Making a Case for the ‘Cult’ of Jazz

[Larry Kart]

You're over-thinking this. The reason people, young and old, don't bat an eye is not because they tolerate or accept jazz music, it's because we are inundated with music everywhere we go and nobody pays any attention to any of it.

I get weird looks from people all the time because I ask for music to be turned down in restaurants or the doctor's office or the gas station, etc. Most people don't even notice it's there.

Don't want to come on like a grumpy old man, but it drives me crazy when I go to a club or bar where good live jazz (or any good live music) is being played, and the millisecond a set ends, recorded music begins, typically at a volume high enough to pretty much prevent conversation this side of shouting between people seated right next to each other. I know, I should either turn up or turn off my hearing aid.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Absolutely. Resist Authority. Fight the power. Make up your own mind. Don't accept that even those who argue authoritatively, sanely and persuasively (such as yourself) are necessarily right.

.

It's late and I can't be asked to write an explanation better than Jim's (and I'm probably unable to, anyway).

What will it take to make me happy? Equally simple - for people to wake up and get a grip on how they're being played. Once that happens you can choose the whens and hows of how you get played, because let's face it, sometimes the good of getting played outweighs the bad. But it needs to be a voluntary act.

The message is, don't let anyone's (even Jim's) greater expertise or knowledge make up your mind for you.

MG

[Chuck Nessa]

Is there a sign-up list for the cult? I can't find it.

So much energy spent on nothing.

[seeline]

About recorded "background music": that's been going on for a long, long time now, so there's nothing new (IMO) to rail about. (I'm in my 50s and can remember it from when everyone called it "Muzak," after the corporation that more or less branded the contemporary idea of "background music.")

Besides, though a lot of us keep saying "nobody pays any attention to it," we're just throwing our ideas about it out on the table. It's not as if I (or anyone else here) really knows these things, in terms of hard factual evidence.

I think I'm going to order a copy of this book.

An ironic thing: a *lot* of pre-19th c. classical music was actually written with the express goal of being "background music" - Telemann's Tafelmusik, for example. But we now listen to a lot of these works as concert pieces, which makes me think ???

Edited July 6, 2008 by seeline

[Chuck Nessa]

An ironic thing: a *lot* of pre-19th c. classical music was actually written with the express goal of being "background music" - Telemann's Tafelmusik, for example. But we now listen to a lot of these works as concert pieces, which makes me think ???

The court ensembles of the 18th century did not follow you into the lobby, elevator, hallway, room or the breakfast counter in the morning.

[seeline]

True enough - but I still have to wonder why we now take that music so "seriously," so to speak. (Me, too.)

On the Muzak (etc.) thing, this looks interesting... (I haven't read it yet, though.)

and I'm no fan of Muzak or "easy listening" radio stations, either.

Edited July 6, 2008 by seeline

[Chuck Nessa]

True enough - but I still have to wonder why we now take that music so "seriously," so to speak. (Me, too.)

On the Muzak (etc.) thing, this looks interesting... (I haven't read it yet, though.)

and I'm no fan of Muzak or "easy listening" radio stations, either.

If those guys back then didn't take the shit seriously, Mozart, Vivaldi, Bach and a bunch of folks would not have survived.

[seeline]

Well hey, they took it seriously enough to dine by it, boat by it, play it during fireworks displays, and who knows what all else... But it does strike me as slightly ironic that a lot of these pieces are performed as center-stage productions today, rather than as incidental music.

But that whole train of thought leads to something quite different than supposed open hostility to jazz...

Edited July 6, 2008 by seeline

[Shawn]

About recorded "background music": that's been going on for a long, long time now, so there's nothing new (IMO) to rail about. (I'm in my 50s and can remember it from when everyone called it "Muzak," after the corporation that more or less branded the contemporary idea of "background music.")

Muzak changed their tune from "background music" to what they branded initially as "foreground music" when they switched from the elevator music (known as environmental) to original artist offerings. After about a decade of calling it foreground music they again rebranded, changed the logo, moved their headquarters to Charlotte and started calling it "Audio Architecture" (the entire slogan was "Creating experiences with Audio Architecture). I should know, I worked for them for 7 years. Actually a pretty cool company all things considered. When I left, the "environmental" music was less than 2% of the business.

Edited July 7, 2008 by Shawn

[seeline]

This New Yorker article deals with all that in some depth - I had no idea (until this evening) that the company had been in existence for so long, nor any idea of what it does today... it's fascinating stuff.

What did you do when you worked for them?

[Hot Ptah]

My impression is that Metheny was simply telling the students that it will be more difficult than they might have imagined to play jazz for a living, because there is not much of a market for it in today's "culture". and that they will need to be strong and persevere.

The rest of the discussion here is somewhat off his point, I think.

I don't know that Metheny's point, if I have understood it correctly, is so radical. Richard Davis, the jazz professor at the University of Wisconsin, has been telling his jazz students for decades now that they have to be prepared to play all kinds of music, not only jazz, if they want to make a living in music, because the session opportunities which existed in the 1950s and 1960s have not been there for a long time. That hardly seems like a controversial idea.

Except for Metheny's emphasis on the words "hostile" and "culture" and "cult", he is making much the same point, I think.

I have read some of Metheny's other speeches and he does tend to go for dramatics, to emphasize a point with colorful or perhaps over-the-top language. Maybe that's what it takes to get through to an auditorium full of students, or what he imagines it takes. In my college teaching experience I have often wished I literally had some firecrackers to wake up some of the students while I was presenting material.

[Jazzmoose]

Besides, though a lot of us keep saying "nobody pays any attention to it," we're just throwing our ideas about it out on the table. It's not as if I (or anyone else here) really knows these things, in terms of hard factual evidence.

I don't agree. When I mention a song at work that's being played on the canned whatever, the first reaction is always the same: the person stops, listens for a moment, then says "oh, that song" (or whatever their reaction is). They just don't hear it until I call it to their attention. Frankly, I wish I could do the same. After working at Home Depot, and now Safeway for the last few years, and hearing this music blaring all day, I don't even listen to music away from work anymore. I'd rather have quiet. If I could somehow stop listening to the stuff they play at work, I imagine I'd still enjoy the music I prefer away from work, but that, unfortunately is something I don't have any evidence of...

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Besides, though a lot of us keep saying "nobody pays any attention to it," we're just throwing our ideas about it out on the table. It's not as if I (or anyone else here) really knows these things, in terms of hard factual evidence.

I don't agree. When I mention a song at work that's being played on the canned whatever, the first reaction is always the same: the person stops, listens for a moment, then says "oh, that song" (or whatever their reaction is). They just don't hear it until I call it to their attention. Frankly, I wish I could do the same. After working at Home Depot, and now Safeway for the last few years, and hearing this music blaring all day, I don't even listen to music away from work anymore. I'd rather have quiet. If I could somehow stop listening to the stuff they play at work, I imagine I'd still enjoy the music I prefer away from work, but that, unfortunately is something I don't have any evidence of...

Sounds like you're not in your ideal employment.

MG

[Shawn]

What did you do when you worked for them?

I worked in the audio marketing department, recording engineer (for voice spots).

[AllenLowe]

one of the Penguin Guides to Jazz CDs describes me as having a "cult" following -

YOU THINK MANSON WAS EVIL?

sorry, gotta go - Squeaky needs servicing -

[jon abbey]

some great posts from Jim here:

I think it's a helluva lot better that the essence of the music be kept alive in non-literal form than literal.

this is dead on. not sure if you mean it the same way that I do, but the current jazz era of regurgitation and recapitulation goes against everything jazz originally stood for: delving into new territory, exploding through what were thought to be barriers, finding your own voice and expressing yourself to the best of your abilities. jazz is such an innately constrained area that this has been impossible to do for decades, and is why jazz has been a stagnant (at best) art form for a long time now (I'd say since Miles left in 1975). but the spirit of jazz is alive and well in other areas of music, it's a crucial underpinning for plenty of the most exciting music happening today, just not jazz itself.

[Jazzmoose]

Sounds like you're not in your ideal employment.

MG

MG, master of understatement...

[Big Beat Steve]

some great posts from Jim here:

I think it's a helluva lot better that the essence of the music be kept alive in non-literal form than literal.

this is dead on. not sure if you mean it the same way that I do, but the current jazz era of regurgitation and recapitulation goes against everything jazz originally stood for: delving into new territory, exploding through what were thought to be barriers, finding your own voice and expressing yourself to the best of your abilities. jazz is such an innately constrained area that this has been impossible to do for decades, and is why jazz has been a stagnant (at best) art form for a long time now (I'd say since Miles left in 1975). but the spirit of jazz is alive and well in other areas of music, it's a crucial underpinning for plenty of the most exciting music happening today, just not jazz itself.

Quite true - both JSangry's statement above and your comment. But if this is so, and if it is being realized by jazz fans, then I wonder why everybody in the "established" jazz world sneered at that entire RETRO-SWING or NEO-SWING movement throughout the 90s. Agreed, some bands were just musically oversimplistic or downright mediocre, others were more clownery than substance, but there were enough musically interesting bands that have added a new twist to the entire swing/jump blues genre by fusing swing with rockabilly/ska/punk influences AND managing to spark new and ongoing interest in the old masters among a younger generation of listeners and (above all) DANCERS. Here in Europe at any rate, this subculture definitely still exists, though the Neo-swing wave has ebbed off quite a bit since the late 90s here too.

Or is it that exploring new territory in jazz is only OK to the keepers of the jazz flame if you use hard bop/post-bop/post-electric-Miles as your STARTING point and anything that uses older forms of jazz for reference is automatically labeled "old hat" or "reactionary" or whatever?? If so, then the stagnation that jazz seems to find itself in serves jazz right. Remember there was a time when jazz was quite legitimately considered a musical form designed primarily for dancing and having fun in an extrovert way instead of a musical background for musing over the relative merits of an augmented 137th vs a doubly flatted 93rd into one's long, grey but oh so sophisticated beard. :D

Edited July 8, 2008 by Big Beat Steve

[AllenLowe]

"but the current jazz era of regurgitation and recapitulation goes against everything jazz originally stood for: delving into new territory, exploding through what were thought to be barriers"

gross oversimplification, I think - jazz has never "stood for" anthing, I don't think, except a very personal kind of self expression and entertainment - I don't think Armstrong in, say, the 1930s, thought he was exploring new territory, though he was doing so anyway; he was not, however, "exploding" through barriers but crossing them through a kind of unintended subversive stealth. One of the reasons for the music's early brilliance was how unselfconscious it was. And the music has periodically felt the need to recapitulate - hence a great quote from Phillip Larken, that in jazz "the past refuses to be over; the whole of history continues to happen simultaneously."

the problem is evaluating the use of history in the music, and some of us are very careful in essence about how we do this (sorry to self promote, but listen to my cd for further reference here) - personally I happen to love the history of the music, but I explore that history NOT because "it's good for me" (the very middle-class notion expounded by Lincoln Center and things like The Great Books Program, IMHO) but because it's like constant food for expression.

my biggest complaint about a lot of new work is that it is completely tied up with the process of making music and not the musical result itself, ignoring the dictum that new work needs to explore new states of consciousness; hence, as well, my dislike of Beefheart, who to my way of thinking found only one state of consciousness and ran with it ad nauseum to the point of boorishness - I feel the same way about guitarists like Loren Mazzacane, who have confused mannerism with style, a gesture with an idea - but we've had this argument before, I know. Jazz is far from dead; it just, as I think Zappa said, smells funny -

Edited July 8, 2008 by AllenLowe

[paul secor]

No argument with a lot of what's been said, BUT - I'm sure Zappa doesn't smell so great these days either - probably never did. And, at least for me, his music always stank.

[jon abbey]

some great posts from Jim here:

I think it's a helluva lot better that the essence of the music be kept alive in non-literal form than literal.

this is dead on. not sure if you mean it the same way that I do, but the current jazz era of regurgitation and recapitulation goes against everything jazz originally stood for: delving into new territory, exploding through what were thought to be barriers, finding your own voice and expressing yourself to the best of your abilities. jazz is such an innately constrained area that this has been impossible to do for decades, and is why jazz has been a stagnant (at best) art form for a long time now (I'd say since Miles left in 1975). but the spirit of jazz is alive and well in other areas of music, it's a crucial underpinning for plenty of the most exciting music happening today, just not jazz itself.

Quite true - both JSangry's statement above and your comment. But if this is so, and if it is being realized by jazz fans, then I wonder why everybody in the "established" jazz world sneered at that entire RETRO-SWING or NEO-SWING movement throughout the 90s. Agreed, some bands were just musically oversimplistic or downright mediocre, others were more clownery than substance, but there were enough musically interesting bands that have added a new twist to the entire swing/jump blues genre by fusing swing with rockabilly/ska/punk influences AND managing to spark new and ongoing interest in the old masters among a younger generation of listeners and (above all) DANCERS. Here in Europe at any rate, this subculture definitely still exists, though the Neo-swing wave has ebbed off quite a bit since the late 90s here too.

Or is it that exploring new territory in jazz is only OK to the keepers of the jazz flame if you use hard bop/post-bop/post-electric-Miles as your STARTING point and anything that uses older forms of jazz for reference is automatically labeled "old hat" or "reactionary" or whatever?? If so, then the stagnation that jazz seems to find itself in serves jazz right. Remember there was a time when jazz was quite legitimately considered a musical form designed primarily for dancing and having fun in an extrovert way instead of a musical background for musing over the relative merits of an augmented 137th vs a doubly flatted 93rd into one's long, grey but oh so sophisticated beard. :D

I don't think anyone's to blame, I just think it's a function of an area being pretty thoroughly explored. there are always new directions to go in music, but at this point, those are outside of jazz's boundaries.

[BruceH]

I'd say the general culture is not so much hostile to jazz as indifferent.

[blajay]

I'm sure Zappa doesn't smell so great these days either - probably never did. And, at least for me, his music always stank.

Wow, sir!--show some respect, the man has been dead for a decade and a half! He was a legendary guitarist/composer. Some lyrics and themes are overly provocative for the sake of defying censorship. But if that gets to you, besides the significant work with the Mothers of Invention, like We're Just in it for the Money, listen to Hot Rats, Waka/Jawaka, the Grand Wazoo, or Uncle Meat and then tell me his music stank. Some of the 80s stuff where he experimented with drum machines and synthesizers is not my bag, but for the most part it is really creative stuff that predated and influenced a lot of wonderful music that has gotten more praise than it should have.

Edited July 8, 2008 by zanonesdelpueblo

[paul secor]

I'm sure Zappa doesn't smell so great these days either - probably never did. And, at least for me, his music always stank.

Wow, sir!--show some respect, the man has been dead for a decade and a half! He was a legendary guitarist/composer. Some lyrics and themes are overly provocative for the sake of defying censorship. But if that gets to you, besides the significant work with the Mothers of Invention, like We're Just in it for the Money, listen to Hot Rats, Waka/Jawaka, the Grand Wazoo, or Uncle Meat and then tell me his music stank. Some of the 80s stuff where he experimented with drum machines and synthesizers is not my bag, but for the most part it is really creative stuff that predated and influenced a lot of wonderful music that has gotten more praise than it should have.

Your opinion and mine differ, & that's ok.

[blajay]

I'm sure Zappa doesn't smell so great these days either - probably never did. And, at least for me, his music always stank.

Wow, sir!--show some respect, the man has been dead for a decade and a half! He was a legendary guitarist/composer. Some lyrics and themes are overly provocative for the sake of defying censorship. But if that gets to you, besides the significant work with the Mothers of Invention, like We're Just in it for the Money, listen to Hot Rats, Waka/Jawaka, the Grand Wazoo, or Uncle Meat and then tell me his music stank. Some of the 80s stuff where he experimented with drum machines and synthesizers is not my bag, but for the most part it is really creative stuff that predated and influenced a lot of wonderful music that has gotten more praise than it should have.

Your opinion and mine differ, & that's ok.

That's true Paul, it's all good. If you ever do spark an interest in Zappa, I recommend the Barry Miles bio from a few years back--great read.