rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (10/15/83)
> ... 75% of what is called jazz today isn't jazz. It would seem that 75% of what is called jazz today isn't what YOU as an individual would call jazz. (or what I would call jazz, for that matter) But the fact that a music has been mislabelled by artists/record companies or even fans does not denigrate the music. The value of the music is based solely on what it sounds like---not who's playing, what instruments they're playing, how fast they're playing, or what style they're playing in. > ... Billboard's (and similar) top 100 jazz albums ... > usually consist of people and groups like Pat > Metheny, George Bensen, Bob James and the like. These > people are wonderful musicians, but their music is no more > jazz than that of Steely Dan or Ricky Lee Jones, and no one > considers THAT jazz! The reason these musicians are > considered jazz is that the record companies have no other > category to place them in. You would insult the musicians > by placing them under rock, and yet you insult jazz by > placing them there. Granted, these people do not fall into the categories of "serious jazz" or "traditional jazz". Frankly, I don't like the music of any of the artists you mentioned, but not because they don't fall cleanly into a preconceived label. More because I find their sounds uninteresting. (I'm allowed to find them uninteresting, so if YOU like them, there's no need to flame.) There are people who consider Steely Dan and Rickey Lee Jones jazz-*like*, and associate them with jazz. There are people who consider Benson, Metheny, DiMeola, Corea, Hancock, et al. the purest form of today's jazz. That's their right, I guess. You come across very antagonistically about rock and jazz both, when you say that associating these people with rock would insult THEM (this is the type of jazz snobbery I have made reference to in the past), and associating them with jazz would insult the genre of jazz. Music grows and changes. People who expect musical forms to stay the same forever fast become anachronisms or "old fogeys". Sometimes the changes result in drastically new ideas and new ways of playing and listening to music. Sometimes they don't. That's life. These musicians represent a very viable arm of what jazz is today. True, they're not part of what jazz used to be. My feeling about musical labels is if you're going to use them, make them absolutely descriptive, and don't be afraid to invent new ones. If you feel that they don't belong together with "pure jazz", you may be right. But in today's world, they seem to qualify as jazz, and the fact that they're different from "pure jazz" does not make them any less viable. Only the content of their sound can do that. > ... Music has disciplines, > and the basic structures of songs must adhere to these > disciplines. When you stray from these disciplines you > escape the musical aspect and enter a new dimension of > sounds which may or may not be music. ... > All songs, especially in relation to a jazz discussion, are > comprised of three components: a melody, the harmonic > element, and the rhythmic element. What differentiates jazz > from pop is that you improvise on the melody, while still > staying within the confines of the other two elements. ... > ... [Ornette Coleman's] "gimmick" was to > not only improvise on the melody, but to stray from the > confines of the harmonic element and the rhythmic element. > When you no longer have the harmonic element to worry about, > there no longer is any such thing as a wrong note. This > intrigued a large number of people who were not that good > when confined to the absolutes of music. It would be the > same as a mathmetician suddenly throwing out the rules and > absolutes of mathematics and declaring that "anything goes." The best composers and musicians will tell you that rules are made to be broken. If composers and musicians stuck strictly to previously defined rules, music would be very boring indeed. The likes of Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, Stravinsky, and a variety of modern composers in the areas of classical (serious), jazz, and (believe it or not) rock attained "greatness" precisely through discarding old rules (and sometimes inventing new ones). You seem "offended" that Coleman's harmolodic stylings "intrigued people who were not that good at the absolutes of music". This is another form of musical snobbery. ("Oh, that's a punk/rock/not-jazz-in-my-book band, therefore they can't play and therefore their music has no value.") Sometimes it takes an outsider, one who doesn't know the rules and doesn't abide by them, to gain insights and make sudden advances in a field. Good music isn't necessarily a product of proscribed training and expertise. By the way, I would think that mathematicians and scientists often speculate about what the world would be like if a given rule didn't apply. This can and often does lead to new insights into the way things DO work. The same applies to music. > When you stray from the absolutes of a discipline, this > tends to confuse the public mind, and provides a great forum > for the followers of this deviation to appear as > "intellectuals." Picasso stated many times that one of his > purposes in his paintings was to cloud the public's > perception of what was art and what wasn't. There are > absolutes in this world, and a sharp person can attract a > large following of "intellectual fools" by making their > discipline "relative" and not absolute. I tend to think that a good deal of so-called conceptual modern art *does* fit into this mold, as well as other art/music/etc., e.g. John Cage's 4'33". [A piece in three movements totalling 4 min. 33 sec. of silence. The movements are demarcated by opening and closing the piano lid. When I met Cage once at a recital, I almost (but not quite) had the nerve to go up to him with a blank sheet of paper and ask him to autograph this score of 4'33".] The sound of this piece is not even an issue; it is the concept behind it that *should* be important to the listener. But that's my personal quibble about conceptual art. The fact is that the ideas you state are often true, but not always so, and as usual, the final test is how the music sounds, not how "well" (whatever that means) it is played. By the way, I'm not sure why you feel there are "absolutes" in definine art. Why do past concepts of what is art define present ones? No one ever said it would be easy to tell the artists from the charlatans in a world of progressive art. The trick is to find them based on your pure reactions to their work and not the hype. > The free jazz and the avant-garde jazz ...people have strayed from the > absolutes of music and attracted their following by playing > unrecognizable songs that have no melody, and are not > confined to any harmonic or rhythmic discipline. The > artistic and deeply emotional experience of listening to > their music isn't there, and the listener's ability to > differentiate between talent and noise is diluted. I think you should say that the emotional experience isn't there *for you*! I would be very reluctant to criticize those who seek to break new ground rather standing on old ground until it becomes old mud. But the acid test is always how the music sounds. If you don't like the results of musical experimentation, that's a matter of taste. If I were you, I'd try to listen to the new and strange sounds as "chords and melodies I've never heard before", instead of "chords and melodies that are WRONG!" > [on Miles Davis] Here's a man who's technical ability ... is nil, and > his contempt for his audience ... is astounding. [Yet he is a] cult > figure with many jazz musicians who can't tell hype from > good music. ... Even when the music is absolute trash, it's > defined as a "new direction in music," and everyone rushes > to hear what it is. The public can be conned so easily. In > short, not only is Miles not a jazz musician, he's not a > musician PERIOD. The public is conned every day by "music industry" clones in rock, pop, & JAZZ! I know little about Miles Davis. [HINT: This is a request for information on what seminal early Miles Davis IS indeed worth listening to---to all you Miles Davis fans.] What I have heard is that what you say about him has become true in recent years. I will say this: through "apprenticeships" with Miles, many great artists have come to the forefront. (I think that among these were McCoy Tyner, Josef Zawinul, and Chick Corea, though I hesitate to include Corea.) Given this, even without knowing much of his music, I would hesitate to call him a non-musician, and would probably call him a very influential presence. > ... let's keep the jazz name for just jazz > and call the other stuff something else. And let's also > differentiate between good music and the crap that Miles and > Ornette throw on us! And let's create net.music.jazz.pure to keep all the slime out of real music discussions. There are few absolutes one can judge music by. If the intended goal is a classical/progressive rock magnum opus orchestral masterpiece, then failure to live up to the standards of such works (in terms of quality of musicianship and orchestration, etc.) are reasonable grounds for judging it unfavorably. The same is true for any piece that seeks to fit into any existing genre/class/style. But musicians that seek to create something new and different, outside of any known style, cannot be judged on criteria designed for another style (e.g., "real" jazz). You sound like you're a "purist", and in any field, there's no arguing with a purist, especially one who sees anything outside of the scope of what he/she knows as sacrilege, impossible, stupid, etc. I am truly anxious to hear your comments on all of this.