"WHY JAZZ?"

Listening to jazz - playing jazz: is jazz primarily music for musicians, as some argue? Since nobody exactly knows, what jazz really is, it isn't necessary to answer this question seriously. But why do electronic musicians in particular stick so obstinately to this subject? In my case this may be related not only to the fact that when I was younger I for some time entertained the naïve dream of becoming a jazz musician. Perhaps more decisive was that I later gave up the plan. This was bound up with the thing about playing and listening. Playing a lot to play better: is this really the best way towards the essence of this music? Only later, when the club- and party-era started, did I begin to approach the answer. There were enough occasions to act out the so-called passion of playing inaudibly on the dance-floor. What remains is the idea of a virtual accompaniment: danceable jazz. I became aware that such jazz indeed already existed remarkably late, which posed the question anew: what is jazz, actually? In the meantime I had studied percussion and checked out electronic music technology, and now at once there seemed to be a way towards an answer: to explore the intrinsic connection between today's electronic beats and their precursors, and devote my work to a subtle trend that seemed to pop up here and there: the 're-Africanisation' of jazz by technological means, its 'minimalisation', the reduction of the harmonic-melodic complex to a point where it again returns into rhythmically pulsating sound. Or: the precision of the computer coupled with an African esthetic of repetitive rhythm and Schoenberg's idea of 'Klangfarbenmelodie'. And which instrument? I must concede that as a boy I admired for some time the electric guitarists, but later on it was the conga-players who became my heroes, because they played these insidiously dry grooves, everything visible, except the eyes are too slow to follow it.  But then came hip hop, along with these cool guys in the background, swinging their digital samurai swords to cut out a basic track with just two strokes. A groovy fingerprint on top of the beat, broaching a sonic space, the exciting touch of documentary created by the traces of noise on the recordings, a tinge of tonality, suggestive but not dictatorial. Without a doubt, my favorite instrument is the sampler!