Have you ever felt like a total imposter when you were doing something that you were supposed to be good at? Like the whole world was going to see through your lies and call you out as a complete fake? Like your work of art was really just shallow garbage that everyone would point out as completely without value?
This situation is called imposter syndrome and it’s feeling that I have experienced. A lot. And actually, I’ve encountered it quite recently.
I felt like an imposter this past week when I recorded my solo bass version of Jobim’s “Dindi”. I tried really hard to honor Jobim’s compositional efforts and pay tribute to the jazz connection within his writing. Along the way, I wanted to push my two handed technique forward a little bit through studying this tune. But then I got to the solo cycle and instead of playing a solo over Jobim’s original chord changes, I played over a two chord loop.
That’s not what Jobim intended. I am an imposter.
I can’t tell you how long I waited to push publish on this one – I was terrified of the response. Everyone was going see that hole in my authenticity. The world would be on fire with rage over my lack of bebop credibility as I improvised over ONLY two chords. Every jazz musician in the world would turn their noses up at my future efforts because they knew that I was a fake. This frightened me to no end.
You see, tradition – in particular the jazz tradition – is very important to me. I believe that we have a responsibility to respect the history of this music and keep it alive into the future. We have a responsibility to prop jazz up in the public consciousness, spreading the word about this music as most people move further away from it. And I think that we need to let the world see the roots of this music in broad daylight, not just shades of a jazz influence that sometimes sounds a whole lot like something else.
It’s this last point where I’ve gotten hung up too often, and it’s taken me down a tough road artistically. You see, it was a long and hard struggle for me to understand this music, more or less play it with any proficiency. There was a big piece of my artistic journey where I couldn’t even come close to the sound I heard in my head. I was pretty tough on myself, and that self-loathing extended out into the world. I become a jazz snob as a coping mechanism. I only wanted to see jazz in its most traditional sense. And when I encountered the music as anything besides my narrow ideal, I criticized it vehemently.
Honestly, it was a pretty confusing time that left me with more questions than answers. How could I play electric bass if I was going to be a real jazz musician? How could that guitar player use distortion on a standard? Why put a one chord funk song on an album and call it jazz? How could the headliner at a jazz festival be a pop star kind of singing standards?!? That hip hop jazz album is completely constructed in a DAW with little to no human interaction – how can we call that jazz if there’s no improvisation? These types of questions ran through my head constantly and they led to some serious judgements.
The only way that I could answer those questions – actually the only easy way for me to answer those questions was to take my jazz snobbery up a notch, making unfair judgements both on myself and the musicians around me. I ended up writing off musicians, recordings, and whole festivals because they stepped outside of tradition. In my eyes, those works of art were not valid because they didn’t adhere exactly to my concept of tradition. They were imposters that were insulting jazz and committing a cardinal artistic sin. I made these judgments in my head, with words as I talked to other people, and in writing to the whole world.
In the immediate moment, my jazz snobbery helped me deal with my insecurities – in a very shortsighted and unhealthy way – but in the long run, it hurt my artistic growth.
As I built my jazz skills, I felt more comfortable in my skin and started to look around my artistic world. There were different ideas with electronics and popular music that interested me, even inspired me. I heard potential for mixing those directions with jazz. I even dabbled. I made plans. I put together projects in my head. I imagined whole worlds that I could explore. It was honestly exciting.
Then I just didn’t do anything. Because it just didn’t fit inside my narrow concept of jazz.
After too many missed opportunties, I’ve gotten in the practice of questioning my jazz snobbery everytime it comes into my field of vision. With that in mind, let’s reframe the Dindi situation.. Here’s how I’m looking at it now.
I’ve been feeling the need to improve my phrasing on melodic material while I’m playing bass lines in my left hand. I’ve always loved Dindi, so I decided it would be a good melody to challenge that part of musicality. After I had worked on it for a little bit, I decided that I really liked what I was doing and I wanted to share it with the world. I felt like my melodic playing had advanced but the reality was that my soloing wasn’t in the same place. I reflected on this and decided that this might be a good piece to do with my loop pedal; I could play the whole thing live, loop that four measure phrase, and then improvise over that vamp using traditional technique. This was excited in a way, because not only could I record Dindi right away, but then I could perform this with my loop pedal. And of course, I would continue practicing the act of playing a solo while I played a bass line; I could always integrate this into my performance of the song at a later date.
My inner jazz snob is yelling “sell out” and “lazy musician”; the more rational side of me is viewing the situation as a nice step forward in my musical approach. And it will only get better with time. I’m hoping that I can take this approach moving forward.
I still believe in approaching jazz with integrity and respect towards the music’s history. I think that jazz should be studied, and ultimately, musicians need to put a lot of time and effort into jazz performance. The music’s vast lineage includes experimentation and an acceptance of other influence though. There’s a balance that’s important to nourish, and that’s what I’m going to try to find in the future.
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