Telling tales

witnessing and the jazz anecdote

Abstract

Anecdotal accounts of jazz are an essential ingredient in musicians' interactions and discussions of music. The deeply social nature of the music, its celebrated oral tradition and the obsession with documentation have established anecdotal stories as a primary means of communicating historical information. Indeed, jazz documentaries, publications and everyday conversations - between musicians and enthusiasts alike - usually contain a multitude of anecdotes ranging from the humorous to the mythological. This isn’t something new; from historical accounts of early jazz history to commentary on the contemporary jazz scene, anecdote is rife and the discourse is littered with informal narratives and first hand accounts. Jazz historians often explain the music away through mythological or anecdotal stories, as if the informal biographical (and often non-musical) accounts of players can unlock doors to a single, unified meaning in the music itself. I examine the role of anecdote within four broad categories: anecdote as entertainment, anecdote as appropriation, anecdote as mythology and anecdote as testimony. This list is not designed to be exhaustive but offers a number of perspectives on the differing functions of anecdote. From these perspectives, I evaluate the role of anecdote within jazz practice and examine the implications of reading established explicit ‘natural’ practices as implicit ideology.