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August 19, 2009 - 7:08am
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How to Save Jazz?
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Mostly Other People Do The Killing
Heck, I can remember when Time asked if God was dead back in 1966. He seems to be doing OK.
Jazz will be just fine.
It did seem for a few minutes there about a decade ago that we'd see an offshoot of rap jazz up jazz, with beat style lyrics and cool jazz inflections, but I guess they didn't say 'fuck' and 'ho' enough. That might have been a cool jazz stepping off point.
Oh, well, if jazz can survive 'fusion,' then it should survive anything.
One thing guaranteed about jazz - we'll get one or two remix/remasters of KOB every year for the foreseeable future. That should help keep the flame alive.
(As a liberal, I think killing music teaching in schools is a great way to try and kill music of all types other than the pablum that gets popular airplay and helps reign in those crazy cats who may now not get exposed to different musical ideas. There should be an extra "R:" Readin', Ritin', Rithmatic, and Rhythm!)
Well, my kids don't hate either Manhattan Transfer or Herbie Hancock, and they are both teenagers who listen to modern pop, too.
Not only that, they will listen to it, and walk around humming some of the less abstract tunes. The older will even sing along with "Java Jive" (which is only marginally Jazz, I know, I know)
They aren't into Chick Corea or Spirogyra much, though.
So I say it "ain't dead yet".
Well, thank God for that.
Spirogyra shouldn't come into play until they are post-reproductive.
As it is with so many other interests in life (ex; beer, hard liquor, sushi, opera, etc.) there is a "break in" factor. Some people need to hear some of the more "listenable" styles of jazz (i.e.; smooth jazz, pop jazz) before progressing into the real thing.
No, I don't believe this to be true. Yes, the larger the audience the more something gets promoted and financed and different styles of music, I believe, goes through cycles. But hey, what do I know...I'm just one of those old guys who has a difficult time keeping up with technology.
"Rock is dead they say. Long live rock."...as The Who once sang. Rock hasn't died, yet, and I suspect that jazz will be around for a while to come.
I guess it's safe to say I'm not into Spirogyra either, then
As far as "break-in" goes, I do agree that it is generally easier to get someone into jazz via something more accessible, i.e. Bill Evans or bop rather than free jazz or something. But the ironic (and interesting) thing is, the young people who are really getting into jazz in the metropolitan areas - the kind that Chinen's NYT article talks about - seem to gravitate toward more challenging, demanding material. Seems that they usually cross over from the indie music scene and explore heady stuff in the classical/jazz worlds.
Bad Plus is an interesting example. Their latest LP has covers of Wilco, Nirvana and The Flaming Lips, but also a great version of Milton Babbitt's Semi Simple Variations. Any group that can go from Kurt Cobain to Terry Riley without breaking a sweat gets kudos from my book, jazz or popular. Brainy, relevant, with a lot of musical guts and instinct and genuine jazz chops. Just what we need for the young 'uns.
Perhaps Terry Teachout is right in a way to yearn for a talent like Louis Armstrong to muscle jazz back into cultural relevance, except that when Louis Armstrong was a pop star, the popular culture itself was more bright-eyed and naive. It's a splintered world that we live in, and it takes a different mold to be relevant in the popular culture and in the jazz scene at the same time; to lament for a charismatic do-it-all star like Armstrong in these times seems a bit outdated and irrelevant at this point. There are other models. Musicians like Bad Plus are proving that jazz ain't over yet.
Spirogyra = smooth jazz = Black Urban music = Jazz-ish!
I went to the assisted living home to check on Mom. They had a large jazz band playing in the lobby. This is Roswell, NM. I didn't know jazz was dying. The tenants were all in the cafeteria eating supper. It was the visitors that came to listen to the band. Mom complained about the noise.
This is like the best thing you ever wrote in this forum.
While I don't have any statistics on this, it seems to me that live jazz is perhaps more popular in Europe than in the US. While it's just an anecdote, every time I'm in a major European city there is some kind of live jazz happening.
Heck, a few years ago we caught some live jazz in Bangkok.
I try real hard to be a shepherd outside the bar...
Very true.
Jazz has always had a proportionally larger audience in Europe. Having manners class and culture is regarded as a good thing there. Having little or no class, bad manners and poor taste in just about everything is looked up to as the "every man" sort of thing in the US.
The only way to save Jazz and anything else good about America is to stop teaching that the lowest common denominator for social and cultural activity is what everyone should aim for.
i'm with SD on this one, Lamont, you may ruin your reputation if you keep this up.
Anti-intellectualism in America is a pretty real issue. I hate to generalize but there's does seem to be a more open-minded spirit of inquiry in other regions. They say classical music, for example, sells very well in Japan, even today. I posted this following thread a while back on a wine/restaurant/book store/jazz cafe which opened up in Seoul, Korea, called Taschen 1812:
http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showf...9&fpart=all
See the pictures and weep! Get your wine buzz on while listening to some Tatum through Thorens 124 & Altec A5, after browsing through the books in a chic urban space. They also have Dynaudio Confidence C4, Michell Gyro, McIntosh gear, etc. Crazy in a public space! 5000 records, 1000 CDs. I think the consensus here when we discussed this back then, was that such a concept won't fly in the States. Probably right, too, or else the Taschen store in Soho would also feature Altec VOTTs or Tannoys, playing back some sweet tunes from the Garrard 301. The closest to that we have in the States are these stupid teen-wear stores in malls that employ joker DJs "spinning" on ipod DJ kit while a Technics deck is just spinning around for show. Sad.
That's a shame. In other parts of the world, these places are thriving. Can you just imagine scores of young people wanting to hang out at some hip place like Taschen 1812, getting hooked on jazz unknowingly? How can you NOT fall in love with what you're hearing, in that space, with your friends or loved ones? A whole generation of Japanese and Korean listeners, for example, developed their love of jazz by frequenting jazz cafes where DJs would spin killer jazz records back in the 70s & 80s. Seems like there is a resurgence of such places in Asia right now, and I really feel bad for our kids here who don't have such options so that they go on dates to the Loews Multiplex instead to watch yet another remake of some 80's cartoon show. And almost become asphyxiated afterward by involuntarily whiffing too much of the creepy Abercrombie & Fitch scent which get emitted from their air vents onto the public walkways.
Jazz is an American art form. Other countries are cultivating it far better than we should be doing. This is a damn shame.
P.S. - Speaking of Taschen, check out this book from Taschen called "Extraordinary Records" on picture records:
http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/popculture/all/05064/facts.extraordinary_records.htm
Jazz does seems to have survived fusion but the real question is whether or not jazz will be able to survive Wynton Marsalis!!
Poor Wynton, he is the Larry Holmes of jazz...rising to prominence in an otherwise unremarkable era.
While Miles was a contemporary of Coltrane, etc...Wynton is stuck in a world with Kenny G and Yanni passing for 'jazz music.'
Well, Branford is quite terrific, so hopefully some sort of balance is maintained. (I do admit to liking Wynton, too - he is great at doing what's already been done, so he is at least keeping alive a tradition, as it were.)
Yes, I know that Wynton does lots and lots of things to help save jazz but all too often it's only Wynton's idea of what constitutes jazz that gets help. So much out-of-the-mainstream jazz, both past and present, gets left with no one to champion their cause. Great artists, such as Lennie Tristano (past) or Ken Vandermark (present), get regulated to the hinterlands and their incredible music is never heard by many so called jazz fans. Lots of really wonderful music goes largely unheard because these jazz fans are being spoon fed a diet of jazz that's sorely lacking in one of it's most essential amino acids: free improvisation.
So it's not that Wynton doesn't support great music, heck just about all the music Wynton "saves" deserves being saved, but rather that his scope is too narrow. The funny thing is that Wynton is not really hostile to free jazz yet he just comes off as being afraid of expanding the boundaries of jazz to encompass some slightly outside playing. What can I say, I know I always seem to beating the same old dead horse but hey, just read my signature.
please dont save it.
DNR. let it die
It is very entertaining having Johnny Cash's little miniature head saying all these funny things on the forum.
Speaking of Taschen and Jazz, check out their book Jazz Covers (they let you 'leaf through' all 497 pages online!).
And on your initial Q, these "is ___ dead" pronouncements strike me mainly as laments about aging.
Is subjectivism dead?
Some things never get old.
Let me trot out a theory I've tried before.
Jazz is in trouble because it's too good - think of what's happened with jazz as being like the Stephen Jay Gould argument about the spread of excellence in baseball explaining why there are no longer .400 hitters.
We don't get masterpieces and heroes because everyone pretty much knows everything - so jazz becomes a music of small gestures and differences.
And we need heroes and masterpieces - we need someone to root for.
s.
The recording industry has gone through several cycles of this sort of thing, I believe. What usually happens is that somebody finds a new thing or a new way to play something, and the cycle starts over.
I'm fairly sure that this will happen again (and again, and again) as both technology and humanity rolls along. If you think about it, in the French Romantic period the "rock and roll" instrument was the pipe organ. Then it was the guitar, then the whole guitar-fuzzbox-etc, thing, then the synth.
Jazz has gone through cycles too, and has enough different genre material that I expect somebody will do the new version of "fusion" or whatever, create another cycle of popularity.
Meanwhile, in the modern world, we don't have to lose any of the good older stuff, either. For the forseeable future, we'll be able to play Herbie Mann to Frank Zappa, etc.
I wonder if we could get the Cal Tjader version of "Ring of Fire"
If there is one, that is.
Hi satkinsn,
That
All I've heard here so far is about "tight assed-can't swing-ass squeaks when they walk-white boy-jazz lite crap"
What about real Jazz Players?
Anyway, it ain't dead. But...the good ones are few and far between, as is usual in all musical genera.
I must be misunderstanding your point Ken since the post you replied to contained Archie Shepp and Bill Dixon who are both "jazz players" (irony noted if you read the interviews), the antithesis of "tight assed-can't swing-ass squeaks when they walk-white boy-jazz lite crap" and they both also happen to be alive.
As far as who's good and who isn't, I'll leave that to the critics.
Everybody is a critic. Thus my bit of humour of the twisty type.
jazz will never be dead as long as there are people to play it. just because the music does not make it on to an LP or CD does not necessarily mean the genre itself is dead. there are still many, many high school and college jazz groups playing around the world. there are still tens of thousands of unknown musicians with "day jobs" playing at local clubs all around the world. go to new orleans and walk down the street and listen to the street musicians. just because these guys will never make it on to a record does not mean that jazz is dead.
This is very true. Guys like Norman Mailer, etc. have all said that the novel is dead just when they stopped being relevant and started wearing dentures. How convenient.
I'm surprised noone here said it so far:
"Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny"
Went to see Wynton tonight with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.
He, and they, killed!
Played a rendition of Monk's Ugly Beauty that had one section with five sax players riffing together.
They also did Epistrophy with a gorgeous simultaneous sax solo by two of the sax players, each soloing at the same time, yet weaving their sound around each other.
Performed maybe the best version of Lou Donaldson's Blues Walk I've ever heard.
The crowd was lively, the playing was superb.
Before the show, Wynton was hanging around outside in the early evening and chatting people up. If I had my iPhone, I could have gotten a pic with him!
The band was hanging out talking Pittsburgh Steelers with anyone who cared to join them.
No after party that I could find. Chico closes down early off campus! But, the local wine bar and the sushi bar both had jazz trios playing - some Bordeaux, some cheese, some nigiri - I'm stuffed on food, but wish I could have taken in more tunes.
Wynton isn't as big as I imagined, and he is shaped like a trumpet player. Kind of barrel chested - I wonder if it affects someone's general physiology. Anyway, Miles was the least trumpet player looking trumpet player I ever saw.
No matter the town, I bet there's jazz within a few miles of your home on any given day.
Jazz is in no danger.
Thanks for sharing. Wynton takes a lot of flak from jazz critics and the peanut gallery. I
I say to save Jazz, we should ban it from the United States and all the airwaves.
you know...
send it underground. way, way , way, way underground.
God, I hate jazz.
I did record the Bad Plus several times, though..super nice guys. recorded Mehldau too...but he was an uppity dick.