115 replies to this topic

[JETman]

Hey, different strokes and all that. Me, I've never been that much of a fan of it to begin with (when the Liebman/Grossman thing was "all the rage" back in the 70s, I was not leading the cheers, if you know what I), and am even less of one now. Nothing "wrong" with it, just not relevant to me personally, not as much as a lot of other stuff, past, present, and, hopefully, future, including musics emanating from New York City. Just not that one kind with that one feeling. Seems like the meaning of "tight" has taken a turn for the worse of the last few decades. But that's just me.

If you wanna hear a "correct" NY thang, might I suggest that you check out some David Binney, and stay away from the fucking Eric Alexanders of the world. K?

[JSngry]

Yeah, sure, ok, and I appreciate your civic pride.

[Stefan Wood]

So, what were Tribe Called Quest/Jungle Brothers/the Roots doing? JDilla? I respect what Glasper is trying to do, but again, to say this is new is ignoring a lot of recent history.

The JDilla reference on a jazz board made my day. Awesome.

Dilla with Glasper would have been a very interesting combo. Dilla died much too young.

[JSngry]

There's a lot of possibilities here...having Shafiq do more than a vocal cameo would be cool...Madlib's "worked with" Blue Note in the past (not sure who the "in" was there), but...there are definitely possibilities if both Glasper and Blue Note really want to go there.

[David Ayers]

I just had a chance to listen to the first half hour or so. What's not to like? It sounds to me like a very well-produced r&b album. I'll buy this.

Where is this "way ahead" stuff coming from? Are y'all trying to create an argument that this is not the way ahead for jazz? This isn't even a jazz record!

That was pretty much my reaction too. I read this thread and went over to Spotify. Couldn't believe the album I was hearing was the one everyone here was talking about!

[CJ Shearn]

There's a lot of possibilities here...having Shafiq do more than a vocal cameo would be cool...Madlib's "worked with" Blue Note in the past (not sure who the "in" was there), but...there are definitely possibilities if both Glasper and Blue Note really want to go there.

Agreed. This is more successful than Blue Note having Us3 besides "Cantaloop" being a single. They went nowhere in American popular visibility after that.

[.:.impossible]

Madlib has been making "jazz" records for years under various monikers.

I think the Shades Of Blue project could have been so much better had he not been relegated to the BN catalog exclusively. If the focus was BN-centric, not BN-only, I imagine it would sound more Madlib. It is definitely not a prime example of his mixing ability.

This is sold as a jazz festival, but everyone knows better.

http://exactchangepr...uring-mf-doom/.

[JSngry]

[thedwork]

reasonably fun thread to read through. it reminded me of the end of a review i wrote 'bout 7 years ago. it applies to a few records every year:

"The media affair regarding [insert current 'it' artist name here] is well underway. [Insert title of current 'it' artist's release here] may lead some critics to celebrate the arrival of the "future of jazz," or cause others to feel compelled to refute such claims. But the reality is not so black and white. Those who are preoccupied with finding an artist to label the "future of jazz" can't see the trees for the forest. Innovation is sometimes incremental and often not easy to detect. It's all a continuum. We need faith that the pursuit of excellence supplies the energy to keep jazz moving forward. Innovation need not always be a "change of the century." It often hides in the shadows, tucked into a brilliant corner like a precocious child smiling to himself with a secret. There may well be such a child tucked into [Insert title of current 'it' artist's release here]."

Edited by thedwork, 08 April 2012 - 04:12 PM.

[AllenLowe]

well, innovation almost always comes, in the short term, as a radical vision - it's only afterwards, with perspective, that the continuum is clear, if it ever is. I remember Joe Albany telling me how astoundingly new Bird seemed, and how almost over night everything else - Prez, Armstrong - seemed hopelessly old fashioned. It's always been that way - with Ornette, Beckett, Cecil Taylor, Rite of Spring, Dada, Albert Ayler. Or read Larry Kart on Roscoe Mitchell.

Edited by AllenLowe, 08 April 2012 - 06:18 PM.

[david weiss]

I was asked to write a column in one of the New York Jazz monthlies and in one draft, I sort of took on the phenomena without being specific to one artist.
It was annoying me a bit seeing the cover of Down Beat and other publications going on and on about the stuff being the future of jazz etc etc.
I think most of you have it right and wish you guys were the status quo. How is a well done hip hop or pop record pushing the jazz envelope exactly.....
Since I have some regrets about cutting all of that out of my piece, I'm going to post it here. I wound up just writing a piece trying to put a positive spin on the state of jazz today, that there is some good stuff out here, some presenters and clubs get it right and have an audience etc etc.
Here is the part I cut out...



This fruitless search of the new thing or trying to sell something as the new, groundbreaking thing has bought
us to the point where we are being told that artists with jazz backrounds making pop and hip-hop CDs is the newest, groundbreaking thing, even the future
of jazz. Said artists are even proclaiming in print that they are pushing the music forward and doing something completely new. It’s easy to think you are
making history if you don’t know your history. There have been jazz musicians working in pop, soul, R&B, funk, hip-hop music since the invention of said
musics. Most of the Motown session musicians were jazz musicians first. This is nothing new. The only difference was those guys weren’t on the cover of Down
Beat saying they are breaking new ground because they can excel in both styles. Sometimes I think we are reliving the ‘70’s which was the last time straight
ahead jazz had a down period of sorts and fusion and the avant garde were at the forefront until we had our fill of that and Dexter Gordon came home and
Wynton Marsalis burst onto the scene. The only difference between now and then was back then, the jazz artists who began to dabble in electric instruments
were maligned as selling out and these days when you make the transition it is proclaimed as a bold new step and moving the music forward. But that is
symptomatic of the world we live in today. Since major labels (what’s left of them anyway) are part of large corporations and large corporations want to sell
a lot of product, jazz has adopted a pop mentality when it comes to breaking a new artist which is why a lot of our new jazz stars seemingly come out of
nowhere with very little experience. Pop is all about breaking new stars, putting a ton of money into a new act and seeing if they take off and now it
seems like the jazz world is doing the same thing. It’s nice to see these artists on David Letterman and for Letterman to call them jazz artists but they
are playing pop and hip-hop. They sound good of course, they are good musicians but is calling pop and hip-hop jazz because it’s performed by musicians with a
jazz backround really helping jazz in the long run? If jazz is dying and not connecting with the youth of today as some say, is this really a long term answer?

Despite all this, I still think jazz is in great shape. There are a lot of great bands in all genres of the music performing today so it is still possible to see this music performed
at a high level. I just wish things were a little more balanced. For young people to be truly exposed to this music, they need to be exposed to all of it.
I don’t think young people only want to hear music created by people their own age though they do perhaps have the notion that only people their own age are
hip. I think like everyone else, they want to hear good music, something that moves them and excites them and perhaps if they were exposed to some of the
unsung guys out here still carrying the torch and playing music of great beauty with passion and intensity and at it’s highest level they might find a true, deep love for
this music and venture on from there.

[.:.impossible]

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.

[JSngry]

Sometimes I think we are reliving the '70's which was the last time straight
ahead jazz had a down period of sorts and fusion and the avant garde were at the forefront until we had our fill of that and Dexter Gordon came home and
Wynton Marsalis burst onto the scene. The only difference between now and then was back then, the jazz artists who began to dabble in electric instruments
were maligned as selling out...

Another difference is that some of the people who heard those 70s albums actually liked - and still like - some of them, and see no reason to not like them, or to incorporate that which they like into their own stuff. Nothing at all wrong with that.

One more difference is that today some people recognize that some of that stuff was actually good music, period. Not everybody, of course.

Remember "Bebop Is The Music Of The Future"? Nice try, that was.

[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.....
I was following a similar thread to this on a jazz journalists blog (he talked of this being the future and how important it is to keep things simple for the people) and posted a comment much more sugar coated then what I said above and it is still "waiting moderation" a month later while the discussion continues. No fun at all.......

[david weiss]

Sometimes I think we are reliving the '70's which was the last time straight
ahead jazz had a down period of sorts and fusion and the avant garde were at the forefront until we had our fill of that and Dexter Gordon came home and
Wynton Marsalis burst onto the scene. The only difference between now and then was back then, the jazz artists who began to dabble in electric instruments
were maligned as selling out...

Another difference is that some of the people who heard those 70s albums actually liked - and still like - some of them, and see no reason to not like them, or to incorporate that which they like into their own stuff. Nothing at all wrong with that.

One more difference is that today some people recognize that some of that stuff was actually good music, period. Not everybody, of course.

Remember "Bebop Is The Music Of The Future"? Nice try, that was.

Yes, of course.....but I still read thinly veiled put downs of this era when reading current stuff about Wayne Shorter or Freddie or any of these guys. The sell out phrase is so ingrained into the history of this era that none of these guys shake it entirely. I was reading a recent article on Wayne that referred to "the dark period" or something to that effect. I was once asked in an interview how I felt when all my heroes sold out. My first response was I was 7 at the time so it didn't hurt so much but then I got into how they all made great records in that period, as good in it's way as their acoustic stuff. Herbie Hancock's Thrust, Wayne Shorter's Atlantis, a lot of the Miles stuff, it's all great and all has a lot of soloing in it (unlike the Glasper CD). I still love them all and play them, they're great records.
Bebop is the Music of the Future, we just haven't arrived at that future yet, but just wait, it's coming........you'll see, some 14 year old will have learned all of Charlie Parker's solos and, oh wait, never mind.......

[JSngry]

I think we just need to let people be and make whatever music they feel like making, for whatever reason, to which end, the more I see how...upset things like this Glasper record & Nicholas Payton's thing make some people, the more sense Payton's whole "jazz is death" and "BAM" thing is making. It's like, there's no reason why you have to play a certain thing, or a certain way, other than to appease your "owners". But if Robert Glasper can make a good contemporary R& B record and bring some "jazz sensibility" to it (and I hear it, just like I heard it back in the days of The Great Sellouts", and just as I stopped hearing it when people started playing that type of music who didn't have it), hell why shouldn't he? I mean, did he make a compact with God to not ever do something like this?

I dog that a lot of "a certain type of people" can' get with hip-hop on even the most pbasic principle, and I get how there are other "certain types of people" who don't ever want to hear non never pop/R&B/commercial/whatever music. But isthis their world to determine what everybody/anybody should or shouldn't play, what kind of musics, for what motivations, to what ends? I think not!

Tell you what - I've been reading "jazz criticism" of some form or ilk for a little over 40 years now, and I don't know that I've yet to read one, not one, critic or pundip or punjab who can deal with any ongoing "commercial jazz" scene from about the mid-1960s onward in the sense of displaying genuine musical discernment. Like what Grover Washington records are better than others, and why? Herbie w/Vocoder, what happens if you don't reflexively run in horror? Ramsey Lewis, what's up with those tempos, jack? Why so just-so? CTI, when do the base track drive the post-production, and when does the post-production come to the rescue, these are all very real questions about how these type musics get made, and a quick "commerical" brushoff is dishonest and inaccurate.. Whereas lots of...words get written about not so much of nothing more than the same changing back into itself.

Confound expectations - make music that carries with it no other expectation that it is by-god going to get made, and let all of "those types of people" free to just leave you the hell alone.

[david weiss]

Exactly Jim.....
I'm all for Glasper making intelligent well made pop/hip hop CDs. I just get sick of hearing how it is the future of jazz. To me, the older critics jumping on this bandwagon are the equivalent of a 50 something year old male buying a Corvette, trying to show how young and hip they still are......
I'm all for the BAM thing too, take this shit over, call your music what you want it to be called (I probably would try to ban the phrase hard-bop, that's the one that seems to keep me down and oppress me), take charge of your music and try to get it called what you think it should be called (though all labels are probably a dead end in the long run).
You are right about there being a lack of intelligent writing for all the fusion music (and it's offshoots) for most of it's life (I think there are probably good reviews of Miles' electric period and the Mahavishnu Orchestra and the like). I think this part is changing though. Like I said, the "jazz" artists today going electric or delving into more popular forms are not demonized as selling out but lauded as taking bold new directions so one would think that there could be intelligent reviews about artists taking bold new directions, it just might not work for you since you know better.......
The article I wrote (the part I kept that is) at the end essentially says/asks/ begs that at this point if we are going to write about music, can we just write about the music. Nothing is going to change the world that drastically at this point so can we just get an idea about what is well done, fresh, exciting, has a pulse or whatever.....I mean ultimately isn't that we are looking for.....good music.

Edited by david weiss, 09 April 2012 - 10:28 PM.

[JSngry]

Like I said, the "jazz" artists today going electric or delving into more popular forms are not demonized as selling out but lauded as taking bold new directions so one would think that there could be intelligent reviews about artists taking bold new directions, it just might not work for you since you know better.......

People be getting dazzled by the gesture without having a clue as to the mechanincs, what's actually happening. "Mixing jazz and hip-hop", well cool, but what...does..that MEAN? What is being done, exactly? Where is the jazz, where is the hip-hop, and how is this all being fit together...or is it really fitting together at all? I mean, I've heard great shit and I've hear shitty shit, and I'll be damned if I know who to go to who's regularly displayed a modicum of non-hype, non-jargonical ability to break it down to me in a way tha makes real sense. I'm not asking for Mister Peabody, hell just be able to tell me maybe waht samples are being used - and how -, and why record X is lubed like a room of recreational porn starts after-party and why record C is like a pile of dead mashed potatoes that kill lab rats.

In other words, display some knowledge of the music that matches what you proclaim of the sociological, and then we'll know who's got meat in the freezer and who's trying to hustle an invite for lunch.

But this music is going to keep happening. There's every reason why it should, and hardly none why it shouldn't. And me, I'd prefer it be good, because when it's good, I really do like it.

[AllenLowe]

well, hip hop continues to disappoint, at least for me. Spent the weekend listening to MF doom. Gimmicky, some interesting stuff, but really an amateur aesthetic that does not really have the same interest as certain other avocational works. Easy for the home recordist, but that's a limited advantage. I like the lo-fi aspects, but it runs its course pretty quickly.

Edited by AllenLowe, 09 April 2012 - 09:46 AM.

[Pete C]

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.

[AllenLowe]

I've always thought of myself as the Jazz Savior - here's the cover to my next album:

Edited by AllenLowe, 09 April 2012 - 10:37 AM.

[freelancer]

I've always thought of myself as the Jazz Savior - here's the cover to my next album:

Happy Easter Allen Lowe. The White Man's Got A God Complex

[.:.impossible]

Allen, when you say MF DOOM is gimmicky and amateurish, what are you referring to? I should add, in case you don't know, that he wears a homemade metal mask on stage.

[AllenLowe]

I just find that, with this stuff - there's an idea - often a good one - as to mixing, for one example, different instrumentals together in a lo-fi sequence. The idea is good, but done in an uninteresting and basic fashion which appears to be making a statement that it really isn't making, in this case, I think, about re-working familiar materials and making them new. I don't find anything "put on" about it (in terms of the metal mask) - it's an idea, a good idea, with which little is done.

this is just my perspective. I like the idea, they just carry it out without any deeply imaginative construction.

[.:.impossible]

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!

[david weiss]

It seems that you, David, need a blog to write the things that a jazz pub won't allow.
Of course, there's no money in it, but it's a satisfying release and may attract people of like minds.

®ø∂

---
Now playing: Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen - Casablanca (Theme From "Crane")

I get my satisfying release here I guess......
You're right, I should blog but it is too time consuming for someone who has to do long tones and write arrangements and it will just get me into trouble.
To be clear though, the above passage is something I edited out of the piece myself. It was too long and instead of just fine tuning every little thing, I decided to just eliminate one theme.
I have to think that with everyone's love for jazz controversy these days, the publication would have preferred I kept that part in even though it is barely controversial. They didn't complain when I removed it though.

[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......

[clifford_thornton]

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.

[Tom Storer]

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 resemble that remark!

[A Lark Ascending]

Me too.