A stupid reflection
A Stupid Reflection
Looking at pop music today, where digital instruments are used more and more and there is less analog music compared, for example, with the jazz era, I thought I’d write this here, specifically to you trumpet players.
As a European, jazz has always interested me from a harmonic point of view, but at the same time I find it a rather boring style — something that already feels very old, and that people keep trying to stretch further and further, living off its former glory. It is beautiful music, of course, and I have learned an enormous amount from it, but I also see it as somewhat obsolete.
The other day I was playing a few phrases in a park and someone came up to me and said, “Ah, you’re playing that American music, right?” And I thought: exactly. This music is immediately recognizable as belonging to a very specific tradition.
I imagine that in the US the jazz industry is still relatively strong, and even here it still has a presence. But artistically it doesn’t attract me that much anymore, despite everything I have learned from it. And of course Miles Davis is one of my favorite trumpet players.
That said, jazz sometimes feels like a style that has been canned and preserved. And I wonder whether one of the reasons jazz developed so enormously in the first place was simply that there was money behind it. People could actually make a living playing music. There were countless clubs and venues where people could play, meet each other, earn money, pay their rent and buy food.
The music industry today is very different. It is extremely difficult to make a living from music, and perhaps even more importantly, the industry follows certain cycles: particular sounds and genres get promoted for a while. Ten years ago, for example, trap was everywhere. Now there is a more modernized, highly electronic sound, techno has also made a comeback, and I think all of that is great.
But when it comes to experimentation with something essentially monophonic, like the trumpet, perhaps the conditions for a similar kind of evolution simply aren’t there anymore. I don’t know.
There are musicians doing interesting things, of course, but many of them still have more than half of their body inside jazz, even when they describe themselves as experimental musicians. You listen to them and… it still sounds like jazz.
So if many art forms evolve partly because there is an industry behind them, the trumpet seems to have become somewhat stuck. I’d genuinely like to hear your opinions on this, without reducing the discussion to hate, insults, or simply telling me, “You’re wrong because of X, Y and Z.” I’m much more interested in hearing how other people see it.
Something similar happens where I come from with flamenco. For many people from the places where flamenco originated, it can feel like old people’s music. And yet elsewhere — or through phenomena such as Rosalía — it becomes modernized again and is perceived completely differently.
So there are obviously many ways of looking at this. But what seems clear to me is that musical styles evolve when they generate interest and when there is a market capable of supporting them — because then talented and obsessive people can afford to spend more time thinking about music.
So, in short, I’d love to hear what you think. And if you want to recommend people who are doing genuinely interesting things with the trumpet today — experimental jazz, non-jazz trumpet music, unusual harmonic or monophonic ideas, whatever — I’d really love to listen to them as well.