What does the term "jazz" stand for in the context of a contemporary jazz festival? Our author Lennart Winterkemper explores this question in his essay. Between the critical reading of promotional texts, numerous concert visits and audience discussions, he finds traces of answers.

A good two weeks ago, the 49th Leipzig Jazz Days came to an end. To paraphrase Rilke, I want to linger for a moment, turn around before saying goodbye, and take one last look at the festival's soundscape, listen to its echo. I take the motto "Mapping Music" at its word and run my finger along the musical map of the stations I have heard. I'm less interested in what jazz actually is and whether this year's Jazztage can be used for an elastic or fixed genre definition. Like the motif of this issue: the melting globe, the thing slips out of your hands as soon as you try to grasp it. Instead, I would rather talk about a musical practice that is characterized by certain demands. The following four are not everything that made up this festival week, but they are cornerstones for retrospective orientation in an advancing horizon of jazz:

Time consciousness. It is an empty phrase in promotional texts that tradition and modernity come together in jazz as something viable for the future. The names of the greats, traditional styles or even innovative power are sold. Some time ago, standards were seen as the connecting element to tradition, but now this is just a relic: Sam Gendel played a brief hint of "My Favorite Things" on the opening evening, otherwise nothing of the sort was heard over the eight days. 

In the chatter between concerts, I can't help but listen to a passionate plea that ascribes jazz a closeness to reality because social circumstances, such as war and injustice, are represented or addressed through this music. Classical music, on the other hand, would only appeal to the emotions. 

So rather an awareness of the present. At the festival, time art played back into the past, which has contemporary relevance. Be it the 30-year anniversary of the end of the Bosnian war in Jelena Kuljić's project, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in Karja/Renhard/Wandiger or the illumination of the male-dominated jazz world of the 1960s in the film "Being Hipp". Contemporary jazz makes current lifeworlds audible, said Annika Sautter, who is responsible for program management and the board of trustees of the Jazztage. Through GANNA, Laura Robles and Nduduzo Makhathini, the ears are directed towards voices from Ukraine, Peru and South Africa, which are in danger of being drowned out by the noise of the world, which is mainly dominated by the USA. The take of the musician-explainer from the audience, apart from his side-swipe against the classical music business, brings me a little further to the vantage point over the area of the Jazz Days.

Artificiality. Attention, mined terrain! To deny that other music is art would be presumptuous. But unlike them, the Jazz Days were dominated by a performance practice that ultimately focused purely on listening to the music. Not as well-behaved as in a classical concert, but: no visual pomp and no recourse to choreography. No personality cult and therefore not particularly conducive to marketing. This would not fill stadiums. Music should not be a happening or a consumer product, but should aspire to something more.

Photo: Simon Chmel

The duo Witch'n' Monk called out at the end of their set with a: "Fuck Instagram!" to the "Revolution" at the end of their set: You should leave them your own address so that they can send their concert announcements by postcard in future. It remained unclear how serious the whole thing was. In any case, when I was browsing through my Insta stories later, I noticed that they had been busy advertising their visit to the Schaubühne Lindenfels.

The list is long with acts who wanted to achieve something political, social or interpersonal with their music. To be able to live up to such an emphatic claim is almost inevitable - but to have it is still commendable.

Of course, there were also exceptions to the events that took place in warm lighting, small venues and with an aura of the alternative: Potsa Lotsa XL were not really convincing with their excess of noise, volume and too much fully beamed screen. In contrast, Stian Westerhus' music and its visualization at the Völkerschlachtdenkmal created a unique, synaesthetic blend. It was a shame that too few people found their way into the monument. For some, "jazz" has a dusty, elitist sound. Nevertheless, the prejudice of being aloof was not really confirmed. Only the grandmaster Dave Holland was predictably eyed with suspicion and mocked by a punk concert taking place at the same time on the opposite side of the street from UT Connewitz.

Transculturality. The fact that jazz is a product of transcultural practice and the cultural appropriation associated with it has almost become a self-evident consensus. The term itself is controversial because it could contain a racist component. It is therefore admirable that the Jazztage also provided a space for critical reflection. A lecture by the in-house graphic designer Stefan Ibrahim in the "Laboratory" project series of the Jazztage was dedicated to the history of pop culture, which was and in part still is a history of the appropriation and exoticization of other music cultures.

Photo: Lukas Diller

At the end of the presentation, an older woman voices her incomprehension about the content: she asks for an explanation of what exactly this is about, and the person sitting next to her, who is apparently her husband, complains that the program (booklet) is "pink mush". Admittedly, I also found it difficult to determine the exact color of the festival; I still can't decide between lilac and rosé. 

Culinary metaphors are nothing unusual for cultural events: think of the "salad bowl", for example. In other words, an eclectic or open and heterogeneous juxtaposition. At this festival, jazz was also an umbrella term for contradictory and different types of music. Dave Holland, Aly Keïta, Stian Westerhus and DJ Allnyx had little to do with each other in terms of music culture, but this resulted in a multi-colored sound image of a world landscape. 

Improvisation. "Giving scope to the innovative, risky and unfinished" was the declared aim of Das Labor. If the series was christened an experiment, the three terms are exactly what jazz and improvisation can be. Innovative: the choice of instruments (and their composition) of the individual acts. There was no sign of the old dichotomy between electronic and purely acoustic sounds. Almost all the bands worked with samples and electronic effects: Agua Dulce, Arthur Kohlhaas "Feedbackloop" or Blake Mills were brilliant sound engineers. Risky: the courage to stand up for the belonging of the excluded or the new. Giving projects such as Das Labor a space or including artists such as Stian Westerhus in the program seemed unusual, but was ultimately clever intuition. Unfinished: only the number 49 on the threshold of the fiftieth seemed unfinished, as the lilting electro bass beats of DJ Allnyx in Werk 2 provided a perfect conclusion, forming a fitting counterpart to the muffled piano runs in the lower register of Eve Risser at the opening concert - the artistic framework for the sound map of the 49th Leipzig Jazz Days.

Photo: Lukas Diller

The field of vision of a landscape is called the horizon. The paradoxical ambiguity, according to the linguistic image grandmaster Hans Blumenberg, lies in the fact that it simultaneously opens up that which it limits. Whoever moves forward shifts boundaries and possibilities at the same time. It was probably similar at the 49th Leipzig Jazz Days - the people who took part and shaped it shifted jazz and its horizons in new directions. The catering for this soundscape tour was a feast for the ears with pink porridge.