The Future of Jazz

[JSngry]

5 hours ago, Joe said:

Zappa also advised us to kill ugly radio. Prescient, but not in the way he probably intended.

 

I think that THIS guy knew what he meant!

 

[ghost of miles]

I summoned the ghost of Thelonious Monk and this is what he sayeth:

Where's jazz going?  I don't know.  Maybe it's going to hell.  You can't make anything go anywhere.

I swear!  Well, either that or I read that quote in Nate Chinen's Playing Changes.  Almost certainly the latter...and btw, Chinen's book is a good read for anybody interested in this here topic.  If nothing else, it does a good job of telling where we've been the past 20 years or so.

Ask jazz musicians in their 20s what they're listening to.  That will at least give you an idea of the stew of influences that's brewing.  I've recently heard praise from such folks for Pat Metheny's American Garage period, pianist Aaron Parks, Esperanza Spalding, Lee Morgan, Maria Schneider, hiphop and gospel... that's just from several conversations, so it can't really be extrapolated into anything meaningful.  But I always like asking younger musicians that question, because I know they've grown up in such a different world than I did, in terms of what was on the radio and TV when they were kids, etc.  There's a fair amount of overlap now actually that didn't use to exist as much between generations, because of the Internet and the explosion of access to so much previously-made music.  Still, newly-emerging sets of cultural references inevitably arise in the exchanges that I've had.

[Joe]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

I think that THIS guy knew what he meant!

 

Yep! My favorite description of EC... "Not that Elvis; more like Buddy Holly after downing a can of STP."

[JSngry]

In The Future Of Jazz, Girls Talk!

But seriously, that guy, that Pat Williams guy, he was certainly the future of something..TV Theme Jazz, maybe? Whatever, the guy had a thing, and if it got obnxious as pickle fuck eventually, early on it was pretty damn clever, clever and crafty, and pretty much unmistakable.

[Teasing the Korean]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

In The Future Of Jazz, Girls Talk!

But seriously, that guy, that Pat Williams guy, he was certainly the future of something..TV Theme Jazz, maybe? Whatever, the guy had a thing, and if it got obnxious as pickle fuck eventually, early on it was pretty damn clever, clever and crafty, and pretty much unmistakable.

 

Pat Williams and Billy Goldenberg did a lot of great early 70s cop show funk scores. they are sadly underrepresented on CD.