What Fine Wine can learn from Jazz – In conversation with Corina Kwami
Born in New Jersey, USA, to a Ghanaian and Irish family, Dr Corina Shika Kwami is a jazz-influenced musician who has performed in countries across the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia with her band “Corina Kwami & the Swing Selection”. She is also a well-known thought leader and speaker whose work cuts across the arts and sciences, music and dance in order to facilitate exchanges between these worlds.
This interview represents a small part of a wide-ranging discussion about cultural and musical history. It has been edited for length and clarity. To hear the whole discussion, click here.
ARENI:
How would you define jazz to someone that doesn’t know much about jazz or music?
Corina Kwami:
I’d love to describe jazz as like cooking. There’s obviously the written-out menu, so there are specific elements. There are pieces that you will adapt and change based on taste, based on the mood. It’s that coming together of those elements of structure and improvisation. And like your favourite dish, you can adapt it.
The structure of jazz is heavily informed by the history. This is a black American art form. An American art form in the sense that it came together on American soil.
ARENI:
When we talk about fine wine, the notion is always associated with quality. Do you define quality in jazz? Is there a way to distinguish good jazz from less good jazz?
Corina Kwami:
I think there’s taste. When I first started playing, there was a certain kind of jazz I really enjoyed, but over time as I listened to more, as I played more, as I practiced more, and worked with more musicians, your taste changes. When you’ve done a lot and you’re constantly immersing yourself, you’re actually looking for that thing that makes it a little bit different.
For me as a player, it’s really about the timing. The pulse of the piece. When someone has a good time, or when a band has really great time, everybody – regardless of how musical you are – feels that it’s a little bit different.
ARENI:
For Fine Wine we’ve got that ‘stop the time’ effect. It’s like everything stops around you. And it’s that capacity to freeze the emotions and to maximize them. As you were saying, anyone, regardless of their experience and knowledge about wine can feel the difference between a good entry level wine and a great wine, with more complexity and depth. They might not want to spend that money, but they can taste that those two wines are not exactly the same.
Corina Kwami:
As you taste more, as you hear more, those things that seem dissonant are, in a way, your brain adapting to that language. Think about the history of jazz. It is one where we have this blending of musical traditions, European musical traditions and African musical traditions. There are patterns that, scientifically, we can understand why they causes our brain to react a certain way, but it is still a preference that – over literally hundreds of years – we’ve become used to.
In some African music, and Indian music as well, there are entirely different scales. As you listen to more, that dissonance just becomes more familiar.
Corina Kwami, Jazz singer and tap dancer
ARENI:
And the dissonance maybe takes you to places you wouldn’t have experienced. You mentioned earlier that jazz has got structure, but there is plenty of room for improvisation. When we go back to fine wine and part of its definition – fine wine does not happen by mistake. Every tiny detail has been thought through. I’m not saying that they have to intervene a lot, but it doesn’t leave much room for improvisation. How does jazz reconcile improvisation and control and technique?
Corina Kwami:
Duke Ellington is one of the musicians whose bands show you the spectrum. He was at his height during the big band era of the ‘30s and ‘40s. These were very strict, hierarchical bands where you had 15, 20-plus musicians on stage and the music was heavily arranged. So, the structure I was talking about. For example, when a horn player will step up to solo, they will have a set form that they’re meant to solo over. In some cases, those solos were scripted, in some cases not. Now over those periods, we do see soloists taking greater freedoms in terms of improvisation. Through the ‘40s and ‘50s, we see the emergence of bebop.
This was obviously not linear. It wasn’t like big bands ended and then bebop started, but in bebop we do see this focus on improvisation in the sense that the soloist is composing in real time. But there is still a structure. There are standard tunes. And so, whether your job is in Tokyo or New Orleans or New York, there is a canon of pieces that we know. If I play with a band that I’ve never met, we all have a similar structure and standard to work from, but it’s the improvisation where we take that liberty. But the only way we can improvise is with a structure. In terms of the fine winemaker, it sounds like there is a standard that at least needs to be met to be considered.
The only way we can improvise is with a structure.
Corina Kwami, Jazz singer and tap dancer
ARENI:
Science has taught us so much about winemaking. In some ways, becoming more knowledgeable allowed that freedom of expression, because we could understand what was going to happen. We had the knowledge to – maybe not improvise – but at least adapt and do something that was closer to our vision.
I wanted to ask you about the language of jazz and to me, at least, it seems very complex and complicated.
Are all these codes and language a hindrance or a help to our community? How do you see that in jazz?
Corina Kwami:
I always start with two perspectives. I think there’s a perspective of players, and a perspective of audiences. I’ll go back to that big band, more hierarchical and structured format. When it’s more improved, there is almost a social contract as players. We are starting this tune; we have this structure. If you were opening up space for somebody to improvise, you literally look at them. There is an etiquette and an understanding of what that is among players.
I would say that structure is something you embrace in order to be free to think about other things. As a player, there is a set of codes and in choosing them, or agreeing not to choose them, we’ve already established a common understanding.
Corina Kwami, Jazz Singer and tap dancer
We’re not live musicians without an audience. So, there is a piece where you come to a gig, you’re coming to be entertained. You’re also part of the act in the sense that if there’s not an audience, there isn’t a gig. We’re in conversation.
ARENI:
Jazz is part of the wider music industry. We can talk about music, but we can talk also about the trade and the industry around it. How is technology changing your world in both production and distribution of music?
Corina Kwami:
Traditional 20th century music was very much controlled by big labels. Whether it was jazz or pop, there was much more of an emphasis on getting the big labels to recognize your work. In the 2000s, we see this shift to digital distribution and also streaming and downloading. You have much more broadening out to more independent artists, independent labels. It’s interesting, because we now are almost going back to that. Not necessarily labels, but much more concentration around musical distribution platforms, like your Spotify or SoundCloud. I think what I anticipate is that you’ll see another form. A platform, maybe not necessarily for streaming, but for facilitating performance.
The skill sets that one develops in order to navigate that is where I’m most interested. For instance, a lot of musicians became more adept at doing recordings at home. Prior, you would rely on a few clips from your gig or hire a videographer to come and do a big video, but now folks are doing it almost as part of practice.
ARENI:
In the different talks that I watched you give, you talk about storytelling. And one of the lessons that we can learn from jazz is how jazz brings many voices together to tell a story.
Corina Kwami:
For jazz, I would be wary if you see one dominant narrative or dominant story, but you can also use that as an entry point to understand and, and explore.
And I guess for wine that might be a particular wine that you enjoy, but it also might be the entry point for you thinking and interacting with others. I think the key part, which I hope has come through in this chat is that it is about people.
Corina Kwami, Jazz singer and tap dancer
There are artefacts like music that reflect our culture, our beliefs, our understandings of our society but, at the core, it is the people.
ARENI:
People have very different understandings of the word ‘luxury’. Is that a word that is really used in the jazz world?
Corina Kwami:
You have things like classic or vintage. First, everyone had access to it. It was social music. Then it became sort of Carnegie Hall. So, there is an element of jazz that people have in their mind that is something very elite. That is something the industry talks about and thinks about how to increase access, especially for folks for whom this music is a shared history.
ARENI:
I think to some extent, luxury is also related to culture. In France, for example, luxury is something that has to do with high-quality craft and savoir faire. Luxury has a very positive association with it. And then you go to the US and luxury is seen as self-indulgence; splashing your money on objects you don’t need. There are some winemakers that understand luxury as the capacity to swim against the current, as the capacity to go slow. That could be jazz as well.
Corina Kwami:
I love that. Totally. It’s luxury to just be human.
ARENI:
My last question will be about the future and looking ahead. If we imagine the world of tomorrow, what lessons can we all learn from jazz that would help us create a better tomorrow?
Corina Kwami:
What world would we like to build for humans to be able to express themselves? The building blocks of jazz are history, the language, the etiquette, how we want to treat and be treated. I wouldn’t say jazz is obviously the model, but I think at least what we’re aspiring for each time you get on stage is to get closer to that. I think for folks who are just excited about the music as well, it is such an entry point for so many other art forms and understanding how these other art forms have evolved.
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