Thunderbird said:

Fair enough.



My father always used to tell me that the best prepared and most capable indivisduals in any line of work make their work look easy, as if it were all improvised, etc.

Much of jazz is spirit and improvisation, so to that extent you're right, but. . .

Much of it is preparation and repetition.

And jazz has more meaning than arguably any other genre of American music. For example, I commend to you "The Making of A Love Supreme" by Ashley Kahn. In it, Kahn recounts how the first movement of "ALS" includes Trane's recitation of the poem by Coltrane, line for line, syllable for syllable, through his saxaphone. But it doesn't really sound like it if you don't know that (and I didn't before I read the book). It sounds like he's just riffing.

Just one example.

Have you seen "Ken Burns' Jazz"?

theAudience said:

You're right! That was my opinion! And we're on the Internet! Welcome to the exciting world of the online message board!!!

Just playing. I'm no jazz expert, but we're all on the same page here. Jazz is cool for whatever reason. Like I said up front, I'm just saying.

@namepeace: I've heard that about Coltrane playing the poem on his sax! The poem is in the liner notes and I've read along. It's better than watching Wizard of Oz while listening to Pink Floyd!!!

edit: I haven't seen Ken Burns' Jazz. What I heard about it was that it focused on drug use by the early guys and skipped most of the last thirty years. Now, it can be argued that jazz hasn't progressed much in the last thirty years anyway (Brad Meldhau's techno-lite Radiohead covers don't count), but I figured I'd skip it.
[Edited 1/4/05 7:12am]

Thunderbird said:

Well, I wouldn't know about that last part, but hey . . .



The series is FAR, FAR, more complicated and complex than that. The series does discuss drug addiction and how it affected the careers of many jazz greats, but it is not the primary focus of the series. It doesn't really focus on the last 30 years, true, but it is as detailed a music history as any that exists on film. I'd highly recommend watching it during the cold winter months.

As for the last 30 years, as far as I can tell it hasn't evolved per se, but I do believe that electronic artists like jazzanova and Madlib are doing interesting experiments. I would call electronica albums like in between and Angles Without Edges jazz before any of the "smooth grooves" stuff that somehow finds its way into the jazz section of most record stores.
[Edited 1/4/05 8:17am]

namepeace said:

True. I only saw one or two episodes on repeat (skipped it when it first aired) and I was more than impressed. It does an excellent job of contextualizing jazz inside the culture especially issues of segregation and discrimination. It analyzes the links and progression between jazz movements and different eras and artists in an incredibly clear and in depth fashion for a TV show. The archival footage alone is astonishing. You get to see the greatest artists in the world perform as well as see the reactions of fans, the lifestyles of bands being on the road, the kinds of restaurants they ate in, it covers everying! Including the dance and club movements spanned by jazz, such as the jitterbug. It also goes into who the artists are, their characters, the critics who discovered them, their unique and special contributions to the art form. And most of all it makes everything about jazz seem exciting and significant. It's all pretty packed in and goes by at a speedy clip so it's hard to absorb it all, but for a TV show, give it an A+.

namepeace said:

I don't know where people get the idea that improvisation is easy. I'm a classically trained musician with a high level of skill, but I cower at the thought of having to make it up as I go with some sense of structure, not to mention just staying in the right key.

heartbeatocean said:

Oh hbo, that's where the fun starts.
Yes it can be scary but simultaneously exciting.
Kinda of like an extreme rollercoaster ride.

Have you had a chance to listen to any of those violinists who improvise?
I'm sure you could do it.



tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm

Thunderbird said:

Believe me i'm hip to the giant soapbox's that are message boards.
Your statement just read like a declaration rather than opinion.

I don't claim to be a Jazz expert either, it's just that I felt the need to try
and defend an art form that seems to be misunderstood due to the Snooze jazz format.

And I agree that "Jazz is cool for whatever reason."

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm

Start with Kenny G.

Work your way up to Jamie Cullum

heartbeatocean said:

I don't doubt that. But as a non-musician I was using "improvising" in the general sense, not as it applies to musicianship.

AsianBomb777 said:

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm

namepeace said:

That is such a cute image! You go, Grandpa. In the early 90s I didn't know what the hell an internet was.

theAudience said:

I think you're right, but I'm still scared. I've been practicing playing with CDs though and that's pretty fun. I'm probably making it into something bigger than it is. It's hard to break out of the classical straightjacket, ya know.

FunkMistress said:

Well, at the time he was in his sixties and he was. in many ways, a traditionalist, but also ahead of his time. Funny.

Like any music, language, art, culture, the key to understanding is to be exposed to it over & over. I know people who think all hip hop sounds the same, all blues sounds the same, all classical music sounds the same, all jazz sounds the same. Those people never took the time to listen to how varied all that music can be.

My dad used to say he could play trumpet better than Miles, and he'd never touched one!

andyman91 said:

I like your dad's outlook.

namepeace said:

You gotta wonder why he never played, right? I guess he was just satisfied with his life.

Ah, jazz ... the music of unemployment, as a great philosopher once said ...

Apparently, many 'jazz greats' like Ellington, Bird and Miles disliked the word 'jazz', as it effectively 'ghetto-ised' their music as one thang. And rightly so. I recently heard a very bitter sounding Max Roach on the radio rasping that 'jazz' was a word used/ appropriated by (white) marketeers to sell music they did not understand/ were not interested in. Miles was influenced by Stockhausen, Bird's favourate composer was Stravinsky and he apparently wanted to study music under arch 'avante-gardist' Edgard Varese. Would that have been 'jazz' too?

On the 'What is Jazz' tip, why is late Coltrane 'jazz' and not 'avante-garde'? Why isn't Hendrix seen more as the embryonic 'jazz great' he was than as a 'wild man black blues rocker'? Why aren't Sun Ra, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams and Tad Dameron (and even Stan Kenton for that matter) seen as major American composers? It's because they are percieved as just 'jazz musicians', as if that's a derogatory term. Ellington, Monk and Ra should be up there with Gershwin and Cole Porter as 'great American popular/ modern classical composers'. The same goes for Frank Zappa and Brian Wilson. But no. These are 'jazz' and that's the end of it.

Why can't music just be called 'music'? Is that too hard for people?

As to how to connect with 'jazz'? Buy Louis Armstrong's 'Complete Hot Fives and Sevens'. If that ain't jazz, nothing is.

Miles said:

ah, the philosopher quotes a philosopher.

I don't disagree with your learned points per se. But a rose by any other name is still a rose. Each of the artists you mentioned created distinctive bodies of work that would be great by any measure. All of the artists you mentioned made music for popular consumption. But not all of them sounded the same. Each of them had wide-ranging influences.

But "what is jazz" issue is really only a secondary point of this thread. The main issue was how do we get people connected to the genre of music commonly known as jazz? We could declassify and reclassify art, and for that matter, life, all day, but for the purposes of having a coherent discussion about certain artists and certain bodies of work, we have to find some moniker.

namepeace said:

Overall, I agree that the word 'jazz' can be as good an agreed reference point as any for this massive bag of sounds. And indeed if we didn't have these 'genre distinctions' then we'd have chaos (tho a beautiful chaos. No musical boundaries, no value judgements on music at all). The problem comes when we have an overall excellent programme like Ken Burn's 'Jazz', (which I loved), which ends up being seen as a semi-official history for this music, but at the same time distorting that history (great that it gave proper place to Louis and Duke and Dizzy, but no jazz after '69? No Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Bud Powell, Sun Ra, Art Ensemble of Chicago, no European jazz or other non-American jazz?! These are the guys that really need introducing/ explaining to the general audience.). But on balance, that show was an important crossroads in my own understanding and discovery of 'jazz'.

As can be seen, I am ambivalent about the whole 'jazz' thing. As Miles Davis(another great philospher) once said, 'Call It What You Like'.

As to getting into jazz, I'm not in love with this idea of 'torturing yourself long enough with playing X musician's records will make you love it'. Liking any music I find is generally quite an immediate thing. Either you like how it sounds or you don't. For years, I liked how jazz sounded but didn't know what to buy. I finally 'got my jazz passport' by buying 'Kind of Blue' (actually good but over-rated IMHO but we'll not go there ...), and hearing the 'jazzy' bits on Prince and James Brown records. Then I moved onto bits of Duke Ellington, Herbie Hancock (mostly via the US3 'Cantaloupe Island' version, I must confess!). I now listen to 'jazz' ranging from King Oliver to Norwegian 'progressive Miles disciple', trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer (highly recommended to those interested in 'future jazz'. Oslo is probably the true jazz capital of the world these days.)

For others, if Jamie Cullum or Robbie Williams doing ersatz swing gets them interested, fine, as long as they seek out 'the real deal'. When I listen to old '80s UK chart hits, I hear jazz influences which I never heard back then, but these days we need great new young artists who know their music (not just jazz) history to come along and reforge the bridge between 'jazz' and 'pop'. Stevie Wonder kind of did it in the '70s and Prince did in the '80s, but since ... Bits of hip-hop have jazz influences, but I like 'real music', not commercial rap. Prince and Jamie Cullum just ain't in the same league.

As things stand, except for the odd (mostly obscure) great new record, 'Jazz' has a great past ahead of it ...

As my brother Miles Davis said in the late '60s, 'Jazz is dead, the music of the museum.' Or is it?

Miles: great post and excellent points. I'll add a little.



Indeed. Burns had a mighty task, left many holes, but still succeeded mightily, overall. Inspired by this thread, I watched the last few installments on DVD, and agree with you that it could have covered more. I personally fell in love with the work of the cats that started as sidemen, but don't get as much notice, like Adderley, Evans, Lee Morgan et al. I am starting to get into Desmond. Many of them, and more, weren't given enough time in "Jazz."



Indeed. I mean, you have artists like the Bad Plus, Pastorius, and records like Hargrove's "RH Factor" and they definitely push the bounds of that "moniker" we're talking about. The argument can be made that artists like jazzanova and Madlib (a/k/a Yesterday's New Quintet and Monk Hughes) make "jazz" as well. But I digress.



I'm a little different. Sometimes, I can like what I hear on first listen, and then learn to appreciate its intricacies, quirks, etc. Like, for example, the first time I heard Monk's "Four In One" or Coltrane's "A Love Supreme." I knew I loved them but there was so much to digest. It's like getting to the "banana" level on Ms. Pac-Man when I was a kid. It may have taken a long time, it may have cost me some time and money, but I knew I liked the game and was gonna get there eventually. So it was the same with jazz. I loved some of it immediately, and I was curious about some of it.

You're right. Not many people would spend time with a record or genre unless they loved it or were curious to hear more.



My intro was Duke Ellington. From there. on a student budget, I bought a Monk compilation tape and "A Love Supreme" and "Kind of Blue." Then, "Time Out." Then, after listening to a neat jazz radio station, I checked out some Blakey and Mingus, Great Jazz Trio, etc. After I got into those records, I began digging the solos on those records by the sidemen -- Evans, Morgan, et al. Then I simply began reading recommendations and buying the amazingly cheap Columbia/Blue Note/Verve reissues(ah, jazz is the best bang for the buck next to classical). And so on. I am still exploring and loving bebop and hard bop. But I am digging on some of the electronic stuff, which not considered jazz, but more evolved than a lot of contemporary stuff on the jazz shelves these days. The newest jazz artists I've purchased are Chano Dominguez (still listening and deciding), Roy Hargrove and The Bad Plus.



Well, I won't argue there. Listening to Coltrane forever changed my perception of rock music. As theAudience will tell you, I have said that the John Coltrane Quartet was the greatest rock band in history, because I hear so much of JCQ in the work of many great bands. Also, I'd add Steely Dan in the 70's, and in hip-hop, Tribe, Jungle Brothers, and Digable Planets. They kept a very jazzy vibe in their music, as well as the incomparable Me'Shell Ndegeocello now.




Great way of putting it.



Well, like a kid that finds some old, but unopened, toys, I find jazz is still new to me. It feels as recent to me as any record of today. Many jazz records give me the same rush I had when I heard Prince records backinaday. That's saying something, at least for me.

great discussion.
[Edited 1/5/05 18:26pm]

Jazz is so full of life for me.It's so sad,so romantic,so tragic,so good.I have always liked jazz.My dad's album collection intro'd me.I was fascinated by the album covers and liner notes.I read them over and over.The sounds were incredible and warm. I still think jazz is the most elegant and eloquent form of music and rivals some film as the most powerful and eloquent form of communication..period.

I think an appreciation of jazz comes from paying attention to life and emotions.Maybe a deep understanding of people and allowing one's "soul" to feed and grow. It comes from allowing one's self to love and be hurt and be happy in that love.

It may be that I'm tripping,but this is how I understand it to be.And I witnessed a life and music lecture from Wynton Marsalis years ago. He just confirmed my beliefs.He is a very intellectual man,but his intellect is influenced and fed by his oppenness to the living.The warmness and honesty of his words and feelings came out in his music and it touched everyone in the audience.He truly loves music as do I.And jazz is a big part of the reason I've been able to stay sane over these years.

rockwilder said:

Funny that you should mention Wynton Marsalis, because UK peeps can hear the repeat of an incredible concert that he gave in London during the summer (as part of the BBC Proms series of concerts) on BBC Radio 3 tomorrow (Fri 7th Jan) at 21:30 GMT. You can listen online via their website, if you're further away (although I can't vouch for the bandwidth).

Great gig! I'd say it's the perfect primer for the uninitiated....

[Edited 1/6/05 10:05am]

In the early 90's with the "Swing Revival" (Cherry Poppin Daddies, Squirrell Nut Zippers) really got me loving swing. I found as much as I could but then just went nuts for every kind of music. Recently saw the Ken Burns Jazz thing and it put a timeline to all the music I've been listening to and loving.

My jazz education came from the Org and people mentioning certain albums, then I go find it and love it. Music is an onion that has infinite layers and I just love finding the next one.

Great topic namepeace

Slave2daGroove said:

Thanks, you said it well.

It's a shame that a 'retro' jazz artist like Wynton Marsalis is so influential, when jazz needs a bold new future (or futures). Wynton's friend Stanley Crouch thinks Miles Davis' 'Bitches Brew' was a 'sell-out'. Well, Stanley must have been listening to some freakin' wierd commercial pop music if he thinks that!

Miles' recommended recent(-ish) 'jazz' albums

'Ask the Ages' - Sonny Sharrock 1993-ish. Classic from the late great 'horn player who happened to play horn on an electric guitar'. Also features Pharoah Sanders in good scream and the late great Elvin Jones snarling his way (literally snarling at intense points in the background!) through magnificently.

'Arcana' - Arcana - 1996. Actually Tony Williams' last great album, produced by Bill Laswell (who also produced 'Ask the Ages). Also features Laswell on bass and arch mad guitar improviser Derek Bailey. This album spiritually harks back to Tony Williams great 'free' work with the likes of Eric Dolphy and Andrew Hill back in the '60s, as well as slighly to the original 'Lifetime' band. Caution - this album is not the usual 'safe jazz' thang. Expect the unexpected ...

Most of Steve Coleman's albums of recent years. Coleman, while being a little too 'intellectual' perhaps, is in my view, truly a modern jazz master.

And, on a lighter note, any of Cassandra Wilson's albums of the last decade or so. I'd go for 'Blue Light Til Dawn', but since then she seems to have got stuck in an artistic rut, making albums similar to this but with little real 'progression'. One of the great living jazz singers.

'Khmer' - Nils Petter Molvaer, 1997 - arguably not jazz (but then, what is jazz? Strokes his goatee beard in thought ...). As I mentioned in a previous post on this thread, Molvaer is a brilliant post M. Davis trumpeter from Norway (home of much great modern jazz), whose music is best described as 'ambient world electro-dance fusion'. Kind of downbeat, but beautiful. He normally plays with Eivind Aarset, a great 'freak-out' noise guitarist. He seems to pick up where Hendrix left off in the 'music as pure sound' stakes.

Jazz may have been born in America, but in my view, the most creative jazz of today has emigrated to Europe, where most of the creative, new stuff is being made.

There's loads more stuff if you look for it.

Jazz has been 'dying' for most of its history. But, as a great philosopher once said, 'Jazz isn't dead. It just smells funny ...'

Miles, you make some great points about the progression of jazz and the aversion of jazz "purists" to newer forms, but therein lies the problem of monikers. As you were saying, they can be convenient but can also serve to limit perceptions about what the music "is."

I am so into exploring hard bop that I frankly haven't even gotten to the newer stuff. What little I have heard from cats like Coleman and Hill and others is so dense that it's hard for me to connect to it. But again, it's hard to say what jazz "is" or "isn't," and I've spoken on that enough already.

I hope that more jazzophiles pay attention to electronica. Many artists in that genre are doing some great things.

Miles said:

It's not just Crouch who thinks that Miles sold out, Wynton generally doesn't even acknowledge Miles' electric period, but yet says that Miles is his biggest influence. It was both Crouch and Wynton whose opinions were largely given as the word on jazz by Burns. The show was consequently pretty much anti-electric/anti-fusion Jazz.

Supernova said:

Well, 'nova, I slightly disagree. Branford was great on there, and there were a few other musicians that were interviewed as well. I think they shoulda given the "other" Marsalis way more screen time. But I think that the timeline of the series per se excluded serious discussion of electric or fusion, much of which is quite good.

namepeace said:

I'm not sure what you mean about Branford.

Supernova said:

Branford Marsalis, brother of Wynton Marsalis. He appeared in some of the later installments.