One of the biggest problem facing today's artists is one of pigeonholing. Traditionally, musicians were brought up in a specific musical tradition, which dictated the creative style in which they played. Up until very recently this multi-faceted model worked very well to communicate the commonalities between artists and their audiences. If you grew up listening to bluegrass, you went to the record store and found the "bluegrass" section to find recordings by your favorite bluegrass artists, and you could be fairly certain that all the recordings in the bluegrass section shared a common set of stylistic rules (the "high lonesome" vocal sound, string-heavy instrumentation which featured either a banjo, mandolin, guitar, or fiddle, 3 or 4 beat-per-measure meter, etc.)

Such a system of labeling can no longer apply to American music. Take a group like Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, for example. The founder of the group, Béla Fleck, has traditionally been associated with bluegrass music. However, the Flecktones play in a style that borrows stylistic elements from several of the old "styles" including bluegrass, rock, jazz, and funk/R&B. This invariably leads to the same sort of problem that many of today's musicians face when posed the question "what kind of music do you play?"

Music today is a miasma of fusions and partitions. What was once simply "dance" music can now be know as Techno, House, Drum-And-Bass, Trance, Retro, Rave, or a hundred others, while groups like Leftover Salmon, Galactic, and Donna The Buffalo reflect elements of several different styles.

I propose that this is no accident and is reflective of more than just the typical artist's need to be different. If we can say that "folk art" and "folk music" can only be truly understood in the cultural context in which it was created, while "Art" is transcendent of such limitations, then we can easily see how much of today's new genres are nothing more than different forms of folk music and the jam bands have emerged as today's true art pioneers.

THE JAM BAND'S PLACE IN MUSIC HISTORY

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a new form of art was beginning to take shape. Until that time, the Western world knew of only one way for an artist to express himself musically, and that was through composition. This is what I will designate as the European artistic tradition as it is the result of European culture and custom. The European artistic tradition encompasses what we know today as Medieval, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Impressionist music. It is true that all of these styles can easily said to be transcendent of the culture that created them, and therefore "Art". We all can still listen to and appreciate Beethoven, for example, without having to know all that much about what Germany was like in Napoleonic times.

The primary characteristic of the European musical tradition is hierarchy. Just as European society had a hierarchy of the ruling class down to the peasants, so too European music has a hierarchy, and at the top is the composer. In the European tradition, the composer is the only creator. Beneath the composer is the conductor. It is the conductor's job to know the music inside and out, and communicate to an orchestra what he or she felt was the composer's intent in creating the music.

The musicians in the orchestra were meant to be evocative exclusively. That is, their job is to play the notes on the page as accurately as possible expressing the soul and emotion of the work as the composer envisioned: nothing more, and nothing less.

American society was not built on hierarchy, though - it was built on cooperation and participation. So when the early jazz pioneers like Jelly Roll Morton began to transform the folk music of rural America, such as blues, into something more universal, it was only fitting that the musical structure fit the societal structure in which it was created. Therefore the new American Art, jazz, was not hierarchal. The role of the composer was diminished or eliminated in favor of a style in which the performer was responsible for creating the music as it was performed. This is the American artistic tradition.

Just as the European artistic tradition saw incarnations in several different musical forms - Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionist, etc., so too the American artistic tradition continues to evolve through musical forms. However, American music has only been around for about 100 years, so the only form we all know to this point is Jazz.

Throughout the history of Jazz, we see its form evolving from its near-blues beginnings. Each time Jazz has radically changed it has done so through the vision of a handful of ground-breaking performers. Louis Armstrong gave us the solo, Duke Ellington fused American and European traditions to re-invent the role of the Jazz Composer, Charlie Parker added complexity through the intricate structures of Bebop, Ornette Coleman removed structural limitation by introducing Free Jazz, and Miles Davis and John Coltrane increased the vocabulary of the improviser by introducing modality and polyphonic harmonic structure.

However, it is equally important to note that Jazz also has a history of artists fusing popular music with improvisation. Everything from swing to Bossa Nova has influenced the shape of Jazz, and Miles Davis seemed set to do the same for R&B and rock when he released the enormously important "Bitch's Brew" album in 1969. However, at that point, for some reason, the Jazz purists seem to lose their tolerance for the new, and what should have been embraced as the next form of Jazz instead became a new secondary genre given the name "fusion."

From that point forward, the tradition of Jazz began to stagnate to the point where today, over thirty years later, the Jazz fascists all stand up and applause because the Marsalis boys are playing the same type of music that Armstrong had already played in the 20s and 30s. Fusion, however, continued to thrive as more and more influences were introduced to the genre. John McLaughlin brought in the raga form from Indian music. Chick Corea added the insanely complex rhythms of Latin music. Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul explored the introspective possibilities of the electronic-acoustic duality of fusion, and Jaco Pastorius added a level of virtuosity and compositional genius not seen since Ellington.

Since that time, the effects of fusion have been innumerable, and its influence is far greater than many people realize, and it is in these influences where the connection to today's jam bands may be found. In the late sixties and early seventies, a ripple effect from jazz/fusion could be felt in the world of rock and roll. Groups such as the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers Band, the Doors, and Cream had begun to bring this improvisational model of music into the mainstream, and if you were to look on the turntables of Jerry Garcia or Duane Allman in 1970, what you would see would be the jazz and fusion artists, like Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

Between 1970 and today, a transition has taken place, and the American artistic tradition which was once squarely in the hands of Jazz musicians has migrated to the jam bands. So what happened between then and now?

Well, more and more, the pioneers were interested in making more than just jazz. Traditional rock or R&B artists like Jeff Beck, Jack Bruce, Stevie Wonder, and Frank Zappa began to expound further on fusion. Established fusion performers, like Jan Hammer, Billy Cobham, Herbie Hancock, and Stanley Clarke added more rock-inspired material to the genre. New instrumentalists, like the Dixie Dregs, Pat Metheny, the Brecker Brothers, and John Scofield began their careers with fusion as a given. And now, today, we have the jam bands, whose influences derive from all of these plus much more.

Therefore, artists like the Aquarium Rescue Unit, Schleigho, and Deep Banana Blackout that are the true result of the American artistic tradition, and not what you find in the new releases section of the "jazz" aisle. Using this concept as my framework, I will be presenting a column of "Jam Band Essential Recordings" which encompass the entire history of the American artistic tradition. In my first installment, I will highlight what are, in my opinion, the recordings which illustrate the transition from Jazz to fusion. Not surprisingly, the name Miles Davis will show up more than once.

Miles Davis - In A Silent Way
The personnel looks like the Miles Davis quintet plus special guests, the compositions are minimalist, and the performances are introspective. What makes this recording important is it is the first time a "Jazz" artist recorded using electronic instruments almost exclusively.

Tony Williams Lifetime - Emergency
This was the true shape of music to come. The performances on this album are among the finest ever captured, the intensity level would put any rock band to shame, and the virtuosity is simply mind-blowing. Too bad the recording quality was so poor, and too bad Tony Williams felt he had to sing.

Frank Zappa - Hot Rats
At the same time that Miles was bringing Jazz closer to rock, Frank Zappa was bringing rock closer to Jazz. Hot Rats features horn arrangements even Mingus would be proud of and spontaneity rare for anyone at that time, let alone a rock parody act (and if that is what you believe Zappa is, I have about 30 CD's you need to hear).