Why Zorn Matters

There's an article in The New York Times  that contrasts John Zorn's "downtown" roots with his slow acceptance by the "uptown" scene: I might not be familiar with the precise definitions of the two areas of New York culture, but the spirit of the article expresses the reasons why Zorn is so important to me. Having grown up in the aftermath of punk, and all the excitement of the rave explosion, Zorn occupied a specific space in my musical pantheon. Lending a murderous saxophone solo to The Violent Femmes, hanging out in the same places as Sonic Youth or Swans and mixing free jazz with hardcore punk, Zorn gave a musical credibility to the wild sounds of my adolescence.

Zorn was always and obviously different to the other musicians I adored for their willingness to experiment while still rocking hard. Sonic Youth might have followed a similar trajectory - Goodbye Twentieth Century is a fine testament to a band who acknowledge the roots of their own noise in formal classical experiments - but Zorn was a virtuoso from the first, and his playing connected him clearly to the imaginations of Coletrane or Ornette Coleman. Spy Versus Spy made his heritage explicit: an album of cover versions by the latter, performed at the speed of hardcore. It was the jazz album I needed to understand, especially in a period when jazz was becoming preoccupied with polish and conservation.

Ironically, by the time of post-punk, jazz had been occupied by an obsession with "style' and taste": it was turning up at the Proms, and the only talent from the golden age still in action was Miles Davis, throwing some uncomfortable shapes around hip hop. Meanwhile, Zorn was cultivating the same legacy to a far more visceral end.

Unlike many artists who pretend towards originality or experimentation, Zorn was interested in the history of music. Naked City, his version of the supergroup, would splice country, punk, romantic jazz and atmospheric soundtracks: he revisited film scores by Morricone. The double set of Cobra revealed how game theory could be used to bridge the gap between improvisation and composition, and by the time electronic musicians were citing minimalism - and remixing Reich and Glass to predictable monotony - Zorn was ready to become the heir of Cage.

Much post-modern composition is self-conscious and postures, or slips into pomposity: Zorn's trick was to treat different musical genres with equal respect. A turntablist could find themselves scratching a string quartet, Japanese hardcore vocalists would accompany be-bop saxophone. Now that the BBC has programmed an evening of his work, Zorn might be heading towards some kind of mainstream acceptance. And yet, even this programme has its surprises...




http://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/john-zorn-primer