Jazz und der Rest der Welt:
Nachhaltiger Wandel oder punktuelle Inspiration?
Starting out from the concept of acculturation (M. Herskovits), the modernization, westernization, and hybridization of musics have been important issues in ethnomusicological studies. Recently, new models of culture contact and change have been proposed, and especially Mark Slobin’s notion of so-called micromusics – or rather local, regional, and transregional musics – have pointed to the importance of dealing with the geographic range of a particular musical idiom. Regarding music, cultural change under the influence of contact between different cultures may be observed in three areas. (1) Musical instruments and/or (2) structural features of music may be adopted and (3) changes in the attitudes toward music and how it is made use of may occur. These three aspects are explored in the paper with particular reference to the way how non-Western musics have or have not had a profound influence on jazz. The notion of jazz as an art music can hardly be attributed to the impact of non-Western models like Indian classical music and the turn to popular idioms on behalf of some jazz musicians does also not depend on developments outside Western societies. Although some »exotic« instruments are sometimes used by jazz musicians, their impact seems to be mostly negligible. While non-Western concepts of modal playing (as in music from India and some other countries) are obviously hard to reconcile with jazz, a considerable effect on jazz can be observed in the temporal domain, namely in the form of odd meters in jazz after about 1959, partly stemming from various »Oriental« musics of Turkey and the Arab world. Since acquiring a foreign musical style is not easily accomplished by jazz musicians themselves, there is a long history of collaboration between them and musicians from other cultures. Particularly the art music traditions of North and South India have often been employed here. However, apart from very rare exceptions these attempts have been confined to singular projects and have neither led to the emergence of a new (hybrid) style nor, on the whole, resulted in marked changes in jazz. The paper finally discusses some reasons for this development, tracing it to particular features of jazz which have made it one of the few true »world musics«.