Must We Call It Anything?

There is a particular sort of conversation that begins with someone playing a beautiful song and ends with two people arguing over what to call it.

The piano is still somewhere in the background. The singer has perhaps just had her heart broken. A perfectly good cup of coffee is going cold. Yet the matter at hand, apparently, is whether this is really jazz.

One person says it is pop. Another suggests bossa nova. Someone else, with the solemnity of a man correcting a wine list, says it has elements of all three but is not truly any of them. By the time a verdict is reached, the song has ended, the coffee is beyond help, and the rest of us have forgotten what we liked about it in the first place.

There is a time and a place for a good argument about music. A small bar, a second drink and a friend with unreasonable confidence in his own opinions can make for an excellent evening. But when the argument becomes more important than the song, something has gone a little wrong.

The trouble with a good song

Take Laufey. Listen to “From the Start” and there is the light, swaying movement of bossa nova, a fondness for jazz harmony, and the sort of direct, disarmingly familiar longing that makes a fine pop song. She has spoken about the influence of jazz, classical music and bossa nova on her work. None of these observations cancels the others out.

To some listeners she is a jazz artist. To others she makes pop influenced by jazz. Both descriptions can be useful, depending on which song one is discussing and what one means by jazz. There is plenty to say about the differences between her work and, say, an improvised performance by a small jazz ensemble. But a young woman does not lose her ear for a beautiful chord because a great many people have heard her music on their phones.

And “pop” need not be delivered as an insult, as though the crime of a song were that somebody other than oneself enjoyed it.

Perhaps the loveliest thing about Laufey is the door her music can open. A listener arrives because a song understands the particular embarrassment of loving someone who does not quite notice. Then, perhaps, they become curious about the rhythm, the arrangement or the older records that helped shape its sound. They may eventually find their way to Ella Fitzgerald, Chet Baker, João Gilberto or Astrud Gilberto. They may simply stay with Laufey. Either way, they have found something worth hearing.

Different rooms, open doors

Jazz, soul, rhythm and blues, and bossa nova are not interchangeable names for pleasant music played in a dimly lit room. Each has its own history, its own musicians and communities, its own musical language.

Jazz grew from Black American musical traditions, and its history is full of invention, conversation and change. Soul carries the expressive force of Black American gospel and rhythm and blues, among other traditions. R&B itself has travelled through many forms, from the rhythm and blues of earlier decades to contemporary music that borrows freely from hip-hop, electronic production, jazz and pop.

Bossa nova has its own Brazilian story. Emerging in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1950s, it drew on samba and engaged with jazz, developing a distinctive approach to rhythm, harmony and singing. Listen to João Gilberto’s guitar and voice, and the gentleness is not simply a mood. There is a precise, quietly miraculous movement beneath it.

These histories matter. Knowing them allows us to hear more clearly and to recognise the people who made the music possible. Calling everything with a soft voice and a brushed drum “jazz” can flatten those differences just as surely as insisting that no music may cross a boundary.

The pleasure is in learning the names of the rooms, while remembering that musicians have always walked between them.

Music does not stay where it is put

Put on “The Girl from Ipanema,” with Astrud Gilberto, João Gilberto, Stan Getz and Antônio Carlos Jobim, and listen to the meeting of Brazilian song and an American jazz musician’s saxophone. The recording is neither a Brazilian musician accidentally wandering into jazz nor jazz politely visiting Brazil for the afternoon. It is a conversation, with several voices worth knowing.

Listen to Sade and you might hear soul, jazz influences, pop and something that seems to belong rather comfortably to Sade alone. Put on D’Angelo and there is R&B, soul and funk, with rhythms that seem to lean back in their chair without ever losing their balance. Amy Winehouse could draw from jazz, soul, R&B and the directness of pop songwriting while sounding unmistakably herself.

None of this means that every artist belongs to every genre, or that the words have no meaning. It means that influence does not observe a neat queue. A musician can study one tradition, fall in love with another, write for an audience raised on a third and make something that belongs entirely to their own life.

People do much the same thing when they dress. An old tweed jacket can sit rather happily over a T-shirt; a pair of trainers can accompany an otherwise traditional suit. One may like the result or dislike it. One can even have a very long opinion about the shoes. But the outfit does not become less interesting because it refuses to be filed under a single heading.

Let the song lead

There is a particular pleasure in following one sound towards another. You hear an unfamiliar voice in a café, ask the person behind the counter what is playing, and leave with a name scribbled on the back of a receipt. At home, one song leads to another, and the evening acquires a soundtrack you had not intended to find.

Perhaps it begins with Laufey and leads to Astrud Gilberto’s recording of Antônio Carlos Jobim’s “Corcovado.” Perhaps a Sade record brings you to Bill Withers, and from there to the voice of Al Green. Perhaps a playlist moves from Erykah Badu to a jazz recording you would never have thought to search for. The route may be untidy. That is part of its charm.

A record shop can be especially good for this. The dividers are useful when you know what you want, but the real adventure sometimes begins when you pick up something from the wrong section. A sleeve catches your eye, a name sounds familiar, or the person at the counter says, “If you like that, try this.”

It helps to listen to the older records on their own terms, too. The past is more than a collection of influences waiting to be spotted in the present. João Gilberto is worth hearing for João Gilberto. Nina Simone is worth hearing for Nina Simone. Their music does not need a modern artist to make it relevant, though a modern artist may be the friend who first introduces you.

An invitation, not an examination

Some of the most enjoyable people to talk to about music know an extraordinary amount and make you feel perfectly comfortable knowing very little. They will happily tell you who played on a record, where the rhythm came from and why one recording is different from another. Then they will put it on and let you listen.

The less enjoyable ones tend to treat affection as an examination. Name five albums. Identify the chord. Explain why the song you love does or does not qualify for the shelf on which they have decided to keep it.

There is nothing wrong with expertise. Good criticism can help us recognise details we might otherwise miss, and musicians deserve to have their craft discussed seriously. But knowledge is most generous when it offers another way in. A person who has just discovered jazz should be met with a recommendation, not a raised eyebrow.

You do not have to pretend to like an artist because they are popular, of course. Nor do you have to pretend to dislike them for the same reason. If Laufey leaves you cold, there is an entire world of music waiting. If she makes you feel as though you are walking home with a small, rather elegant heartbreak of your own, that is a perfectly good reason to keep listening.

Leave a little room

The records on a shelf need to go somewhere. So do the songs in a streaming library. Labels help us find things, and sometimes a precise name can lead us towards a whole history we did not know existed.

But the person listening does not need to stay on the shelf with the record.

A song can carry the rhythm of bossa nova, a little of the language of jazz and the immediacy of pop. Another can move between soul and R&B until the distinction matters less than the voice coming through the speakers. The names can coexist. So can the feelings.

Put the kettle on. Pour another drink. Play the song again, and let the argument wait until it is over.