Newsflash: Europeans play jazz!

Our good friends over at Bagatallen pointed me towards this article at The Economist.

In the article we learn that although Europeans have been into jazz from the beginning (critical appreciation and jazz-classical fusion are singled out), Europeans were bound to lack the basic elements which informed the music—the subtle inflections of blues and swing which came from its African-American roots and which could be merely mimicked elsewhere.

However, nowadays Euros are more confident: In the words of a French drummer, “We are all inspired by American musicians, but our background and our freedom and our way of living should influence the music and we should let go.”

This ushers in EST: Depending on his mood, Mr Svensson regards the trio's work as a sign that European jazz has come of age, and is even challenging the native product in creative supremacy—“Europe is going to be the place for jazz”—or dismisses the connection altogether: “We're playing less and less jazz. It's more the e.s.t. sound...We just try to go to the heart.”

EST is cool, but really, Django Reinhardt created a totally European strain of jazz in the 1930s, generally referred to as Gypsy Jazz. Even though I'm no connaisseur of older European jazz, surely there are and have been plenty of musicians who have nothing to be embarassed about, whether they were working in the mainstream (e.g. Michel Petrucciani) or further out.

A resounding yawn.