Global Groove: Words of a Jazz Cosmos, Chris Searle (491pp, Jazz in Britain)
Believe it or not, sometimes when things turn up for review unasked for I get a bit of a sinking feeling. Do I ignore and discard the book/CD/download code or should I knuckle down and try to wade through the pile of stuff accumulating in my study? As a rule of thumb I don’t review book PDFs, my eyes won’t take the strain, and I feel less bad about not downloading and/or reviewing MP3s than if someone bothers to send me an actual CD or LP.
Anyway, Jazz in Britain, kindly sent Global Groove to me. It arrived with a thump as the postman threw it into the porch then scuttled off into the rain, leaving the outer door swinging in the wind, and I have to admit that the combination of the subtitle and my first flick through had me sighing. See, it’s not really a book as such, it’s an anthology of CD and concert reviews from The Morning Star, selected from over 20 years of such. It’s also the fourth book in a series, which made me think it might be scrapings from the (metaphorical) barrel.
How wrong I was! I put it beside my bed and picked it up the next day, opening it at random. A couple of hours later, I realised I ought to get some sleep, even though I had become entranced by the brief, informed and gently opinionated reviews. Searle knows what he likes and is happy to tell his readers why that is. He also offers up brief recording details when appropriate, sometimes some wider context and occasionally a couple of interview quotes too.
Of course, I started reading by looking up musicians I like: the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Derek Bailey, Harry Beckett, Evan Parker, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Elton Dean, Johnny Dyani, Joe Harriott, Charles Mingus, Kenny Wheeler and the Sun Ra Arkestra all appear at least once. Then my eye was drawn to neighbouring entries, associated entries, even musicians whose work leaves me cold. (No, I am not going to list those.) All are succinct, positive and well written.
I haven’t of course, read them all yet. This isn’t a book to read from cover to cover, not in one sitting anyway. It’s a book to flick through, read an entry, then get online to listen to what the unknown album or band you’ve just read about actually sounds like. At the moment I’m trying (and failing) to find Julius Hemphill’s Starkly adventurous sounds of the city, which Searle describes as an ‘extraordinary dialogue of sounds’, ‘a solo work of jazz theatre’ made by ‘a pioneer, an urban explorer […] who found macabre and beautiful sounds in a faraway city’. He also calls it ‘a work of prophetic and perturbing truth.’
You can, perhaps, see why I’d like to hear this album of multitracked saxophones and prepared tapes which conjures up a version of New York. And there are loads of other tracks and albums and musicians and bands I’ve never heard of but now want to hear. There’s even a couple of entries here which might persuade me to give another listen to certain albums I’ve ignored or disliked at first listen.
Searle’s listening habits are wide-ranging and catholic. From African jazz to improvisation via big bands, jazz funk, bop and spiritual freakout, Searle can hear the interconnectedness of it all and enjoy the groove, abstraction, texture or noise as required. To be honest, I’d like to have read him engaging with some music he didn’t enjoy or couldn’t fathom, but I expect that is just me being nasty. Searle has got his groove on and it’s a good one. This book is a fantastic exploration and map of jazz music in its widest sense.
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Rupert Loydell
Buy direct from Jazz in Britain here.
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