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An All Year Season of Discontent in Jazz


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Leaving aside "Whiplash," which to me seems an unrelated matter (also, I've only seen the tour de force verbal abuse scene, not the whole film), I think that the main point of interest in the Rollins-W. Post- and faux KOB kerfuffles and their offshoots is where they came from and why. That is, none of this b.s. would have worked (or "worked," if you prefer) if there hadn't been some prior agreement (or "agreement") out there in some precincts of the culture that jazz was a handy stand-in for all sorts of stuff that gets or has been culturally sanctified without the likes of the would-be hip sneering classes being consulted or getting a vote. No, I don't think that the indignant moralistic tone of much of the pushback to the aforementioned provocations was strategically sound -- I would have preferred a brief surgical response on the "why" front, then silence -- but one of the things mentioned in the Times piece seemed to me to be the best response at all because it wasn't a response but just was good/full of life and, FWIW, abundantly, unpretentiously hip: Antonio Sanchez's drum score to "Birdman."

Fact is, we've come to the point (though that point may well have passed) where jazz can be/could be used by turds, trolls, and creeps to advance their little agendas. The only answer, as in the "Birdman" score, is more or less un-ignorable value and vigor. Yes, getting such work out there is a problem, one that was solved in the case of "Birdman" because of the actual tastes of the people who were already in charge there/in a position to make things happen. But isn't that often the case?

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Not sure I've got Larry's point but is it this - rattle the jazz cage by saying jazz is pointless fare for middlebrows who think it is art - people pour out to say in a laborious and PO-faced way, 'who are you callin' middlebrow?' - point made, cage rattlers move on to next cage.

That's pretty much it -- the cage rattlers part and the "laborious and PO-faced" response part. But I don't quite get the "pointless fare for middlebrows" versus "who are you callin' middlebrow?" dynamic. Didn't seem to me that either the free-lance cage rattlers or the irritated occupants of the jazz cage had, or were accusing others of having, their brows at any particular level, high, middle, or low. Rather, it seems to me, that this mini-shebang was based (however distantly) on the various moves over the years to more or less defensively sanctify jazz -- e.g. "It's America's classical music," Wynton and J@LC, the Ken Burns series, etc. Maybe Jim in post #8 kind of agrees with me on that, but maybe he's just having fun.

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Maybe Jim in post #8 kind of agrees with me on that, but maybe he's just having fun.

Doing both, doing both...in the old days you could just cut a motherfucker for getting all dicty and/or bitchy. Now you just go and whine about it online. Not sure how much progress that is, to be truthful, because in the old days, you thought twice about getting all dicty and/or bitchy, hello bullshit, meet deterrent. Nowadays, it's like, hey, all the dicty and/or bitchy your ass can eat, don't worry, if we run out we'll make you some more, open house at this house, we never close, and everybody naked all the time.

You know, when everybody's naked, nobody's naked. But your private parts are still out there for the critters to eat on anyway. Who's got the upper hand then if not those who want to eat and run? Is that really a preferred state of being, I ask you?

Happy New Year!

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