Do We Even Need Jazz Critics?

[Dr. Rat]

I for one would probably not have been able to get to the point where I feel I am now without critics helping to show the way - in my early days, particularly, Dan Morgenstern (primarily through liner notes) and Martin Williams, and than Ira Gitler (per-Jazz Masters of the 1940s); also Dick hadlock's book on the 1920s; and the collection Jazz Panorama. A critic who is good enough will send me back to the source, especially if he does not like something that I have liked (Larry and Bill Evans is a good example here); or will illuminate something clearly: read Mike Wellstood's notes to the Donald Lambert LPs. This, as I mentioned, has also been crucial to my understanding and enjoyment of film and theater (Stanley Kaufman and Richard Gilman). You might also, related to this topic, read the brilliant Susan Sonntag essay "Against Interpretation" which deals with many of the issues we are dealing with in this thread. Her point is that many critics, rather than accepting a work on its own terms, often apply very personal, and often irrelevant, standards in an attempt to make a work personally understandable. The mediocre critic, rather than get inside a work, will reduce it to the conventional, applying conventional concepts of meaning in place of a true depth of understanding. Here's a few relevant quotes: 1) from Beckett, I believe, on the requisite meaning for an artist: "He has nothing to say, only a way of saying it." 2) Poet Charles Olsen: "An object is its own meaning."

Words to live by.

Sontag's point of view is far from unassailable, and can easily be interpreted as a smokescreen for someone who wrote a self-consciously unreadable novel.

But where is the erotics of art? What do we imagine this to be? Where is the erotics of sex?

There is art, there is no erotics of art. There never will be an erotics of art, and if you asked me Sontag was being pretty silly in even suggesting the possibility. Unless of course she meant the sort of biological study of art proposed by EO Wilson in Consilliance. But I doubt that's what she meant.

If you asked me, some jazz criticism is better than most jazz. And interpretation doesn't kill things--if art is so fragile for you that someone interpreting it is a ravishment, then I'd say your appreciation of art is rather weak.

Sontag uses the over-interpretation of Kafka as an example of the heremenuetic ravishment of art, but what diference does it make? You are either affected by Kafka or you are not, regardless of whether someone say that the cockroach thing stems from early bedwetting experience.

Anyhow, "against interpretation" I interpret as longing to be sheltered from interpretation, which to me is the artist asking to have her cake and eat it, too.

Everyone should worship the art object because of its deep significance, but no one should ask what that significance might be. Art as religious mystery. I think we can do somewhat better than that.

--eric

[Christiern]

What I think we need less of is pompous analysis of jazz performances. Listen, enjoy, comment--if you wish--but don't strain yourself to figure out why.

I think jazz critics should express their own opinion, view performances from a perspective that only years of broad, eclectic listening can form, and do this with one aim: to guide the less experienced listener to a vantage point from which he or she can form their own opinion.

During my 28 years as a reviewer at Stereo Review, I assumed that readers eventually developed a pretty good picture of my likes and dislikes, and that they read my opinions with that knowledge to guide them. Reviewers have an enormous advantage in the fact that they are able to listen to virtually every available release--they should share that advantage with their readers/listeners.

Just some hastily entered thoughts.

[Joe]

A critic critiques the critical character:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/movies/02scot.html

[sheldonm]

I keep it simple: either I like the music or I do not. I could care less what others think, either way.

I like liner notes and informative/educational articles that critics sometimes write(like Larry Kart's Tristano Mosaic article that I'm reading now)), but when it gets into how good the the mucic is, that's up to me to decide and I do not need/want a critic evaluating my likes/dislikes.

Listening to and really enjoying a bunch of Pablo titles at the moment. I could GAS if critics do not like them.

There is an audiance for critics, but I'm not in attendance.

[AllenLowe]

"Against interpretation" has little to do with Dr. Rat's comments - and is a welcome antidote to the wrong kind of contextualization, the kind that drowns a work in academic obscurantism, critical careerism, and personal obsession -

[Dr. Rat]

"Against interpretation" has little to do with Dr. Rat's comments - and is a welcome antidote to the wrong kind of contextualization, the kind that drowns a work in academic obscurantism, critical careerism, and personal obsession -

Well, it's easy enough to read: Against Interpretation

I read it as not a condemnation of "excessive interpretation," but more or less an essay "against interpretation" as such.

      Transparence is the highest, most liberating value in art--and in criticism--today. Transparence means experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are. This is the greatness of, for example, the films of Bresson and Ozu and Renoir's The Rules of the Game.

[32]

          Once upon a time (say, for Dante), it must have been a revolutionary and creative move to design works of art so that they might be experienced on several levels. Now it is not. It reinforces the principle of redundancy that is the principal affliction of modern life.

[33]

          Once upon a time (a time when high art was scarce), it must have been a revolutionary and creative move to interpret works of art. Now it is not. What we decidedly do not need now is further to assimilate Art into Thought, or (worse yet) Art into Culture.

[34]

          Interpretation takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted, and proceeds from there. This cannot be taken for granted, now. Think of the sheer multiplication of works of art available to every one of us, superadded to the conflicting tastes and odors and sights of the urban environment that bombard our senses. Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life--its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness--conjoin to dull our sensory faculties. And it is in the light of the condition of our senses, our capacities (rather than those of another age), that the task of the critic must be assessed.

[35]

          What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.

[36]

          Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeezes more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.

[37]

          The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art--and, by analogy, our own experience--more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

          10

          In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.

          [1964]

I suppose one may interpret Sontag as AllenLowe does, but I don't see why anyone would have gotten excited over an essay with a theme as innocuous as that. She seems to me to be trying to push quite a bit farther than condemning the sort of interpretation nearly everyone is ready to condemn. She's suggesting a sort of neo-romantic take on art as the hotline to truth, beauty, the zeitgeist and/or all that.

--eric

[Simon Weil]

Critics are mediators. They mediate between the general public and the musician. And they're not just any old middle-man, they do add value - or at least they have the potential to add value. Like many other people, I absolutely depended on critics to tell me what was worth listening to when I came into the music (in my case, Charles Fox, broadcasting on the BBC was the guy who made all the difference). This can be just the received wisdom about certain recordings, but it also includes sound judgement about new developments - a key role for the critic

(If there are no new developments, that's another problem). I.E. You need critics if you're just starting IMHO.

But you get to a certain stage where you more or less know what's what in Jazz (or at least what you're interested in) - and then the value of the critic changes. Now he really has to be capable of telling you something new - or of letting you hear something in a new way. It is at this stage, and in this way, that the critic can "add value" for the experienced jazz fan - i.e just about everyone here. This is the stage at which, strictly speaking, one doesn't "need" critics - but one's experience is nevertheless capable of being substantially enriched by them.

The other factor is to do with pride. I'm sure most people here have the thought that they could do better (or at least the equal) of many published Jazz critics - So it pisses people off to have to treat critics as though they were something special, dignified by the title "critic", or a byline in a paper, or whatever.

Now I'm not a big fan of our current crop of critics (understatement), but the people who criticise them (which of course includes me) should think about their motivations too.

With all due respect.

Simon Weil

[Simon Weil]

Sontag was clearly a fine mind. I never took to what she wrote because her sensibility somehow seemed at odds with mine (the extracts above are like that) - but you have to respect her (at least I do).

And I felt I had lost something when she died.

Simon Weil

[Dr. Rat]

Charles Fox, broadcasting on the BBC was the guy who made all the difference

Reading Fox, Harrison and Thacker in the Essential Jazz Recordings was really important for me early on.

Do you know if any of the old fox BBC spots is available on the internet? I'd love to hear him on the radio.

--eric

[Alon Marcus]

First of all let's start from saying that anybody who listens to jazz automatically becomes a critic.

I think that we need critics in every field but most of the profesional critics are just taken too seriously by themselves. I prefer the objective and informative critic. I don't like critics that are trying to sell the ultimate truth.

...and a little quote that was attributed to Einstein:

Chemistry is a wonderful and interesting science, the problem is with chemists, they just can't understand it.

Much of it applies to jazz criticism.

[AllenLowe]

This is the core of her argument:

"Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeezes more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art--and, by analogy, our own experience--more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means."

it is a rather radical proposition given the way most criticism is performed today - especially since so much contemporary work mystifies people who look for the kind of "meaning" that they are accustomed to - and why Charles Olsen's comment,to those perplexed by his poetry, that "the object is it's own meaning" is so essential -

[Simon Weil]

Charles Fox, broadcasting on the BBC was the guy who made all the difference

Reading Fox, Harrison and Thacker in the Essential Jazz Recordings was really important for me early on.

Do you know if any of the old fox BBC spots is available on the internet? I'd love to hear him on the radio.

--eric

Well, there's some Charles Fox interviews available here - I haven't actually listened to them online, but I seem to remember liking the Art Blakey (may even have it on tape) one (it was ?an hour plus when broadcast).

Quality critic. Good broadcaster.

Simon Weil

Edited January 3, 2005 by Simon Weil

[Leeway]

I've seen any number of posts here and AAJ "against criticism." A lot of it strikes me as good old-fashioned American anti-intellectualism and know-nothingism. You know, the kind of thinking that proclaims," Everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten." Not to turn this into a Politics thread, but we see that kind of thinking (or lack thereof) in our current President, who seems to get positively ill when confronted with real ideas, let alone ideas that conflict with simplistic thinking and pre-held prejudices. Instead of learning to expand our intellectual horizons, many now wish to shrink them to a comfortable myopia. I guess it's a sign of the times.

[GregK]

Not to turn this into a Politics thread,

then why did you??

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Again, I have to point to the distinction between criticism and other writing.

If you are saying "Do we even need jazz writers?" that to me is a very different question - because you've now eliminated all historians, biographers, theoreticians, analysts, reporters, as well as the liner-note-writers, reviewers, in addition to the true critics. Hey, even the discographers - a friend is preparing a presentation and will be making the case that discography benefits *everyone* in jazz (not just the total nerds....).

Are there some people who look to get their viewpoint handed to them by a critic? Apparently yes. I've met some on the Internet. These are the people who are not open to listening, reading, or thinking for themselves. Some here have talked about how great criticism sends them back to the records - well, some people never bother to listen to the records. They just know the party line. That, I have a problem with. But one can't really blame the writer for how their work is being abused.

Writing on jazz can supply insight - one person's insight - which should never be taken to mean "the only insight" or "the true insight". Get your *own* insight (which still isn't the only or true insight) by experiencing things yourself. Then when you read something you'll be better able to appreciate it. And I like what Chuck wrote about being challenged - but I think some folks don't put up a fight. They're not challenged, they just live and die by the Penguin Guide (or whatever). When I read some of the works in the collections of Balliett or Kart or Morgenstern or Schuller, I have my own perspective on the subject that let me say, "Yes, I agree" or sometimes "No, but I understand that view" - but I am especially sensitive to what the writer's strengths and weaknesses are, and musical knowledge is an area that too many writers try to bluff their way through (so sometimes I say "What an idiot - he's out of his depth!"). Even someone who *does* know music like Schuller has faults because he's not a jazz player. Having done the research work, I have a pretty good idea of whether or not a writer did his homework, and in some areas I can spot sources because I spend so much time with those materials. A mediocre writer is unlikely to surprise me because the research will be shallow. What I appreciate is NOT hearing the same old story, but instead getting fresh perspective - thoughtful, reasoned perspective that has solid backing. For a start, I want to find someone who's done at least as much listening as I have - not less. I also put a lot of value on primary sources - let me hear from the folks who were *there* - not godawful Wynton Marsalis talking out his ass pretending he was there.

There are plenty of times when I will hear *about* someone before hearing that person. I don't make any judgement at that point other than to say, "Hmmm - sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out." Then, when I get the chance to experience whatever it is, then I form my own opinion. Like Larry Kart mentioned Anita Brown recently - I'm interested in checking out her record. I don't know that I will agree with him (particularly with regard to Maria Schneider, which was the context of the mention, since Larry hasn't heard Schneider's latest album - which I would say could very well change some of the views he expressed), but I know that Larry has ears and gets a lot of things. He doesn't have *my* ears, which is why *I* need to hear the record. An aesthetic experience cannot be second-hand. What works for me might not for him and vice versa, which is great. Now, once I check it out, I might want to discuss it further with him, and with others who have heard it.

Mike

[Simon Weil]

...good old-fashioned American anti-intellectualism...

My experiences in Jazz fit with de Tocqueville.

Simon Weil

Edited January 4, 2005 by Simon Weil

[AllenLowe]

oh, let him get political (as long as he agrees with me) - he's pointing out, correctly, a very American strain of anti-intellectualism -

[medjuck]

Well since I started this thread let me jump in: I certainly don't think of my self as an anti-intellectual. I was an academic with a Phd for many years. I guess I still have the PhD though nobody but my mother ever calls me Doctor. I think my biggest influences were Marshall Mcluhan and Robertson Davies (who were my teachers) along with Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag.

I'm certainly not against analysis, but I do think a lot of Jazz criticism is just one-upmanship.

And what's that famous quote: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture".

[Michael Fitzgerald]

And writing about writing about music is like..................

(Sometimes we even get into writing about writing about writing about music here)

Mike

[JSngry]

And writing about writing about music is like..................

Driving a car from your bed to your toilet?

[A Lark Ascending]

Speaking as a card-carrying non-intellectual I can vouch for a suspicion of intellectualism well beyond the USA (in the UK intellectualism is perceived is rather too French to be of any value [one of those smiley's denoting an ironic comment rather than a comment expected to be taken at face value!]).

So much intellectualism is so joyless. Those who perceive themselves as intellectuals seem to delight in what they dislike, the limits of their taste, their distance from the public at large.

Most people (and I think I can generalise in this instance) enjoy music on an emotional level. Many also enjoy it on an intellectual level; or use their intellect to unpick music that interests them but does not immediately connect emotionally.

It comes as a real irritation to see music that has connected with you in a genuine, honest, emotional way belittled by a self-proclaimed 'intellectual'.

Critics/writers/commentators or whatever you want to call them who can communicate the joy of listening to music get all my gratitude. They enthuse me. Those who can illuminate it through work, research, study put at the service of the music, the musicians, the listeners are to be as valued as any other contributers to society.

Those 'intellectuals' who sit on the sidelines picking fault, preening themselves with regard to their discrimination, stewing in their own perceived superiority deserve nothing but ridicule.

I suspect the age of the self-contained 'intellectual' was left behind in the last century.

[Apologies for my inability to name drop leading 'intellectuals']

[Simon Weil]

And what's that  famous quote: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture".

Said by Frank Zappa. He also said "Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny".

Which make Jazz criticism somewhat like:

Driving a car from your bed to your toilet

Enough to drive you round the (U) bend.

Simon Weil

[My son the doctor! Oy veh]

Edited January 4, 2005 by Simon Weil

[AllenLowe]

SUV or compact?

[Simon Weil]

Armored ( or amour-ed?).

Simon Weil

[JSngry]

And what's that  famous quote: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture".

Said by Frank Zappa.

Open to debate, apparently: http://home.pacifier.com/~ascott/they/tamildaa.htm