Beyond a Love Supreme

[Mark Stryker]

http://www.popmatters.com/review/176027-beyond-a-love-supreme-john-coltrane-and-the-legacy-of-an-album/

Haven't read the book so can't completely confirm Layman's judgment rendered in this pan, but I will say it rings true and accurate to the breed of book under discussion and Layman does a nice job of articulating the issue. "It’s a cool idea to examine what it means for this improvisational art form to be based so utterly on obsessing over recordings that become 'commoditized' and fetishized and other big words. Alas, Whyton’s academic style makes his book not just a chore to read but, frankly, loaded with many buckets full of bullshit. That said, let me lay out the basics here, as Whyton has some intriguing ideas that might be usefully discussed in the language of normal, non-tenured human beings who are interested in jazz rather than just looking smart at some symposium somewhere."

Edited October 28, 2013 by Mark Stryker

[erwbol]

This might as good a place to post this question as a separate thread.

I've been wondering if anybody here has read Leonard Brown - John Coltrane and Black America's Quest for Freedom: Spirituality and the Music

Link

Edited October 26, 2013 by erwbol

[John L]

I think I'll pass on this one.

[umum_cypher]

I haven't seen it, but I very much doubt this is the whole story. Tony Whyton has interesting things to say.

[Big Beat Steve]

What does "re-ify" (or "reify"?) mean, please?

No matter what Whyton may have to say, this review is off-putting just because of the apparent writing style of the book, and if what the reviewer says about the STYLE of this book is only correct by 50%, then ... oh well ... Why cannot these "academics" relax a little sometimes and stop their academic navel-gazing for a moment to see when their subject on hand calls for an at least SLIGHTLY more "down to earth" treatment if they care about reaching their target audience AT ALL?

After all you can be scholarly and still be comprehensible.

Or is a PH.D. required to listen to "A love Supreme"?

(No, I have no idea who WIll Layman is and with what grains of salt his reviews may have to be taken, but I have come across this problem of academics going overboard in academic blurb when dealing with jazz before (though apprently nowhere near as badly as here) and I DID obtain a University degree too - in a field not a zillion miles away from (academic) writing so normally "ought" to get to grips with a fair dose of scholarliness)

Edited October 27, 2013 by Big Beat Steve

[BillF]

A few random thoughts:

It's regrettable that jazz has been taken over by academia in this way. This sort of writing - endemic in many academic areas nowadays - is quite alien to the spirit of the music and, quite frankly, insults it.

An artist friend of mine, whom I won't name, produces writing of this sort about his own work. When I visited his art show and liked the work - finding it even entertaining - I told him I'd feared the worst after reading the incomprehensible gobbledegook he'd written about it. He laughed and said he only wrote that stuff to send people up and tie them in knots.

Perhaps the best policy, then, is to ignore the academic writing and enjoy the Coltrane disc.

I'm very happy, though, about academia's taking up of jazz in another way - the practical courses which now abound in learning and playing the music. These are keeping the music alive and generations of musicians - as far back of Jimmy Giuffre - are now the products of such courses. Teaching on these courses is also a valuable source of livelihood for musicians, particularly in providing pensions when the continual touring and playing become too much to sustain.

[danasgoodstuff]

'to reify' is to treat an idea like it's something you'd meet walking down the street - in connection with jazz recordings, it's treating officially released labums as if that's the whole story, when in fact the're only snapshots, not the whole life - I think Herbie H said something to that effect.

fn-Social Construction of Reality, something I read in college a long time ago...

[A Lark Ascending]

Absolutely, Bill.

I love reading about jazz (and music in general) but so often I give up because the book (or article) is about the projections of the writer rather than a real attempt to try to explain the music. Humphrey Lyttleton's couple of books on jazz (fused into a single volume) are my benchmarks. I learnt more about what to listen to in classic jazz from those two than from any number of academic volumes. Ted Gioia's book on West Coast jazz was another classic of clear writing that aimed to explain the music rather than posture.

The one that drove me absolutely nuts earlier this year was the recent book about 60s/70s UK jazz - there was a good book about the music within but it was utterly ruined by this second-hand sociogobbledegook.

I'm haunted by having to read this sort of impenetrable stuff on education as part of my teacher training course 35 years ago - even as a callow 21 year old it read like bollox. And quite a bit of 'post-modern' historical writing disappears up the same orifice.

Humph's books, from start to finish, give the impression of a real attempt to 'include' listeners from all walks of life. Too many of these academic tomes seem to try to claim music for a small clique of knowing insiders.

[i was trying to read a book of articles on Michael Tippett earlier this year. I'm really keen to understand his music more. But I was completely floored by one about his relationship with 'English' music that spent 20 odd pages telling me that more research needed to be done.]

Edited October 27, 2013 by A Lark Ascending

[John L]

Or is a PH.D. required to listen to "A love Supreme"?

No, but you need one to go beyond "A Love Supreme."

[David Ayers]

Glad to see 'Surpreme' spelt correctly in the thread title, sorry to see a sad lapse on 'Luurve'.

[Mark Stryker]

Glad to see 'Surpreme' spelt correctly in the thread title, sorry to see a sad lapse on 'Luurve'.

Corrected. Why didn't somebody say something about this earlier ... Sorry.

[JSngry]

Glad to see 'Surpreme' spelt correctly in the thread title, sorry to see a sad lapse on 'Luurve'.

Corrected. Why didn't somebody say something about this earlier ... Sorry.

I just thought that "Surpreme" was beyond Supreme, what with it having one more letter, and figured, hey, Mark knows what's up, so like, hey, right?

[Mark Stryker]

Glad to see 'Surpreme' spelt correctly in the thread title, sorry to see a sad lapse on 'Luurve'.

Corrected. Why didn't somebody say something about this earlier ... Sorry.

I just thought that "Surpreme" was beyond Supreme, what with it having one more letter, and figured, hey, Mark knows what's up, so like, hey, right?

Mark does know what's up, but sometimes he's a sloppy speller. You cats gotta keep me honest.

[David Ayers]

Glad to see 'Surpreme' spelt correctly in the thread title, sorry to see a sad lapse on 'Luurve'.

Corrected. Why didn't somebody say something about this earlier ... Sorry.

I just thought that "Surpreme" was beyond Supreme, what with it having one more letter, and figured, hey, Mark knows what's up, so like, hey, right?

Mark does know what's up, but sometimes he's a sloppy speller. You cats gotta keep me honest.

It was better before! Change it back!

[JSngry]

I engaged the carrot cake in a lusty repartee of thrusty wits and cold platter chips, neither one of us seeking to avoid nor belittle the others most dangling delectables and alluring amenities, the cake was there to be eaten, and eaten with engorged lasciviousness at that, and me, I was just a dude who being driven by nothing too more complicates than to just get all up in that cake and have my way in a most natural way, the way that left everybody feeling better when, finally compulsions were sated and it was clean whole-GLANDULAR ACTION in the service of the most easy most slated ways made the perfect world.

The cake as truly taken, an the cake nevermore deeply satisfied in the cosmic order than when it were so, neither place nor role mattered then, on consumption it the most pre-innocent, undefiled manner possible.

Every bite should engage the genitals; and see if the partnership is a fast and/or worthy one. In my case, it always is; We take with great pleasure that which is given with as equally great pleasure. None dare call it "love" for fear of cheapening it. Never lowered it's id, REAL love, love of the type that renders dogmatic praddle into so much candy wrappers for faggot candied..pettichoral transmutations of a just good natural food fuck..

Thus Sprach The Carrot Cake and I From within

[robertoart]

What does "re-ify" (or "reify"?) mean, please?

No matter what Whyton may have to say, this review is off-putting just because of the apparent writing style of the book, and if what the reviewer says about the STYLE of this book is only correct by 50%, then ... oh well ... Why cannot these "academics" relax a little sometimes and stop their academic navel-gazing for a moment to see when their subject on hand calls for an at least SLIGHTLY more "down to earth" treatment if they care about reaching their target audience AT ALL?

After all you can be scholarly and still be comprehensible.

Or is a PH.D. required to listen to "A love Supreme"?

(No, I have no idea who WIll Layman is and with what grains of salt his reviews may have to be taken, but I have come across this problem of academics going overboard in academic blurb when dealing with jazz before (though apprently nowhere near as badly as here) and I DID obtain a University degree too - in a field not a zillion miles away from (academic) writing so normally "ought" to get to grips with a fair dose of scholarliness)

It's not too hard to find out what reify means. And unless there is a better word to encapsulate what it means, that one will work.

I think the academics like to flex their intellectual muscles, just like tenor sax men were wont to do.

Coltrane moved from the bar room to the concert hall and he made an album that had meaning for both audiences, and the crossover of the two.

Then he made some albums none of em possibly liked much at all

[Face of the Bass]

One of the reasons I got into academia was to improve the writing. There are absolutely ways to write about complex cultural phenomena with language that can be understood and appreciated by the educated layperson. I often think that the off-putting formulations of some academics are simply a function of not understanding how to write well.

Also, to the point earlier that this academic discourse insults jazz, I would add that it insults just about everything that it tries to cover. Seeing the lives of ordinary people reduced in this way is actually even more offensive than what some writers try to do with Trane.

I started reading the edited volume on Black America's Quest for Freedom and gave up on it partway through. My recollection is that there were a few nice essays but also a lot of stuff that was really third-rate.

[clifford_thornton]

This might as good a place to post this question as a separate thread.

I've been wondering if anybody here has read Leonard Brown - John Coltrane and Black America's Quest for Freedom: Spirituality and the Music

Link

I've never read any of Brown's writing, but have heard him play tenor on record and he's quite good.

[robertoart]

If you're using the lives of great men and women simply to flex your own intellectual muscles then shame.

But if you are flexing your intellectual muscles to further illuminate and make cogent those great lives and intellectual property then more power to you, whatever the context,,,, be it the academy, the street or the bus stop.

[Big Beat Steve]

A quote given in another currently ongoing topic here sums it up nicely, IMHO: :g

There was a fear that if it was made understandable, it wouldn't seem important.

[robertoart]

A quote given in another currently ongoing topic here sums it up nicely, IMHO: :g

There was a fear that if it was made understandable, it wouldn't seem important.

[David Ayers]

works of art which cannot be understood in themselves but need some pretentious instruction book to justify their existence will never again find their way to the German people.

[robertoart]

works of art which cannot be understood in themselves but need some pretentious instruction book to justify their existence will never again find their way to the German people.

Exactly.

[fasstrack]

Ha ha. Poor Whyton.......