mfs@mhuxr.UUCP (SIMON) (05/15/85)
I ask the question, not because I think the music is going to hell in a hand basket, but because I think it is at its healthiest in 20 years. My question is not a nostalgic longing for days past, better than these, but breathless anticipation of what is to come. Consider the following items: We have genuine jazz superstars as varied as Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Jordan Cecil Taylor attracted an overflow crowd every night during a one week engagement at a New York club The same Cecil was one of the hits of the "Return of Blue Note" concert at Town Hall There have been some articles (in the Chicago Tribune in particular) complaining of how boring the music is. The last item, especially, is a signal to me that all is well. A whole generation of musicians, having come up through the wild avant garde days, are now building their own structures. Cecil has repeatedly said that the idea of free jazz is not just freedom "from", but freedom "to". So we are now reaping the rewards: when musicians have absorbed that the only rule is that there is no rule, the structures they create are based on their own creativity rather than on "what the book says". Thus we have David Murray's brilliant updating of Ben Webster and Paul Gonsalves; thus we have Cecil Taylor's percussive melodies in a historical meeting with Max Roach's melodic drums; thus we have Stanley Jordan paying a moving tribute to Jimi Hendrix without ever trying to sound like any one but Stanley Jordan. Finally, and best of all, the people are getting into it. Clubs are overflowing, with new ones opening all the time. And it's not just in New York: there are thriving scenes in New Orleans (of course), Washington, DC, LA, San Francisco... and of course Europe. So we have both exciting musicians and n appreciative public willing to support them (well, not on the scale of Michael Jackson but you can't have everything) These are interesting times indeed! Marcel Simon