The Destructive Character

Not even going to try to write a detailed review of Peter Brotzmann's set at Cafe Otto the other night but watching the 68 year old German free jazz savant made me conscious of the way that forms of expression and a anti- capitalist politics remain deeply intertwined in a way that goes beyond didactic posturing. It's almost too obvious to link Brotzmann to such a position, given the genesis of his work in the far left political and cultural mileiu of Germany in the 1960's and the pivotal role the recording 'Machine Gun' (Don Cherry's nickname for Brotzmann incidentally) has played in providing some sort of index for the rage and potentiality that issued out of the radical cultural and political context of the late 1960's.

As Brotzmann himself says about the recording 'it had very much to do with the whole political situation in Western Europe and the whole world actually, what was happening in Washington DC, in Detroit, in the (American) South – it was hell. It was really a kind of steaming point where we young guys thought we would be able – even with music – to change the world'. Judging by his performance Brotzmann certainly retains much of that rage, and its at this point that the critical cliche's about the sonic warfare of Brotzmann's style can usually be invoked. However, what struck me about his performance was the way the noise and the rage were punctuated by passages of a surprising fragility and the occasional- I think- quotation of jazz standards.

'The destructive character stands in the front line of traditionalists. Some people pass things down to posterity, by making them untouchable and thus conserving them; others pass on situations, by making them practicable and thus liquidating them. The latter are called the destructive'.

Walter Benjamin, 'The Destructive Character'.

Just what tradition might Brotzmann continue to make practicable in the present and what exactly is liquidated in this practice? Now that we are so distant from both 1968 and the parallel evolution of free jazz in the 1960's- the twin events that Brotzmann arguably retains fidelity to- what relevance might he have in the present atmosphere of cultural production as nothing but distraction and entertainment?

Watching Brotzmann in the pleasantly rarefied (or should that be reified?) environment of Cafe Otto made me aware of how much avant- garde and experimental culture constitutes a relatively privileged ghetto these days, admittedly in the face of the circulating inanity of an ever more insidious commodified pop culture. This isn't to completely knock Cafe Otto since decent venues for this kind of thing are few and far between in a city given over to the power of the rentier and the chain coffee shop although simultaneously the role of such venues is more than ambiguous in that particular dynamic. That said, one of the more enjoyable impressions I carry from the place is from last year when during an electronic set by Otomo Yoshihde I noticed two Rasta's carrying Nyabinghi drums listening intently outside, thus suggesting a soundclash I'd be more than happy to hear.

Except for brief moments of conjunction, as with the 1960's, this dislocation between experimentation in music and politics has probably always been the case but Brotzmann's performance and presence both illuminated the paucity of contemporary 'radical' cultural production and carried a trace of something else. The tradition that Brotzmann is such an important part of- free jazz, improv, 'fire music'- while still vital in many respects exists, at least in the UK, as a very marginal practice that carries its own cultural capital for the hip. If not the artists, then the broader culture around 'experimental' music is often separated from any critique of the present, part of the merry- go- round of festivals and residencies that constitute 'our' cultural milieu. The 'tradition' and more broadly radical experimental music become a more enlightened consumer choice, akin to sampling free range meat rather than having a McDonalds, the conservation of a particular form rather than the opening out into a situation that might unsettle.

Somehow, watching Brotzmann was a reminder that this need not be the case. This wasn't just to do with the cultural gravitas of his role in experimental music or his overt political statements. It was the way that he visibly still struggled with the form of the 'tradition' and interacted with the other musicians that liquidated any suggestion that this is a musical culture only worth preserving for the delectation of the culturally curious. Rather than the certainty of accomplishment and success that an improv maestro might be expected to carry Brotzmann seemed more possessed by uncertainty, revealed by lapses into almost melodic and brooding passages, sometimes disappearing into silence. Sure, he still delivered the violence that we expect but the questioning that was still implicit in his performance was almost more effective in raising the spectre of a radical cultural production not easily assimilated by capital and lifestyle choice.

Perhaps, in the context of improvisational music this is what noise artist Mattin has termed a 'going fragile', a refusal of the roles that even free, experimental music (and politics) can impose, a step out of the safety zone. If so it was a weak version of the afore mentioned- we still dutifully stood and watched, sipped our beer and drifted out into the night afterwards. The expectations of our cultural experience were not irrevocably disrupted. but there was a glimpse of tradition being liquidated into situation and becoming fluid again. Aligned with the sheer physicality of the sound, a consistent fuck you to the snail of shit that much contemporary culture (and life) forms, it suggested that rather than being tied to epochal events such as May '68 and 1960's 'fire music', improvisation can still suggest ways out of the claustrophobic cultural, political and everyday dead ends that contemporary capital nurtures.