the end of jazz

[alocispepraluger102]

from the atlantic

LINK

"John Lewis, the music director of the Modern Jazz Quartet, noted: “Jazz developed while the great popular music was being turned out. It was a golden age for songs. They had a classic quality in length and shape and form and flexibility of harmony. The jazz musicians were drawn to this music as a source of material.” The Songbook, a product of a fleeting set of cultural circumstances when popular, sophisticated music was aimed at musically knowledgeable adults, was the crucial wellspring of jazz. Both jazz and its progenitor are worthy of radical—indeed, reactionary—efforts to preserve them. But despite Gioia’s ardency, there is no reason to believe that jazz can be a living, evolving art form decades after its major source—and the source that linked it to the main currents of popular culture and sentiment—has dried up. Jazz, like the Songbook, is a relic—and as such, in 2012 it cannot have, as Gioia wishes for it, an “expansive and adaptive repertoire.”"

Edited October 25, 2012 by alocispepraluger102

[JSngry]

If I read this guy right, he's saying that jazz is over as new because the "Great American songbook" is over as new:

there is no reason to believe that jazz can be a living, evolving art form decades after its major source—and the source that linked it to the main currents of popular culture and sentiment—has dried up.

Uh, maybe that's not why. Maybe that's like saying that automobiles are over because they don't make Oldsmobiles anymore - it's only true if you think of cars in terms of Oldsmobiles, and only want to have a car if it's an Oldsmobile.

And it's horribly, horribly insulting to the people who really understand what makes cars run and have found different ways to make them and things for them to do.Never mind the people who have a solid grasp on the need for mechanized transportation and all the different possibilities and implications thereof, not limited to cars.

Fortunately for cars, there's more people more into cars than are into just Oldsmobiles. And fortunately for transportation, there are plenty of people who are willing to use different methods to get from Point A to Point B, and to delight in new methods as they become available.

Unfortunately (or maybe not!) for jazz, there's more people who are into Oldsmobiles than there are into cars.

I love it how when people are unwilling to change/grow/evolve/whatever that it's always change's fault and not theirs. And how the changes always happen anyway. Now there's A Timeless Classic for ya'!

[alocispepraluger102]

it might be fair to say that jazz will not ever be as popular because of the fertile song era, but that it will probably survive in much less conspicuous, more creative forms.

Edited October 25, 2012 by alocispepraluger102

[JSngry]

I like a "good song" as much as anybody, but...what does that mean, really, in a non-totally-subjective way?

Sure, we've come to know "songs" as more or less being one general "thing", but how much of that thing was formed by a confluence of technology with convenience with capturing an audience with both and then keeping them because both were manifesting itself in ways that were both utilitarian and entertaining/uplifting/whatever, and how much of that was because the 32-Bar Popular Song was God's Master Plan?

And what happens when (rhetorical question, b/c it's already happened) that confluence no longer really "works" in that way, and "songs" begin to form as different "things" than before? Should we weepy waily gnash our teeth about The Death Of Song, or should we maybe take a look at the difference between the "song impulse" and the chrono-cultural-specific manifestations of it and how Now might not be Then no more, but no sweat really, because It still be It?

Or is that just too damn hard and/or inconvenient, especially for industries ("songs" and "jazz" both) built on preserving themselves more or less As Is?

[robertoart]

from the atlantic

LINK

"John Lewis, the music director of the Modern Jazz Quartet, noted: “Jazz developed while the great popular music was being turned out. It was a golden age for songs. They had a classic quality in length and shape and form and flexibility of harmony. The jazz musicians were drawn to this music as a source of material.” The Songbook, a product of a fleeting set of cultural circumstances when popular, sophisticated music was aimed at musically knowledgeable adults, was the crucial wellspring of jazz. Both jazz and its progenitor are worthy of radical—indeed, reactionary—efforts to preserve them. But despite Gioia’s ardency, there is no reason to believe that jazz can be a living, evolving art form decades after its major source—and the source that linked it to the main currents of popular culture and sentiment—has dried up. Jazz, like the Songbook, is a relic—and as such, in 2012 it cannot have, as Gioia wishes for it, an “expansive and adaptive repertoire.”"

Sure it can, and still does.

Why does Jazz have to be linked so comprehensively to the 'American Songbook'. Especially when the Jazz masters provided an equally valid compositional legacy of their own. It tends to imply that without 'the songbook' African American music wouldn't exist. And downplays the genius of the players who responded to the pop culture of their day.

Contemporary players will/are developing their own relationships to the moments 'popular song'. Same as always.

Why does the 'songbook' have to be seen as Jazz's 'progenitor'. This is not necessarily what John Lewis is saying either.

Here is another quote along these lines, related to Gerber's Jazz Jews book....

"of this symbiotic relationship between the songs of Jewish-American popular composers and jazz.

The show will feature the songs - jazzed up - of such Jewish-American greats as George Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin and some lesser known composers.

Songs that although not written for jazz, have contributed so much to it."

The Saxophone wasn't made for Jazz either, but has contributed so much to it.

[rostasi]

What? Again?

[JSngry]

The Saxophone wasn't made for Jazz either, but has contributed so much to it.

Yes, because saxophones, like drum machines, just sit there and play themselves!

I mean, really, this article, and others like it, that take down The Jazz Ship with the GAS Ship, remind me of Jim Jones on the PA at Jonestown saying Mother Mother, lay down with your babies and stuff like that. You ever hear that, the real tapes from the real Jonestown? It's creepy, it's misdirection away from Alternate Means Of Survival, and dammit, it's Funeral Home Pimping.

Somebody here once asked why so much the urgency/need to see a jazz/hip-hop fusion, and well, it's not really that that's what is wanted nearly as much as it is that yeah, a lot has changed There, but a lot hasn't, and just as much of a lot There still matters as a way to not put on the Smiling Slave Suit Of The Mind and getting on the Never Will Be Anybody But Somebody Else Ship, a ship that is already sunk and only sets sail to Further Sunkeness (but I'll be damned if they're not booked solid and keep making more to accommodate the demand), so STFU Jim Jones, ya' know what I'm sayin'?

[A Lark Ascending]

What? Again?

Beat me to it!

[JSngry]

Or as I once said - and was beat all around the head for so doing -

Songs? Still? Really?

to which let's add:

Jazz? Still? Really?

Dead? Still? Really?

Articles about Song/Jazz/Dead? Still? Really?

Funeral Home Pimping. all of it! Now that Your Loved One has done died and gone, let US meet your needs in Your Hour Of Need. We'll write all the articles you need with the "personal touch" that only WE can provide.

Mack Daddy, meet Casket Mack Daddy.

Masket Daddy!

[Big Beat Steve]

What? Again?

Beat me to it!

My thoughts exactly too.

[David Ayers]

I guess if it was all that alive that instead of responding to this (who's John Lewis, after all) we'd be talking about all the new developments - but there are none. Or if there are we manage to never, ever mention them.

[JSngry]

I guess if it was all that alive that instead of responding to this (who's John Lewis, after all) we'd be talking about all the new developments - but there are none. Or if there are we manage to never, ever mention them.

Or, maybe, not even hear them because they're you know...not what we have in mind.

[David Ayers]

I guess if it was all that alive that instead of responding to this (who's John Lewis, after all) we'd be talking about all the new developments - but there are none. Or if there are we manage to never, ever mention them.

Or, maybe, not even hear them because they're you know...not what we have in mind.

Ah ah. True.

[ejp626]

Jazz is dying -- to me at any rate. The scene is at a creative dead end (to me). It mostly feels like picking over old bones when obscure releases from the 1950s or 60s (like this Ben Webster in Norway set) are far more satisfying to me than 95% of the new releases (which on top of everything else generally seem few and far between). There are some new directions, but they just don't speak to me (aside from Vijay Iyer and Rudresh Mahanthappa I guess). I also feel I came to the scene too late (well past the peak) and am starting to drift away again...

Edited October 25, 2012 by ejp626

[JETman]

Where's Robert Glasper when you need him?

[Joe]

I find the subtitle of this article very revealing...

"How America’s most vibrant music became a relic"

Yet the neo-conservative critics Mr. Schwarz cites are not called out for their (significant) contribution to this museum-ification of the music.

Yokada yokada.

[A Lark Ascending]

I blame Wynton.

Well, since no-one has given him a fresh thread this week....

[felser]

Didn't Philip Larkin already explain that jazz died in the early 60's when John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman and those other scalawag ruffians killed it? Or was it already pronounced dead Chuck Berry in the late 50's?

I've got no kick against modern jazz,

Unless they try to play it too darn fast;

And change the beauty of the melody,

Until they sounded like a symphony,

[AllenLowe]

I'm gonna say - that there ways OUT for jazz; and one of them is using historic materials in ways which are fresh and new - which itself is not a new idea - except almost no one is really doing this in an interesting way - except me. the keys are:

1) the compositions - enough crap; learn all of American song and then re-do it

2) the harmony - learn your triads; the modes have become boring; study all the stuff that was written 1920-1930; and then everything else

3) the solos - keep 'em short, dammit

this is not THE ONLY way; but it is one way.

the proof of all this will be out in January 2013.

[JETman]

I'm gonna say - that there ways OUT for jazz; and one of them is using historic materials in ways which are fresh and new - which itself is not a new idea - except almost no one is really doing this in an interesting way - except me. the keys are:

1) the compositions - enough crap; learn all of American song and then re-do it

2) the harmony - learn your triads; the modes have become boring; study all the stuff that was written 1920-1930; and then everything else

3) the solos - keep 'em short, dammit

this is not THE ONLY way; but it is one way.

the proof of all this will be out in January 2013.

Plannin' on makin' an appearance on the charts, do ya?

[felser]

Plannin' on makin' an appearance on the charts, do ya?

I even have a name suggestion for Allen to use on his chart conquest - LoDawg.

[Larry Kart]

Really stupid article, for many of the reasons mentioned by many above -- and this comes from a guy (i.e. me) who wrote a piece titled "The Death of Jazz?" back in 1986 or so (my premise was different I think/hope than Mr. Schwarz's). In particular, the equation of the life of jazz and the existence or non-existence of new GAS or GAS-like material flies on the face of, among other things, what jazz musicians have actually done with that material since there was anything called jazz. Does anyone believe that, say, Bird's "Embraceable You" is great because he's playing a solo that takes off on (in some respects) "Embraceable You." Hell, I imagine that a whole lot of people have listened to that solo and been legitimately thrilled/moved by it without being all that aware, if at all, of what changes/melody lie in the background there. Nor do I think that almost anyone who has a deep fondness for Gershwin's admirable original song hears Bird's "EY" and goes, "How lovely a variation on 'EY' that is; I like it for just that reason." And examples of that sort in jazz are almost f---ing endless, so much so as to be more or less the norm. I mean, "Bugle Call Rag" is cool, but alongside Duke's "The Sergeant Was Shy" (even though the latter does allude ironically/comically to the former)?

[Chuck Nessa]

Well I guess that all depends on what you know.

[AllenLowe]

well that's the point - the more you know about American music the more you know about what it is and is not and what it might become - and Larry's exactly right, it's always been about radical transformation of one kind or another - Brecht called this copien, Shakespeare did it with old texts, Armstrong did it with basic materials, Ellington with a combination of things - even Ornette was taking bits and pieces of other things, even if he himself was not always aware.

Edited October 25, 2012 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

Nor do I think that almost anyone who has a deep fondness for Gershwin's admirable original song hears Bird's "EY" and goes, "How lovely a variation on 'EY, that is; I like it for just that reason."

Just people who need Gershwin in order to justify Bird in their own heads. How many of those there are, I have no idea, but at least one of them is Masket Daddying for The Atlantic, so I'm sure there's more than just him.

:crazy: :crazy: says Beat Down magazine!!!

Let's play this game - what would Black American Music be without Cornball White People imposing their will?

What's that you say? There might not even be a Black America to make Black American Music without Cornball White People imposing their will?

Or for that matter, would there even be an America As We Know It without Cornball White People Imposing their will (aka White Man Got A God Complex)?

The Devil you say!

Edited October 25, 2012 by JSngry