Saxophonist Garbarek gives voice to a foreign affair
Most of the great jazz musicians have been American, and indeed some of the more ethnocentric jazz pundits are wont to refer to it as 'American music'.
The inference here is clear. It is that musicians from other parts of the world merely mimic their US counterparts, and historically and statistically the position is hard to attack. Jazz was certainly born in the US, even if its seminal elements had to be imported from various locations on the other side of the Atlantic, and it is true that most of its major innovators have carried US passports. Most, but not all.
Just as jazz assimilated elements of African and European music to create the basis of the synthesis we know and love today, so certain key musicians across the ocean, starting with Django Reinhardt in the 1930s, have reassimilated that wonderful mixture and made from it something new and equally valid.
A surprising number of these players and composers have come from Scandinavia, probably because from the 1950s onwards a significant number of American players chose to settle there, temporarily or permanently.
One of these was pianist George Russell who moved to Oslo in the 1960s. In 1965 he was booked for the Molde Jazz Festival where he heard, and immediately hired, an 18-year-old saxophone prodigy who had been playing since the age of 14, when he first heard a John Coltrane recording on the radio. Jan Garbarek was smitten, and rushed out to buy a horn.
Russell was stunned. Garbarek was, he declared, 'just about the most uniquely talented jazz musician Europe has produced since Django Reinhardt'.
He certainly found a new and important voice. For many jazz musicians, the basis of their art is a deep understanding of its hallowed traditions and a dedication to extending them. Garbarek approached it differently.
He understood from the outset that the roots of an authentic jazz style can be planted in any sufficiently fertile soil - and furthermore that they can occasionally be transplanted without killing the tree. What he heard in Coltrane was not the summation of all the great American saxophonists who had gone before him, but a unique voice that could help him find his own.
Garbarek had roots of his own in Norwegian folk melodies, and he quickly assimilated his hero's interest in non-American music. Early experiments with Indian music - directly attributable to Coltrane's fascination with Ravi Shankar - led on to later encounters with Brazilian musicians such as Egberto Gismonti and Nana Vasoncelos and performances of music by Greek composer Eleni Karaindrou.
It is difficult to think of an artist who better exemplifies jazz as a world music than Garbarek. Karaindrou claims to hear a strong Balkan influence in his playing. Weather Report founder, and sometime Garbarek collaborator, Czech bassist Miroslav Vitous believes his Polish ancestry gives him an instinctive understanding of Slavic tunes, and has written several for Garbarek.
He made full use of his opportunities in the 1960s to hear and sometimes play with US jazzmen visiting Scandinavia. He soaked up the sonorous horn playing of Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin and Ben Webster, but also played with Ornette Coleman's trumpeter collaborator Don Cherry and developed an understanding of free jazz.
Garbarek made his solo debut, Afric Pepperbird, in 1969 on the fledgling ECM label, which, with its audiophile production standards, mostly non-American roster and commitment to hard-to-label improvised music might have been made for him.
ECM head, Manfred Eicher, also introduced him to Keith Jarrett - along with Pat Metheny, the label's top US signing - with whom he made the Belonging and Luminesscence albums in 1974, going on to become one of the key players on the later My Song, Nude Ants and Personal Mountains albums.
Other players Eicher teamed him with include Ralph Towner, Kenny Wheeler, Gary Peacock and Eberhard Weber, while the saxophonist himself sought out performers of ethnic folk music ranging from Tunisian oudist Anouar Brahem to Indian tabla player Shaukat Hussain.
Next year, Garbarek will be offering a fascinating contrast to Wayne Shorter's Coltrane-influenced saxophone style at the Hong Kong Arts Festival, appearing at the Cultural Centre Concert Hall on February 22 and 23 with a superb quartet comprising bassist Weber, Danish percussionist Marilyn Mazur - a Shorter discovery - and keyboardist Rainer Bruninghaus.
