Alternatives

At IAJEStrings, there's a discussion on the subject "Alternative Strings". This label - intended to cover non-classical genres of string-playing - has come to be accepted in recent years, but some have questioned its appropriateness. I tried to present my own take on the topic in the following post:

I like Gayle Dixon's suggestion of World Strings as a "catch-all" title for diverse non-classical genres of string playing. But I also wonder if it's good for strings to keep isolating themselves from the rest of the currents of music. After all, genres such as Folk, Fusion, Latin, Gypsy, Klezmer and so on are not exclusive to strings, though strings may often be involved. What I mean is that perhaps it isn't necessary to have a special term or category for non-classical string playing. When strings play jazz, that is precisely what they do - play jazz, along with other non-string instruments. And when they play the various kinds of folk music, they again play folk music -alongside, or in awareness of, other instruments or voices. The same is true when strings play classical music.

I think the categorisation/classification issue is an important one, because it has far-reaching implications for the role of string instruments in jazz music in particular. If string instruments are divided off as being somehow "special" or "alternative", it makes it all the harder for them to be integrated within a jazz context.

While recently listening to some of the Quartette Indigo recordings from the late 1990s, I became pleasantly aware that while several musical traditions are interwoven in this playing - jazz, classical, gospel, blues, African music, to mention just a few - Akua Dixon's music is above all a jazz expression, with plenty of scope for improvisation and "free" playing. But as music played by strings, it also has numerous points of contact with things that are usually played on other instruments. The quartet arrangements by pianist Sonelius Smith and trombonist Steve Turre, and Gayle Dixon's violin performance of a John Coltrane solo and her arrangement of Monk's Ruby My Dear are particularly interesting from this point of view.

To my ears, the music of Quartette Indigo points both inward, to the sounds and timbres and colorations of strings, and outward, to the orchestral and vocal palette of a much larger range of genres, interests and ensembles beyond the string section or quartet. Just as the classical string quartet or string orchestra constantly reminds the listener of a wider range of instrumentation, so does the jazz string chamber ensemble, when conceived in this way. And in QI, there's also a clear link to the classical and even the symphonic tradition, a link of the kind that's found in the music of Duke Ellington, for example.

I think there are lessons to be drawn from this - not least the perception that while classical music and jazz can happily co-exist, so can classical music and other genres of musical expression. It would be a shame to think that the non-classical styles and genres represent some form of rebellion against or denial of the classical ones. Instead, perhaps we need to look for forms of music-making, composition, improvisation and listening that enable all the genres to communicate with one another. That's what I hear, for example, in Tanya Kalmanovitch's experiments with Bartok improvisations (on compositions for 2 violins) and her work on South Indian music.

If strings are to make real headway in a jazz context, I submit that they need to opt in to all the richness, diversity and variety of which they have historically proven themselves to be capable, rather than opt out into some uncertain "alternative" or "contemporary" musical future. And perhaps that's a question that needs to be considered in the field of string music education.

I don't know how much sense this makes, but thought I'd say it anyway.

DM