Day 2
As enjoyable as it was reclining in Guadalajara for the night and despite the pleasant sounds of my first musical discovery of February it was about time to move on. One reason is that outside of Ximena Sariñana there seems to be little else going on musically in this corner of Mexico. Everything’s either a particularly soulless variety of pop or the maddening oompa-loomping of mariachi. With the rock mixed in Los Lobos make good use of it but otherwise it’s a good excuse to move on.
And move I did. Having experienced first-hand the limitations of searching for my Sugar Man online it seemed time to unplug from the Matrix and see what Dublin City had to offer. A recent article in the Irish Times by Frank McNally directed my attention towards something the existence of which I realised I had only a vague idea; Irish jazz. The focus of the piece was Louis Stewart and it was a rousing portrait he painted of the man. The fact that he had a gig on the second day of my month of musical discovery made the decision to attend an easy one.
The problem I face here is that I don’t really know enough about jazz to have an informed opinion on it. It’s a lot like cinema in that there is both the visceral element to it, the way it makes you feel in the moment, and the intellectual level where an understanding of the technicalities of the form play an important part. Also, if, as has been bandied about in certain circles, Louis Stewart is one of the great living jazz guitarists, why do most Dubliners not realise he exists in our very midst, passing us in the street, sitting beside us at the pub?
The answer to that question is simple; one of jazz’s defining characteristics is the anonymity of its practitioners. Everybody knows Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis but how many 21st Century jazz musicians can you name? Can you count them on one hand, or is one hand even too much? Dublin is not like Chicago or New York where a jazz musician is considered “forgotten” compared to, say, some presidents – who the fans will insist did less for their country anyway than that trombonist who used to stand on the corner drunk at 4am and wake the neighbourhood with his talent. Dublin is where artists, musicians and writers come to be forgotten: really forgotten.
Louis Stewart and the other members of his quartet squeeze themselves onto the stage upstairs in JJ Smyth’s just after five on Sunday afternoon. There’s little ceremony about the whole thing. The drummer taps his sticks on the bar as he awaits his pint and shortly Louis arrives through the main door and without so much as a howdy-do the performance is under way. The songs all follow a similar pattern, with the guitar, piano, upright bass and drums all playing at once in the beginning, the guitar taking the lead. Then the guitar drops out and the piano goes for it followed by a bass solo, followed by the drums, followed by a full return for the quartet.
John Goodman’s mockery of Oscar Isaac in Inside Llewyn Davis (“G! C! G! G!”) is understandable when watching this performance. There’s a technical proficiency that’s blatant in the playing of the four musicians, but what’s fascinating is not just the way melodies are not so much played as introduced and then abandoned, but also the way in which personalities become apparent through the music. The guitar can be easy and slow, but it can also be sprightly and light-hearted. The piano is more intellectual and humorous, making references to other melodies, seemingly building towards a satisfying note and then mocking your expectation by leaping back down the keyboard.
The point of any music is to return to where it started, so if it begins with a C note it has to end on one. But whereas most music takes a fairly conventional route around the world and back to its starting place (car to the airport, plane to the far side of the world, maybe walk rather than get the shuttle bus when changing terminals, you know, for a bit of variety), jazz, at least as performed by Stewart, doesn’t go the expected route. It takes you to the Alps and when it’s up on top of the mountain, rather than saying “Right, let’s go back down the mountain to that nice looking town over there” it says “Fuck it, let’s paraglide across the Mediterranean into the depths of the Sahara”. Of course half-way to the Sahara it decides to take a detour and ends up drinking cappuccinos in the forum in Rome.
Stewart’s own peculiar style dances around the coming home bit as if it’s a labour in itself to be there. The rest of the quartet cease playing and a simple B-flat would finish the song, but Louis scales down in the bass notes, then plays some descending chords somewhere in the middle of the neck, then messes around the high e-string for a while. This can go on for a good minute while the rest of the quartet sit there waiting to hit that home-note, as if they’re hosting Louis’s coming home party and he’s late; stopped off at the bar and ended up chatting to someone who caught his interest. It puts you in mind of the theory about The Odyssey that the reason it took Odysseus ten years to get home after the Trojan War was that he didn’t really want to be there. Even when he was in Ithaca he spent days arsing around with the shepherd before going to see his wife.
During intermission a couple from Meath tell me, when I let slip that this is my first jazz gig that Louis Stewart is about as good as it gets. The man saw Louis play back in the ’70s and when I mention how impressed I am at the piano he shrugs and says “Well, he’s famous. Myles Drennan. He has his own trio”. I wondered who else he might be able to direct me towards in this underground scene with its own special definitions of fame. Nigel Mooney and Hugh Buckley were mentioned and added to my list. The lady mentions Treme unprompted, a nice coincidence since that show’s the reason I’m here this evening.
When the quartet returns Louis takes a gulp of Guinness, presumably as any good Irish jazz man does, and the second half commences. It seems at this stage that the piano is struggling to find its voice. It isn’t humorous, it isn’t satisfying, it’s exploring but coming up short. Louis interjects from time to time and then lets the piano go again but the song seems to fail. The next song is a slow number that gradually finds its tone. Notes here and there land just right and things start to pick up. When everything seems under control, Louis stands up mid-song, puts down his guitar and sits to the side of the stage and watches.
Jazz works on tension. It’s not like the blues where satisfaction is expected at the end of each bar, countered by the misery explained in the words, here the satisfaction can arrive out of nowhere and it comes after bars and bars of seemingly aimless and spontaneous wandering. If you go for that satisfying lick too early you minimise the effect, if you go too late it’s the same deal. It’s no wonder it’s such an unpopular genre in a world of instant satisfaction.
The piano is taking off; Myles jumps in his seat and starts coyly rumbling the piano keys. He plays a familiar few notes and people in the crowd start to laugh. That elusive inspiration has clearly hit and even though I don’t quite know what’s going on I do know by the gig’s conclusion that I need to find out more about this music.
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Watching a film called The Music Room about an old Indian landowner who spends his ancestors’ fortune on having musicians come to his house to perform, it’s a reminder of how music was once considered to be an extravagance, something that dulled the senses and weakened the mind. Plato specifically banned it for his hypothetical “leader class” in his perfect society for that reason; now people can’t even walk to the shop without their earphones glued in.
The gatherings in the film show with what reverence music was held when it only came to us in live form and Louis Stewart this afternoon had as attentive a crowd as I’ve been amongst. I was reminded of the humour in Myles Drennan’s piano playing, the insertion of little in-jokes (“Clair de Lune!” someone shouted at one point), how ridiculous it is to expect from the outset to make a living out of this type of thing. Any creative endeavour is done because it’s enjoyable to the person doing it, and Myles Drennan is clearly having a laugh when he performs these numbers. It’s hard to think while watching him play that it was ever the idea of amassing a fortune that propelled him to learn how to communicate so brilliantly through music. If you can make your bread and butter on top of that then it’s a bonus, but a largely peripheral one.