simple chord sequences provide the infrastructure in which individual players communicate though improvisation. The be-bop revolution complicated those harmonic arrangements, extending almost madly the use of the 2-5-1 cadence, adding chromaticism and an ever thickening harmonic palette, comprising sus chords, slash chords, 5ths and 9ths, flattened or sharpened, 11ths, 13ths, and so on. 4 But the soloist still solos within the harmony; the individual plays off and with the collective. 5 And this fact persists from the early 12-bar blues of W.C. Handy one hundred years ago, through the swing of Ellington and Lester Young in the 1930s, through be- bop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, Coltrane’s sheets of sound, the stretched blues of (for instance) Wayne Shorter’s Footprints and – yes – the freedom music of Ornette Coleman (and Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor). So, if even jazz, harmonically and rhythmically complex, arena for almost heroic individual performances, is essentially and necessarily a collaborative, collective art, then perhaps we can combine Aristotle’s famous Man is a political animal (understanding ‘political’ as broadly ‘social’) with my misremembered slice of Pater: all art should aspire to the form of music, because music is a political form. In a collection of essays as diverse as this year’s Semantron , it would be difficult to identify any unifying theme. But many of the pieces are concerned with how our actions affect other humans, other species and the natural environment. In some of the essays, in a context of presidential egomania and more genera lized ecomania (‘Drill, baby, drill!’; consumerism; the obsession with economic growth), 6 there is also a clear sense of the urgent need to find sustainable solutions to the climate crisis. We humans, by our activities, have caused a degree of species destruction both astonishing and depressing; 7 we destroy roughly 10 million hectares of tropical rainforest every year, thereby losing over 100 plant and animal species daily. 8 Yet we continue to burn fossil fuels in our homes, cars, lorries and planes, in energy production and in warfare. 9 We cannot seem to see beyond our own immediate environment. Even as the damage is done, we feel unaffected. We think that our needs and desires human mind, see, for example, Buller 2005; Cummins & Allen 1998; Godfrey-Smith 2017; Hookway 1984; Sperber and Mercier 2017. 4 Jazz, like all music, begins with the simplicity of 12 notes, and the simplicity of the basic major and minor triads. In developing genuine harmonic complexity out of such basic components, jazz mirrors evolution in the natural world. It is worth noting, though, that, as jazz became more harmonically and rhythmically complex, it ceased to be a dance music in the way swing had been (see e.g. Kaplan 2025: 45-7). If dancing (and other acknowledgements of rhythm) are a distinctive human trait, then that makes jazz’s relationship to evolution more interesting. 5 I say this while acknowledging the (apocryphal?) story that when Charlie Parker first played the astonishing solo bridge on A Night in Tunisia , all the other musicians just stopped: what was that? It seems that, at first, they did not recognize what Parker played as music. 6 For interesting analyses of our attachment to economic growth, and for some counter-proposals, see Jackson 2017 and 2021. 7 See Wildlife numbers fall by 73% in 59 years at Nature decline is now nearing dangerous tipping points, WWF warns - BBC News. Published 10/10/24; accessed 1/6/25. 8 See How Much Rainforest Is Lost Daily? Understanding the Impact on Biodiversity and Climate – ChaseDay.com. Published 26/1/25; accessed 1/6/25. 9 Not much has been written about warfare as an ecological disaster, though see Kreike 2021 and, very recently, an article about the environmental damage wrought by the war in Gaza: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/30/carbon-footprint-of-israels-war-on-gaza-exceeds-that-of- many-entire-countries. Published 30/5/25.
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