejoice the heart’? I make no apologies for the fact it was written for a jazz festival 12 years ago (1993), since its currency is obvious. Xavier Felgeyrolles wrote it to promote Jazz en Tête, the festival he founded in 1988 and still going strong. Thanks to Xavier for letting me reproduce it:

“Jazz can be compared to wine. It has its varieties, its vinification, its soils, and its vintages. Jazz has become universal and, in the same way as wine, it intoxicates. To say that good jazz is exhilarating is simply a free translation of the famous title of a tune by Duke Ellington : “It doesn’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” But swing is not the only intoxicating element in a form or music in which rhythms, colours and sounds are all blended, but just as the unique alchemy of wine is the triumph of life over the bland simplicity of fruit juice, jazz must have that extra something which other forms of music don’t possess. It should not be thought, however, that jazz has significance provided that the quality of elation is present. In our age of individualism, every musician who possesses a measure of jazz technique believes that he is obliged to produce, and even worse, boast about his own local ego jazz style, more or less environmentally friendly if it can’t actually be said to be good. There are numerous countries where an honorable wine is produced. Even if it is very obvious that Bordeaux wine comes from the Gironde area, nevertheless, wine buffs can be somewhat amazed by some wines from California. Should one like the latter because of their Bordeaux models, or simply for themselves, when they give instant pleasure ? Obviously, the varieties and the vines cultivated in California helped enormously when the Bordeaux region was ravaged by phylloxera at the biginning of the century, Europe, with its concerts and festivals has, in return, most probably been of help to American Jazz. In any event it must be recognised that wine production is not confined simply to the Bordeaux region and to California : Cabernet wines from Chile, Australia, South Africa and Romania, are also, together with others, proof of this particular wine flourishing in very different parts of the world. Comparing wine with music, in those days of prohibition, may be surprising that a generation of jazz musicians is made up of tee-totalers, who often irritate with their rigid, qualified-jazz-musician warp ( in comparison with past pioneers whose alleged excesses are part of jazz legend), pontificating Doctors of Music Science in a world of illiterate people who are insensitive to the music of founders, apparently shameless exploiters of the musical inventions which stand out at intervals throughout the decades of jazz history. Like champagne, jazz connot be re-invented ; one carries on the tradition and one doggedly improves the taste if possible, in a modest way ; it is left to some observers to comment in a erudite manner on the size of the bubbles when the advent of soft drinks has already deadened all oenological (knowledge) aesthetic feeling in televiewers. To seek to defend the integrity of a form of music which sometimes tends to be most amidst the uniformity of society’s Vin Dèlimitè de Qualitè Supèrieure, is an illusory task ; to seek the universal expounding of the language of jazz to a majority of people who are unaware even of its existence, has something of the Utopian about it. But this Utopia is saving when naïvete and innocence reign supreme and for the duration of a festival, we create the conditions not only for music but especially for musicians and spectators to meet each other. Jazz en Tête doesn’t pretend to be like a wine agricultural show, where it would be impossible to attempt to show a diversity of wines without risking a fusion of beverages ( a loss of individuality). This festival prefers to restrict itself to the classic soils of jazz without showing the most conventional wines. The jazz wines at this festival are fairly young, and the tastings of 11 years of festival have given many novices the opportunity to sharpen their palate with regards both to the classic characteristics of colour and of nose, and to a surprising diversity of wines. Techniques of vinification have evolved and one chooses those which respect the spirit of wines ( au tout du cru prètons l’oreille). Jazz en Tête avoids “Beaulolais nouveau” marketing of all types. Similarly, strong alcohol and sophisticated alcohols are rejected ; the strength of an orchestra is not measured in the decibels which can be extracted from it in order to increase the musical weight artificially. Although programme-building is often caught between the success of “Famous Trumpeters”, which goes to the heads of the promoters (reputation and star rating require them to take celebrity status into account) and the latest “heavenly Saxophones” which poison the hearing audience, it is a fact that Jazz en Tête audience has doubled since the beginning, thus conforming to a very simple principle : in the same way as alcoholism is less widespread in famous wine regions than in others, - through inherent justice doubtless, good jazz at its correct temperature can be consumed in as large quantities as one wishes during the festival, and why not ? - intoxicate those who want to escape from the boredom of their everyday existence. “

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