Getting into the swing of things

Brass bands are often criticised by those outside the fraternity for not being able to play swing and jazz in an authentic manner. Rodney Newton considers this topic with the help of Dr. Robin Dewhurst, Tony Fisher and Allan Withington

“When is someone going to teach your brass bands how to swing?” So said a jazz-playing gentleman (not a brass bander) to me in the interval of a Brass on Sundays concert at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall a few years ago. As someone coming from the ‘other side’ of music, I could give no answer, but, having heard the ‘real thing’, both in New Orleans and at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club and the 100 Club in London, I knew what the critical gentleman meant.

This is evident when one hears an American brass band playing in swing or jazz style, and the Norwegians seem to be able to make a better fist of it than the average British brass band. The Americans swing with ease because that music is in their blood (the same as a Whit Friday-style road march is in ours); jazz is all around them, it is part of their culture and they absorb it from their earliest years. Here it is not quite so prevalent. As the brass band repertoire now contains a number of jazz-based compositions and arrangements (many coming to my attention as a reviewer), I thought it would be interesting to ask the experts what they thought of this matter.

Dr. Robin Dewhurst, Senior Lecturer in Popular Music and Head of Jazz Performance at Salford University, has a lifetime’s experience as a jazz composer, arranger and performer (as many readers will know, his jazz trio made a considerable contribution to Cory Band’s 125th anniversary concert in Cardiff earlier this year) and offered the following observations: “Until about three decades ago, the brass band repertoire contained little swing or jazz music of any great distinction. The Salvation Army probably had the best arrangements in the genre, but for the secular world of brass bands, well-arranged jazz and swing pieces were decidedly thin on the ground. Then along came the James Shepherd Versatile Brass and things began to change. The Salvation Army, with its songster brigades and timbrel groups alongside its brass bands, has always had a certain amount of jazz-inflected arrangements, and many of the European bands, particularly those in Norway, have had music directors with swing band and big band backgrounds, whereas the average British ‘secular’ brass band conductor usually has a background of traditional brass band playing.

Added to this, brass band people usually have a very narrow definition of the meaning of the term, ‘swing’. Our own jazz tradition began in the music halls and continued through the great dance bands of the past such as that of Geraldo, but it really has European roots. Often, when brass band people talk of ‘swing’, what they really mean is the style of Count Basie, but the whole genre is very much broader than that. It is difficult to play against one’s inbuilt traditions and the stiffness of some players when attempting to play in a jazz style is contagious. In order to improve the situation, I think we need more good jazz arrangements in the repertoire and the willingness of conductors to listen to, and learn from, ensembles like The Brazz Brothers and Mnozil Brass, who are showing the way forward (Stavanger Band, for instance, has modelled itself on the music of the former). Jazz improvisation has been very slow to seep into brass bands, although great soloists like Wycliffe Gordon and James Morrison have helped to open ears in this respect.”