Something about Hard Bop and the labels in question worked well to produce stylistic homogeneity. The emphasis on "blowing" over composition and the preference for economical, sometimes hasty, sessions (certainly in Fantasy's case) made for generally simpler chordal structures and arrangements and put the spotlight on the soloist. Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but there seemed to have been many more sessions led by soloists, particular saxophonists and trumpeters, than today.
I don't know if I am so much following a jazz orthodoxy in my listening preferences as I am just following my ears.
Jazz is not created by a label. Jazz is created by an artist who is lucky enough to have the appropriate support of a great label. Sure there were many visionary labels in the previous hey day of the music. And that is a luxury that we don't currently enjoy. But who is to say that we won't enjoy another hey day.
A central fallacy that seems to be implied in all of the arguments in this thread is that new jazz needs to have been recorded day before yesterday in order for it to be hot, hip, cool and now.
Personally, I think this is wrong.
Jazz is still new whenever it finds you, even if it is 50 years after it was first recorded. Great music is timeless, and just because the payola whores are not able to turn tricks with it any longer has no bearing on the worth of the music.
I can give you a good personal example. I just discovered Dave Pike's album Pike's Peak a couple months ago. I only heard one song one time but I know this album is kickin. Apparently it is a bit of a collector's item and I cannot find mp3 downloads and an import costs like $50. The album was recorded in the early 60's but I never heard of it or Dave Pike before 2 or 3 months ago. This is new jazz to me but hell, the thing ain't even in print. The fact that it was recorded almost 50 years ago has nothing to do with nothing. As long as the music is hot what's the dif.
This is one of the essential things that separates jazz music from the popular music of the day (also known as mostly crap). This is the argument that goes to the whole foundation of the so called music industry which is a scheme which is basically structured to separate 13 years olds from their allowance money. The industry does not facilitate the fulfillment of the art form. The industry simply judges the merit of an artist by the size of their entourage and and and.....
A central fallacy that seems to be implied in all of the arguments in this thread is that new jazz needs to have been recorded day before yesterday in order for it to be hot, hip, cool and now.
I suggest no such thing. Thelonious Monk will always be cool. There will always be people discovering him for the first time, and they will think its the greatest music they've ever heard. Older jazz, when its great (or even good, in some instances) will always inspire and entertain and delight. It certainly remains relevant.
But looking at jazz as a whole greater than the sum of its individual musicians, as with any art strata, there is a danger of stagnation ever-present. The last thing we should want is for there to be a perpetual cycle of homage and repetition. No matter what the art is, I want it populated by innovative creators, new views both on current, past, and future times, unique perspectives, tapped into the weltanschauung of today and instigating the seeds of the new worldviews of tomorrow. Otherwise, all you got is an army of cover bands.
I think its good that jazz has attained a historical significance. Dinosaurs have, too. The thing is with dinosaurs, it's easy to forget just how awe inspiring those fuckers were until you stand next to a lifesized model of one at the museum. I don't want that fate for jazz.
Jazz is not created by a label. Jazz is created by an artist who is lucky enough to have the appropriate support of a great label. Sure there were many visionary labels in the previous hey day of the music. And that is a luxury that we don't currently enjoy. But who is to say that we won't enjoy another hey day.
I think we're already seeing it happen. A label like Criss Cross could be considered the new Blue Note (loosely, I admit). Many small labels are finding a real niche for themselves, the various musicians on those labels cross-pollinate on each others albums, creating a music incubator of collaboration. The ability to sell albums by digital download and ditching the physical cd, cheap ways to market themselves via myspace, facebook, band/label sites, etc, DIY labels are starting the thrive. The jazz that's been recorded this last decade is ample evidence that we're already in another heyday. The fact that the general public hasn't yet caught up doesn't mitigate that; it's just something that needs to improve. But hope, plenty of reason to be doing it now.
Cheers.
Innovation starts with the foundation. You cannot know where you are going unless you know where you been. Trying new directions in jazz is fine, but not when you are doing stuff just so you can be different. I could choose to wear my underwear on the outside of of my pants, and I guess that would be innovative. But it would not contribute to greater purpose of underwear. In fact, in many ways it would defeat the purpose of underwear. You can find something new without standing on your head and doing back flips.
Ultimately I think that when you get right down to it, jazz is a common language that transcends distance and time (yeah I know those two are really the same thing) and geography and now even culture. In order to call it jazz you must at least begin with the basic structure as it is understood by the people who speak that language and expand from there. You must use the basic syntax and grammar of the language. Certainly you can introduce new words and phrases but you must begin at the starting point and develop from there. And you must demonstrate how this is related to what came before and how it is different and better not just different. You cannot just come from out of left field and call it jazz just because you are skilled on your instrument.
Ultimately I think that when you get right down to it, jazz is a common language that transcends distance and time (yeah I know those two are really the same thing) and geography and now even culture. In order to call it jazz you must at least begin with the basic structure as it is understood by the people who speak that language and expand from there.
Yet here we are, communicating in a language that is the national language of 60 million people, who no longer control how it is spoken in North America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and Australia, and who cannot guarantee that the language is mutually intelligible among its speakers. Certainly, if the principles of linguistics were applied to Jazz, we'd find the same creativity and innovation that occurs in spoken languages.
Innovation starts with the foundation. You cannot know where you are going unless you know where you been. Trying new directions in jazz is fine, but not when you are doing stuff just so you can be different.
In order to call it jazz you must at least begin with the basic structure as it is understood by the people who speak that language and expand from there. You must use the basic syntax and grammar of the language. Certainly you can introduce new words and phrases but you must begin at the starting point and develop from there. And you must demonstrate how this is related to what came before and how it is different and better not just different. You cannot just come from out of left field and call it jazz just because you are skilled on your instrument.
I agree with that. But the reality of things is that with jazz, musicians are intimately aware of where jazz has been and are schooled in its foundations. Expert musicianship is one of the qualities that separate jazz musicians from, say, rock. In jazz, you can't just listen to an AC/DC album, tell two of your friends to meet you in the garage, and just start pounding out power chords in four four time. There are working rock and pop bands who've never heard of The Kinks. I'd bet money you can't find a working jazz musician who hasn't heard of Lee Morgan. When we talk about innovation in jazz, it's already a given that the musicians tasked to carry the jazz torch have already passed their history exam.
I have no comment on your underwear.
Yet here we are, communicating in a language that is the national language of 60 million people, who no longer control how it is spoken in North America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and Australia, and who cannot guarantee that the language is mutually intelligible among its speakers. Certainly, if the principles of linguistics were applied to Jazz, we'd find the same creativity and innovation that occurs in spoken languages.
Great post. And really, we do have that. Geographically, we can find some commonalities in jazz sound that coalesce within certain areas, differing just enough from other areas to qualify as a different sound, while still tethered to the overall thought of what jazz is to tie them all together.
There are working rock and pop bands who've never heard of The Kinks. I'd bet money you can't find a working jazz musician who hasn't heard of Lee Morgan.
I kinda wish, instead of using Lee Morgan as a Kinks comparison, I had used Oliver Nelson.
Kinks = Oliver Nelson in my book.
People migrate (that was a big deal back when a thousand miles was a big deal). Over time, although they started off speaking the same language, the languages evolved into French, and German and English etc. and they are no longer speaking the same language.
So in order for us to continue to be able to communicate we all must evolve the language together. The working musicians act as a sort of peer review. You don't have the new thing unless and until everybody is trying figure out what you are doing and trying duplicate it.
The thing that makes jazz what it is, was, or could be is the universality of it all. You can walk onto the stage anywhere in the world with a bunch of jazz musicians who don't speak the same language and that you have never seen or heard of before, call a tune, count it off and just blow. Everybody knows the tune, it exists only in the moment and will never be played in the same way again.
Daaaaaaaam mommio I am scared of you. You don't work for the child support people or nothing do you? Cuz there does not seem to be anything you cannot locate.
Speaking of which, there is a fellow named Junebug that I once helped out but I never got paid for it. I don't spose you could track him and my money down.
So in order for us to continue to be able to communicate we all must evolve the language together. The working musicians act as a sort of peer review. You don't have the new thing unless and until everybody is trying figure out what you are doing and trying duplicate it.
So the unity of Jazz is not a reality, but a goal to which one must aspire? It's a matter of cultural politics rather than natural evolution?
The unity of jazz is a reality if you accept my definition of it. It should have nothing to do with cultural politics it goes beyond that. Jazz is a culture unto itself now.
Yeah the labels try to act as the arbiters of what is or should be heard but usually they just fuck it up. If you listen to the old guys it is clear that they understood that their role was to simply present the music as it was in the best possible light. Orrin Keepnews, Alfred Lion, Rudy Van Gelder.
Can you imagine Keepnews saying to Monk, " Babe, everybody knows you're a genius, but the kids just aren't digging that old ping pong shit of yours. I got a couple of Elvis Pressley covers we want you to record and then we will generate some buzz by getting you photographed with the right people"
Can you imagine Keepnews saying to Monk, " Babe, everybody knows you're a genius, but the kids just aren't digging that old ping pong shit of yours. I got a couple of Elvis Pressley covers we want you to record and then we will generate some buzz by getting you photographed with the right people"
That's some distortion of my argument. Like I think MIT tells its engineers to that their papers should read like Stephen King. And for the record, Rudy Van Gelder was very much aware of the difference between letting musicians do what they do and participating in the creative process, and that producers (especially himself and Lion), through their participation, shaped recordings in such a way that the the labels output achieved "consistency."
jackedUPjazz - Pike's Peak with Bill Evans on piano actually was issued on cd (Portrait - part of CBS) in 1989 and it is excellent. I seem to remember a lot more meddling by producers than what I'm hearing in this thread. Basie did 2 Beatles albums and an album of James Bond themes. Grant Green recorded (for Blue Note) Goin' West (Red River Valley & On Top Of Old Smokey ?!?) during the height of the Westerns craze. Countless jazz artists recorded Broadway show albums, bossa nova albums (Ike Quebec for Blue Note, Coleman Hawkins for Impulse), whatever the trend of the day was. Most of these were awful and quickly forgotten, never to be reissued, but they were a fact of life back in the good old days (although Mosaic Records box set of Joe Pass Recordings does include not only "12-String Guitar Movie Themes" (with Charlie Haden on bass) but also 4 country and western tracks (Cold, Cold Heart, Hey Good Lookin', etc)). Was it "meddling" that virtually every Lee Morgan album after his hit with "Sidewinder" had to include at least one cut that was in the same vein in an attempt to duplicate Sidewinder's success? From what I'm seeing, that sort of thing isn't nearly as prevalent today. Artists may choose to do material by, say, a pop artist (e.g. Brad Mehldau), but the record label isn't pressuring him to. Again, I think the last decade has seen a proliferation of jazz artists who are not only grounded in jazz, but many other kinds of music also. They incorporate what they want to into their jazz playing when they choose. No doubt there is an attempt to draw in listeners with a Radiohead tune that normally wouldn't listen to jazz. But I've listened to numerous cd's, which I found to be excellent jazz albums, only to read the notes and find out from the notes that a tune or two was from a pop band. I wouldn't have known from the performance. It's not jazzed-up broadway show tunes or country and western tunes as in the past, but a jazz artist playing a jazz version of a non-jazz tune.
JUJ - the zip file passed the tests on my computer. Clean. Unzipped, listened, sounds good. I cannot find mp3s anywhere. As you said, exorbitantly expensive CDs are available, but they are certainly out of my price range. If it gets reissued or appears somewhere as an mp3, I will buy. I will consider getting one of the albums available at the place that shall not be named.
Seems like part of the Pike's Peak conversation was whispered - but [edit - if everybody who wants it already got it, then there's no need to leave the link hanging out here] a link to a zipped version. It does sound good.
Sorry mommio, I didn't realize your comments were whispered or I would have whispered back.
Seems like part of the Pike's Peak conversation was whispered -...It does sound good.
Yeah, I knew it would be kickin.
But as anxious as I am to hear the album, I am reluctant pull down the zip file
1. Because, I truly try to play by the rules especially when it comes to copyrights
2. Safety is a concern, I don't know who is providing that zip file
@thirstyear
I never said jazz labels were immune from the types of behavior that I was describing. Yeah, I imagine a lot of bullshit goes on with jazz labels as well, but I still detest it. I simply called attention to the aesthetic of "the old guys" in producing the jazz classics that are still standing 50 years later. But I guess it is kind of hard to have that kind of passion and vision with your musical output when you are struggling to make payroll.
I don't really mind jazz artist playing pop tunes as long as they take it seriously and give it a jazz treatment.
In the hands of a master any tune can be a jazz tune Linky
@badthoughts
I was not trying to characterize or distort your position I was simply giving an extreme example of the kind of thing that goes on all the time. But you never said or implied any such thing.
I have nothing against cowboy music when played by authentic cowboys. All you have to do is look at the cover of Way Out West to see that Sonny obviously grew up ridin' horses, wranglin' cattle, and gun fightin'. That's why that album is a classic.
I've listened to numerous cd's, which I found to be excellent jazz albums, only to read the notes and find out from the notes that a tune or two was from a pop band. I wouldn't have known from the performance. It's not jazzed-up broadway show tunes or country and western tunes as in the past, but a jazz artist playing a jazz version of a non-jazz tune.
Don't many jazz ensembles play "I got rhythm" in some form?
I'm sure that many popular tunes were jazz-ed up at the request of producers and label execs. But to get back to a point I wanted to make originally, the aesthetic of the blowing session worked to make Hard-bop derived Jazz more uniform. Chord progressions became secondary. I wouldn't go so far as to say that composition was unimportant, but it served as the vehicle for improvisation above all else. And in the context of rising popularity of Cool Jazz, Hard bop musicians regarded composition (certainly more structured composition) as emblematic of the white-washing of the genre. As much as they may have felt burdened to play popular tunes, they weren't necessarily beholden to playing them in recognizably popular styles (even you admit your surprise at finding pop tunes). Yesterday's hits became today's sheets. Chorus, verse, repeat, blow for the next three minutes, end.
(ETA: I'm listening to Kenny Dorham's "Jerome Kern's Showboat" as I write)
JuJ has advanced two analogies to illustrate his arguments; jazz as a language and jazz as a science, with peer review. The differences between the two can, perhaps, be attributed to the extent that either is or can be policed. Natural languages vary in the extent to which they resist policing, and this to the degree that they are unwritten or less closely identified with state institutions - such as, for French, the Academie Francaise. Forms of English, many of them unwritten, have flourished throughout the world, some of them mutating so radically that you or I would have great difficulty in understanding them (I have difficulty with some British variants, let alone Nigerian or Singapore English. On at least one occasion the BBC felt the need to provide sub-titles when interviewing people from Tyneside).
Early jazz was very much like an unwritten language. While jazz musicians still pay lip-service to the idea of spontaneity and claim to improvise, the increased prevalence of recording most certainly led to a situation closer to that of a written language, and, to some extent, to an institutionalized endeavour akin to one of the sciences. Recording engineers, review journals, and so on, provided the structural framework within which benchmark performances could be agreed upon, and a canon, of sorts, could be constructed. The enterprise came to characterized by a studied seriousness that one might describe as scholastic or academic.
However, whereas the sciences stand or fall, in the end, through their efficiency in accounting for reality, jazz, like other cultural products, stands or falls by its ability to engage with human imagination and that, whether for better or for worse, means that it will be brought to the market-place. That means either selling records or filling venues.
Until recently - say up until the 70s - jazz reviewers were able to play a role similar to that played by the writers of etiquette manuals during the 18th and 19th centuries. But as the plastic has become less important to the consumers, so the gatekeepers, the manual writers, have found it harder and harder to ride herd on the music. Whether you approve of that or not will depend on how seriously you take the erstwhile opinion-formers, and, perhaps, on how seriously you take the music.
Expert musicianship is one of the qualities that separate jazz musicians from, say, rock. In jazz, you can't just listen to an AC/DC album, tell two of your friends to meet you in the garage, and just start pounding out power chords in four four time. There are working rock and pop bands who've never heard of The Kinks. I'd bet money you can't find a working jazz musician who hasn't heard of Lee Morgan.
There may be working rock bands who haven't heard of the Kinks, but I doubt whether they are working very hard; most of the successful rock bands have had at least one member who was grounded in the history of the form, and who was willing to go to some trouble to get his or her hands on "obscure" recordings. As to musicianship, you may have a point, but I certainly recall hearing jazz bands playing in dance halls during the late 60s and early 70s that were pretty rough; what they provided was music to jump about to. Also, during that period, you would find people who might play in a rock band on Saturday night and do a jazz gig in a pub on Sunday morning. As usual, frontiers are difficult to define and difficult to police and maintain.
JuJ did not originally present the analogy of of jazz as language in order to discuss either its variety or the strategies used to define its boundaries. He only admitted to the policing of the genre only because he was forced to recognize the practices that that informed playing and recording. Although he has recognized this, as well as the institutional oversight of Jazz, he uses them as exceptions without altering his original thesis, that the 1950s and early 1960 define the natural maturity of Jazz, and that ought to inform how we approach "what is Jazz." His initial presentation of Jazz as a language would be familiar to those engaged in the mission civilisatrice in Africa. In JuJ's own words:
Ultimately I think that when you get right down to it, jazz is a common language that transcends distance and time (yeah I know those two are really the same thing) and geography and now even culture. In order to call it jazz you must at least begin with the basic structure as it is understood by the people who speak that language and expand from there. You must use the basic syntax and grammar of the language. Certainly you can introduce new words and phrases but you must begin at the starting point and develop from there. And you must demonstrate how this is related to what came before and how it is different and better not just different. You cannot just come from out of left field and call it jazz just because you are skilled on your instrument.
In the context of French (from the viewpoint of the French), no outsider can be admitted to any discussion without mastering (to their satisfaction) every detail of language. This is a suffocating proposition, raising images of instructors who had their students repeat the word "uf", plying them with remedial exercises for hours on end. It appears in the haughtiness of Parisian waiters who refuse politeness to Quebecoises for the slightest variant of the tongue.
However, whereas the sciences stand or fall, in the end, through their efficiency in accounting for reality, jazz, like other cultural products, stands or falls by its ability to engage with human imagination and that, whether for better or for worse, means that it will be brought to the market-place. That means either selling records or filling venues.
Arguably, with mass literacy and mass media, this era has the greatest potential for producing cultural uniformity. This seems quite opposite the case, since we are not contemplating what makes it so uniform, but rather if it is possible if it is possible to call it uniform. And I would not say that these are small innovations that are added to and advance the whole. These are radical innovations. Serious attention to language might provide some clues. Innovations occur within small groups before they are transferred to larger publics. The dialects, creoles, pidgins,and argots either radicalize the language or make it branch off (such as what happened with the regionalizations of Latinic and Germanic languages). The smallness of the group helped to incubate the innovation so that it became a more refined product. Bebop (because it is familiar to us) similarly emerged from the narrow association of musicians who played outside the mainstream before they gained fame. Some were quite conscious of reinventing the genre (Gillespie) and bucking tradition (Monk). But as in language, Jazz innovators could not have complete ownership of their product. Others were (and are) bound to come with irreverence and indifference. The mass market may helped to keep some consistency, but some subculture will be poised to take over the mainstream. Indeed, if we looked to how the mass market has fostered genre, we might have to switch Lee Morgan and Chet Baker in the Jazz pantheon: so-called Cool Jazz may have had a more profitable life than other post-Bebop variants.
Parisian waiters are not always hail-fellow-well-met, but I have never to my recollection been sneered at by one of them for my imperfect command of French. In fact, in recent years, the driving force in the French language has come from the children of the migration, and has affected both lexicon and phonology to a remarkable extent.
The same is true of musical forms; French jazz musicians have been very open to musics from elsewhere. I'm almost tempted to argue that this may be because years of ignoring the Academie have emboldened them to take little notice of musical censors. In fact, however, given that the European jazz musician is by nature given to traversing boundaries, it is unsurprising that after having looked to Harlem, they now look to Kinshasa, Algiers or Rio.
In the earlier post, I did not directly address JuJ's fundamental proposition; I've already voiced my disagreement in other threads. His take on both language and jazz is more normative than I can agree to. Recent work on language acquisition suggests that rather than receiving a language from their elders, children create it anew. That seems to me a reasonable analogy for the way music develops as well. A child's language is a heady concoction breed from disparate elements - the ways of speech of her parents, of her teachers, her friends, and of the voices she hears on the radio, on the television - and in the street. The members of the Academie are often shocked by the result, and may even refuse to recognize it as French. They use arguments that are similar to those advanced by JuJ above. To some extent I can sympathize; for a nation to exist, there needs to be some kind of common code. But musics are not nations.
@Bad Thoughts - Yes, many jazz musicians have played variations on "I Got Rhythm". The Great American Songbook - Gershwin, Kern, Porter, etc. - provided harmonically rich songs which were excellent vehicles for improvisation. And many of them did come from shows. But playing a well written song that may have originated in a show because it is a superior blowing vehicle is very different than making an album of a show that is currently a hit on broadway in an attempt to cash in with a jazz version of the show. It is the latter which is problematic, and which was so rampant back in the day.
There are articles I have read that argue a global culture does not lead to a homogenization but to the production of (related) niche cultures. The overwhelming variety of influences forces people to pick and choose, they can't assimilate everything, and the result is many different variations of the source elements rather than standardization. I do see this in jazz today.
Bottom line, jazz musicians define jazz. We can marshall all the arguments we want to insist that this or that is jazz based on a certain criteria, but as early as the late 50's some jazz musicians were becoming tired of hard bop and we saw the rise of modal and free styles of jazz. Again, I think a focus on hard bop defines the majority of jazz fans, not jazz artists. For many of the reasons I have cited previously jazz listeners got frozen in time while jazz musicians moved on. I don't think it's up to the listeners to tell musicians what kind of music they are playing (I am reminded of Wynton Marsalis's annoying attitude toward any style of jazz outside of parameters he defines, as if he is the arbiter of all-that-is jazz). I think it's fine to say, "This, for me, is what jazz is", but I personally would never presume to judge the works of countless musicians, based on standards I define, as to whether or not they are worthy of being considered jazz musicians. Not that I don't believe some things are jazz and other aren't, but, again, they are jazz for me - and that judgement is one which is always growing and changing as I age. The more I think I know about jazz the more it surprises me and I find that things i previously believed are wrong. I personally hope that process never ends.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that composition was unimportant, but it served as the vehicle for improvisation above all else. And in the context of rising popularity of Cool Jazz, Hard bop musicians regarded composition (certainly more structured composition) as emblematic of the white-washing of the genre.
@bad thoughts
Yeah I think you are on to something here. In the last couple years my views have changed. I may be about to commit another act of jazz heresy here, but I think jazz is incorrectly viewed as a performer's art. However, not unlike classical musics, I believe jazz is a composer's art.
JuJ did not originally present the analogy of of jazz as language in order to discuss either its variety or the strategies used to define its boundaries. He only admitted to the policing of the genre only because he was forced to recognize the practices that that informed playing and recording.
Dude, chill out, it's not a competition, nobody is going to win the thread. We are just exchanging ideas here.
Natural languages vary in the extent to which they resist policing
Exactly. The labels, critics and other commentators may try to police the language in much the same way that literary scholars and linguists will try to police the Kings English. But try as they might, slang and other variations enter the lexicon and over time achieves acceptance. Languages diverge and then reconnect producing a gumbo of dialects and patois that may or may not be recognizable in the original language as the original structure and syntax has been changed. But there definitely is a structure.
you would find people who might play in a rock band on Saturday night and do a jazz gig in a pub on Sunday morning.
Exactly. Only a very small percentage of really good jazz musicians can make a living solely playing jazz. All music can influence all other music so that the rock gig on Saturday night may actually inform the jazz gig on Sunday morning in positive ways.
But musics are not nations.
I beg to differ. But it depends on how you define a nation. Sure, there are no armies, or capitols or territorial waters. But if you don't think jazz is a nation you are just not paying attention.
With the groove our only guide we shall all be moved
Comments
Jazz is not created by a label. Jazz is created by an artist who is lucky enough to have the appropriate support of a great label. Sure there were many visionary labels in the previous hey day of the music. And that is a luxury that we don't currently enjoy. But who is to say that we won't enjoy another hey day.
A central fallacy that seems to be implied in all of the arguments in this thread is that new jazz needs to have been recorded day before yesterday in order for it to be hot, hip, cool and now.
Personally, I think this is wrong.
Jazz is still new whenever it finds you, even if it is 50 years after it was first recorded. Great music is timeless, and just because the payola whores are not able to turn tricks with it any longer has no bearing on the worth of the music.
I can give you a good personal example. I just discovered Dave Pike's album Pike's Peak a couple months ago. I only heard one song one time but I know this album is kickin. Apparently it is a bit of a collector's item and I cannot find mp3 downloads and an import costs like $50. The album was recorded in the early 60's but I never heard of it or Dave Pike before 2 or 3 months ago. This is new jazz to me but hell, the thing ain't even in print. The fact that it was recorded almost 50 years ago has nothing to do with nothing. As long as the music is hot what's the dif.
This is one of the essential things that separates jazz music from the popular music of the day (also known as mostly crap). This is the argument that goes to the whole foundation of the so called music industry which is a scheme which is basically structured to separate 13 years olds from their allowance money. The industry does not facilitate the fulfillment of the art form. The industry simply judges the merit of an artist by the size of their entourage and and and.....
OK take deep breaths, in, out, in out, in, out.
Alright I need to finish this later when I regain my composure.
I will simply point out that this is one of the problems I have with our new overlords over at the other place.
But looking at jazz as a whole greater than the sum of its individual musicians, as with any art strata, there is a danger of stagnation ever-present. The last thing we should want is for there to be a perpetual cycle of homage and repetition. No matter what the art is, I want it populated by innovative creators, new views both on current, past, and future times, unique perspectives, tapped into the weltanschauung of today and instigating the seeds of the new worldviews of tomorrow. Otherwise, all you got is an army of cover bands.
I think its good that jazz has attained a historical significance. Dinosaurs have, too. The thing is with dinosaurs, it's easy to forget just how awe inspiring those fuckers were until you stand next to a lifesized model of one at the museum. I don't want that fate for jazz.
I think we're already seeing it happen. A label like Criss Cross could be considered the new Blue Note (loosely, I admit). Many small labels are finding a real niche for themselves, the various musicians on those labels cross-pollinate on each others albums, creating a music incubator of collaboration. The ability to sell albums by digital download and ditching the physical cd, cheap ways to market themselves via myspace, facebook, band/label sites, etc, DIY labels are starting the thrive. The jazz that's been recorded this last decade is ample evidence that we're already in another heyday. The fact that the general public hasn't yet caught up doesn't mitigate that; it's just something that needs to improve. But hope, plenty of reason to be doing it now.
Cheers.
Ultimately I think that when you get right down to it, jazz is a common language that transcends distance and time (yeah I know those two are really the same thing) and geography and now even culture. In order to call it jazz you must at least begin with the basic structure as it is understood by the people who speak that language and expand from there. You must use the basic syntax and grammar of the language. Certainly you can introduce new words and phrases but you must begin at the starting point and develop from there. And you must demonstrate how this is related to what came before and how it is different and better not just different. You cannot just come from out of left field and call it jazz just because you are skilled on your instrument.
Remember, in order to be understood language must gorp slaaaaaaaaivkkk asdiyusdf dlkfj iuonfao fieoivn aoeisd jfosdj
I have no comment on your underwear.
I kinda wish, instead of using Lee Morgan as a Kinks comparison, I had used Oliver Nelson.
Kinks = Oliver Nelson in my book.
No language is static (unless it is dead)
So in order for us to continue to be able to communicate we all must evolve the language together. The working musicians act as a sort of peer review. You don't have the new thing unless and until everybody is trying figure out what you are doing and trying duplicate it.
The thing that makes jazz what it is, was, or could be is the universality of it all. You can walk onto the stage anywhere in the world with a bunch of jazz musicians who don't speak the same language and that you have never seen or heard of before, call a tune, count it off and just blow. Everybody knows the tune, it exists only in the moment and will never be played in the same way again.
If you can't do that, it ain't jazz
Speaking of which, there is a fellow named Junebug that I once helped out but I never got paid for it. I don't spose you could track him and my money down.
So the unity of Jazz is not a reality, but a goal to which one must aspire? It's a matter of cultural politics rather than natural evolution?
Yeah the labels try to act as the arbiters of what is or should be heard but usually they just fuck it up. If you listen to the old guys it is clear that they understood that their role was to simply present the music as it was in the best possible light. Orrin Keepnews, Alfred Lion, Rudy Van Gelder.
Can you imagine Keepnews saying to Monk, " Babe, everybody knows you're a genius, but the kids just aren't digging that old ping pong shit of yours. I got a couple of Elvis Pressley covers we want you to record and then we will generate some buzz by getting you photographed with the right people"
I'm clicking on everything I see but I ain't hearing no music.
This feels distinctly unsafe
I seem to remember a lot more meddling by producers than what I'm hearing in this thread. Basie did 2 Beatles albums and an album of James Bond
themes. Grant Green recorded (for Blue Note) Goin' West (Red River Valley & On Top Of Old Smokey ?!?) during the height of the Westerns craze. Countless jazz artists recorded Broadway show albums,
bossa nova albums (Ike Quebec for Blue Note, Coleman Hawkins for Impulse), whatever the trend of the day was. Most of these were awful and quickly forgotten, never to be reissued, but they were a fact of life back in the good old days (although Mosaic Records box set of Joe Pass Recordings does include not only "12-String Guitar Movie Themes" (with Charlie Haden on bass) but also 4 country and western tracks (Cold, Cold Heart, Hey Good Lookin', etc)). Was it "meddling" that virtually every Lee Morgan album after his hit with "Sidewinder" had to include at least one cut that was in the same vein in an attempt to duplicate Sidewinder's success? From what I'm seeing, that sort of thing isn't nearly as prevalent today. Artists may choose to do material by, say, a pop artist (e.g. Brad Mehldau), but the record label isn't pressuring him to.
Again, I think the last decade has seen a proliferation of jazz artists who are not only grounded in jazz, but many other kinds of music also. They incorporate what they want to into their jazz playing when they choose. No doubt there is an attempt to draw in listeners with a Radiohead tune that
normally wouldn't listen to jazz. But I've listened to numerous cd's, which I found to be excellent jazz albums, only to read the notes and find out from the
notes that a tune or two was from a pop band. I wouldn't have known from the performance. It's not jazzed-up broadway show tunes or country and western tunes as in the past, but a jazz artist playing a jazz version of a non-jazz tune.
Yeah, I knew it would be kickin.
But as anxious as I am to hear the album, I am reluctant pull down the zip file
1. Because, I truly try to play by the rules especially when it comes to copyrights
2. Safety is a concern, I don't know who is providing that zip file
@thirstyear
I never said jazz labels were immune from the types of behavior that I was describing. Yeah, I imagine a lot of bullshit goes on with jazz labels as well, but I still detest it. I simply called attention to the aesthetic of "the old guys" in producing the jazz classics that are still standing 50 years later. But I guess it is kind of hard to have that kind of passion and vision with your musical output when you are struggling to make payroll.
I don't really mind jazz artist playing pop tunes as long as they take it seriously and give it a jazz treatment.
In the hands of a master any tune can be a jazz tune
Linky
and what do you have against cowboy music
@badthoughts
I was not trying to characterize or distort your position I was simply giving an extreme example of the kind of thing that goes on all the time. But you never said or implied any such thing.
obviously grew up ridin' horses, wranglin' cattle, and gun fightin'. That's why that album is a classic.
I'm sure that many popular tunes were jazz-ed up at the request of producers and label execs. But to get back to a point I wanted to make originally, the aesthetic of the blowing session worked to make Hard-bop derived Jazz more uniform. Chord progressions became secondary. I wouldn't go so far as to say that composition was unimportant, but it served as the vehicle for improvisation above all else. And in the context of rising popularity of Cool Jazz, Hard bop musicians regarded composition (certainly more structured composition) as emblematic of the white-washing of the genre. As much as they may have felt burdened to play popular tunes, they weren't necessarily beholden to playing them in recognizably popular styles (even you admit your surprise at finding pop tunes). Yesterday's hits became today's sheets. Chorus, verse, repeat, blow for the next three minutes, end.
(ETA: I'm listening to Kenny Dorham's "Jerome Kern's Showboat" as I write)
Early jazz was very much like an unwritten language. While jazz musicians still pay lip-service to the idea of spontaneity and claim to improvise, the increased prevalence of recording most certainly led to a situation closer to that of a written language, and, to some extent, to an institutionalized endeavour akin to one of the sciences. Recording engineers, review journals, and so on, provided the structural framework within which benchmark performances could be agreed upon, and a canon, of sorts, could be constructed. The enterprise came to characterized by a studied seriousness that one might describe as scholastic or academic.
However, whereas the sciences stand or fall, in the end, through their efficiency in accounting for reality, jazz, like other cultural products, stands or falls by its ability to engage with human imagination and that, whether for better or for worse, means that it will be brought to the market-place. That means either selling records or filling venues.
Until recently - say up until the 70s - jazz reviewers were able to play a role similar to that played by the writers of etiquette manuals during the 18th and 19th centuries. But as the plastic has become less important to the consumers, so the gatekeepers, the manual writers, have found it harder and harder to ride herd on the music. Whether you approve of that or not will depend on how seriously you take the erstwhile opinion-formers, and, perhaps, on how seriously you take the music.
There may be working rock bands who haven't heard of the Kinks, but I doubt whether they are working very hard; most of the successful rock bands have had at least one member who was grounded in the history of the form, and who was willing to go to some trouble to get his or her hands on "obscure" recordings. As to musicianship, you may have a point, but I certainly recall hearing jazz bands playing in dance halls during the late 60s and early 70s that were pretty rough; what they provided was music to jump about to. Also, during that period, you would find people who might play in a rock band on Saturday night and do a jazz gig in a pub on Sunday morning. As usual, frontiers are difficult to define and difficult to police and maintain.
JuJ did not originally present the analogy of of jazz as language in order to discuss either its variety or the strategies used to define its boundaries. He only admitted to the policing of the genre only because he was forced to recognize the practices that that informed playing and recording. Although he has recognized this, as well as the institutional oversight of Jazz, he uses them as exceptions without altering his original thesis, that the 1950s and early 1960 define the natural maturity of Jazz, and that ought to inform how we approach "what is Jazz." His initial presentation of Jazz as a language would be familiar to those engaged in the mission civilisatrice in Africa. In JuJ's own words: In the context of French (from the viewpoint of the French), no outsider can be admitted to any discussion without mastering (to their satisfaction) every detail of language. This is a suffocating proposition, raising images of instructors who had their students repeat the word "uf", plying them with remedial exercises for hours on end. It appears in the haughtiness of Parisian waiters who refuse politeness to Quebecoises for the slightest variant of the tongue. Arguably, with mass literacy and mass media, this era has the greatest potential for producing cultural uniformity. This seems quite opposite the case, since we are not contemplating what makes it so uniform, but rather if it is possible if it is possible to call it uniform. And I would not say that these are small innovations that are added to and advance the whole. These are radical innovations. Serious attention to language might provide some clues. Innovations occur within small groups before they are transferred to larger publics. The dialects, creoles, pidgins,and argots either radicalize the language or make it branch off (such as what happened with the regionalizations of Latinic and Germanic languages). The smallness of the group helped to incubate the innovation so that it became a more refined product. Bebop (because it is familiar to us) similarly emerged from the narrow association of musicians who played outside the mainstream before they gained fame. Some were quite conscious of reinventing the genre (Gillespie) and bucking tradition (Monk). But as in language, Jazz innovators could not have complete ownership of their product. Others were (and are) bound to come with irreverence and indifference. The mass market may helped to keep some consistency, but some subculture will be poised to take over the mainstream. Indeed, if we looked to how the mass market has fostered genre, we might have to switch Lee Morgan and Chet Baker in the Jazz pantheon: so-called Cool Jazz may have had a more profitable life than other post-Bebop variants.
The same is true of musical forms; French jazz musicians have been very open to musics from elsewhere. I'm almost tempted to argue that this may be because years of ignoring the Academie have emboldened them to take little notice of musical censors. In fact, however, given that the European jazz musician is by nature given to traversing boundaries, it is unsurprising that after having looked to Harlem, they now look to Kinshasa, Algiers or Rio.
In the earlier post, I did not directly address JuJ's fundamental proposition; I've already voiced my disagreement in other threads. His take on both language and jazz is more normative than I can agree to. Recent work on language acquisition suggests that rather than receiving a language from their elders, children create it anew. That seems to me a reasonable analogy for the way music develops as well. A child's language is a heady concoction breed from disparate elements - the ways of speech of her parents, of her teachers, her friends, and of the voices she hears on the radio, on the television - and in the street. The members of the Academie are often shocked by the result, and may even refuse to recognize it as French. They use arguments that are similar to those advanced by JuJ above. To some extent I can sympathize; for a nation to exist, there needs to be some kind of common code. But musics are not nations.
There are articles I have read that argue a global culture does not lead to a homogenization but to the production of (related) niche cultures. The overwhelming variety of influences forces people to pick and choose, they can't assimilate everything, and the result is many different variations of the source elements rather than standardization. I do see this in jazz today.
Bottom line, jazz musicians define jazz. We can marshall all the arguments we want to insist that this or that is jazz based on a certain criteria, but as early as the late 50's some jazz musicians were becoming tired of hard bop and we saw the rise of modal and free styles of jazz. Again, I think a focus on hard bop defines the majority of jazz fans, not jazz artists. For many of the reasons I have cited previously jazz listeners got frozen in time while jazz musicians moved on. I don't think it's up to the listeners to tell musicians what kind of music they are playing (I am reminded of Wynton Marsalis's annoying attitude toward any style of jazz outside of parameters he defines, as if he is the arbiter of all-that-is jazz). I think it's fine to say, "This, for me, is what jazz is", but I personally would never presume to judge the works of countless musicians, based on standards I define, as to whether or not they are worthy of being considered jazz musicians. Not that I don't believe some things are jazz and other aren't, but, again, they are jazz for me - and that judgement is one which is always growing and changing as I age. The more I think I know about jazz the more it surprises me and I find that things i previously believed are wrong.
I personally hope that process never ends.
@bad thoughts
Yeah I think you are on to something here. In the last couple years my views have changed. I may be about to commit another act of jazz heresy here, but I think jazz is incorrectly viewed as a performer's art. However, not unlike classical musics, I believe jazz is a composer's art.
People's exhibit 1
People's exhibit 2
People's exhibit 2 interesting alternate
People's exhibit 3
Dude, chill out, it's not a competition, nobody is going to win the thread. We are just exchanging ideas here.
@Tim Mason
Good stuff.
Exactly. The labels, critics and other commentators may try to police the language in much the same way that literary scholars and linguists will try to police the Kings English. But try as they might, slang and other variations enter the lexicon and over time achieves acceptance. Languages diverge and then reconnect producing a gumbo of dialects and patois that may or may not be recognizable in the original language as the original structure and syntax has been changed. But there definitely is a structure.
@TimMason
Exactly. Only a very small percentage of really good jazz musicians can make a living solely playing jazz. All music can influence all other music so that the rock gig on Saturday night may actually inform the jazz gig on Sunday morning in positive ways.
I beg to differ. But it depends on how you define a nation. Sure, there are no armies, or capitols or territorial waters. But if you don't think jazz is a nation you are just not paying attention.
With the groove our only guide we shall all be moved