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51 minutes ago, ep1str0phy said:

This is kind of worth some discussion, but not just here--it demands a degree of scrutiny from the actual performing music community in New York and elsewhere. I stayed very, very far away from this part of the issue when the debate was at its most raging, because heated accusations and developing meaningful, dialogic relationships with other musicians do not mix. 

The sad, practical reality of personal comportment in professional jazz music is often just that--kind of whack, sanctimonious, and unreflective. There's a bunch of stuff about glass houses and looking like a fool that--and I'll only speak for myself here--I'm not interested in participating in. I hope that others, many more esteemed than I, can operate on the same frequency. 

There as a useful point that Iverson has classically only real been interested in documenting and discussing a particular locus of jazz performance, and so nurturing some sort of panoptic scholarship isn't really his responsibility. On the other hand, Iverson has developed a critical voice in this music that in some way outsizes his instrumental contributions, so a degree of self-awareness would be kind of neat.

I saw some very well-respected musicians (people for whom I harbor deep personal respect) piling on Iverson in some pretty unfair ways. I heard the accusation that he never recorded with a female musician, which is patently untrue:

 

Agreed. 

I also thought that Iverson's knee-jerk post on Mary Lou Williams in reaction to criticism that he had not featured a woman on his blog was ill-considered.  In my opinion, the Mary Lou Williams post operated to support claims that he was sexist.  The post suggested that only a firestorm of criticism would prompt him to post about a woman artist and that he would have never done so organically.

While Mary Lou Williams is great, she has been dead for a long while.  In my opinion, Iverson would have been better served by responding to the criticism by speaking with a few woman musicians who are around today and getting their takes on the Glasper controversy.  That would have made for good reading and probably would have extinguished some of the fires that he unsuccessfully tried to put out.  I believe that he might have discovered that women musicians have greater perspective and are generally much less predisposed to outrage than you might believe if you hang out on Twitter too much. 

 

 

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59 minutes ago, sonnyhill said:

Agreed. 

I also thought that Iverson's knee-jerk post on Mary Lou Williams in reaction to criticism that he had not featured a woman on his blog was ill-considered.  In my opinion, the Mary Lou Williams post operated to support claims that he was sexist.  The post suggested that only a firestorm of criticism would prompt him to post about a woman artist and that he would have never done so organically.

While Mary Lou Williams is great, she has been dead for a long while.  In my opinion, Iverson would have been better served by responding to the criticism by speaking with a few woman musicians who are around today and getting their takes on the Glasper controversy.  That would have made for good reading and probably would have extinguished some of the fires that he unsuccessfully tried to put out.  I believe that he might have discovered that women musicians have greater perspective and are generally much less predisposed to outrage than you might believe if you hang out on Twitter too much. 

 

 

I feel like this is 100% correct--I don't have much to add, I just wanted to say that. What began as a quizzical and kind of off-color interview exploded downward into hole digging and a bunch of ill-conceived apologies. Again, Iverson wasn't under any mandate to cover woman musicians in the first place, but the Williams post just seemed to reinforce the fact that that realm was kind of a social and critical blind spot for the Do the Math blog. I'd love to hear responses from some women in the community--I felt like most of the discussion was, in the most circular of senses, just a bunch of men yelling at each other about feminism. 

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Little to no interest in Glasper, Iverson or Iyer here but the idea that TBP is "smooth jazz" seems ridiculous. They are also not young lions, at least not anymore.

Iverson seemed to come off with the worst look of anybody -- smarmy know-it-all white guy -- which is pretty telling, considering Glasper reached ultimate cornball in this kerfluffle. But yes, a bunch of jerky dudes yelling at each other about feminism indeed. Much like white guys yelling at each other about levels of "wokeness" to the plight(s) of people of color. It's a problem.

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On 4/12/2017 at 1:52 AM, robertoart said:

True. 

I guess I picture an audience that probably also listens to The Necks. Not that there's anything wrong with that Necks lovers!! 

Actually, the cultural parallel that comes to mind is Medeski Martin & Wood.

20 hours ago, ep1str0phy said:

I feel like this is 100% correct--I don't have much to add, I just wanted to say that. What began as a quizzical and kind of off-color interview exploded downward into hole digging and a bunch of ill-conceived apologies. Again, Iverson wasn't under any mandate to cover woman musicians in the first place, but the Williams post just seemed to reinforce the fact that that realm was kind of a social and critical blind spot for the Do the Math blog. I'd love to hear responses from some women in the community--I felt like most of the discussion was, in the most circular of senses, just a bunch of men yelling at each other about feminism. 

There were lots of responses by women musicians and fans on twitter and on Facebook.  The reason "most of the discussion" seemed like "just a bunch of men yelling at each other about feminism" isn't a signal that women weren't interested/engaged in the discussion - it's that we're only hearing the people with the biggest megaphones, who happen to be men. :(

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2 hours ago, Guy Berger said:

There were lots of responses by women musicians and fans on twitter and on Facebook.  The reason "most of the discussion" seemed like "just a bunch of men yelling at each other about feminism" isn't a signal that women weren't interested/engaged in the discussion - it's that we're only hearing the people with the biggest megaphones, who happen to be men. :(

Well, right--and I should probably clarify what I mean. Yes, there was a significant volume of women penning think pieces and responses in the wake of the Glasper drama, but the public visibility of these responses was relatively low. To compound this, the level of discourse across the board was pretty abstract and often messy. The Michelle Mercer piece was pretty widely traded, but the women in the article were random Facebook commentators, of all things--Iyer, meanwhile, was quoted in name and written about at (sort-of) length. Sarah Deming's made the rounds, but that was a woman addressing her husband's very public crisis--and not some sort of comprehensive essay meant to balance the volume of responses from male musicians and writers (nor did it mean to be). 

This take is probably pretty reductionist, I admit--but this debacle says as much about the state of 21st century jazz journalism as it does remind us of some of the embedded gender inequities in the music. It was like that BAM episode all over again. The course of this broader discussion was way more about public reprisal than ameliorating any social inequities or righting the imbalanced coverage of women in the music. 

Please tell me I'm wrong, because I'd love to think that this discussion led to the start of a new jazz festival centered on women composers, or that the next time a prominent interviewer who receives Glasper's awkward thoughts on the place of women in jazz, he or she sees fit to follow-up by interviewing an actual woman in jazz. Or maybe, you know, glass houses and all that, we can talk about why people having discussions about feminism and progressivism tend to record almost exclusively with male musicians, and so on. 

Edited by ep1str0phy
horrendous grammar
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1 hour ago, ep1str0phy said:

this debacle says as much about the state of 21st century jazz journalism as it does remind us of some of the embedded gender inequities in the music.

I think it says more about the state of 21st century Western Civilization than it does anything. Get off the Facebook and back into the clubs, all genders, leave THAT part of it behind for sure, but people would be better served overall by less verbal philosophy and more hanging out in the nightclub. Feel the chemistry in person, all peoples.

What? No more nightclubs? Well now, cart, meet horse, y'all get something done, please, enough of this!!!!!!

Collapsed-Horse-in-Grangetown.jpg

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interesting to me on a self-serving level, because I may be the only male bandleader who has specifically, and recently, done TWO major recording projects in which the political statement was made about the need for male jazz players to stop discriminating against women musicians and to start actually hiring them. TWO. But I cannot get someone like Mercer to pay attention. One project is out, the other some time later this year. And the point I make is that this was not tokenism but an understanding of my own personal need to expand my artistic horizons. So Vijay and Iverson - who have the advantage over me of money and actual bookings - could easily do same.

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Anthony Braxton, Harris Eisenstadt, Taylor Ho Bynum and many others seem to have no issue with working with female musicians on the regular.

Not to have this descend in to men having a pissing contest about who got there first, like 'working with females' is some sort of musical innovation.

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FWIW, I think the issue isn't so much that there are too few women participating in the music as with the lack of recognition and perspective accorded the tremendous number of women who are actively performing jazz and improvised music in the modern day. I'd say a solid 75% of projects I've participated in as of late have featured at least one woman on the bandstand, and that's often incidental rather than deliberate. 

If I had to guess--and I could be wrong here--but a lot of this maybe/probably has to do with the dint of jazz scholarship and and the vestiges of jazz hypermasculinity in and among performers, critics, and promoters. If we're in the business of fetishizing midcentury music, the traces of midcentury values are not far behind. We'd like to live in the 21st century and say that people are hired without regard to gender or race or creed or whatever, but, well... 

The "women are delicate" thing is also super weird and archaic sounding to me--i.e., women aren't bass players or drummers, they're usually piano players, and so on. That phenomenon itself is embedded in extant social prejudices regarding what it is or isn't proper for a woman to do in this society. Try telling Myra Melford or Joanne Brackeen that they should be playing delicately, jesus.

Also--also--lest this devolve into a "white males have had their day"-type thing--as a (male) POC, I recognize that "social justice railroading" often contravenes fair and efficient dialogue, and that discussions that devolve into accusation and retaliation do not equate to amelioration or positive change. 

In this instance, it's not about fairness per se so much as accuracy and representing the world as it is. 21st century jazz is often way more diverse, equal, and colorful than these kinds of debates--and, for that matter, the "dominant jazz narrative"--would suggest.

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2 hours ago, JSngry said:

I think his remarks were precise, caring, genuine. BTW, one of Chicago's better tenor saxophonists for some years has been Juli Wood. She takes no prisoners.
 

http://www.juliwoodsax.com/moovin-and-groovin/

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"women are delicate" and "I have experienced with other women, however, a kind of going overboard to try and assert the Yang part of themselves, more so than necessary, to the point of abandoning their own delicacy as women. I worked with a pianist who would do this and I would mention it in a real professional way that she was neglecting that part of her nature."  are not even the same sentiment, although maybe to today's ears they are?

I mean, I've been programmed (mostly by self) to believe that a balance within one's self is a good thing, that the more balnced you were, the more, uh...balanced a person you would be.. Now, if it was Joe Hardon telling some chick to not be so rough, ok, that's gonna be ALL kinds of WTF?, but it's not Joe Hardon, it's Joe Henderson, himself a player who was not unaware of the different elements to be found inside, including delicacy. I get that times change, and so do people's perceptions of both inside and outside, but I'd hate to think that there's still no room for artist-to-artist heart-to-hearts about projections of personality, and "i don't know that what you're playing is really all of who you are, what do you think?", I mean, yeah, that's a really limited-access zone for a conversation, but...those are talks that can be had, and Joe Henderson would not have been somebody I would would exclude from that access. ok? Unless you're going to be one of those "fuck everybody, this is who i am, if you can't handle it, fuck off, yeah, this means you Joe Henderson, you're part of everybody, EVERYBODY, understand?" We all know people like that, and how do they end up? So determined to not be pigeonholed that they end up unable to simply fit in. Anywhere. Ever. Wearing a perpetual Personality Condom. Maybe that's the right approach for these times in which we live in, but I'm old, don't plan on living another 61 years, and really don't see going there now.

Nor do I ever plan on "clitoris" becoming a verb. No in this lifetime.

 

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the point for me is that, as I was told by more than one women musician, they are generally not first call, and every one of them has had an experience of being called by a male musician for a 'rehearsal' that was really a 'date.'

White males tend to hire white males; people tend to work with people who are like themselves. I believe in affirmative action and its principles. And I think one has to get beyond one's normal comfort zone. I have done this repeatedly over the years (I was a little frightened of Hemphill because of that bare-chested picture of him with the "I want to kill you" look. But I figured what the hell and just called him up).  The best tenor player if have heard in 20 years is a 22 year old woman who works a full time job at Trader Joe's. My favorite baritone player is someone I would never have played with but for my active search for women musicians, and my favorite drummer was located in the same way.

So, I am not pissing with anyone, just glad I did it and proud of the results.

 

 

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"women are delicate" and "I have experienced with other women, however, a kind of going overboard to try and assert the Yang part of themselves, more so than necessary, to the point of abandoning their own delicacy as women. I worked with a pianist who would do this and I would mention it in a real professional way that she was neglecting that part of her nature."  are not even the same sentiment, although maybe to today's ears they are?

I mean, I've been programmed (mostly by self) to believe that a balance within one's self is a good thing, that the more balnced you were, the more, uh...balanced a person you would be.. Now, if it was Joe Hardon telling some chick to not be so rough, ok, that's gonna be ALL kinds of WTF?, but it's not Joe Hardon, it's Joe Henderson, himself a player who was not unaware of the different elements to be found inside, including delicacy. I get that times change, and so do people's perceptions of both inside and outside, but I'd hate to think that there's still no room for artist-to-artist heart-to-hearts about projections of personality, and "i don't know that what you're playing is really all of who you are, what do you think?", I mean, yeah, that's a really limited-access zone for a conversation, but...those are talks that can be had, and Joe Henderson would not have been somebody I would would exclude from that access. ok? Unless you're going to be one of those "fuck everybody, this is who i am, if you can't handle it, fuck off, yeah, this means you Joe Henderson, you're part of everybody, EVERYBODY, understand?" We all know people like that, and how do they end up? So determined to not be pigeonholed that they end up unable to simply fit in. Anywhere. Ever. Wearing a perpetual Personality Condom. Maybe that's the right approach for these times in which we live in, but I'm old, don't plan on living another 61 years, and really don't see going there now.

Nor do I ever plan on "clitoris" becoming a verb. No in this lifetime.

 

I may in fact be looking at this through a more contemporary lens (i.e., applying modern standards to "premodern" sentiments), but I also think that that's instructive with regard to this particular conversation. 

Part of the reason that this Glasper incident exploded so horrifically is that Iverson was reluctant to editorialize the interview. He even invoked Notes and Tones in one of the response posts ("That's the tradition I want to be in, and frankly the tradition I most respect: "Warts and all."), the implication being that honesty affords is its own sort of accolade. That's fair and well, and I think that a music entrenched in complicated racial, political, sexual, etc. dynamics benefits from a degree of candor--but, and I'm sure many will agree, contextualization has always been important. I mean, that Art Blakey quote about Buddy Rich ("The only way he can swing is from a rope.") is absolutely incendiary, but it sounds far less militant--natural, even--within the framework of the actual interview. 

Apropos of that--and to add some actual nuance to my initial criticism--Joe Henderson, like Blakey, gets a pass, sure. Henderson's music emanates from a historical and social continuum, a time period, and performance practice that necessitates that one address gender equality as exceptional rather than obvious.

In terms of what Joe actually says within the context of that conversation--quizzical at best, at least for 2017. Martin was prompting Henderson, so the weirdness is dialogic--but the fact that the conversation shifted so quickly to softness vs. hardness, manhood vs. womanhood, delicacy vs. indelicacy, etc. is unfortunate. When he talks about the pianist who would assert the "Yang" part of herself to the degree that she was "neglecting" her own delicacy as a woman--he's basically saying she's a basher, yes? I can't imagine him saying that J.C. Moses, or Beaver Harris, or Bobby Battle, etc. "brought too much manhood to the table"--he'd probably just say that that dude was heavy-handed or something. 

My problem isn't with Joe, who is comes across as presciently progressive within the context of his hiring practices--it's more the tenor of the conversation, and the notion that, again, unrepentant honesty is its own biblical fact/is its own virtue, which is bullshit. 

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3 hours ago, ep1str0phy said:

I may in fact be looking at this through a more contemporary lens (i.e., applying modern standards to "premodern" sentiments), but I also think that that's instructive with regard to this particular conversation. 

Part of the reason that this Glasper incident exploded so horrifically is that Iverson was reluctant to editorialize the interview. He even invoked Notes and Tones in one of the response posts ("That's the tradition I want to be in, and frankly the tradition I most respect: "Warts and all."), the implication being that honesty affords is its own sort of accolade. That's fair and well, and I think that a music entrenched in complicated racial, political, sexual, etc. dynamics benefits from a degree of candor--but, and I'm sure many will agree, contextualization has always been important. I mean, that Art Blakey quote about Buddy Rich ("The only way he can swing is from a rope.") is absolutely incendiary, but it sounds far less militant--natural, even--within the framework of the actual interview. 

Apropos of that--and to add some actual nuance to my initial criticism--Joe Henderson, like Blakey, gets a pass, sure. Henderson's music emanates from a historical and social continuum, a time period, and performance practice that necessitates that one address gender equality as exceptional rather than obvious.

In terms of what Joe actually says within the context of that conversation--quizzical at best, at least for 2017. Martin was prompting Henderson, so the weirdness is dialogic--but the fact that the conversation shifted so quickly to softness vs. hardness, manhood vs. womanhood, delicacy vs. indelicacy, etc. is unfortunate. When he talks about the pianist who would assert the "Yang" part of herself to the degree that she was "neglecting" her own delicacy as a woman--he's basically saying she's a basher, yes? I can't imagine him saying that J.C. Moses, or Beaver Harris, or Bobby Battle, etc. "brought too much manhood to the table"--he'd probably just say that that dude was heavy-handed or something. 

My problem isn't with Joe, who is comes across as presciently progressive within the context of his hiring practices--it's more the tenor of the conversation, and the notion that, again, unrepentant honesty is its own biblical fact/is its own virtue, which is bullshit. 

Wonder if Joe was talking about Joanne Brackeen?

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If he was, and if you want to take it to mean that she got bashy sometimes to an uncomfortable degree, I'll not disagree. To me, she often enough sounded like somebody who had to pee but couldn't get up and go because it was, you know, the set. Thant's not a quality I associate with any gender, but it is how Joanne Brackeen has often enough struck me, as wigging on the bench because the bladder sought in vain the relief of a healthy urination almost too lon denied.

Ancient Dynasty was a helluva a record for them both, though, so calmer head and drier benches prevailed.

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1 hour ago, JSngry said:

If he was, and if you want to take it to mean that she got bashy sometimes to an uncomfortable degree, I'll not disagree. To me, she often enough sounded like somebody who had to pee but couldn't get up and go because it was, you know, the set. Thant's not a quality I associate with any gender, but it is how Joanne Brackeen has often enough struck me, as wigging on the bench because the bladder sought in vain the relief of a healthy urination almost too lon denied.

Ancient Dynasty was a helluva a record for them both, though, so calmer head and drier benches prevailed.

Now that's jazz criticism at its best. :g

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