Laufey

Music is in a way the most abstract of art. It is one of those forms of art which are not visual. It does not really resemble what you feel with your senses. It is more like abstract art, because music does not resemble ambient noise, the way that visual art sometimes resembles natural landscapes. It is more similar to abstract visual art, where elements of the visual are reconfigured and rearranged to form some abstract puzzle that you can chew on in your inner ear.

The magic thing about music is that it translates into pure emotion. It’s true that other art where storytelling is involved will evoke emotions too, but music is closest to directly experienced emotion on the inside. Songs and lyrics are intriguing because the music evokes emotions one way and the lyrics will evoke it another way, and those two channels may or may not dovetail each other.

It is almost always abstract art, and it may have to be combined with other less abstract forms in order to make it more tangible. Maybe because it’s abstract, it’s less accessible to people who haven’t had time to chew it over. In many ways, it is universal and can cross boundaries.

It is the art form that has the most intimate relationship with time, maybe together with dance. In many ways, it parallels our own perception of time passing. We might listen to a piece of music that we listened to when young, and have a Proustian moment and get brought back to the good old days. But on top of it all, we will experience the time of a duration similar to what we are remembering.

First of all, what is it about jazz that fascinates people endlessly?

You could say that jazz is rooted in the culture of the black people who invented it, and that could well be true. But jazz is not about blackness: it is about jazziness. Jazz is what it is. While there may inevitably be a vast overlap between blackness and jazziness: it is spontaneous but earthy. It is flighty but intellectual. It strikes a certain balance between flashiness and discipline. It is informal but can also be dressed up and elegant. It is very democratic and down-to-earth. Very urban, and rooted in the bustle of the nightclubs of the big cities. Black people have a special place in Jazz, but jazz is not exclusively black music.

That said, jazz is in a way one of the most amazing art forms that’s ever been created. Jazz is in some way one of the most modern forms of music.

The first thing to know about jazz is that it’s played with the same instruments that gave you classical music, with the very notable exception of the drum kit, which probably has African origins. That’s because, in spite of its traditional association with blackness, it was invented in a white man’s country. Probably the slaves and their descendants saw the instruments lying around, and invented a new music. Many of the harmonies descended from French impressionism, which makes sense since the birthplace of jazz is acknowledged to have been New Orleans. Jazz speaks the language of – if not the oppressed, then the colonised. It is the fusion of the culture of the coloniser and the colonised. It is the bastard child of classical music and Afro Cuban drumming.

There are three very important features of jazz that should be mentioned. One of them is the sophistication of the harmonies. The vocabulary of jazz chords is larger than classical music. Jazz chords is a term that conveys awe and respect for the fantastic plethora of harmony at the disposal of jazz musicians. The second feature is the improvisation, which is very technically intimidating: not only are you supposed to play something that involves having great technical skill, you’re actually – as Wayne Shorter puts it – some hybrid of a player and a composer. It’s composition, that means it’s supposed to be well-considered enough to pass off as a piece of finished music. That means it isn’t supposed to be hackneyed, cliched or boring, even though the knowledgeable listener already knows what the chords are supposed to be, so one element of surprise is lost. The variations do not exist in isolation, but are supposed to build upon the previous one, like they were rungs of a ladder. And the third element is swing. It’s supposed to have some rhythmic sophistication.

I think what made jazz really interesting is that – it was undoubtedly some kind of flexing by the black musicians who invented it, and who had to come up with a form of music that stood out so much you just couldn’t ignore it. It was a scene that I can imagine was ferociously competitive, and yet it was undoubtedly a team game, and some kind of fraternity existed. Jazz must have sounded very startling to a lot of white ears: it was a form of music that acknowledged the existence of classical music, and yet diverged from it so much that it was recognisably its own thing. It had a lot of elements that classical music, having existed for hundreds of years, lacked. And it was badass enough, almost designed to wipe out many notions of white racial superiority. (That being said, I do acknowledge that classical music has deeper ideas about architecture, but I’m too impatient to deal with that, which is why I’m inclined towards jazz.)

The first thing to know about Laufey is that she was born in 1999, and that was the year that I think I finally understood what jazz was all about. Time really flies: in the years when I could have been a jazz musician, a human being grew up to become the latest jazz sensation and is currently undergoing her 15 minutes of fame: maybe more, maybe less.

I’m not sure how we’re going to wade into this conversation about Laufey and whether or not she’s the saviour of jazz. There are rapturous articles that Laufey is here to “save” jazz music. She’s not. She’s popular because unfortunately this is the 2020s and winning the social media game is the deciding factor in popularity. This isn’t the late 20^th century anymore, where you’re investing a lot of time and effort into making your records sound better. It’s all about making your videos look better.

This is the day and age where there’s never been a better time to stream videos that analyse great music to death. (Actually that’s not true, because back in the 90s, you were guaranteed to have every major record release reviewed at least once. Now, new music barely makes a dent in the consciousness, and a few favourites get played to death. I’m starting to wonder if there’s a lot of music that doesn’t get picked up by an influencer and ends up languishing in obscurity.

Is jazz dead? Yes and no. It is dead in the sense that it is no longer moving forward. Frank Zappa infamously said that “jazz isn’t dead: it just smells funny. OK, you can’t really trust what Zappa has to say about jazz because I don’t think he groks it at a level that some other guys have. But in a way he’s right. He said it in 1973. Jazz was on fire in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. It was just one amazing thing after another: from Charlie Parker laying the foundations of bebop to Miles Davis doing cool jazz, to Thelonious Monk pioneering his Monk stuff, to Mingus and his large orchestra compositions, to Miles bringing modal jazz to the fore, and then pushing all the boundaries with his second quintet and his electric era. And that’s before we’ve mentioned the bossa nova, John Coltrane, the rise of jazz fusion with rock, and the great stable of Blue Note musicians.

But after that amazing burst of creativity, jazz was slowing down. The 70s were by no means a bad decade: we had the great fusion bands: Mahavishnu, Weather Report, Return to Forever, Pat Metheny, Joni Mitchell. But it was turning into something that was way too slick and professional, and the inventions and breakthroughs were not as impressive.

After that, the big stories of jazz music were about 2 genres that were spawned off from its former greatness: drum n bass, and jazz-inflected hip hop.

Jazz had basically turned into classical music. Anybody today can start listening to it and have their minds blown. But it’s no longer moving forward. The innovations have stopped. You can have something wild and out there, but it’s just different from the past and doesn’t hit the spot. You don’t know where the next great ideas are going to come from.

It’s not so easy to dismiss Laufey. She’s a pretty good singer with good vocal technique. She can play. If she was making music in the 90s, she’d be good enough to get onto Lilith Fair. The question is, is she an elite jazz musician? Let’s put it this way, I’ve listened to a lot of masters, and I could always point to something that I find amazing. To compare with somebody else who is also a name in Bossa Nova, I’ve heard Jobim write things that make my jaw drop. I haven’t seen the same from her.

I don’t want to be one of those jazz gatekeepers. But the question is, is she going to look as great when you put her next to John Coltrane? If John Coltrane is, as his boxed set says, the heavyweight champion, Laufey is not in the same weight class. You have music videos made extolling the genius of Stevie Wonder. Are we going to similarly extol the genius of Laufey?

It’s pretty unfortunate that Adam Neely chose to make a video about Laufey (but in a way he did her a great favour because of the publicity that she gets from this). It sounds one part that he might want to ride her coat tails, another part that he’s a bit resentful about the attention she’s getting and only after that, some kind of academic discussion about the Laufey phenomenon that somebody half my age who’s genuinely curious about the world might come up with. That said, this is the social media game, and if you aren’t going to say something that’s slightly “problematic” or slightly controversial, even slightly assinine, you aren’t going to go viral.

Even the ingenue who’s supposedly some poster girl for nice bossa nova music gets some props. Astrud Gilberto is very easily dismissed as a lightweight, but almost everything about Astrud was invented by Astrud: the dreamy, naive personality (unfortunately she can’t pull this schtick off from middle age onwards). The desafinado singing (yes, Astrud sings vaguely off-key in a way that’s very unique and intriguing). Astrud Gilberto is a genuine original and a great artist. You don’t have to dismiss somebody just because she sounds fluffy.

I’m actually reluctant to write an essay like this, because it’s very hard to diss a musician at the beginning of her career. Don’t forget that Radiohead’s first album was “Pablo Honey”, which was basically one great song (“Creep”) and 10 other songs that screamed “flavour of the month”. Nothing to suggest that they would very soon start a run where they released 5 classic albums and become legends.

Laufey is still young. But her odds of being a musical legend are not good. The great musicians of the 20^th century had access to a lot of other great musicians and great studios. These days, recordings sound more like demos. All I got to say is, good luck cos you’re going to need it.