Dmitry Ukhov. No growing medium

No growing medium
Dmitry Ukhov

Publication date: February 10, 2004

Dmitry Ukhov is a music critic who can easily be called both a musicologist and cultural critic, chairman of the Moscow Association of Jazz Journalists, winner, among other things, of the 1999 Bohemian Jazz Prize.

Russian Magazine: Do you think the history of jazz in Russia is a natural or unnatural path of development? (That is, at first it was banned in our country, they listened to it under the radar, but now it has become a classic, and not everyone listens to it, only music lovers.)

Dmitry Ukhov: Jazz is part of the entire world culture, and the attitude towards it was/is the same as towards any other music - Viktor Gorodinsky in the propaganda “Music of Spiritual Poverty” pays less attention to it than dodecaphony (which, unlike jazz - he knew). For example, the "hipsters" were criticized not even for jazz - but for some kind of "boogie-woogie", and without knowing what it was. It’s just that in the period immediately preceding the start of the Cold War and the end of the anti-Hitler coalition, boogie-woogie was the personification of everything incomprehensible in a foreign (mass) culture (in our yard in the 50s they believed that Coca-Cola was a strong alcoholic drink) . An interesting conclusion can be made by reading “Jazz. From Leningrad to St. Petersburg” by Vladimir Feyertag: in the 30s and 40s, among the people of “jazz”, those who were engaged in anything else other than music were imprisoned first of all (such as the legendary Kolbasyev , who has nothing in common with the character depicted in the fake movie called “We are from Jazz”).

RJ: Jazz has become quite an “elite” music (festivals are not cheap events, LeClub is an expensive establishment). These entertainments are not available to everyone. To what extent do you think musicians now have to simplify their material and adapt it to modern audiences? How do you evaluate the program of the current fourth festival "Triumph of Jazz" ?

DW: This Triumph is the least interesting of the four. Bringing Gino Vannelli was a mistake. At many festivals it is customary to enter and leave the hall - this is normal, you always like something less, something more, but so that they leave the headliner in droves, as they left Vannelli, by the way, an interesting artist (in his genre)! It’s good that Igor Butman took the fire upon himself, wedging his “fill in” into Vannelli’s ready-made arrangements. But Joe Locke and Tommy Smith became a revelation for the audience that went specifically to jazz. A pleasant surprise is Evgeny Maslov in the Butman Quartet - both the fact that Maslov did not waste twelve years in America, and the fact that they played his own well-rehearsed pieces, and not “ball” standards, as is usually the case. And Freddie Cole is an example of what we have never had - quiet and calm “club” music playing.

It is in the nature of professional art to simplify and adapt something (music publishers until about the First World War lived on medleys on themes from operas for four hands). The problem is different - there is no breeding ground for the development of talented people with creative inclinations. And jazz education in vocational schools is, to put it mildly, just as conservative as the teaching of academic music. At the “Round Quartet” events, for example, there are only friends and fellow students of Alexei Kruglov (by the way, a graduate of the jazz department of the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music), despite the fact that he works with popular Russian literature - from Yesenin to Bulgakov.

RJ: How do you assess the number of festivals taking place now - are there many or few?

D.W.: The traditional list (Triumph of Jazz, Parliament Jazz, Bohemian Jazz) can be continued - for example, low-budget “Jazz Voices”, new improvised music in “House”. And still this is not a lot, it is infinitely small. And they are all terribly far from the people - except for the Hermitage and the free performances of the Ivanov brothers' enterprise at the city days. More people live in Moscow (not counting the region) than in Switzerland or Belgium. But there are five times fewer festivals, jam sessions and similar events. In Montreux, along with current pop music (more precisely, quality pop), several dozen big bands perform (without fees). And the company of Claude Nobs (the organizer of Montreux) TCB alone produces more CDs per year than the whole of Russia.

RJ: Why did jazz turn out to be (and did it turn out to be?) to one degree or another music “for the elite market” (the NTV anniversary, held under the sign of jazz, is very typical; RTR in this case would have had pop music)?

D.W.: The social significance of jazz in our country tends to zero. NTV and other bohemians, the new Russians, are simply adopting Western standards, in which jazz has long found its place - the sound background of the middle-brow socialite. It is significant that the company that purchased the series “Jazz by Ken Burns” in 2001 promised to show it continuously for a year on various state channels - but it seems that even “Culture” abandoned the series. By the way, it moved jazz from prime time to “after midnight”, closer to erotica.

And it’s not worth even talking about the pompous State Central Concert Hall “Russia” with its disgusting acoustics, purchased “stars” underfoot, geographical proximity to the authorities, which has nothing to do with creativity. And there is a place for bourgeois smooth jazz there. It is unlikely that any of the “politicians” (with the exception of approximately the same percentage of natural jazz lovers as in the whole world - like Bill Clinton or Clint Eastwood), for example, went after David Sanborn, an artist performing at The Knitting Factory, and Gateau Barbieri is not the author of Last Tango in Paris, but a member of Don Cherry's quintet.

The conversation was moderated by Anna Nemzer