Ken Burns Jazz Book
Steve Cooper
should be aware that it is not really a representative history of jazz.
There are far better books on the market. Granted, it does have many
sumptuous, never-before-published photos -- but the downside is that the
book is really the gospel according to Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong
(or is that Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch?).
Another interesting point is that only 25 pages or so of the over 450 pages
are devoted to jazz after 1970.
By the time I finished leafing through the book I was disgusted by the
grossly disparate number of Ellington photographs (and I am a big Ellington
fan). I have since decided to return the book to the store for a refund.
Caveat emptor!
Ulf Åbjörnsson
> the new Ken Burns Jazz book does have many
> sumptuous, never-before-published photos -- but the downside is that the
>
> Another interesting point is that only 25 pages or so of the over 450
pages
> are devoted to jazz after 1970.
>
Ulf
Thomas Reilly
come to an end or end up as a discarded chad. Ask for Burns to do a series
on jazz after 1970. Simple isn't it.
"Steve Cooper" <stev...@mediaone.net> wrote in message
news:tauS5.15214$M51.4...@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net...
> Anybody who is going to be putting out $65 for the new Ken Burns Jazz book
> should be aware that it is not really a representative history of jazz.
> There are far better books on the market. Granted, it does have many
> sumptuous, never-before-published photos -- but the downside is that the
> book is really the gospel according to Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong
> (or is that Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch?).
>
> Another interesting point is that only 25 pages or so of the over 450
pages
> are devoted to jazz after 1970.
>
Dennis J. Kosterman
<stev...@mediaone.net> wrote:
>Anybody who is going to be putting out $65 for the new Ken Burns Jazz book
>should be aware that it is not really a representative history of jazz.
>There are far better books on the market. Granted, it does have many
>sumptuous, never-before-published photos -- but the downside is that the
>book is really the gospel according to Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong
>(or is that Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch?).
>Another interesting point is that only 25 pages or so of the over 450 pages
>are devoted to jazz after 1970.
To be fair, Louis and Duke were by far the two greatest figures in
jazz history up until 1945 or thereabouts, and even today I'd put 'em
both in the top 5. If you're going to devote most of a book to
pre-1970 jazz, it figures that those two would dominate it, since they
dominated the music for at least half of the period covered.
The pre-1970 bias should have been no surprise anyway, since the
companion TV series has exactly the same bias. Even though a lot of my
favorite jazz was made after 1970, and I wish Burns had covered that
period more thoroughly, I appreciate his reasons for not doing so. If
you're going to take a historical approach to something (and that's
the approach he's taken in all of his projects), it's hard to include
"current events". We don't yet have the perspective to know what's
important and what isn't. I think he could have come a little closer
than 1970, but that's just a matter of degree.
For those of you in or near Chicago, they're going to have a preview
of the series (1 hour -- I don't know if it's one entire episode or
snips from several of them), with Burns himself taking questions
afterward. I believe it's at the Symphony Center -- sorry, but I don't
remember the date (threw the brochure away).
And finally, speaking of Stanley Crouch (he's mentioned somewhere
above), I just picked up the Knit Classics re-issue of the 1976
"Wildflowers" sessions (avant-garde jazz by various artists), and
there's a short track by David Murray with Mr. Crouch on drums!
Interesting, in view of his current feelings about the avant-garde...
Dennis J. Kosterman
den...@tds.net
Don Mopsick
This sounds like just my kind of book. There are more of us out here than
you think.
There are many, many books in print and out devoted to jazz post-WWII. What
are you afraid of?
Don Mopsick
"Steve Cooper" <stev...@mediaone.net> wrote in message
news:tauS5.15214$M51.4...@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net...
> Anybody who is going to be putting out $65 for the new Ken Burns Jazz book
> should be aware that it is not really a representative history of jazz.
> There are far better books on the market. Granted, it does have many
> sumptuous, never-before-published photos -- but the downside is that the
> book is really the gospel according to Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong
> (or is that Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch?).
>
> Another interesting point is that only 25 pages or so of the over 450
pages
> are devoted to jazz after 1970.
>
Simon Weil
or two (depending on the account you read) jazz records. So he relies on his
sources for his view of jazz. Both he and his co-writer lionize Wynton - who
gets an interview to himself. Albert Murray also gets a (shorter) interview.
Stanley Crouch gets a longish thinkpiece to rabbit on about post-60s jazz. I
think you get the picture.
I think this book is wrongheaded.
Simon Weil
Check out my Wagner and the Jews book at:
http://members.aol.com/wagnerbuch/intro.htm
void
wrote:
>
>and for the uninformed, "avant garde" and "free jazz" are not
>synonyms. (refer to your dictionary if you have any doubt about
>that fact.) "avant garde" can refer to the stylistic ideas
>introduced by charlie parker just as well as it can refer to
>the percussion style introduced by sunny murray or the interactive
>electronics of violinist jon rose. it's a relative term,
>obviously. in the most general sense, one can describe the most
>progressive edge of any art form using the term 'avant garde.'
Yes, would you believe I shocked someone by referring to Duke Ellington
and Charlie Parker as avant-garde?
Even though neither Ellington's nor Parker's idioms are new any more,
I still feel when listening to them that I am listening to avant garde
musicians, to people who had their ears and hearts and minds open and
were determined to push the boundaries of the music.
--
Ben
220 go.ahead.make.my.day ESMTP Postfix
Dan Given
>
> Bruce LeClaire wrote:
> > "The key for us was forging the partnership between Sony Legacy and the
> > Verve Music Group. [...] Ron Goldstein, who's the president of the Verve
> > Music Group, said, 'We were forced to check our egos at the door and
> > work with people who are mortal enemies.'" [KB]
>
> perhaps if they checked their egos at the door they might have
> chosen to include some material from the black saint or esp or
> aum fidelity catalogs. anyone who shares a common primary goal
> of profit is an ally against progressive music.
but why bother even looking to labels that didn't start up until post
1970. Jazz was dead by then, and, in the eyes of Verve and Sony and
Burns, there is no reason to look at that music. However, it may have
been helpful to forge a partnership with whoever controls Blue Note. I
can't remember who all is covered in the series, but it seems to me
pretty tough to have a comprehensive collection of prime Monk without
Blue Note, and I'm pretty sure there is a Rollins disc. I can't
remember what is on the Coltrane disc -- where does Impulse fit into
this.
My local chain stores have big display racks of the Burns CDs for really
low prices, and while some of them may be OK as compilations, I question
the value of more compilations. There are already how many Charlie
Parker compilations out there. I worry that people will buy the bunch
and assume they have the definitive jazz collection.
Dan
Bruce LeClaire
Seems to be a good place to drop this in, culled from today's Boston
Globe (Fri 11/24), which seems to have taken it from J.D. Considine's
article in the Baltimore Sun:
<<
"'Jazz' is an opportunity to see how we are as a people. [...] In many
ways, I've made the same film over and over again, just asking that
question of different subjects. [...] Jazz is a sense of our future, of
what we can be when we live out the true meaning of our creed to
paraphrase Dr. King" [KB]
Although the 10-part documentary won't air on PBS until Jan, the 5-CD
box set "Ken Burns Jazz" (Columbia/Legacy/Verve 61432) has been released
along with the single disc, "The Best of KB's Jazz" (ditto 61439).
"The key for us was forging the partnership between Sony Legacy and the
Verve Music Group. [...] Ron Goldstein, who's the president of the Verve
Music Group, said, 'We were forced to check our egos at the door and
work with people who are mortal enemies.'" [KB]
Burns sees it as being directed to "a general public that is confused by
jazz, that thinks you have to have an advanced degree to understand it"
Still, jazz criticism is nothing if not contentious, as Burns found when
working on "Jazz". When "The Civil War" aired, sever months passed
before a few historians published objections to the series; with
"Baseball", it took several weeks before some sportswriters weighed in
with objections over what they thought were greivous omissions. "Two
years before I finished 'Jazz', I was getting letters from jazz critics
telling me where I went wrong", says Burns with a laugh.
"We thought, actually, that we might even end the film in 1960." [KB]
>>
And, as exhibited by the following sentence, there appears to be not
just one modern genre of jazz neglected by Burn's treatment of post-1960
music...
<<
Far more problematic is the set's view of contemporary jazz. Although
the avant-garde is dealt with deftly and incisively -- offering a strong
sense of the music's anger and audacitty with drowing the listener in
gales of dissonance -- fusion, smooth jazz, and jazz/hip-hop experiments
are given only the most superficial representation.
>>
--Bruce
Nick Dempsey
print ad I saw the other day.
It's an ad for some kind of organic yogurt or some such. Features Burns' big
funny-looking head and copy that goes something like (I'm being very liberal
with my rendering):
I believe in:
Jazz as the great American artform.
Baseball as the pinnacle of sport.
Long walks on the beach.
Organic yogurt from free range cattle.
???!!!
--NPD
Nils
Simon Weil wrote:
> Both he and his co-writer lionize Wynton - who
> gets an interview to himself. Albert Murray also gets a (shorter) interview.
> Stanley Crouch gets a longish thinkpiece to rabbit on about post-60s jazz. I
> think you get the picture.
>
> I think this book is wrongheaded.
based on the fact that burns devotes so little time with the last 3
or 4 decades of jazz history, you can safely assume that politics
have entered into what might otherwise be a informative summary.
the really sad thing (imho) is that there are real people with real
careers at stake here. it's not a simple act of ignorance or closed-
mindedness, it's an active exclusion of artists who have spent their
whole lives pursuing a progressive truth. as if these people need
any more obstacles in their way.
n
Nils
Bruce LeClaire wrote:
>
> Seems to be a good place to drop this in, culled from today's Boston
> Globe (Fri 11/24), which seems to have taken it from J.D. Considine's
> article in the Baltimore Sun:
>
> <<
>
> "Jazz is a sense of our future, of
> what we can be when we live out the true meaning of our creed to
> paraphrase Dr. King" [KB]
don't mind me if i offer a running commentary here. i'm not sure how
we can sense the future if KB's documentary is so thoroughly grounded
in the past. i can't imagine a jazz future without free or fusion
influences. are the last 4 decades of jazz worth 5% as much as the
first 4?
of course one can always recycle things and repackage them so they
look new and different, but that's not progress. that's called being
a poseur.
> "The key for us was forging the partnership between Sony Legacy and the
> Verve Music Group. [...] Ron Goldstein, who's the president of the Verve
> Music Group, said, 'We were forced to check our egos at the door and
> work with people who are mortal enemies.'" [KB]
perhaps if they checked their egos at the door they might have
chosen to include some material from the black saint or esp or
aum fidelity catalogs. anyone who shares a common primary goal
of profit is an ally against progressive music.
> <<
> Far more problematic is the set's view of contemporary jazz. Although
> the avant-garde is dealt with deftly and incisively -- offering a strong
> sense of the music's anger and audacitty with drowing the listener in
> gales of dissonance -- fusion, smooth jazz, and jazz/hip-hop experiments
> are given only the most superficial representation.
> >>
it's interesting how anger and love can appear synonymous to the
closed-minded. do people honestly think albert ayler's music is
angry? there's a certain amount of race-related anger that was a
part and parcel of the era in which free jazz had its beginnings,
but i have a hard time coming up with any records that are just
plain angry.
and for the uninformed, "avant garde" and "free jazz" are not
synonyms. (refer to your dictionary if you have any doubt about
that fact.) "avant garde" can refer to the stylistic ideas
introduced by charlie parker just as well as it can refer to
the percussion style introduced by sunny murray or the interactive
electronics of violinist jon rose. it's a relative term,
obviously. in the most general sense, one can describe the most
progressive edge of any art form using the term 'avant garde.'
if the avant garde is something to be 'dealt with' and disposed
of, the concept behind the work must be to bury one's head as far
as possible up one's ass.
n
Simon Weil
>based on the fact that burns devotes so little time with the last 3
>or 4 decades of jazz history, you can safely assume that politics
>have entered into what might otherwise be a informative summary.
Here's Stanley Crouch:
"...by 1970, things were beginning to go bad for jazz. The phenomenon of fusion
was on the build and it was debunking swing, in all its magnificent variety
through static rock and funk beats, electric pianos, and bass guitars. At the
same time avant-garde jazz of the sort distinctly separate from the swinging
version of Ornette Coleman brought to New York in 1959 had dispensed with jazz
rhythm altogether. Major figures in jazz either sold out to pop trends or
abdicated while those with serious integrity continued to swing in contexts of
increased obscurity. Those given to premature autopsies were sure that this
time, jazz was on its death bed. So when [Wynton] Marsalis moved to New York in
1979, things looked fairly grim for jazz...
Marsalis changed that situation dramatically. By example, through recruitment,
teaching, and his won accomplishments, he became, as Betty Carter said, "the
fate of the music. I believe he arrived here to bring the music back."
Sleevenotes to Wynton Marsalis Septet Live at the Village Vanguard/Crouch 1999
And here's Ken Burns on the final episode (no 10 1960-now) of his series on
Jazz:
"It has Armstrong and 'Hello, Dolly,' " he says. "Then the whole Mingus,
Archie Shepp, Art Ensemble protest. We have Duke and the death of Billie, we
have John Coltrane and his second chapter and his death. We have Miles
turning first to the avant-garde, then helping to create fusion, setting off
an argument about whether that is in fact jazz. We simply say, 'It's an
argument and it's going to spawn a lot of really creative music.'
"We cover the deaths of Ellington and Armstrong in valedictorian passages.
Then we basically say, 'We're in the mid-'70s, jazz is dead.' Because that's
what most people felt at the time; even Miles Davis said that jazz was
dead."
"Then the film begins to rise up," he continues. "Wynton joins Art Blakey
and there's this huge renaissance in the '80s of new jazz talent led by
Wynton. We wind up with our 'outro,' which sort of looks at where we've been
with a montage, and talks about various contemporary people playing a
variety of stuff."
Los Angeles Times, August 6, 2000
So Burns is taking The Stanley Crouch view of the last 30 years of jazz
(1970-now).
Monk5by5
thing that has happened for jazz in the last 20 years.
the outre should be The Die Like a Dog Quartet groovin' and swingin' down the
road to the unknown.
His premise, gleamed from the boneheaded Crouch & Marsalis, is more than
wrongheaded, as Simon pointed out, but destructive and not based in reality.
It's based in a deep bais and hatred for creative music that Stanly Crouch &
Wynton Marsalis have been promulgated for the past 20 years.
Because Wynton can't stand the idea that he is not his generation's defining
jazz musician, he obfuscates the true meaning and joy that is jazz, and he
plays god by not even choosing to address the reality of the current flowering
of post modern jazz.
Musically, it is a golden age, commerically it is not.
but maybe we can dream...as Joe Maneri told me, "it's gonna be big, when the
people are exposed to the music"
He's obviously a dreamer, and not addressing this story, or even touching on
dozens of stories about this latest golden age of jazz, is a slap in the face
to every musician or listener to modern music.
Marc Sabatella
> There are many, many books in print and out devoted to jazz post-WWII.
What
> are you afraid of?
There is nothing wrong with prefering one particular era of jazz over all
others. There is something wrong with presenting this top the public at
large as being the sum total of what jazz is.
--------------
Marc Sabatella
ma...@outsideshore.com
Check out my latest CD, "Falling Grace"
Also "A Jazz Improvisation Primer", Sounds, Scores, & More:
http://www.outsideshore.com/
Glenn Wilson
Glenn
www.jazzmaniac.com
"Marc Sabatella" <ma...@outsideshore.com> wrote in message
news:yaTV5.1685$jg6.2...@news.uswest.net...
> Don Mopsick <moph...@landing.com> wrote:
>
> > There are many, many books in print and out devoted to jazz post-WWII.
> What
> > are you afraid of?
>
Ted Williams
whole thing with $$$ in mind. The cool thing is I can't wait for the Charles
Mingus and John Coltrane Action Figures (then I could get them to beat up
the Wynton one!), just in time for Xmas!!!!!
Ted
Glenn Wilson <glenn.wil...@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:909149$27k$1...@slb1.atl.mindspring.net...
> Amen, Marc.
>
> Glenn
> www.jazzmaniac.com
>
>
> "Marc Sabatella" <ma...@outsideshore.com> wrote in message
> news:yaTV5.1685$jg6.2...@news.uswest.net...
> > Don Mopsick <moph...@landing.com> wrote:
> >
> > > There are many, many books in print and out devoted to jazz post-WWII.
> > What
> > > are you afraid of?
> >
Ira Chineson
"Steve Cooper" <stev...@mediaone.net> wrote:
>
> By the time I finished leafing through the book I was disgusted by
the
> grossly disparate number of Ellington photographs (and I am a big
Ellington
> fan). I have since decided to return the book to the store for a
refund.
> Caveat emptor!
>
>
I can possibly understand being disappointed or even annoyed by
too many Ellington photos, but "disgusted" is not a word I would
ever associate with an excess of Ellingtonia.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Robert Vincent Walker-Smith
<snip>
>There are many, many books in print and out devoted to jazz post-WWII. What
>are you afraid of?
They're afraid that the series and book will bring the 'wrong sort' of people
into jazz. And I think you know the kind of people I mean. . . the ones who
don't know a lot about music, but who want to enjoy what they listen to. It's
the Marsalis Heresy - jazz as popular music.
Robert
Robert Vincent Walker-Smith
<snip>
>but maybe we can dream...as Joe Maneri told me, "it's gonna be big, when the
>people are exposed to the music"
>
experimental, avant-garde, 'good' jazz because the Beast Marsalis tells them
not to? Last time I was at my local Virgin Megastore (San Francisco), Art
Ensemble of Chicago had a number of CDs on the rack. If anyone really wanted
to listen to them, the music is commercially available.
Contemporary jazz has a small fan base because it appeals to a small segment of
the music-listening populace.
>It's based in a deep bais and hatred for creative music that Stanly Crouch &
>Wynton Marsalis have been promulgated for the past 20 years.
interviewed in a local weekly. The venom and vitriol they expressed concerning
the Great Satan was truly breathtaking. Of course, that's not bias and hatred,
because they're good and pure artists, defending jazz against the forces
seeking to popularize it. After all, Wynton goes around to schools,
encouraging children to listen to jazz! Who knows what that could lead to?
Robert
Monk5by5
among other great bands, I was priviliged to see Ellery Eskelin's trio with
Andrea Parkins and the *great* Jim Black perform this past summer...
This band is comparable in artistic stature to *any* of the great music that
will be presented in Mr. Burns' film.
to believe otherwise is denial and nostagic hero worship..
yet this music will be ignored along with the other great musicians that have
built on the tradition and history that is celebrated in this film.
and this band is not only ignored, the music that they promulgate is dismissed
with a broad brush due to everything that Wynton believes in.
and in effect, a large percentage of the working, striving and creative
musicians are dismissed as not worthy of his standards as what it means to be a
jazz musician.
I guess, to them, jazz is dead
to promote this idea to america is a tradgedy of the highest order....
and we can thank the ignorance of Mr. Burns and the obtuse brain of Mr. Wynton
Marsalis
One Great Day.....
Ulf Åbjörnsson
Again you find the essence, Robert! Good going!
Ulf
Amos Omondi
"Ulf Åbjörnsson" <aabj...@algonet.se> wrote:
> Again you find the essence, Robert! Good going!
>
> Ulf
You, Ulf, reading that mail one could see what the fellow means by
hatred and bias. It's a pity that after all these years the avant-con
types still have not realized that it no longer works to claim that
people who have no use for mindless noise simply "don't get it", "hate
creative music", are anti-progress, etc. They would fare slightly
better if they woke up to the reality of today's world.
The Wynton Wars are over, and Wynton War. Let's not turn it into
another US presidential election.
Ted Williams
in something that is being presented as history. I guess you'll always get
some of the presenters opinion in it. Its the fact that this whole project
stems from 2 major record labels, and a handful of like minded/opinionated
sources that really bugs me.
Its great that people will see the film and start checking out great
musicians, but the musicians they'll be checking out are pretty much all
dead, and only represented by the 2 major record labels that had a part in
the series.
Think about this, what if Verve and Columbia had said, ok....this is a great
time to start pushing new artists in our catalog. We've got a new series
coming out, people are going to be excited by the buzz. PBS will show the
series, and we'll hold a prime time concert to showcase some of our more
well known artists, and to introduce people to new artists. We'll take a
chance. We'll actually PROMOTE these artists like the pop industry (that
they already have a hand in) promotes Nsync or Britney Spears.
Just anything...show the music is alive and swinging. Hell, show Wynton on
TV, but do it with artists as well...There's just too much focus in the
wrong area, and they don't appear to traditions (living traditions, I might
add) best interest at heart. They have, as Lady Bug from the Digable Planets
says, the almighty dolla, the green powa as their great motivator.
So its not that the "wrong people" will be listening to jazz..its that they
will be presented a biased view as the truth. And it will just continue the
cycle...the record plantation.
Ted
Robert Vincent Walker-Smith <rwlkr...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20001202015036...@ng-bd1.aol.com...
John Monroe
> here is the problem [snip]: among other great bands, I was priviliged to
> see Ellery Eskelin's trio with Andrea Parkins and the *great* Jim Black
> perform this past summer...
>
> This band is comparable in artistic stature to *any* of the great music that
> will be presented in Mr. Burns' film.
>
> to believe otherwise is denial and nostagic hero worship.. [snip]
For me, this statement gets right to the heart of the matter. Actually, I
like Wynton's work *and* Eskelin's. Both have passed what for me is the
acid test for a Jazz musician: they have created instantly-recognizeable,
highly-personal sounds and approaches. To my ears their best albums (Citi
Movement, One Great Day) deserve to stand alongside the canonical
masterpieces of the Jazz past.
A lot of this group's readers probably view that claim with no small
amount of skepticism. The reason why is simple, I think -- "nostalgic
hero worship" has become an integral part of how Jazz is listened to and
appreciated these days. No matter how good and original a present-day
musician is, he (or she) will always be relegated to second-class status
by Jazz critics and the Jazz press (and also by listeners, to a certain
extent), for no other reason than an accident of birth. The "golden age"
of Jazz is over, according to this school of thought; therefore anything
that happens now has to be in some way inferior or at least derivative.
The first thing people often seem to do, when talking about a young
musician, is not to point out his originality, but rather to try and guess
who he's copying. These guesses aren't always correct, but the tacit
assumption always seems to be that if a young player is making music now,
he (or she) has to be cribbing huge amounts from some exalted predecessor
or other.
Brad Mehldau's frustration with being compared to Bill Evans, I think, is
a classic example of this problem (this was the subject of a thread a
while back). If you listen to him, Mehldau sounds *nothing* like Bill
Evans. His whole rhythmic approach is different, as is his touch and the
way he constructs his solos. In some ways, his approach to improvisation
is closer to Keith Jarrett's -- but even that comparison is off base.
What it boils down to is that Mehldau is working his ass off to be
*original.* No wonder he gets so frustrated by the critical knee-jerk
reflex to turn him into an imitator, for no other reason than because
that's what one does when writing about a young musician these days.
Why do Jazz writers and fans have this "hero worship" mentality? Part of
it has to do with the whole "back to tradition" thing of the 80s, but I
don't think that's really the root of the problem. The real reason we
fetishize the past in Jazz, I think (and believe me, I do it too), is
because of *recording,* and the way recordings are marketed today.
Records, by their very nature, create a nostalgic cult of the great, dead
player and the perfect moment. By listening to a recording over and over
with certain romantic notions in our minds, we give it a special aura --
old records stop being old records and become traces of an eternally-lost
golden age. When we hear "Kind of Blue," we don't just hear an excellent
jazz album (which is all we hear when we put on, say, Dave Douglas' "Soul
on Soul"), we hear a masterpiece for the ages.
If "Kind of Blue" had just come out yesterday, it quite simply *would not
sound the same* to us as it does now. When we listen to KoB, we do so
expecting to hear a "great masterpiece." Inevitbly, we hear the music
through the filter of everything that has been said about it in the past
(even if we haven't actually read all that stuff,
it's enough just to *know* that it's all been said). Any new recording,
then, is at a huge disadvantage: there's no way you can compete with the
"back-story" of a classic album (or even of a reissue of a mid-level
sixties Blue Note session). After all, Dave Douglas, however good he
sounds to us at the moment, might just be a flash in the pan, but
Miles...we *already know* that he's an icon. As a result, I believe, we
have a tendency to hear his music differently. That's part of how
esthetic posterity works in Western culture: you don't hear anybody
pointing out the dramatic or literary flaws in "Hamlet" now, but you
probably did back when it came out, before it had acquired icon status.
Of course, to be an icon, a work of art has to be *good* -- but that's
another post.
My sense is that in Jazz this hero worship thing didn't exist to the same
extent in the 50s and 60s. First, reissues weren't nearly as prevelant as
they are today, which meant that new releases played a much more important
role in shaping people's vision of what Jazz was. Second, the past
*weighed* less on critics and fans: people seem to have listened less with
reverance for what had been done than with interest in what was happening
in the moment. It's too bad we have so much trouble doing that now,
because the last decade has been a fantastic time for new Jazz.
John Monroe.
Robert Vincent Walker-Smith
<snip>
>A lot of this group's readers probably view that claim with no small
>amount of skepticism. The reason why is simple, I think -- "nostalgic
>hero worship" has become an integral part of how Jazz is listened to and
>appreciated these days. No matter how good and original a present-day
>musician is, he (or she) will always be relegated to second-class status
>by Jazz critics and the Jazz press (and also by listeners, to a certain
>extent), for no other reason than an accident of birth. The "golden age"
>of Jazz is over, according to this school of thought; therefore anything
>that happens now has to be in some way inferior or at least derivative.
> It's too bad we have so much trouble doing that now,
>because the last decade has been a fantastic time for new Jazz.
Thank you, John. I greatly enjoyed and appreciated your post. Your comparison
with Hamlet is particularly apt.
Robert
Nils
> The first thing people often seem to do, when talking about a young
> musician, is not to point out his originality, but rather to try and guess
> who he's copying. These guesses aren't always correct, but the tacit
> assumption always seems to be that if a young player is making music now,
> he (or she) has to be cribbing huge amounts from some exalted predecessor
> or other.
perhaps you are overinterpreting critical reviews in which the style
of a young musician is often compared to someone well known from the
canon. this is merely a tool used by reviewers to communicate
information to their readers. often the best way to encapsulate the
style of a musician is to make a brief analogy to a more established,
easily-recognized artist. that way people have an instant way of
relating to the sound of the new work. of course any review that
doesn't go beyond that starting point is doing nothing to elaborate
upon the specific stylistic innovations of the young musician, and
basically represents laziness on the part of the reviewer.
a lot of people say (said) that d.d. jackson sounds like don pullen--
which he certainly does--but leave out the fact that he has created
his own complex sense of time, has a more precise & metered touch,
and has developed his own idiosyncratic embellishments for "inside"
solo material. one can take these critical opinions two ways: either
as a statement that d.d. is ploughing the same row as pullen; or that
d.d. has taken a lot of pullen's ideas to a new level. i personally
feel strongly that the latter is true.
> Brad Mehldau's frustration with being compared to Bill Evans, I think, is
> a classic example of this problem (this was the subject of a thread a
> while back). If you listen to him, Mehldau sounds *nothing* like Bill
> Evans. His whole rhythmic approach is different, as is his touch and the
> way he constructs his solos.
i beg to differ. i can understand mehldau being frustrated, but to
say he sounds *nothing* like evans is either ignorant or just plain
opinionated. there's no reason not to point out his invention, as
you have--in fact the comparison is useless without these points--
but come on, mehldau sounds a lot like bill evans did.
this gets into a philosophical paradigm quite quickly. 'innovation'
in art is simply creative synthesis. ideas don't come out of the
blue--they have an origin somewhere within music, or art in general,
or amphibian ecology, or personal experience, or whatever. the
creative artist performs a synthesis of pre-existing ideas, arriving
at a unique personal combination which says something new that
couldn't be said using other syntheses. and the next guy might
build on that, and so on.
> Why do Jazz writers and fans have this "hero worship" mentality?
like i said, it's probably less of a problem of "hero worship" than
a tool of "touchstone description." though the wyntons and burnses
of the world certainly have a problem with this... did you hear that
jazz nearly died with the deaths of ellington and armstrong? yes,
it's true! you can consult the 'jazz' series publicity if you want
to hear all about it. or you can wait and enjoy the series when it
comes out in january. i personally plan to be doing something else.
:)
> Part of
> it has to do with the whole "back to tradition" thing of the 80s, but I
> don't think that's really the root of the problem. The real reason we
> fetishize the past in Jazz, I think (and believe me, I do it too), is
> because of *recording,* and the way recordings are marketed today.
respectfully stated, i think you're going way overboard here. people
are always going to be more familiar with well-recorded artists, and
in general the older the artist, the better the familiarity (at least
in a relative sense; this drops off after a certain point). the
critics are working within the conscious experience of the audience.
that's it, plain and simple. if they fail to go beyond direct
comparisons, they should be reviewing sports instead of music.
now of course it takes a while for a musician to acquire 'innovator'
status; but then there are also *plenty* of musicians who are falsely
heralded as 'innovators' simply to provide hype. ignorant reviewers
often miss the foundations upon which musicians build their style;
and this is just as often reflected in an 'innovator!' review as pure
laziness can lead to a 'sounds just like...' review. i don't want to
slight any artists here, but it does take a while to establish a body
of work which can realistically be termed 'innovative.'
there was talk about saxophone innovators a while back, and the name
mats gustafsson came up. now there's a young guy--35 years old--who
has produced a body of work which can critically be termed innovative.
i don't want to repeat all the reasons why. they're in the archives.
it's harder to convince people based on live performance, certainly,
so recorded output is generally the standard by which artists are
usually judged. i don't see anything really 'wrong' with that.
n
Bruce LeClaire
John Monroe wrote [in part]:
Another great post (rmb has had a recent rash of them). Many
interesting points raised concerning hero worship, and the evolution of
jazz from 50's->today. But, let me point out that jazz has often
focused on the individual from its beginning, and Armstrong, Parker,
Bix, Bean and others were heroes long before the 50's.
>
> It's too bad we have so much trouble doing that now,
> because the last decade has been a fantastic time for new Jazz.
>
I generally agree with this statement, save for the venues. While there
is a great number of people playing great music (jazz and otherwise)
today, the number of places to actually see live jazz seems much reduced
from say 15-20 years ago.
--Bruce
John Monroe
> perhaps you are overinterpreting critical reviews in which the style
> of a young musician is often compared to someone well known from the
> canon. this is merely a tool used by reviewers to communicate
> information to their readers.
I agree. What I was trying to get at in my post was not an
across-the-board attack on "x shows y's influence" criticism -- that is,
of course, a very effective method of beginning to describe music. What I
was after was something a bit more basic, related to the way we experience
Jazz's past in the first place...maybe this post will make that clearer.
> > If you listen to him, Mehldau sounds *nothing* like Bill
> > Evans.
>
> i beg to differ. i can understand mehldau being frustrated, but to
> say he sounds *nothing* like evans is either ignorant or just plain
> opinionated.
I'll take "opinionated," thanks ;). And yeah, the "nothing" was over the
top -- after all, just about every piano player working in Jazz today,
especially in a trio format, owes an audible debt to Bill Evans, including
Mehldau. At the same time, I'd stop rather short of saying Mehldau sounds
"a lot" like Evans. At the very least, to my mind, you can hear him
working hard *not* to sound like Evans, which means he tends to use a
sharp attack, to build his improvisations (on standards especially) around
the development of cells from the melody (where Evans focused more on
harmony), and to generally do rhythmic stuff that wasn't Evans' bag.
[I originally had a bit about your idea of innovation as synthesis here,
which I think is really cool, but I don't want this post to be too huge.
Suffice it to say I agree!]
> > The real reason we fetishize the past in Jazz, I think (and believe
> > me, I do it too), is because of *recording,* and the way recordings
> > are marketed today.
>
> respectfully stated, i think you're going way overboard here. people
> are always going to be more familiar with well-recorded artists, and
> in general the older the artist, the better the familiarity (at least
> in a relative sense; this drops off after a certain point). the
> critics are working within the conscious experience of the audience.
> that's it, plain and simple.
True, but that wasn't quite what I was getting at -- your talking about
recordings as the basis of the "x sounds a bit like y" critical approach,
which I acknowledge is a necessary tool of the trade. My response to your
final point should make what I was trying to get across a bit clearer:
> it's harder to convince people [of an artist's quality] based on live
> performance, certainly, so recorded output is generally the standard by
> which artists are usually judged. i don't see anything really 'wrong'
> with that.
I wasn't trying to say that I thought there was anything *wrong* with the
fact that so much of our experience of Jazz is through recordings! That
would be like saying "I love poetry, but it's wrong to experience it
by reading it in texts published in books and magazines."
Text is a medium that allows us to experience poetry; recording is a
medium that allows us to experience Jazz. In the case of dead
musicians, recording is our *only* way of experiencing their music.
A recording, however, is not reality. A recording gives us a
fragmentary image of the past, like a snapshot. On the one hand, we see
a recording as being "real," an accurate record of what happened at a
particular moment. On the other, it's profoundly "unreal," because the
moment it captures has been ripped from its historical context. This
"unreality," in turn, influences how we perceive the music.
I'll go back to Kind of Blue for an example. I haven't read the new
Ashley Kahn book, but a review I saw noted that for the musicians who
played the session, it was nothing special -- a day's work, like any
other.
For these musicans, at the time, the Kind of Blue session was an event
that fit into the larger context of everyday life. They shaved in the
morning, got dressed, went to the studio, set up, played, probably stopped
for lunch (Kahn, I bet, could tell us what they ate), played more, smoked
cigarettes from time to time, went home or to other gigs afterwards, and
generally lived their lives.
When we hear the album, that whole everyday back-story disappears (or, at
most, shows up in our mind as a kind of myth...Miles smoked *this*
kind of cigarette and ate *that* sandwich). All we hear when we
put KoB on our home stereo -- no matter how high-end our system -- is
the part of the session that made it to the album, polished and taken out
of context, frozen so that we can contemplate it as a timeless work of
art. Once it's in this new, bug-in-amber form, we listen to the
album and feel that magic was taking place while it happened, that the
musicians who recorded it were all in the process of transcending
themselves.
The older KoB gets, and the more people say about it, the stronger our
reverence will get. The way we relate to it -- the nature of our
reverence for it, the *kinds* of feelings it generates -- has a lot to do
with the medium of recording. You could say this to a lesser degree about
*any* Jazz album, particularly any older Jazz album by a musician who has
died or has moved on to a new style. Every one of these recordings
presents us a fragment of the past that we *can't* experience in any other
way, and that no present musician could possibly duplicate. No
present-day record could ever sound like even the most ordinary early-60s
Prestige multi-tenor blowing date, even if all the technology used were
the same.
That's why I think the reissue revolution has changed the current Jazz
scene by fostering an atmosphere of nostalgic hero-worship: the easy
availability of so many reissues has made the peculiar experience of
listening to old records an ever-more-important part of a
Jazz fan's relationship with the music.
It's pointless to say the "taking-out-of-context" and "freezing in time"
recording does is "bad"...it would be like saying breathing is "bad."
Breathing shapes our experience of being alive in profound ways, sure, but
making a moral judgment about such an essential fact of life is absurd.
Even if some philosopher pronounced breathing immoral, I'd still do it.
Recording is necessary to Jazz, but it also imposes a certain way of
perceiving the music, one that today, I think, forces us to make a special
effort to fully appreciate the talent of our current crop of active
musicians.
All the ghosts sitting in the record store bins make it hard for us to
give the living the attention they deserve.
John Monroe
John Monroe
> No present-day record could ever sound like even the most ordinary
> early-60s Prestige multi-tenor blowing date
Fer cryin' out loud! That should read "mid-to-late 50s Prestige
multi-tenor blowing date."
John
Dennis J. Kosterman
<tming...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Think about this, what if Verve and Columbia had said, ok....this is a great
>time to start pushing new artists in our catalog.
Would this really make a difference? Most of the younger musicians on
Columbia's and Verve's rosters are traditionalists, just like the
older ones. The people on the cutting edge are mostly on indie labels.
Dennis J. Kosterman
den...@tds.net
Nils
> The older KoB gets, and the more people say about it, the stronger our
> reverence will get. The way we relate to it -- the nature of our
> reverence for it, the *kinds* of feelings it generates -- has a lot to do
> with the medium of recording....
people have been going apeshit about william shakespeare for quite a
while now. but i bet they'd have different feelings if they saw one
of his plays in its original performance... i guess it's that kind of
idea. problem is, jazz is a relatively new art form, so the heroes
are just beginning to gather dust, historically speaking. i would
hope that records like 'naked city' and 'this is my house' (to name a
couple worth revering from the '90s) eventually make it to the next
generation, just like there was a crowd jumping on the train of the
beat generation. if you *hear* william s burroughs read from naked
lunch, my god, what a difference. there we've got a situation where
not only is there a book 'snapshot in time' but also a recording
(several, i'm sure) 'snapshot in time.' (btw, the rec that i'm
referring to is the gorgeous 4-cd set put out a few years back by
giorno poetry systems.)
> That's why I think the reissue revolution has changed the current Jazz
> scene by fostering an atmosphere of nostalgic hero-worship: the easy
> availability of so many reissues has made the peculiar experience of
> listening to old records an ever-more-important part of a
> Jazz fan's relationship with the music.
an artefact of marketing as much as the influence of 'critics' and the
listening public. reissues are great, man. don't put em down. it
all sorta comes back to the 'great divide.' some people think jazz
needs to swing, and other people want more than that. those who need
it to swing have mostly seen the golden age pass (not to put down
young artists in that idiom, but honestly i don't hear substantial
progress in swinging jazz since the mid-60s). and they are the people
who clamor for reissues, who would prefer to support a dead artist
than a young guy (or gal) trying to make it today. those are the
people who have these ideas that there will never be a bandleader
greater than miles, or whatever kind of nonsense crap like that.
yeah, it's sad, but ain't it the truth.
the rest of us see bands led by john zorn or ken vandermark and say,
wow, what a breath of fresh air. let's see *this* one gather some
dust. fans of that music are probably more likely to be 'critics'
and academics than the general listening public (take a look-see into
amazon's best-selling jazz records if you want a bit of a shock), but
you'd be surprised how many regular people bit into that first naked
city record. (of course being on a major label didn't hurt any...)
> All the ghosts sitting in the record store bins make it hard for us to
> give the living the attention they deserve.
and on that gruesome final note i guess we should all agree to support
the living creative talent of today. buy some stuff off the smaller
labels documenting the present. and get out to see some live
performance, cuz that's a whole nother thing than sitting on the couch
drinking tea listening to the hot fives and sevens.
n
John Monroe
> people have been going apeshit about william shakespeare for quite a
> while now. but i bet they'd have different feelings if they saw one
> of his plays in its original performance... i guess it's that kind of
> idea.
More or less, if you figure that when you see the play in its original
performance, you have *no idea* whether it will turn out to be a landmark
of English literature or not. The historical back-story (knowledge that
lots of people have gone ape-shit through the ages, or even during the
last forty years) changes the way an audience perceives a work of art.
> reissues are great, man. don't put em down.
I didn't intend to. Believe me, I love listening to old records: in these
posts, I've been trying to work through *why* that's so, and why listening
to old records *feels* the way it does. New records and live music are
great, but to me, anyway, they feel different (not worse, just
different). For whatever reason, Jazz listeners and critics tend to take
recording for granted -- I am interested in asking some questions about
it instead. I'm not finding fault with recording, just trying to describe
what it does to our perception of a certain kind of music, one that relies
heavily on spontaneous improvisation.
> the rest of us see bands led by john zorn or ken vandermark and say,
> wow, what a breath of fresh air. let's see *this* one gather some
> dust.
Sure. Today's new records will become "old records" in due time;
eventually, they too will become objects of nostalgic veneration. This is
an inevitable process. But for the marketing reasons you mentioned,
recordings from the nineties will probably take a longer time to acquire
"masterwork" status than those of the sixties, say. At the moment, they
just have too much competition from older stuff: they can't build up a rep
of their own *in the present* in the same way Kind of Blue, for example,
was able to. Plus, of course, they lack the "retro" appeal that even the
dullest session from the fifties seems to have today, since, for
whatever reason, fashion has for the moment decreed that certain kinds of
dated objects are "in." (This is manna from Heaven for Jazz fans -- don't
get me wrong -- but it's a mixed blessing nonetheless.)
> fans of that music are probably more likely to be 'critics'
> and academics than the general listening public (take a look-see into
> amazon's best-selling jazz records if you want a bit of a shock), but
> you'd be surprised how many regular people bit into that first naked
> city record. (of course being on a major label didn't hurt any...)
The same could be said for non-smooth (rough?) Jazz in general, to be
honest. The Jazz demographic is like the Classical demographic: a small
group of educated afficionados.
> > All the ghosts sitting in the record store bins make it hard for us to
> > give the living the attention they deserve.
>
> and on that gruesome final note i guess we should all agree to support
> the living creative talent of today.
My intention wasn't to be gruesome. I think the burden of history Jazz
totes around with it is a beautiful thing, but one with complex
ramifications. Like a ghost, an old record is both magical and deeply
sad. This emotional complexity is part of why I find listening to old
records so fascinating. But yeah, I agree: buy reissues! Buy new records!
Go to shows! Appreciate the genius of Miles! Revel in the gifts and
discoveries of today's musicians! The challenge is being able to to all
of that at once. It's possible, but takes a conscious effort, I think.
John Monroe.
void
wrote:
>Contemporary jazz has a small fan base because it appeals to a small segment of
>the music-listening populace.
This is a tautology.
--
Ben
220 go.ahead.make.my.day ESMTP Postfix
Robert Vincent Walker-Smith
><rwlkr...@aol.com>
>wrote:
>>Contemporary jazz has a small fan base because it appeals to a small segment
>of
>>the music-listening populace.
>
>This is a tautology.
sell as well as more traditional jazz,simply because it appeals to fewer
people. The argument made on this NG and elsewhere that certain cultural
mandarins (the Marsalis-Crouch junta) talk down modern jazz, resulting in this
phenomenon, is what I was arguing against. Presumably, if what they are
arguing is correct, a documentary tilted heavily to fusion, AACM and the late
works of John Coltrane would result in a surge of interest in music that has
been commercially available for years.
Thing is, they're saying that this doc and book will not increase popular
interest in jazz - but what _would_? What they've been doing for years
already?
Robert
void
wrote:
>
>The point I was attempting to make: experimental, 'avant-garde' jazz does not
>sell as well as more traditional jazz,simply because it appeals to fewer
>people.
But experimentation is the tradition of jazz.
>The argument made on this NG and elsewhere that certain cultural
>mandarins (the Marsalis-Crouch junta) talk down modern jazz, resulting in this
>phenomenon, is what I was arguing against.
That's an oversimplification. Nobody has the power to wave a magic wand
and make the public like or dislike something. However, Marsalis does
control the disposition of a considerable amount of funding, and he has
used this money to focus attention on himself and on the history of jazz.
So people are asking, if Wynton is so interested in the future of jazz,
as he claims to be, why doesn't he promote what's happening in jazz *now*?
>Presumably, if what they are arguing is correct, a documentary tilted
>heavily to fusion, AACM and the late works of John Coltrane would
>result in a surge of interest in music that has been commercially
>available for years.
I think the point is rather that people are interested in living,
breathing music, and that the way to get people interested in jazz is
to show them how it lives and breathes. Not to give the past short
shrift, but not to downplay the present either.
DHoff56012
>> a classic example of this problem (this was the subject of a thread a
>> while back). If you listen to him, Mehldau sounds *nothing* like Bill
>> Evans. His whole rhythmic approach is different, as is his touch and the
>> way he constructs his solos.
>
>i beg to differ. i can understand mehldau being frustrated, but to
>say he sounds *nothing* like evans is either ignorant or just plain
>opinionated. there's no reason not to point out his invention, as
>you have--in fact the comparison is useless without these points--
>but come on, mehldau sounds a lot like bill evans did.
>
come after them on that instrument. So most any piano player is going to have
a little Bill Evans in them, just as every trumpet player is bound to have been
influenced by Freddie Hubbard, and every saxophonist by Bird or Trane.
As musicians develop, they sound less like their influences. In his early
days, Herbie Hancock had quite a bit of Evans in him, but now he is obviously a
giant in his own right, and influencing the present generations of pianists.
And in several years Brad Mehldau will have found his particular sound, most
likely. He is already a superb musician. Same thing with Nicholas Payton, who
unfairly gets labeled a "Freddie clone". Lets just see what these guys sound
like 10 years from now.
Amos Omondi
simo...@aol.com (Simon Weil) wrote:
> So he relies on his
> sources for his view of jazz. Both he and his co-writer lionize
Wynton - who
> gets an interview to himself. Albert Murray also gets a (shorter)
interview.
> Stanley Crouch gets a longish thinkpiece to rabbit on about post-60s
jazz. I
> think you get the picture.
Yes, we do get the picture. He took the trouble to consult people who
know what real jazz is. I hope this is adequately reflected in both
the book and the documentary.
Amos Omondi
"Marc Sabatella" <ma...@outsideshore.com> wrote:
> Don Mopsick <moph...@landing.com> wrote:
>
> > There are many, many books in print and out devoted to jazz post-
WWII.
> What
> > are you afraid of?
>
all
> others. There is something wrong with presenting this top the public
at
> large as being the sum total of what jazz is.
>
> --------------
> Marc Sabatella
Well, get pen and paper and present the better view.
Amos Omondi
Robert, I know exactly what you mean. All the people who were praising
Marsalis at the beginning are now doing a different dance. Why?
Because instead of being the "in" discovery, now even thosse "kind of
people" know who he is. Some even seek to deny his very existence by
claiming that nobody listens to one of the best-selling jazz artists of
our time. What I don't understand is why these people and their
associates do not go and and write books that present their better view
of jazz. Instead, all they do is lie low and wait to rain on somebody
else's parade.
"Don't back down. Come at it the way the way they
are coming at it."
- Wynton on the avant-con propagande
Amos Omondi
fl...@dayspring.firedrake.org (void) wrote:
wand
> and make the public like or dislike something. However, Marsalis does
> control the disposition of a considerable amount of funding, and he
has
> used this money to focus attention on himself and on the history of
jazz.
> So people are asking, if Wynton is so interested in the future of
jazz,
> as he claims to be, why doesn't he promote what's happening in jazz
*now*?
Simple answer: a lot of what those people would like him to promote is
hardly jazz. If those avant-con types want their stuff to be promoted,
they should look elsewhere: anyone who is even moderately awake should
have realized that Marsalis is never going to prostitute himself in
that manner. Marsalis promotes real jazz; if you don't like it, tough
blank.
Bruce LeClaire
Robert Vincent Walker-Smith wrote:
>
> Thing is, they're saying that this doc and book will not increase popular
> interest in jazz - but what _would_? What they've been doing for years
> already?
Wynton (and others) has this right-- if you want more jazz fans, you
need more jazz musicians. And the place for that is in the schools,
with music education, and especially band, in particular.
The effect is two-fold. First, the percentage of jazz fans is certainly
higher among those with exposure to musical instruments (whether or not
they still play). Secondly, the more readily available instruments and
musicial instruction are to kids, the more jazz musicians will appear on
the scene. Don't forget, even Charlie Parker started out on a school
horn (albeit a French horn as the case may be).
--Bruce
Ted Williams
interest in what is going on now. That's the major thing. More people
listening to current players would create a demand for more current
players...that could even spark more clubs opening their bookings to more of
a jazz scene. I remember 10 years ago (ok, wasn't really old enough to get
into the clubs) when the whole "acid jazz" thing was happening around here.
I used to hang out side of Ajax Lounge listening to Charlie Hunter...and a
host of other young musicians....they were playing different places every
night...part of the reason was because of the exposure they were getting in
the papers...
Everything just seems a bit stagnant at the moment.
I do agree with you though, the exciting people, that need the most help,
are on the indie labels...and of course the major labels will have more
traditional or contemporary musicians....don't think there's any kind of
easy solution. But proper education would help. Showing people what the
tradition is all about...and making a conscience effort to be unbiased, and
just present the topic, not your own personal views...which I see as the
major flaw in this Burns project...that and of course...the other flaw being
the fact that this is all a marketing scheme to get reissues sold......
Ted
Dennis J. Kosterman <den...@tds.net> wrote in message
news:3a29d57...@news.tds.net...
Robert Vincent Walker-Smith
<snip>>The effect is two-fold. First, the percentage of jazz fans is certainly
>higher among those with exposure to musical instruments (whether or not
>they still play).
Ah, so it _is_ true! That would explain a lot about why I have such trouble
listening to jazz - my musical education is rudimentary at best.
Thanks for contributing this.
Robert
Monk5by5
and I know many others who are interested in more challenging music than me who
have no more background than I from a theory perspective.
David J. Clarke
introduction, Burns never claims this is the sum total of jazz. He
underlines it is a history and a social (rather than an aesthetic one).
Second, other than the book, I assume that more fully developed opinions
would appear on these matters after the shows have actually aired. Am I
lacking some a priori knowledge that the rest of you possess?
Regards
David
********
Marc Sabatella <ma...@outsideshore.com> wrote in message
news:yaTV5.1685$jg6.2...@news.uswest.net...
> Don Mopsick <moph...@landing.com> wrote:
>
> > There are many, many books in print and out devoted to jazz post-WWII.
> What
> > are you afraid of?
>
> There is nothing wrong with prefering one particular era of jazz over all
> others. There is something wrong with presenting this top the public at
> large as being the sum total of what jazz is.
>
> --------------
> Marc Sabatella
> ma...@outsideshore.com
>
> Check out my latest CD, "Falling Grace"
> Also "A Jazz Improvisation Primer", Sounds, Scores, & More:
> http://www.outsideshore.com/
>
>
>
>
Monk5by5
Top_Catt
rwlkr...@aol.com (Robert Vincent Walker-Smith) wrote:
> Don Mopsick wrote:
> <snip>
post-WWII. What
> >are you afraid of?
>
people
> into jazz. And I think you know the kind of people I mean. . . the
ones who
> don't know a lot about music, but who want to enjoy what they listen
to. It's
> the Marsalis Heresy - jazz as popular music.
> Robert
In all fairness, jazz did start out as a popular music; the "great
schism" came with the Bebop era. Now, it's mainly an art music, and
those who advocate or try to produce "pop" jazz are invariably condemned
by the purists (us, that is). I'm not siding with with the Marsalis
"philosophy," or what he tries to pass off as one (Simon Weil's essay
has summarized it very well, for anyone who's interested). I'm not
completely unsympathetic to the traditionalists, either (I can be one
myself, when I'm in that mood). But still, there's a lot of room for all
sorts of approaches, in this still-young art form, so why all the
infighting? It really bothers me to hear Marsalis and Cecil Taylor
sniping at one another, or Keith Jarrett ranting at whoever *he's* mad
at this month, and on and on and on. Just remember that all the verbiage
is nothing more than an adjunct to the music, at best-- and a lot of
p.r. flackery, at worst.
When I was a kid, the Jazz Crusaders (remember them?) dropped "Jazz"
from their name when they realized that they were morphing into a
pop/funk group. Sensible, weren't they?
T.C.
Ira Chineson
Thomas F Brown
Top_Catt <top_...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
>When I was a kid, the Jazz Crusaders (remember them?) dropped "Jazz"
>from their name when they realized that they were morphing into a
>pop/funk group. Sensible, weren't they?
I don't think they did that to appease the Jazz Police.
They did it to avoid scaring off pop fans.
Simon Weil
>Good point, he should have called it Shirley.
>
"I've been working in two parallel tracks. One has been a trilogy of three
major series -- Civil War, Baseball and Shirley. The Civil War defined us [as a
country]. Baseball was a way to tell us what we'd become, that is to say, how
we were defined. And Shirley is about a redemptive possibility for this
democracy, I think, at its very heart and soul."
" Because embedded in the message of Shirley is a finely tuned constitution at
work: all people listening, incorporating, dealing with the question of the
individual as well as the collective. And you have essentially in Shirley a
model of what we might become when we live out, as Dr. [Martin Luther] King
[Jr.] would say, the true meaning of our creed."
So let's all play an Ode to Shirley.
Simon Weil
J@LC AND SAVING DEMOCRACY at:
http://members.aol.com/simonweil/lincolncenter.intro.htm
Simon Weil
>A couple minor points. First, in every interview I've read as well as in the
>introduction, Burns never claims this is the sum total of jazz. He
>underlines it is a history and a social (rather than an aesthetic one).
>
Top_Catt
Now you've given Mr. Burns the idea for next project! Think of it;
Shirley Temple, Shirley Chisholm, Shirley McLaine... there's plenty of
footage available, and he's bound to rise to the challenge of tying it
all together in his inimitable way. Shirley Jones will be the Marsalis-
type project advisor...
Shirley I jest,
T.C.
Nils
Top_Catt wrote:
>
> In all fairness, jazz did start out as a popular music; the "great
> schism" came with the Bebop era. Now, it's mainly an art music, and
> those who advocate or try to produce "pop" jazz are invariably condemned
> by the purists (us, that is).
it's really hard to say that jazz is an 'art music' given
that music by definition is art. music as entertainment
can be a sticky issue, since the spheres often tend to
overlap. perhaps 'high art' versus 'low art' would be an
apt comparison. but it's important to note that just
because a music is entertainment, that doesn't mean it
automatically can't be 'high art.' it's fair to say the
popularity of jazz has taken a severe downswing since its
height in the '30s, but it's unfair to take the artists
who dominate the jazz market of today and call their music
"pop" jazz. pat metheny, for example, has made it amply
evident that he has the knowledge and chops to play just
about anything from the most "out" music (eg 'the sign of
four') to the most "straightahead" kind (eg 'question and
answer'). his most popular records reveal a uniquely
capable style of soloing and composition, even though it
may fall within a context of marshmallow sonorities.
even though folks like kenny gorelick may appear in the
jazz bins, it's really more appropriate to call their
music 'popular instrumental' as there it bears little in
common with what we know as jazz ('art music' or not).
n