Arts Alive visiting pianist Jon Jang unites West and East in his music. He spoke to Gwen Ansell
DUKE ELLINGTON, as usual, got there first with his Far East Suite in the mid-1960s. Since then, enough jazz musicians have looked East to staff a big band, from John Coltrane to John Zorn.
United States West Coast pianist Jon Jang is the latest in the line — with the difference that his music looks directly to the source in Chinese and Japanese folk and classical music. Jang — with Downbeat poll-winning flautist James Newton — flew into Johannesburg on Sunday for a week of workshops and rehearsals culminating in recitals tonight and tomorrow night, September 16 and 17, under the Arts Alive banner.
“I grew up as a third-generation Chinese-American in the post-McCarthy era when you couldn’t even talk about China. Obviously, I wanted to understand my roots. When I was about four, my mom played a 78 of Paul Robeson singing a Chinese song, Chi Lai. Later, I read Robeson’s essays and heard presentations where he compared African and Chinese tonal languages; their sense of time and spatial relations; African rhythmic and Chinese melodic strengths.
“This year I visited Beijing for the first time, to study the opera. The Chinese have a real sense of melody, a feeling for pitch and ornamentation. Listening to a Beijing opera song, on one pitch, highly ornamented, you can be reminded of the blues or gospel — of what, for example, Aretha Franklin does with a song like Amazing Grace.”
A love for gospel music is one of the things Jang and Newton share — Newton attributes his miraculous recovery from jet-lag to the curative powers of Mahalia Jackson’s voice. But for the flautist, the door into world music was opened by saxophonist and Charles Mingus collaborator Eric Dolphy. “He created a new musical language, derived in part from Bird, but with strong world music connotations — very vocal, very human. He’s my model — also because he aimed to be a good person as well as a great musician. If you’re a great musician and a jerk, it has to detract from the music.”
Both men acknowledge the “important and beautiful tradition of jazz expression” as their spiritual home, but cite historic Asian composers and players, and modern European classicists like Olivier Messaien and Alban Berg, as important. “Sometimes the area we speak through is jazz, sometimes not,” says Newton. “It’s God’s choice.”
But speak they will. “Musicians are historians, prophets, so you have to be strong about your feelings in a situation. One message of our music is that change is essential. Everything changes — in nature, and for women and men too,” says Newton.
For Jang, another message is diversity. “In my half of the programme I’ll be presenting contemporary and personal renditions of Chinese folk songs. There will be ornamented improvisations in the Chinese style and jazz impros working on the changes. We’re creating hybrids and yet maintaining identity, saying: we accept differences — in languages and even political thinking. We don’t have to agree or become the same so long as we can have dialogue and work together.”
For both men, coming to South Africa has been an intensely emotional experience. “This is the first time my feet have touched African soil,” reflects Newton, “something I’ve wanted my whole life … Whole churches in America offered up prayers for Nelson Mandela and the ANC for years. In April we all shed a great many tears of joy.”
Jang’s record label, Asianimprov (founded in 1987), also works to obtain grants for new music, to conduct music education and campaigns against the racism suffered by not only African-Americans, but also by Americans of Asian, Native-American and Hispanic descent. Jang’s most recent release, Tianenmen, commemorates the massacre of Chinese pro-democracy campaigners.
On the album, and in live performances, Jang uses his piano to “integrate different expressions and voices. I was a late starter. My formal lessons began at 19 — before that, I was struggling to play boogie-woogie by ear. Now the piano’s a part of my voice. I admire Ellington the pianist — a side of him which still has less recognition than his composing. His touch, approach and voicing are very orchestral.
“Right now, I’m learning the Chinese `butterfly harp’ — which is played with bamboo hammers — and trying to develop piano techniques to simulate Asian classical instruments.”
But depite this love for the musics of the East, the two men also relish the swing of jazz classics like Come Sunday and Round Midnight.
Newton is reluctant to predict too much about tonight’s performance. “We want to meet our South African colleagues, sit down and break bread, and find out what they want to say before we fix a programme.”
He is amused by my confession that, in listening to Asian compositions, I’m not always sure where the music is going, where “home” is: “As musicians, we’re always moving forward. We also don’t know where home is. Sometimes what we play is creating a new home.”