"LOVE THE JAZZ IN YOU..."

Incompetent people believe that jazz is music for connoisseurs, for the chosen few. But our guest, Salman Gambarov, has a different opinion. He is an Azerbaijani jazzman, member of the Union of Composers, People's Artist of Azerbaijan, pianist, composer, teacher, founder of the jazz band Bakustik. He believes that the comprehension of jazz requires a trained ear and concentration, not selectivity. That is why Salman GAMBAROV prefers to perform in a chamber environment, in a club where the true connoisseurs of jazz gather; who are focused and trained. They listen to a musician whose art can be defined by the following famous expression: "True jazz is the art of expressing both the person and the nation simultaneously".

"Do you think jazz is a genre of music for a select few? Galina Vishnevskaya once said the same about opera. That it is not a type of art produced for the masses, and it is not a problem that opera is understood and loved by a few people. Is the same true for the jazz?"

"I wouldn't say that, but both opera and jazz have a great variety of styles. When it comes to opera, the works of Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Giuseppe Verdi are accessible to wide audiences. For example, the operas of expressionist Alban Berg and other composers of the 20th century who wrote avant-garde vocal-dramatic works certainly need a trained audience. The same is true for jazz. The works by Glenn Miller and Oscar Peterson are still loved. But jazz is not a dogma and is still in development. Unlike the 1940s, when Thelonious Munch and his works were unfamiliar to audiences of the time, there is so much diversity even in one style today. It all depends on the taste preferences of the audience. Serious jazz requires a trained listener, who will perceive the music not just for dancing or snapping fingers. Modern music requires immersion and concentration. Any jazz composition contains the main theme. But it sounds for no more than a minute. The rest is improvisation, which is supposed to develop the theme. The untrained ear is unable to follow the performers' thoughts, where they lead the theme, how it will transform in the finale, or even remain unchanged. Obviously, for the incompetent people this will be nothing but a waste of time. Please note that I'm not talking about professional musical education. The key here is the desire to get close to the music. By the way, complex music is usually listened to not by lyricists, but by physicists. Not by writers or artists, but by techies like IT specialists, physicists, mathematicians and so on. I get a little upset when jazz is treated as entertainment music. Although there are various directions in jazz making it sort of a comfort music for relaxing and dancing. But that's not my thing. That's why you can hardly find my target audience in big crowded concert halls, rather in clubs gathering deep listeners."

"You once said that the opening of the jazz club Caravan back in 1997 was the happiest musical event in your life. Has anything been able to negatively influence this happy trend of your creative life since?"

"Indeed, it was a moment of great happiness back in the day. A jazz club in the city centre, at the intersection of one of the main shopping and entertainment streets of Baku. It was the period following the signing of the oil contract. Foreign top managers were visiting Baku, foreign jazz fans started to visit the place. We were happy, but there has always been that thought of incompleteness because our senior colleagues had never seen the club exclusively for jazz music. Although we loved talking about Baku as the city of jazz, it had never been one in fact. Therefore, for our generation, the opening of the club and then the jazz centre was a great success. But it would be unfair to say that it was the only successful venture. Month-long tours in China, Europe, USA, Canada, meetings with musicians, joint jam sessions, performances at jazz festivals have energised us with plethora of unforgettable impressions, strength to develop more projects. Meeting with like-minded people, successful collaborations is an opportunity to perform even more, to get positive emotions. That's why I am not going to idealise the past. The future is no less interesting for me as a musician."

"Let's talk about international festivals you just mentioned. Baku is going to host yet another jazz festival soon. Where do you feel more comfortable performing - at home or abroad? How do you assess the level of festivals held in Azerbaijan? Can you compare them with their foreign counterparts?"

"I have participated in local festivals, including the Baku Jazz Festival, up until 2015, when the management and organisers changed. But I am happy for young jazzmen performing at the festival. It is definitely a chance for them, a blueprint for the prominence in future. We now can perform outside of Azerbaijan. I regularly perform in clubs. So those who wish can listen to me in clubs, in particular at Best Place in Icherisheher. Festivals are a platform for the young. It is an incentive to prepare, rehearse and create new compositions. The benefits are clear and obvious. But, frankly speaking, I am not fond of the quality of the music performed in the Baku Jazz Festival. There are a select few good musicians among them, just a couple of people maybe. The rest is not able to impress at all. There are many mediocre festivals abroad as well. But foreign festivals beat you with their large number. In Germany, the Netherlands, let alone the US, every city holds its own festival! There are very famous events with serious performers, art directors and impresarios. True professionals who can easily spot pseudo-jazz, if you will. Please also note that they always present new programmes; each subsequent festival comes with a new programme. A musician can take part in the same festival five times in a row, but he will never repeat himself, each time you will hear to his new works. A festival is not a concert. I like the fact that many of them have their own image. For example, in Portugal there is a festival that doesn't accept any ethno or classical jazz. Only modern, creative, avant-garde jazz with an unusual line-up of musicians. That's very close to me. On the other hand, the London or Montreux festivals are more democratic, they let everyone in - from ethnic to country. But you won't hear serious jazz music there. So it is very difficult to draw analogies here. There are many festivals held abroad. But we have only one in Baku. In Georgia, there are several festivals held in Tbilisi and Batumi. We are invited to join them in October."

"What about the importance of personality in music? It is believed that, for example, an actor should perform instructions given to him instead of being a smart guy—like a trained animal. What about the musicians?"

"Well, you'll mainly find both dictators and those who give some room for improvisation in cinema. It depends on the set of tasks assigned to actors by the director. They dictate his working methods. By the way, if you want to enjoy cinematic improvisation in its totality, I highly recommend Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes, a feature film with no script. Just a pure jazz film. A musician who comes up with a project and invites other performers to join it understands that something has to be fixed. That's why he asks them to work together within certain limits. But when one of the team members offers better options, the band leader should be lucky to work with such creative personalities. No band leader, say, a pianist, knows the saxophone better than the musician playing that instrument. If he offers better variations to the composition, his recommendations should be listened to and accepted. I always suggest instrumentalists to show initiative. Unfortunately, sometimes it is impossible to materialise the most interesting ideas due to the lack of professional training—when it is hardly enough to play notes. Pianists and string players study at music schools or academies, other instrumentalists are massively self-taught. But jazz music rarely lets in non-professionals. It's a serious music like academic music. Writing opera and ballet without a proper academic training is very difficult. It is possible to compose pop, disco or rap music without having classical education; it's a job even a supermarket clerk can do."

"What about 'love the art in you, not yourself in art'?"

"I often rephrase it like 'love jazz in you, not yourself in jazz'. By the way, this is immediately visible and audible during the performance. Some musicians like to walk out with a towel around neck and a bottle of water, as inseparable attributes of a jazz musician - they even put the water by the piano in advance. You look and think: 'yeah, why not, but let him play now'. That's when the problems start. The guys has probably watched and read about how famous musicians go on stage, but he has not understood the main thing - how they played. The external factor certainly plays a role, but it is not more important than skills and the depth of performance. That's how they show themselves in the world of jazz."

"You have scores written for films, including the soundtrack to the silent film Latif and for The Red Garden.  Do you plan to work in cinema again?"

"I have always been interested in music for films which I liked. I was especially interested in composers, authors of the soundtrack. I consider myself lucky, as I had the chance to work in various genres, including documentary films, drama and marionette theatre, musical comedy, etc. Latif is my first performance in silent cinema, but not the last one. Then I also worked with Georgian filmmakers. We performed the music from the first film, My Grandmother, with an international cast at the 2015 Baku Jazz Festival. Music from the second film, Eliso, was also performed with an international cast in Tbilisi.  As for The Red Garden, this is the first full-length feature film in my track record. I was invited to join the production by the film's director Mirbala Selimli. The film won a number of festival awards, including for the best music. I woe my participation in last two works in auteur cinema to my son, Teymur Gambarov, who made two short films (Quxuroba and İki gün), both made in difficult film language. He suggested that I write the music, but there's not much of it in both films. Usually in auteur cinema all the music is based on inter-noises, on atmospheric breathing; it doesn't add lyrical or dramatic notes to the narrative. I am very happy that my son's very first film, Quxuroba, won a number of international film awards, including at the Sarajevo Film Festival. I am very happy about his success! As for the music, the soundtrack to Latif travelled halfway around the world from 2001 to 2015, from Sochi to Buenos Aires, and was performed on various stages in Germany, Switzerland, Russia and Poland. I can say that the project was a fortunate one."

"Is the art of improvisation a natural gift? Or, can it be developed? Do you think children should be taught the basics of jazz in music schools? Is academic music enough before they come to jazz when wiser enough?"

"Children should be taught musical literacy at music schools and develop their apparatus through the classical music. School age is very early for teaching jazz. No way, they have to master the instrument, which is possible only through classical music. There were some experiments, but nothing good came out of them. At best, children learn something from notes. But this does not mean a contact with jazz music.  On the other hand, children should be taken to concerts, academic and jazz concerts, theatre and cinema to develop their taste in arts. I think this should be done anyway, even if the child does not feel himself in music in the future. Contact with art will make a person spiritually rich. When the child grows up, becomes literate, masters a musical instrument, then it is possible to try to take him into the world of jazz. But improvisation cannot be taught. If a person is gifted, he will show it right away, he should be shown the path to follow. His brain must be saturated with this music in order to transmit signals to his hands. Only then will the idea to improvise appear. You can hardly feel this desire at younger ages. That's why I'm sceptical about the idea of teaching improvisation. Perhaps one can try hard discipline at school, but it does not work for haute art."

"How would you describe the Azerbaijani jazz? What jazz direction is the right one to label it? Among the popular ones, we often hear about mugham-jazz, folk-jazz in relation to the Azerbaijani jazz culture..."

"For me, Azerbaijani jazz is ethno-jazz rather than mugham-jazz. This is the generally accepted term. Indians or Kazakhs performing jazz with national elements will still perform ethno-jazz. We have musicians who can play purely American and ethnic jazz. The main thing is the quality of the music, be it American or ethnic jazz. But it is not always there. The most unpleasant thing is when they perform Azerbaijani ethnic music, making it a cheap substitution for the real jazz. It becomes clear that performers know neither the folk music nor jazz, simply speculating on the improvisation, say, with Sary gelin. If there is something fresh, interesting, new, such music is always welcome. We should honour the traditions and legacy of Vagif Mustafazade and Rafiq Babayev. But we should not perform Vagif's compositions exactly as he did. Actors recite poems in their own manner. Musicians should find their own way, too. Playing the way Vagif Mustafazade played some 60 years ago is unacceptable!"

"Azerbaijani jazz has glorious traditions. What do you think about its future?"

"Indeed, we can remember amazing Gosjazz and small compositions of Vagif Mustafazade, Rafiq Babayev, Vagif Sadikhov. The main thing is to be in love with jazz sincerely and fervently, as they did. Only in this case it is possible to guarantee success. That's why it is important to love jazz in you. These masters loved jazz. That's why I wish musicians not a diploma, but a good education. I have experience of teaching at different levels, including in special music schools, colleges and the academy. And I've always told my students that if they did not learn, they would always have this worm of envy towards those who did. For that reason, they won't go to their peers' concerts, lest they witness their success. It's horrible! So, those who studied and got experienced in this genre will make the future of the Azerbaijani jazz. I wish them great success!"