National Taiwan Normal University
Graduate Institute of Ethnomusicology
Research and Preservation Group
Master’s Thesis
An Inquiry Into the Taipei Jazz Scene
with Comparisons to Shanghai and Tokyo
Advisors: Professors Wen-Pin Hope Lee & Cheng-Yu Lee
Student: Jeffrey Y. Kao
July 31, 2017
ABSTRACT
Jazz is a modern musical language that beats to its own rhythm. This paper will explore how this
Western musical genre has been assimilated and/or adapted in major cities in East Asia, with a focus on Taipei and Shanghai and Tokyo as comparison points. I will examine the socio- historical development of jazz music in each city through the impact of cultural imperialism and nationalism, the development of modernism, and as soundscapes. By gathering data from modern-day case studies and performing personal interviews and surveys in the search for authenticity, I will describe the current state of jazz music in Taipei and make recommendations for future promotion.
Keywords: jazz, Taipei, Shanghai, Tokyo, venues, soundscapes, authenticity, nationalism, cultural imperialism, modernism
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES ...... iii
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1
II. BACKGROUND, MOTIVATION, AND RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ...... 4 Background Motivation Research Methodology
III. HISTORICAL BACKGROUNDS ...... 9 Introduction Shanghai Tokyo Taipei
IV. TAIPEI’S INTERNAL FACTORS ...... 24 Educational Factors Economic Factors Cultural Factors
V. CASE STUDIES ...... 31 Introduction Shanghai: Heyday Tokyo: Body & Soul Taipei: Blue Note Taipei: Sappho Taipei: Alchemy Conclusion
VI. SURVEYS ...... 44 Introduction Survey Questions Results Conclusion
VII. CONCLUSION ...... 55
APPENDICES ...... 57 Appendix A: Interview with Wei-sheng Lin Appendix B: E-mail correspondence with Wei-sheng Lin
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 60
ii LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 1: Stage of Shanghai’s Heyday ...... 32 Fig. 2: Stage of Tokyo’s Body & Soul ...... 34 Fig. 3: Stage of Taipei’s Blue Note ...... 36 Fig. 4: Stage of Taipei’s Sappho Live ...... 38 Fig. 5: Stage of Taipei’s Alchemy ...... 40 Fig. 6: Survey Q1 results ...... 49 Fig. 7: Survey Q2 results ...... 49 Fig. 8: Survey Q3 results ...... 50 Fig. 9: Survey Q4 results ...... 51 Fig. 10: Survey Q5 results ...... 52 Fig. 11: Survey Q6 results ...... 53
iii CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
“If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.” Louis Armstrong, American jazz trumpeter and singer, with only a few words, pointed out the vagueness in defining the jazz idiom, which was only beginning its development as a musical genre during his heyday. Collier defines jazz as “a music created mainly by African-Americans in the early 20th century through an amalgamation of elements drawn from European-American and tribal African musics,”1 including African slave traditions and church spirituals, which resulted in its trademark improvisation and call-and-response patterns. However, what exactly constitutes modern-day jazz is difficult to define.
Tucker and Jackson suggest another definition of jazz that’s based on various factors:
1) a musical tradition rooted in performing conventions that were introduced and developed early in the 20th century by African Americans; 2) a set of attitudes and assumptions brought to music-making, chief among them the notion of performance as a fluid creative process involving improvisation; and 3) a style characterized by syncopation, melodic and harmonic elements derived from the blues, cyclical formal structures and a supple rhythmic approach to phrasing known as swing.2
What’s notable in this definition, compared to the previous one, is the overlap in denoting an
African American tradition and the confluence of various elements to create a new genre.
Jazz has also fused together with previously separate genres, resulting in the emergence of sub-
1. James Lincoln Collier, "Jazz (i)," The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Oxford Music Online, accessed April 8, 2014, http://0- www.oxfordmusiconline.com.opac.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/subscriber/article/grove/music/J223800.
2. Mark Tucker and Travis A. Jackson, "Jazz," Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, accessed April 8, 2014, http://0- www.oxfordmusiconline.com.opac.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/subscriber/article/grove/music/45011.
1 genres such as acid jazz, Afro-Cuban, bebop, free jazz, and ska, to name a few.
Some also view jazz as belonging to genres such as folk, popular (“pop”), and sometimes art music. Others even viewed jazz as a false art form. Philosopher-cum-musicologist Theodor
Adorno viewed jazz as too commercial and pleasant-sounding, as well as exceedingly standardized, to the point that the structure of the music (the “whole”) was always predictable and thus unexceptional. He further alleged that jazz musicians suffered a “false pretense,” or
“pseudo-individualism,” that when they improvised they believed they were creating new material, when in fact they were building off of existing structure and merely substituting new notes by “circumscribing the same underlying harmonic functions.”3
Yet others believe that improvisation, the key to jazz music, is beneficial to musicians in exercising the brain. Educator David Beckstead believes that we exercise the right side of the brain, in contrast to the more commonly used left side when performing memorized passages, which is more commonly associated with multitasking.4 This allows jazz musicians to use the entire brain while performing. Professors of Music Education Lee Higgins and Roger Mantie also see improvisation as beneficial in exercising creative ability and providing experience for musicians. More specifically, they see the former through an increase in musicianship skills and exposure to musical contexts, and the latter through musicians’ social interactions and exercise of creativity in group environments. Higgins and Mantie also quote jazz pianist Vijay Iyer,
3. Theodor W. Adorno, “On Popular Music,” Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, vol. 9 (1941): para. 24, accessed 28 Apr. 2017, http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/SWA/On_popular_music_1.shtml.
4. David Beckstead, “Improvisation: Thinking and Playing Music,” Music Educators Journal 99, no. 3 (2013): 70.
2 “Because life itself is improvisatory in nature, there is really ‘no difference between human experience and the act of improvisation.’”5
Though improvisation is a symbol of jazz music, different cultures attach varying values to the concept, with some believing in following music scores to the tee, while others have never seen scores before and rely on rough musical frameworks to develop their own sense of music.
Across the world, in dissimilar regions and countries and reflecting various factors, ranging from cross-cultural exposure to societal traditions of musical performance, jazz takes on new forms and meanings for different people.
5. Lee Higgins and Roger Mantie, “Improvisation as Ability, Culture, and Experience,” Music Educators Journal 100, no. 2 (2013): 41.
3 CHAPTER TWO
BACKGROUND, MOTIVATION, AND RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Background
I’m a Taiwanese-American, born and raised in the United States but have lived in Taipei for five years. I’m also a musician with a background in piano and voice. In the past, I’ve explored – and still practice – classical music but have also previously dabbled in jazz, performing with a few jazz choirs and recording a studio album. As a musical genre with its own set of rules, even with improvisation, jazz is a different language that one must learn to “speak.”
While music is a natural gift for some, fundamentals do assist with the learning process; for instance, with jazz, this may include performance experience with 12-bar blues and blues scales.
I have also immersed myself in Chinese music, specifically playing instruments such as the guzheng and pipa and used jianpu (numbered musical notation) in rehearsal and performance. These varying experiences have sparked in me a curiosity as to how musicians can create opportunities for blending and synthesizing genres and techniques to innovate new music.
Motivation
With my mixed cultural background, I’m curious about the interplay of Western music and Eastern societies. More specifically, I want to understand the degree to which societies assimilate and/or adapt Western music and what factors, both internal and external, contribute to its outcomes in performance styles. Simultaneously, I realize that there is a place for exposure to foreign music within every society, so I’m also curious as to how one’s background may influence his or her degree of acceptance of foreign music.
4 I’m additionally concerned with Taipei’s cultural sector; I feel that it’s stagnant and underdeveloped and want to comprehend what external factors contribute to these impressions. I want to understand if the jazz idiom is something that is welcomed by the music community and to what extent; this will help me understand if there’s room for promotion and support to bring jazz music to a higher level of audience attendance and participation.
Research Methodology
As jazz music has a shorter history than so-called “classical” music, less traditional academic literature is proportionally available. The canon of jazz-related literature is then limited to the 19th through the 21st century, as per jazz’s timeline of existence, and is decidedly more modern. Thus, research requires a more atypical style that does not just rely on conventional academic sources, like journals and books, but also on modern promotional tools, such as newspaper advertisements and websites/blogs.
Jazz is decidedly a Western-based musical idiom, as previously noted. It is also synonymous with and representational of modernity, as it is a newer genre, so as Eastern societies have become increasingly more Westernized, I want to assess how much they embrace
Western modernity in its intersection with Eastern traditionalism.
My research will focus primarily on Taipei as one of these Eastern societies. As a current resident, I’m interested in answering the questions as to why Taipei exists in its current state, one of confusion as to what degree it retains Eastern ideals but also embraces those of the West. I have also specifically selected Shanghai and Tokyo, which are highly populated cities in the Asia region that have likewise collided historically with Western influences. All these cities have correspondingly dealt with colonization to some degree.
5 In reviewing current literature, scholarly-written material – that is, by those with academic credentials – regarding modern-day jazz in Taiwan, let alone Taipei, is fairly lacking; additionally, accessible material is mostly in Chinese. As a researcher whose mother language is
English and secondary is Chinese, this requires extra effort to sift through research.
To analyze the current status of jazz in Taipei, I will examine Taipei vis-à-vis Shanghai and Tokyo from a socio-historical perspective. However, I do not seek to give a complete account of jazz music in each city, nor to name every important artist; instead, my goal is to present brief snapshots in time, particularly during the 20th and 21st centuries, as they relate to society. I will survey spaces and soundscapes within these cities, for they are locales for the intersection of people and music, and determine the degree as to which each community embraces jazz music. I will additionally dissect how macro-level forces, governmental and societal, impact these micro-level spaces. This top-to-bottom approach, or cause-and-effect approach, will better explain the status quo; a bottom-to-top approach that focuses on details would be futile, as we would attempt to analyze the effects first (the status quo of jazz music) without knowing their root causes.
I will implement both qualitative and quantitative measures. Both are essential to providing a complete picture of the Taipei jazz scene. Researchers Fusch and Ness call attention to the necessity of utilizing both types in quality research: “The easiest way to differentiate between rich and thick data is to think of rich as quality and thick as quantity. Thick data is a lot of data; rich data is many-layered, intricate, detailed, nuanced, and more. One can have a lot of
6 thick data that is not rich; conversely, one can have rich data but not a lot of it. The trick, if you will, is to have both.”6
The former will come from first understanding the historical and sociological backgrounds of the selected cities before analyzing jazz music spaces as case studies, using an observer-participant perspective to record observations for comparison and contrast. This entails assuming the role of an audience member and calling upon my own experiences as a musician to evaluate soundscapes as social phenomena, noting details about each setting, as well as audience behavior and reaction to the music. I will also ask musicians about their impressions, so as to hear performer perspectives. Since the listener experience cannot be qualified by mere statistics, these subjective impressions and observations will confirm or reject specific hypotheses regarding Taipei’s jazz scene.
I will derive quantitative measures from researching statistics about performances in
Taipei, gauging the amount of promotion and audience participation through performance and attendance numbers. I will further survey Taipei residents to understand their conceptions about jazz music in Taipei, injecting concrete data into my research to respond to my theories. In this regard, a common rule of thumb is n > 30 for the population sample size, which should approximate a normal distribution. However, researchers vary on what exact number is appropriate for performing quality research, as each person’s research goal is influenced by disparate factors. Researchers Baker and Edwards summarize various other researchers and methodologists’ recommendations: “Adler and Adler advise graduate students to sample between
12 and 60, with 30 being the mean; and Ragin suggests that a glib answer is ‘20 for an M.A.
6. Patricia I. Fusch and Lawrence R. Ness, “Are We There Yet? Data Saturation in Qualitative Research,” The Qualitative Report 20, no. 9 (2015): 1409, accessed July 20, 2017, http://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol20/iss9/3.
7 thesis and 50 for a Ph.D. dissertation.’”7 Science and mathematics professor Ali Delice further states, “Although sample size between 30 and 500…is generally sufficient for many researchers,
8 the decision on the size should reflect the quality of the sample in this wide interval.” With a range of numbers given for sample sizes, I will aim for at least 50 responses, so as to get a picture of the Taipei jazz scene that is as complete and unbiased as possible.
7. Sarah Elsie Baker and Rosalind Edwards, “How Many Qualitative Interviews is Enough? Expert Voices and Early Career Reflections on Sampling” (paper, National Centre for Research Methods, Southampton, England, 2012): 5, accessed August 1, 2017, http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/2273/4/how_many_interviews.pdf.
8. Ali Delice, “The Sampling Issues in Quantitative Research,” Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice 10, no. 4 (2010): 2008.
8 CHAPTER THREE
HISTORICAL BACKGROUNDS
Introduction
To fully fathom Taipei’s jazz scene, we need to first survey Taipei’s historical background from sociological and ethnomusicological perspectives to see how external and internal forces shaped its current state. Because Taiwan’s exposure to and development of the jazz genre is more compact than in other Asian countries, we can first examine the reception of jazz elsewhere in Asia as a baseline before delving into the extent of Taiwanese reactions. Since
Taipei is a major city in the East Asia region, as mentioned previously, the geographically adjacent and major cities of Shanghai and Tokyo will serve as comparison points. Through this foundational background, we can better trace Taiwan’s historical development and understand how external and internal factors influenced the development of jazz.
American military brought jazz music to both Shanghai and Tokyo. Each city places a distinctive value on “authenticity,” which E. Taylor Atkins, history professor at Northern Illinois
University and author of Blue Nippon, defines as “preserving the social contexts of performances, original performance practices, and the spiritual and cultural meanings of music – in other words, accurately representing unfamiliar ‘world musics’ in a manner faithful to their original contexts.”9 Adaptation or assimilation is based on each city’s degree of authenticity. As jazz is an American musical idiom, we can use the lens of authenticity to assess a singular culture’s replication of jazz compared to its original state. Atkins continues that “an artist must possess special qualities – educational background, life experience, ethnic heritage, motivations,
9. E. Taylor Atkins, Blue Nippon (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001): 23.
9 or artistic vision – which confer upon the artist the right not only to work unchallenged in a particular medium, but to establish the standard by which all others working in that medium will be judged.”10
My goal is to see the impact of Eastern cultures and Western music and what effects they generate in the realm of jazz music. What I found is that we can analyze the socio-historical development of jazz through three points of analysis:
1) how colonialism may have influenced it, and any resulting nationalist responses;
2) as a symbol of modernism;
3) in specific soundscapes.
Shanghai
“The American journalist Burnet Hershey claimed in 1922 that ‘Shanghai without jazz…would not be Shanghai. Jazz is the very essence of its existence.”11 Shanghai is a cosmopolitan city in China and the largest metropolis in the world, with a booming population that embraces both Eastern and Western influences. American, British, French, and Japanese concessions post-Opium War (1839-1842) and subsequent colonialism contributed to Shanghai’s sizeable population and comingling community. Andrew Jones, professor of Chinese at
University of California, Berkeley and author of Yellow Music, describes Shanghai as “a place to which intellectuals, revolutionaries and dreamers from all over China went to make a new modern culture. It was the center of publishing, media and the record industry. It was China’s
10. Ibid., 24.
11. Joys Hoi Yan Cheung, “Chinese Music and Translated Modernity in Shanghai, 1918- 1937” (Ph.D diss., University of Michigan, 2008): 127.
10 first Hollywood .”12 The city embraced the foreign as “normal” during this age, and there were seemingly no racial boundaries.
This makes the presence of Buck Clayton in Shanghai, notable African-American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and arranger, more remarkable. First visiting in 1935, he felt his time in Shanghai was marked with “the sort of respect and recognition that had been denied him in his native country because of his color.”13 He was a celebrity in Shanghai, not just due to the strength of the American dollar relative to the local currency, but because he, according to sociologist James Farrer and historian Andrew David Field, represented “the power and allure of
‘authentic’ American jazz performed by musicians of African heritage.”14 In this foreign setting,
Clayton enjoyed privilege not afforded to him in his home country and due to his exemplification of authenticity in the jazz genre.
Ironically, Clayton and his band mates would still encounter oppression abroad not by local Chinese – or even other immigrants – but rather from American marines. On one occasion in 1935, soldiers “hurled bricks at Clayton and his sidemen. A melee ensued, from which the musicians emerged more or less victorious, if not unscathed.”15 Jones also notes the familiarity in this colonial setting, like others, where the foreigners (the Americans) would oppress the natives
(the Chinese), to the extent that Clayton noted, “…When it was all over the Chinese onlookers treated us like we had done something they had always wanted to do and followed us all the way
12. Marlon Bishop, “Andrew Jones on the Story of Shanghai Jazz,” Afropop Worldwide, accessed April 28, 2017, http://www.afropop.org/2415/andrew-jones-on-the-story-of-shanghai- jazz.
13. Andrew Jones, Yellow Music (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001): 1.
14. James Farrer and Andrew David Field, Shanghai Nightscapes: A Nocturnal Biography of a Global City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015): 124.
15. Jones, 4.
11 home cheering us like a winning football team.”16 Thus, American imperialism was ever-present not only against locals but even American minorities in a foreign land.
Shanghai could also be described by its “semi-colonalism,” which literary scholar and
UCLA professor Shu-mei Shih describes as highlighting the “fractured, informal, and indirect character of colonialism, as well as its multi-layeredness.”17 As colonialism had resulted in disparate societies in Shanghai, it also created an environment where one was free to experiment with different styles and uphold individual values. The Chinese, for instance, were free to tinker with Western rhythms while still incorporating traditional melodies, without fear of persecution from others, including the government.
After the establishment of the post-Qing Dynasty Republic of China in the 1910s, China experienced new music forms, as musicians came to Shanghai from America to entertain foreign audiences in nightclubs and ballrooms. Jazz music, however, was synonymous with modern dance music; thus, Chinese crowds unfamiliar and uncomfortable with public dancing were less keen to this musical genre. Instead, most elite Chinese would visit venues such as teahouses to be entertained by escorts. However, due to artists such as Whitey Smith incorporating Chinese melodies into their music, music that originally seemed “foreign” began to become familiar to
Chinese audiences, who then began to visit these jazz halls. Most well known for popularizing jazz music is educator-cum-composer Li Jinhui, who created “a hybrid genre of American jazz,
Hollywood film music, and Chinese folk music.”18 His music, often to referred to as the earliest form of China’s popular music, allowed jazz music to become mainstream and, therefore,
16. Ibid., 5.
17. Cheung, 68.
18. Jones, 6.
12 normal. “Between 1927 and 1936, Li pioneered a new and hugely influential brand of Sinified jazz music; recorded literally hundreds of “modern songs” for companies like Pathé-EMI, RCA-
Victor, and Great China, composed screen songs for fifteen popular entertainment films, and even led the first all-Chinese jazz big band at an upscale nightclub.”19 Critics, most notably in the government, deemed Li’s music as “yellow” music, or “pornographic,” for its themes of love, leading to political persecution. Yet in the 1930s and 40s, due to his association with artists like
Clayton and the invention of the gramophone disseminating his music, jazz melodies still remained familiar to the general public. His popular music was consequently the precursor for modern popular music in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
“Entering a jazz cabaret was…a novel experience for Chinese customers, one that involved transporting oneself temporarily out of China and into a transnational cultural space.”20
The first set of Chinese-run cabarets geared towards Chinese patrons opened in 1928, allowing jazz to become one with the city, a symbol of modernity. During the 1930s and 40s, dance halls such as the Paramount Ballroom, Ciro’s Nightclub, Canidrome Ballroom, and Metropole
Gardens Ballroom were popular. In these soundscapes, foreign and locals mixed, and men and women were not bound to specific Chinese cultural boundaries. Becoming a hostess was even a prized position; women would compete for these positions, a far cry from being taxi-dance girls, due to the publicity and prestige that they entailed. Shanghai was so notable that Japanese jazz musicians would venture there to learn their trade, so much that “a sojourn in Shanghai was a badge of authenticity.”21
19. Ibid., 73.
20. Farrer and Field, 18.
21. Ibid., 128.
13 Post -World War II, amongst the rise of Communism, Mao Zedong’s rein, and the
Cultural Revolution, the government continually propagated that jazz music was yellow music, leading to the gradual closure of jazz venues. The government sped this process along by raising taxes on businesses and discontinuing licensing of dance hostesses. Su Zheng, music professor at
Wesleyan University, states that jazz was contrary to nationalism, for it was “a symbol of
American imperialism, colonial legacy and bourgeoisie decadence.”22 Accordingly, the popularity of jazz music waned, as people at most would participate in private dance parties or government-sponsored events; their only other encounters would be from listening to recordings and watching films.
The death of Mao in 1976 signaled a new freedom and nostalgia for the past jazz era.
From the 1980s through the 2000s, Shanghai began to rebuild its reputation in the jazz world.
“By the 2000s, Shanghai had reemerged as China’s jazz capital, though no longer the music capital of Asia. Its jazz community also was much smaller than the mostly indigenous scene in
Tokyo.”23 Farrer and Field, in 2004, counted forty-six jazz-themed venues,24 which included venues such as the House of Blues and Jazz and the Cotton Club, as well as the reopening of the
Peace Hotel, which was popular in the 1920s, signaling a return to the past and creation of new soundscapes.
22. Su Zheng, Claiming Diaspora (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011): 158.
23. Farrer and Field, 149.
24. Ibid., 117.
14 Tokyo
Ethnomusicologist David Novak sees Japan as a “nation that listened to sounds from outside.”25 As early as the 19th century, government-sponsored schools and their performing troupes first embraced Western music. Atkins states that the Meiji government utilized Western music in schools specifically “to demonstrate Japan’s ‘civilization and enlightenment,’ and to achieve cultural parity with the Western imperialist powers.”26 Hence, the government did not see Western music for its uniqueness and contribution to society but rather as a show of cultural prowess; educated Japanese would have a sense of pride that they were multitalented and expert in both Western and Japanese music, while Westerners would only have their own music as their specialty. The Japanese held to nationalist ideals; creating a new form of national music that embraced both Western and Japanese concepts “was a necessary accoutrement to the modern state.”27
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Western music, including jazz (jazu), first came to Japan through the influence of visitors to Japan, including military forces and missionaries.
Filipino bands also furthered the spread of jazz music, especially in the port cities of Osaka and
Kobe, and, in tandem with jazz music, dance halls sprung up, like in Shanghai. Dance halls became the gathering places for social dance, where musician and performer could meet; since jazz was participatory, “the spontaneous interaction between performer and listener (or dancer)
25. David Novak, “2·5×6 Metres of Space: Japanese Music Coffeehouses and Experimental Practices of Listening,” Popular Music 27, no. 1 (2008): 22.
26. Atkins, 50.
27. Alison Tokita, “Bi-musicality in Modern Japanese Culture,” International Journal of Bilingualism 18, no. 2 (2012): 165.
15 contribu ted to the shape of the music.”28 By the 20th century, the popularity of social dance had increased to the point that it was necessary for couples to learn dance steps to be considered
“modern.”29
Jazz in the 1920s not only referred to the post-World War I American popular culture that infiltrated Japanese society but also “connoted a new set of social mores, fashions, gender relations, and consumer practices otherwise known as ‘modernism’ (modanizumu).”30 Edgar W.
Pope, professor at Aichi Preferectural University in Aichi, Japan, specifies that jazu songu (jazz song), was used as an overarching “general term for American or American-style popular songs,” and that jazz music as a whole signified “American-style modernity” while providing a framework for “exoticism” that might appear through, for example, Arabian and Cuban themes.31 In essence, jazz was a fresh genre that, although pushed by the government to prove their cultural parity vis-à-vis Western nations, was both an adapted and nationalized music form.
Although jazz music and social dance first took off in Osaka, in the late 1920s, Tokyo, rebuilding after the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake, also began to open new commercial dance halls, some which were mere copies or branches of those in Osaka. Musicians found work here, or in one of the five major recording studio orchestras, or even “so-called ‘symphonic jazz’ orchestras that performed for radio broadcasts, movie soundtracks, and theatrical revues.”32
Consequently, musicians had a variety of job opportunities available to them; if an opportunity
28. Atkins, 56.
29. Ibid., 54.
30. Ibid., 47.
31. Edgar W. Pope, “Imported Others: American Influences and Exoticism in Interwar Popular Music,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 13, no. 4 (2012): 510.
32. Atkins, 77.
16 was unstable or undesirable, they were able to change jobs quickly. Artists of this time, such as
Fumio Nanri and Yosuke Yamashita, were not only famous in Japan but also internationally.
The diffusion of jazz music ensued, like in Shanghai, through audio recordings and social spaces, which included dance halls and coffeehouses. By Japanese audiences interacting with music, they created new and fresh soundscapes, giving rise to a new culture and soundscapes that had not existed previously in Japan. Specifically, these coffeehouses for music appreciation, jazu kissa, existed as “hideaways where jazz lovers could relax, hear new records and learn about trends like free jazz from others who knew the music well”; later on, when jazz was “allied with
Japanese university counterculture, [they] became organizing centers for the student protests that rocked Japan,” writer Tom Downey notes.33 Even post-World War II, when radio and recordings were both readily available to consumers, “the coffeehouse remained the most important place to study and acquire a jazz vocabulary.”34 They were regarded as the “first and foremost places of music appreciation…a specialized secret than a general public meeting place.”35 Even today, amidst the crammed and small shops, bars, and restaurants in Tokyo, kissa still exist as secluded listening areas.
The 1930s was a time of ultra-nationalism in Japan. As Japanese military forces conquered Manchuria and other parts of China, even parts of French Indochina in 1940, they sought to expand their spheres of influence and, thus, their access to resources. Concurrently, while the world saw Westernization as a positive influence, Japanese advocates wanted restoration of a pure Japanese society and a purge of Western influences. An example of
33. Tom Downey, “Re-Made in Japan,” Smithsonian (April 2014): para. 14-15.
34. Atkins, 75.
35. Novak, 17.
17 Westernization was the dance hall, and Tokyo police began to attempt to shut down smaller dance halls and restrict new business permits early in this decade. Though jazz and its dancing were not outright subversive, the government viewed jazz as a “modern” art form through political lenses and applied anti-American sentiments in mandating a “‘total jazz ban’ (settai jazu kinshi).”36 Wartime jazz was then relegated to “‘light music’ (keiongaku) or ‘salon music’ (saron myūjikku) that would satisfy state censors, cultural nationalists, audiences starved for diversion, and jazz musicians who had traditionally merely replicated the latest American trends.”37 NHK,
Japan’s national public broadcasting organization, became the only place to legally play this watered-down form of jazz.38
New jazz resurfaced post-World War II, as American troops stationed in Japan longed to hear music of their homeland. Ironically, the Japanese government that had severely obstructed jazz’s promotion previously was now its publicist, merely a week after surrendering to the
Americans. The government created the Japanese Recreation and Amusement Association
(RAA), which “established a nationwide network of cabarets, dance halls, beer halls, and nightclubs with live musical entertainment for the exclusive use of occupation forces.”39 This created the first “Jazz Boom,” ushering in “a rash of jazz coffeehouse (jazu kissa) openings, the resuscitation of social dancing, and the music’s heightened visibility in movies, radio, television, stage productions, and concert halls.”40
36. Atkins, 128.
37. Ibid., 131.
38. Ibid., 158.
39. Ibid., 175.
40. Ibid., 184-185.
18 “Japanese jazz” in the 1960s and 1970s embraced neo-nationalist sensibilities and desire for authenticity in creating Japan’s own art form, yet this new avant-garde jazz form was quite distinct from the American jazz idiom. Sadao Watanabe, prominent saxophonist of the time, reinforced the vagueness and opaqueness of “Japanese jazz,” as he “repeatedly faulted Japanese performers for a poor ‘rhythmic sense’ resulting in a ‘non-swinging Japanese jazz.”41 What is curious about Japan’s jazz community is that even though musicians have reinvented jazz to make it their own, a source of national identity, Atkins claims that there is still “a consistent ambivalence about the authenticity of its own jazz expressions,” even as they try to interpret and attempt “to replicate the exact sounds of American jazz as well as the social and cultural contexts.”42 This difficulty of trying to invent their own sound is exemplified by musicians’ visits to Shanghai in the 1940s to learn more about the jazz idiom. Shanghai was not America by any means, nor did it provide truly “authentic” jazz, but yet it provided a stepping-stone, a sense of initiation, so that Tokyo musicians could return home reinvigorated.
A 2011 poll of 268 Japanese college students revealed that jazz was among the top five favorite music genres, besting rap, opera, and even enka, but placing lower than pop, rock, and classical. Further analysis showed correlation between jazz appreciation and personality traits: liking jazz was associated with “aesthetic appreciation, creativity, and unconventionality.”43
Perhaps in Japan, only certain audiences appreciate jazz music, even with the country’s own spin on the genre.
41. Ibid., 244.
42. Ibid., 11-12.
43. R.A Brown, “Music Preferences and Personality Among Japanese University Students,” International Journal of Psychology 47, no. 2 (2012): 264.
19 Taipei
What makes Taiwan especially particular is its history of being colonized, most notably by the Dutch in the 17th century as a Pacific trading port and later by the Japanese in the late-19th and early 20th centuries. Consequently, Taiwan has accumulated a variety of influences, Dutch,
Japanese, and, of course, Chinese, adding to its rich aboriginal history. As sociologists Yi-Ping
Shih and Cheng-Hang Chang point out, “Local people’s identity and subjectivity are never pure transcendental existence but mixed with the residue of colonial experiences.”44 The Taiwanese truly have a rich but complicated history from which they have shaped their experiences.
Post-World War II, as the Nationalists took over Taiwan and established the Republic of
China in 1949, with Taipei as state capital, they ushered in a new age of developments, especially in the music world. Taiwanese first encountered the jazz genre from external influences, all of which helped set the stage for its own development of jazz. As early as the
1940s, Japanese teachers were already arranging American military songs for orchestra and choir, exposing Taiwanese audiences to jazz-influenced music. The key to Taiwanese development of the jazz idiom comes from a history of mentorship and lacks creativity or its own unique spin, or even a nationalist form as response to cultural imperialism.
We can separate the brief history of jazz in Taiwan into three periods, the early stage
(1949-1979), post-dissolution of American diplomatic relations (1980-1987), and its renaissance from 1988 onward. During the early stage, both Filipino and American military bands arrived in
Taipei in 1952 and August 1955, respectively. Audiences were zealous for the never-before- heard Latin style of the Filipino bands, invited by the Taiwan-homegrown Kupa Orchestra, many
44. Yi-Ping Shih and Cheng-Heng Chang, “The Sweet and the Bitter of Drips: Modernity, Postcoloniality, and Coffee Culture in Taiwan,” Cultural Studies - Critical Methodologies (CSCM) 10, no. 6 (2010): 447.
20 of which had first traveled to and performed in Shanghai. American military bands then arrived as a result of the December 1954 signature of the US-Taiwan Mutual Defense Pact and debuted in Zhongshan Hall. Due to the high cost of attending these concerts, American bands would sometimes put on public concerts to invite the Taiwanese into the world of jazz music. In 1959,
Jack Teagarden and his six-man band visited and exposed the Taiwanese to another form of jazz music in Dixieland, also taking place at Zhongshan Hall.
Though under military rule, new hotels, dance halls, and nightclubs sprung up in the
1960s and 1970s in tandem with the growth of the Taiwanese economy, and as the general population gradually increased their disposable incomes, they also had more opportunities to attend concerts and appreciate new music. Musicians also were enthusiastic to perform jazz, with the aforementioned Kupa Orchestra founded in 1952 and making their residence at the
Ambassador Hotel when it opened in 1964. Big band music, which incorporated rumba and cha- cha rhythms, became a commonly heard jazz genre during this period, which added to audiences’ fresh excitement for bebop. Taiwan Television Enterprise, Ltd., colloquially known as TTV, was established in 1962, and from 1963 to 1966 highly publicized jazz music by broadcasting homeland jazz performances from 7 to 7:30 PM daily on its show “New Sounds of Jazz,” totaling 162 episodes during its run. Also notable during this era was composer Kuiran Li, who established the Taipei Contemporary Jazz Association in 1964, encouraging research and discourse in the jazz genre, and Heishan Di, who not only was a pupil of Li but also the first
Chinese accepted into the Berklee School of Music in 1969, majoring in jazz composition and guitar performance, and later returning to Taiwan to write teaching materials and found the
Taipei Youth Orchestra in 1978.
21 1979 marked the end of official relations between Taiwan and the U.S., as the latter switched its diplomacy and official relations to China. This led to the withdrawal of American military from Taiwan but had the additional effect of removing the regular clientele of hotel dance clubs and nightclubs. Big band musicians immediately lost their jobs, except those that belonged to the bands of three major television stations. As a result, without opportunities to come into contact with jazz as before, audiences turned their musical ears towards rock and roll and campus folk songs. Without a consistent influx of foreign musicians to perform and thus teach and mentor local musicians, jazz began a steady decline.
But all was not lost. “Father Tsai” founded Blue Note in 1976, playing his own records and thus creating an atmosphere similar to the Japanese kissa. Dizzy Jazz Band was established as an eight-man combo in 1981 and gave its first performance on June 6, 1983 at Shih Chien
Hall. From then on the group has performed semi-annually and expanded to include two big bands, a youth band, a Latin band, and jazz combo.
In the late 1980s, Taiwan’s economy began to improve exponentially from changes in export structure and successes in the electronics industry, in addition to the government lift of martial law. This meant that Taiwan steered away from its closed nationalism and became more open to foreigners. Foreign musicians again flocked to the country to perform; famous artists such as Wynton Marsalis, Diana Krall, and Chick Corea filled venues like the National Concert
Hall. The jazz renaissance in the 1990s also stemmed from the widespread purchases of music albums and the popularity of the Internet, which allowed music lovers to share information quickly and with anyone across the world.
The music stage at the civic plaza in front of Taipei City Hall was completed in May
1998, and every Friday night from September on would host a weekly jazz concert. Other venues
22 such as Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall and Taipei International Convention Center also began to organize jazz concerts. The 2000s also marked the premieres of jazz festivals not only in Taipei but also across the country, the first of which took place in Tamsui in 2001 and continued in cities such as Taichung in 2003 and Taipei in 2007. The National Theater and Concert Hall in
Taipei also established its summer “party” in 2012.
23 CHAPTER FOUR
TAIPEI’S INTERNAL FACTORS
Introduction
In assessing Taipei’s socio-cultural background, I found that Taipei’s history and interaction with jazz music is limited; a variety of factors contribute to a lack of adaptation and nationalization of the genre. Every factor I discovered could appear trivial but still contributes to the larger picture of the lukewarm reception to jazz music. Even a loose connection merits further examination. Thus, I present some theories to the outcome of jazz music in Taipei in the educational, economic, and cultural spheres.
Educational Factors
Hong Kong educational researchers Wing-Wah Law and Wai-Chung Ho surveyed almost
1700 Taiwanese secondary school students in May 2004, all of whom had experienced “at least six years of music education and therefore were supposed to be familiar with both Chinese and
Western classical music,”45 in order to depict the state of music education in Taiwan. They found that 1,385 (84.2%) had never been to popular concerts, 1,493 (91.1%) had never been to classical concerts, and 1,444 (87.9%) had never been to other world music concerts, but that the most popular world music type was jazz music. Simultaneously, these students rated themselves only
2.66 on a scale of 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) in familiarity with world music. This demonstrates that students have the curiosity to learn other types of music but do not receive that exposure,
45. Wing-Wah Law and Wai-Chung Ho, “Culture, Music Education and the State in Hong Kong and Taiwan in a Global Age,” Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, no. 169 (2006): 67.
24 leading to their lack of familiarity. Law and Ho further surmised that teachers are unfamiliar themselves, thus subsequently afraid to teach and avoid exposing students to different types of music in which they themselves lack experience. Though Taiwan is increasingly globalized and modernized, this demonstrates that the education system has opportunity to increase exposure of all facets of music to students.
From my extensive scouring of all Taiwanese university music departments, there currently exist merely two jazz studies departments, one at National Dong Hwa University in
Hualien and another at Fu Jen Catholic University in New Taipei City, both of which were only established in the last few years and are also not located within the city limits of Taipei. This lack of university support is a hindrance to any student that has an interest in continuing studies on an academic collegiate level. Most universities choose not to give opportunities to students to explore this avenue of music, save for a course in improvisation; even arts universities such as
National Taiwan University of Arts and Taipei National University of the Arts have, at most, a student-run jazz club. Many local artists have thus had advanced education outside of Taiwan, where more jazz pedagogical resources exist; one such artist is trumpeter and professor Stacey
Wei, who studied at City University of New York (CUNY).
Wei also sees this lack in continuity from secondary to university level education.46 He believes that secondary school students that want to major in jazz studies at the university level in Taiwan have no choice. At best, they are offered a handful of jazz courses and must devote the rest of their time to completing coursework to graduate on time. He also claims that twenty to thirty years ago, school and community classical orchestras experienced a decline in membership
46. Stacey Wei, “Discussion of Jazz Studies/Courses in Universities Department of Music in Taiwan” (paper presented at International Symposium in Jazz Music at Fu Jen Catholic University, New Taipei City, Taiwan, April 25, 2012).
25 but, due to efforts in the last ten years, Taiwanese classical music developed a better system for performance and promotion of music, once again re-engaging musicians; he believes we can similarly do the same for jazz music in Taiwan. Wei also lists several factors in the education system that limit the success of aspiring, young jazz musicians: lack of a specialized jazz major, lack of a jazz curriculum, unqualified teachers, unclear positioning of school curricula, and limitations in supplying enough instruments for a band.
Economic Factors
Salary stagnation is a common source of discontent with Taiwanese, with sources frequently stating that in the last twenty years, give or take a few years, there has been no real increase in monthly wages. Dou and Hsu report that there was no growth between 2000 and
2011,47 while the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission reports that “real monthly wages in Taiwan [barely rose] during the eight years of the Ma Administration.”48 The
Taiwan News more recently reported that housing prices last year third quarter were 9.35 times average income, meaning that “it would take the average Taiwanese worker over 9 years to buy a
47. Eva Dou and Jenny W. Hsu, The Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2012, accessed April 30, 2017, http://on.wsj.com/WhxdEh.
48. U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Taiwan’s Economy Amid Political Transition, by Kevin Rosier, Sean O’Connor, and Rolando Cuevas (Washington, D.C., 2016), accessed April 30, 2017, https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/Taiwan%27s%20Economy%20amid%20Politi cal%20Transition.pdf.
26 house, if they spent none of their salary on anything else, even food or drink, during that period.”49
Amongst the backdrop of many feeling “a greater sense of uncertainty about their economic future than they have in decades,”50 most musicians in Taipei need to take on various part-time jobs such as teaching, in addition to performing, so that they can survive, in juxtaposition to the white-collar worker who may only work one full-time job. These part-time jobs and even gigs at jazz clubs, according to bassist Wei-sheng Lin, are so low-paying that it’s vital for one’s financial well-being to pursue other opportunities, such as recordings and weddings, the latter of which he estimates generates income of 200 to 300 USD per event. This contrasts with solely performing in a Chinese orchestra, which he estimated at netting 100 USD per week.51 This vast disparity in income sources shows that not every job yields the same profit, even with the musician possessing similar musical skill sets. A fear of not making enough income to survive adds pressure to the artist’s lifestyle: the artist must search for and secure the best income sources, utilizing his or her personal connections.
Jazz critic Ernest “Heavy” Su similarly surmises that the Taipei jazz scene does not economically support performing artists. At the time of his interview in the first decade of the
2000s, he estimated the Taipei metropolitan area to have approximately ten jazz venues; with
49. Keoni Everington, “Housing Prices 9.35 Times Average Income,” Taiwan News, April 18, 2017, accessed April 30, 2017, http://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3143158.
50. Marc L. Moskowitz, “Message in a Bottle: Lyrical Laments and Emotional Expression in Mandopop,” The China Quarterly, no. 194 (2008): 368.
51. Wei-sheng Lin, interview by author, December 21, 2015.
27 each venue in operation every day of the week and each musician paid 8000 NT (approximately
265 USD), Taipei venues only support a total payout of 2.4 million NT: only 80,000 USD!52
Note that my case studies will not delve into businesses’ profit margins, since earning profits does not correlate directly with jazz music popularity, as most jazz venues also double as bars. A profitable business could attribute their successes to alcohol sales; a highly attended (and, thus, “popular”) jazz bar could conversely take losses. Thus, for the sake of avoiding mitigating data points, research will be limited to macro-level analysis.
Cultural Factors
38 years of martial law in Taiwan, or the “White Terror,” is bound to leave lasting effects on society. When opposition to the ruling party leads to imprisonment and sometimes execution, it leaves an intangible dread from which society cannot easily rid itself. Post-White Terror, the fear of “rocking the boat,” or changing too quickly, may exist amongst older generations who remember a sense of being controlled and not being in control. Taiwan possesses an identity of the “other,” of being colonized and never quite escaping the grasp of imperialism. “In the 20th century, Taiwan was not only colonized by Imperial Japan and the Kuomintang (Nationalist
China) but also by European elitism and U.S. populism. In the pursuit of a ‘modern’ lifestyle, this postcolonial society has been subjected to conflicts and struggles between these different representations of modernity.”53 Taiwan is still searching for its own modern identity as a country, free from its previous postcolonial binds and pressures.
52. Xiang-yi Zhang, Taiwan’s Jazz Spectrum (Taipei: Taiwan Classics Publishing, 2006): 136.
53. Shih and Chang, 450.
28 Taiwan is relatively new as a democracy, with less than 30 years of history since the ascendancy of Lee Teng-hui as President in 1988. Only recently have Taiwanese begun to develop a sense of self, that is, as Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of
Toronto Joseph Wong defines, an “alternative and complementary understanding of what it means to be Taiwanese...[whereby] the inculcation of political, social and economic citizenship is inextricably tied to ethnic politics on the island.”54 This is to say that Taiwanese have begun to take ownership of their place in the world through their self-developed and individualized identities.
Marc Moskowitz, professor of anthropology at University of South Carolina, points out that “emotions such as loneliness, sorrow and heartbreak are difficult to express in Chinese and
Taiwan's cultures which idealize stoic endurance and emphasize indirectness as a means of maintaining social harmony.”55 Yet there is a commercial market for hearing these emotions expressed externally as opposed to internalizing them. In examining the top 20 best-selling CDs in Taiwan in February 2006, “in total, key words for loneliness and/or isolation appeared 80 times in 227 songs,” as opposed to 17 times in 306 U.S. songs.56 Furthermore, KTV establishments exist for the public to sing these very pop songs and to express themselves – even in front of others!
Further cultural paradoxes exist, for instance, in the popularization of coffeehouses.
Throughout the 20th century, Taiwanese have established new coffeehouses, embracing a
Western ideal and contrasting sharply with the concept of Chinese teahouses. Kingcar
54. Joseph Wong, “Deepening Democracy in Taiwan,” Pacific Affairs 76, no. 2 (2003): 254.
55. Moskowitz, 366.
56. Ibid., 373.
29 Corporation even created Mr. Brown Coffee, with a Western-sounding name and a Western character as trademark. This reveals that in line with the concept of modernity, Taiwanese are receptive to new ideas, including Western ones. Yet in the realm of music, jazz hasn’t quite experienced the same adaptation. It might even easily fuse with other genres; Jay Chou, for instance, is known for mixing Chinese melodies and Western classical textures into his brand of pop music. Perhaps it takes one (popular) musician to make the effort and see what fruit his or her efforts will bear.
30
CHAPTER FIVE
CASE STUDIES
Introduction
An “authentic” jazz scene must combine a reputation for technical skills and mastery of the standard forms with a reputation for innovation.57
Authenticity in jazz…implies that an artist must possess specific qualities – educational background, life experience, ethnic heritage, motivations, or artistic vision – which confer upon the artist the right not only to work unchallenged in a particular medium, but to establish the standard by which all others working in that medium will be judged.58
As I selected jazz venues to attend as case studies, I simultaneously searched for the key concept of authenticity in the setting and selection of musicians. The venues I chose needed to innovate yet conform to local tastes, and musicians needed to be qualified through one or more of the above qualities. Note that the above definitions do not qualify what the audience needs to be in order to be authentic, for their tastes are always evolving and vary from individual to individual. However, I could note and gauge audience engagement with both venue and artists to test their sense of being “authentically knowledgeable” about jazz.
In all cities, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Taipei, I attempted to select venues that were renowned in the jazz community, according to research and/or word-of-mouth. I selected three venues in Taipei as the primary focus of my case studies, all dissimilar in venue size, in order to see if there was variance in audience response, but also to compare against Shanghai and Tokyo, who have more established jazz scenes. I also avoided selecting Taipei’s Brown Sugar, though
57. Farrer and Field, 146.
58. Atkins, 24.
31 popular and commonly referred to as a “jazz bar,” as I have already visited on two occasions and have yet to hear any authentic jazz music. I had also previously attended the Taipei Jazz Festival in 2015 and saw this as more of an activity than a true representation of jazz venues.
Shanghai: Heyday
Fig. 1. Stage of Shanghai’s Heyday.
I visited Shanghai in November 22, 2015 and though I had heard of Cotton Club and
Peace Hotel, amongst other venues in my research, I also discovered that local artist Coco Zhao performs here occasionally. Other local guides also put this jazz club on their recommendation lists, so I thought it was worth an observation. I did later visit The Jazz Bar at Peace Hotel, but the song selection, as performed by musicians whose average age is 82, was mostly Chinese tunes with jazz inflections. It’s worth noting that their sets were more of staged performances and lacked the improvisational nature that most modern jazz possesses. The musicians would also start and end together but were often not together rhythmically.
32 The bar, when I arrived in the 9 o’clock hour, was mostly full, with approximately 30 guests, a smattering of foreigners but mostly locals, judging from their language exchange. I was relegated to sitting in the bar area, which is directly in front of the front entrance, on one of five stools. Directly in front of me were two rings of seating around the stage, the outer ring with six booths of three extra chairs each and approximately three tables and some chairs in the inner ring.
The musicians were Oleg Roschin (piano), Brian Hurley (bass), and Charles Foldesh
(drums) playing standards such as “The Existence of Being Lonely,” “Fly Me to the Moon,
“Cheek to Cheek,” and “Route 66,” and often stopping to introduce their songs and build rapport with the audience, which was fairly attentive. While most people had drinks – and each person sitting in the booth definitely had one each – their attention was mostly fixed on the musicians, with eye contact and upright body posture. In fact, I only noted one person on his cellphone the entire time I was in attendance, while other audience members would peek every once in a while.
The venue sits on a quiet side street, and the music is not audible from the outside unless someone opens the front door. While the outside seems almost too simple and stark, with black walls and art deco lettering, the interior, dim purple lighting, combined with attentive silence from the audience, does give an ambience of authenticity in what I imagine a quiet 1930s night would be like. Musicians and audience alike were engaged, also contributing to a feeling of nostalgia.
33 Tokyo: Body & Soul
Fig. 2. Stage of Tokyo’s Body & Soul.
September 11, 2015: I attempted to visit the famous Blue Note in Shibuya, cousin to the jazz club in New York and host to many foreign and famous musicians, but did not know that reservations on this Friday were absolutely necessary. Even being a party of one did not help my case, as the waiting list was several parties long and, at concert start, was not going to decrease. I quickly searched for another local jazz club and found Body & Soul, which at the very least was highly rated by Internet friends and also appeared on some online publications’ top recommendation lists.
Body & Soul is on the same street as Blue Note, just a few blocks away, but in a seemingly quieter neighborhood of Minami-aoyama, as it’s located in a commercial building.
After descending stairs to the basement level and proceeding to a kiosk to pay a steep, approximately 40 USD cover charge (and this is apparently normal in Tokyo), I entered a small venue with only 11 patrons. The bar was directly to the right and coat check to the left as I entered, and I turned right to head towards the other side of the jazz bar where bar stools sat on a
34 raised level, behind a raised table for drinks. I passed by a line of bar stools also on my right, and two workers sat behind the bar next to the step to the raised level. In the middle of the jazz club sat four tables, placed in front of the musicians, with three pairs of audience members and one lone female. Another female also sat to my right on the raised level.
I was unable to catch the musicians’ names since I arrived in the middle of the set, but I was able to jot down song names: “Three Card Molly”, “Lulu’s Back in Town,” “I Can’t Get
Started,” and “Procrastination.” The musicians were all ethnically black, and I guessed from the
U.S. from their accents. They seemed very much in tune with each other, acknowledging each other’s solos and showing active listening skills by nodding along, with the bassist even closing his eyes in enjoyment at times.
The audience also was quite attentive at the start of the set. With this observation, my goal was to see how jazz was a dialect with both “verbal” and “non-verbal” cues, with “verbal” being the musicians’ tempos, rhythms, and inflections, and “non-verbal” being the audience’s physical reactions, whether applause, nodding, or tapping a foot. Consequently, the audience applauded after each solo, as is customary in most jazz contexts, as a show of appreciation.
During the first song I observed, one of the workers nodded to the rhythm, and a man seated at one of the tables tapped along while his female companion also nodded. Every customer had a drink in front of him or her, and no one moved in the middle of the set. However, by the third song, I noticed two patrons visibly asleep, while another had his eyes closed.
The musicians and audience all seemed quite authentic, with non-verbal cues that emphasized attentive listening and participation with the music. The venue also was authentic – and I would hope so with such a steep cover charge – not just with its appearance but also since
35 bar staff were active listeners. As I left the venue, the manager had noticed me taking notes and offered me some material about the venue and its performance calendar.
Taipei: Blue Note
Fig. 3. Stage of Taipei’s Blue Note, Blue Note, accessed April 8, 2014, https://www.facebook.com/pages/BLUE-NOTE- %E8%97%8D%E8%AA%BF/156802101016061.
Blue Note is located in a nondescript location, the fourth floor of an office building at the northeast corner of Roosevelt Road and Shida Road. The only indication that there is a jazz club is a dated, blue, and rectangular sign with “Blue Note” on the side of the building.
Visitors can choose to take the elevator or the stairs, both of which seem to be structural holdovers from the 1970s. Upon ascending either to the fourth floor, a hallway leads to a wooden door that could just as easily lead to someone’s home. However, what greets the visitor is both the opposite and similar: it is not someone’s Taiwanese home but an intimate, cozy jazz club that could just as easily be located in a Western environment.
Upon entering the club from the southwest corner, I saw pictures and a television screen lining the wall to the right and a partition to the left. Directly in front was the bar area in the southeast section of the club. Upon passing the partition, I saw the stage area, which marked the
36 left-center portion of the club. The northern section of the club had a raised-level seating area with about four larger tables, which connected to the seating area directly next to the stage and into the bar area.
When I entered the club, there were only five patrons, two couples who were sitting in the northern section of the club and one patron sitting by himself in the bar area. All had drinks, probably due to the 250 NT (approximately 8 USD) cover charge that included a drink, and, contrary to my stereotype of Taiwanese people needing constant access to technology, no one had mobile phones out on the tables; instead, they were all listening considerately to the music.
Even more surprising was their intentness in enjoying the music; while none of the couples were actively tapping their feet or nodding their heads, which, in my opinion, would be observable cues of enjoying the jazz music, they, however, were enjoying the music in a manner similar to in a formal concert, avoiding conversation with one another and staring straight ahead at the musicians. The single male had his phone on the table but nodded his head to acknowledge the beat of the music.
The musicians, a quartet of piano, electric bass, drums, and saxophone, had lead sheets but barely referred to them throughout their two sets of five songs each. In fact, as if demonstrating their knowledge of the music, as well as enjoying being in the “groove” of jazz music, each closed their eyes at times and nodded along when other musicians performed their improvised solos.
The musical performance was unremarkable in the sense that it could have actually taken place in a Western location – the music had its standard jazz chord progressions and improvised solos – yet the musicians worked well as a combo and listened to each other’s playing. The combo apparently played jazz standards, although they were not as familiar to me; I could barely
37 make out the titles through the pianist’s thick English accent. All in all, the combo was quite standard in their production of jazz music.
This is why my reaction as an observer even surprised me: I could find similar décor and musical guests in the West, yet this was in Taiwan. Even the mannerisms of the audience were often appropriate for jazz aficionados, although they, at times, seemed too proper and formal.
Taipei: Sappho Live
Fig. 4. Stage of Taipei’s Sappho Live, Sappho Live, accessed October 10, 2014, http://www.sappholive.com/.
I heard of Sappho Live from my interview with Wei-sheng Lin, and it also fit the profile that I was searching for in Taipei of a medium-sized jazz venue. Thus, I decided to attend the performance of Belgian Joachim Badenhorst on October 10, 2014 for his experimental and improvisational sets on the clarinet.
Sappho Live is located off of Xinyi Road, a main thoroughfare in Taipei. Walking down the stairs from street level, customers begin to hear the strains of music. A walk through a small courtyard leads to the front door of the jazz bar. Upon entering, I saw what I could best describe
38 as two halves to the venue, with a passageway dividing the two sides. On the left were approximately four tables with chairs, the bar, and the bar seating area, and on the right were some circular couches and the performance stage. Proceeding straight ahead led to the restrooms.
As the left side was almost filled to capacity with audience members, we found a couch directly in front of the stage.
The performance was unusual, to say the least. As the performer was mostly improvising and making sounds out of different parts of his clarinet, there were no songs or melodies to observe and note. All I could do was watch the audience members, including the friend I had attended with, who were intently staring and listening, without distracting themselves on phones or cutting off eye contact.
I could only describe the sounds that came out of the clarinet as out-of-this-world and incoherent. Perhaps this was “authentic” improvisation, as it was clearly new material, but it lacked any sort of structure, and after thirty minutes of listening to noise, I began to nod off. I do remember that my friend, a musician, remarked afterwards, that it was another fantastic performance, so perhaps we all have different interpretations of what is authentic.
39 Taipei: Alchemy
Fig. 5. Stage of Taipei’s Alchemy, Alchemy Bar, accessed April 13 2017, https://www.facebook.com/BarAlchemy/.
I had previously visited Alchemy on a Thursday night to meet with friends, noting that there was live music, but I had not taken particular notes. I decided to visit again on April 13,
2017 and take better notes on both musician and audience behavior. I was curious as to what role jazz music plays in a traditional bar with jazz night, as opposed to a purely jazz bar.
Alchemy is a speakeasy bar located on Xinyi Road in a nondescript high rise that also houses Marquee Nightclub. In fact, reservations are necessary, even on a weeknight. We had luckily made reservations the evening before because when we arrived, every seat was taken.
Apparently, there are 50 seats, although the number of seats seemed less than that. Alchemy also has a pricey 800 NT (approximately 27 USD) cover charge per person.
A smattering of six tables line the opposite side of the actual bar, with another alcove next to the bar, and in front of the bar are several bar stools. Towards the back of the establishment is where the musician trio played; behind them were the restrooms.
After entering and ordering a drink, I surveyed all the tables. The place was completely full, so I assumed that some people were in attendance for the music. As the trio played their set,
40 they did not pause to introduce songs but merely blended into the background. Every time a song ended, no bar patrons would spontaneously clap; it was only until the bar staff would start clapping and cheering that the audience would take their lead and applaud. I looked around at the audience several times through the first set; no one ever regarded the trio whatsoever.
After the first set, the trio moved toward the entrance to drink and chat. Even then, no audience members walked up to strike up a conversation. I guessed then that the musicians had no regular fans or any friends in attendance.
I waited to see if there were any change in audience behaviors during the second set, but, again, the audience paid no attention to the band and only applauded when prompted by bar staff.
After the second set, I approached two of the band members, Oren Dashti (piano) and Chuck
Payne (drums), to hear their side of the story.59
First and foremost, when I brought up the lack of audience response, they mentioned that they were used to it; Alchemy had hired them when it first opened in 2012, and they had already played continuously for five years because of their love for the music, not audience response.
This, I felt, was an authentic musician response, being guided by passion and not pay. They also volunteered their thoughts that it really is not about the pay there because it wasn’t sufficient enough to sustain their livelihoods. One member mentioned that it was really “musical prostitution,” about finding several jobs that can pay the bills, which was in line with what Wei-
Sheng Lin stated during my interview with him.
I asked about how they felt about jazz venues in Taipei, and the two agreed that there were still a few but not many suitable venues. Oren mentioned that he had been in Taipei for 15
59. Oren Dashti and Chuck Payne, conversation with author, April 13, 2017.
41 years, and it seemed that businesses did not seem to turn any substantial profits but were rather static. He even asked me if it was a wise idea to open a bar, given this state!
Overall, Alchemy seems to have the decorations and setting for a 1920s, Prohibition-era bar and has the right mindset to appear authentic, yet the audience doesn’t seem to embrace the jazz music as much as one might anticipate in such an environment. I asked one of the bar staff who had been encouraging applause if there were any regulars that would attend merely to see the musicians. She replied no; even people who booked tables just for the sake of hearing live music rarely interacted with the musicians. These audience members were therefore inauthentic
– and only at the venue for the drinks.
Conclusion
As expected, I found musicians in all cities, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Taipei engaged with audiences and authentic. Shanghai is certainly international, with both locals and foreigners appreciating jazz music, but there is nostalgic desire to reinvigorate the jazz idiom; the Peace
Hotel Jazz Band is an example of this promotion, though I cannot comment on the hotel’s financial motivations. However, jazz clubs’ purposeful architecture and mood truly foster a sense that they want to create honest and accurate revivals of the past.
Tokyo’s jazz scene is unquestionably one of adaptation and reinvention of jazz as its own. The listening climate is subdued but attentive. Even with foreign musicians playing in the one venue that I was able to visit, I could see a sense of ownership of jazz as a legitimate music genre in the country, not as foreign, through the audience interactions and reactions.
Since I was able to survey a variety of jazz venues in Taipei, as well as focus my research on this city, I feel that I have a deeper understanding of the city’s vibe when it comes to jazz music. I feel that there are certainly jazz fans, some of which enthusiastically host and plan
42 events, but mostly because they have had substantial exposure to world music or have a desire for the “foreign.” Surprisingly, from my visits to Blue Note and Sappho Live, I found that there are very attentive audiences, some of which are quite informed and well versed in jazz improvisation. At the same time, the overall feeling of Taipei in the jazz realm is that it’s pleasant but not a “legitimate” genre. Knowing that even the National Concert Hall asks for musical scores from jazz musicians before their performances shows that there are some that still do not fully understand the fundamentals of jazz music.60 Overall, there doesn’t seem to be any momentum in expanding the jazz scene; instead, my sense is that everyone is “doing their own thing” and networking, but hoping that the combination of all of their small events will somehow eventually lead to a greater development of jazz music.
Across all cities, I feel that there are future opportunities to see how local musicians interact with local audiences, as all of the musicians I observed were, unfortunately, foreigners to the cities in which they performed. Venues did seem very contemporary and appropriate, all with a “jazz period” feel. Audiences appeared fairly engaged, showing that jazz is perhaps a niche genre in which true aficionados understand the language and do their best to connect with the music, regardless of what venues they attend.
60. Zhang, 125.
43 CHAPTER SIX
SURVEYS
Introduction
The goal of these surveys was to add quantitative value to my research and use statistics to validate or invalidate my hypotheses, as well as to discover unexpected thoughts and ideas that people have about jazz or music in general. I designed the surveys to take no more than three minutes and be easily answered. Most questions were multiple-choice – thus limiting extraneous and irrelevant information – which also allowed respondents to answer truthfully, without fear of judgment. The first two questions give no indication that this survey will be focused on jazz music, so as to gain a true picture of what musical genres people listen to, in addition to their methods of access. A linear scale question asks respondents to self-assess their familiarity with jazz to see how they view themselves, and a single short-answer question gives respondents an opportunity to expand on previous questions and allow me to assess growth prospects for the
Taipei jazz scene.
I concluded my survey with a sample size of 47 Taipei residents, with survey responders in the age range of 20s to 40s and of both sexes (exact numbers not documented). I had hoped to include both younger and older generations but did not have contact with them. The number, though, exceeded the minimum target sample size of 30, creating a more accurate picture of
Taipei residents’ reactions to music.
44 Survey Questions
I presented survey questions in both Chinese and English to allow for the entire Taipei resident population, including foreigners, to be able to answer. As Chinese-to-English and
English-to-Chinese translations can vary, this also eliminated confusion in misunderstanding.
Below are the questions with rationale and explanations.
1. 您會聽哪些音樂類型？ (What types of music do you listen to?)
• 流行 (Pop)
• 節奏藍調／嘻哈／饒舌 (R&B/Hip Hop/Rap)
• 古典 (Classical)
• 搖滾 (Rock)
• 鄉村 (Country)
• 爵士 (Jazz)
• 其他 (Other):
Respondents were able to select multiple answers. My goal was to see what other genres of music Taipei residents listened to besides jazz so as to see the correlation between jazz listening habits and other genres, specifically pop.
45 2. 您如何與以上的音樂種類接觸？ (How do you come into contact with the above types of music?)
• 下載或藉由線上串流媒體。 (Download or stream music.)
• 購買專輯。 (Purchase albums.)
• 聽音樂會。 (Attend live concerts.)
• 其他 (Other)
Respondents were able to select multiple answers. As I surmised that most people download or stream music these days, I was curious to see if purchasing albums is still a behavior that still exists nowadays. Some of my research material also references Taiwanese habits in purchasing albums, so I wanted to verify if this was current or outdated. The selection of attending live concerts is, of course, the focus of my research, to see if Taipei residents still attend venues for live music.
3. 您在台北聽過爵士樂嗎？ (Have you listened to jazz music in Taipei?)
• 是。(Yes.)
• 否。(No.)
This question is self-explanatory, yet it also limits respondents’ experiences to Taipei, as this is my research target.
46 4. 您去過哪些爵士樂場合？ (What jazz venues have you been to in Taipei?)
• 藍調 (Blue Note)
• Sappho Live
• 黑糖 (Brown Sugar)
• Alchemy
• 國家音樂廳 (National Concert Hall)
• 台北爵士音樂節 (Taipei Jazz Festival)
• 其他 (Other):
I included the three venues I selected for case studies but also Brown Sugar to see how many people had visited before and view it as a venue for jazz. The National Concert Hall and
Taipei Jazz Festival are also audience-friendly venues that attract not only jazz-lovers but the general public as well.
5. 若您去過以上爵士樂場合，您最重要的原因是哪個？ (If you've been to the above venues, what was your primary reason for visiting?)
• 約會 (Date)
• 聚會 (Hang out with friends or family)
• 想聽某個音樂家 (Wanted to hear a certain musician)
• 喜歡聽爵士樂 (Enjoy listening to jazz music)
• 其他 (Other):
47 With these selections, I assessed for passive and active participation. I purposely phrased the question to emphasize respondents’ primary motivation. The first two responses are more passive and social; the respondents may have only attended these venues because someone invited them. If they initiated the visit because of a date, friends, or family, they are more likely to respond with the third or fourth answers, which are more active.
6. 若 1 是完全不熟悉、5 是非常熟悉，您對爵士樂有多熟悉？
(How knowledgeable do you feel about jazz, on a scale of 1 being completely unfamiliar and 5 being fluent?)
The linear scale question lets respondents self-assess their awareness of jazz music, allowing me to evaluate general trends and public perceptions.
7. 還有什麼機會或原因，會讓您更加認識爵士樂？ (What opportunities or factors would help you to become more familiar with jazz music?)
As mentioned previously, this allows me to understand any inclinations in respondents’ thoughts as well as consider future scenarios to promote jazz music.
48 Results
1. What types of music do you listen to?
Pop 93.6%
R&B/Hip-Hop/Rap 38.3%
Classical 40.4%
Rock 27.7%
Country 19.1%
Jazz 40.4%
Other 8.5%
Fig. 6. Survey Q1 results.
As anticipated for this sample, most people listen to pop (93.6%), with classical and jazz both at 40.4% of respondents and R&B/hip-hop/rap at 38.3%. Roughly half of the respondents listen concurrently to both pop and jazz; in fact, only one respondent that listened to jazz music did not listen to pop.
2. How do you come into contact with the above types of music?
Download or stream music. 95.7%
Purchase albums. 34.0%
Attend concerts. 59.6%
Fig. 7. Survey Q2 results.
49
Also as expected, most respondents (95.7%) stream or download music to access music, with approximately one-third still purchasing albums. Almost 60% of respondents attend live concerts, demonstrating that there is still a need for venues and musical spaces that allow for interactions between musicians and listeners.
3. Have you listened to jazz music in Taipei?
Yes. No.
Fig. 8. Survey Q3 results.
68.1% has, 31.9% has not. The former was higher than I projected, demonstrating that in this population sample, respondents are fairly exposed to jazz music in Taipei.
50 4. What jazz venues have you been to in Taipei?
Blue Note 25.6% Sappho Live 7.7% Brown Sugar 51.3% Alchemy 7.7% National Concert Hall 43.6% Taipei Jazz Festival 38.5% Other 20.5%
Fig. 9. Survey Q4 results.
In line with my projections, many respondents (slightly over half) had been to Brown
Sugar. Notably one-quarter has been to Blue Note, so this venue is not as invisible as I had expected. 43.6% has been to the National Concert Hall, although I did not limit this choice to attending a jazz concert, and 38.5% has been to the Taipei Jazz Festival, demonstrating that there is an awareness of the event.
51 5. If you've been to the above venues, what was your primary reason for visiting?
Enjoy Date, listening 5.4% to jazz music, 21.6%
Wanted Hang out to hear a with certain family or musician, friends, 13.5% 59.5%
Fig. 10. Survey Q5 results.
Most visited for passive reasons, with almost 60% visiting jazz venues to hang out with friends or family. Only 13.5% attended for the “active” reason of hearing a specific musician and only 21.6% for the express purpose of listening to jazz music. Thus, even though 40% of respondents stated in question #1 that they listen to jazz music, their primary reason for visiting jazz venues may not be specifically for the listening experience but rather social reasons. This is in line with what I experienced during my case studies, where some audience members were not actively engaged with the music but more so with their companions.
52 6. How knowledgeable do you feel about jazz, on a scale of 1 being completely unfamiliar and 5 being fluent?
51.1%
25.5% 14.9% 8.5% 0.0%
1 2 3 4 5
Fig. 11. Survey Q6 results.
Approximately half of the respondents rated themselves as a “2,” and adding the 15% at a
“1,” this signifies that the majority of the sample views themselves as “unfamiliar.” This expresses the need for more jazz exposure and promotion in order to increase respondents’ confidence and knowledge with the genre.
7. What opportunities or factors would help you to become more familiar with jazz music?
This final question is a free-response follow-up to the previous question and allows respondents to unconsciously expand on their thought process. In analyzing their replies, I looked for trends or common words to look for statistical significance. What I discovered was that the most common factor, for 25% of respondents, was actually more events: lectures, concerts, and public events. This demonstrates that the current promotion of events is insufficient; if there is a regular schedule, this is not enough to allow the public to feel that jazz is relevant enough in Taipei culture.
53 Conclusion
Other opportunities for exposure include integrating jazz music into media such as movies and radio broadcasts and placing the onus on musical artists to make jazz relevant and palatable. What surprised me most, though, because of the focus of this research, is that only a few felt that the current availability and state of Taipei bars, restaurants, and performance spaces do not encourage them enough to encounter jazz music. This means that the jazz community does not need to look to creating new venue spaces but rather needs to increase promotion of existing venues as well as the events that take place at said venues.
54 CHAPTER SEVEN
CONCLUSION
In Taiwan, a jazz music “fan” is not your typical consumer, one that just “likes” jazz music, but one that might “extremely” like jazz music, to the extent that he or she willing to spend more money and time than the typical person in order to support jazz music.61 Yet the existence of a high-spending, solid base of true jazz “fans” in Taipei may be more of a myth than reality.
Taipei has more of a jazz scene than expected but due to its short history being exposed to jazz, there is room for growth. In surveying its venues, settings exist to provide authentic jazz, but at the same time the Taipei government needs to build an internal infrastructure that cultivates younger generations to play jazz, perhaps by beginning with revamping the music education system. Though cultural and economic forces may negatively influence them and give pause for resistance, most jazz musicians still partake in their art for the pure joy of being an authentic artist.
The survey results show that Taiwanese people are exposed to jazz music and aware that
Taipei does have a jazz scene. They are knowledgeable of various jazz venues, with many having already visited one or more, and are not asking for entrepreneurs to open more; instead, they desire artists to take the initiative to weave jazz into various parts of their lives, such as at public events and in the media. As Mandopop is popular in Taiwan, using more jazz melodies and, possibly, jazz-like improvisation in pop songs could lead the way for jazz to be seen as more mainstream. Since Taipei doesn’t have the same sense of nostalgia as Shanghai and Tokyo,
61. Lü-feng Li, “Research on Taiwanese Jazz ‘Fans’” (M.A. thesis, National Chengchi University, 2004): 163.
55 there is still opportunity for “nationalizing” songs and taking ownership of jazz music as adaptable and not just purely Western. American ethnomusicologist Mantle Hood championed
“bi-musicality,” the idea that one should learn the musicality of his or her mother (musical) language and that of another if one is to be a true musical scholar, as it “prepares the way for the professional activities of the performer, the composer, the musicologist and the music educator.”62
Lin also pointed out that nothing has drastically changed in the last fifteen years in the world of Taiwan jazz music – yes, fifteen years. The main difference, he explained, is that people have portable music on their smartphones now.63 The onus is on the musician not only to learn the language of jazz but also to find others to “jam with,” because the best way to improve jazz and improvisational skills is in practice with others.
As this research was limited to comparing and contrasting jazz venues for authenticity, there is also room for further research on the financial and operational sides of jazz venues. One possible topic is surveying clubs for their promotion methods and comparing their costs of doing business.
62. Mantle Hood, “The Challenge of ‘Bi-Musicality,’” Ethnomusicology 4, no. 2 (1960): 55.
63. Lin, interview by author.
56 APPENDIX A
Interview with Wei-sheng Lin
My criteria in finding a musician for an ethnographic interview was that the musician needed to be a local Taiwanese who had studied abroad in the U.S., so that they had experienced a difference in culture and responded to it, as well as jazz music in its home country. I found
Lin’s name while reading Taiwan’s Jazz Spectrum, did some research on the Internet for his contact information, and contacted him by e-mail in Mandarin Chinese.
Unfortunately, this was a difficult time for Wei-sheng, as his dog was ill, so he agreed to perform the interview at Chongen Animal Hospital in Yonghe District, New Taipei City on
December 21, 2015 at 10 AM. The interview environment was not ideal, with animal patients and owners roaming around, and every few minutes we would have to stop the interview while
Lin spoke to the doctor or assistant. The below interview was conducted mostly in English and lasted about 45 minutes, with intermittent interruptions that are not documented.
Q: I have read a bit about you, but tell me yourself about how you fell into jazz.
A: It seems cool. I like black man music. Bands always need a bass and it’s a way to make money. I started by getting my philosophy degree at National Taiwan University and was going to get my PhD, but my Japanese jazz teacher said to study my master’s in jazz at SUNY. I came back in 2014 for different reasons.
Q: Tell me what you think of jazz’s place in Taiwan and, specifically, Taipei.
57 A: Not much has changed in the last fifteen years, now people use iPods. Hotel bands have even moved to iPods, or they use older musicians who got their jazz education from American military clubs.
It used to be very difficult to buy vinyls, since during Chiang Kai-Shek’s rule there was martial law controlling everything. Most musicians learned in street art form, like [in] Africa.
There’s no school; it’s like a baby learning to speak, lots of copying. For most people learning and playing are two different things, learning is from a system and playing you have to figure it out yourself. Improvisation is different; most is self-taught.
Like the iPhone the need is there. With traditional Chinese music [guoyue], there are no performance opportunities except to teach, and you make about 100 USD per week. With jazz music you can teach but students may not know what to do after graduation, so it’s better to have a day job.
I make most of my money mostly from commercial gigs, like weddings and recordings, about 15-20 per month. I make about 200 to 300 USD per wedding. It’s important to have professional connections because there are very few gigs at jazz clubs, and they are low paying.
Some weekdays I play at Blue Note, though. I also take private lessons but maybe not weekly.
58 APPENDIX B
E-mail correspondence with Wei-sheng Lin
I was not able to ask all of the questions that I prepared during our in-person interview, so
I sent Lin a thank-you and follow-up email on January 4, 2016 with the following two questions in Chinese, which he also answered in Chinese on January 6, 2016. For ease of reading and conformity with the rest of my thesis, I’ve translated the questions and answers into English.
Q: You said you’ve performed recently at Blue Note. Approximately how many times this year?
Have you performed at other clubs? Are there any you particularly enjoy?
A: Sappho is another live [house], but if you wanted me to compare, because I’ve only been once it’s difficult.
Q: How do you view the future of jazz music? How should youth that want to learn jazz music do so?
A: I think jazz music will forever be non-mainstream music but still will have those that like it, and those that like it will find a channel to learn jazz music. YouTube is a really good place [to learn]. In the future, there will probably not be a lot of music schools or a variety of schools because many people can use Internet resources to self-taught [sic].
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