Jazz, Multiculturalism, and the Future of Music: A Personal Reflection

A personal encounter with jazz

It all started the day I saw some musicians playing jazz. I love jazz—I consider it one of the highest forms of music. But then I began asking myself why, after a while, I got bored. I love this genre; I enjoy playing, studying, and improvising it. The answer, I believe, lies in the wrong approach: some people pretend to be jazz musicians when they are simply failed musicians; others call themselves jazz players without knowing a single musical note; some think they are jazz players because they can fire off hundreds of scales; others believe they qualify just by playing thousands of harmonic passages; and some call themselves jazz musicians because they don't understand a thing about music. I suspect that technical jargon and intellectual hypotheses about music are nearing their end. People need to hear real music, made with love. The Rolling Stones wrote songs, the Beatles wrote songs—so did Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Sting, Bob Dylan, and many others. One could argue that these musicians created songs with both music and lyrics, and that jazz is something else, pure music. I agree—but music can take many forms. The jazz played decades ago was genuine, a foundational pillar of our musical culture. Playing it over and over again, a hundred years later, weighed down by endless technicalities, becomes staggering. Jazz is something you have to feel—it is not technical or even fully real; it comes from inside.

Years have passed, and music is moving in a more open direction; contamination is the word of the future. Frank Zappa was already talking about it. Milan today is a multicultural city, with Chinese, Pakistani, Moroccan, Indian, American, Spanish, and Russian residents, all of whom influence how we act and listen. This is why I feel compelled to write about the versatility of music. We live in this multicultural society and should imagine a genre connecting all cultures. So, stop playing thousands of scales and thousands of notes—nobody is interested in that anymore. The only people who find it fascinating are those who do it professionally. But nowadays, extemporizing jazz musicians are far too many.

I hope jazz players don't hate me—I think they should thank me, because I love jazz and believe it must be respected. It's not about knowing famous musicians. I spent countless hours listening to tapes, records, and CDs to reach these conclusions. I still get excited when I hear real jazz. Distinguishing a genuine jazz player is difficult, but some can do it. For this reason, I think jazz should not be seen only as notes and harmony, but as a way to express oneself and to live—a genuine philosophy of life. Every kind of music can be jazz, even a classical tune twisted into something new; that is the freedom you have if you approach jazz properly. Jazz was played in New Orleans, Chicago, and New York in the early 1900s, serving as a way to express suffering and the hardships of life through melodies and words, just as gospel and blues did. Davis, Armstrong, B.B. King, Brubeck, Mingus—these are some of the greatest jazz players, and they will never die. Petrucciani, a great pianist, was a genius who understood how the future would unfold. If we think of jazz as emotion and improvisation, we cannot lock it into a limited genre. Rock music shares those same qualities, as do bossa nova and classical music. We cannot reductively label Bach, Mozart, and Chopin purely as classics—they were musical experimenters above all. Unfortunately, today people confuse emotion with technique and improvisation, but that is not jazz. Jazz is emotion, magic, something else entirely.

Music and computer science

The definitions of music and information technology share one word: science. "Information" comes from the French informatique, combining information and automatic; in English it became "computer science." Notice the word science appears in that definition. Computer science can be described as the automatic processing of information through algorithms, with mathematics as its bedrock. Music derives from the word "muse," which refers to a source of inspiration—in Greek mythology, the muses are tied to poetic inspiration and art. Yet the definition of music includes both the word art (the art of sound) and the word science (the study of chords and harmony as applied rules). Are music and computer science just science, or something more? Both are science and art because they stir emotions. The two are closely related: inspiration is not mathematics, and creativity is natural, having nothing to do with science—but without creativity, no music can be created. Even creativity, however, needs order and precision. Notes and time signatures cannot be placed randomly. What difference is there between ¾ and 4/4, between a waltz and a pop song? Without mathematical sequences, distinctions between genres would vanish. This is hard to grasp, but science is part of creativity. How can you turn emotions into something concrete and physical without rules? The first step is art—an idea sparks in the mind—and then, using the science of sound or programming, you bring that idea to life.

Thinking of computer science as merely numbers, bits, or mathematics would be a mistake. Everything comes from emotion. Mathematics is beautiful—consider the famous Pythagorean theorem: its simplicity makes it a fantastic theorem, reaching beyond geometry. Just as in programming, when writing software, the lines of code have their own charm to a programmer or hacker, whether for clarity of code or the elegance of implementation. The same thing happens with music, the only concrete and universal art, even more direct than painting. Painting is reserved for the few who can grasp what others miss. In music, things are different: a six-year-old can smile from a simple Mozart melody. With mathematics and computer science, it is hard to see the beauty and emotion in creating something, though we may sense it when looking at an iPhone, iPod, or iMac. These objects are the visible part, but who knows what lives inside that neat box? How did Steve Jobs feel when he created it? Someone knows. Can we say computer science and music have something in common? Of course. They are two different arts, but they both deal with emotion.

Music and the internet

The network that has reshaped cultures and ideas has also affected music. It all began with the idea of connecting different countries for military purposes, resulting in global communication. Is that good or bad? We will know in the future. The network has made music more versatile and accessible from anywhere. On various websites, you can hear sounds from different nationalities, any genre, any style. Go to YouTube and type the first letter of an artist's name—millions of results appear, ready to be listened to, leaving you spoiled for choice. But can this lead to confusion and disorder? People today are much more musically open because the internet is a powerful tool for introducing new music and ideas (we are talking about the network, not radio). The internet is, in fact, synonymous with curiosity. As we know, the sources we find online may be true or false depending on interpretation; I believe a good book is always better.

Thanks to YouTube, the world can learn about music. People can listen to Pakistani hip-hop, Bulgarian dance, Moroccan rock. Each nation has its own style and harmony, molding genres in unique ways. English rock differs greatly from Israeli rock—either because of the scales used or the cultural context—but it is certainly different. That is the beauty of music, much like life: beautiful in its diversity. Music has become a mix of notes combining Eastern and Western scales, and it is all good. Jazz should perhaps die and make way for new musical horizons. What I call FuJaBoCla may be a simple answer: create a new genre connecting many cultures while keeping a constant melodic line. Facebook offers another resource—the reach of that social network is fantastic. I discovered what my friends in Peru are listening to in a single click. Time is just a click away. Once again, it all started from the idea to reconnect with old friends, but over time, Facebook has come to share different musical tastes with everyone.

Continuum and new music

Music is heading toward contamination—toward sounds people have not yet heard. A path is opening around what we can call a "continuum" in musical genre, where barriers are falling and something new arises. The problem for experts using algorithms to classify musical genres is identifying the correct method. How to proceed? Can a song be divided into segments and coded for each genre?

Suite, progressive, step up

Is this a return to the past—to the suite? Perhaps. While the suite was a Baroque composition of dances with different rhythms—allemande, gigue, Sicilian, minuet, and others—today's music moves toward more rhythms yet with a single key, a unified melody across varying tempos. That was not exactly how the suite worked; each dance had its own melodies and sounds. Could we call this "progressive"? It resembles what happened in the 1970s, when "prog" music mixed genres. To be honest, I have never liked that music; I cannot find a connection between the start and the end, only a desire to excel in technique without proper order. The main idea of what we are discussing can be seen in the final scenes of the Step Up movie series. There, classical music, funk, and hip-hop blend in a single key, involving both music and dance. Rhythm is the key to everything. Perhaps the music emerging now merges either with dance (just as in the suite) or with genre fusion. That is because music, above all, is rhythm—the urge to move.

FuJaBoCla stands for Funk, Jazz, Bossa, and Classical. These represent the diverse cultural musical influences of the world. Some genres are missing, like Rock and Pop, but I will not address them separately—playing FuJaBoCla leads naturally to contaminated Pop and Rock as well. Starting from Europe, we move to North and South America. The world is ruled by ideas of many colors. Now, we can find Chinese, Pakistani, Indian, Japanese, Moroccan, and Brazilian cultures just outside our doorstep. This reality changes the way we think, live, and interpret things. Even our daily habits have changed: not long ago, we could only choose between Italian restaurants and pizza places—now Japanese, Chinese, Moroccan, Indian, and Greek restaurants are everywhere. The same is happening to music. We have reached a point of immense variety in rhythm, melody, and overall sound.

FuJaBoCla has a strong classical foundation—I believe that at the start of everything, there is always a solid amount of classical culture. Just as Einstein began by studying classical mathematics to understand its secrets and pitfalls, I have resolved to infuse a good dose of classical music into the wider musical world. "Classical" refers not only to the great classical period but to all that rests on a definite and lasting foundation—pure substance. "Definite" means that classical music is built on rules, but also on emotion and passion—not the same as "exact," because nothing in music is exact. "Lasting" indicates that a sound, sturdy theory has been confirmed over time.

Playing FuJaBoCla is quite difficult, because one risks moving from one genre to another without a logical connection. This is the hardest part—the key to everything—creating a musical transition rooted in the same source. An attempt at this approach was made with Progressive music, but the result was chaotic. FuJaBoCla is different. Simplicity underpins the entire creation, even in its diversity and mixture of styles. Something somewhat similar is already happening in Milan's public houses through lounge music. What is it? Drawing-room music? Music for dancing while having a drink? Lounge music has existed for about fifty years and blends Jazz, Soul, Ambient, and newer genres as time passes. Could something like this happen in Pop music, producing a new contaminated Pop? Yes, it could. It is already happening—partly because good songs never die. Is it still reasonable to talk only about Jazz today? Should we move forward? Can super-virtuoso musicians not understand that music must progress? There is a huge amount of music yet to be discovered. Baricco wrote in his book Niente paura (though the source quotes Nineteen Hundred): "The keys of a piano have a beginning and an end, but the music you can create is infinite." It is true—music is completely undiscovered. Some believe music has reached its end, that nothing exists beyond Jazz. That cannot be, because there is everything still to be explored.

Adding music as another sense

I have always believed that perceiving music at the neural level cannot depend solely on brain connections. There must be something we do not know, something innately human. Einstein spoke of the fourth dimension—time—in his space-time conception; I would add a fifth: music. Better yet, music could be another sense, alongside touch, taste, and sight. You cannot fully explain why a pop song becomes popular, or why a child smiles hearing a certain tune. What is happening inside your body at that moment? You could conduct a study at the physiological or neural level, ignoring the lyrical content. Something happens in our body when listening to music, stirring very strong feelings.

Harmony, melody, rhythm, and words

Are lyrics important in a song? This debate has lasted forever. I used to say no, about seventy percent of the time. Let me explain with an example: Do you like the Beatles? Pink Floyd? Bob Marley? Nine out of ten people say yes. Good. Do you understand the words of those groups' songs? Eight out of ten people say no, unless they happen to be American, English, a writer, or a curious listener. Most people hear the tune, the chorus, the reggae beat that makes them move—how many people truly know the words to a classic like "No Woman, No Cry"? Yet they sing it, even if they barely grasp the chorus. And why do Italians often prefer hard-rock, metal, reggae, and funk over other genres? I do not think the answer lies in lyrics, but in sound. I am not dismissing songwriting—I am writing about music after all—but we must acknowledge that melody, rhythm, and harmony usually outweigh the text. I sang "La Canzone del Sole" for years before asking myself, "What does it actually mean?" Many teenagers sing songs without paying any attention to the words; feelings are what matter. Bob Dylan is a great musician—I love him and have translated his songs. After comparing notes with fellow musicians and friends, I propose the following five listener types:

• Musician-composer: focuses mainly on sound.
• Lyric reader: pays serious attention to the text.
• Less musician, more reader: cares more for lyrics than music.
• More musician, less reader: may play an instrument or be a music enthusiast—prioritizes music over the lyric.
• Music enthusiast-critic: bases evaluations primarily on the words.

Some works are meant to be accompanied by words; others exist mostly for their sound. When a strong text meets powerful music, the result is great musical poetry. For the excellent guitar riff of "Satisfaction," there is nothing more to add.