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What to do when the wife hates jazz.


Hardbopjazz

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I got a divorce. However it was only part of a larger problem. I didn't know the woman long enough to realize that we really didn't have anything in common and music was in that equation. I liked the guy in the black hat who is part of my avatar and the ex liked Neil Diamond. Some of the posters here have pointed out that compromise is in order in this case. However if compromise doesn't seem to work and your wife is giving you hell over your musical tastes then you might want to view this as a smoke signal in your relationship.

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I got a divorce. However it was only part of a larger problem. I didn't know the woman long enough to realize that we really didn't have anything in common and music was in that equation. I liked the guy in the black hat who is part of my avatar and the ex liked Neil Diamond. Some of the posters here have pointed out that compromise is in order in this case. However if compromise  doesn't seem to work and your wife is giving you hell over your musical tastes then you might want to view this as a smoke signal in your relationship.

My wife tries to hide that fact that she doesn't like jazz. She listens to CDs with me in the car and goes to many concerts with me. However, she thinks that I don't know that she doesn't like it because she is very supportive of me as a jazz musician.

I think you are totally correct that loud protests over the music you play and inability to conpromise is a sign of a deeper problem. My ex asked me to stop playing music because she was "jealous of the time I spent with the instrument". It was actually her need to control and manipulate.

I'll never give up what I love for another person again.

Edited by Upright Bill
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However if compromise doesn't seem to work and your wife is giving you hell over your musical tastes then you might want to view this as a smoke signal in your relationship.

If your s.o. is giving you hell about something as relatively benign as music, it's definitely a sign that something else is wrong. My wife sometimes complains about the amount of money I spend on music (which is a legitimate complaint, and I do try to keep my spending under control. I'm just weak sometimes...), but she never complains about the music itself. She likes most of what I play, and what she doesn't like either she tunes out or I don't play when she's around.

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and i thought that only brazilian women didn't like jazz...

seriously, my wife doesn't hates jazz but i´m sure she will never fall in love about it. i have already burned a compliation for her with her favorites and i was really happy to do it. she hears music at her office but mainly brazilian music. at home she is watching TV or sleeping in front of...

i don't avoid to listen any kind of jazz if she is at home or not and she knows that i will divorce her immediately if she touches the volume knob by herself :angry:

if she is watching TV at the living room (my apartment is not that big) i try to keep the volume at a reasonable level.

she never complains about the money i spend every month on CD´s and she is very supportive about my CD addiction. she spends the same money buying her clothes or whatever so we're even on this side too.

i have tried a lot to educate her on jazz but gave up last year. i guess i´m lucky enough with who i have by my side even if i don't think luck is really involved on our choices with the woman we choose to be with us. we should be very careful on this matter ;)

my personal advice about this particular situation is REPLACE YOUR WIFE!!!!!

Marcus Oliveira

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Maybe we should solicit a response from the female members of this board.

What do your significant others think of your musical tastes?

My ex-husband and I were extremely compatible musically! We met when a mutual friend asked me to write music for a play he and my "Future Ex" were co-writing. And soon after, we started a trio together: he alto, me bass (my apologies to Tarzan). We both had quite broad-ranging tastes -- and introduced each other to a lot of new things -- because of him I first heard Albert Ayler -- and "Ayler" became the middle name of our son, born almost 7 years after we first met.

Well...

Let's just say that because of musical compatibility I missed some "smoke signals about the inability to compromise" -- and raising a child is an endeavor where that ability is crucial...

My current BF is another musical omnivore and a great musician -- I learn so much from everything he listens to -- even including sports talk radio! One thing I have in common with both of them, in addition to musical tastes, is a need for silence at times -- when the need appears, it's pretty pressing -- so it feels very natural to respect that need in others and have my need understood in turn -- that's one thing that's worked smoothly in most of my relationships (including friendships, bandmates on the road) with musicians. I gravitate toward people who feel like music is not BACKGROUND, you're putting it on to pay attention to it, and who share a need for silence at times (accomplished by an easy compromise -- if you need quiet and have another room to go to, you will; if not, the people with you will turn things off for a while).

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If your s.o. is giving you hell about something as relatively benign as music, it's definitely a sign that something else is wrong. My wife sometimes complains about the amount of money I spend on music (which is a legitimate complaint, and I do try to keep my spending under control. I'm just weak sometimes...), but she never complains about the music itself. She likes most of what I play, and what she doesn't like either she tunes out or I don't play when she's around.

:tup

that is exactly what i would have said!

were we seperated at birth? :g

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Everytime I spin a disc or LP, my wife always comes into the room and nearly shuts the volume. Her love of jazz doesn't go beyond Chuck Mangione's "Feels so Good." So when I put the headphones on, I get, "you are Ignoring me."

Do any of you on this board have similar stories with their spouses or other half?

I feel your pain.

My wife calls Jazz that "bweep-bop" music.

She wonders aloud why I won't play that smoothie stuff, sighs, then walks out of the room. :(

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  • 6 years later...

This was a great thread, so I'm resuscitating it, if only for this one post. My girlfriend of 2.5 years generally listens to what I jokingly refer to as "bitch punk," even though most of it is underground punk/rock rather than the Blink 182/Good Charlotte stuff (which I don't mind on occasion). She's actually quite good about tolerating most of my music, and when we moved to the East Bay (her first choice) for grad school, she compromised by agreeing that we would rent a 2-bedroom so I could keep my music and listen to it in the spare. We only saw live jazz once together - a gypsy jazz combo in Minneapolis at a club that is now closed - but she frequently good-naturedly complains that I haven't burned her a copy of Django music. Her main issue is with horns and drums, particularly the hi-hat, but she seems to be okay with older music, where the quality of horns and drums are muted. Our main, petty, disagreements usually stem from me being cheap about something stupid - i.e. she wants to buy blueberries or rice milk and I think they're too expensive - to which she'll come back with, "Oh, you don't have a problem spending xxx dollars on jazz cds." She's got a point.

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It got to the point with my second wife that we were taking vacation time separately so I could go to New York or off to a festival somewhere, which she had zero interest in doing, and that's never a great sign. ---> "How was your trip honey?" "Great, what did you do while I was gone?"

Uh-huh.

On the plus side, I'm convinced I'm happier as a bachelor now partly because I can indulge in music to my heart's content. The woman I have been seeing for the past while is tolerant, not jealous of my semi-obsession, but she basically thinks of all of it as "everything you play is out of tune." She's teasing, but also being truthful. If we were to live together, I can see where it might become a big problem firing up Jelly Roll at 1 a.m.

:ph34r:

Edited by papsrus
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You just have to perform some of that on her first :w

Over here, we sort of found a way... I have my own room and do most of my listening in there - usually over speakers, but late at night I might as well use headphones. There were some moments when my girlfriend was severely pissed off, but I take her to some concerts now and then and while she'd never put on any jazz herself, she got more and more tolerant (however, I still can't tell in advance what she's going to like and what not... funky and electric stuff usually is too nervous but lyrical stuff and vocal jazz then is very boring, anything in between is worth a shot.

I think the greatest concert we saw together was Randy Weston's trio - that was so energetic and so... what a shitty word, but authentic, yes - honest, straight and direct music, played with lots of joy and love - and that worked perfectly for her, too, in a live setting (but I bet she'd find it nervous when I'd put it on at home - or boring in case of solo recordings).

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You just have to perform some of that on her first :w

:g

Reminds me of that scene in "When Harry Met Sally," when Billy Crystal, after finally ending up in bed with Meg Ryan, wonders, how long do you have to hold a woman after sex? Is a minute long enough? Five minutes?

What's the acceptable time frame here, (as you gaze longingly toward your stereo system in the living room)? :w

Edited by papsrus
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My wife over the past 12 years has slowly warmed up to some of the milder stuff I play like Swing, Swang, Swinging by McLean, but she definitely does not like free jazz or anything that gets wild or out of control (she refers to it as an orchestra warming up). Having said that, she gets how much I love jazz and even tolerates it when I blow a couple hundred here and there (so long as I can convince her that the cds I'm buying are rare and OOP ;)) and that I play the wilder stuff when she's not around. All in all, not a bad arrangement.

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If you have kids, you can use them. A year ago my 2 small boys became hooked on Art Tatum's 'Elegie' - "Put the fast piano one on" they'd say, I look at the wife, roll my eyes and on it goes.

I've managed to get the eldest to demand Flatt and Scruggs to be played. Little Richard works great too, anything they can go beserk to, and can name - "rock an rollll".

Generally, jazz is more difficult... but tell them Roland Kirk is playing with his nose and it does the trick for a while.

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I guess I'm pretty lucky in this regard. My wife likes music in the mild way most people do. I remember being somewhat impressed the first time I went over to her house when we were dating. She had a small CD collection - about 30 discs - but it was pretty eclectic: Patsy Cline, Bob Marley, The Hackberry Ramblers.

Music is a pleasant diversion to her. But she totally seems to get what music is to me - the focal point of my life, and has on occasion articulated it better than I could. I used to try to wait until she wasn't around to play the more outside stuff (Ayler, Cecil, etc.), but even that's not really necessary; she doesn't seem to think of any of my music as strange anymore.

The one time recently that she shook her head over what was coming out of the speakers was when I was spinning a 78 by The Six Musical Magpies, a black vaudeville group from the twenties. When they started yodeling, she (humorously) complained to her friends on her Facebook page.

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