Categorically, the wide and vast musical genre of jazz can be defined by a few things: syncopated rhythms, improvisation and a forward moving quality that accentuates specific beats known as swing. But the distinct genre, originating out of the rhythm and blues music of African American communities in late 19th and early 20th century New Orleans cannot be constrained to a few musical characteristics. At its core, Jazz is a spirit of expression, a personification of the inner freedom of the performer leaping out onto the stage. It is a way of life, a language if you will, that since its beginnings over a century ago, has spread throughout the world like wildfire.
The team at The Ringling are well aware of this. That’s why this season, as a part of The Ringling’s Art of Performance lineup, the organization is putting on a Global Jazz Series, where four different jazz musicians from around the world will grace the Historic Asolo Theater this spring. “One of the most spectacular things about jazz is that it has literally traveled around the world and come back. It’s a language that has been consumed and absorbed by almost every culture on earth,” says Elizabeth Doud, The Ringling’s Connie-Kuhlman Curator of Performance. “One of the most extraordinary things about jazz as an idiom is that it becomes modified and reinterpreted in so many different traditions throughout the world. Each time it interacts with a different culture it takes on characteristics of that culture.”
One of the musicians embodying this concept of “global jazz” is American jazz trumpeter and vocalist Amir ElSaffar, who will come to The Ringling in February to perform with the sextet of jazz and Middle Eastern musicians known as the Two Rivers Ensemble. ElSaffar, born in Chicago and based in New York City, has spent his career intertwining his Arabic roots with his love for classical music and American jazz.
What has distinguished ElSaffar as one of the leading forces in contemporary jazz, and by extension helped form the Two Rivers Ensemble as well as his 17-piece Rivers of Sound Orchestra, is how he has brought the Arabic maqam melodic system into the American jazz idiom. The name of the Two Rivers Ensemble is inspired by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, two ancient, intertwining rivers that descend from Turkey throughout the Middle East. These rivers are of incredible historical importance—the lifeblood of the Fertile Crescent region, the Tigris and Euphrates are what fueled the rise of Mesopotamian civilization. With the classically trained ElSaffar and his sextet, the two rivers symbolize a merging of cultures, musicalities and spirit. “Parallel to his work as a jazz musician, performer and composer, ElSaffar has also been deeply immersed in the study of the maqam music scale. He’s been on these parallel paths and also worked on the fusion of two musical languages that created the Two Rivers Ensemble,” says Doud. “Maqam is part of a wider Persian musical tradition that works with a lot of tonalities that aren’t present in Western music. It’s deeply based on syncopation, counter times and different concepts of melody.”
Unlike modern Western music, which is based on a twelve-tone equal-tempered musical tuning system, maqam scales in traditional Arabic music are microtonal. Where traditional European music moves up and down the scale in semitones, Arabic music in the maqam melodic system can progress in far smaller steps. While ostensibly incorporating the maqam melodic system into traditional jazz might seem like fitting a square peg into a round hole, the two music theories are actually more closely related than they might initially seem. For while the traditional maqam music moves differently, it still includes some of the central tenets to what makes jazz, jazz. Not only are syncopated rhythms and counter times popular in both genres, there is also a deep history of improvisation in maqam music. “They are very interesting parallels, because of course improvisation is one of the central tenets to jazz expression and that language. When you master an instrument, you are able to have very daft usage of that instrument and can not only work within an ensemble and follow music but you can also have these pockets where you exhibit a very wide range of creativity,” says Doud. “It’s something that is very present in the maqam music system as well.”
Like the rushing waters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, intertwining, fighting and ultimately coexisting, ElSaffar is keeping the global language of jazz alive, one trumpet note at a time.