Jazz & the new Cool

There seems to be something inextricably "new" about the things we call "cool". Coolness is related to novelty in the same way that, to Plato, justice was to the good. Jazz artists have it much harder today than they did in the 60's in this sense.

I saw Javon Jackson "& Friends" at the Outpost performance space tonight. Jackson (Tenor Sax) was accompanied by Benny Green (Piano) Carl Allen (Drums), Eddie Henderson (Trumpet) and Peter Washington (Bass).

When Jazz music took the anglosphere by storm, it was because of its coolness or inherent difference. I.E. Jazz aficionados fell in love with a genre of music premised on the idea that it would never grow old.

It did, and Javon Jackson has the difficult job of making music for these people. Does he succeed? I think so. "The real deal", as many people in the audience said after the show. Green was capable on the piano; exerting enough control on the tempo and demonstrating a consciousness of the melody that supported his solos. Jackson was great as well; it's amazing to see a virtuoso at work on any instrument, but the pleasure of listening to a great saxophonist is in his or her ability to toy with the melody, adding a kind of prescience to the song.

Jackson was all this, and it was a gift (as his introduction put it) to have him in "this part of the country" (as Jackson put it--I imagined him thinking: "Where the fuck am I again?" as he stared vacantly at the audience of elderly whites in front of him). Jackson, to his major credit, did not display the typical self-conscious insouciance so characteristic of Jazz artists who are all-too-aware of their audience and the sometimes-derivative nature of the music they have devoted their lives to. Jackson was at ease on stage, playing old Terence Blanchard tunes in order to satisfy his own urges, new ones. Which is what coolness is all about, no?