Reparations - Stephen Byth
There’s that old saying that you should never mention religion or politics at a dinner party. With the exception of playing a game of Monopoly, few things have the ability to start monumental arguments between family and friends like the aforementioned topics. However, as I get older, I’m starting to feel like we should talk a lot more about politics, especially when it comes to jazz and improvised music. Going through jazz school, it felt like the teachers followed the old adage to a tee. With hindsight, it seems exceptionally strange that a tertiary course based on music created by a people for whom immense inequality and systemic racism was a daily experience, rarely discussed politics or race. While I can understand that it’s very challenging to sensitively navigate such complex topics, especially to a room full of (mostly) privileged, white Australian 18-year old’s, I think that it’s important to acknowledge and discuss as part of the music’s history.
Recently, I’ve thought a lot about how the music we make on a local level should reflect, comment on or acknowledge the society in which it exists. This relationship can be overt; a central theme or concept around which the music is written, immediately obvious to the listener. But it can also be abstract or tangential, not obvious to the listener but subtly embedded into the fabric of the composition or conception of the music. Balancing these two polarities can be difficult, on the one hand you don’t want to come across as preachy or didactic but on the other, you want to still feel as though your intention and message is apparent. It also adds a whole other layer of complexity to the process. With something like race, you have to be very careful to create your work in a deeply respectful and considered way. Personally, as an uber privileged straight white guy, I would want to try and take great care to position the music and myself as an ally, in support of a cause. It’s important to be careful not to insert yourself into a narrative that isn’t your own.
So, I was particularly intrigued when I saw the title and read the liner notes to Steve Byth’s new album, Reparations. In Steve’s words, this music is “a call-to-action for all Australians to do their part in repaying the debt owed to Indigenous Australians and the Natural World, which are inextricably linked, after centuries of mistreatment, damage and oppression”. It’s seemingly rare for an improvising musician to so directly link their music to a cause, especially one with such a dark history of trauma and conflict. As a white Australian, it is impossible to comprehend the shameful past of Australia’s colonial settlement and the countless atrocities committed against the First Nations people of this land. The shame continues to this day with immense inequality, racism and deep prejudice at the core of Australian society and public policy.
There is also shame in the way white Australians, who in 234 years, have caused irreparable damage and destruction to a continent upon which Indigenous populations lived sustainably for more than 60,000 years. This is where Steve’s music finds its entry point into this complex subject matter, taking inspiration from the shapes, sounds and life in Australia’s natural landscape. The music on Reparations, composed and arranged by Steve is performed by a high calibre cast of international musicians who recorded remotely throughout 2020. In this sense, it seems to have embraced one of the biggest challenges of Covid 19, the inability to perform music in a room together. By recording all parts remotely and then mixing it together, there is scope to easily utilise instrumentations that would not be possible or feasible in a live recording format. This seems to have played a big part in the conception of this music, the ensemble expanded with violin, flute and bass clarinet and largely through composed with brief moments of improvisation throughout. The result is music that is orchestral in nature, subtly able to evoke Australia’s beautiful landscapes and texture yet can turn on a dime to express the anger and turmoil of this nation’s dark history.
Take the track Adani as a perfect example of how the instrumentation is employed to express contrasting characters and themes. When writing about music, you always run the risk of reading too much into things that were never intended by the composer, making a fool of yourself in the process. All the same, here I go! Getting a little imaginative, when I listen closely to the intro of this track, you can hear the air pushing through the woodwinds in the beautiful, closely voiced chords. It almost sounds like the wind blowing gently through the leaves. As the main theme develops, there is a moment of opening into what feels like a huge, cavernous expanse at 0.35 with the entrance of the rest of the ensemble. The music is reflective and peaceful during the brief bass and saxophone solo that abruptly changes around the halfway mark with the entrance of an epic three way bass clarinet, clarinet and trumpet solo that crescendos into an even more epic unison melody that culminates in the ultimately epic return of the original theme at 4.15!! Epic-ness aside, by this point, the music feels frustrated and impatient: as though you can never return to what seemed like a simpler, pristine time only 4 minutes ago… it really is quite the rollercoaster!
Personally, I have also loved listening to this recording as a document of Steve’s growth and development as an improviser, composer and as an artist. I remember meeting Steve at a jazz summer camp when I was 16 and he was probably 14 or so. He had already absorbed so much music and was playing at a ridiculously high level for a teenager. We played together on and off into our early twenties and as an improviser, Steve always had such an incredible command of his instrument, a big sound and great time feel. But on this recording, he displays a new maturity and patience in the way he crafts his solos, leaving lots of space between thoughtfully constructed phrases and melodic ideas. Steve is in fine form on the track Pain to Progress, taking an amazing solo that uses the full range of the instrument to create a musical narrative. I love the way each of the phrases are developed, never quite letting them go, reaching further and further into the altissimo as the solo progresses. Reparations is a perfect snapshot of an artist with a strong creative vision who has a message to share beyond the music itself – I’m excited to hear what comes next!