Agency, Social Organization, and the Musical Practices of Jazz Bass Players in Australia

Abstract

The democratic and agentic social meanings of jazz and improvisation have been widely understood in relation to US history; however, performing jazz musicians’ everyday experiences cannot necessarily be understood in the same way. Performing in jazz ensembles is a complicated experience, one in which musical roles are negotiated, restricted, or liberated, sometimes in the course of performance as a form of improvisation and at other times in the rehearsal work that surrounds such events. As such, the everyday experience of a musician’s career can significantly affect the social encoding of appropriate musical performance practices associated with the instrument and its role in the ensemble. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted with jazz double bass players in Australia, this article uses this global location as a case study to explore the social expectations that affect the musical practices of bass players when working as accompanists. The article examines this side-person role, its benefits, pitfalls, and practical realities, suggesting that the relationship between the musical practices, ensemble hierarchies, and social meanings of jazz and improvisation is contingent on context. I argue that what governs the way the bass players in this case study perform is a duality of economic imperative and creative desire.

Jazz and improvisation are primarily interpreted as musical and social practices that are agentic forms of expression, allowing people to express their identity often against normative positions and requiring capacity for individual decision-making. These social meanings emanate from movements that at times explicitly involved jazz musicians in critiquing dominant social structures in the United States, and asserting positive articulations of African American identity in the context of African American oppression and marginalization. Although they are contextually specific, there is a widely held perception that these meanings hold across societies where jazz and improvisation are performed. This phenomenon’s pervasiveness shows how the assertion of African American identity has strongly influenced contemporary Western understandings of improvisation and jazz. However, the cultural specificity of these meanings is also the cause of some concern because they are sometimes applied universally, despite lacking a clear relationship to the context and purpose of the musicians.

Scholarship on African American music has drawn significantly from Paul Gilroy’s concept of the Black Atlantic (Gilroy 1993), which has been used to theorize jazz improvisation as articulating identities that challenge dominant white Western social structures (Lewis 2004, 133–35; Porter 1999, 423–26; Stanyek 2004, 93–106). However, these socio-musical meanings of jazz are sometimes at odds with the experience of rhythm section players, particularly drummers and bassists, whose expected function is mainly to support, accompany, or complement the work of a soloist. Similarly, the meanings ascribed to jazz performance and improvisation are contingent on the context in which they are found across the globe. In this article, I draw on fieldwork with a group of bass players in Australia, whose experiences are reflective of many jazz scenes in democratic countries outside the United States, to explore how the meanings of jazz and improvisation are contingent on the performance practices used by musicians, the relationships between musicians, and how they view improvisation.¹ I focus specifically on four players who have primarily played the role of the bass player accompanist in their careers, and on the relationship this role has to their improvisation. In doing so, I address the representation and perception of bass players in jazz history and discourse, and critique the literature surrounding jazz as a democratic and agentic art form. I then examine the experiences of the fieldwork participants and how the social and economic context of jazz performance structures their music-making. I also examine how their different experiences in a jazz scene outside the United States could be seen as indicative of many developed countries that have a mediated relationship to the Afro-American meanings jazz carries, and which lessen its political potency in terms of articulating cultural agency.

The view of improvisation as artistic and distinct from entertainment serves to articulate and negotiate minority identities into a beneficial musical and social position (Stanyek 2004, 93–106). Jason Stanyek discusses the specific social meanings and history of using improvisation as a socially discursive musical practice that articulates Afro-American identities through jazz in the United States. Stanyek argues that jazz practices and improvisation among musicians of African descent in the United States and South America create positive intercultural identities that resist negative assumptions about African American musicians. Jazz voices their concerns, particularly following bebop and the avant-garde practices of musicians in the 1960s, such as Charles Mingus, Max Roach, and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). For instance, Mingus utilized the musical vernacular and syntax of jazz to score his works critiquing political figures such as Governor Orval Faubus, who segregated schools in Arkansas, and to underscore the poetry of Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, who chronicled the African American experience and Afro-modernism.

Stanyek’s idea of ‘intercultural improvisation’ is defined by negotiating musical and social spaces through improvisation. It would not be unreasonable to see this as a valuable model for understanding musical interaction between musicians from different musical and social backgrounds. The narrative of jazz articulating positive, intellectual, and artistically cultivated African American cultural identities is paramount in the context of predominantly white social structures in the United States. Despite the ways in which Afrological versus Eurological views of improvisation can obscure the hybrid creation of jazz, George Lewis’s argument is evidence of how race remains a central issue shaping the cultural meanings of jazz (Lewis 2004, 133–35). In this context, the term improvisation carries powerful political and racial connotations that have been used by white free-improvisation musicians to exclude black jazz musicians and simultaneously used by African American musicians to critique racialized social structures (Lewis 2004; Monson 1996).

However, there is a need to temper purely positivist assumptions about improvisation as a social and musical practice and highlight its specific contextual circumstances in order to understand the relationship between its musical and social functions without conflating them. Jerome Camal has argued that Pan-African intercultural interaction is not always a positive experience and can exploit those with less access and power in Western music industries (Camal 2012, 174–77). It is essential to consider that the processes of intercultural improvisation can also be used socially to reinforce and restrict. One such example is Ghanaba’s (Guy Warren) experience of performing jazz in America and the resistance to the Ghanaian rhythms he wished to introduce to performances (Feld 2012, 61–62). Ghanaba’s experience is a reminder that musical performances using improvisation are not always equitably experienced.

These perspectives on improvisation are shaped by the contextual and discursive factors surrounding jazz, particularly bebop and Latin–jazz hybrids that have emerged. Performers such as Dizzy Gillespie who were involved in Latin Jazz and bebop collaborations, regardless of their political or social inclinations, established a place in US American society for the practice of jazz as an art form which confounded the primitivist myth (Porter 1999, 423–26; Monson 1996; Gioia 1997, 130).² In this context, the social semiotics of improvisation as free and democratic, and its historical association with jazz musicians, assert a modern, intelligent, and agentic conception of African American identity. These signifiers of improvisations result from how sound is given its meaning by specific social and political situations (Blacking 1995, 50–60).

In The Fierce Urgency of Now, Daniel Fischlin, Ajay Heble, and George Lipsitz assert in polemical style that improvisation is a musical and social process that carries almost universal traits, which makes it an agentic, democratic, and emancipatory process of cultural creation (Fischlin, Heble, and Lipsitz 2013, xv). To argue this perspective, they rely heavily on US-based jazz contexts, which reflect these ideas in the social practice of improvisation. These contexts strongly support their argument; for instance, the work of the AACM and the perspectives of free improvisers like William Parker reflect a conception of improvisation that draws on music with origins in the Black Atlantic (Fischlin, Heble, and Lipsitz 2013, xvi–xvii). However, their argument extends this conception of improvisation beyond these specific contexts, which Scott Currie raises as a significant concern because of this ‘cross-cultural generalisation’ (Currie 2017, 360). Such a perspective is troubling as it misses the depth and breadth of understanding about improvisation gathered by examining its meaning and experience contingent on context.

Fischlin, Heble, and Lipsitz’s (2013) argument emanates from a combination of some of jazz’s musical practices and social history. Soloists’ improvisational approaches are commonly associated with freedom of voice and are seen as agentic in the work of Paul Berliner (1994, 120–21) and Ingrid Monson (1996, 142). Their research is influenced by the social context in which jazz was formed and the values of freedom of expression and creativity central to jazz and African American artistic practice. However, there is room for more nuance to augment the political leanings of scholarship on improvisation by authors such as Fischlin, Heble, and Lipsitz (2013). In addition, ethnographic perspectives can highlight how the combination of musical and social processes identified by Berliner (1994) and Monson (1996) are experienced differently in jazz scenes around the world.

Improvisation can reflect other values. For instance, improvisation in Hindustani classical music can be understood to reflect the inherent hierarchies between soloists and accompanists passed down through the caste system (Neuman 1977; Napier 2007). In the context of musical training in gharana (a musical lineage often linked to a family and their students) in North India, both Neuman (1977, 238–39) and Napier (2007) argue that the improvisation of musicians is stratified, with higher caste soloists being the feature and recognized as artists while accompanists are seen as artisans. While Napier notes that these roles have been challenged and accompanists have taken on a more celebrated musical and social role, he argues that this context of improvisation is governed by an ‘ideological framework’ that emphasizes ‘notions of pedigree, seniority, and authority’ (Napier 2004, 52). The result is that the soloist and accompanist are ‘co-operative and mutually sympathetic,’ a relationship in which the accompanist is seen as an ‘authoritative [voice]’ with partial autonomy (Napier 2007, 296). This partial autonomy lets them interject melodically even though they ‘may not necessarily be able to claim authority over the soloist’ on equal terms (2007, 296). The literature on accompaniment in Hindustani music reveals that ensemble performance is a complex intertwining of musical voices that negotiate authority over aspects of the performance through improvisation.

These perspectives show that the meanings of jazz and improvisation cannot be deployed uniformly across the practices of improvising, given the multiplicity of contexts in which the musical practice occurs. However, the idiosyncrasies of the way improvisation is used in the contexts described by Stanyek (2004), Lewis (2004), and Fischlin, Heble, and Lipsitz (2013) make the social meanings of improvisation potentially potent. Indeed, the capacity for individual decision-making and performance seems a comfortable fit for the characterization of jazz musicians’ practices when soloing. However, the application of concepts of agency, democracy, and freedom to other ensemble roles needs to take into account that jazz ensemble performance requires specific roles from musicians. In this study, bass players provide musical accompaniment in a way that does not always support a view that agency equates to freedom of expression in jazz performance. While jazz musicians worldwide have aspirational goals for music-making to express identity (MacDonald and Wilson 2006, 59–61), its capacity to reflect such meaning is made convincing when musical practices ‘reproduce, reinforce, actualise, or memorialise extant socio-cultural identities’ in some form (Born and Hesmondhalgh 2000, 35–36). Distinguishing between ideals and identities that exist in practice is difficult, but accommodates the vastly different social and political circumstances of the performance of jazz in varying contexts.

The Australian European backgrounds of the performers in this study and, indeed, the demographics of jazz musicians in Australia more broadly, are a reminder of the significantly different social context of jazz performance outside the United States. This context impacts the meaning of jazz performance and can prove challenging to pinpoint because archetypes of Australian identity like larrikinism and mateship have a tenuous relationship to jazz (Whiteoak 2003, 378; 2014, 25; 1998, xii–xxii, 267). While not the focus of this article, it is an important issue that contextualizes this study and how these performers are understood (Phipps 2022). Contemporary scholars have recently attempted to take up narratives of jazz being localized, as developed by John Whiteoak and Bruce Johnson, and argue that the practices of Australian musicians performing jazz shape, and are shaped by, national identity and the social context of Australia (Johnson 2000, 159–63; Whiteoak 1998, xi–xxii; Rose 2016, 38–44; Robson 2020, 2–19). Johnson’s arguments are often concerned with positioning the musicians’ practices in relation to social and political structures such as the Australian nation, the Asia-Pacific, and, of course, jazz and American musical identity (Johnson 2000, 17–26). However, the issue of how a settler society interprets an African American cultural form remains mostly undeveloped. Johnson’s and Whiteoak’s claims of uniqueness in the musical and cultural practice of Australian jazz musicians, while addressing the historical past, are also evidence of contemporary anxieties over the social meanings of adopting jazz performance in Australia, which are not necessarily significantly different from other developed countries (Phipps 2022, 54–60). Recently, practice-based scholarship has drawn attention to the position of the country near Asia and the impact of these cultures on the practices of Australian musicians, while still maintaining claims of Australian uniqueness and associations with ideas of freedom and agency, which, while reflective of ensemble leaders, do not necessarily reflect accompanists’ experiences. Many scholars, regardless of how they see the role of the nation regarding local jazz performance, point to the importance of cultural hybridity in musical practice. This practice-based scholarship, which assumes the socio-political aims of Johnson’s and Whiteoak’s work, often traces local performers’ histories and influence on others to assert unique performance practices (Rose 2016, 38–44; Robson 2020, 2–19).

Research into local jazz performance, however, has seldom examined whether characteristics of freedom and agency exemplify the social and musical meanings of the music in Australia, which, like many other nations outside the United States, does not have a history of using jazz to articulate identities against dominant social structures (Phipps 2022, 66–67). One problematic feature of this discourse is the absence of Indigenous perspectives amidst arguments about the localization of jazz to Australian culture. Jazz practice in Australia has instead been overwhelmingly white and middle class, creating a different relationship between the music’s practitioners and the important role the style has played in articulating African American agency.

Expectations of the Bass Role in Jazz

The bass player’s foundational harmonic and rhythmic role in jazz ensembles persists in contemporary practices, and has been reinforced by the discourse on ensemble roles in jazz improvisation. In their landmark ethnographic studies, Monson (1996, 29) and Berliner (1994, 299) describe the role as one of support and occasional interaction, and minimize its capacity for instigating melodic development. This perspective has been around since the earliest writing on jazz and reflects the assumptions of early historians such as Hugues Pannasié about ensemble roles (Chevan 1989). David Chevan has argued that early histories diminish the bass role’s contributions as either accompanist or soloist to improvisation in jazz (1989, 73).

In general, jazz histories offer little discussion of bass players and their role in ensembles except concerning their support of leading figures such as Miles Davis. Notable attempts at historicizing and re-historicizing in the new jazz studies, such as those written by Alyn Shipton (2001), Gary Giddens and Scott Deveaux (2009), and Ted Gioia (1997), carry little mention of bass player leaders. As such, there is minimal representation of ensemble leaders who are bass players. While drummers have received a similar treatment, several drummer leaders receive significant scholarly and media attention. For example, Buddy Rich, Art Blakey, and Max Roach were known for their leadership and as soloists, but often maintained a close connection to accompaniment drumming practices with varying degrees of interaction as leaders. Blakey, in particular, rarely interacted with the soloist as a leader, but his drumming effectively organizes the performance from the chair of the accompanist role (Givan 2016, 6–7).

Charles Mingus is the featured bassist in most jazz history and continues to be one of the most researched bass players in academic literature, especially concerning his social politics. Examples include ‘Rebels and Volkswagens: Charles Mingus and the Commodification of Dissent’ by Mark Laver (2014) and ‘Outrageous Freedom: Charles Mingus and the Invention of the Jazz Workshop’ by Scott Saul (2001). His innovative musical practices, particularly composition, are increasingly drawing scholarly attention, such as Mario Dunkel’s ‘Charles Mingus and Performative Composing’ (Dunkel 2011) and Andrew Stinson’s unpublished thesis ‘Charles Mingus Played Bass? Rediscovering a Jazz Soloist through Transcription’ (Stinson 2014). The correlation between Mingus’s innovative practices and politics makes him significant to the history of jazz but is not necessarily representative of most bass player leaders’ experiences. Most appear in lists of other notable figures in histories and receive minimal academic attention, surfacing in the discussion of those they accompanied, such as Charlie Haden with Ornette Coleman, Dave Holland with Miles Davis, and Eddie Gomez with Bill Evans. However, such players have had significant careers as leaders, made numerous recordings, and received substantial press in magazines that looked at the nature of their ensembles and how they lead them. Holland is one of the most influential leaders, and his bass style has been studied pedagogically for the way it interpolates Hindustani approaches to rhythm (Oh 2005). Holland has led both small ensembles and big bands, which focus on intense rhythmic interaction, polyrhythm, and division of uneven metre. His use of Hindustani rhythmic practices has stimulated the approaches of contemporary players such as Linda Oh and Kate Pass. Holland expresses a desire to maintain connection and identity in the bass role: ‘In my bands, I like being the bass player—in a supportive role as well as exploring melodic and rhythmic ideas—rather than the featured soloist’ (Ouellette 2002, 59). There is also a degree to which players such as Holland and the widely renowned bassist Ron Carter, known for accompanying Miles Davis, are discussed over others because of the perception that they are innovative.

Other leaders, such as Charlie Haden with his Liberation Music Orchestra, have made socially significant statements that have garnered mainstream press attention. On its self-titled album (Haden 1970, see Discography), Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra brought together jazz and South American music, exploring issues of conflict in the Americas developing from the Spanish–American War (Davis 2005). In 2005, Haden used this ensemble to criticize the then-Bush Administration with Not in Our Name (Haden 2005, see Discography), referring to the Iraq War (Davis 2005, 84). However, most scholarship on Haden and historical references to his work refer to his time with Ornette Coleman (Shadduck 2006). Haden’s work in Coleman’s group—in particular, albums such as The Shape of Jazz to Come (Coleman 1959, see Discography) and Free Jazz (Ornette Coleman Double Trio 1961, see Discography)—occurred in an ensemble that blurred players’ roles, giving the performers more freedom to determine how and what they played, effectively soloing collectively (Rush 2017).

More recent scholarship on ensemble roles has pointed to how these ensembles led by Coleman offered an opportunity for accompanying musicians to reinterpret their role in jazz (Rush 2017, 23). Similarly, Travis Jackson’s contemporary ethnography Blowing the Blues Away (Jackson 2012) sees bass players and drummers accompanying as instigators of musical events rather than mere accompanists. His ethnographic discussion of Larry Grenadier in the studio shows the bass player as a persuasive force on musical events and the source of much musical interest, in contrast to earlier perspectives (Jackson 2012, 173–74). Similar arguments have been made about the interactive accompaniment practices of Scott LaFaro and Marc Johnson in the Bill Evans Trio since the 1990s (Wilner 1995; Holgate 2014).

Holding Down the Bass Role in Practice

In this section, I examine the musical and social backgrounds of bass players who work primarily as sidemen or sidewomen using the accompanying bass role as the foundation of their musical practice. While other bass players mentioned in the ethnographic study spent most of their time leading ensembles, these musicians are discussed here because they prefer to occupy the role of a bass player accompanist. I introduce the contrasting perspectives and performances of respected Australian double bass players such as Sydney-based Brendan Clarke and Lloyd Swanton, a leader of The Necks, Melbourne-based Philip Rex, and prominent younger musicians such as Sydney-based Tom Botting and Perth-based Kate Pass. These bass players were selected because of the significant esteem in which their musical colleagues hold them.

Rex, a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts in the 1990s, is well known among jazz musicians in Australia for his work with Paul Grabowsky in both the Paul Grabowsky Trio and the Australian Art Orchestra, and for his long history of working with the pianist Jex Saarehlaht in his piano trio, which affords Rex space to take an interactive and sometimes soloistic approach. In these roles, Rex has worked in traditional jazz ensemble structures such as the piano trio, cross-cultural collaboration with Carnatic musicians as part of the Australian Art Orchestra, and electronic music production. Botting, originally from New Zealand, has become a well-known bass player on the Sydney scene and has spent significant time as an accompanist, primarily in the jazz ensembles the Steve Barry Trio and Tiny Hearts, and working as a freelancer. Currently in his thirties, Botting’s musical history is closely connected to rock and metal music, such as Tool, which influences how he discusses the bass role. Pass performs in mainstream jazz and cross-cultural collaboration, such as with Persian Australian vocalist Tara Tiba (Tiba 2014, see Discography). While Pass’s voice is not as prominent in this study because she prefers cross-cultural ensemble settings, which are the subject of further research, her approach to the bass accompanist role is interesting because it carries jazz approaches across styles.

A significant amount of these musicians’ work occurs in music venues like jazz clubs; each musician also relies on corporate functions and family occasions. However, many jazz performances also occur in venues not initially intended for that purpose. These include pubs, which have historically tended to emphasize local communities and in which listening is secondary to drinking (Taylor 2018, 113).

In jazz, the performer of the bass role must display musical adeptness, mainly through a groove. However, it is not expected to be the most prominent source of musical material for listeners. This ensemble hierarchy is summed up by the bass role’s relationship to core performance contexts from jazz’s history. Players such as Rex, Clarke, and Botting cite firm, supportive bass players like Ray Brown, Paul Chambers, and Ron Carter, who primarily work for other musicians, as models that influence their approach. There is a significant correlation between the models presented by Berliner and Monson and those used in jazz education (Berliner 1994, 380–82; Monson 1996, 29). In this case study, the bass players studied in conservatorium jazz programmes in which conceptions of the bass as a supportive role are reinforced by pedagogical texts that are commonly used in educating developing double bass players, such as Rufus Reid’s The Evolving Bassist (Reid 2000). Students learn early on that they are expected to perform the bass role by being firm and supportive in using two feel and walking bass lines, and while melodic or heterophonic interaction is allowed, it is secondary to the soloist’s material.

To be hired for a gig in Australian jazz scenes, freelance bass players must exhibit these musical qualities as their colleagues desire. Knowledge of the bass role as defined by Monson (1996, 29) and Berliner (1994, 319–24), which includes communicating rhythmic structures and harmony and imbuing the music with energy, is paramount to employment prospects. The comparatively small Australian jazz scene has tended to prefer bass players who groove or swing, and prioritize melody accompaniment. This role is enculturated by jazz education in Australian conservatoriums and the pedagogical texts and perspectives they espouse. As a result, the bass players involved in this study were keen to stress these models as the foundation of good bass playing and connected to their ability to obtain work.

A notable example was when Brendan Clarke demonstrated to me that to make the music ‘swing’ rhythmically, the harmonic material being delineated must sit comfortably in the rhythmic structures of the piece, in this case, the twelve-bar jazz blues ‘Straight No Chaser’ by Thelonious Monk (Brendan Clarke, interview with author, 7 December 2015). While this musical practice is perhaps of little surprise, its social significance should not be underplayed (Phipps 2018, 95–96). Everything that the bass player plays has to make the music swing or groove (depending on the style), including solos; it does not swing of its own volition. The quality of the swing in a bass player’s practices is a litmus test for their cultural authenticity and whether they have enough musical vocabulary to voice their authenticity in jazz performance.

Clarke’s work on ‘Blues for None Other’ (a track from Clarke 2013, see Discography) is an example of such an approach. Clarke’s interest in Ray Brown and his studies with Ron Carter see him adopt a rhythmically firm approach in this recording, which avoids metric ambiguity in favour of accompaniment support. Working within these structures and using these practices is one of the primary musical functions of a bass player and a reason why they are hired. Despite its importance to this role, what constitutes a swing feel is subjective and determined by context and perception. However, it is one of the musical features of jazz, along with improvisation, that made it marketable in public and corporate institutions—demonstrating what Dale Chapman calls the ‘controlled freedom’ and swing, which can be leveraged for financial return (Chapman 2018, 24).

The opportunities for individual expression in the bass role come from an ability to manipulate musical material within what is sometimes confined to performance contexts. The ability to go beyond the functionality of harmonic and rhythmic groove is something that is socially valid but is up to the individual bass player. In this sense, jazz’s social practices can accept differences to various degrees, as individual voice is considered appropriate (Berliner 1994, 59).

How this bass role is performed is in the hands of the musicians, who make decisions with some agency within ensemble structures and styles that suggest interdependence rather than freedom. For example, while a bass player must have a solid time feel, which leads to social esteem, we might see the capacity for manipulating time, which is a part of this role, as agentic. However, playing authentically with a good sense of time sometimes means pleasing the others in the ensemble, most obviously the ensemble leader. The entrainment of a rhythm section’s groove is a communal act, requiring coordination and negotiation of different approaches to rhythmic placement in performance between individuals. In this way, a bass player can instigate changes as far as their collaborators will accept, asserting themselves in the negotiation at play, as seen in Travis Jackson’s work (Jackson 2012, 173–74).

Players are aware that the choices they make in performance affect the music’s direction and describe it in terms of supporting or serving the music. This concept crosses many popular music styles, but is significant because it is integrated with pedagogy in jazz. Botting describes how ‘You should be aware of what every note is going to be doing … it has to serve the music primarily I think’ (Tom Botting, interview with author, 5 November 2014). It is important to note that Botting’s language is influenced by his experiences playing rock and heavy metal while studying at high school and university, and as a professional in metal–jazz group Scoredatura. While these remarks reflect a perspective influenced by the vernacular of contemporary popular music, the sentiment of his comments is mostly congruent with perspectives of the bass role discussed earlier (Jackson 2012; Monson 1996; Berliner 1994). The difference is that they appear without reference to jazz tradition and authenticity, which American practitioners often invoke. Kate Pass describes the pedagogy of jazz bass playing in Australia as extending beyond the style to include strong encouragement to perform popular musical styles for a viable career on the electric bass. The primacy of melody and the bass’s role of serving it continues in Pass’s collaborations with popular Persian singer Tara Tiba. According to Pass, the audience for Tiba’s music often requires her to replicate the album’s bass lines and keep consistency with the ensemble’s recordings. These dynamics reflect the long-term challenges to the commercial viability of jazz in the comparatively small Australian music scene described by John Shand (2009) and Peter Rechniewski (2008), and the widely understood need to embrace hybridity for economic sustainability. However, re-enacting particular jazz styles in ways that are deemed authentic is often directly connected to obtaining performance opportunities, particularly in the earlier parts of a musician’s career (McMullen 2019, 3–4).

In the context of Tara Tiba’s group, Pass plays a predominantly accompanying role that involves various degrees of improvisation and occasional solo opportunities. The predominantly featured improvisers, however, are the vocalist Tiba and saxophonist Laura Corney. Pass’s playing is closely linked to the bass role but calls on ideas of negotiation, in much the way that Stanyek has theorized the intercultural encounter, as the process inherent in determining how she will play in the ensemble (2004, 87–139). Pass also observes that playing jazz and collaborating with Persian musicians creates a sense of freedom (Kate Pass, interview with author, 4 April 2015). However, this sense of performance freedom has limitations—Pass describes her music-making process as being closely linked to the bass role; she says that ‘being a bass player is like being a side person’ and it is hard to remove the supportive bass function aspect of performance practice even when taking a featured solo (Pass, interview with author, 4 April 2015). She also speaks of how the bass role established in jazz is brought over into the cultural collaboration. Pass’s language of ‘freedom’ reflects one of the common ways in which improvisation in music across or on the periphery of musical styles is discussed. However, the aesthetics and practices of these styles are still influenced by traditions of accompanying jazz drawn from previous training.

The cross-cultural situation presents unique issues in selecting the appropriate way to construct bass lines. Persian classical music’s use of radif (a complex of melodic figures built around a specific groups of notes and often described in terms of scales in the West) as an overarching guide to structure does not necessarily fit well with the structure of Western harmony and its specific jazz usages. Pass’s writing on the topic reveals that to accommodate elements of Tara Tiba’s vocal style:

the rhythm section plays an extremely conservative role in this recording, playing very simply. This was partly at Tara’s request and partly because we discovered that if we played in an interactive manner … it would sound inappropriate and not supportive of Tara’s vocal performance. (Pass 2013, 43)

Pass’s performance is largely ‘restricted to a two feel’ (Pass, interview with author, 4 April 2015). The somewhat complex negotiation of stylistic approach and musical practice seems to suggest that the musical creativity of the group, while concerned with appropriate support of the Persian radif components, constantly interacts with a perceived audience in reference to popular music aesthetics and the best way to reach out to this market and ensure the ensemble’s performance opportunities (Pass, interview with author, 4 April 2015). Pass describes her understanding of the nature of the bass side-person role as such:

The thing that I really enjoy is treading that line between what I wanna do and what the leader wants to do and doing something that satisfies me and the audience and just navigating in that, I find really interesting and I think that the most successful bass players are people that do that really well. (Pass, interview with author, 4 April 2015)

Pass’s language here reflects the practical experience of accompanying double bass players. Bass performance accompaniment requires negotiation with other instrumentalists over what is appropriate and possible in a jazz performance, and the same can also be said of cross-cultural performance. Determining this is a challenge for musicians in and of itself, and is one that bass players like Pass, Botting, Rex, and Clarke relish. Yet in Pass, Botting and Clarke’s cases, this seems closely connected to the way they have gone on to variously explore leadership in different ensembles. Bass players often feel that it is not always appropriate for the bass to be a melodic feature of musical performances, even if they may like it to be. As a result, root notes on the downbeat remain fundamental to the performance practices of double bass players across the spectrum in walking bass, bossa nova, or various other styles. In the more contemporary ensembles Botting plays in, such as Tiny Hearts, these features of the bass role continue to guide performance practice. For instance, the bass underscores the popular verse–chorus structure of ‘Balclutha’ with root notes (Tiny Hearts 2014, see Discography), and provides little interaction with the melodic instruments. The bass role identified as imperative pedagogically is clear here despite the musically hybrid nature of the performance. The singable melody is the focus, underscoring how popular music aesthetics help shape the bass’s evolving role in jazz.

Botting’s perspective is interesting in that he perceives the bass as occupying a sonic space and musical role as the foundation on which the musical performance’s structure is built, but he also desires to move beyond jazz structures. Botting embraces elements of the ideology surrounding free improvisation and the aesthetics of local free improvisation groups such as Drub (Botting, interview with author, 5 November 2014). His desire to play the instrument differently does not necessarily mean leaving the bass role significant to jazz unoccupied, but straddles styles depending on the performance context.

Basically, for me getting to improvisation and why I do it … the thing that got me into jazz and improvised music was the fact that these guys were creating, were composing on the spot. That was how I sort of see improvisation at its highest level. At the weekend at Wang [Wangaratta Jazz Festival], probably the best thing I saw all weekend was Drub, a band, Scott Tinkler, Carl Dewhurst and Simon Barker just free improvising, and it sounded like they were composing; it was insane. It was just like, that’s what I’m trying to get to, that’s where I want to try and get at, whether it’s in a completely improvised setting or not. Just trying to get those moments of sheer composition in improvised settings. (Botting, interview with author, 5 November 2014)

Botting actively chooses to restrict his playing style in ensembles to maintain a connection to the concept of the bass role, but not at the expense of engagement or interaction. The approach of seeing these interrelationships between musicians almost compositionally is seen in the ensemble Tiny Hearts, which focuses on contemporary jazz aesthetics:

Well, in those situations, basically, I think I’ll put it into the context of this one band I’m in, Tiny Hearts, because that’s probably the most open I get to play, and in that band, the roles can shift unexpectedly. Like always, the bass is the bottom of the band. That’s how I sort of approach it; that’s where I prefer to hear it. But within that context, we all know these tunes really well, and we know each other really well. So if I want to take the melody somewhere it hasn’t been discussed beforehand, I know I can do that, and I have the freedom to do that, and everyone else … kind of will adjust … and go with that and react accordingly. (Botting, interview with author, 5 November 2014)

Despite the focus on tradition in pedagogy, there is inherent hybridity in how jazz is learned and performed in Australia’s music scene, where musicians routinely perform and learn across styles, as Botting describes. When questioned about more interactive accompaniment models, like that of the Bill Evans Trio, which have more fluid types of swing and groove, local bass players can be sceptical about its application. As Clarke says, ‘[taking] care of business,’ outlining the harmony, and providing a solid groove are qualities that have made him the accompanist of choice for the New York-based Sydney expatriate John Harkins and visiting musicians like Joe Farnsworth, with his rhythmically charged hard-bop-style drumming (Clarke, interview with author, 7 December 2015). In the group’s hard-bop-style performance, you can see an aesthetic that privileges playing instead of manipulating time in the bass role. Farnsworth’s performances demonstrate how drummers, when leading, also take an approach in which they continue to display the accompaniment role. However, drummers are more likely to display rhythmic interaction and volume control in their roles, which offer a way to comment on developments and provide direction musically (Farnsworth 2016, see Discography).

However, the common usage of these practices does not mean that these players do not engage in interactive or soloistic models of accompaniment that manipulate time (Heyman 2018, 239). Instead, bass players often choose not to display aspects of their facility on the instrument in order to support the ensemble’s music appropriately. For example, Philip Rex’s approach to performing ballads is part of an approach in which he is driven by being contextually appropriate to the musical ensemble he is playing with. When discussing why Rex thinks of the bass in terms of foundation even when being interactive, he joked that if you did not ‘you don’t work,’ and would ‘become a solo artist’ (Philip Rex, interview with author, 11 November 2015).

While Rex’s stance is quite jovial about the prospect of being a solo artist, a bass player who cannot play with others and performs alone, despite its humour, is a social negative in jazz scenes. Taken to its extreme, it would mean a status peripheral to jazz and improvised performance contexts, which are overwhelmingly ensemble-based. Alternatively, it would mean being unable to work or working sporadically due to a perceived lack of mastery of the bass’s primary musical role and purpose in jazz. Rex’s playing on the ballad ‘Ivory Cutlery’ (Jex Saarelaht Trio 2014, see Discography) provides an interesting insight into this mindset. He straddles a musical aesthetic that adheres to the fundamental bass role but is also interactive with the piano solo at various points. He plays a counter-melodic bassline but still refers to the root at the beginning of these lines to ground it in the bass role. An example of this approach appears in the excerpt transcribed in Example 1.

Example 1.

Jex Saarelaht Trio, ‘Ivory Cutlery,’ on Liminal (2014).

The line is interactive because of its melodic quality and goes beyond mere root-tonic function, setting up the phrase in the first bar with a fill and then playing in an almost polyphonic way. This approach could be considered in line with what Matthias Heyman calls soloistic accompaniment that sits between ‘highly embellished’ accompaniment and an actual solo improvisation (Heyman 2018, 239). However, Rex dismisses viewing it this way in favour of a perspective from his experience of the accompanying bass role. Discussing this excerpt, Rex had the following to say about the role of the bass and musical interaction:

Rex: Yeah I suppose so I’m playing a bass line but it’s, you know there’s points where I’m outlining the form a bit, so at the end of a certain section or as we go into a new phrase I might play a fill or maybe something a little busier than my regular playing, although in the actual moment I’m not really ‘thinking’ so much at all about what I’m playing, I’m just playing the song and feeling where it’s going and um there’s a sense …

B.P.: There’s a sense of forward momentum …

Rex: and I’m not thinking about what, I’m just making sure I’m making the changes, so I’m playing root notes pretty much all the time on the downbeats and then creating a musical accompaniment to [pause] because this is a piano solo. In a way, it’s no different to what Ray Brown did his whole career, which was very much about playing a focused melodic bass line behind what was going on with some fills and stuff and some kind of embellishments in there. Because it’s a trio like that, and there is space, I can do a few things, but I don’t want to overdo it, I suppose. My natural instinct is to not go and fill all the space but just let things breathe a little bit. But pretty much the focus is to create a bed which something can work on. Like when you listen to it the first time, I think I was successful because I wasn’t even listening to myself; I was listening to the piano. So I suppose a person might be drawn to the bass at certain parts, but most of the time, it is the piano solo with some interplay with other instruments so that it’s successful in that way and with what the drummer’s doing, with what Niko’s [Schäuble] doing as well. (Rex, interview with author, 11 November 2015)

In Rex’s statements, he shares his thinking on what good bass playing sounds like: qualities such as a ‘melodic bass line behind … with some fills and … embellishments in there.’ These musical preferences for the style of Ray Brown and Charles Mingus suggest good bass accompanying goes beyond the merely supportive but does not stray into the soloist’s realm (Rex, interview with author, 11 November 2015). The bass remains underneath in ensemble hierarchy and generally below the pitch of the melodic material. The more space available, the more this material may come out, but with the understanding that a bass player must ‘just let things breathe a little bit’ (Rex, interview with author, 11 November 2015). From Rex’s perspective, we can see how manipulating time can be agentic and supportive through interaction.

The bass role represented here is desirable despite restrictions to performance practice. For those who take up the role, the bass’s musical function provides a clear social and musical purpose. In Clarke’s view, playing in an ensemble can be much more fulfilling than performing on the bass as a solo instrumentalist (Clarke, interview with author, 7 December 2015). Allowing the music to say something is a collective task, which sometimes means choosing not to express personal style in the cause of cooperation (Monson 1996, 102). ‘I really enjoy doing that [solo improvising], but essentially you know, nothing beats playing with a band, great players, that’s the buzz’ (Clarke, interview with author, 7 December 2015). This rhetorical positioning is partly derived from the centrality of ensemble performance as jazz’s primary social activity. The focus on ensemble performance is a feature of jazz practice that reflects the centrality of cooperation in the social context of the formation of the music in the United States. Although the performers may not necessarily be of the same political sentiment, the interpersonal musical–social interaction of ensembles affects a sense of social cohesion. Similarly, a shared creative purpose binds groups of musicians who are primarily connected by the affinity of listening and performing jazz (Slobin 1993). As a result, agency can also be observed in choosing to be part of a collective project with interacting but regulated voices. As such, playing with others confers social authority on the musicians, providing public approval. In the local context, this identifier of a bass player as a jazz musician is vital because of the alterity it provides the musician from popularly understood rock and pop icons associated with uncultivated masculine Australian (‘ocker’) archetypes and the European cultural background of classical and art music practitioners.

However, Rex’s view of cooperative interaction is not shared by all, and some bass player ensemble leaders see this accompaniment role quite differently. Lloyd Swanton, best known for his works as a leader with hybrid ensembles the Necks and The Catholics, continues to play as an accompanist in jazz ensembles when not touring. A more level ensemble hierarchy can certainly be achieved in contemporary jazz and is seen in his accompanying a solo by pianist Alister Spence on Steve Lacy’s The Bath (Phipps 2018, 180–82). During this solo, Spence played a figure built on toggling an interval of a fifth; Swanton responded by engaging in dialogue with the piano over this musical gesture. This musical dialogue prompted further investigation and a discussion with Swanton over the nature of the interaction between him and Spence. Spence and Swanton have played for years together, particularly in the Alister Spence Trio, and Swanton describes the dynamic between him and Spence in figurative terms as ‘psychic’: implying the ability to pre-empt and understand the direction of each other’s improvising. Such interaction is evident in the trio’s recorded material (Alister Spence Trio 2006, 2012, see Discography). A similar interplay can be heard between Swanton and Spence on ‘Marco Polo Goes West’ from 4:19 to 4:24 on the Alister Spence Trio’s Mercury (2006), but reversed with Swanton as soloist and Spence as accompanist. Spence suggests a melodic fragment that breaks from chordal accompaniment, which Swanton then continues on the bass, as transcribed in Example 2.

Example 2.

Alister Spence Trio, ‘Marco Polo Goes West,’ on Mercury (2006).

For Swanton, playing in a variety of ensemble settings with different codes to navigate as a double bass player is an enjoyable part of being a musician that encourages improvisation and situational judgement (Phipps 2021a, 64–66). Despite developing his strumming and bowing approach for use in The Necks, Swanton’s approaches are not bound to the group, and he sensitively uses them in different contexts (Phipps 2021b, 9–10). During my fieldwork with Swanton, these approaches to sound appeared in his accompanying performances with The Field and The Philip Johnston Quartet; on recordings, they can also be heard with The Alister Spence Trio and the Phil Slater Quartet, among others (Phipps 2018, 178–84). Such sensitivity to performance setting requires deploying practices developed in The Necks in different ways to contribute to different performance aesthetics. Swanton does this largely in the more traditional role of bass accompanying. Take, for example, a performance with the blues and jazz-influenced ensemble The Field led by Canadian expatriate Bruce Reid on 17 July 2014 at Camelot Lounge in the inner-west Sydney suburb of Marrickville. Bass lines in this group are unambiguous and are governed by the notion that the bass is the foundation and should provide the groove using pizzicato. However, during an atmospheric introduction to Reid’s ‘The Mountains So Blue,’ Swanton employed his tremolo bowing technique and, playing it quietly on the A harmonic on the D string, used it to support the other instruments, particularly rubato guitar work by Reid and John Stuart, in what could be thought of as soloistic style. In this context, the technique becomes part of the supportive bass accompaniment, taking a secondary role. When I asked Swanton about spontaneously using the tremolo bowing in this way, and in this context, he responded that ‘it’s nice to just keep coming up with fresh things that show the other players that you’re committed … you know let’s find something fresh with this piece, not that we’re bored with it, but let’s just see’ (Lloyd Swanton, interview with author, 2 December 2014). The use of this practice is accepted partly because of the legitimacy that Swanton has established for it among his peers through his performances with The Necks, and due to his recognized position as an acclaimed musician both in the media and among his peers (Shand 2009; Clarke, interview with author, 7 December 2015). Swanton’s personal positioning as a player who reimagines the role of the bass in positions of leadership or co-leadership in The Catholics and The Necks transfers into the other ensembles he plays with. His reputation for reimagining the bass allows for a more flexible relationship to the aesthetics and traditions of the bass role. Swanton still uses the practices of jazz when performing the bass role, but the expectation is that he will bring part of his more exploratory approach to his interpretation. Take, for example, Philip Slater’s statement about why he wanted Swanton to join his group:

I particularly wanted his sound … Through being a fan of The Necks, and knowing that so much of that aesthetic is just his sound, I can’t deny that I wanted a bit of that. There’s a voodoo to his playing. (Phil Slater, cited in Shand 2009, 187)

In Swanton’s hands, the bass may be the instigator of something new, fresh, challenging, and exciting in the performance of music, even using more traditional aesthetic assumptions of the bass role, which many musicians desire.

Translating the Bass Role to Leadership—Brendan Clarke’s Stretch

In the bass accompanying role, a need to be musically creative and demonstrating individual expression is balanced by a need to serve the broader cultural codes and aesthetic preferences that influence other musicians’ practices. To play authentically in this role confers social capital that leads to more work. Bass players like Clarke, who have gone on to lead their ensembles, want to maintain a connection with the bass role rather than be seen as solo artists due to the benefits and demand for the bass role. As a result, Clarke straddles both but always identifies himself with the bass accompanist model even when working as a leader, a strategy used by many bassists, including Dave Holland.

Clarke has worked as an accompanist for most of his career and began leading his own quartet on and off since 2013. He has continued to use the supportive bass role, which leads to minimal change in the performance practices he uses. Clarke has played in a variety of styles, including pop, rock, and jazz, and is mostly known as a jazz freelancer, accompanying local and visiting musicians such as Joe Chindamo, Bernie McGann, James Morrison, Chris Potter, and Wycliffe Gordon. His work, both as a leader and an accompanist, is primarily focused on styles that would be considered connected to the bop and hard-bop idioms. Important career highlights include working with US drummer Joe Farnsworth and locally based piano player John Harkins. He also plays a considerable number of corporate engagements ranging from The National Press Club in Canberra to wedding functions.

Clarke started his quartet to showcase a series of compositions he had written and played occasionally with friends and colleagues but never recorded. After releasing the recording Stretch in 2013, Clarke led the ensemble at major Australian jazz festivals such as Wangaratta and Manly and performed in most jazz venues around Sydney. Clarke says that he does not think he changed his bass playing fundamentally, ‘essentially I’m still doing what I do,’ in addition to taking a few opportunities to ‘play the melody and do intros’ (Clarke, interview with author, 7 December 2015), such as on his rendition of George Bassman’s ‘I’m Getting Sentimental Over You’ on Stretch (Clarke 2013, see Discography). In this recording, Clarke demonstrates his ability for different styles of bass improvisation, such as through self-accompaniment and by using double stops to imply chords. As a leader, Clarke can improvise in ways that are normally the domain of other instrumental players, such as extemporizing on the melody. In his introduction to ‘I’m Getting Sentimental Over You,’ Clarke uses this ability to suggest chords or imply harmonic movement in rubato self-accompaniment. In Example 3, he implies a movement from A major to D7 and then A minor to D7; and then in bar 8, a movement from D7 to A minor, to A♭7 to D♭7, heading to G7 in the following bar. This movement is referred to by jazz musicians as a sideslipping ii–V.

Example 3.

Brendan Clarke, excerpt from bass solo introduction to George Bassman, ‘I’m Getting Sentimental Over You,’ on Stretch (2013).

It is important to note that the leader usually assigns such introductions; the bass player then has to produce something in keeping with the style of the tune and that accommodates the leader’s wishes (Rex, interview with author, 11 November 2015). In Clarke’s situation, as an occasional ensemble leader, he can choose the framework in which that improvisational activity occurs, on what tune, harmonic cadence, tempo, and rhythmic feel.

The bass’s primary business in Clarke’s ensemble is still the bass role, to accompany and occasionally solo, reflecting his vision for the ensemble as a unified musical group structured around acknowledged jazz performance practices. Clarke’s approach maintains traditional musical hierarchies rather than positioning the bass as the feature of the ensemble’s whole performance:

So it’s not really about me, my band, I just want to play good music, and it’s fun choosing all the stuff; it’s sort of just fun, isn’t it? I’m not trying to take the world by storm. As I’ve said, I’ve done one gig this year, and I haven’t tried to get anything else; it’s just cause because, well, why not everyone else is doing it? I’m gonna do it as well. (Clarke, interview with author, 7 December 2015)

This approach can be heard on his tune ‘Fi–Hi’ on the same album, which is underpinned by a repeated bass groove (Clarke 2013, see Discography). The straight eighths groove, anchored on beat one, can be heard throughout the piece. While the groove is re-occurring, Clarke does add in more rhythmic interaction, particularly during the saxophone solo, but notably does not enter the higher register of the instrument or take a solo himself. Similarly, his approach to ‘Blues for None Other’ involves an up-tempo walking bass line for most of the performance with some rhythmic interaction but does include a solo (Clarke 2013, see Discography). The solo begins in a walking style associated with the earliest bass solos and still used by prominent bass players such as Larry Grenadier in ‘Aerigin’ on Where Do You Start? (Brad Mehldau Trio 2012, see Discography). It moves into swung eighth notes using blues and bebop style phrasing structures before returning to the walking style at 6:01 to exit the solo.

While Clarke’s ensemble may not focus on his virtuosity, or ‘chops’ as he refers to it, it does serve as an important marker of a shift in social status, despite the infrequency of the performances. Clarke is adamant that he wanted to ‘make a contribution … and put my stuff out there,’ a rhetoric and creative product that moved him from the position of accompanist to something of more considerable social significance (Clarke, interview with author, 7 December 2015). But Clarke derives a personal musical identity and authenticity as a bass player in his project, defined by conventionally expected qualities such as a good sense of time or groove and harmonic control. Clarke can choose his band members and choose the repertoire that further solidifies his authority as a musician and as someone who keeps and continues the jazz performance tradition in the jazz scene. However, as a leader, this authority confers on Clarke’s work, in general, a more powerful social role as a musician. The complexity of combining the two roles is evidenced in Clarke’s claims that it did not affect how people respond to his other work as a sideman, but that it has led to a change in how Clarke feels he is perceived in the jazz scene, as indicated in the following quotation:

No. I mean, a lot of people came out, actually; I mean, I had quite a few people come and say ‘hey man,’ you know, a few friends of mine put bands together after that, and I’ve had a couple of other people say ‘man you inspired me to start my own band.’ Which was really nice, you know, because I guess it takes a bit of, you know, it takes a bit of, even though I’m being a bit low-key about it. It does take a bit of courage to put your stuff out there, you know, to record the music that you’ve written and take it and present it and go ‘this is me,’ you know people aren’t necessarily going to dig it. Musicians aren’t necessarily gonna dig it, so it is a risk because it’s pretty easy being a sideman, you know, there’s no pressure really, but it’s not the same. (Clarke, interview with author, 7 December 2015)

Moments earlier Clarke had said that he placed the title ‘Bandleader’ on his email signature ‘because it’s what people do’ and that it was not significant because ‘anyone can put a band together.’ His candour over the dangers and the risk of negative reception inherent in presenting his musical vision suggests that his move from bass player to bass player and bandleader was a significant step to take in the social organization of jazz musicians (Clarke, interview with author, 7 December 2015). The temerity to take risks in the development and performance of a musical project is ultimately rewarded by the musical community in terms of social status regardless of the traditional role of the instrument they play. A bass player doing this is not a new thing, and in this sense, instrument choice is not a definite factor. Most notably, Charles Mingus became one of jazz’s most significant composers and auteurs while using double bass practices seen as traditional, albeit in some surprising new repertoire. However, moving into a leadership role musically, recording one’s compositions, and organizing to perform them at prestigious events are all significant markers of achievement in the jazz scene. Having one’s own compositions takes a musician to another level. In this sense, the composer’s privileged position in Western cultural contexts continues to elevate musicians’ status within the local scene.

The discourse used by bass players when talking about the jazz scene avoids speaking of social hierarchy. Instead, Clarke positions himself as contributing to musicians’ social group and the performance of jazz by recording an album of his material, which reflects his taste and experience as a musician, thereby enhancing his reputation. The significant level of artistic mastery associated with leading an ensemble enhances social standing and the ability to influence an ensemble’s direction by demonstrating a higher level of creativity. The relative social anonymity of being an accompanist may have greater economic security than the role of bandleader, as gigs come via reputation and status as an accompanist but result in less creative control and less social capital, at least outside the jazz scene. According to Clarke, accompanying is an employment opportunity only available to rhythm section players, leaving frontline instrumentalists financially dependent on their projects due to fewer sideman gigs in larger ensembles. The implication of this is that bass players hold a fundamental role as accompanists in jazz ensembles, which leads to financial stability for players like Clarke, who have significant reputations. Relinquishing this position would be a big employment risk.

Conclusion

The musical practice of jazz and the social discourse of freedom of expression that surrounds it have an important contextual history and associations with the musical practice of improvisation. However, the degree to which this defines a musician’s experience of performing jazz depends on variables such as a musician’s role in the ensemble and the context surrounding the specific jazz performance. In countries outside the United States, such as Australia, jazz bass players like Clarke, Rex, Botting, and Pass improvise and make agentic musical decisions but are also subject to cultural and social regulations to maintain their role in specific musical communities. The selection of musical practices that bass players use as accompanists are subject to the cultural prevalence of US practitioners’ approach to educational models and local preferences for supportive bass styles that can be interactive, but not at the expense of their supporting role. The social expectations of the bass players’ role and the cultural aesthetics of good bass playing drive demand for bass players in most global jazz economies. Clarke, Botting, Rex, and Pass are aware that their employability in musical performances is bound to how supportive they are as accompanists and their ability to contribute to the ensemble individually and authentically. As such, agency might also be viewed as a capacity to choose to work collaboratively and cooperatively in a context that values individual expression when it contributes to collective ideals. Similarly, the degree to which musical practices such as swing or interaction promote collective conceptions of what constitutes good jazz improvisation weighs heavily on the musicians’ choices even when musical hybridity is prominent, as in Pass and Swanton’s experience. This article demonstrates the continuing centrality of the supportive and, at times, interactive bass role in contemporary jazz performance across global contexts. Double bassists engage with the preferences of different musicians and tailor their musical approach to match the expectations of the ensemble role.

There is an inherent tension in the musical hierarchy of jazz ensembles that means a more traditional bass role mediates the individual preferences of bass players. Many bass players see this as an expressive opportunity that reflects a day-to-day reality in local jazz scenes, where commercial viability hangs on a knife’s edge. It is also connected to the history and storytelling surrounding the instruction of double bass players in institutions that position the role as supporting rather than leading, despite the many challenges to that model discussed earlier. Therefore, an ability to establish some sense of control and adapt decision-making depends on the ensemble context, a vital component of agency despite its seeming contradictions to concepts of freedom. Musicians’ experiences, like those discussed in this article, suggest that universalist assumptions about the nature of musical improvisation, while appealing, are misplaced. Cultural and contextual relativism governs the experience of improvising and playing jazz in a musical ensemble. The meanings of jazz improvisation as freedom of expression, while idealized by local Australian jazz narratives, do not emanate from the local social context (Phipps 2022, 58–59). However, the music does carry these representational histories when invoked. While jazz’s practice is structured in hierarchical ways, which can be malleable in different performance contexts, its potency and history as a musical–cultural formation of African American musicians is something musicians outside the United States recognize as central to their musical expression. Their contemporary practice carries a level of indebtedness to the collectivity and agency at the roots of jazz’s development, its salience to contemporary articulations of Black perspectives in the United States, and the reality that different local musical contexts lead to different musical meanings.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by The Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

Notes on contributors

Benjamin Phipps

Benjamin Phipps is a passionate tertiary music educator who utilizes ethnomusicological methods to influence both his teaching and his research. He completed his PhD in Ethnomusicology with a particular focus on local jazz scenes, the development of improvisation in these scenes, and the way the adoption of jazz and hybrid music-making practices leads to the formation of new identities. Ben currently works at UNSW Sydney, Australia, designing and delivering programmes for teaching staff professional development.

Notes

1 This research project received Ethics approval from UNSW Human Research Ethics Committee No. HC15283. The research for this ethnographic project provided the basis for my PhD dissertation, and parts of the interview and fieldwork interactions discussed here draw on this work (Phipps 2018).

2 Ted Gioia (1989) explores the use of primitivism to explain the skill of African American musicians performing jazz and their representation by historians and the media.