COVERS, ARRANGEMENTS, ORIGINALS, OH MY!
With each album release comes its own narrative, an opportunity for me to unpack each piece of of the project, and for me, the songs come before anything else. I have a running list in several notebooks, scattered all over my house, purse and office and it’s constantly growing. It would be terribly uncomfortable for me to not have a bullet proof plan before entering the studio, however I’ve also been a part of very successful recording sessions where we showed up and the songs were still being written. There are many ways to put together a project, but for me it always starts with the songs. And yes, to a large extent what I do is not considered by some to be original.
Because of this, there always seems to be a bit of a defense/self-loathing conversation happening in the back of my mind-Why did you pick these? Why aren’t you doing your OWN songs? Am I a real artist if I keep doing arranged music? Alongside my incessant need to be taken seriously, I cringe with my whole body when someone addresses BORJONER as an album of covers. There is good reason for my cringing, for I most certainly do not consider what I do as an artist as that. I consider myself an interpreter.
So why is there a pervasive attitude about what we do in jazz as unoriginal? Canada Council, the major funding body for Canadian artists, does not consider arrangements to be originals, and so to qualify for Canada Council funding, at least 50% of the album must be original music. To me, this says that what I do is invalid and unoriginal which begs the question, what is the difference between a cover and an arrangement?
A cover is:
an homage to the artist who wrote it
recognizable to the listener in its new state
On the contrary an arrangement should:
represent the artist preforming it more than the original composer/performer.
have movement that feels different than , but nods to, the original.
have hermeneutic value. In philosophical terms, an interpretation can give new meaning to a song and transcends its original context.
An arrangement asks you to take what you know about a song and throw it out the window, to shed yourself of what you heard to take on what you hear. As listeners, we regularly take songs in and make them about us as listeners, mis-taking meanings and creating stories all our own. “As [Quincy] Jones puts it, "The meat and guts of arranging is sweatshop work, a blend of experience, architecture, soul, and science." What I try to do when making a choice is to build in those songs the feeling that is inherent in me when I hear the magic moments that I know would make good pieces, and bringing that collection of notes to new players will automatically give new feeling to the music. There is no outright mimicry, we leave that to a pristine cover, which I consider an homage to the song and it’s writer.
Take for instance, the many times that jazz musicians have taken on popular music of their time and interpreted them. Nina Simone’s I Shall Be Released, John Coltrane’s version of My Favourite Things, Turk Murphy’s arrangement of Kurt Weill’s Mack the Knife for Louis Armstrong, to name a few. Brad Meldhau has perfected it with his many interpretations of Radiohead and more. Think of it like a Lego experiment. Each piece of Lego belongs to a set, and yet the ways in which you can build with Lego are endless. In doing the same, jazz arrangers add another layer or description to the chordal structure, re-telling the story of the song.
Your homework: think on Joni Mitchell’s most recent performance of Both Sides Now on the 2024 Grammy Awards, and think back to two previous versions released in 1969 and then 31 years later in the year 2000. The melody is the same, the notes are the same, but there are inherent differences between all three versions. In her first version, the song feels very much about a yearning, it’s a youthful glance at relationships of all sorts and it’s sung in haste. In the other two versions, time is an obvious marker, where age and reflection on it makes the biggest impact in her latest performance, giving the song gravitas and memory. The middle performance feels the weight of regret, of missing out on something possibly? There is a tension between all of these versions, and in that tension is the creation of new meaning. She plays with time, with chord structure and in doing so gives us a brand new song.
*Take a listen to these versions and others of Both Sides Now on my playlist.
I love being an interpreter of songs and I am blessed to have such a talent in my friend Carsten who took the songs we chose and literally breathed a new life into already perfect songs. That is a challenge in itself!!!
I can’t wait for you all to hear the rest of the songs. Album drops March 29 everywhere!
xx