JSngry

The more things change... :g :g

From the back, the pianist looks a little like Chick... Most likely not early '60s, I think. Fascinating clip.

Didn't you say the same thing about progrock? Metal, progrock, six of one, 5.9 of the other. AFAIC. YMMV.

Ooops! Never mind.

And I'm just saying, don't let the decisions that result from your/our/anyone's curiosity be influenced by cultural politics, one way or the other. And also, don't take of somebody else's decisions personally, one way or the other.

I for one never said that it's not. All I said was that, yeah, it's good, but I'll take a pass in favor of other things. Apparently that triggers a feeling of rejection in some. I'm reminded of Cecil Taylor's comment along the lines that "white people" can not disabuse themselves of the notion that they have some indefinable something that non-white people want. Well, this isn't exactly about that, but when I say that I've given opera a thorough general examination and have concluded that, no, there's not anything there that I particularly want, much less need. then the response is all this "oh but there's such a great history to this, it's part fo the Great Tradition, you can't understandThe History Of All The Music In All The History Of All The World" type stuff that feels to me more than a little as if I'm being told that there's something wrong with me because of my decision, or at the very least that I'm making my decision based on cultural politics and not musical objectivity, and that, c'mon, get real, who are you kidding, you know it's Great Music. Well, golly gee-whiz, guess what - I've made my decision based solely on personal, musical grounds, and no, there's nothing wrong with me. Strange as it might seem, "it's all good" doesn't mean that "it all works for me". I can, and do, appreciate -or am working on appreciating - damn near everything. But if something doesn't "work" for me after a "darn good look", including Great Music, then I feel no need to fake the love, or even the like. And somebody who's gotten metaphorical death threats about not loving, much less even liking Bill Evans ought to...have at least some part of a clue about this... Opera & metal - the two genres that, a few specifics aside - do absolutely nothing for me. Doesn't mean that they're not "good", or that they're not "significant" (or in the case of opera - Significant - no sarcasm intended), just that they don't give me anything significant and/or anything that I don't get better - for me - elsewhere. I fully recognize, accept, and even...welcome the fact that for many, many other people, an undeniably large # of people over an undeniably large period of time, that this is not the case. But I am not one of them. Sorry if that's a "problem", but if it is, it for damned sure ain't my proplem.

False analogy. Thanks to technologies (especially those of dissementation), time "moves" faster than it used to. It's hardly an original observation that it took jazz less than a century to move through all the cycles that it took "classical" music several centuries to go through, and there's no question that things like radio, television, & the phonograph (to say nothing of the accelerated speed of actualy physical transportation) is perhaps the most significant reason why.

Yeah, ok, I can see that. It's just that that stuff comes across as so droll, so sterotypically "dry" in a British kind of way that I myself have a hard time imagining it as being wholly serious, especially in light of the whole Wizzard thing. And I've commented before that I hear a lot of Lynne's ELO work as having the same dry drollness, that it's all a big. very subtle "serious joke". But this might be a case of my limitations not letting me see the reality. Could be.

Yeah -- and what a kind. Wow.

The history of one kind of music, yeah... Maybe it's a chronological thing, but I was born at such a time that not too terribly far into my "personal developement" I became aware of whole parts of the world's music for which stuff like opera and ballet wasn't really...relevant. And although those musics weren't any more directly relevant to me than this other stuff, they weren't any less relevant either... Point being - at one time in America (or the world, really), you didn't have a lot of options. You either went the Euro-Cultural route, the middlebrow route, or the roots (hillbilly, blues, etc.) route. And if you were really hip, you took jazz. That was pretty much all there was... Africa, Asia, South America, the rest of the world, was not really there for full-flavored consideration. Not that it still is, but whereas once upon a time, my love for James Brown kinda hit a dead end as far as where it came from and where it would lead to. But that was looking at it in a strictly American/Western arena. But before I hit 20, that was beginning to no longer be the case, and by the time I was 25, that was definitely not the case. The first time I heard Fela, it was like...O.....K! And electric Miles no longer seemed like an fascinatingly eccentric path travelled by an always idiosyncratic musician as much as it did one of the opening acts of a long unfolding set of musics for which old-school Western criteria and practices were just not...really needed. And from what I was hearing/feeling/thinking as a result of contact with these musics, they were certainly none the worse for it. Add to that the fact that my background - Southern, semi-rural, with absolutely no strong cultural/esthetic ties to the "Old World" of Western European culture (the closest we got was being Missouri Synod Lutheran, and that's pretty old skool constipated, but East Texas Redneck Missouri Synod Lutherans are at least as much East Texas Rednecks as they are Missouri Synod Lutherans...), and you got somebody for whom the "sense of duty" to accept all this preordained stuff at face value as part of my "obligation" to be a Responsible Artist And Cultured Human Being was somewaht less than...compelling. There were just too many other options by that time. Which is not to say that I deny the validity of that tradition, nor is it to say that I have not explored and been inspired by much of it. I have, and I continue to be. It is just to say that if the object of any art is to inspire, elevate, and awaken, then there is plenty available from all over the world - including America! - that has done that for me quite more organically than has opera. And with the passage of time, the notion that "the history of music minus the history of opera would be a fairly weird, distorted thing." is a concept that frankly seems quaint, naive, and even perhaps unintentionally chauvinistic. Now don't get me wrong. Just becuase I have "other priorities" does not mean that I turn my back on all of "Western Civilization". That would be both impossible and stupid. It does mean however, that even the biggest plate (to use Oliver Lake's analogy) doen not have room for infinite portions of ifinite possibilities. At some point, choices must be made. And when it comes to choosing opera, I look at it like the space on the plate can usually be allocated elsewhere with no loss of either sensual, intellectual, or spiritual nourishment. Mileages will obviously vary on this, but mileage often depends on the peculiarities of any given selected route.

Uh...

Movies.....I came this close to saying movies....but that's a wildly widely variable thing there.... MG, it's not really class politics that bugs me, although that's definitely in the mix. It's more, at root, the sense of manipulation that Rod mentions above. And yet..."storytelling" of any sort has manipulation as a fundamental part of it's m.o., even in it's most objective form (i.e. - if all I'm telling you is "just the facts" of a situation, what situations I do or do not tell you about represents a value judgement in and of itself as to what I think you do or don't want/need to hear)...so "manipulation" is a pretty much unavoidable/inescapable part of communication... I guess it's more a question of scale and intent. I understand quite well that opera, Italian opera especially, was in its time, at root entertainment of a type not too terribly dissimilar from a Broadway musical.. People came for the show, not the "art", and much of the medium was constructed accordingly. Well, ok, it's only rock and roll, etc...but that was in its time, and that time is over and what do we have now? Just as we have a whole big lots bunch of jazzkids whose concept of "swinging" is totally devoid of any sense of dance impulse, so do we have a big lots bunch full of "classical" music culture for whom the "art" is rooted more a matter of stipulated existence rather than a need for ongoing proof. And as rooted in class politics as that so often is, it's really something beyond that, because that's a type behavior that you find at every level of human activity - the "type" of people who presuppose "specialness" & go about the business of creating things - all sorts of things - that have that presupposition as its raisin debtor. Keith Jarrett, anybody? Now many, many times, as with Jarrett, and as with things operatic, there certainly is some meat there, some "art" that really is art outside of its presupposition of same, but the question for me, the free-willed consumer with at least some awareness of just how big a world it is and how many people are/were/will be doing how many different things that may or may not be relevant to my lifestyles, past present or future, is this - am I going to get something out of the experpience to either A) take me back for thoughtful reflection/reconsideration; B) Stop me dead in my tracks to look at right now in a different/better(?) way than I currently am; or C) Get me going towards a future that contains more awareness (of whatever) than I currently have AND - is this challenge/benefit going to come in a package that presents a beneficial time-emotion investment/benefit gained ratio? And it's that ratio that's the dealbreaker for me in a lot of things. Not that "challenge" is to be avoided, of course not. Challenge is to be welcomed, courted, even. But challenge - and substance - comes in many, many forms. And there, as they say, is the rub... All this to say that in my current estimation, "art" is as much a matter of final effect as it is initial intent (and has nothing whatsoever to do with any sort of hand-me-down "intrinsicality") and as such everybody concerned would be better served by assuming nothing, manipulating nothing, and by doing everything.

http://sonnyrollins.com/birthdayvideo.php

Really?

And I'd also like to go on record here as saying that finally, at long last, I really don't believe in Culture any more. All that does is imbue acts of creation w/a talisman-like effect that makes it too easy for somebody to not think or feel. Smart people with good minds and great spiritis can (and do) find inspiration in any number and quality of material. Which is not to say that exploring beyond one's "here" to get to one's "there" is not a noble undertaking, because dammit, that is the most noble undertaking. But "here" & "there" are in no way fixed quantities, and as a result who knows what's going to work how with whom. There ain't no magic Culture Elixir that is guaranteed to get you there. I listen to Pavarotti, I feel stifled and want to go lie down. I listen to James Brown & my spirit & imagination soar, and my desire to be kinetically active & creative soars. (and yeah, I have seen the clip of them performing together...). Others will react in the opposite manner. So much for the Approved Culture Path To Better Living. Like I said, I don't feel a void.

Well yes, of course they are. But isn't it funny how each era/epoch/whatever produces these "types" (and yeah, "idiosyncratic genius who defies all categorization" is a type) in some form or fashion? Individuals vs types = yin & yang, complimentary opposites that constitute the whole. Can't have one without the other, and vice-versa. Makes sense to me.

No doubt. But we are where we are, and I ain't got all day (or all night) any more. So some things have gotten the cut, opera being one of them. It's not like I feel a void as a result either. Of course, that's all I was really saying in the first place, and would have been content to say. But then some guy pops up & tells me that because I'm not mesmerized to goosebumps by some Pavarotti video that I'm not getting Bechet & Armstrong. And to that, I, as the old folks say, take exception. :g

Wasn't the Italian population in New Orleans as large a % of the city's overall population as in many larger Eastern seabvoard cities? And as a result, wasn't opera then very much a "civilized pastime" for many New Orleans residents, with some very high quality companies and facitlities at the local's disposal? And weren't Creoles well represented in the operatic orchestras of New Orleans until the Jim Crow crackdown? What I don't know off the top of my head is if Bechet actually played in an operatic orchestra. Don't think so, but I do think he studied with players who did, at one time. But yeah, the Jim Crow crackdown, and the resultant throwing together of two cultures that had previously kinda intnetionally avoided each other is justone of the many cultural cross-pollinations that made New Orleans the unique olio (I refuse to say "gumbo" due to Marsailispathy) that it was that allowed it to produce what it did how it did.

I think that at this point in time, as the particulars of their individual immediacies inevitably fades to reveal the permanence of their intents (that is to say, all human behavior ultimately comes down to a handful of "types" of actions, although the ways they get acted out are seemingly infinite), that they are far more alike than not. Sounds interesting, but, on second thought, I don't know what you mean here. I'm not pulling your chain, but please amplify if possible. Simple. You know, the "seven (or five or how many ever) basic themes of literature" thing extrapolated to human behavior. People, individually & collectively, don't really do that many different things. They just don't. That's why there's only seven (or five or how many ever, I've got it down to one uber myself) themse to write about, because that's really all we do. The "interesting" part is in the ways we do it. Studying that shit'll have you working nights and weekends. But that 's the how. The what, that all comes down to few. And what opera, musicals, and cabaret (ususally) are is stories told with one too many layer of signification and one too many layer of I'm supposed to find this "deeper" (or something) than the stories found in real life. It;s not that it's not real, it's that it's presented to me with an implicit assumption that I'm going to like this better than reality because this is "special" or something. Like if I don't sit there and be dazzled/charmed/transported/whatever that it's my fault/problem. Opera, musicals, cabaret, are ultimately - for me - different ways of getting your ass in a chair to be convinced that what you're seeing is "magic", that the people doing it are "special", and that because I buy into their illusion, I am "sophisitcated". No matter how artfully it's done (and hell yeah, there's been enormous artfulness in all three), it's in the service of that vision (which is surely a tangent of one of the seven or five or one great themes...), and that's a vision that does not interest me at all. If I want "magic", I'll take it in, like 2-5 minute doses at a street fair and then move the hell on. And if I want real magic, hell, reality (as in unscripted real reality) has more than enough to offer, good, bad, funny, scary, and real surprise endings a fair amount of the time. And if I want MAGIC, shit, I've had a voodoo curse placed on me (for real), and how that played out has let me know in no uncertain terms that I most assuredly don't.

Well yeah dude, DUH!

Live well, Sonny, live well.

I think that at this point in time, as the particulars of their individual immediacies inevitably fades to reveal the permanence of their intents (that is to say, all human behavior ultimately comes down to a handful of "types" of actions, although the ways they get acted out are seemingly infinite), that they are far more alike than not.