#I made this cover songs/fanfic connection later after we'd finished talking

[thisisstanne]

Recently, a friend told me that fanfic isn't real writing, isn't real art because it lacks creativity. She said that the authors are taking someone else's characters, fully formed and existing in a universe already defined and detailed, and just re-imagining them in different scenarios. And that, she was adamant, was not art, was not creativity. That was playing with Barbie dolls, she said.

And the whole time we were talking, I had some great jazz playing in the background. Some of it was older stuff, some really cutting edge, but all of it wildly creative, technical, skilled, and artistic. And every single track was a cover of someone else's song.

Jazz as an art form is built on covers: of jazz classics, of pop songs, of classical music. When you go to a jazz concert, you'd be lucky to get even fifty percent original music -- the majority of the music in the genre is reinterpretation after reinterpretation after reinterpretation. And all of it is art. All of it is creative. These musicians are powerhouses, they're icons, they're technicians, they are the best of the best.

So if we accept that cover songs are real music, if we see the creativity and the artistry in them, then we have to recognise fanfic as exactly the same thing: a reinterpretation of someone else's work that brings artistry and creativity in its own right. Fanfic is real writing.

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Here's my Spotify playlist of some of my favourite jazz reinterpretations of rock/pop songs.

A lot of the jazz is very modern, very challenging, but it is all great stuff created by GREAT musicians at the height of their artistic powers. Enjoy!

(If you've never tried contemporary jazz, this is a great introduction, btw. Really good stuff here.)