Philip Larkin on Jazz

Philip Larkin on jazz in 1968 – ‘this development, this progress, this new language that was more difficult, more complex, that required you to work hard at appreciating it, that you couldn’t expect to understand first go, that needed technical and professional knowledge to evaluate it at all levels, this revolutionary explosion that spoke for our time while at the same time being traditional in the fullest, the deepest ... ofcourse! This was the language of criticism of modern painting, modern poetry, modern music. Of course! How glibly I had talked of modern jazz without realising the force of the adjective: this was modern jazz, and Parker was a modern jazz player just as Picasso was a modern painter and Pound a modern poet. I hadn’t realised that jazz had gone from Lascaux to Jackson Pollock in 50 years, but now I realised it – relief came flooding in upon me after nearly two years despondency.’

The principal themes of modernism – mystification and outrage, deliberately obscure and angry.

‘If jazz records are to be one long screech, if painting is to be a blank canvass, if a play is to be two hours of sexual intercourse ... then let’s get it over, the sooner the better, in the hope that human values will then be free to reassert themselves.’

The fans - ‘My readers ... sullen fleshy inarticulate men ... husbands of ageing and bitter wives ... fathers of cold eyed lascivious daughters on the pill ... and cannabis smoking jean-and-bearded (sons) whose oriental contempt for ‘bread’ is equalled only by their insatiable demand for it ... men whose first coronary is coming like Christmas ... (men) who drift, loaded helplessly with commitments and obligations and necessary observances, into the darkening avenues of age and incapacity, deserted by everything that once made life sweet.’

‘These I have tried to remind of the excitement of jazz, and tell where it may still be found.’

The origin of the word jazz - from Creole patois jass "strenuous activity," especially "sexual intercourse" but also used of Congo dances, from jasm (1860) "energy, drive," of African origin.

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