It is surely no exaggeration to say that the most important musical event of the twentieth century is the encounter between African and European musical culture. This encounter first took place in the countries of North and South America, where people of African and European descent live together. It was there that jazz and the various South American musical styles came into being, and from them the various forms of rock and pop music that are now heard all over the world.
The European understanding of music is shaped by highly developed harmony and melody. Pieces of music are written down in notes and scores. This way of working made possible the development of very different complex forms, such as the fugue, the sonata and twelve-tone technique, but it prevents a piece fixed in this way from being changed through improvisation. Music, or art in general, is very much regarded as a value in itself. It is not primarily addressed to a particular audience, and in its highest form it has no social function either. There is a strong expectation that the musician or composer will keep coming up with new and novel compositions – that he will be “creative”.
In African music, rhythm is the dominant element. A piece of music arises from the layering of different rhythms that complement one another to form a complex web. Each player can change the overall sound by changing his rhythmic pattern, and steer the development of the music in a new direction. Instead of a dramatically shaped formal course, what emerges is an epic structure that keeps on continuing and can extend over long stretches of time. Having time is no problem for Africans! In music structured like this it is impossible to notate or repeat a piece. Consequently there is also no role for the composer, who is so important in Europe. African music is closely bound up with everyday culture; it always relates to the village and to events in the village. Festivals, religious rituals, healing processes and communal work are linked with music and with particular pieces. (In Europe we still know this from church music, where the events of the year also have their own songs and chants.) When Africans judge music, what matters first of all is that it fits a particular situation and is well played. Novelty and creativity are not exactly forbidden, but nor are they expected.
In jazz, elements of both musical cultures came together. From Europe it borrowed functional harmony and most of its instruments. Very soon many jazz musicians also took up the technique of setting down compositions in score. From the African tradition come the interest in rhythm, the very voice-like ideal of sound, and the willingness to leave the music to the flow of improvisation. As in Europe, jazz musicians see themselves as autonomous artists, while at the same time, because of the African tradition, they seek contact with the audience and often attune their music to the place where they are playing. The astonishing thing is that in jazz both sources have combined into a harmonious whole that only partly resembles its two “parents” and once again follows laws of development entirely its own.
The varying balance of European and African elements has fertilised the stylistic development of jazz and given rise to a multitude of different styles. While orchestral works such as Gil Evans’s “Miles Ahead” lean very closely on the European form of the solo concerto, the late work of Miles Davis, for example, is built, as in African music, from many overlapping layers. The tension between the two opposite poles from which jazz arose is what gives this music its dynamism and enables it to develop further in ways that cannot yet be foreseen.
Of course no one can know how music will sound in fifty or a hundred years. But I consider the encounter of African and European musical culture described above to be irreversible. It is unthinkable to me that European musicians, above all the creative and talented among them, will ever again do without the possibilities opened up to them by improvisation, the intensity of rhythm and individual tone production. For all my respect for the masterpieces of European classical music and for some of the efforts of the composers of “New Music”, in my eyes these are achievements of a historical epoch that has in reality already passed.