The case for strange and difficult music

A Medeski Martin & Wood fan offers a defence of why we need jazz from the fringes

Successful big-ticket jazz festivals are something of a paradox — the biggest draws are often the least jazzy, and the most artistically progressive players don’t always bring the crowds out en masse. So I was more than delighted to see that the programming in this year’s TD Canada Trust Toronto Jazz Festival weighed heavier than usual on the challenging side of things, booking European free-jazz titan Alexander von Schlippenbach (with his Monk’s Casino group), the Enrico Rava/Stefano Bollani duo and continuing the tradition of bringing Medeski Martin & Wood to the fest.

Without acknowledging and showcasing difficult music, the festival would be aiding and abetting jazz’s stiffening into a dead art form — an artifact better suited to a natural history museum than a steamy club. Jazz is alive and continues to evolve, and it’s to the fest’s credit that they treat it accordingly, even if that requires catering to the rock crowd every once in a while. (Hey, even Miles Davis opened for Steve Miller on occasion.)

Medeski Martin & Wood are one of the best examples of artists who regularly blur the line between accessible and difficult. With their alt-rock-inflected, turntablism-heavy 1998 album Combustication, MMW broke though into the mainstream stoner-festival scene and even managed to crack the Billboard 200. They also served as the rhythm section on guitarist John Scofield’s well-loved A Go Go, an album that’s become the blueprint for innumerable hippie jams.

Then, at the peak of their popularity, they released their two most divisive works: the live acoustic album Tonic and the avant-noise masterpiece The Dropper. While I consider the latter to be their best work, my jazzbo friends hated its sprawling sonic indulgence.  They weren’t overly impressed with the post-traditional approach of Tonic, either, as only the Coltrane and Lee Morgan tunes constitute anything close to a proper “swing.” But Tonic is the perfect yin to The Dropper’s yang, as both explore the outer edges of MMW’s improvisational abilities and studio experimentation.

Most agree that what made jazz such an undeniably important art form was the unrelenting experimentation in the 1950s and ’60s. Though MMW’s recent albums have been hit or miss (with their playing on Zaebos, volume 11 of John Zorn’s ambitious multi-album Book of Angels project being an unqualified success), they’re now harnessing the power of their live shows into a bold new exploration on their three-record Radiolarians series. The fact that MMW continue to experiment is the very thing that keeps them relevant, and, while challenging music may not be the easiest thing to sell in a tanking economy — note the hiatus taken by both New York’s JVC festival and Quebec’s avant-garde showcase at Victoriaville — daring like theirs is essential to the continued relevance of jazz.

MEDESKI MARTIN & WOOD play the TD CANADA TRUST TORONTO JAZZ FESTIVAL Sat, Jun 27. Nathan Phillips Square, 100 Queen W. $30 from Ticketmaster. 8pm.