Ubuntu Fusion Music

Preface

Freedom is the fundamental principle of creativity in jazz music. The artist is at the liberty to select from novel sources and blend them into jazz’s basic characteristics, thereby not only expanding its colourful palette but also deeply influencing the internal processes in improvisation, specific rhythm and sound. Although improvisational freedom has been so far the most discussed symbol of jazz, it can be also found in musical characteristics such as sound and rhythm, as well as in the music scene.

The primary rhythmic character of jazz is derived from African music; it was also African music culture which initiated the migration of jazz artists, bringing in, at the same time, ethnic elements. Regardless of any voices proclaiming the death of certain genres, the migration trends have continued, with fusion creating new challenges and shaping jazz, rock, and world music.

At present, the large migration wave in Europe is also having an impact on the whole world. Coincidentally, a vital part of musicians’ lives has been travelling and migrating from place to place. In this respect, Romani musicians, accustomed to nomadic life, have had an advantageous position. Hence, Romani have significantly contributed to the dispersion of jazz in Central Europe, particularly in Hungary¹ and Slovakia. Various external factors have led to racial, social and cultural differences between musicians. Whether we refer to a jazz diaspora,² or to convergent and divergent processes, the result is interesting fusion music which, ultimately, guarantees diversity and richness in jazz.

After 1989, all post-socialist countries had to deal with the remnants of prohibitions and orders of their former regimes that had choked the internal development of jazz and also its outward-facing aspects, such as event organization.

Nonetheless, despite profound efforts for a democratic world, dictators have not yet completely disappeared. There are still countries, such as Ukraine,³ for example, where artists have to struggle for the right to use their native language, or suffer from violence and censorship that enforce the language of the majority (e.g. in China⁴) and which consequently also limit the use of English as the language of jazz. Adam Kielman⁵ has analysed the dialect used in the vocal parts of the Chinese world music bands Mabang and Wanja Chuanzhang, to which the majority language (standard Mandarin) has been recommended. Even at present, Chinese groups have difficulty accessing a well-equipped studio,⁶ which musicians in the former European socialist countries were experiencing in the 1960s. Censorship practices, where a bureaucrat with no appreciation of music and art decides on what will or will not be publicly available, postponed the emergence of Chinese rock music to as late as the 1980s.⁷ Although Kielman denies Chinese censorship and only mentions regulations aiming to support the spread of Mandarin, from other sources we know that the Internet as the main channel of information is censored there.⁸ Regarding the notion held by Western observers about central management being from Beijing, Kielman argues that ‘the negotiation of the local within the global ecumene is not a top-down process controlled from Beijing, or any other center, but a complex, multilayered process that happens in part through circulations of music and practices of listening’.⁹

The issue of freedom versus censorship in jazz lies not only in unresolved theoretical positions but also in practical applications to musical life. To questions of censorship I raise in my Central European Jazz Studies class, a 20-year old Russian student¹⁰ responded: ‘The censorship was historically conditioned and necessary. It cannot be approached from a uniform point of view as specific steps in the process of culture purification, but rules and principles should always be determined on a case-by-case basis, taking into account certain historical conditions.’ Another Russian student (22 years of age) said: ‘Censorship must exist and be implemented because the state is responsible for upholding the law and protecting its citizens. How else can extremist and fascist tendencies in music or xenophobic speeches be prevented?’ I explained that democratic countries do not need censoring institutions and regulators to set the rules, since the operating rules are determined by artists and audiences themselves, and by independent institutions such as agencies, publishers, clubs, radio and television. It is the artists who establish boundaries within which they operate. Censorship, autocensorship, prohibitions, and State or Secret Police controls were radical interventions that taught us a lesson during the socialist regimes where dictatorial artistic measures ultimately resulted in the underground, a double culture, development of a ‘tolerated’ grey zone, and an open counterculture with extremist elements. Censorship, therefore, means something other than law-based regulations.

The Covid pandemia has shown that the East–West, socialist–capitalist, and Christian–Muslim divides are irrelevant as we all share the same world. And we should take care of it, as highlighted by new theories concerning soundecology and soundscape.

Yvetta Kajanová

1 Havas, The Genesis and Structure of the Hungarian Jazz Diaspora, 145–155.

2 Ibid., 168.

3 As early as the first decade of the new millennium, the dominance of the Russian language in Ukraine prompted its non-governmental organizations to campaign for singing, talking and communicating in the native language. However, the spread of popular music repertoires in the Ukrainian language did not occur until the period of 1998–2013. Loshkov, Rok-muzika v Ukrayinі: oznaki perіodizatsіyi. [Rock music in Ukraine: signs of periodization], 14–18; Shulha, ‘Funktsionuvannya ukrayinsʹkoyi i rosiysʹkoyi mov v Ukrayini ta yiyi rehionakh’ [Functioning of the Ukrainian and Russin languages in Ukraine and its regions], 49–74.

4 Kielman, Sonic mobilities. Producing Worlds in Southern China.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid., 35–38, 150–158.

7 Wang, Research on the Interaction between Chinese Contemporary Urban Pop Music, Music and Social Cultural Environment.

8 Kielman, 74.

9 Kielman, 67.

10 Russian students were admitted into the Faculty of Arts at Comenius University in the 2022–23 academic year because they came from Ukrainian regions.

‘Ubuntu’ and Fusion Music: A Concept Not Only of Musical Mutuality. Sources of Inspiration, Creative Methods, and the Significance of Improvisation (Introduction)

‘Ubuntu’ is an African principle of mutuality and humaneness (expressed in variations in African languages and dialects) which may be summed up as follows: ‘I am because you are’, or humaneness for others. We feel the fusions connecting not only diverse music genres but also artists and people from different cultures, ethnicities, and social groups. For the past 15 years, music fusions have also been a frequently used creative method in popular music. Musical grupings cross the borders between genres and create novel, fresh combinations. This trend draws on the popularity of world music and the need of today’s people to return to their historical roots.

The term fusion music largely referred to late 1960s jazz and rock music blendings although at that time jazz rock, rock jazz, or crossover were the preferred terminology. However, with the appearance of 1980s tendency to constantly push the boundaries of jazz into ethnic fields, ‘fusion music’ began to be widely adopted. New expressions such as pop jazz, funk, electric jazz, and later derogatory terms like eclectic jazz, or even those of smooth jazz, acid jazz, nu jazz, or electro jazz, which gave rise to conflicting interpretations, also came to the forefront. Several problems were solved by introducing the term world music which was, however, accepted by many only as a commercial label.

Side by side with these external characteristics, composition and improvisation have been also changing in ethnic music, jazz, rock music, classical music, and other genres.

Since the emergence of postmodernism, the compositional approach in jazz, rock, and contemporary music styles and genres has undergone significant changes. Its characteristics are shifting from ‘opus perfectum et absolutum’ with precise notation to improvised expressions. This is occurring not only in jazz, where musicians choose between improvisation and notated arrangements, but also in classical music with composers favouring improvisation instead of the previously preferred notation. Contemporary music writers opt for a compromise between these two approaches, often being in the role of performer. Contemporary compositional techniques in jazz, rock, blues, country, and modern classical music embrace the fields of composition, improvisation, comprovisation, arrangement, hybrids, variants, cover versions, remixes, productions, etc. Classical, along with modern software analyses and the identification of aesthetic attributes and historical contexts of compositions are the key to understanding these phenomena.

The volume aims to answer the questions as to whether fusion music is still relevant today in Europe and in the world, in which genres and styles, and whether the current situation is similar to or reminiscent of the early history melting pot of jazz in the USA.

Some papers are based on their authors´ musical and creative practices and point out the artistic processes and the significance of improvisation in the genesis of a new composition. Another group of contributors bring theoretical knowledge and new information about fusion trends in the world of contemporary music.

Jana Belišová and Yvetta Kajanová