Article: Can Jazz Be Saved?

[Billy B]

An excerpt from an essay in progress.............

The notion that Jazz is only appreciated by the musically literate is absurd. In years past when Jazz was more popular the public was more musically literate? I don’t think so. We play Jazz for very appreciative audiences of elementary school children with no musical knowledge. My wife has zero musical knowledge and can identify the music of Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and others. Her favorite drummer is Matt Wilson. She describes the music of Dave Douglas as “pretty”. Yet the musical snobs diss her interest as naïve and meaningless. I have news for you. People like her are your audience. They are the supporters of the arts. They buy the recordings and pay the admission to clubs and concerts. This idea of looking down your noses at the ignorant because “they just don’t understand” is a huge part of the problem and certainly not a part of the solution. The more likely scenario for the waning interest in Jazz is the fault of the musicians themselves. Too many times the public is exposed to unprepared, poorly dressed musicians with an attitude. They show up with their Real Books, no set list, ignore the audience and expect to be paid for what is essentially a glorified jam session. Sorry, but playing the head, everyone solos, then play the head out is really boring. In fact, it sucks. And my wife is offended by such lackadaisical performances.
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Bill Bergren

[JazzmanGIANT]

I think that is part of it. But jazz is a stage-learned art. Yeah aebersolds and basement jamming with co-players helps, but performing and getting that performance feeling is what helps us jazzers learn the art outside of the practice room. And since everyone has to start somewhere, a lot of beginners (who have a lot of passion and interest to perform) do play concerts that are real books head-solo-head form. We all gotta start somewhere. Is the concert any less boring if its a bunch of kids playing like that, but playing their instruments well?

Part of the problem could just be the public's waning interest in music itself. I have many friends who plainly do not listen to music. Most of my friends (other then my combo mates and fellow pro music-hopefuls) do not need music to live their lives fine.

I'm not sure
JMG
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The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas. MilesDavis
"Always be heard - no matter the dynamics."-Mr Adolph Herseth
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[Billy B]

[Scorpion]

Jazz is evolving. Whoever said "no one now-a-days knows bye bye blackbird" was dead on. Jazz is all about taking an existing tune and screwing around with it. No one recognizes Bye Bye Blackbird, Stella by Starlight, or any other crusty pop tunes, so you need to draw from the musical vernacular. We have some forward thinking artists. Brad Mehldau includes a fair amount of popular tunes in his performances, and he does them extremely well. Roy hargrove has been fusing hip hop/soul and jazz. Maria Schneider is doing a pop-jazz-orchestral thing. Steve Coleman has been doing his own thing for a while now.

Some people don't like it, and say its not jazz. You know what the cats pioneering be-bop back in the day called people like that? Moldy figs. They are the cats who refuse to leave the collapsing building until they're sitting in a pile of rubble. I say we call it Jazz until we call it something else.

The Latin as a dead language example was good, but incomplete. Yeah latin is a dead language and no one speaks it anymore, but it also happened to spawn spanish, italian, french, et al.
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-1964 Olds Super Balanced Depleted Uranium single flue Harpoon (w/custom coprion hand guard i got from a 1925 Conn Erradicator.) Akright converted handle w/calfskin grip (143xx)

[bg]

You guys make good points.

I'm with Bill, in believing that sight-reading on stage does not constitute
a first-rate presentation. I'm with Scorpion and Thomas in feeling
that the material and styles must naturally evolve.

Evolution is not linear. I'm amazed by the answers I receive, when I ask my graduate level Jazz History students if they think that Jazz has consistently
improved with each generation. After interesting discussion, during which I
honor all viewpoints, I lay a little Art Tatum on them.

Evolution is about adaptation to environment, times and circumstances.
However, he who does not understand the mistakes of history is doomed to repeat them. It's a tricky job for today's young musician to know when to stop honoring the past and begin exploring the future. Certainly, most approaches to teaching the subject err heavily on the side of tradition.
Then there are the "Creative Music" programs; also a valid approach, but often more exclusionary and close-minded than the philosophy promises.

Balance is the key. One foot in the past and one in the future usually has you standing right in the present moment.

[healey.cj]

...

[khedger]

[khedger]

[mike ansberry]

Is jazz dying? Maybe. Depends on whether you are talking about jazz as art or jazz as entertainment. I still believe that with the advent of bebop, jazz became an art form that is too difficult for the masses to appreciate. Most people want to hear something easy to understand with verses and choruses that repeat over and over and a relatively simple chord structure that doesn't require any effort to appreciate. They are "tone bathers", to quote Dr. McGuire.

I'm not saying I don't like jazz. Personally, it is my favorite type of music. My wife, who has heard me playing jazz for years, grew up a country and rock fan and has little appreciation for jazz.
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Music is a fire in your belly, fighting to get out. You'd better put a horn in the way before someone gets hurt.

[veery715]

IMO, it doesn't make any difference what you call it, whether it's cool, whether there's a stand with music on it, whether there is a predictable structure (ABA, head, solo, head..), whether it's drawn from the current musical rage or from one 75 years old; what matters is what's coming out of the horn/keyboard/drums/kazoo and whether you as an individual in the audience find it appealing, interesting, stimulating, inspiring, confounding, mystifying - any adjective which suggests you might leave that scene with music in your head, questions on your mind, in other words - your brain gets hooked on some aspect, processes it, and ends up pushing you to find a way to hear more.

There is someone to enjoy every performamce, whether it's kids real-booking it for the first time in public, or some really smart musician tickling the educated musical nerves of the sophisticated listener (Mehldau comes to mind here). What nobody enjoys is pretense, pompousness, performance-is-for-the-performer, and other variations of "attitude".

Audiences will show for performers and performances which garner popularity and create word-of-mouth mystique. How stuff gets promoted, what it costs, and whether it is appealing enough to get folks off their bums and out of the house, all goes to determining if you'll get an audience. It must be a pleasurable experience, perceived as worth the money, and unlike anything on television or the 'net, to be a success.

So how to reach them, how to entice them, and how to hook them - those are the questions we need to answer.

The bebop era was born when performers, many of whom were just plain bored, sought to stimulate themselves and a perceived sophisticated audience with rhythm and changes which were unpredictable, frenetic, and required some real work to both play and listen to. The same boredom made the jazz world fertile ground for drug-addiction. IMO, neither of those developments did any real good for jazz as a genre. Audiences who had flocked to big band swing era performances and could grok the music, were alienated by bebop's listener unfriendliness and a slump in jazz appreciation began which artists like Miles, Brubeck, Getz and Jobim were forced to overcome. They spurred a renewed interest which brought jazz to the White House and Lincoln Center. Innovative, stimulating music which made you want to move to it - that's what helped bring it back in the late 60s and early 70s. And that is what, I think, it will take now.

Recently I attended a latino music concert at Radio City. Most of the audience were on their feet, dancing in place and with their neighbors. There was a high mood, a huge crowd, and I think it was JAZZ too!
veery

[bg]

Keith,

I believe you are correct. Memorization is not a barometer of talent.

However, with improvising (vs. ensemble) there is another issue. The side of the brain involved in reading is engaged in an intellectual process. In improvising, it operates by "plugging-in" or applying theoretical concepts.
The other side, which is more intuitive, is engaged when playing "by ear".
This side knows the material in a different way, and is more free to react and interact when being creative. It also has more emotional access.

There is a huge difference in the way most people improvise when they
know a tune, versus when they are reading changes. This philosophy is quite unpopular today with students, and is sometimes equivocated right out of the picture. Let me assure you, this is the way Jazz was played before it entered the academy.

I'm now going to do that thing that some of my students hate. I'm going to bring up the way it was "back in the day".

I learned to play in small clubs in the midwest. The older musicians absolutely forbade the use of fake books or charts on the bandstand.
If someone didn't know a tune, they had the option of sitting out for that tune, or of trying to "hear it". When a young player reached for a book,
the whole room would go into an uproar; not just the musicians, but also the audience. The audience knew that reading on the stand was the embarrassing hallmark of the amateur. Amateurism was discouraged.

I understand that times have changed, and that relativism is the new self- esteem. Should everyone know "Bye Bye Blackbird"? OF COURSE!!!!
There is a canon of standards and jazz classics that are expected repertoire of any jazz musician worth his salt. I've been to Cairo, Quito,
Bangkok, Copenhagen.... they all knew "Bye Bye Blackbird" at the jam sessions. This doesn't mean one has to play this kind of repertoire at every gig. Your memorized repertoire is your stock-in-trade, your currency as a musician. If you want to play at the professional level,
you must begin memorizing song from all genres: Jazz(of all eras) Broadway, Pop tunes 1920s-present, Brasilian, Salsa etc. This is what the
big guys do. The guys who don't, are simply not operating at the same level.

What you do is up to you. My students have to memorize 20 tunes per semester. It's the most important requirement I make of them.

[ChopsGone]

Billy B, thank you so much for presuming that having opinions that might differ from yours means that I had completely missed the point. It's so nice to be reminded by some complete stranger what an incompetent buffoon I am.

I had a long, Kirkian reply hung up in posting courtesy of Comcast, so I'll do the short version. Much of my former career depended on very careful gathering and analysis of data, and development of systems to make practical use of the findings. I wanted to know what might have changed since the 2002 survey. Why not do as I did, and read both the 2002 SPPA and the 2008 update, then read the entire SPPA user's guide, with special emphasis placed on section 6?

http://www.nea.gov/research/SPPA/users-guide.pdf

Enjoy. I'm still curious about a usable definition of what the NEA considers jazz, but that doesn't really matter. I see the local jazz scene remaining quite lively, jazz clubs doing reasonably well considering the economic times, and jazz in a broad array of styles being played and enjoyed. To me, that's reality. And now I'll butt out without even saying those two little words I so long to say to you.
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Aubertins, Bessons, Calicchios, Courtois, Wild Things, Marcinkiewicz, Ogilbee Thumpet, DeNicola Puje, Kanstuls....

[Billy B]

Keith,

For years I have been a lead, commercial player. I dabbled in jazz, learned to play changes well enough to get by. I was right there with you in your views.
Recently I took the next step by memorizing, transposing to different keys, studying altered harmonies. The transformation has been amazing. I think Brad is on to something with his explaination of the mental process that occurs when the visual stimulus is removed.
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Bill Bergren

[ConnArtist]

[tommy t.]

[connicalman]

Here in Boston the radio station that defined FM rock radio just went off the air. WBCN, 104.1, is no more. Before the pinstriped suits took over and started worrying about market share, back when the DJ's had to have talent and develop an ear for introducing innovation in that genre, that station was a towering figure, a giant from whose shoulders the rest of the country got a view, and grew.

Now you can get satellite stations or on-line streamed options, but you're buying into a national taste-tested product. The regional flavor is gone.

See the parallel to this thread? Perhaps the demise of FM rock radio, as with newspapers, as with what we call Jazz, is only part the suits and the masses. Maybe it is just too easy, even for lovers of a particular genre, to flip a switch and get satisfaction.

The good news? I've read that many small local newspapers are succeeding. Same with local farms. As Tip O'Neil put it, 'all politics is local'. Maybe there's hope for music, too.
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[Billy B]

<The good news? I've read that many small local newspapers are succeeding. Same with local farms. As Tip O'Neil put it, 'all politics is local'. Maybe there's hope for music, too.>

This is exactly what I think has to happen.
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Bill Bergren

[JazzmanGIANT]

[westview1900]

[bg]

Yes and no.

They should be allowed, and even encouraged to perform as much as possible; everywhere: EXCEPT in the venues purporting to present professionals.

This is part of the current problem. If you are an amateur, there are now plenty of clubs that would love to put you on their schedule, especially if it
means they can pay nothing!

Back to the old days: WE USED TO CALL THIS "UNDERCUTTING" AND THE UNION USED TO HARASS THE CLUBS THAT WENT FOR THIS.

All bets are off now. I guess Jazz IS dead.