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A new and impressive recording has come to light from Georgian jazz singer Nino Katamadze, simply titled as "Red." Other albums with related designations, such as "Blue," "White," and "Black," have given her work thematic consistency over the last few years. The newest of these colors is arguably the most dramatic; levels of emotion associated with that end of the spectrum can be traced to the singer's views on jazz, improvisation, and liberty.
Born in 1972, Katamadze received a classical education in music, after which she formed the ensemble Insight in 1999, with whom she performs to this day. Never terribly keen to give interviews, she has nonetheless defined her work recently as "a free form of expression. It's improvisation that's ongoing - every single second."
It's improvisation that's ongoing - every single second
This sense of self-determination through sound, she claims, does not come quickly. Giving advice not long ago to some young performers, she noted: "The main thing [as you develop your craft] is to strive for an inner freedom - the kind of freedom that'll always accompany you on your chosen path... Jazz isn't just music, it's a way of life. It's a different way of walking, a different kind of sustenance, and of socializing...."
It's a different way of sitting, even.
That superior socialization can take place both on stage and off. "When you're able to improvise with an entire group of musicians, well that's a totally unique sense of joy... What's important here is the way you feel - or what you're hoping to reveal." Her increasingly unfettered expression takes place thanks to the audience - in whom she has trust.
"You don't just turn up and 'do' a concert; you arrive on behalf of the audience. You get nervous, you can't sleep the day before; you've no idea what'll happen. Maybe this'll be your last concert ever! And yet you really want things to be sincere. Wherever there's sincerity, you'll find sparks."
This same sense of vibrant abandon comes, to some degree, from Katamadze's upbringing in the hills of Georgia. Her notion of social space was fostered by geography. She claims as a child even to have raised a bear cub - and lived among deer! For this reason she states, unsurprisingly, that she'll never be a city dweller.
The importance of those open, lofty vistas grows over time, since her growing fame and popularity has led to increased touring. Katamadze's reach extends across the map - as far as the eye can see; distant views foster long-term plans.
Part of her snowballing success has come from the fact that Katamadze frequently sings in an imagined - and improvised - language, which she herself describes as the "speech of emotion." In the same spirit, she maintains that while she may be a Georgian who's popular inside Russia, the fact that she's also a musician means she "serves" an ethical or artistic goal over and above political geography. "Music only has one goal. It serves goodness."
The levels of optimism are high - in fact impressively so, given the sociopolitical tensions between Russia and Georgia in the last few years.
Not all jazz-tinged traditions are connected to this sweeping sense of freedom, though. A good example of ad-libbed songwriting that's embraced for other, sadder reasons can be found in acts such as Plum Bum from the city of Brest, in Belarus. Here we discover the sort of itinerant, free-form writing that comes - historically - from folks on the run.
Music in these situations, honed by criminals, drifters, and gypsies, becomes a brief expression of slapdash jamming amid life's grim inevitabilities. It's a fleeting respite from dark actuality and the unexpected surprises thereof.
Plum Bum are a fundamentally acoustic quintet of double bass, clarinet, accordion, drums, and guitar. They define their gypsy style as inspired by the following sensations and places: "[Our music is born] of much tobacco and wine. It comes from pointless wandering - back and forth through nocturnal cities. It's born of dancing, music itself, and love."
From this point on the melancholy increases: "This is the kind of mangled, stupid rock 'n' roll you hear in railway cafes. It's a strange cocktail - the kind that won't make you heard hurt - and will even leave you wanting more. This is the music of shipyard bars... it's full of the bizarre forces that bring sailors to those bars in the first place..."
This is the kind of mangled, stupid rock 'n' roll you hear in railway cafes
Those social forces are unlikely to be happy - and so a messy, extemporized ditty offers a little relief. With a bottle of something strong.
Katamadze discerns the essence of her music as some kind of elusive "spark." Any random, happy confluence of individual skills, however, becomes something entirely different with Plum Bum. The music of Brest is woven not by Muses, but instead cobbled together according to a junkyard aesthetic. "Our style is made from second-hand goods. It's a warehouse of stuff that's found only by chance. It's a pawnbroker's shop, a cheap antique stall. It's a tobacco kiosk or run-down cafe on the edge of a big city."
Where subways end and more nastiness awaits.
These are drunken, driven songs from society's edge - the music of people who are forced to improvise lest they be caught! Denied entrance into the modern city, yet lacking the traditional skills of rural subsistence, they're stuck in social limbo.
These increasingly grim perceptions of songwriting increase if we look further into the past. To state the obvious, the best-known songs of a given nation are those which have endured the longest. In countries such as Russia, Georgia, and Belarus, one also needs to ask what that music has survived. What, for example, of the most violent years in a nation's history, and the role of a song as a quiet, desperate expression of freedom amid awful risk?
There are Russian performers today who work hard to maintain the traditions of cabaret culture from before the Revolution; old songs of survival, they reason, might serve well today. Here, amid the tangos and torch songs of the 1910s, the freedom of early jazz is downgraded not only to the culture of "shipyard bars." It's also linked to the wanton decadence of small, semi-legal clubs on the edge of a national catastrophe, during world war and/or national insurrection.
Here singers and musicians could feel their increasing "uselessness" as WWI tore a continent asunder. Refusing to admit their dwindling reputation, they instead took morally suspect pleasure in their demise - and sang of the strangest, sickest pleasures. Death itself was stylized.
One example of that heritage today would be Moscow's "Cabaret de Pierrot le Fou" (i.e., "Кабаре Безумного Пьеро"). This explicit reference to craziness suggests that we're dealing with an illogical relationship to some kind of creative "freedom." These are bittersweet, if not ill-advised songs from people stuck in history's dead-end.
Despite themselves, the artists of pre-revolutionary bars performed dark, sarcastic tales of love and liberty. They mocked what they missed.
The most obvious example of that tradition would be Alexander Vertinskii, who - as a prince of cabaret decadence - eventually fled both Russia and the Revolution. He only returned home after circling the entire globe - quite literally - and never regained the freedoms he once had prior to 1917. For all his movement, the degrees of liberty slowly lessened. Hence his nasty little songs of pain, pleasure, and their dizzying combination.
The joy in our songs is never divorced from sadness. Our drama is never free from elements of the grotesque
As the members of "Cabaret de Pierrot le Fou" admit: "The joy in our songs is never divorced from sadness. Our drama is never free from elements of the grotesque."
The texts of "Cabaret de Pierrot le Fou" are taken mainly from the first three decades of the twentieth century, over the course of which Russia's dreams of universal freedom would morph into ghoulish immobility. Thanks, of course, to one of Katamadze's compatriots.
Songs of freedom from lands such as Georgia or Belarus, therefore, are unlikely to be either light or easy-going. They're very often a brave, even masochistic expression of self-will in the face of worsening situations. Historically speaking, they frequently develop against the backdrop of some awful drama - and for that reason, perhaps, in lands where political dictates have done so much damage, we can understand why Katamadze would want to avoid language altogether.
Even our Georgian optimist tempers her sunny outlook from time to time... "Life shows us what comes next. First of all you have to get through today. You have to fill it with love, and then tomorrow we'll see what happens. There's so much beauty in the present day; you should learn how to see all that God has given us in the present... And tomorrow we'll think about tomorrow."
Because it may not be nice.
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