Robert Glasper

[A Lark Ascending]

Modality - jazz schools, jazz institutes, extensive formalised training, classicization of repertoire, notion of being generally 'improving', recreative music more past than living, academic documentation, recorded legacy, access to funding mechanisms, and calling itself classical (since maybe Mingus, maybe before). As for 'handouts' - how English you are in your way of seeing the world!

I see. Academic stuff. Angels dancing on heads of pins.

[David Ayers]

Modality - jazz schools, jazz institutes, extensive formalised training, classicization of repertoire, notion of being generally 'improving', recreative music more past than living, academic documentation, recorded legacy, access to funding mechanisms, and calling itself classical (since maybe Mingus, maybe before). As for 'handouts' - how English you are in your way of seeing the world!

I see. Academic stuff. Angels dancing on heads of pins.

These are just realities. You may be satisfed to be a consumer or what you call a 'listener', but really you are just the last link in a long chain, and others must think hard and work hard to make their music legitimate, recognizable, viable and successful. That's very true of classical and jazz - ironic maybe that such intent and planful work by so many has as its only aim the satisfaction of the passive consumer. People study - a lot - and plan - a lot - to make any of these things happen. When you buy a download of classical or jazz you contact all of the types of body and types of work I named, and others. These are complicated collective processes, and they serve you well. You see musical training as just 'academic'? Or the conservation of the recorded legacy as just 'angels dancing on the heads of pins'? Anti-intellectualism pursued even beyond the boundaries of its own unreason.

[A Lark Ascending]

Not doubting the work involved in any way at all.

But I'm rather confused as to why you are taking the moral high ground in protecting all who work so hard in the industry whilst at the same time being so dismissive of a lot of the jazz produced by those same hard working people (a regular beef of yours) - "lots of the records become quickly boring, they are so easy to take in, the tunes get boring *really* quickly, too few of the solos actaully catch fire, etc." Hardly respectful of those musicians or the people who help the music along the chain; not to mention the 'cd collector' you have such contempt for.

[David Ayers]

I am saying that classical music has a legitimacy problem and so does jazz. Jazz has adopted a classical strategy which helps keep it in place ('it' - though as I keep saying I regard 'jazz' as a set of contrasting if related practices). What will the outcome of that strategy be? Don't know, but all eyes on 'classical' music because their moves are the ones jazz now imitates.

And as for jazz being boring - a lot of it is. It just is. Next time you find yourself bored by music, hold that thought. Don't get me wrong - I think a lot of music is boring, not just jazz. But jazz is somewhat staid. Really new things are fun. Did you get to Hockney?

[A Lark Ascending]

I am saying that classical music has a legitimacy problem and so does jazz.

Not for me. Some I like, some I don't. And I try to keep in mind that others might like what I don't. Or that I might not be in tune with what the performers/composers were doing.

Not sure who decrees what is and is not legitimate.

Jazz has adopted a classical strategy which helps keep it in place ('it' - though as I keep saying I regard 'jazz' as a set of contrasting if related practices). What will the outcome of that strategy be? Don't know, but all eyes on 'classical' music because their moves are the ones jazz now imitates.

I see your point here from the 'industry' end. But not all listeners/consumers pay that much heed.

And as for jazz being boring - a lot of it is. It just is. Next time you find yourself bored by music, hold that thought. Don't get me wrong - I think a lot of music is boring, not just jazz. But jazz is somewhat staid. Really new things are fun. Did you get to Hockney?

I'll rewrite that for you:

"And as for jazz being boring - well, for my taste a lot of it is. It just is for me. Next time you find yourself bored by music, hold that thought. Don't get me wrong - I think a lot of music is boring, not just jazz. But I find that for me jazz is somewhat staid. I find that Really new things are fun."

I find music boring sometimes but that can be as much my state of attentiveness as anything else. If a piece of music doesn't engage me I stop listening to it. Or leave it until I've been given another incentive to try it again.

But overall, I am rarely bored by music. If I was, I'd do something else.

I'm all for new music - but I've never felt that precludes enjoying old music or new music in an old style. Some cultural arbiters decree that we must constantly hurl ourselves into the shock of the new; others demand we adhere to the eternal values of tradition. I can't see why you can't do both; or why different people might not choose one way or another without being hectored by the guardians of the portals of culture. [Now there's good, old-fashioned, English woolly-minded liberalism for you! (though that sounds Welsh) Ain't going to make any Iskra-like manifestos!]

Did you get to Hockney?

I live nearly 200 miles from London. Visual arts are only of peripheral interest to me. I'm sure it was wonderful.

Edited April 12, 2012 by A Lark Ascending

[ep1str0phy]

I can agree with you to a degree. I''m intrigued enough though to keep listening.

You do realized that MF DOOM is the rapper right? The music is supplied by other people.

Maybe you would be more interested in Flying Lotus? 1983 is a good start.

If you don't find it interesting, hey, you've tried!

I think there's plenty of jazz inflected/jazz influenced hip-hop production that accomplishes the idea (or an idea like) what Allen mentions very successfully, with qualifications. It's funny--I sometimes feel like the "avant-garde" of today, insofar as that notion is tied to any particular genre (i.e., avant-garde jazz, avant-garde/experimental hip-hop), is as much about elaborating upon and reconfiguring the basic aesthetics of a given genre rather than transcending them. This makes sense in jazz terms. There is a fine line between genre transcendence and genre obliteration, and if it was evident in the post-Ayler continuum, it's ultra evident in a world that encompasses not only loud, burly blowout free jazz but also the music of the AACM, European Free Improv, Takayangi's Mass Projection, EAI in the Erstwhile vein(s), and so on. In other words, if you're making "avant-garde jazz" today, you're likely working with a specific set of materials commenting on a specific set of things, and if you're making anything truly unheralded or radical, you've left the wheelhouse of the genre avant-garde and are probably making something entirely different.

I honestly haven't heard the term avant-garde hip-hop too often--"experimental" hip-hop is more common--and I imagine that part of this has to do with the fact that the presence of an avant-garde implies something like definitive progress/evolution for a genre. "Experimental" is a softer word. Like avant-garde jazz today, a lot of avant-garde hip-hop does have to cater to genre conventions and operate, if not foremost, than at least first on the basic principles of hip-hop production. So even something like this:

...which virtuosically reworks a Wayne Shorter sample ("Barracudas" (General Assembly), off Etcetera), is identifiably a work in the post-Dilla continuum of hip-hop production. I was a tremendous fan of Madlib's Blue Note project until I went back and discovered that he hadn't done much with the source material--the best tracks ("Slim's Return," which samples The Three Sounds) don't do much to alter the DNA of the base track, and the most radical reworkings just sound like Yesterday's New Quintet music (YNQ being Madlib's prefab jazz/improv group, which is more or less groove/samples with noodle-y improv superimposed over everything). I was pretty thrilled when I recognized what I'm pretty sure is part of Don Cherry's Mu on the same YNQ album as the Shorter sample (above), but I was disappointed when I realized that he hadn't done all that much with it. Yes, Shades of Blue was unheralded in that it gave a hip-hop artist unprecedented access to the Blue Note vaults, but it didn't/doesn't do for hip-hop a stitch on what the most incendiary Blue Note dates did for jazz.

Maybe the trappings of the loop premise are like ride cymbal dominance and the soloist/rhythm section dichotomy, and so on--it's all stuff that both "genre'd" musicians and critics can't bring themselves to get over, as if losing any number of said attributes would irreparably denature the music's DNA. The opposite argument is that this is the stuff that makes the music work, which is still the argument leveled against, say, electric Miles (you eschew the flexibility of cymbal timekeeping/swing time in favor of bass drum/snare drum dominance, ala rock, and you're left with less interactive music that is more or less stiffer in character--Jack DeJohnette on Live-Evil may want to have some words with you, but I get the point). But then there's shit like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2od42AkD8Gw

...that is just so undeniable and crazy that it doesn't really matter what it is and what it isn't. Flying Lotus is still largely and mainly "about" hip-hop, but some of his studio stuff sits on the line past where you can dance to it and before it becomes "merely" general category electronic music. All this goes to say that there's still flexibility in and around the breaking point of any given genre, although it's important to acknowledge both that these breaking points exist and that there is a shadowy, probably unnecessary commitment to genre sanctity all over the map in this millennium.

Edited April 12, 2012 by ep1str0phy

[David Ayers]

You're right that this is not avant-garde (it's rather comfortable in fact). Avant-gardism usually has to do with a fairly fundamental reconsideration of the purpose as well as the modality of any art - not a question of genre at all, which seems to be more a functional question determined more than anything by audience. Of course avant-gardes themselves become historical, but that's another question.

[AllenLowe]

I think of some of the above - in Epistrophy's post - as really Musical Collage (I've done a bit of this myself). It' an interesting form and made to order for the digital age.

Edited April 12, 2012 by AllenLowe

[ep1str0phy]

The thing that got me was that Flying Lotus is the great-nephew of Alice Coltrane; Cosmogramma is a tribute of sorts to Alice. I honestly can't think of any Coltrane/kosmigroov-inflected music of recent times that has been as creative in its use of Trane-ish source materials. Regardless of its success on its own merits, I think what makes Cosmogramma interesting as a legacy work is the degree to which it departs from its subject matter and conceptual heritage. This doesn't mean to say (on an entirely different level) that Glasper's music is better "current" jazz because it really isn't jazz, but rather that Flying Lotus's Trane-isms are mostly successful because they don't try (or bother) to meet a master on his own terms (and that's a lesson in and of itself, I think).

Two of my favorite Trane tributes are "Ohnedaruth" on the Art Ensemble's Phase One and the entirety of Marion Brown's Sweet Earth Flying. The former is sort of a tribute in name and not explicit content and the latter is not really a tribute per se, but they both manage to evoke the iconology of Trane without really doing any Trane-like stuff. "Ohnedaruth" ties together late Trane's implications of infinity, as well as the vocalistic tendencies of the post-Ayler/post-Live In Seattle energy music, with the more earthy hard bop (in the rhythm section hookup) of Trane's earlier days; it's at once a way forward (tying together seemingly disparate subgenre tropes) and a kaleidoscopic view of Trane's personal musical history. Sweet Earth Flying, on the other hand, takes the modalish free harmony and open time feel of late Trane and shrinks it, interpolates some space, and sort of softens the hardcore machismo of 60's energy music--it's at once an interesting commentary on surviving with avant-garde jazz after the 60's as well as something absolutely true to Brown's unique pastoral voice. There's something to be said in both of these cases (as there is with Cosmogramma) in terms of "finding your own voice" while remaining completely part of the lineage.

[david weiss]

Too bad you cut it. Yeah, some of it is disparaging, but you get it. I'm still surprised to read folks here comparing this to a jazz record.

Yeah, I regret it a little but you kind of have to walk on eggshells out here, everyone is a little touchy and it's easy to get in trouble and get a reputation for being...I don't know....a dick I guess.....

Well, the NYCJR edits more for length than for content, so had you submitted that part it probably would've stayed. Besides, I think more people would agree with you than not, though perhaps that is me being naive out in the hinterlands.

Clifford, I did submit that part and the whole piece was too long so as I said elsewhere, I made the decision to cut out this whole section instead of trying to trim everything a little bit and hurt every section of the piece......

I decided I didn't want to stir the shit that much as it were and removed the semi offending part......

[david weiss]

Enough with the trope of jazz being a sick patient, or the other one of jazz being an inviolable, sacred art form. Both are, essentially, irrelevant to most musicians and listeners. If somebody wants to mix jazz & hip hop it's neither the salvation of jazz nor its death knell, it's just another episode in a long and multifaceted history of the music in relationship to other genres.

This kind of stuff seems "important" to those of us who follow the scene, but I think it's meaningless to most listeners, as well as artists who will, for the most part, choose to follow what they think is right for their own careers, be it with a focus on artistic integrity, or commercial success, or both. I think it's like all those petty battles in academia that seemed important when I was in academia, and are essentially off my radar now.

Agreed Pete...

Neither the sick patient nor the sacred art form model is going to attract anyone new to the music.

The first is too negative and might even convince some who have a passing interest in the music to not bother if they are actually paying attention.

The other just scares some people off and I get more of the inevitable "I want to like Jazz but I guess I need to know about it first" when I tell a person I meet that I'm a jazz musician. Then I have to go into the whole well the music should just appeal to you on a basic level like any music and then the beauty is if you want more detail and understanding of the music that's there for you to but it's just music like any other you can pat your feet, shake your ass and sing along with the melody shtick.

The piece I referred to above, the part I did keep was about how I was getting tired of the sick patient part and all the pieces about how jazz is dead or dying or why Americans can't comprehend it or it needs to be simpler etc etc. It's overkill and if people are paying attention even a little oppressive perhaps. I went on to say that I travel the world playing this music and I go a lot of places where things are done right, creative programmers, festivals, club owners who run a nice shop etc etc and these places thrive so if things are done right, the audience is there. Maybe we should focus on that and how to do that in more places and then maybe we can get somewhere. When I play with The Cookers, it is usually for an older audience and they couldn't care less about most of this. They just want to hear some good music (with ties to the stuff that first got them interested in this music apparently) in a nice surrounding and buy a CD and go home......I love them all......

Jazz has been mainly a lifestyle music - like most musics I suppose - but practitioners have to be a whole lot more into it than anyone else (um, like, say, golf). I have come to disagree with the idea that it is a music that requires a sophisticated listener - yes, it is basically (in its 'modern jazz' form) an expository music, but so much so in fact that lots of the records become quickly boring, they are so easy to take in, the tunes get boring *really* quickly, too few of the solos actaully catch fire, etc. So the question of venue is important, as you say, but also therefore of demographic, and then a question of what music. If you don't want to play to elderly toe-tappers, don't. Miles knew if you want to retain audience you have to change idiom, and he also saw ways to make that artistically engaging for himself. Jazz - if it wasn't good enough for Miles, why should it be good enough for anyone else? To my mind there is not 'the music'. Musicans have to train a lot and are invested in method - audiences can move on quickly. It's not 'education' though, I agree with you, and the more 'jazz fans' push it the more dire and uncompelling it seems (most discussion of jazz persuades me that I am not interested in it any more). Can it stay on, as a classical music? That's the model now - hm.

The classical model at least shows that most forms of music can have legs and can last forever and jazz will certainly do that. I guess it's just how much. How big of an audience will there be down the road, how many musicians will be able to sustain themselves doing this etc etc.

I guess a large part of the older fan base will be dead or not going out so much anymore in 30 years and that leaves it to the next generation that is not that interested? Somehow classical music has it's audience and it seems to renew itself so I guess it will be the same for jazz, newer generations will figure it out at some point.

Right now they are going to 55 Bar, Smalls and Fat Cat and some places in Brooklyn. I guess in 20 years they will go see the same bands (who have climbed up the ladder) at Birdland and have dinner and buy a CD or something and have a nice night and so on and so on.

I had a meeting not too long ago with a record company and sat with three people from the label discussing things. One said, how do we expose jazz to more people, get a broader audience etc etc and I said, great, that's a noble thing, go do that but you know what, why don't you just get me all the jazz fans. If you got me all of the jazz fans, I'd be doing OK. There are enough of them, focus on them, get the word out to all of them and have them come to my shows and buy my CDs. I'd be fine with just that. Let's start there and then we can do that bring it to the rest of the world thing.......

Edited April 13, 2012 by david weiss

[AllenLowe]

"get all the jazz fans" - and still have room for an agent's heart.

[Larry Kart]

@ David Ayers -- What's an "expository" music? And what's a 'non-expository" one? I don't get the distinction or even how the terms would apply to music.

[David Ayers]

@ David Ayers -- What's an "expository" music? And what's a 'non-expository" one? I don't get the distinction or even how the terms would apply to music.

I'm just using the term by rough analogy with the theory of sonata form - I know they aren't exactly the same. I used expository to get at the idea of exposition/development, though in rondo form there isn't really development. I just mean that it is rational and clear, like C18th music.

[.:.impossible]

This album apparently won a Grammy for R&B album of the year.

[robertoart]

I think of some of the above - in Epistrophy's post - as really Musical Collage (I've done a bit of this myself). It' an interesting form and made to order for the digital age.

Exactly. And the Zorn crew also exemplified this (although in a more 'hands on' analog way).

It is Post Modernism par excellence. And rather old fashioned now, when compared to the trajectories of other Arts disciplines who seem to have left behind the egalitarian juxtaposition of genre. That is, by not 'serialising', side by side, different genres, or 'collaging', as you say, in a 'cut and paste' process. The things I like about Glasper, and the movement he represents, is the way the stylistic influences are attempted to be 'contingent' within the overall form or integrity of the vision. I get the same feeling from people like David S Ware and Matthew Shipp in the Free Jazz continuum.

Of course, this is the same thing Miles was doing with Bitches Brew and On The Corner, or Archie Shepp was doing with Attica Blues, or Blood Ulmer was doing with Are You Glad To Be In America. It's kind of a throwback to a Modernist 'cannabalisation' of influences. But it's not, because we now live in a post digital world.

Edited February 16, 2013 by freelancer

[Blue Train]

This isn't worth a new thread. If you liked the last worthless recording you're probably going to like this one.


Having said that.....this has to read to be believed. It's like Crouch on Meth.

Money quote:

"Jazz must change. If it doesn't, only about seven people will be listening to it way down the road."

WTF? to begin with this...okay, beside the obvious that apparently if it's @ a slow-jam tempo....it's "feminized".

"Second, Robert's music was surprisingly feminized. Much of it was taken in a slow-jam tempo with rich Fender Rhodes chords and chipped beats that struck a chord with women—a welcome relief from past R&B misogyny."

Apparently, being completely unoriginal will save Jazz.




http://www.jazzwax.com/2013/10/robert-glasper-black-radio-2.html

Edited November 3, 2013 by Blue Train

[JSngry]

This album apparently won a Grammy for R&B album of the year.

2014 yields:http://www.grammy.com/nominees/%27%20%20%20img_path%20%20%20%27?genre=27

18. Best Traditional R&B Performance

Winner

Jesus Children

Robert Glasper Experiment Featuring Lalah Hathaway & Malcolm-Jamal Warner

Track from: Black Radio 2

Label: Blue Note Records

[uli]

I have posted this before on similar threads for me the durmhedz are the real thing. Starting about 2 mins in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPq72cz7EQo

[CJ Shearn]

I really like what Derrick Hodge does on "Live Today" and also Mark Giuliana's "My Time Is Now" crafts hip hop influences in an interesting way.