And all that jazz
Musicians add insight and humour to a welcome book about New Zealand sounds.
In the small canon of writing about New Zealand jazz, this cleverly constructed and well-illustrated 240page paperback stands out. Although the dance-band era has been intelligently documented – notably in Chris Bourke’s Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918-1964
– the subsequent modern age when jazz became an art form for consideration and analysis has been less well served.
And there’s been plenty of it. In his Outro here, Norman Meehan – a Wellington composer, performer, recording artist and teacher – says he’s aware of at least 120 new albums since 2000 alone. For a music mostly on the margins of popularity, jazz stubbornly hangs in there, the music itself often the only reward for its practitioners.
Meehan, who wrote the fine Mike
Nock biography Serious Fun, presents the modern era like a jazz composition: themes are laid out and explored in chapters, and there’s space for soloists.
After the Intro, in which he discusses how he came to jazz, Meehan lets the first player take the microphone. It is Auckland multi-instrumentalist Jim Langabeer, who then does the same for the topic Finding Jazz. And so the book plays out: Meehan – with quotes from other musicians not interviewed at length – identifies such themes as Learning to Play, Getting Something Happening, Should I Stay or Should I Go? and on to The Way Forward. After each, musicians including Frank Gibson Jr, Anthony Donaldson,
Kim Paterson, Nathan Haines and Roger Manins have their say in edited interviews.
There’s generational breadth to the eight major voices, and the digressive, conversational and anecdotal style makes the book both reference text and engaging reading.
Some topics deserve greater exploration: Meehan admits that too few women, Maori and Pasifika artists are included.
Co-credited is photographer Tony Whincup, who shot the 17 insightful portraits accompanying the text, though sadly he died before completing the project. New Zealand Jazz Life – with suggested albums and further readings at the end of the book – is part of an ongoing conversation about jazz’s recent past and present, and it allows some of our most informed to have a say. And to express it with generosity, humour, insight and – given there’s barely a buck in it – surprisingly little complaint.
NEW ZEALAND JAZZ LIFE, by Norman Meehan (Victoria University Press, $40)