How Amy Winehouse defined her duty as a jazz artist
The purpose of jazz differs depending on who you ask. For some, it’s nothing more than a set of musical sensibilities designed to explore the boundaries of music. For others, it exists to reflect the times, falling into different shapes depending on societal and cultural factors. As a musician, Amy Winehouse sat in both categories, with her heart falling firmly on the importance of freedom of expression.
In many discussions about great jazz connoisseurs, it’s likely that a handful of well-known names will come up, like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, and many others. While jazz has a history richer than most could ever imagine, the birth of its modern wave saw an iteration that showcased the genre as a more serious form of art rather than something you could dance to.
Throughout each revision, the power of experimentalism reigned. Jazz is perhaps one of the only forms that looks to tradition as a source of inspiration, linking various aspects of musical history to fabricate something that challenges listener experiences while celebrating the past. Jazz is a genuine study of art, with waves that push the horizons of music as a whole, not just the siloes it seems to exist within.
When Winehouse came along in the early 2000s, jazz wasn’t what it once was. Although many of those within Winehouse’s family and musical circle had strong connections to earlier iterations of the jazz scene, her reimagination of the art came as a fusion of jazz with more accessible and modern manifestations of R&B, pop, and soul.
Alongside the obvious musical arrangements that demonstrated each of these fusions, her voice became a huge selling point and almost inextricable from her wider artistry. Winehouse may have appeared to the cynic as nothing more than a caricature of once-popular musical tropes, but reducing her craft to such criticisms only served to strengthen her impact, which arrived as the perfect ode to music itself: Winehouse didn’t debilitate jazz, she celebrated it and earned it a newfound legion of fans.
According to the singer, this was a deliberate act. Discussing her craft, she once explained: “I write all of my own stuff, everything: the music, the words, everything. It’s important for me to write music that’s of my time, and to reflect people who are like myself, my age, and coming from where I’m coming from.”
Regarding the historical aspect of her music, she elaborated: “I’m not interested in old music. Jazz is not a horn line to me. To me, jazz is carrying your freedom forward with music and pushing boundaries, always.”
As a result, Winehouse always kept her jazz heroes close to her chest, but her own music became a bigger reflection of what she felt jazz – and by extension, musical innovation – should be. Most of the topics that she wrote about were relatable and culturally significant, but the music itself represented the history of the art while providing a gateway into its appeal.