JSngry

I can tell you that the Southern American Rural Cultures in/with which I grew did use music to teach/instill social/moral lessons/values. Although, the less Southern/Rural that people became (or tried to become), the less they were used...

Bartenders treating musicians like their employees. Now there I think I disagree with you. Experience with Senegalese music inclines me to think that sponsorship is - or can be - a good thing. Commercial sponsorship enabled the Senegalese music industry to beat pirates who were selling about 80% of all albums in Senegal in the 70s and early 80s, by reducing the price of K7s to a competitive level. I can't find on the web any examples of album sleeves actually containing adverts for products like Nescafe frappe, or Baralait (a baby milk formula), but I have them myself. The albums all contain a song praising their sponsored products. The music industry in Senegal would have been destroyed without this sponsorship. With it, the pirates have been driven out of the market. Here's the website for the 20th St Louis Jazz Festival, sponsored by the government and about 40 firms whose logos appear at the bottom of the page. No well known American jazz musicians this year but past years have featured Parlan, Shepp, Lucky Petersen, Roy Haynes, Louis Sclavis, Randy Weston, Jack DeJohnette, McCoy Tyner and the Elite Swingsters. MG No doubt. However, I've had experience with sponsorship of the type where the music is there just to pimp the sponsor and you're expected to act all....endorseful and shit b/c of your participation. Not happy when that happens.

Authorities writing encyclopedias are a common way to monetize the culture while remaining indifferent about (if not outright hostile to) the tribe. I remember the first time I heard Cabell, I literally laughed out loud because I knew exactly where he was coming from, musically and socially. I knew that tribe, had been spending a lot of time in that world and when you get to know people from the inside, you come to recognize their sound, their voice, their angles, their "accent" (I don't think that album was titled entirely accidentally), and yeah, I just GOT Marvin Cabell from Note One, no explanations necessary. But it's not just Marvin Cabell and it's not just that tribe. But we could go on about that forever, and Paul ain't got forever.

Great photos.

Wholly avoidable and irrelevant sloppiness being considered "spontaneity".

Got the message yesterday. already had the Tolliver, but did get the Merrill, which I had passed on until now. I tend to like Helen Merrill far more often than not, but am willing to let her catalog envelop my shelf space slowly but steadily and gradually build in an almost Tantric-like manner. Seems like the way it should be done with Helen Merrill.

I don't even know who Richard Cook is, to be honest with you.

Sponsorship.

The tribe is what keeps you alive, thriving, and relevant when the nation either fails to care, or even worse, tries to make you go away. As it pertains to music, for instance, I can hear one note of Marvin Cabell on Accent On The Blues and know that at some level/plane, our tribal affiliations intersect at least somewhat. And nothing can make that not so except one or both of us renouncing the tribe altogether. I don't think Marvin has, and I know I sure as hell won't. You carry that with you and you'll be fine. Once you know who you are, you can grow into anything. If you don't know who you are, you can be led into anything. It starts with music, maybe, but it doesn't end there, or anywhere.

This.

REad the label - it says MILES DAVIS' BITCHES BREW.

Nobody having a score on the game between tunes.

Players who interact without listening.

Contrarian decisions about shirttails.

Audience members who think that you want to be as drunk as them.

Not just there, but on the Grant Green & Elvin Jones Lighthouse albums as well. Time/place/etc.

The Barry Ulanov bio says something about how at some point, Duke walked in, asked to see the books, had a look, walked out, and that was that.

I see divided-and-conquered factions now being monetized (and about to have it stepped up to a whole 'nother level, depending on what kind of a November it is), be it through consumerism or criminalism or rabidism, not tribes. Tribalism = bad. Tribes = good. I know, it don't make sense. It's one of those things.

Male MCs who think that it's ok to do a Rick Holmes thing in 2012 for a crowd that doesn't know who Rick Holmes is and think it's cool what this guy is doing.

Hey I get miffed by a lot of stuff these days. I'm at that age. Nah, what I truly believe is that you should always be open, always. But open is not an action, it's a state, and it's a state that manifests itself in infinite variations. But there are those whose action is to simply state the act, and in doing so, their action moves them away from the state. And that can indeed be miffing! But miffed is easily left behind when one hears the voices of the tribe calling one home. And the more open we are, the more tribes there are who will at least let you come in out of the rain. If they want something in return - they are not the tribe for you, although if they want nothing from you but you want to give something to them in return, then perhaps they are. Don't be monetized. Get tribalized!

People with glasses too big for their head, unless the way they play changes the way you look at their head. But only unless. Subjective, I know, but many things are!

No, at some point it's an imperative if you want to "go to the next level of understanding" as a listener as well. Do you just want to be friends with this music or do you want to get...intimate with it...mmm...ya' know? But going to that next level, that is an option. Definitely. And there's no absolute right or wrong with what you do or you don't (or even if you do or you don't), just know that the different levels exist, and that you can make a baby without being in love, and you can deeply love somebody without making a baby, but either one of those experiences on there own are in no way the same as deeply loving somebody and having a baby with them, much less raising the baby to be an adult and then growing old til death do you part, etc. None of it is necessarily "better" than any other of it, but it is different, each in its own way. And you know what's really missing in today's life? A positive sense of tribe. Tribes are somehow for "savages". Well, I disagree! Tribes is what bring you together to have all that music/"music" in the air everywhere you go, getting inside you without you even having to think about it. Un-tribing people makes them easier to mold them to "consume" and stuff, to give them money and predict how it will come back. "They" call it "monetizing the culture", when all it really is is breaking down the tribe to create human cash crops. So yeah, join a tribe. Join a tribe you can love, warts and all. Join a mf-in' tribe and know what it means to be able to rely on things besides and beyond the conscious mind.

But of course, having said that, you have to listen, you have to get the details, otherwise you're not really hearing the music, you're more or less taking an aural Rorschach Test. And to play is ALL about details, although executed from what part(s) of you is another discussion altogether. But a subconscious familiarity makes for a more friendly conscious objective examination. Feeling it makes thinking about it more to the object of the game, I think. And if it don't fit, don't force it!

Casual slacks with high-dollar dress shoes.

Well yeah, it's like "we" marvel at "other cultures" for whom music is so "natural" because they're "immersed" in it every waking moment. Well, of course. And does that mean that they spend every one of those waking moments LISTENING to it? Hell, nothing would get done! I mean, I get the whole "silence is beautiful" thing, and I get the whole "mental inspection" thing, and I get the whole THING thing that comes with that, but do you know when White People sound their Whitest when playing ANY kind of music? When they're THINKING about it instead of just PLAYING it. I can only factually speak for White People, though. But.Tristano knew that the Id is where its at, speakining in White People Terms. Translate as necessary. I think it behooves us all to just have shit playing in the background all the time, whatever, just let it play and repeat, make that music a part of our every waking moment and don't worry about "listening" to it, just let it soak into the subconscious and see what a difference that makes. Because I tell you this - whatever swinging I can do, whatever blues I can play, whatever intuitiveness I have, very little of it came from actually LISTENING and most of it came from osmosis. I've spent a lot of time around a lot of people and we all spent a lot of time with "music in the air" while we were doing other things, as well as making music. After a while, it just becomes your nature. You are who you are, but you can sure as hell develop that and me a More Fuller who you are if that's what you'd care to do. There's a time to get under the covers and there's a time to let the covers get over you. Yes you can!