The Brooklyn Rail

Several decades ago, along with the art historian Barbara Rose and a small staff, I helped start a magazine called the Journal of Art. I had come from a couple of other publications that leaned pretty heavily on theory, and often viewed art through the scrim of meta-textual analysis. (More than one friend asked me, when it was my job to edit this material, “So do you start with perfectly comprehensible writing and then muck it up?” To which I usually answered, “You should have read it before I got to it.”) Our idea with the Journal was to let artists talk about their work. Interestingly, they almost never approached even the outer limits of theory. Rather, they spoke practically: of trial and error, of the benefits and drawbacks of certain media, of trying to make inchoate ideas coalesce and express the artist’s intentions.

Taking this approach was eye-opening, partly for showing art as a day-to-day pursuit informed by a host of real-life issues. As a result, the magazine allowed people from different disciplines to get closer to the act of creative expression. What I found most of all, though, was that directness helps; it communicates, it demystifies. We generally don’t need an intermediary, let alone a totalizing world view, to experience an artwork. If anything, that keeps us on the outside, when what we want is access to the mystery. The best art writing provides that.

Some of the best music writing follows this template. When the Bob Dylan kind-of autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One, came out, readers were spared high-minded pronouncements on the nature of fame or the ills of society in favor of tangible materials: the books he read coming up, the records he listened to, the traditional songs he learned by the dozens, all rendered in a homey if occasionally elliptical style. When he wasn’t recounting the influences that went into his work, he took some time to recount the specifics of recording music, complete with frustrations and blind alleys and having very little idea of the value of the material being presented. Yet out of this collection of facts and recollections comes a deeper understanding of creating his art. Of course, this approach is not always a shoo-in; his follow up book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, felt oddly generic in its exploration of what makes certain music great. This seemed to follow the general Dylan pattern of unmitigated genius interspersed with inscrutable side tangents.

In the realm of music writing today, there are many approaches, but to my mind, the most successful are often the simplest. One of my favorites is the site called Do the Math, published online by the former Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson. It often features very insightful, wide-ranging, lengthy interviews with great musicians, many of whom Iverson has played with, such as his extended hangs with the drummers Tootie Heath and Billy Hart. They are fully informed by his practical experience of cobbling together a musician’s life, of gigging in a number of different bands, going on the road, and the like. These posts also dig into the reverence these musicians have for their chosen peers and teachers, and their recognition of their own place in the continuum of music.

But Iverson is also capable of something as broad as a full-on critique of his field, as in the article he wrote for The Nation, called “The End of the Music Business.” His even-handed overview finds the value in streaming services in launching or reviving careers, or simply allowing music to be broadly available, while decrying aspects of the odd spoiled-for-choice atmosphere it creates, including the obscure system of payments for musicians. He has a gift for making complex subjects easier to consider and follow. He also has an endearing weakness for trashy movies and crime fiction.

Even when Iverson goes deep into the weeds, providing a full breakdown of a musical score, he can sound deceptively casual doing so. Analyzing a classic track by Joe Henderson, he wrote:

There are no conventional cadences in “Inner Urge.” The harmony just goes. The last chord is G major, but nobody would say that “Inner Urge” is in the key of G. I suspect it is this very unresolved quality that has made “Inner Urge” a favorite of jazz students. One never has to risk a resolution that feels square; instead, one is suspended in perpetual hipness.

Iverson is a genuine polymath, and the same free-roving intelligence that defines his playing is evident in his writing. Another person with this sort of range and genuine fascination with seemingly everything is the guitarist Joel Harrison. He evinces a deep commitment to exploring new directions for his instrument, and is the founder and director of the Alternative Guitar Summit, which regularly hosts the likes of Nels Cline, Mary Halvorson, and Julian Lage at its gatherings. His own playing takes him in a number of different directions, and he maintains an active practice of scoring films and creating classical pieces as well. You can hear a range of these styles, as well as the delicacy and tensile strength of his approach, in his superb duet with guitarist Anthony Pirog on a recent project called the Richmond Sessions, live studio recordings made at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and available to stream on YouTube.

On top of all that, later this year Harrison is releasing a book called Pity the Genius (Cymbal Press), which purports to be “a journey through American guitar music in 33 tracks.” His recent essay on Western swing guitarist Jimmy Wyble, with whom he took lessons, draws on personal experience to create a memorable portrait of a lesser-sung figure, and himself:

I studied with Jimmy for two years in LA. Mild-mannered, bespectacled, as gentle a human being as one could fine, Jimmy tried to get some shape in my playing. I knew little about jazz, less about country, quite a bit about rock, and though I might be a cosmic singer-songwriter with a “jazz influence.” Yikes. He patiently encouraged me to learn Charlie Christian licks, tried to get me to read better, and supported my roots as a classical player. He was friendly, soft-spoken… This sensitive soul wasn’t built for life on the road. And so he became one of those unheralded musicians who work for a salary behind the scenes and get to sleep in their own bed every night. I can still see him smiling as I walked into his Glendale studio, graying hair, slightly stooped, playing a big box Gibson. Do any of us understand how we find each other in life? He had what I needed, and I took as much as I could and left way more on the table.

Writing about music is an opportunity to expand a listener’s horizons. It seems to work best when the writer respects the sense of direct connection and communication that the art form inspires. I try to remember that when I’m writing my own words on music: adding context and lived observations is helpful, but the illumination we seek is already right there in the source material.