La résurgence du passé dans le jazz contemporain : une problématique post-moderne ?

Jazz, as developed through the last century, has kept a close relationship between creation and tradition. Constant reference to the roots of jazz has been made possible by both the oral transmission and deep and rapid evolution. However, there are numerous signs which show that since the 1980s the past of jazz is becoming more significant than its present. This phenomenon, parallel with certain recent developments of contemporary written music, will be examined here within the general scope of postmodernism. Initially we will have to clarify the meaning of modern and postmodern concepts as applied to music generally, and jazz historiography in particular. A tentative analogy might be made between postmodernism and jazz in their various shared conceptions - renunciation of a linear view of history, obsession with reference and eclectism, concern with communication between artists and audience. Nevertheless, we must also distinguish between different (sometimes opposite) ways of appealing to the past - reconstruction, revivalism, orthodoxy, adaptation, re-reading. Among these, a kind of " moderate postmodernism " appears through the recorded works of Dave Douglas or Franz Koglmann, and emerges from the particular level of historical consciousness which governs the elaboration of their appeals to the past. However, the postmodern analogy cannot be totally relevant if we consider only the resurgence and recycling of historical materials within contemporary jazz. A further stage of this research will consider such musicians as Uri Caine and Gian-Luigi Trovesi for the astonishing width of their scope of reference. Deliberately appropriating all kinds of historical musical materials with the help of collage and quotation, they playfully abolish any hierarchy of style or genre. In so doing, these musicians are approaching many postmodern problematics.