讲座 Talk · Ian Patterson | 死亡、重生及新革命：爵士乐25年以来的发展趋势 Death, Rebirth & New Revolution: Trends in Jazz in the Last Quarter of a Century
本文为第二届OCT-LOFT国际爵士音乐节讲座讲稿
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讲座简介 Introduction of the talk
“我想与大家分享从我第一次接触爵士乐至今26年的经历，谈谈这段时间内爵士乐的发展趋势，以及我参加过的爵士音乐节并从中窥探爵士乐的变化。此外，我还会与大家聊聊我在亚洲参加爵士音乐节的经历及爵士乐在亚洲的出现与发展。最后，我会向大家介绍All About Jazz这个网站以及中国的音乐家及爵士乐迷如何从这个网站获益。”
“The idea is to share my personal experience of jazz in the 26 years since I first came to it. I will talk about trends and changes during that time, and will talk about festivals I have attended and how they reflect changes in jazz, and I will talk about my experiences in festivals in Asia, the emerging jazz industry in Asia, and at the end I will talk about how All About Jazz can potentially benefit Chinese musicians and jazz fans.”
讲者简介 Introduction of the Speaker
1986年的尼斯爵士音乐节是我第一次真正接触到爵士乐。Miles Davis的现场演出征服了我，并使我改变。一年后，我悄悄离开贝尔法特斯，来到伦敦。此后的四年，我参加了许多现场音乐演出，从Bowie到Fairport Convention，从Fleetwood Mac到NusratFateh Ali Khan，从Roy Harper到Frank Zappa。然而，爵士乐，是我的音乐道路上的灵药。我纵横于ol’ town, 英国及欧洲大陆，只为了看见Oscar Peterson, Stan Getz, Ray Charles, John McLaughlin, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Courtney Pine, John Scofield, Sun Ra, Etta James, Andy Sheppard, Wayne Shorter, James Blood Ulmer以及 Miles的演出。在地中海沿岸的意大利、西班牙的十年，使我像热爱弗朗明哥、红酒以及被人轻视的午睡般，用更欧洲的视角热爱着爵士乐。目前，我以东南亚为根据地，热切关注如小虎鲸般罕有的爵士乐师工作。但偶尔能发现这两样事物，所以我还是对生活抱有希望。我现在看起来并不像一名有名的印度电影演员。
Ian is dedicated to the promotion of jazz and all creative music all over the world, and to catching just a little piece of it for himself.
“The Nice jazz festival of 1986 was my first real exposure to jazz. Miles Davis' opening number blew me away and I was instantly converted. A year later I had slipped unnoticed out of Belfast and arrived in London, kneecaps intact. For the next four years I feasted on live music; from Bowie to Fairport Convention, from Fleetwood Mac to NusratFateh Ali Khan, from Roy Harper to Frank Zappa. Jazz however, was my musical drug of choice and I criss-crossed the dirty ol' town, the country, and continental Europe to see the likes of Oscar Peterson, Stan Getz, Ray Charles, John McLaughlin, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Courtney Pine, John Scofield, Sun Ra, Etta James, Andy Sheppard, Wayne Shorter, James Blood Ulmer and of course Miles. Ten years in Mediterranean Italy and Spain gave me a more European perspective on jazz as well as a love for flamenco, red wine and the much underrated siesta. I am currently loosely based in S.E. Asia where I am keeping an eye out for jazz gigs which are almost as rare as the Irrawaddy dolphin. Both are sometimes spotted so I live in hope. I do not at present look like a famous Indian movie actor.”
Ian joined All About Jazz in 2006.
死亡、重生及新革命：爵士乐25年以来的发展趋势
Death, Rebirth & New Revolution: Trends in Jazz in the Last Quarter of a Century
讲者 Speaker：Ian Patterson / 现场翻译 Interpreter：庞舸 Allen / 时间 Date：2012.10.14
25年是一段漫长的时间。你很难想象那个没有电话、iPod、手提电脑和无线网络的年代，更别说那时候的车子里装的还是卡带式音乐播放器。那是一个和现在完全不同的世界：“艾滋病”、“全球变暖”还没有成为大多数人关注的议题，而“柏林墙”则是那场肥皂剧里政治与意识形态隔阂的最佳代表——那是一场漫长的、卡夫卡式的肥皂剧，由里根、戈尔巴乔夫、撒切尔夫人等主演，我们称之为“冷战”。
A quarter of a century is a long time, any way you look at it. It's hard to recall how the world got by 25 years ago without mobile phones, iPods, laptops and Wi-Fi — strange, too, to think that people had cassette players in their cars. It was a different world then; AIDS and global warming were barely on most peoples' radars, and the Berlin Wall was the maximum representation of the political and ideological divide in that long-running Kafkaesque soap opera called the Cold War, starring Reagan, Gorbachev and Thatcher.
对于爵士乐来说，25年也是一个很长的时间。爵士的丧钟曾经响起过很多次，但仍有包括我在内的很多人相信，这是爵士乐百年来最让人振奋的时期。很多人也认为，最后一次的爵士革命发生在60年代和70年代的交界，以Miles Davis的两张具有突破意义的专辑——《In a Silent Way》（哥伦比亚唱片，1969）和《Bitches Brew》（哥伦比亚唱片，1970）为代表的，那段融入了电子乐的爵士新风潮时期。我坚信，如果爵士真的在某处消亡，它一定也已经以某种形式重生再造了。我还坚信，爵士乐正在悄然进行着另一场充满力量的革命，重组着爵士乐和它的认知、产品、市场，以及乐迷群体。
A quarter of a century is a long time in jazz terms too. The death knell has been sounded for jazz many times, but there are those who believe, myself included, that this era is the most exciting in the 100+ year history of jazz. Many people also believe that the last revolution in jazz took place as the ‘60s handed the baton to the ‘70s, with the onset of electronic-influenced jazz, typified by Miles Davis’ ground breaking albums “In a Silent Way” (Columbia, 1969) and “Bitches Brew” (Columbia, 1970). It is my belief that if jazz did die somewhere along the way, then it has been reborn and has recast itself. It is also my belief that jazz is living another revolution, a quiet but powerful revolution that is shaking up the music and its perception, its production, its marketing and its fan base.
我和爵士的爱情故事开始于1986年的法国尼斯爵士音乐节。事实上我并不是被爵士吸引而去的，当时我真正感兴趣的是布鲁斯。英国的布鲁斯大师John Mayall和他的Bluesbreakers乐队在表演的时候，我激动坏了，因为正是他的乐队在1965年捧红了年仅17岁的Eric Clapton。我有Clapton的所有专辑，通过他，我了解了更多的布鲁斯大师，比如Howlin’ Wolf，Muddy Waters，Robert Johnson，BB King和Buddy Guy。John Mayall当时是在一个古老的罗马圆形剧场演出的，那个剧场已经屹立了2000多年，就如同已经78岁的他至今仍在演出和录唱片。
My love affair with jazz began at the Nice Jazz Festival in 1986. Actually, I didn’t go there attracted by jazz, but rather by the blues. English bluesman John Mayall and his Bluesbreakers were playing and I was thrilled to get the chance to see the man whose band in 1965 had been a launching pad for a 17 year-old guitarist by the name of Eric Clapton. I had all Clapton’s records and he had been my route to Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, BB King and Buddy Guy. Mayall played in the old Roman amphitheater, still standing after 2000 years. Mayall is still standing too, and at 78 is still touring and recording today.
接下来我还看了Buddy Rich管弦乐团的演出。这位鼓手的独奏如果再进行得久一点，恐怕就要把整个罗马圆形剧场震垮了。这场表演无比震撼，我完全被这个乐队极具破坏力的声音以及咆哮般的管乐演奏抓住了。当天的管乐部分中有一位名为Steve Marcus的中音萨克斯演奏家让我记忆深刻——那是我第一次亲耳听到爵士的即兴演奏，听着他一段又一段炫目的演奏，我发现，爵士乐简直就和我同样热爱的摇滚乐一样令人亢奋。就这样被这个乐团迷住之后，我意识到爵士乐其实同样流淌着布鲁斯的血液。
Next up was the Buddy Rich Orchestra, and the drummer unleashed a solo which, had it gone on any longer, might well have brought the Roman amphitheater down. It was thrilling stuff, and I was seized by the big-band’s juggernaut sound and the roar of the brass. In the brass section that day was tenor saxophonist Steve Marcus, and this was really the first time that I had been exposed to jazz improvisation in the flesh. I realized watching Marcus play chorus after dazzling chorus that this music, jazz, was every bit as exciting as the rock music I also loved. Captivated by Rich’s orchestra, I realized too that the blues colored all the solos.
大约15年之后，我在西班牙巴伦西亚一家小小的爵士俱乐部里又看到了Steve Marcus的演出。那是一个平日的晚上，令人失望的是，只有极少听众，而且大部分都是为了喝酒聊天才去的，几乎没有人真正注意到这位伟大的音乐家。在演出上半场结束后的休息时间，我看到他一个人站在吧台旁，便走过去想要感谢他在那么多年前把我带入了爵士的世界。“噢，终于有人说英语了！在这儿都没人和我说英语！”这是他对我说的第一句话。我们友好地交谈了一会儿，然后我问他，做如此低调的演出感觉如何。他看着我，回答道：“兄弟，不存在什么低调的演出。就算今天在座的只有六个人，我也会进行同样的表演。”这样的真诚和谦卑，是我遇到的大部分爵士音乐人都具有的品质，也是我热爱爵士乐的另一个原因。
About 15 years later I saw Steve Marcus playing in a small jazz club in Valencia, Spain. It was a desperately small crowd on a midweek night, most of whom were there to drink and they were paying little attention, or respect to this wonderful musician. During the first set interval I saw Steve Marcus standing at the bar by himself and I went over to him with the intention of thanking him for turning me onto jazz all those years ago in a Roman amphitheater in France. “Oh, man somebody who speaks English! Nobody speaks English here!” was the first thing he said. We chatted amiably for a while and I asked him how it felt to play such a low-key gig. He looked at me and said: “Man, there’s no such thing as a low-key gig. If there were only six people here I would play the same.” This kind of sincerity and humility is something common to most jazz musicians I’ve ever come across and another reason to love the music.
对我来说，那次86年的尼斯爵士音乐节另一大亮点是一支四人乐队，它的成员包括英国著名的Cream乐队的贝斯手Jack Bruce、鼓手Ginger Baker，以及当时还名不见经传的英国萨克斯手Courtney Pine，还有刚随伟大的贝斯手Jaco Pastorius完成了巡演的19岁的法国吉他手Biréli Lagrène，他们将要在一个停车场表演。当时我们正在音乐节闲逛，朋友突然叫到：“快看！那不是Ginger Baker吗？”还真是他。我们马上跑过去请他在海报上签名。他当时完全喝醉了，几乎站都站不直，但还是有风度地草草签上了。我们祝愿他演出成功，因为还有大概15分钟就要开演了。
Another major attraction for me of the 1986 Nice Jazz Festival was a four-piece band featuring bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker of Cream fame, playing in a car park with the then almost unknown British saxophonist Courtney Pine, and 19-year old French guitarist Biréli Lagrène, who already toured with the great bassist Jaco Pastorious. Walking around the grounds of the festival, my friend said, “Hey, look over there. Isn’t that Ginger Baker?” It was. We hurried over and I asked him to autograph my poster. He was absolutely pissed out of his mind and could barely stand upright. He graciously scribbled his autograph and we wished him a good gig, due to begin in about fifteen minutes.
我们坐到舞台前，但是演出没有按时开始。等了好一阵子，主持出来向大家道歉，说是出现了“技术故障”。只有我和我的朋友知道，可能是演出方找不到Baker了，更有可能是Baker找不到舞台了。
Sat stage-front, the concert did not start at its appointed time, and after a lengthy wait the emcee apologized for the delay, citing “technical problems” — which my friend and I both knew that meant they couldn’t find Ginger Baker, or Baker couldn’t find the stage, which was more likely.
最后Ginger Baker还是出现了。他的四重奏演奏了很棒的摇滚爵士，当然也融合了动人的布鲁斯。非常巧合的是，他的前队友Eric Clapton两晚后也在尼斯海岸边的Juan Les Pins进行了演出。演出完后，我问Jack Bruce，Cream乐队是否有重组可能，他说：“Eric并没有邀请我们。”这场我所期待的重聚恐怕还要再等上个20年吧。
Eventually Ginger Baker turned up and the quartet played a fantastic jazz-rock set, touched of course, by the blues. It just so happened that Eric Clapton was playing down the coast at Juan Les Pins two nights later, and after the concert I asked Jack Bruce if there was any chance of a Cream reunion. He said: “Eric hasn’t invited us.” That particular reunion would have to wait another 20 years.
在那次尼斯爵士音乐节上我还看了Dr. John and the Night Trippers的表演，那是我第一次听到融合了放克、爵士和布鲁斯的新奥尔良爵士。然而，真正让我醍醐灌顶的经历，是终于见到了头牌人物——Miles Davis。我记得那场演出人多得不得了，只有站位，像摇滚演唱会一样人山人海。Miles Davis的演出极具神秘感，他低头在舞台上缓步徘徊，似乎对观众漠不关心。他的演出方式与其它任何人都不同，至今我都认为那是独一无二的。他的音乐彻底征服了我。在他的音乐之中，我听到了爵士、流行、摇滚和布鲁斯间千丝万缕的联系。我瞬间明白了：音乐没有边界，一切都有可能。
Also at the Nice Jazz Festival that June of 1986 was Dr. John and the Night Trippers and I heard for the first time the sounds of New Orleans in his funk, jazz and blues gumbo. However, the real revelation for me was seeing headliner on one of the nights, Miles Davis. There was a huge, standing-room only crowd and an atmosphere more like that of a rock concert. There was a tremendous mystique about Davis, head bowed, slowly prowling the stage and seemingly indifferent to the audience; he had a stage presence unlike any other performer I had ever seen before, or since. The music blew me away. In Miles’ music I heard the links between jazz, pop, rock and the blues. I understood that everything is possible at once. There are no limits.
其实在1986年——Miles Davis销声匿迹五年之后回归的第六年——并不是所有人都喜欢他当时所做的音乐。他根本不在乎其他人怎么想，固执己见，在一次Nick Kent为《Face》杂志对他进行的采访中说道：“过去已死，爵士已死。完了！结束了！再去模仿那些垃圾没有任何意义。”
Not everyone was so in love with the music Miles Davis was making in 1986, half a dozen years after returning from his five-year self-imposed exile. Whilst Miles didn’t care what anybody thought about the music he was making, he was plenty opinionated himself, saying that year in an interview with Nick Kent in the Face magazine: “The past is dead. Jazz is dead. Finito! It’s over and there ain’t no point aping the shit.”
他说的是什么意思，爵士已死？给我等等，我这才刚到，就要散场了吗！
What did Davis mean, jazz was dead? Wait a minute, I’ve just arrived at the party!
爵士的发展似乎在80年代中期因为创造力的匮乏而陷入了停滞。在70年代的融合爵士和先锋爵士之后，爵士的集体革新运动就止步不前。在80年代之前，20世纪的每一个10年都见证了爵士乐的重要变革。变革大步向前，从摇摆乐到比波普，还有之后的各种流派，比如酷派爵士、经典爵士、硬波普、电子爵士、摇滚爵士、融合爵士，以及广受欢迎的、以Grover Washington和George Benson为代表的顺滑爵士（smooth jazz），都预示着未来30年爵士重要的新方向。相较而言，80年代的爵士可以说是趋于静止。新的风格在哪里？新的运动又在哪里？
Jazz seemed to have ground to something of a creative standstill in the mid 80s. Collective innovative movements in jazz seemed to have ended with jazz-fusion and the avant-garde experimenters of the ’70s. Each decade of the 20th century had witnessed significant evolution in jazz. This evolution accelerated as jazz moved from swing to bebop, and schools such as cool, jazz-classical, hard-bop, electric jazz, jazz-rock, jazz-fusion and the massively popular smooth jazz of Grover Washington and George Benson all heralded important new directions in the following three decades. By comparison then, the 80s seemed to be somewhat static. Where was the new school? The new movement?
传统卫道士十几年来一直在哀叹爵士乐的现状，其中一些试着向过去寻找灵感。在80年代中期前段，出现了所谓的“Young Lions”，他们在知名小号手Wynton Marsalis的带领下，掀起了一场新保守主义的复兴运动，而Marsalis从那之后便坚守于此。或许正是这种创造性的瘀滞使得Miles Davis发表了“爵士已死”的言论，也或许是他的言论促使Marsalis去嘲笑某些爵士艺术家，说他们是一群“身着奇装异服，自以为是摇滚明星”的怪咖。这也很可能是Marsalis对Davis的报复，因为在84年Davis的一次演出中，年轻的Marsalis抱着想与Davis即兴合奏的希望踟蹰向前，却被Davis毫不客气地赶下舞台，这在当时成为了轰动一时的话题。
滚下他的舞台。
Traditionalists had been bemoaning the state of jazz for over a decade. The answer for some was to look to the past for inspiration. In the early-mid eighties, the so-called Young Lions, led by the high-profile trumpeter Wynton Marsalis led a neo-conservative revival, and Wynton, for the most part has stuck to his guns ever since. Perhaps it was this perceived creative stasis that prompted Davis’ comment on the poor health of jazz. Maybe Miles’ death knell prompted Marsalis to mock certain established jazz artists for, as he put it, “wearing dresses and trying to act like rock stars”. This was possibly a back-handed swipe at Miles, who at a concert in 1984 had famously told the young Wynton rather bluntly to get off his stage, after Wynton had wandered on in the hope of jamming.
然而，日光之下并无新事， 就算是Miles Davis拿出最酷炫的行头，在Sun Ra面前也会黯然失色——他几十年前就这么穿衣服了。
However, there is nothing new under the sun, and even Miles in his most spangled outfit could never outshine Sun Ra, who had been dressing up like that for decades.
Miles Davis一生都在做自己认为对的事情，直到1991年去世，Wynton Marsalis也一样追随着自己的信念而活。当无数后辈们回望这段光辉历史，这两位都给到了他们重要的启发。我在1999年西班牙的 Vitoria-Gasteiz 爵士音乐节（Vitoria-Gasteiz Jazz Festival）看到了林肯中心爵士乐团的演出，这个Wynton Marsalis的大乐团演奏了Duke Ellington的作品。早上是给儿童看的演出，晚上是给大人看的。无论是看到孩子们无拘无束的舞蹈，还是听到大人们的高歌，感觉都是如此美妙——他们都为Duke Ellington的音乐而感动，这便是对他的一百周年诞辰最好的庆祝。
Miles continued to do his own thing right up to his death in 1991, and in his own way so has Marsalis. Both Marsalis and Davis will have inspired many newcomers to jazz to check out its illustrious past. I saw the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra perform at the Vitoria-Gasteiz Jazz Festival in Spain in 1999 where Marsalis’ big-band was playing the music of Duke Ellington. The morning concert was a concert for children and the concert in the evening for adults. To see the joy of uninhibited dancing children and the vocally moved adults — both inspired by Ellington’s music in the centenary of his birth — was fantastic.
Miles Davis的影响在他死后20年依然无处不在。在2005年爱尔兰科克爵士音乐节（Cork Jazz Festival），他的影子处处可见——他曾经的队友Ron Carter、Dave Holland，Chick Corea和Roy Haynes都已成为了乐队领队。我在过去这26年中几乎找不出哪一个爵士音乐节是没有他的痕迹的。
Miles’ presence today is felt everywhere; his influence remains omnipresent 20 years after his death. At the Cork Jazz Festival in Ireland in 2005 the presence of Miles seemed to be everywhere — his ex-sidemen like Ron Carter, Dave Holland, Chick Corea and Roy Haynes were all leading bands and I can barely recall a festival these past 26 years where his spirit hasn’t been present to some degree.
在我的祖国北爱尔兰，爵士曾经被严格限制，只能周日下午才能听见一些老年人常去的酒吧、酒店在播放传统爵士。没有音乐人想来贝尔法斯特（北爱尔兰首府）演出。这也难怪，爱尔兰共和军声称来访的乐队都可能是合法的攻击目标，结果当然就是人人避而远之。我在当时看到过的最接近爵士的演出，是1986年Sting的演唱会，他的乐队包括萨克斯手Branford Marsalis、鼓手Omar Hakim、键盘Kenny Kirkland和贝斯手Darryl Jones。不错是不错，但是远远不够。
Jazz in my native Northern Ireland was restricted to Sunday afternoon trad-jazz in hotels and clubs frequented by the elderly. Nobody wanted to come and play in Belfast. And little wonder: the Irish Republican Army had declared visiting bands to be legitimate targets, and consequently most stayed away. The closest thing to jazz I saw was a concert by Sting in 1986, when his band included saxophonist Branford Marsalis, drummer Omar Hakim, Kenny Kirkland on keyboards and Darryl Jones on bass. It was good, but it wasn’t enough.
1987年我从北爱尔兰搬到了伦敦，度过了四年的时光。不久，我发现英国爵士界即将发生一些振奋人心的事情。有一支桀骜不驯、标新立异的大乐团Loose Tubes，它的成员包括多乐器演奏家Django Bates，萨克斯手Iain Bellamy、Julian Arguelles和Mark Lockheart，以及吉他手John Paricelli。这群英国新一代的爵士音乐人开始用自己音乐语言演奏爵士，而不是照搬美国的传统。
In 1987 I moved from Northern Ireland to London where I spent the next four years. I soon learned that there were exciting new things happening on the UK jazz scene. There was the irreverent, iconoclastic big-band Loose Tubes, which included multi-instrumentalist Django Bates, saxophonists Iain Bellamy, Julian Arguelles and Mark Lockheart and guitarist John Paricelli — an exciting new generation of British jazz musicians who played in their own language without apeing the American tradition.
还有Earthworks，鼓手Bill Brufords极具原创性的乐队。他们融合了电子和原声打击乐，并且在之后二十年成就了独特的风格，让Loose Tubes的Bellamy和Batesand，以及之后萨克斯手Tim Garland、钢琴手Gwilym Simcock这样有才华的音乐人为世人所知。
There was Earthworks, drummer Bill Brufords’ highly original band which fused electro and acoustic percussion, and which would forge a very distinctive path for the next twenty years, introducing talent such as Loose Tubes’ Bellamy and Bates to a world-wide audience, and later saxophonist Tim Garland and pianist Gwilym Simcock.
当然，还有刚才提到的Courtney Pine。在和Ginger Baker、Jack Bruce、Biréli Lagrène等人演出完不久之后，22岁的Pine就发行了他的第一张专辑《Journey to the Urge Within》（Verve唱片，1986），在英国流行榜排名第39位，销量超过25万张。作为一张爵士乐专辑，获得这样商业上的成功在英国是史无前例的。
And of course, there was Courtney Pine. Shortly after that concert in Nice in the car park with Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce and Biréli Lagrène, the 22-year old Pine released his debut recording, “Journey to the Urge Within” (Verve, 1986), which reached 39 in the British pop charts, selling over 250,000 copies, an unprecedented commercial success for a British jazz album.
那时，Pine也是英国一个叫做Jazz Warriors的纯黑人爵士劲旅的成员。这个乐团成就了一系列黑人音乐家，包括萨克斯手Steve Williamson、低音大提琴手Gary Crosby、钢琴手Julian Joseph、长号手Dennis Rollins和鼓手Mark Mondesir。这三支乐队向我证明，爵士即使没了美国味，也依然可以有杰出的原创。英国无疑当今世界上最为生机勃勃和富创造力的爵士宝地之一，近25年来涌现的一大批优秀的个人和团体，都很值得关注。
Around that time Pine was also a member of the all-black British jazz group the hugely energetic Jazz Warriors. This band launched the careers of black musicians such as saxophonists Steve Williamson, double bassist Gary Crosby, pianist Julian Joseph, trombonist Dennis Rollins and drummer Mark Mondesir. These three bands more than any other illustrated to me that jazz could be brilliant and original without having an American accent. The UK jazz scene today is undoubtedly one of the most vibrant and original anywhere in the world, and the emergence of confident individual and collective voices in this last quarter of a century has been very exciting to watch.
几乎在同时，在美国，由萨克斯手Steve Coleman、Greg Osby，钢琴手Gerri Allen，歌手Cassandra Wilson和小号手Graham Haynes组成的M-Base乐团，也以令人耳目一新的观念和充满创意的表现，积极对抗着Miles Davis的悲观主义。尤其是Coleman，他另辟蹊径，创造了好些近25年中最出色的原创作品。钢琴家Vijay Iyer这样评价Steve Coleman：“我很难再夸大Steve的贡献。他影响了不止一代人，是继John Coltane之后最具影响力的音乐家……在他的影响背后，是对于音乐和生活的全球性视角。”
Meanwhile in America, at roughly the same time, the M-Base Collective of saxophonists Steve Coleman and Greg Osby, pianist Gerri Allen, singer Cassandra Wilson and trumpeter Graham Haynes were also defying Miles Davis’s pessimism regarding jazz, with their refreshing ideas on creative expression. Coleman, more than most of the M-Base musicians, has pursued a fiercely independent path, producing some of the most strikingly original music of the last 25 years. Pianist Vijay Iyer said of Coleman: “It’s hard to overstate Steve's influence. He's affected more than one generation, as much as anyone since John Coltrane... What sits behind his influence is this global perspective on music and life.”
M-Base、Loose Tubes、Earthworks和Jazz Warriors，这四支受到上世纪不同时期爵士乐的影响而截然不同的乐队提醒着我们：爵士的历史从来不是直线发展的。历史的运动是重叠交织的，各种各样的事物都可能成为灵感源泉，冲突与更迭不计其数，这些都为爵士乐的新发展带来源源不断的动力。爵士的运动也许已经消亡，也许奄奄一息，但是永远会有重生，总会有人把音乐带向更新、更激动人心的领域。
M-Base, Loose Tubes, Earthworks and the Jazz Warriors — four highly distinct creative ensembles inspired by various periods of the past century of jazz — remind us that jazz’s history has never been strictly linear. Movements overlap, new developments have many well-springs, inspiration comes from myriad sources and the knock-on effects are impossible to calculate. Movements of jazz may have died or become antiquated, but there has always been renewal, and there are always individuals, many of them, who carry the music to new and exciting places.
然而，即使是最新、最令人激动的现代爵士乐，也或多或少从过去汲取过营养。在座有多少人知道Jan Johansson，这位活跃在上世纪五六十年代的瑞典钢琴家？他起初受到许多美国的爵士音乐家的影响，但并止步于此。在1963和1964年，他录制了改编自瑞典传统民谣的爵士演奏作品，在瑞典这样940万人口的国家，他的专辑《Jazz På Svenska》卖了40万张（这相当于在中国卖出2千万张）。他深深地影响了后来的Esbjorn Svensson，还有Tord Gustavsen、Andreas Ulvo、Jan Lungdren、Bobo Stenson以及电子二人乐团Koop，并且还可能影响了不少的nu-jazz、electronic jazz风格的钢琴三重奏。
But even the newest, most exciting modern music draws its inspiration to some degree from the past. I wonder how many people in the audience have ever heard of pianist Jan Johansson, the Swedish jazz pianist active in the 1950s and 1960s. Johansson was initially influenced by American jazz musicians, but he moved beyond that, recording jazz workings of old Swedish folk songs in 1963 and 1964. In a tiny country like Sweden, population 9.4 million, his album “Jazz På Svenska” has sold 400,000 copies, the equivalent of a Chinese jazz artist selling 20,000,000 CDs. Johansson has been a major influence on the late Esbjorn Svensson as well as Tord Gustavsen, Andreas Ulvo, Jan Lungdren, Bobo Stenson, electronic duo Koop and probably a host of nu-jazz/electronic jazz piano trios.
现在，欧洲有众多的爵士乐队都摆脱了美国的痕迹，我认为这是25年里爵士音乐最大的改变之一。
These days in Europe there are a huge number of bands who play jazz music without a trace of an American accent, and this is, in my opinion one of the greatest changes in jazz during this last quarter of a century.
80年代晚期的伦敦简直就是我的天堂，因为在当时，每晚都有很多音乐会。那时的伦敦爵士音乐节（London Jazz Festival）曾经推出了Dizzy Gillespie、Stan Getz、Max Roach、Hank Jones、Oscar Peterson、Ray Charles、Freddie Hubbard、Joe Henderson、Elvin Jones、Clarke Terry、Miles Davis等一大批爵士好手。我曾在皇家节日音乐厅听过英国小号手Guy Barker的音乐会，应该是1988年，作为Freddie Hubbard的开场。他那令人叹为观止的技巧和纯粹的音乐性深深地打动了我。近段时间Barker应该是独领风骚，因为伦敦爵士音乐节正呈现出一个非常健康的英国爵士音乐人比例。
Based in London in the late ’80s, I was really spoilt for choice as far as concerts went, with half a dozen concerts on somewhere in the city every night. The London Jazz Festival back then used to throw up Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Max Roach, Hank Jones, Oscar Peterson, Ray Charles, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Elvin Jones, Clarke Terry, Miles Davis. I saw British trumpeter Guy Barker’s concert in the Royal Festival Hall, I think it was 1988, opening for Freddie Hubbard, and his stunning technique and sheer musicality impressed me greatly. These days Barker would be headlining, as the London Jazz Festival is presenting a very healthy percentage of British jazz musicians.
刚才提到的很多美国爵士音乐家都相继去世，2012年只有为数不多的还健在，他们都是Charlie Parker的那一辈的人。许多名留史册的伟人们在这25年间相继离世，但讽刺的是，或许正因如此而进一步扩大了他们对年轻一辈的影响。
The American jazz musicians just mentioned have all since passed away. In 2012, there are only a handful of musicians alive who were contemporaries of Charlie Parker. A lot of jazz’s historical greats have passed away in the last 25 years, and perhaps this, ironically, has had a liberating effect on young jazz musicians around the world.
伟人固然隽永，新一代的巨匠也不容忽视，包括像Steve Coleman、Joshua Redman、Chris Potter、上原广美（Hiromi）、Craig Taborn、Esperanza Spalding、Esbjorn Svensson、Brad Mehldau和Stefano Bollani这样的音乐人，还有很多乐队，比如Medeski Martin and Wood、The Bad Plus、Phronesis以及Neil Cowley三重奏等等，全世界的音乐家和乐迷都从他们身上获取了养分。虽然所谓爵士的“黄金时代”已是老生常谈，而就爵士乐在全世界的号召力而言，大量优秀的音乐家确实正不断在各处被挖掘，冒险尝新的成果也越来越丰厚，我相信，现在正是一个伟大的音乐时代。
The jazz greats will always be lionized, but there is now a new generation of jazz greats to look up to as well; all over the world musicians and fans are inspired by the likes of Steve Coleman, Joshua Redman and Chris Potter, Hiromi, Craig Taborn, Esperanza Spalding, Esbjorn Svensson, Brad Mehldau, Stefano Bollani, and bands like Medeski Martin and Wood, The Bad Plus, Phronesis, the Neil Cowley Trio. Talk of jazz’s so-called Golden Age is nostalgic, and in terms of jazz’s world-wide appeal, the sheer numbers of incredible musicians to be found everywhere, and increasingly fertile adventures in cross-pollination, I believe that this is a truly great age of music that we are living in now.
或许不会出现什么声势浩大的爵士运动，但毋庸置疑，现在比以往更具多样性，对个性的重视程度也前所未有。爵士其实正在以一种安静的方式进行着革命。
There may not be a significant new movement going on but there is arguably greater diversity and greater individualism than ever before — jazz is living a very quiet form of revolution, where anything goes.
伦敦把我宠坏了，因为我根本不用再去其他地方找爵士听了。但我还是看了欧洲的一些最好的音乐节。威尔士的布雷肯爵士音乐节（Brecon Jazz Festival）或许不是最有名的，但它有世界上最漂亮的举办地。在1990年，我看了Sun Ra的乐团在一个市镇礼堂的演出，以及James Blood Ulmer在停车场的演出——这是我在停车场看的最好的演出之一。布雷肯音乐节在1984年开始举办，当时只有100英磅的预算。虽然曾三度几乎因经济困难而夭折，它还是顽强地存活了下来。除了在主场地，音乐会还在酒吧、酒店门厅、咖啡厅、餐馆、公园、市中心的演奏台等各种各样的地方举行。作为“两足动物”的罕见胜利，音乐节期间道路都对汽车封锁了。
London spoiled me - I didn’t have to go anywhere else to see jazz. I did however, travel see some of Europe’s finest jazz festivals. Brecon in Wales may not be the most famous jazz festival in the world, but it has one of the most beautiful locations. In 1990 I saw Sun Ra’s Arkestra performed in the Town Hall and James Blood Ulmer played in a car-park — some of the best gigs I’ve seen in car-parks. Brecon was first staged in 1984 on a budget of 100 pounds. Despite almost folding three times due to financial difficulties the festival refuses to die. In addition to the main venues, concerts were held in pubs, hotel foyer’s, coffee shops, restaurants, the town’s park and in the town’s bandstand in the center of the city. And, in a rare victory for bi-peds, the roads were closed to cars for the duration of the festival.
布雷肯这种全城参与的举办方式被广为采纳，包括像伦敦爵士音乐节和澳大利亚的墨尔本国际爵士音乐节（Melbourne International jazz Festival）这样更为大型的音乐节都有借鉴。最好的音乐节就该像一个社区一样，让尽可能多的人加入这种节庆般的氛围中，把音乐带给大众。但是不可否认，像深圳这样1千万人口的城市去做这样的事情会更具挑战性，毕竟布雷肯只有8020人。
Brecon’s town-wide approach for its jazz festival is a model which larger jazz festivals like the Melbourne International jazz Festival in Australia and in recent years the London Jazz Festival have adopted. The best festivals are about community, involving as many people as possible in an atmosphere of celebration, bringing the music to the people, though it has to be admitted that this is more of a challenge in a city the size of Shenzhen, with a population of 10 million, than it is in the Welsh market town of Brecon, with its population of 8020.
另一个不能错过的是荷兰海牙的北海爵士音乐节（North Sea Jazz Festival），它在1990年被《Jazz Times》杂志评为世界上最好的爵士节。我89年去了一次，马上就明白了它为何广受赞誉：16个舞台，3天，超过200场演出，10万人参与……当然，数量是一回事，质量是另一回事——这个音乐节的阵容也让我目不暇接：从John Abercrombie到Stan Getz，从Joe Zawinul Syndicate到Etta James，从John Scofield到Screamin’ Jay Hawkins，还有Youssou N’Dour 和Super L’Etoile……我还错过了Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters、Ramsey Lewis、Kenny Burrell、George Benson和McCoy Tyner三重奏——而这仅仅是其三天中的一天。
The other jazz festival that I was determined to catch was the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague, described by “Jazz Times” in 1990 as the best jazz festival in the world. I made it to this Netherlands festival in 1989 and it was easy to see why so many people hold it in such high regard: 16 stages with over 200 acts over a period of three days and over 100,000 people in attendance. The numbers are one thing, but the sheer quality of the music is another. I bounced from guitarist John Abercrombie to Stan Getz, from the Joe Zawinul Syndicate to Etta James, from John Scofield to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and to Youssou N’Dour and Super L’Etoile. Along the way I missed Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters, Ramsey Lewis, Kenny Burrell, George Benson and the McCoy Tyner trio. And that was just day one of three.
你有时候不得不在两、三场有时甚至四场同时进行的好演出中做出选择，这实在是一种甜蜜的折磨。幸好，第二天我没有错过Cab Calloway、Buddy Guy & Junior Wells、Chick Corea Acoustic Band、Art Blakey，Astrid Gilberto和Buckwheat Zydeco。这个音乐节的节目设置的绝妙之处在于，你可以看到几乎所有形式的爵士乐，从传统新奥尔良到摇摆爵士、波普、自由爵士、融合、先锋和电子爵士，再到布鲁斯、福音、放克、灵魂、嘻哈、R&B、民族流行和拉丁爵士……完全不存在歧视和偏见：你还能上哪看到Sun Ra和Kenny G出现在同一天演出呢？
It’s a delicious kind of torture having to choose between two, three and sometimes four great acts, all playing in different venues at the same time. However, catching Cab Calloway, Buddy Guy & Junior Wells, Chick Corea Acoustic Band, Art Blakey, Astrid Gilberto and Buckwheat Zydeco was a good return from day two. The great thing about the festival’s philosophy is that it presents jazz in all its many forms, from traditional New Orleans to swing, bop, free jazz, fusion, avant-garde and electronic jazz to blues, gospel, funk, soul, hip-hop, R&B, World Beat and Latin jazz. There is no discrimination — where else could you see Sun Ra and Kenny G on the same day?
演出每天从下午3点进行到凌晨2点半，你会像贪食者一样在这几天疯狂地大快朵颐直到筋疲力尽。那时我还是个穷学生，身上的钱，买完三天的通票，再加上从伦敦到阿姆斯特丹再到海牙的路费，就不够住酒店了。所以我带着睡袋，每天就在音乐节对面的一个丛林的围栏旁边、被灌木和大树层层包围的角落里睡觉。
With concerts running all day from three in the afternoon until 2.30a.m., it can be an exhausting and emotionally draining experience to feast like a glutton on such extraordinary music. Back then I was a poor student, and after buying an all-concerts pass and making my way from London to Amsterdam and then The Hague I didn’t have enough money for a hotel. So, I brought a sleeping bag and slept against a high fence giving onto a forest, and hidden by thick bushes and trees, just across the road from the festival site.
第三天早上，我被警犬、带着墨镜的便衣中情局特工还有荷兰特警弄醒了，他们让我穿好衣服然后跟他们上车。在警车上，他们对我疑心重重，因为护照上显示我来自北爱尔兰的贝尔法斯特。原来，我睡觉的地方正是荷兰国会大厦的外围，那天美国总统老布什还刚好到访。
On the third morning of the festival I was awoken by saliva-drooling sniffer dogs and plain-clothes CIA agents in sunglasses and Dutch Special Forces. They allowed me to dress and accompany them to their vehicles where they took a great interest in my passport with its issued-in-Belfast stamp. It turned out that my chosen spot to camp out was beside the fence of Dutch National Congress Building, where American President George Bush senior was visiting that same day.
就在当时的五年前，爱尔兰共和军企图刺杀英国首相撒切尔夫人，再加上这几年来他们至少20次企图刺杀美国总统，中情局当然不会放过任何一个从北爱尔兰的来的可疑人物。
Just five years after the IRA had attempted to assassinate British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher — and given the fact that there have been 20 attempts to assassinate American Presidents over the years — the CIA weren’t taking any chances with someone from Northern Ireland.
他们问了我一系列问题，有时还拐弯抹角地套话。但是作为一个22岁、留着莫西干头、身上只有一张音乐节上淘的二手Miles Davis的CD的人，我实在太不像一个杀手了。最后他们还是把我放了，并且让我下次选择住宿地的时候多留点儿心。我也不太确定，但有可能这次的事件跟音乐节后来迁址到鹿特丹有点什么关联。
They asked me a string of questions, some more intelligent than others, but as a 22-year old with a Mohican haircut and armed only with a second-hand copy of Miles Davis’ album, purchased at the festival, I thought I cut a poor figure of an assassin. I was asked to move on and choose my lodgings more carefully in future. I cannot be sure, but perhaps the danger my presence posed for the President of the United States of America had something to do with the festival’s subsequent relocation to Rotterdam.
在第三天的北海爵士音乐节上，我先以Steve Williamson开场，接着又看了Oscar Peterson、Dizzy Gillespie & Phil Woods，还有Andy Sheppard。最让人苦恼的是最后一场，我要在Miles Davis和钢琴家Ahmad Jamal之间做出选择。虽然那时候的我毅然决然地选择了Miles Davis，错过Jamel还是让我感到很可惜。幸运的是，后来我又看了几次Ahmad Jamal的演出，最近一次是在吉隆坡，2012年5月，82岁的他依旧演奏得浑然忘我。
Day 3 of the North Sea Jazz Festival started for me with Steve Williamson, then went on to Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie & Phil Woods, and Andy Sheppard. The one frustrating choice I had to make was for the final concert, as Miles Davis’s time clashed with pianist Ahmad Jamal. I opted for Davis, a simple enough choice back then, but I was none too happy about missing Jamal. Happily, I have seen Ahmad Jamal a few times since then, most recently in Kuala Lumpur in May 2012, and at 82 years of age he is playing as well as ever and like nobody else out there.
虽然我在此后的22年里没有再去过北海爵士音乐节，但每年仍密切留意着它的节目。从那之中，我也看到了广泛反映在世界上各种爵士音乐节的节目设置中的许多变化。北海爵士音乐节一直是尽可能地提供最多样化的节目——几乎包含了所有风格的爵士、布鲁斯，也涵盖了世界音乐的元素——近几年也开始向流行口味展开了大门：99年有Elvis Costello，03年有Gotan Project，06年有Jamiroquai，07年有Snoop Dogg，10年Katie Melula，Prince, 11年有Paul Simon，Seal和Tom Jones，12年有John Hiatt和Lenny Kravitz。
I haven’t however, returned to the North Sea Jazz Festival, but for the past 22 years I have kept a close eye each year on its program, and have seen there, the changes that are reflected widely in the programming of jazz festivals throughout the world. Though the North Sea Jazz Festival has always offered the most diverse program imaginable — covering the whole gamut of different jazz styles, the blues, as well as including an element of World Music — it has in recent years opened its doors to more pop-flavored acts: Elvis Costello in ’99, Gotan Project in ’03, Jamiroquai in ’06, Snoop Dogg in ’07, Katie Melula in ’10, Prince, Paul Simon, Seal, Tom Jones in ’11, and John Hiatt and Lenny Kravitz in ’12.
同样的趋势在其他一些历史悠久的爵士音乐节上也可以看到，比如新奥尔良爵士音乐与传统文化节（New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival）——在那里爵士几乎已经被摇滚和流行淹没了，还有蒙特利尔爵士音乐节以及不计其数的其它音乐节。有些纯化论者喊道：为什么越来越多的爵士音乐节要选择加上摇滚和流行的演出？我X！难道他们没有自己的音乐节可去吗？
This same trend can be seen in historic jazz festivals such as the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival (where the jazz has almost been swamped by rock and pop acts), the Montreal Jazz Festival and countless others. Why are more and more jazz festivals opting to include pop and rock acts? Goddamit! — the purists say — haven’t they got their own festivals to go to?
全球经济衰退不会在短期消失，艺术产业也收到了重创，政府和私人赞助商对其的资助大大减少了。欧美的很多演出场地都关门大吉了，爵士音乐节不得不面临一个抉择：是做出改变逆流而上，还是被淹没于历史的洪流。通过放宽演出限制，阶段地引入流行和摇滚，音乐节迎来了更多年轻人，他们就如同26年前在尼斯的我一样，将开始接触爵士乐。
The global economic recession, which shows few signs of going away any time soon, has seen the arts in general take a big hit from government as well as private funding bodies. Many venues in Europe and America have closed and jazz festivals find themselves facing a reality which is sink or swim. By relaxing the programming and staging pop and rock acts, festivals bring in a larger, younger audience, and one that is going to be exposed to jazz music, possibly--like myself at the Nice Jazz Festival in 1986--for the very first time.
这样的现状一定会改变。多年以来，我经常拉着不懂爵士的朋友去看音乐会：Wayne Shorter、Andy Sheppard、Toots Thielemans、Chano Dominguez、Pat Metheny、Chick Corea、Sun Ra、Hiromi、Esbjorn Svensson Trio、Enrico Rava、Herbie Hancock、John McLaughlin、Randy Weston、Jim Hall……还有一长串列都列不完的杰出艺术家。几乎每一次，我的朋友都会被音乐家的表演、被爵士乐的力量深深震撼。
There are bound to be converted. Over the years I have dragged friends who didn’t know jazz to see concerts by the likes of Wayne Shorter, Andy Sheppard, Toots Thielemans, Chano Dominguez, Pat Metheny, Chick Corea, Sun Ra, Hiromi, Esbjorn Svensson Trio, Enrico Rava, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, Randy Weston, Jim Hall..and a long list of great artists, and in nearly every case my friends have been simply blown away by the power of the performances, the power of the music.
记得有一次，我拉了一个西班牙的朋友去看Joshua Redman在巴伦西亚郊外的一个小小的爵士音乐节的演出。Redman当晚简直像着了魔一样，表演得太棒了，而我朋友惊讶得嘴巴张得老大，他说：“这是一个完全不同的世界！”
I remember persuading Spanish friends to come with me and see Joshua Redman at a small jazz festival just outside Valencia. Redman was absolutely on fire that evening, and my friend — mouth open in shock for much of the gig, said: “This is a whole different world.”
然而，我们不应该忘记，尽管我们这些爵士迷们认为爵士是音乐世界的中心，它实际上却是很小众的，只有在它作为舞曲的化身时曾在二战前流行过，而大部分人只是在咖啡馆的背景音乐中和爵士有过短暂接触。很多喜欢流行乐的人都不愿意花时间去深入了解爵士乐。
We mustn’t forget, however, that although we jazz fans tend to think that jazz is the center of the musical world, it is really niche music. It was only ever popular as dance music in a previous incarnation before World War II. Most people have little or perhaps fleeting contact with jazz as background music in coffee shops, and many people raised on pop music have little patience to investigate it.
有个人曾经大费周章地调查过欧洲爵士音乐节的血统纯正与否，这个人就是Wynton Marsalis。英国爵士研究中心的经理Tony Whyton在他的书《Jazz Icons: Heroes, Myths and the Jazz Tradition》（剑桥大学出版社，2010）中记录了Marsalis对欧洲爵士节的调查活动。根据Marsalis的调查，在音乐节表演的乐队中只有五分之一是真正的爵士乐队，而且那些主办者都不愿意把“爵士音乐节”改为“音乐节”，在Marsalis看来这并不符合他所追求的爵士独有的美学高度。
One man who went to some trouble to investigate the jazz credentials of European jazz festivals was Wynton Marsalis. Tony Whyton, manager of Centre for Jazz Studies UK wrote in his book, “Jazz Icons: Heroes, Myths and the Jazz Tradition” (Cambridge University press, 2010) how Marsalis discovered on a fact-finding mission to European jazz festivals that only two out of ten bands were actually jazz bands, with festival programmers declining to call their events "music festivals" , according to Marsalis, while seeking the aesthetic elevation that jazz brings.
Marsalis的事迹发生于80年代，要是放到现在，谁知道他会怎么看待如今的蒙特勒爵士音乐节（Montreux Jazz Festival）呢？这个音乐节上有90%都不是爵士乐队。到底乐迷们能够接受爵士音乐节多大的“稀释”程度，已经成为越来越多争论的主题。2010年，在一个名为Live！Singapore的艺术产业会议上，我作为讨论组成员和许多艺术家一起讨论爵士的未来。其中有一位资深的35岁新加坡钢琴家Jeremy Monteiro说道：“爵士部分至少要占到60%，才能被称为‘爵士音乐节’，否则只应该叫‘音乐节’。”
Marsalis’ trip took place in the late 1980’s, so what he would make of the Montreux Jazz Festival these days, with its 90% non-jazz bands is anybody’s guess. How much “dilution” of jazz festivals is acceptable to jazz fans is the subject of increasing debate. At Live! Singapore, an arts industry conference in 2010 where I was a panelist discussing the future of jazz, fellow panelist Singaporean pianist Jeremy Monteiro, a 35-year veteran of jazz festivals throughout the world said: “I think a festival which has less actual jazz than other genres should call itself a music festival. There should be at least 60% jazz."
很多人会支持他的观点，但是如果剩下那40%的其他音乐家有如Elvis Costello、Bruce Springsteen或者Snoop Dogg这类，而能把他们的歌迷到爵士音乐节中，从而确保音乐节继续存活，那么这种“稀释”不失为一个明智的作法。
Many would agree with Monteiro, but if the other 40% like Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen or Snoop Dogg manage to bring the fans into jazz festivals in healthy numbers, thereby ensuring the survival of the festival, then such dilution seems like a wise move.
我们也有充分的理由支持将新的乐迷引入爵士领域。扩大这一部分乐迷群体对爵士乐的发展和成长都有着重要作用，哪怕有些人会像26年前的我一样，阴差阳错地就喜欢上了这种音乐，指不定在Tom Jones和Prince的音乐会的中间邂逅了Ahmad Jamal，就从此入迷了呢。
There is also a strong argument in favor of bringing new fans to jazz. It’s important for the music’s growth and development to widen this fan base, even if some people — like myself 26 years ago — will stumble across the music by accident, perhaps chancing upon Ahmad Jamal on the way between Tom Jones and Prince concerts.
之前提到过的作家Tony Whyton也是与会者之一，他是这样评价爵士音乐节的：“在最好的情况下，音乐节可以成为变革的催化剂。它们可以把日常的空间变成神奇的世界，或者让人们以全新的方式感受他们的环境。音乐节有能力促进社区的发展，并且使人们产生公民的自豪感。”
Author Tony Whyton was also a panelist at that conference on jazz in Singapore, and he had this to say about jazz festivals: “At their best festivals can act as catalysts for change. They can transform everyday spaces into magical worlds or encourage people to see their environment in a new way. Festivals have the ability to galvanize communities and contribute to a sense of civic pride.”
他还说，爵士音乐节，甚至是任何音乐节，都应给观众提供一个正面的多元文化视野，在一个民族主义和排外主义盛行的世界里，它的重要性是不可估量的。
Whyton also spoke of a jazz festival or indeed any music festival’s ability to offer audiences a view of diverse cultures in a positive light, something which cannot be underestimated in the global context in times of rising waves of nationalism across the world and outright xenophobia.
“爵士乐和世界音乐的演出，”Whyton宣称，“经常有潜力超越演出本身，而给予观众新颖的、美好的文化体验。”我一直把他两年前的这番话铭记在心。此后，每当我参加一个音乐节，都越来越多地感觉到音乐节对其周边社区的影响，还有不同类型的听众与演出者之间的相互激荡，以及它良好的教育意义和社会效益。
“Jazz and world music programs,” Whyton declared, “often have the potential to go beyond performance and provide the audience with a new and inspiring cultural experience.” Since listening to Tony Whyton’s comments two years ago, I have borne his words in mind whenever I attend a jazz festival, and I’m increasingly aware of the impact of the festival on the surrounding community, the mix of people in the audience — and on the stage — and the educational and social benefits of the music and the occasion.
Whyton很偶然地也成为了过去25年以来爵士乐中另一个巨大变化的代表人物，这一变化就是爵士在90年代逐渐发展起来的学术新风潮。或许是因为研究爵士的学者越来越多，学术上的争论也越来越多了，但这样的争论无疑是有益的。John Gennari在《Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics》写道：“20年来，那些让爵士评论界产生分歧的问题——种族、文化、审美、历史和权力——是非常错综复杂和棘手的……爵士和它的历史中充满了混乱、异端、偶像颠覆与想象力的惊人壮举，爵士评论界发生的混战自然也不应逊色。”
Whyton, incidentally, is representative of another of the more significant changes to take place in jazz during these last 25 years or so, and that is the new wave of jazz scholarship that has grown since the 1990’s. There is increasing debate among jazz scholars (perhaps because there are increasing numbers of jazz scholars) but such debate is surely healthy. John Gennari, author of “Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics” wrote: “The questions and issues that have riven jazz criticism over the last twenty years — on matters of race, culture, aesthetics, history and power — are knotty and difficult…jazz and its history are full of dislocations, heresy, iconoclasm, and stupendous feats of imagination. Jazz criticism should be no less gloriously messy.”
评论界当然已经是一团混战了。“什么是爵士”这个问题被越来越多地提出来，就像塞车时此起彼伏的喇叭声一样，在学术界和世界各地爵士节上的众多讨论会议上争得不可开交。但请不要忘了，再一次，日光之下并无新事，早在40年代，在比波普取代摇摆乐的时代，评论界也对“什么是爵士”有过无比激烈的争论。定义爵士是什么，最困难的地方就在于每个人对于爵士都有着不同的看法。
It’s certainly messy out there, and as the question “What Is Jazz?” sounds with ever increasing frequency, like angry car horns in a traffic jam, prompting gnashing of teeth, academic studies and numerous panel discussions at jazz festivals around the world, it’s worth remembering that, once again, there is nothing new under the sun: back in the 1940s jazz critics argued violently over what jazz was, as swing gave way to bebop. The difficulty in attempting to define jazz is that jazz means many things to many people.
2010年我采访了Either/Orchestra爵士乐团的领队及萨克斯手Russ Gershon，他就这个问题上发表了看法：“我的得到的结论是，爵士是一种演奏音乐的方式。从本质上讲，它根本不是一种声音、一种风格或是一种特定的音乐元素组合。摇摆的确是爵士的产物，但是很多流行音乐也有摇摆的感觉。The Beatles也有摇摆歌，The Beache Boys的很多歌都很摇摆，还有很多有摇摆的感觉的作品不是爵士。几乎所有你想得到的、可以用以定义爵士的音乐元素都可以在非爵士的领域找到，与其以此来定义爵士，不如说它是一种处理音乐元素的方法。比如说也有即兴的方法，它同样在其它类型的音乐里也会出现。几乎除了欧洲的音乐会乐曲以外，所有音乐都有某种程度的即兴成分。”
In a 2010 interview I conducted with Russ Gershon, saxophonist and leader of the Either/Orchestra he said on the subject: “The conclusion that I've come to is that jazz is a method of playing music. In the end, it's not even a sound or a style or particular set of musical materials. The swing feel is definitely a product of jazz, although there's lots of pop music that swings: the Beatles had swing songs; the Beach Boys had a lot of swing. There's plenty of stuff that swings that isn't exactly jazz. Almost any particular musical element that you could name to define jazz can also be found outside of jazz. It's more an approach of what you can do with musical elements. There’s the improvisational approach, of course, although there's improvisation in other music, too. Almost every music outside of European concert music has some degree of improvisation.”
意大利的小号手Enrico Rava在2012年1月我对他的一次采访中，则对爵士有更为诗意的诠释：“对我来说，爵士是上个世纪延续到现在的声音。它是世界的声音。它是西方的历史结晶。”
Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava defined jazz in more poetic terms, in an interview I did with him in January 2012: “To me, jazz is the sound of this last century until now. It is the sound of the world. It is the score of Western history.”
“西方的历史结晶”，这听起来是一个不错的光环。然而，爵士从来没有界限，它已经从西方缓慢而坚定地传入了东方和亚洲。除了日本——那里的爵士早就开始蓬勃发展了——亚洲的其他国家，不管是在本土爵士音乐人和乐队的培养与扶持上，还是在引进国外演出的数量水平上来说，都还只能算是小打小闹。
“The score of Western History” — it has a nice ring to it. Jazz however, knows no boundaries, and is slowly but surely spreading to the East, and Asia. Excluding Japan, which has enjoyed a long and vibrant association with and appreciation of jazz, the rest of Asia has, by comparison, merely flirted with jazz, both in terms of producing jazz musicians and bands and in terms of receiving touring jazz musicians from abroad.
然而，这方面在过去的十年里已经发生了重大的转变。爵士音乐节在各地如雨后春笋般涌出：十年里，泰国从无到有冒出了5个爵士节；在马来西亚和婆罗洲也出现了4个；在印尼，从30年前的1个，到现在估计有40个，包括爪哇爵士音乐节（Java Jazz Festival），最近的这届有超过10万印尼人参加。
However, the last decade has seen a significant shift in this regard. Jazz festivals are popping up everywhere it seems; in the last decade five jazz festivals have sprung up in Thailand where before there were none. In Malaysia and Malaysian Borneo, four jazz festivals have started up; in Indonesia, the number of jazz festivals has shot up from one (dating back almost 30 years) to an estimated forty in 2012, including Java Jazz, which regularly draws crowds of over 100,000 Indonesians.
韩国有两个爵士节，包括Jarasum国际爵士音乐节（Jarasum International Jazz Festival），在2011年，短短2天至少有17万人参与。香港国际爵士音乐节（Hong Kong International Jazz Festival）于2011年启航，中国大陆的北京、天津、广州、珠海和深圳也不甘示弱。这几年，菲律宾、印度、尼泊尔、台北、台中、蒙古国、阿塞拜疆、俄罗斯和迪拜也涌现了很多爵士节。我和世界各地大大小小的爵士节的主办人都聊过，他们都有一个共识，就是对于策划者来说，要举办一个成功的音乐节，最重要的事情就是要知道音乐节存在的意义，以及他们的观众到底是谁。
South Korea has two jazz festivals, including the Jarasum International Jazz Festival, which in 2011 drew over 170,000 people in two days. The Hong Kong International Jazz Festival was launched in 2011, and in mainland China there are now jazz festivals in Beijing, Tianjing, Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Shenzhen. Jazz festivals have also sprung up in recent years in the Philippines, India, Nepal, Taipei, Taichung, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Russia and Dubai. I have spoken with directors of jazz festival, big and small, from all over the world, and the one thing they agree on is the importance for festival programmers of knowing why their festival exists and knowing who their audience is if a festival is to be successful.
亚洲爵士的崛起，或许仅仅是反映了国际平衡在多领域的转变。Michael Schuman在《The Miracle: The Epic Story of Asia's Quest for Wealth》（哈珀柯林斯出版集团，2009）一书中写道：“经过几代人的努力，亚洲摆脱了持续几个世纪的停滞状态，成为全球经济中一股越来越强大的势力。这种转变是如此巨大，以致于很多人都称之为奇迹。”
The growth in interest in jazz in Asia, perhaps merely reflects a broader shift in the international balance. In his book The Miracle: The Epic Story of Asia's Quest for Wealth (HarperCollins, 2009), Michael Schuman writes, “In little more than a generation, Asia has emerged from centuries of stagnation to become the rising force of the global economy—a transformation so spectacular that some have called it a miracle.”
亚洲有超过40亿人口，经济正在迅猛地发展，社会也进行着深刻的改变，所以Wartajazz.com的Agus Setiawan这样宣称也毫不牵强：“爵士的下一件大事是亚洲。”Wartajazz是印尼最重要爵士推动组织，Setiawan比任何人都了解爵士在印尼的成长过程。
Given the sheer number of people — over 4 billion — the booming economies and important social changes, it is not so farfetched when Agus Setiawan, of WartaJazz.com, declares: "The next big thing for jazz is Asia." Wartajazz is Indonesia’s most important jazz advocacy organization and Setiawan knows better than most how the appetite for jazz is growing in Indonesia.
WartaJazz.com网站的成长是一个鼓舞人心的故事，同时也证明了爵士从来不是独立存在和发展的。它起步于一本爵士月刊杂志，在1996年由两个爵士乐迷创办。不久之后，Setiawan加入了，他建议出版线上杂志，但是这个设想2000年才实现。“刚开始的时候，我们的网站只有5个人浏览，而且很显然其中的3个是我们仨。”Setiawan在2010中的一次采访中说道。而10年之后，这个网站每月的浏览量都有6万。
The story of WartaJazz.com is an inspiring one, for in it lies the truth that jazz is a living, evolving entity. Wartajazz.com began life as monthly printed jazz magazine started by two jazz fans in 1996. When Setiawan joined soon after, he suggested they took it to the next stage by publishing the magazine on-line, though this didn’t happen until 2000. "For the first while, the site was only accessed by five people, which was obviously us three—and two other people," Setiawan told me in an interview in 2010. Ten years later the site receives 60,000 visits per month.
从那以后，网站开始举办爵士音乐会、建立电台，出版印尼爵士音乐家的CD、拍了一部纪录片，把美国的爵士艺术家带到印尼来，或者把印尼的带到国外去，还为其他爵士音乐节提供网页设计，以及制作各种高质量的周边产品。Wartajazz.com收到了从世界各地寄来的CD并建立了一个馆藏数量接近2万张的音像图书馆，Setiawan希望能用于和所有印尼大众分享。网站的成功，为亚洲竖立了一个榜样，它的经验值得后来者学习和借鉴。
Since then, Wartajazz.com has staged jazz concerts, set up a jazz radio station, produced CDs of Indonesian jazz artists, made a documentary film, promoted tours of American jazz artists in Indonesia and vice versa, provided web design for other jazz festivals and produced an extensive range of high-quality merchandise. Wartajazz.com receives CDs from all over the world for review and has a library approaching 20,000 CDs, which Setiawan would like to share with the Indonesian public. Wartajazz.com is one of the great success stories of jazz in Asia and a model for others to follow.
在2010年，我很幸运地去了爪哇东部举办的Jazz Gunung，一个Wartajazz.com一直在扶持和宣传的新兴音乐节。这毫无疑问是我参加过的所有爵士音乐节中风景最为壮丽的——它坐落在云雾缭绕的火山群之间。当时Jazz Gunung音乐节规模很小，而且为期只有一日，但是有两支乐队抓住了我的眼球：融合了爵士和印尼传统音乐甘美兰的Batuan Ethnic Fusion乐队以及吉他手Balawan。
I was fortunate to attend Jazz Gunung — a young festival which Wartajazz.com has helped develop and promote — on East Java, in 2010. It was easily the most spectacular setting for any jazz festival I have ever attended, situated among the clouds in the midst of volcanic mountains. Jazz Gunung started as a small, one-day festival, but there were two bands that day that really caught my eye, fusing jazz and Indonesian gamelan, Batuan Ethnic Fusion and guitarist Balawan.
我想，这就是亚洲爵士的未来：亚洲的声音，亚洲的性格。再去重复美国人的Bebop还有什么意义呢，美国人早在40年代末之前就玩腻了。
This, I thought, is the way forward for jazz in Asia — an Asian sound; an Asian identity. What’s the point in just copying American bebop, a movement, incidentally, that had already begun to go out of style in America before the end of the 1940s?
我还邂逅了另外几支给我留下深刻印象的亚洲乐队：台湾的丝竹空爵士乐团，他们把中国传统乐曲和器乐演奏与爵士融合；印尼的SiamakDialog，他们把传统的甘美兰和Miles Davis风格的电子爵士进行了融合；香港的SIU2，一个令人激动的乐队，他们用中西乐器创造出一种动感的都市之声。当然还有更多像这样的乐队和艺术家，他们都向我们展示了亚洲爵士的可能性——心系传统，也同样走在当代的前沿，放眼未来。
I have come across several other Asian bands that have made a large impression on me: Taiwan’s Sizhukong, which fuses Chinese traditional music and instrumentation with a jazz/world aesthetic; Indonesia’s SiamakDialog, which fuses gamelan with Miles Davis-influenced electro-jazz and Hong Kong’s SIU2, an exciting band that fuses Chinese and western instruments to create a very vibrant, urban sounds. All these bands, and there are surely more like them, are fine examples of the possibilities of jazz in Asia — mindful of tradition, Asian tradition that is, yet utterly contemporary and forward-looking.
我有幸亲眼见证了亚洲爵士成长过程的一小部分，去遍了泰国、老挝、柬埔寨、越南、马来西亚、婆罗洲、韩国、印尼和香港的音乐节和演出，现在来到了中国大陆。但是我依旧感觉自己只是接触了亚洲爵士的皮毛，还有很多充满创造力的乐队没有被我发现。虽然如此，从槟榔屿到河内，从婆罗洲到香港，再从曼谷到首尔，我都听到了质量极高的音乐，而且听众都十分热情，这使我坚信，亚洲爵士的前途一片光明。
I have been lucky to have experienced firsthand a little of this growth of jazz in Asia, having covered jazz festivals and concerts in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Borneo, Korea, Indonesia, Hong Kong and now mainland China. I feel, however, that I have only scratched the surface of jazz in Asia, and I have surely only heard a fraction of the innovative bands that are currently making music. Nevertheless, the quality of the music that I have seen — from Penang to Hanoi, from Borneo to Hong Kong, and from Bangkok to Seoul — and the enthusiasm of the audiences leaves me in no doubt that jazz has a big, bright future in Asia.
值得注意的是，美国和欧洲的音乐家热衷于来亚洲做演出，这是两个原因导致的结果：第一，糟糕的经济让在欧美地区做演出越来越难；第二，西方音乐人在亚洲得到了相当好的体验。越来越多的人来中国、马拉西亚、印尼、韩国或泰国巡演，我经常被音乐人问：“我要怎样才能去亚洲演出？”我认为，在下个十年里，最主要的巡演路线一定会遍布亚洲。
Significantly, American and European jazz musicians are very keen to tour Asia. It’s a combination of two things; firstly, the poor economic environment that makes touring difficult in both America and Europe, and secondly, the hugely positive experience that Western jazz musicians have when they tour Asia. More and more Western jazz musicians are touring in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea and Thailand, and I am frequently asked by musicians: “How can I get into Asia?” There is no doubt in my mind that a major tour trail will develop throughout Asia within the next decade.
对于欧美音乐家和经纪机构来说还有一个关键问题，就是亚洲的签证和工作许可。在2011年香港爵士音乐节的一个讨论会议上，槟榔屿爵士音乐节（Penang Island Jazz Festival）的总监Paul Augustin建议，亚洲音乐节的这些策展人应该集体去欧美的重要城市走一圈，主动提供相关信息，这一定会吸引很多想在亚洲立足的音乐家和经纪人。不难想象，许多欧美的爵士音乐节的策划人、赞助商，以及一些自身拥有爵士项目的学府，都会投来关注的目光。
One of the key questions for European musicians/agents regards visa and work permit requirements across Asia. On a panel discussion on jazz that took place at the Hong Kong International Jazz Festival, 2011, Paul Augustin, director of the Penang Island Jazz Festival, suggested that a tour of key European/American cities by a panel of Asia's jazz festival directors, in order to provide such information, might be of interest for musicians, their agents and managers trying to get a foothold in Asia. It wouldn’t be difficult to imagine that such a panel would invite a lot of attention, and it's an idea which European and American jazz festival directors, funding bodies — as well as universities and colleges offering jazz programs — might consider.
但是，如何让亚洲爵士打进欧美市场呢？这看起来困难重重。尤其是北美，签证要求十分严苛，更别提那高昂的费用了，让人在一开始想想就泄气。新加坡的钢琴手Jeremy Monteiro说：“从那（美国）到这（亚洲）这是一条宽阔的三向公路，而从这到那却只有一条羊肠小径，但是这也并不是因为针对谁，只是现实如此。”亚洲暂时还是个爵士的进口者而不是出口者，但它还是有希望的，比如台湾的丝竹空爵士乐团在2012年6月加拿大巡演的成功证就明了这一点。我认为，亚洲的爵士艺术家要想在国外取得成功，最本质的一点就是要坚持音乐上的原创性。
However, what about the opportunities for Asian jazz musicians to break into Europe and America? It seems that there is something of a mountain to climb, particularly to access North America, where stringent, not to say expensive visa requirements can be off-putting for a start. Singaporean pianist Jeremy Monteiro observed: “From there [America] to here [Asia] there’s a three-way highway but from here to there there’s a footpath. But you can’t take it personally.” For the time being at least, Asia is most likely to remain an importer rather than an exporter of jazz, though there is always hope, as Taiwanese band Sizhukong’s tour of Canada in June 2012 demonstrated. For Asian jazz artists to succeed abroad, it is in my opinion essential for them to present music that is original.
但是对于亚洲音乐家挑战依旧很大，鉴于越来越多的主办者一旦有了新的项目就重新邀约新的艺术家。或许这就是这个时代的象征吧：大众的关注能持续的时间太短，以致于BBC必须把全球新闻浓缩成短暂的1分钟节目，Twitter取代了正统的沟通方式，科技的创新也层出不穷，令人眼花缭乱。
The challenges are greater still for Asian artists in light of a growing trend among promoters to re-book artists as long as they have new projects to offer. Perhaps this is just a sign of the times, where attention spans are so short that the BBC offers a one-minute summary of the world news, where Twitter has replaced serious communication and where innovation in technology advances with dizzying speed.
今年早些时候，我采访了法国单簧管手Louis Sclavis，他这样说：“现在音乐家的现状已经改变了很多，这也影响了当今的音乐。15、20年前你要是有了想做的项目，就可以在全欧洲办40场演出。你可以经常演奏自己的音乐，然后不断进步和升华。你可以在你的音乐里钻得很深。而现在，你顶多只有10到20场，有时更少。所以你不能以同样的方式对待音乐了，这也很大程度上改变了音乐本身。你不能像20年前一样那么专注地发展你的项目了。”
Earlier this year I interviewed French clarinetist Louis Sclavis and he had this to say: “One thing which has changed a lot is the situation of musicians today, and this has a big consequence on the music. Fifteen, twenty years ago, when you had a project, you could play 40 concerts throughout Europe with your band. You could play your music often. You could really play it and develop it. It was possible to go really deep into your music. Today, you have 10 or 20 concerts maximum, sometimes fewer. So you cannot think about the music in the same way, and this has changed music a lot. You cannot develop your project as you could 20 years ago.
“我的第一个乐队在一起演奏了十二三年，”Sclavis说，“而现在的乐队，不到三四年就散了。你不得不改变，因为主办者总是要求你每次带点新东西，比如新的乐手或新的作品。我觉得，对于音乐家们来说，现在更难按照他们自己的想法发展了。”
“My first group played together for 12 or 13 years,” said Sclavis, “these days, after three or four years it’s over, and you are obliged to change because the promoters always ask you to bring something new every time — new musicians and new projects. I think it’s more difficult for musicians these days to develop their own way.”
作为现今最有创造力的作曲家、音乐家之一的吉他手Alex Machacek，也同意这样的观点：“现在的很多音乐节都只想要‘首次’的噱头。然而可笑的是，这些人上哪都把乐队挂在嘴边高谈阔论，提到一些经典乐队的名字的时候他们却是一脸茫然。我感觉，在这个急功近利不断物色新东西的时代，乐队根本没有机会好好钻研自己的音乐，因为每次都得要有全新的东西。”
Guitarist Alex Machacek one of the most innovative musicians/composers today agrees: “There are many festivals that only want to have a premiere of something. But the funny thing is that these people are always talking about bands and whenever the name Weather Report comes up they all get glassy eyed. There were line-up changes but that was a band. I feel that nowadays with the concept of having to come up with new stuff all the time a band doesn't really have a chance to develop its personal sound anymore because you have to be a new project every time.”
好事多磨，我们还是应该要保持乐观，因为这个时代也为音乐家提供了前所未有的机会，就如在2010年Live！Singapore的会议上，纽约爱乐乐团的总裁兼执行董事Zarin Mehta所说，“传播艺术所能用到的最不寻常的手段”现在都已经被我们轻松掌握了。我很荣幸从2006年开始为www.allaboutjazz.com开始撰稿，这个网站为亚洲爵士音乐家提供了一个传播的平台，拥有每月约百万的访问量，是世界上最大、受众最广泛的爵士网站。
Yet in spite of these challenges there must surely be reason for optimism, for the times that we live in offer opportunities to musicians as never before. At the Live! Singapore conference in 2010, Zarin Mehta, President and Executive Director of the New York Philharmonic spoke of “the most extraordinary means of propagating our art” that are now within our reach. The jazz advocacy website for which it has been my privilege to write for since 2006, www.allaboutjazz.com represents one way by which Asian jazz musicians can propagate their art. With around a million individual visits every month All About Jazz is the largest jazz webzine in the world. It also has the widest reach.
每年，All About Jazz报道的音乐节比世界上任何一个出版物都多，包涵了从北极圈到亚洲，从拉丁美洲到中美洲，到加拿大、北美、澳洲、非洲再到欧洲。全球有超过3万的音乐家在网站建立了个人档案，中国的音乐家也可以从这项服务中获益。网站还提供其它各类服务，包括：上传MP3作品，在“Take 5 With…”专栏发布自我介绍，发布音乐会、音乐节或者其它活动的宣传资料，当然，还可以发布专辑。所有的这些都是免费的。
Every year, All About Jazz covers more jazz festivals than perhaps any other jazz publication in the world, from the Polar North to Asia, from South and Central America, to Canada, North America, Australia, Africa and Europe. Over 30,000 musicians globally have a professional profile at the site and Chinese musicians can benefit from this and other services that All About Jazz offers, including uploading an MP3 song, submitting an auto-interview via our “Take 5 With…” column, submitting news items to promote a concert, festival or event, and of course, by submitting CDs for possible review. All of these services are free.
最近，All About Jazz新推出了一个姐妹网站——Jazz Near You，它致力于推动爵士产业在新技术方面的发展。它还会成为你的活动指南, 你可以在上面查到目前世界上近200个城市的音乐会、音乐节和活动的信息。主办方、音乐家，甚至是任何人都可以发布地点和活动信息，不过这些信息必须准确、完整且专业。
The most recent and exciting innovation at All About Jazz is the launching of a sister website called Jazz Near You, which has the potential to drive the jazz industry world-wide in a way that only new technology can permit. Essentially an events listing guide, Jazz Near You will list concerts, festivals and events in nearly 200 cities worldwide. Presenters, musicians and indeed anybody at all can submit venue listings and events, though obviously information entered must be accurate, complete and professional.
虽然今年9月才上线，这个网站已经有了11000个演出地点和音乐节的目录。同时，在爵士迷的帮助下，它能提供最详尽、最及时的更新。因为热爱音乐，很多人都支持像All About Jazz这样的网站，他们也相当于在向世界推广那些音乐人及其音乐的行动上贡献了一份力量。社交网络以及网络所延伸的产业无疑是大势所趋，也是音乐家打入以前未曾触及的市场的新出路。
Though only launched in September 2012, Jazz Near You has 11,000 venue and festival listings, and in time, with the support of jazz lovers, Jazz Near You will provide the most comprehensive, constantly updated event/venue listings guide to jazz ever created. Advocacy of websites like All About Jazz, motivated by a love of the music, are playing their part in promoting musicians and their music in the globally changing market. Social networking and web-generated business is undoubtedly one of the greatest forces of the future and the way forward for many musicians to find a way into previously distant or inaccessible markets.
在过去这25年里，我们也见证了爵士在录制和推广方式上的革命。音乐已经从录音棚采集变成了录音棚加工，现在任何人都可以生产CD，很多音乐家在世界上不同地方录制自己那部分，然后组合成乐队的作品。然而，技术的发展也是一把双刃剑。在同一次采访中，吉他手Alex Machacek说：“有时候我觉得音乐在某种程度上失去了它的价值，因为你可以随时把它轻松地偷过来。任何可以被数字化的东西都会马上被放到网上去。有几次在邮件或者博客上交流，人们都劝我接受’音乐是免费的’这个想法。好吧，如果音乐是免费的，那我真就不知道该以什么谋生了。”
In the last quarter of a century we have also witnessed a revolution in the way jazz is recorded and marketed. The music has gone from being captured in the studio to being manufactured in the studio. These days almost anyone can produce a CD, and a dozen musicians can record their individual parts in a dozen different locations around the world and together produce a group performance. However, technology has always been a double-edged sword. In the same interview with guitarist Alex Machacek he observed: “Sometimes I think music kind of loses its value because you can steal it and it’s easy to steal. Everything that can be digitalized is basically up on the internet in no time. Sometimes I have e-mail exchanges or blog exchanges where people confront me with the thought that music is free. Well, if it’s free then I don’t know how to make a living.”
“新一代人真的认为所有东西都是免费的，”Machacek说，“我真想把这种想法塞进他们的脑子里——‘嘿，这才不是免费的呢。’还有人说，‘我只是想下载听听看是不是喜欢’，可有多少人真的会iPod里有了还去花钱买？因此，我必须尽可能压低工作预算，才有可能回本。我在谈的还不是盈利哦，只是填平支出而已。我总是说，好吧，既然你那么爱分享，为什么不把你的女朋友也分享给我啊？又或者把你的车借我用用也行啊。而人们又会回答，‘噢，那不一样，只限于音乐而已’。”
“There’s an entire generation growing up really thinking that everything is for free. I would like to put the thought in people’s heads that hey, it’s not for free. The next argument is ‘I’m just downloading it to see if I like it’, but how many people who already have the music on their iPod will really go and buy it? This is the reason that I have to work super-low budget so there’s a chance that I can recoup. I’m not even talking about profit, I’m talking about covering my losses. I always say, well, if you’re so into sharing why don’t you share your girlfriend with me? Or, I’m in town, let me use your car, or whatever. But people say ‘oh, it’s just music’.”
自产自销已变得如此简单，而最讽刺的是，现在几乎所有人都能自己做出一张CD——这十年来独立生产的CD数量已经爆棚了——而爵士产业却无法支持和容纳其中的大多数。可看、可听的太多了，演出场地却完全不够。如果这听起来太让人丧气，我想再分享Zarin Mehta的一句话——他的发言让Live！Singapore会议上的听众都产生了强烈共鸣：“好音乐永远有立足之地。”
One of the great ironies of easy self-production and distribution is that whilst almost anybody can now produce a CD — and the number of independently produced CDs has soared in the last decade — the jazz industry cannot support and accommodate most of them. There are too many to listen to, too many to review, and not enough venues for musicians to play. And if that sounds defeatist, then I would like to share with you once again the words of Zarin Mehta, President and Executive Director of the New York Philharmonic, who struck a resonating chord with the audience at the Live! Singapore conference when he said: “Great music will always find a foothold.”
爵士的发展在过去这25年像过山车一样有起有落，我们将有幸能共同见证未来的25年。我相信它会是一场奇妙的旅程。如果说上个世纪的风风雨雨已成为过去，那么如今这些激进、先锋、充满争议的爵士乐将会成为未来25年的主流。新的，以及尚未被发明的技术将会进一步推动音乐产业的革命，谁知道是好是坏呢？说不定哪天韩国的少年团体就在北海爵士音乐节上演出了呢。唯一可以肯定的是，不管是纽约还是深圳，世界各地的人们永远都会在探索着、争论着：什么是爵士。
The past quarter of a century has been a roller coaster ride for jazz. With a little bit of luck we’ll all be here to witness the next quarter of a century. It’s sure to a fascinating journey. If the past century is anything to go by, then the jazz considered radical, avant-garde or controversial today will be mainstream practice 25 years from now. New and yet to be invented technologies will further revolutionize music making, for good as well as for bad. And who knows? Perhaps Korean boy-bands will be playing at the North Sea Jazz Festival. What’s sure, is that people everywhere, from New York to Shenzhen, will still be arguing over what jazz is.
文本信息 Text Information
来源 Source：Ian Patterson提供英文讲稿 English script provided by Ian Patterson
翻译&编辑 Translating & Editing：庞舸 Allen，尹思卜 Midori Yin，陈力思 Johannes Chan
校对 Proofreading：陈力思 Johannes Chan