Before Louis Armstrong
“Before there was Louis Armstrong there was nothing.” –Iman Lababedi
As one who, in my youth, had been fairly indifferent to the music of Louis Armstrong, I was somewhat intrigued when, more than a decade ago, Iman Lababedi of rock nyc began to explain to me what a truly monumental musician Satchmo was. As I learned, for the first time, about his life, career and the huge influence he had on American modern music, I felt lucky that someone had led me out of my ignorance and given me the understanding to appreciate the man and his legacy.
Thus, I understand why a sentiment like “before here was Louis Armstrong there was nothing” resonates so strongly for Iman the devotee (it is a play on John Lennon’s old line: “Before there was Elvis Presley there was nothing”). Not meant to be taken literally, it is more like an oath or a pledge of allegiance; a statement of fealty and admiration for the man’s great accomplishments. Standing on the summit of Mt. Armstrong, Iman gazes reverently in the direction of “before” and sees below him, stretching to the distant horizon, a vast, featureless cloud cover through which no other mountain top emerges.
It is with that rather flimsy but contrived hook that I want to take this opportunity, on the 260th anniversary of his death, to recite my own statement of devotional certitude:
“There is Johann Sebastian Bach, and then there is everybody else.”
Unlike Armstrong, who arguably invented Jazz, Bach did not create a new musical form. He took the existing components of the baroque era; counterpoint, harmony, multiple voices, textures and rhythms, etc, and refined them into devotional and secular works unparalleled in their beauty, depth and pure artistry.
Bach never heard of jazz, but his music is highly jazz-alicious. The Swingle Singers (jazz vocals) and Modern Jazz Quartet spring to mind immediately but go ahead and search “jazz Bach” and see what you come up with. His music has been played by myriad jazz artists (go to YouTube and search for Wynton Marsalis playing “Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen”) It doesn’t appear, however, that Armstrong was one of them (and that is not a criticism).
Why Bach and jazz? Improvisation is the key. His music begs to be turned and inverted and curved and skewed. Improvisation was very important in the 18th century baroque. That’s why I firmly believe Bach would have “gotten” jazz. I think he would have loved Armstrong, and I insist on believing that, once he got the knack for it, the old Big Wig would have had no trouble riffing with Satch.
So all that to say this: Before Bach there were excellent musicians and popular musical styles that influenced him greatly. His genius was that he absorbed it all, understood it completely and produced complete and utter masterworks that have literally stood the test of time to the tune of 300 years.
That’s why, 260 years after he put down his quill for the last time, he’s still over here…and everybody else is still over there.