be.jazz comments
Is it any wonder that "Europeans" get the idea that here in the US jazz has become a repertory art form? Certainly the most visible practitioners aren't up to anything other than protecting turf and claiming "ownership" of the music. The continued arguments about Ornette and the use of glaringly simplistic terms like "free jazz" and "the avant garde" (which is frikkin hilarious, considering "the avant garde" is 50 years old!) show just how ignorant even American musicians are regarding creative improvised music.
by the way, stunning blog, thanks,
peter
I think "avant garde" is just a useful taxonomical term, like "classical music."
Aside from that..."Grrr, grrr, grrr!"
And one more cheap shot before I go: when you (plural) start wildly throwing around the word "ignorant," you sound more than anything like a freeper.
On second thought, scratch "plural"...the above was really only in response to Peter's ranting.
Hi Peter,
Thanks for visiting and for the compliment.
The thing is, I think that the Euro "US = repertory" view comes from ignorance and perhaps ideology. Any serious listener has to go beyond "the most visible practitioners." Also, many Europeans love Wynton Marsalis (there are two statues of him, one in France and and a new one in Spain).
Many European musicians regularly cross the Atlantic to spend short or long amounts of time in New York. They do so because they love that scene, its ambiance, its history, its energy.
I think none of these people would make the kind of generalised pronouncements Douglas reports. So I think only ignorant and/or arrogant people would.
Resistance to free jazz certainly continues, but perhaps it is easy to get an inflated sense of how much of it there is?
For me, "avant-garde" is a contextual term. Louis Armstrong was avant-garde at one time, but isn't any more, just like Ornette's original quartet. Free jazz kind of is too: free from what?
Hi- Godoggo, what's a "freeper"?
Hmmm...maybe the ferocity of my opinions concerning creative improvised and composed music and the culture that has grown up around it has to do at least in part with the ferocity of the argument in the music community where I live and practice (Santa Fe, NM).
Also, with challenges I've faced in regard to a "jazz" radio show I do here (www.ksfr.org) regarding "balance" in programming (i.e, I'm in the odd position of having a green light to play some "outside" stuff but not "too much," where "outside" is first off a very vague aesthetic category and secondly rather narrowly construed, with, for example, Brotherhood of Breath being "crazy").
(and a million thanks to destination-out.com for providing some playable tracks, Randy Weston for example, and some that can't ever be played...Kaoru Abe anyone?)
And I'd gladly *forget* the whole Marsalis thing altogether if people weren't quoting them...Darius Brubeck's quote from the JazzTimes article about "earning" the (whatever) to play (whatever) is egregious.
thanks, peace
Peter
A freeper is literally a habitue of Free Republic (here's the Wikipedia page) and, perhaps, more generally someone on the Internet who displays a freeper-like mind set. I've been frequently annoyed by the habit that many right-wingers have of accusing anyone who disagrees with them of igrorance, though they certainly don't have a monopoly on this reflex.
I do think it was a positive move to call out jazz as "America's classical music" and move it into performance halls as well as night clubs. The old "avant garde" performers themselves were the ones who really made this an issue by slamming the "retro" crowd in interviews. When I was in NYC during the late 1990's it all seemed quite healthy to me for the young players to be jamming with all those boppers and swing players before they made their way to the great beyond. I do not consider it a bad thing that some jazz remains danceable.
Sayeth D. Douglas:
"all that crazy experimental freedom in the 60s and 70s. We're learning to harness that and most 'free' music has some sense of structure now."
Did anyone else have moment for pause with that?
With respect to the 60's and 70's, how much of that music was 'crazy'?
How much of it was (when presented) an 'experiment?'
Was it 'crazy' that musicians were exercising this 'experimental freedom'?
Who says the music that came out of that "crazy experimental freedom" didn't have 'some sense of structure'? For all we know, much of it had an *actual* structure (though it may have only been known to the musicians)
How exactly is it (now) being 'harnessed?'
Who is doing the harnessing? (Who is the "we" he's referring to? His band? His demographic? His countrymen?)
What does this harnessed 'sense of structure' sound like? Does it sound different than an actual 'structure?' Can you really have a music *without* structure?
I want to understand, but I do not understand. I'm not trying to bust grammatical balls or hurt anyone's feelings here either. Honest! What is he saying? What does he mean? Who reads bloomberg.com? I want to understand!
sjz
"when it hits you, you feel no pain"
Hi sjz, thanks for visiting over here. I encourage everyone to visit " It Is Not Mean If It Is True (Attack Attack Attack)".
With respect to the 60's and 70's, how much of that music was 'crazy'?
I took crazy in a loose, slangy, slightly ironic sense.
How much of it was (when presented) an 'experiment?'
Hard to say. What counts as an experiment in music? "Giant Steps"?
Who says the music that came out of that "crazy experimental freedom" didn't have 'some sense of structure'?
Well, Free Jazz had a definite structure, many other pieces did too, as a quick perusal of Destination:Out will show. But is calling something unstructured an automatic insult?
How exactly is it (now) being 'harnessed?'
I think DD implies how: "What we do now on the frontier of composed and improvised music"
Who is doing the harnessing?
I assume him, his peers and his mentors.
Hello- for some reason, the advert attached to this comment string for me is for "Caring, Aggressive Divorce Lawyers." Maybe there's a cheeky joke from the universe in there, as these conversations lately tend to go sour pretty fast. I've been boatin' around on the Net and I've found a surprising amount of heated this and that, a-fussin' and a-fightin', about a music that I thought was old hat, thanks to Hat Hut, haha. It would be great to hear specifically what Dave Douglas means by his more general statement, and I think sjz's questions are good ones. As for "jazz as America's classical music," to each his own and all, but it's that word "classical" that gets me, that desperation for validation, the imprimatur of legitimacy. Did jazz have to get that stamp to move from clubs to concert halls? And do we need the whole pantheon/canon idea perpetuated? As for dancing, check out Cecil Taylor's interaction with one of the jazz police (from http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/...e.php?id=1250):
CT: Could you dance to James Brown?
JP: Well, sure.
CT: Could you dance to Albert Ayler?
(silence)
CT: Well, I can dance to both...
Hard to say. What counts as an experiment in music? "Giant Steps"?
>I don't think "Giant Steps" really counts as an 'experiment.' Ahead of its time, revolutionary (etc.) yes, but an 'experiment' no. Experiment (to me at least) suggests "well, I don't know how this is going to turn out, but here we go anyway: And-a-one, and-a-two..." Not that there's anything wrong with experiments, or experimental records, but it seems we've lost our grip on what 'experimental' really means.
Well, Free Jazz had a definite structure, many other pieces did too, as a quick perusal of Destination:Out will show. But is calling something unstructured an automatic insult?
>It's only an insult to those pieces which are structured. And again, can any music 'have no structure?'
How exactly is it (now) being 'harnessed?'
I think DD implies how: "What we do now on the frontier of composed and improvised music"
>so long as we (I'm) sharing my (and E.M. Forster's) feelings, I wonder if DD would describe his music in quite the same manner at a dinner table with John Coltrane, Lowell Davidson, Milford Graves, Cecil Taylor, Bill Dixon Giuseppi Logan (etc.)
The tone (if not the actual grammar) of DD's quote suggests (to me at least) that he has taken an accounting of the music of the 60's, taken the necessary "corrective actions" and come up with a better, more stable 'version 2.0'.
But then again, in these troubled times, Dave Douglass can hardly be considered public enemy number one.
> For all we know, much of it had an *actual* structure (though it may have only been known to the musicians)
We have a problem here in regards to locating 'structure'. Does structure exist in design, in execution, or in reception?
If we're not careful, we're in danger of accepting the definition of structure as it has been defined by the West European Concert Tradition; that of a structure somehow magically embedded by the score-maker in the 'music itself.' There's nothing wrong with this definition of course, but I think we should take a moment to think about what we lose by accepting this definition into Jazz (or any other tradition outside the West European Concert).
> Can you really have a music *without* structure?
Possibly not, but as I expressing above, which particular definition of structure? Or maybe I should ask: Whose structure?
> But is calling something unstructured an automatic insult?
Perhaps it should not be an insult. In practice, however, it is. The same way as, say, in some times and places, to be black _should_ not be a problem, but in practice the it is a category of oppression.
S,
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