What's All That Jazz?
The JazzWorks repertoire explained
It’s Thursday in St Andrews, and that means one thing: Jazz Night. From 9pm to 12pm each week at the Student Union (yes, this is absolutely a shameless plug), JazzWorks society runs an open jam session, with anyone and everyone welcome to play or sing a song. But what are the songs being played each week? Why have these songs been chosen over others? And why don’t they play that one song you love?
The specific JazzWorks repertoire, much like jazz itself, comes from a variety of sources. Before delving into the ingredients of this canon, however, it’s first essential to know the basics of a jam session and how jazz operates. Jazz is a genre deeply rooted in tradition, collaboration, and creative expression through improvisation, and together these principles allow a jazz musician to perform without much familiarity with any given song. All a player needs is a ‘head’ (the song’s melody), a chord progression or structure, and a rhythmic style to inform the feel of the song. Out of this foundation, a group of jazz musicians can come together and play a song without practising it, using the chords and style to inform a solo invented on the spot.
With regards to JazzWorks, these qualifications can lead some songs to be played instead of others. If a song has a complicated chord progression or an intricate, demanding melody, it can be difficult for less experienced players. On the other hand, if a tune is too simple and its chordal structure too basic to foster interesting, nuanced solos, it can become boring for more experienced players. It is in this middle ground between straightforward and musically interesting where much of the JazzWorks repertoire forms.
Most songs heard each week are ‘jazz standards’, or songs that have solidified themselves into the broader jazz canon. This canon, in basic terms, consists largely of songs from the Great American Songbook (itself a canon of popular early 20th-century theatre and night-club songs from artists like Cole Porter and Irving Berlin) in addition to the most beloved jazz songs to emerge over the last century, such as ‘So What’, ‘Take Five’, and ‘Watermelon Man’. What constitutes a jazz standard can be entirely subjective, and whilst a piece doesn’t have to be a standard to play at Jazz Night, for a group of musicians trying to play together it can be much easier to play a song everyone has heard of than not.
This brings us to the backbone of the Jazz Night repertoire: The Real Book. The Real Book is the closest thing to a comprehensive list of standards to exist in jazz, as it contains the melodies and chord progressions to 400 songs, and it’s what you’ll see musicians flipping through and following on stage during a tune. The book, along with its strictly harmonic counterpart iReal Pro (an app that provides the chord progressions to hundreds of songs), allows a group of musicians to perform a song that they’ve never seen before. As such, a song’s inclusion in the book and/or app can make all the difference in whether or not it’s played on any given Thursday. This can lead to many great songs being neglected due to their absence in the book, often constraining the repertoire.
Nevertheless, even if a song cannot be found in The Real Book, it can still find its way into Jazz Night. It depends on the musicians. As jam manager Theo Robinson says, “The JazzWorks repertoire, at its core, comes from the songs which our musicians enjoy playing the most!” If a player or group loves a song, they can learn (or sing) the melody, give the band the chords, and then that song can be played like any other. This is the case with many Jazz Night staples, such as ‘Caravan’, ‘Isn’t She Lovely’, and ‘The Chicken’, all highly popular Thursday tunes despite no mention in The Real Book.
The JazzWorks repertoire, therefore, while often informed by existing databases, is entirely dependent on what the musicians want to play. Some songs have simpler chord progressions that allow newer players to solo with confidence. Others are highly technical and propose fun challenges for more seasoned players. Others are simply incredible fun to play time and time again. It all relies on the needs and preferences of the players, which can change at any moment. “Often it is anarchy deciding what song is played next,” workshop manager Ewan Riddell says, as there’s no set list or road map in a jam session since anyone can propose a tune at any time. If you have ever gone to Jazz Night and seen the musicians, upon finishing a song, look like they don’t know what they’re doing, chances are that they don’t. But such uncertainty and spontaneity are by design. For Theo, “it’s an exciting process and means that you never know exactly what music will feature each time, and it’s a democratic way of always keeping it fresh.” And that democracy, mixed with a little anarchy, is keeping in line with the heart of jazz, a genre with a thousand rules and no rules, where freedom is principally achieved through collaboration.
Total dependence on the musicians also means that as students come and go the repertoire is constantly evolving, again just like jazz itself. “In the past,” according to Ewan “we have had musicians who tend towards funk, this year we have a lot more musicians interested in classic jazz bebop styles.” While such preferences vary year by year, each class also inherits the tastes of its predecessors, creating a dynamic repertoire that displays the footprints of those who came before as well as those on stage every Thursday. Just as the culture of St Andrews is a unique blend created by students from many different countries and backgrounds, so too is the musical canon they create, endlessly changing but always offering the proper outlets of expression.
So, if you find yourself at Jazz Night tonight or on any Thursday (with free entry until 10:30pm!), keep an ear out for what kind of songs are being played. Watch the equal parts of democracy and anarchy as the players rotate in and out, choosing songs on a whim. Listen in common ignorance to everyone on stage, as no one knows where exactly the music will lead next.
Illustration by Elizabeth Lang
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