Why Jazz Doesn't Work on a Cruise Ship

I have had both good and bad luck playing in "Showbands" on cruise ships. When I called my first cruise line about a professional music job, they just automatically placed me in the Showband. I had several choices of ships. Musicians will tell you "the run" is what determines to which ship you would like to go. Who would want to be stuck traveling to Nassau every four days for six months straight? This may be a good itinerary for the guests, but for a crewmember we need amenities at our ports. A simple drugstore or department store will suffice. Six months is a long time to go without underwear or shaving cream. These items tend to cost double in Caribbean gift shops. A good run is a seven day cruise with seven ports. (i.e. a port each day) That means there are no sea days on which you are stuck on the ship. Sea days are good for revenue, because people use the services offered by the ship. They gamble, drink, and buy photographs. Sea days can be hell for crewmembers. I was lucky enough to acquire probably the best run in the fleet. It was also probably the best band. What I discovered first was the bands don't know how to swing. Swing comes from jazz, and jazz is American music. If you didn't grow up in America, chances are you have little idea what swing music is. Even upon realization of what jazz is, it can take months to years to do the necessary study to play good jazz. It is a lifelong pursuit, and that pursuit is what jazz musicians commit to at an early age. Musicians that work cruise ships haven't or don't necessarily need to make that commitment. Or do they? I would say if you want to be a real musician, you have to study jazz. I became intrigued with jazz, because my father played piano. He played both piano and Hammond organ, and I was surrounded by this "feel good" music growing up. I just naturally wanted to do the same thing. The music was fun, fun to play and fun to listen to. My father taught me to read chord symbols with the vehicle of "Somewhere, Over the Rainbow." I started to pick that song out on the piano, and naturally embellished it with cocktail-style arpeggios. My parents couldn't believe what they were hearing. I had been taking classical style piano lessons for almost ten years. Reading music is not fun, and I didn't enjoy piano lessons although I asked to take them. I started in first grade, two years earlier than what they suggest. Your fingers aren't really big enough to learn the piano at that age, but because I was interested, they let me. When I saw an opportunity to play music that was more fun and promised some recognition, I jumped at it. Although I had good feeling and accomplished technique because of my classical training, I did not truly learn how to swing until after my Master's degree. I had a "feel," but it wasn't jazz feel. It came from my father. I managed to graduate with a Master's degree in Jazz and Commercial music without ever listening to ANY jazz music. Can you believe it? I listened to fusion/jazz because it had a beat I was attracted to. Wizard Island by the Jeff Lorber Fusion was my first album and still remains one of my favorites. It should have won the Grammy for best instrumental jazz album, although fusion shouldn't really be classified as jazz music. Fusion uses jazz-like harmony, uses complex melody, and puts it over contemporary and often Latin-oriented beats or grooves. It does "swing" in the sense of having real feeling, but it is not real swing. When you make the commitment to real swing, it changes you. It stands to reason when you begin listening to music that originated at the turn of the century, your modern upbringing and psyche will be changed. If you commit to the music, then you are committing to a personality and emotional profile that is not really modern. There is a classification of "Modern" jazz, but you have to go through the lineage first. Many young musicians make the mistake of thinking they can play Avant Garde style jazz without first studying what came before. This is a fallacy. The Avant Garde is the natural evolution of the styles of jazz that came before. Although it may sound cacophonous, it is highly organized emotion-based music. To get back to the point, should a ship musician have to have this education? My feeling is they should not, but only if they are playing in a jazz specific band. There are jazz groups on ships that work in jazz lounges. Of course these musicians probably will have the proper training in American jazz history. I say probably, because a majority of musicians that are working ships in all capacities of music don't. French/Canadian musicians don't swing at all. They try to swing in a way that is very "pop" oriented and based on the rhythmic accents of 1 and 3 rather than 2 and 4. In fact I had an Italian/American bandleader who loved swing tell me it wasn't until much later in the jazz lineage that 2 and 4 became the predominant accented beats. I can't imagine. The first big band record I heard was Woody Herman's Herd, and the four brothers certainly don't accent 1 and 3. 1 and 3 are "squares Ville," straight, man, Ricky Tick. If you look up the definition of Ricky Tick in Wikipedia, it says a novelty type music based on the plucking or twanging of strings, like the banjo. Does that sound appropriate for the use in a music based on the suffering of slaves? I think not. Bebop is the army that took early swing and hipped it up, although I have heard many white musicians playing Bebop that play it square. Doxy is the best tune I can think of that personifies accenting the OFF BEATS of an 8th note line rather than the on beats. There was a school of musicians that figured this out, and I remember that discovery as a senior in college. These were the guys that could really play, because they could create the feel of swing music without the rhythm section by accenting the off beats. Syncopation is the definition, and its inception was in Ragtime music. It is a crucial component of the definition of jazz music in any circle, novice, professional, or academic. Its predecessor was the rhythm of the Cakewalk. Syncopation is the heartbeat of jazz, the soul, the pulse. African tribal drummers were playing in different times signatures at the same time, the definition of polyrhythm. It took Günter Schuler’s enthusiasm with jazz to travel to Africa and notate such an occurrence. No one had been able to write down African drum music, because they are playing in differing time signatures at the SAME TIME! This is unlike Stravinsky's influence with his Rite of Spring which was the first written music to change time signatures within a certain piece or movement. This is called mixed meter. Extrapolating, you must use syncopation in your playing to be a jazz player. If you don't understand this concept, then don't call yourself a jazz musician. Most ship musicians, because they are required to play for production shows with 'sequenced" tracks, abandon this concept. These tracks often use the "pop" concept instead of the authentic or appropriate "feel" of the music they are exploiting. I say exploiting, because they are doing what Barry Gordy did when he formed the Motown record label. White America was not ready at that time to absorb both the tumultuous and intense music of Negroes, so Barry figured out a way to "water down" the original black R&B and Soul music. I guess, although I have not confirmed it, that this process may have been the beginning of most "pop" music. This is an ongoing debate with myself. "What was the first real American "pop" music?" I think it came from the Brazilian Bossa Nova, which emerged into the United States via Stan Getz in the l950's. That would make chronological sense. What would all the crooners songs be categorized as? The point I am trying to make is that swing-based music is difficult. Most ship musicians, especially new hires, don't have the proper training and experience to play jazz music, yet they are forced to do so. Where and why? The answer is.... "The envelope please." Dance sets. The last ship I was on, none of the bands, of which there were many, could play dance music. They were playing with MIDI sequences, often times faking real playing, and with no real knowledge of the music they were playing. Dance music seems to be D-E-A-D with a capital "D" Let me reiterate this. Dance music seems to be D-E-A-D! Pop music is NOT dance music, because the internal and insipid "strumming" of the acoustic guitar does not a rhythmic feel create. It is a joke, the enemy, El Diablo. In fact if you rhythmically analyze this "pop feel," you will find it does not even qualify as music. What is this? Because the definition of MUSIC is time organized in rhythm. That means the human being should be able to perceive the rhythm, because "All God's chillin' got rhythm." This naturally occurring rhythm does not exist in "pop" music. I have never been able to figure out if the use of this so-called concept was intentional, as to create a music that purposely has no rhythmic feel, or if it was born out of ignorance. The dilemma continues today, because the majority of the music on America's airwaves is this kind of "pop." It generates NO feeling, because of the lack of perceivable rhythmic pulse. Maybe some people, like most of the ship musicians I have worked with, seem to think making music with no real feeling of its own is appropriate. Of course Stravinsky himself said music by itself can not generate a human feeling, it has to be attributed to it. I can partly agree with that. If there is no HUMAN being present to be the receptor of the feeling, of course it won't exist. I do believe music can create a human feeling by itself. That's what music is and why it is an art form. As I have said before, you can project whatever emotion you want on top of music that says and means nothing. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the definition of J-I-V-E. If you have no talent, then you razzle dazzle them, as the song in Chicago states. You can't call yourself a musician if this is your philosophy. Understanding the rhythmic content of a particular song is the only source of performing it. You can't play it unless you cognitively understand and can state verbally what the rhythm pattern or clave is. Simply put, what is the rhythmic pattern of the beat? Is it a Rumba? Is it a Bossa Nova? Is it a Meringue? All forms of dance music are going to have a pattern upon which the human body movements are based. How do you move your feet? You move your feet in the rhythm of the music most often generated by the bass line and drums. That is why it is a crying shame that most ship musicians are not American and don't know ANY of the styles of dance music. Techno, one style, doesn't qualify. To be qualified to play in a Showband on a ship, you must know your dance styles, period. Most don't. All of the computer-generated "pop" styled music on America's airwaves must then be categorized as JIVE. Arnold Schoenberg said, "The further music moves away from dance, the more it dies." Who is going to BUY music that is eye candy? Music by its very nature is meant to make the body move and feel good, not tranquilize it so that extraneous, unwanted, sexual feelings can be projected to a probable consumer. America has always been a country who attempts to sell products by sex. We have never been good at selling the commodity itself like Europe, because we USE sex to try to sell other products. I assume projecting a sexual feeling on top of what formerly was country music, is an attempt to do what? I don't have the answer for that other than fock up the appropriate sexual development of our youth population. At least television media is finally hipping up to the ill effects of misogynistic, cheap, superficial fodder of broadcasted mainstream American music. In continuing my thread about jazz and ship musicians, my feeling is the neurosis created by young musicians ill-equipped with the tools of swing is not worth the cruise experience. The cruise experience is a vacation for guests. Except upon very specific cruise lines, the majority of guests are not expecting a jazz-type experience that deals with deeper issues. They are there to party. I have played upon ship after ship where "jazz sets" fail, because the guests simply don't want it. Why project this responsibility upon otherwise capable and energetic musicians to create an otherwise avoidable predicament? I have changed cruise lines twice simply, because the musicians with which I have to play don't know their styles. When you do know your styles or can swing in the style of American jazz, they turn the tables and try to ostracize YOU. You are the anomaly, not the example of what is correct. I thoroughly enjoyed changing cruise lines, because recently for the first time working ships, I wasn't responsible for dance sets. Shows are enough. When you work a full schedule of production shows, fly-on entertainers, and jazz sets, the added responsibility of making a Showband play dance music is inappropriate. What is the role and function of all the other bands that are hired?