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Post by Rich on Jul 21, 2015 0:56:58 GMT
This thread is an off-shoot of a conversation that began in another thread (http://londonjazzcollector.freeforums.net/thread/30/albums-love-first-warmed-over). We were talking about difference types of audiences appreciating jazz, and it made me think: Of all the people listening to jazz and digging it in American in the '40s, '50s, and '60s, who of them could say they felt like they 'understood' the music? Can you yourself say you feel you 'understand' the music? What do we even mean when we say we do or don't understand jazz? Are we talking strictly about the musical ideas, or does understanding extend to include notions like intention, origins, etc.?
The thing I love about jazz is that I always feel like there's something new to learn. I've come a long way from not knowing anything about it but I still feel like I have a lot to learn.
The clip below always stands out in my mind when interpreting the art of jazz. It's a clip of Jimmy Smith speaking to what I presume is a European reporter about their work as a critic (video should automatically start at 15:21):
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Post by Rich on Jul 21, 2015 1:17:15 GMT
I love watching Smith's raw emotion in this scene, but I wish I could understand what the reporter is saying.
I also have to admit that while at the end of the scene he criticizes The Beatles (and in effect rock music in general), later on in the film Smith is seen covering the Rolling Stones, with the explanation from his manager that it will sell...
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Post by gregorythefish on Jul 21, 2015 18:47:17 GMT
oh man, so much to say on this. first of all: when people talk about 'understanding' or 'getting' an art form, they are (perhaps unintentionally) using words that have varied and unclear meaning. it exists as a way to take a shot at someone whose tastes are different. all that matters with music is whether you like it and/or think you can learn from it. what other possible reason is there to listen? listening for any other reason is asinine. or perhaps i should say: if another good reason exists, i've never heard it, and i've presented that thesis a lot.
there isn't much to 'get' in music. people are making noises and you either want to hear them or don't, for whatever reason. highly, highly subjective. i know people who listen to great blue notes or prestiges when they visit me (i like to play records with guests over) and they feel like it is 'just' collective noodling. i don't really disagree, but for the 'just' part. there isn't a 'beyond' for collective noodling so there isn't a 'just'. i don't care that that phrase sounds condescending. it is essentially correct for an album like "wheelin and dealin" and i have no problem with that. it's my favorite kind of music. so it doesn't excite everyone. no problem. there is plenty else for them to enjoy.
we as a community can sometimes forget also that music is not for us what it is for most people. most people like to tap their foot or hear a catchy melody or shake their bottoms. i'm sure all of us like that from time to time but for us music is something rich and worthy of deep exploration. not everyone, few people in fact, think of music this way. and that's ok. i have friends that are this way about film and i just don't get it. or sports, for god's sake. but i still enjoy going to a ball game. but one might say i don't 'get' it in that i don't see why people spend hours and hours of their lives obsessing over stats and standings and such. but they would say the same of me with runout etchings, deep grooves, adresses, etc. or even just the amount of time i spend listening to music.
so not 'getting' something is essentially the same as just not enjoying it for taste. and smith's issue is that some critics don't seem to get that what is fun to create is not always fun to consume. and the artists have the prerogative (or should) to create what they want. and i've never encountered a reason for my own personal dislike of any music that wasn't inherently personal, even if i do believe some of those things are largely objective overall.
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Post by dottorjazz on Jul 21, 2015 20:56:34 GMT
in terms of what I like listening to I'll never take prisoners.
while anyone is free to listen and like any kind of music, I'm pretty sure most do not know and do not care about the "back stage".
I do, instead: I'm interested in how a music was born, how it developed, why it got to an end. reading, listening, comparing, learning is my daily task and pleasure.
I do not spend a second in front of TV, last time I went to the cinema was more than two decades ago. music is my main interest, after health, family and work. yes work: I love mine and it allows me to enjoy my passion a lot. I've got no time for other distractions: music is completely fulfilling, and my music is Jazz.
my two kids, 12 and 13, fill their ears with shit, NOW.
I did the same when I was so young. one of my hopes is they'll change as I did. I'd love to teach them how and why I fell in love with Jazz.
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Post by gregorythefish on Jul 22, 2015 13:46:47 GMT
it's entirely possible, dott, that their eventual hobbies will be entirely different. or perhaps even crazier.
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Post by Rich on Jul 22, 2015 23:24:51 GMT
oh man, so much to say on this. first of all: when people talk about 'understanding' or 'getting' an art form, they are (perhaps unintentionally) using words that have varied and unclear meaning. it exists as a way to take a shot at someone whose tastes are different. all that matters with music is whether you like it and/or think you can learn from it. what other possible reason is there to listen? listening for any other reason is asinine. or perhaps i should say: if another good reason exists, i've never heard it, and i've presented that thesis a lot. there isn't much to 'get' in music. people are making noises and you either want to hear them or don't, for whatever reason. highly, highly subjective. i know people who listen to great blue notes or prestiges when they visit me (i like to play records with guests over) and they feel like it is 'just' collective noodling. i don't really disagree, but for the 'just' part. there isn't a 'beyond' for collective noodling so there isn't a 'just'. i don't care that that phrase sounds condescending. it is essentially correct for an album like "wheelin and dealin" and i have no problem with that. it's my favorite kind of music. so it doesn't excite everyone. no problem. there is plenty else for them to enjoy. we as a community can sometimes forget also that music is not for us what it is for most people. most people like to tap their foot or hear a catchy melody or shake their bottoms. i'm sure all of us like that from time to time but for us music is something rich and worthy of deep exploration. not everyone, few people in fact, think of music this way. and that's ok. i have friends that are this way about film and i just don't get it. or sports, for god's sake. but i still enjoy going to a ball game. but one might say i don't 'get' it in that i don't see why people spend hours and hours of their lives obsessing over stats and standings and such. but they would say the same of me with runout etchings, deep grooves, adresses, etc. or even just the amount of time i spend listening to music. so not 'getting' something is essentially the same as just not enjoying it for taste. and smith's issue is that some critics don't seem to get that what is fun to create is not always fun to consume. and the artists have the prerogative (or should) to create what they want. and i've never encountered a reason for my own personal dislike of any music that wasn't inherently personal, even if i do believe some of those things are largely objective overall. Thanks for the thoughtful response, Gregory. Regarding your first paragraph, the thought that appreciating music is as simple as whether or not it brings you joy, I have a scenario for you. Suppose a woman hears an instrumental song and loves the emotion expressed within it, but then finds out that the person who made it is a misogynist. Some women might not care but my guess is it would change most women's appreciation of the art. I think Dott was eluding to this when he said he likes to know the story behind his favorite music. Appreciation of art is not always as simple as standing in front of a painting or putting headphones on and enjoying the experience. In fact, I might go as far as saying appreciation of art is always ultimately psychological, and dare I say it's never strictly about what you see, hear etc; our minds are always meddling with that. I think Smith's point is that there is so much more to jazz than the beat and even more to it than the emotion each song might convey, but what is that exactly? I think it's many things, including the story of the music, the story of the people who create the music, it's complex music theory. I don't think Smith was saying there's something wrong with someone simply patting their foot to the music, but he does seem to believe that a much deeper appreciation of the music can be obtained. I personally think a huge part of that understanding is not just understanding the music theory that goes into it but also understanding what kind of a social statement jazz was always making, especially in the context of a country overrun with racism. I thought you made some great points in your third paragraph. I do think most people invest some degree of emotion in music but perhaps not nearly as much as people like us. However, as I wrote above, I think Smith is saying that there is more to music appreciation than emotional connection. Maybe he's talking about an ideological connection, ideological in the sense that one understands the meaning, a meaning that may go beyond the emotion conveyed...? My hypothesis is that jazz has a deep heritage in which a subculture of people takes pride in the fact that the music is not easy to understand, and I also hypothesize that this has much to do with the racial climate in the United States in jazz's formative years. So while Smith seems aware that jazz is not as easy to digest as The Beatles, he seems to simply wish that people would make a more concerted effort to understand and appreciate the music and the culture surrounding it. From the beats to the hipsters, we all know that it's easy to like jazz in a fashionable way. I'm sure Smith would rather this be the case than those people hating it, but he does seem to wish listeners would dig deeper, and that's what I'm always trying to do. I don't think I'll ever be satisfied with the degree to which I feel I understand the music, but in a good way, because the music is so deep that one could spend a lifetime listening without getting bored! |
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Post by dottorjazz on Jul 23, 2015 7:26:03 GMT
"one could spend a lifetime listening without getting bored!" yeah! I'm one of those ones. |
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Post by gregorythefish on Jul 23, 2015 16:27:36 GMT
i also agree that i could go a lifetime without getting bored listening, but i really don't think that jazz or any other music existed as a conscious response to anything, but as a subconscious search for variety. perhaps i am being too brief because i am in a rush.
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Post by Admin on Jul 23, 2015 19:58:53 GMT
I had a couple of revelations recently, something I had not seen as clearly before, which put the broader canvas of music enjoyment in focus. It's an odd story but I'll share it.
I've been in the south of France for a couple of weeks, when two events sent me a call.
After the "Jazz Festival", which was populated with superannuated American soul and funk bands - Kool and The Gang, no jazz there, a big "party scene" followed in the next few evenings, starring Mr Big DJ, David Guetta that night. The building next to us was full of full-on party animals, whose after-party trick was to spend the night on my roof taking drugs, and smash a window to break into the building to get out. They could at least left money to repair the window, but no. Hedonism? Narcissism, the face of a"good time" (for them).
The second insight was a day later, a free Sunday afternoon concert of light classical staged in the beautiful gardens of Cimiez. Bits of Strauss waltz, all sorts of classical, twenty musicians playing their role under the baton-waving eye of the conductor. NO improvisation, and nothing swang. I cried out - Ellington, Basie, something, anything, but no, music by rigid definition. Two hundred-odd people attending enjoyed it, and I was left begging for "jazz", anything which swings, please?
Sometimes you get more perspective on what you like by getting force-fed on what you don't.
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Post by dottorjazz on Jul 24, 2015 7:32:06 GMT
we were discussing these days on LJC about Jazz' death.
I'm convinced it almost is, out there, but not inside us.
what about when we all will be dead?
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Post by alunsevern on Jul 25, 2015 9:54:28 GMT
Hello folks, Musics are born, they mutate and change and develop, and they die. So much is undeniable, I think - and it might be argued that if it weren't for electronic recording we would accept this as the natural order of things. Indeed, were it not for recording, almost all music except that which currently exists would be as dead as medieval plainsong.
But in the present age we are all our own curators and archivists, building libraries of what we treasure from across the ages, almost everything open to us, almost everything available. I think that poses a particular challenge for enthusiasts like us. In an age of plenty - of hyper-plenty - the challenge is not how much we can explore; it is how fully we can understand and appreciate what we do explore. And for this reason, when jazz does die - and I think it will at some point, or will mutate into something that will no longer be jazz exactly - it won't matter all that much because there will still be a recorded legacy of every conceivable kind of jazz, near-jazz (and non-jazz!) to explore and get to grips with.
You see, one of the things I have come to realise is there are two types of people. THere are those who care - passionately, deeply - about recorded music (sometimes in a collectible form such as original pressings), and those who care equally passionately about how music is performed. I fall into the first camp, I now understand, and rightly or wrongly have no interest whatsoever in how or even whether jazz continues to be performed because I never ever go to live music. I"m not sure what they says about me or about the recording of music - I just state it as a fact. And for this reason, for the rest of my life, even another of note of jazz were never recorded or played, there will always be more than enough music for me to explore...
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Post by Rich on Jul 25, 2015 13:55:32 GMT
Hello folks, Musics are born, they mutate and change and develop, and they die. So much is undeniable, I think - and it might be argued that if it weren't for electronic recording we would accept this as the natural order of things. Indeed, were it not for recording, almost all music except that which currently exists would be as dead as medieval plainsong. But in the present age we are all our own curators and archivists, building libraries of what we treasure from across the ages, almost everything open to us, almost everything available. I think that poses a particular challenge for enthusiasts like us. In an age of plenty - of hyper-plenty - the challenge is not how much we can explore; it is how fully we can understand and appreciate what we do explore. And for this reason, when jazz does die - and I think it will at some point, or will mutate into something that will no longer be jazz exactly - it won't matter all that much because there will still be a recorded legacy of every conceivable kind of jazz, near-jazz (and non-jazz!) to explore and get to grips with. You see, one of the things I have come to realise is there are two types of people. THere are those who care - passionately, deeply - about recorded music (sometimes in a collectible form such as original pressings), and those who care equally passionately about how music is performed. I fall into the first camp, I now understand, and rightly or wrongly have no interest whatsoever in how or even whether jazz continues to be performed because I never ever go to live music. I"m not sure what they says about me or about the recording of music - I just state it as a fact. And for this reason, for the rest of my life, even another of note of jazz were never recorded or played, there will always be more than enough music for me to explore... Interesting post, Alun. LJC has taken the post in another direction and I like it. Regarding recorded music, it is special and quite different than live performance in some interesting ways. I have always been completely enthralled by recording technology both analog and digital, and the science of capturing sounds artificially with microphones and mixing them together in a way that sounds pleasing is equally fascinating to me. And there is such a wide variety of recording styles: just like painting, they can be made to imitate life very closely or they can create cartoony impressions of reality. I like both. Although I do enjoy live music as well, recorded music has a special place in my heart. Perhaps it has something to do with how intimate and personal the experience of listening to recorded music can be. Regarding the deaths of musics, my best guess is that if a music ever did exist, there's someone somewhere who studies it and performs it, even Gregorian chants, regardless of whether or not electronic recording technology exists (the obvious historical counterexample is music notation). But I think I see your point, as far the musics disappearing from the pulse of popular culture, certainly, and that is certainly happening to jazz. Sometimes I wonder when this will happen for hip hop, as hip hop has been a driving force in popular culture for about 30 years now, and I'm not sure jazz can say the same (rock even longer I suppose). Correct me if I'm wrong but jazz was the central form of music in popular culture from about what, the '20s to the '30s? Surely bop did not have the same mass appeal as swing. I think hip hop and rock are different because popular culture demands 'simple' musical forms, and rock and hip hop are just that. Swing morphed into bop; will hip hop become something else less accessible anytime soon? It would need to be replaced by something I guess. Does the 'life' of a form of music depend on individuals studying and performing it, or would we think of jazz remaining 'alive' so long as individuals listen to it and appreciate it? For the first time in history, electronic recording technology has made it possible for people to appreciate music long after its cultural impact without there being a need for anyone to study and perform it. So in one sense there will probably always be someone who keeps jazz alive through study, performance or listening, but in another sense, I guess jazz is already 'dead' because of how far it has been removed from being culturally significant at the present. |
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Post by alunsevern on Jul 26, 2015 20:37:39 GMT
Rich, You raise some interesting points. I think, first, there is probably a distinction to be made between cultural forms remaining alive as opposed to continuing to develop. I think this is the point Dott periodically makes - that jazz has ceased to develop in the way that it did from say the 20s to the 60s or even 70s. Second, I think you're right ago query whether jazz is still culturally significant, but to entirely fair I think we would also need a definition of what 'culturally significant' means in practice. I'm not sure I have an answer to that one immediately  |
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Post by dottorjazz on Jul 27, 2015 13:55:20 GMT
I think this is the point Dott periodically makes - that jazz has ceased to develop in the way that it did from say the 20s to the 60s or even 70s. you got it, Alun! that's what I meant. my complaint is towards the lack of any new direction in Jazz. it's frozen in the first 70s, imo. anyone can observe that a Music that had been so developing from its roots in the 20s, couldn't go further after Free. from there on, we have had a lot of good musicians who couldn't express in a true new way. this is death for me. |
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Post by alunsevern on Jul 28, 2015 8:56:55 GMT
Dott, I think you may be right. While I love much of what has happened to jazz (or to *some* jazz) over the past twenty or thirty years (since the 1980s, let's say), these developments have for the most part meant an ever greater assimilation into jazz of European contemporary classical and avant-garde traditions. One need only think of ECM -- a quite explicit attempt to fuse a new 'cool' largely abstract and non-swing jazz from jazz-plus-classical/world/chamber music. And ECM has been doing that for over forty years!
Developments in free jazz and improv, while to my ears fascinating, are again refinements of what has become an established tradition, not a revolutionary break with the past or huge innovation.
Other European labels -- such as ACT -- have sought to popularise a sort of lyrical Scandinavian jazz that (again to my ears) verges on easy listening at times (Esbjörn Svensson Trio, for example).
Where truly excellent jazz has continued -- Tomasz Stank springs to mind -- it can be argued that even his best work is approaching twenty years old (Leosia and Matka Joanna, for instance -- while Balladyna, his first for ECM is forty years old next year!).
This begins to look like a music that has nowhere new to go, nothing new to say - and perhaps that is true. But I think there is a simpler explanation: only a very few musicians can make a living from jazz today. If jazz is the music you choose to commit to, you are committing to poverty. There's nothing wrong with that -- many artists in many media over the years have made precisely that choice and opted for a life outside the mainstream. But you can't do that and raise a family, buy a home, pay the bills.
Jazz has become closer to writing - to poetry or first novels or literary fiction: the only people who can afford to commit to it full-time need a private income or a vow of poverty to sustain them... Or alternatively, if they made their reputation decades back, they must just get by...
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