JOHN CLARE

This section is dedicated to the work of John Clare, who began writing in the early 70s, and has long been regarded as the doyen of Australian jazz writers. Helen Garner, in her preface to Clare's book Take Me Higher, describes how she used to cut out his writings under his Gail Brennan pseudonym and paste them into her diary. Originally she thought the articles were written by a woman. She describes his writing as "superbly literate and articulate, deeply informed, yet completely ordinary in tone, even at their most elated. A relaxed freedom flowed through everything he wrote. He was fearless. He rejoices. He celebrated. Years later, an art critic who admired him said to me: John Clare’s an ecstatic.” Many of John Clare's articles that were published previously in various publications are collected here. Click on the INDEX button for a list of articles in this folder.

A DEFENCE OF THE AVANT-GARDE

by John Clare

JazzChord, Jul/Aug, 1994

I would like to take up my dialogue with Bruce Johnson, if I may. First, I must say I agree with Bruce absolutely that established or traditional jazz forms should not be ignored in arts funding. As I have already made clear in JazzChord, I believe that it should be a matter of the highest priority to record the Port Jackson Jazz Band and the Yarra Yarra Jazz Band. If I won the lottery I would subsidise these projects myself. These are simply the first projects that come to mind. Nevertheless, I must take issue with Bruce's attitude to the 'avant-garde', and music assumed to be on the 'cutting edge'…

A RESPONSE TO BRUCE JOHNSON

by Gail Brennan [aka John Clare]

JazzChord, Summer 1994/95

A new picture emerges. Hitherto, Bruce had shown us only one piece in a campaign he has mounted in various high culture pamphlets. Eric Myers may recall that when he heard Bernie McGann for the first time at the Seymour Centre, he said: “I’d heard he was avant-garde, but he’s actually very melodic.” That Bernie was avant-garde and difficult was a widespread assumption and a frequent put-down. I have heard venue owners say they would not book the musicians I mentioned because they were “too avant-garde”. A prominent rock critic expressed disbelief when I said Ornette Coleman was very rhythmic and melodic. “But isn’t he avant-garde?” A musician I greatly admire was surprised I liked his record. He thought I was “into the avant-garde”…

THE MUSIC OF STAN KENTON AND ITS DIVERSE SOURCES

by John Clare

JazzChord, Oct/Nov, 2001 & Feb/Mar, 2002

Music can imitate trains, horses galloping, bird calls and the like, but even the most programmatic music is far from precise as a general descriptive tool. Yet there is perhaps nothing more powerfully evocative - of time and place, of nature, technology, the very fragrances of our past - than music. Yet again the same music might evoke quite different memories for different people. ‘I neither see nor hear nor smell the sea,’ said one critic of Debussy’s masterpiece La Mer. I knew that critic had never surfed, never slid into the swell from a rock ledge or smelt the salt tang from the shade of a cliff-bottom cave accessible only by water; never felt the manifold rhythms of the open ocean in his body. He knew the tame old Mediterranean, where myths of sea monsters had to be invented to compensate for the lack of wave action. Debussy - who could not swim, incidentally - had created the greatest of all sea music. Nothing compares with it…