JSngry

It's not about assimilating the music into/with/whatever other musics. It's about learning from the rest of the world some very basic truths about where people are (which is for the most part not where "we" are) and putting them to use. It's really not that complicated.

You know, none of us lived through the Industrial Revolution, so we're all convinced that that paradigm is the paradigm. But we're all living through the Technology/Digital Revolution, and guess what? It ain't, not any more. Things like internal rhythm, listening focus, attention spans, etc. are going to change in a fundamental way (they already are), and they're going to stay changed (even as they continue to change). Do we want to be strangers in our own world? Or do we want to find a way to keep the bad guys from totally taking over the dissemenation of the information that we all know to be true? Ching-chinga-ching-chinga-BLAM! E-raced. De-leted. Fatal error. Ya' gotta be a moving target these days.

Yes, but your own sensibilities need not be so set in stone as to be untouched by those coming behind you, do they? Look, I'm fully aware that I am who I am, that I've lived how I've lived, and that there's no magical getting rid of that. But does that mean that I've got to not listen, enjoy, & maybe even be moved by things not of my generation or before? Not to somehow become somebody else entirely, to forget my old truths, but to just simply add to what I already know? Hip-hop per se has never bothered me, and I was into it pretty early on, still got a bunch of old Sugar Hill 12" that I still pull out. Same w/dance music - I was digging Funk back in the day big time along w/all the jazz. So if I liked those musics then, why shouldn't I like them now? And if they've evolved, why shouldn't I check out the evolutions? Life goes on, with you or without you. I fell into the coomon (and necessary) middle-aged "stupor" of hunkering down and narrowing focus, because when you're raising kids, that's kinda what you gotta do. But it doesn't mean that it's a stupor that must become permanent. I'm coming out of it, thank god, and I'm hearing some things that interest me coming out of the evolutions of what I once dug with a passion. Now does that meant that I'm going to automatically dig all the evolutions? Hell no. So much hip hop now has become a big pile of sludge, and so much dance music has become mechanical/techno robot music. That's not for me, not at all. But what about the stuff that doesn't turn me off? Am I supposed to say, "Well, yeah, that's really hip, but hey, I'm too old for it, so I'll just leave it alone"? WTF is that? Goddammit, I'll like whatever I like, thank you very much! And probably like it more because I'm liking it with some perspective, not because it's all I know. Now as far as how I let all that affect my music, well hey - I understand the motivation behind Miles' electric work better & better every day. He had a personal need to confront "popular culture" on his terms, to bring what he knew to what he maybe didn't know but was intrigued by. If in the end it meant having what was essentially an instrumental pop band, hey - it was a damn good instrumental pop band, showing the rest of us that that type music didn't have to be locked into formulas of obviousness and simplicity, that you could still paint pictures of grace and nuance in an idiom that often disdains such things. For me, that's every bit as important as refining "Stella By Starlight" (or even "Directions") further and further and further and further and... So I don't know. I don't have Miles' resources, guts, money, career, or reputation. And I sure as hell don't have the cachet to get a bunch of young guys into a band to let me learn from them while I, hopefully, teach them at the same time. So me myself, hey, I'm probably through doing anything too much different than I've already done, although I hold out hope otherwise. But it kills me to see players younger than me just not giving a damn about doing anything other than what's already been done, even/especially on the "free" scene. The world is full of interesting music today, and some of it could easily lend itself to the skills that a good jazz player could bring to it (to say nothing of the spirit that a good jazz player should be able to bring to it, since to me, jazz is spirit first and foremost). Kahil El'Zabar's Juba Collective side is an example of what might someday be possible when jazz meets house w/o playing down to it (as well being an unfortunate example of what happens when you get a project like that recorded by somebody who doesn't understand either music...). And that's just one possibility. I've long admired Steve Coleman, and if it took him way much longer than I had hoped for to get that shit sounding as good as I hoped it someday would, the last few things of his I've heard have made it there. Finally. And there's other possibilities, so many other possibilities to make musics that are alive & relevant outside of an increasingly hermetic world. But it ain't gonna happen if "jazz musicians" stay locked up in the cave, and leave the few truly bold & open spirits out there left hanging to look like fools inside the cave and like freakish anomolies outside it. That's their loss (although they'll not see it as such), but more importantly, it's the world's loss. But agoraphobia is what it is, so I'll know where to find those guys whenever I need to find'em. Which, frankly, is probably going to be less and less as time goes on.

Somewhere there's heaven...

And btw - I still love this music, even the lesser efforts. I've put a lifetime into it, and that's for keeps. But I've lost my illusion/delusion that it is going anywhere other than where it's already been w/o some fundamental changes in outlook, and I don't see too much interest in that amongst my peers. If anything, I see hostility towards it. Too bad. How are things in your town?

Same answer. The motive of most the people releasing the music is the same as those making it. They think it matters, and no doubt to them it does. And a lot of it is "good" - fine musicians playing sincerely. But when you look at "distinctive", that then very much becomes a matter of distinctive relative to what? Does the perception become the reality? Yeah, probably so. And I have come to the conclusion that too much of the current "jazz perception" in not one that sees all the possibilities of the world in which we now live. It's one thing to create an alternative reality to have a place of your own in which to grow & prosper, but it's another thing to create an alternative reality to have a place to run to and hide in. Which is which? The results speak for themselves, and there again the perceptions will be the reality, and we all have different perceptions, so I'll not go there, at least not here. I will say, though, that it might behoove a lot of jazz musicians to open the curtains every once in a while, maybe even open the door and go for a walk outside the neighborhood. But agoraphobia's a bitch...

Somebody should do it.

LATE? It's only 5 in the afternoon!

I'm deeply inspired by my late father damn near every day. But I don't wear his clothes. That doesn't seem to be a contradiction. EXACTLY!!!

Well, of course. But those are places you never will go, because those are places that don't exist anymore. If the inspiration is to find those places that don't exist anymore, then...no thank. But if the inspiration is to find some places here, now that you haven't been before, then hell yeah! That's all I'm saying - the past should inspire the present to create the future. It shouldn't inspire the present to rebuild the past.

Nor do I. But I don't wear in 2006 what I wore in 1976 either. Even if I could still fit into it, I wouldn't.

As a time of action, yeah, the present is definitely the most important point in time. But if you try to prepare for the present while it happens, you're gonna be S.O.L. "In the moment" is a vital notion, but I'm afraid it's been somewhat over-romanticized. You don't practice/rehearse/compose/etc. for the moment, you do it to be ready in the future - when "the moment" actually arrives. You want to have the tools to be able to handle it, and if you don't, your past will fuck up your present, and your future won't be all that you want it to be. Inspiration is indeed a matter of the moment, but being able to handle it isn't, except in those very rare occasions where we do something "over our heads". And I don't think that anybody would recommend depending on that happening as a matter of course... Ok, as somebody who's participated in a few recordings, all of which I believed in at the time, and most of which I still do believe in, I can tell you that there's a certain amount of vanity involved. You think that you've got something to say, and you want it heard. So you make the record. It's a way of saying, "Hey world, I'm here". And yes, there is commerce involved, defintiely. You're hoping that enough people will hear the music and like it enough to want to hear more in the form of gigs & further CDs. There's that pesky future popping into the equation again! Fair enough for all of that, we all need that sort of "validation", and god knows we all need to be operating out of hope rather than despair. But it doesn't mean that the music we make is really going to "matter". Now that's not the point of recording, but then again, you're wondering, if I'm reading you correctly, why so many jazz records today aren't that distinctive. It's because the people making them aren't. Doesn't meant that they're invalid as people or musicians, just means that what I read in a comic strip long ago is true - "Remember - you're unique. Just like everybody else." And I'll apply that to my own recordings. The two QO sides were both labors of love, and I'm proud to have made them. But I'll not kid myself by pretending to think that they're anything other than vanity projects, things that we documented because we wanted/needed them to be documented. Even if somebody else had felt that want/need, how big a fool would I have to be to think that our music was anything other than a small drop in a vast ocean that evaporates and replenishes drops routinely and without concern? No, we loved the music, we played it out of love, and we documented it out of love. But to think that we did it simply to "capture the moment" would be naive. We did it because A) we thought we mattered and needed to prove it to ourselves B) we hoped that the documents would build for the future & C) nobody had a day job at the time. It would also have been naive for anybody, especially us (although this wasn't the most musically, uh..."cosmopolitan" group...), to have thought that we were making music that was anything other than a response to things much bigger and much older than us. To us it was "new" in some sense, but as far as the overall jazz scene, it was definitely "inside-out" (or what ever you call it), and nothing too radical at that. It's a sign of the scene that some people found us "avant-garde". HA! We weren't raising any new possigilities, and we certainly weren't asking any new questions. Hell, we were struggling just to answer some fairly old (in jazz trems) ones! And that's where I think most of today's jazz musicians are today - the legacy is so deep at this point that it's all too easy to get weighed down by it and to feel that you've got to "honor" it in some form or fashion. And when you get to that point, you start, quite unconsciously, to make music about jazz rather than jazz itself (indeed, this happens with any music, I think, other than that which is entirely functional). I've only recently begun to see the ultimate futility in this myself. I'd convinced myself that I was a "jazz musician" who belonged in the "jazz world", and if that world was a small-getting-smaller one, it was like that because the rest of the world was wrong, a bad place to be avoided at all costs. Any pleasures to be found there had to be wrong, because everything about it was wrong. Well, the rest of the world is wrong in a lot of ways about a lot of things, but that doesn't mean that we're any less wrong ourselves, and it doesn't mean that the world's pleasures are not there to be had by us too. We're as out of touch as the world is overly wired-in. We're as insular as the world is promiscuous. We're as closeminded in our highly focused broadmindedness as the world is ignorant of everything by having all of it at they're disposal. We're as wrong for being hellbent on defining who we are by who we aren't as the world is for willing to be any thing at any time because it's the thing to do. We're as wrong for mocking the party from the outside as the world is for going to into it thinking that it's real. In short, we've become prisoners of our own making as well as prisoners of external circumstances. Not too much we can do about the latter until we fix the former. There are a few (or more) beautiful exceptions, but if you're wondering why new release after new release sounds like they sound, that's my answer. And here's my solution - Fuck "jazz". Fuck "music". Fuck anything and everything except life lived without fear. Then let's see what songs demand to be sung, and then let's sing the hell out of them.

I'm deeply inspired by my late father damn near every day. But I don't wear his clothes.

Diner. Mickey Rourke.

Well of course I'm talking about the future. No sense trying to shape the musical past, because it's already happened. And no sense talking about shaping the musical right now, because as soon as it's here, it's gone. So what else you got left? You want a bridge between the past and the future? I gave it to you. I didn't say forge about the music (in fact, I specifically said not to! I said forget about what it's all "supposed" to be. Big difference. Look - if you've been touched, really touched, by jazz, or by any music, it'll be a part of you. This music's spirit has been too strong to just pass away. But the body that spirit's been being delivered is like any other body - it ain't gonna last forever w/o some unnatural assistance. To ensure a healthy body for that beautiful spirit, it's going to have to stop being about "style", because that's missing the point entirely about what it was about in the first place, which was relating to life through a music that best provided a vehicle for doing so for the people making it. I know we still got plenty of people who best relate to 2006 life by 1956/1966/etc. music but when it gets to be as literal as it so often gets, is that really relating to life by engaging it head-on or by avoiding it to one degree or another? Is the demand for certain "criteria" to be net ultimately just a fetish of some sort, maybe even an avoidance mechanism? If it is, that's cool, I suppose, but I'd like to make the modest suggestion that if where you're from is dictating where you are (or, especially, where you're going) too much past the point of giving you an individual flavor with which to go forth, then, unless you're heading down the homestretch of life, you're really not going anywhere other than where you've already been. Might as well sit around and look at the photo albums all day. But if you do that for too long, don't be surprised if later on in life all the pictures of you in those photo albums will be of you looking at old photos. Is that a life well-lived?

Yeah? Then what the hell does it mean to a woman? Touche, Mr. Gould! I still like the "nature and time making love to each other" thing, and for exactly that reason.

To your first point, I would say that I'm not so sure. You take a labellike Sharp Nine, and I don't think that "extending" is what they're all about. They're more of the "once good, always good" school Or you might call it the Keeping it alive" mentality. I'm not here to argue for or against that point, just to point it out. Then you got the labels and artists who position themselves as "contemporary" or some such by combining elements of free and inside. There's certainly validity there imo, and some oftne interesting enough music. But really - is combing 40 year old music with 50 year old music really pushing the envelope, or is it just getting around to some overdue cleanup work? I can see where the labels promoting this type thing are sincere in thinking that they're "extending", because it is a type music that's not been done to death already. But again, it's an "extension" only to those so deep on the inside of the jazz world that that the rest of the music world (or the world's music) is uninteresting, unknown, and/or irrelevant. It's a weird world, that one, because the sincerity and dedication is inspiring as well as noble. But, geez, it's a big world, and relevance only to self is only going to matter so much in it. And that goes to your second point - you're saying, I think, that "originality" and "innovation" maybe ought to be given more consideration than they are currently being given. Well, part of me hears you loud and clear, part of me says that you can only be who you are, and part of me knows deep down inside that this whole "jazz culture" has gotten so neurotic & inbred, musically and mentally, that they type of originality and innovation that we'd both no doubt like to see is going to take a lot more than the conviction that honor is all it takes. Me being past my prime and shit, but still caring a great deal about the music itself, I'd like to issue this challenge to all young players - forget about "jazz". Forget you've ever heard it. Forget all the names, histories, etc. Now here's the catch - do that with all the other music you've heard and learned about over the years. All of it, from the oldest to the most recent. Now, here's the final catch - don't forget about the music itself, just forget what it's called, and forget that it matters which is which. Now, after you've done all that, just play what you know, hear, and feel. Don't worry about what fits and what doesn't fit. If you can't make a singer hear how to fit in with those those Trane licks that aren't fitting over the hip-hop beat with the power chords underneath and the drummer's forays off into Sunny Murrayland, don't sweat it. If you all truly feel it & hear it, you'll find a way to make it fit, eventually. Just fit it, don't force it. Let it fall into place on its own terms, not yours. Once you get there, go out and play it for people who don't know or care about "types" of music. Play it for motherfuckers who don't know A-Flat from A Train from Aaliyah from AA from AAA from A Love Supreme. Play it for them and see if they dig it. If they don't maybe it's just because they're some ignunt motherfuckers. Or it may be that you ain't playin' shit. You gonna have to figure that one out on your own. Just don't rush to judgement either way. But if they do dig it, hey you might be on to something. You might have found some music that's not either consciously or subconsciously trying to live up to its parents out of a latent inferiority complex. And maybe then we can maybe start talking about "21st Century Jazz" as a designation of an actual music instead of a simple chronological designation as to when 20th Century Jazz is being played.

If it were that simple, you could sync up two metronomes & it would swing.

Since you be goin' that direction, how 'bout "Come Go With Me" - Del Vikings. Too bouncy for whitefolkschurch. No news here, but The Fleetwoods had moments where the shit would just shut up and stand still. Doesn't matter to me if the songs themselves were crap (and they almost always were), those moments were...unique.

If I can be serious for a second (and that's a big if...), how about "Our Prayer", the Brian Wilson thing? Do handbells do chromatics? If not, get the choir to do it. It's a beautiful little thing, it is.

"Come Softly To Me" by The Fleetwoods, done w/o the dumb "dum-dum, dumby-do-dom-be-doobie" part. The Fleetweood were a human handbell choir unto themselves.

Some things defy any rational explanation. Ron Carter's consistently inconsistent intonation is one of them.

Ah, but the future is merely tomorrow's today.

The differnce being that in each case, the question of the then-current decade would have been in response to the previous decade's question having been answered in, by and large, no uncertain terms. Some of us have been asking this question for at least 20 years and still don't have a satisfactory answer, which is, I think, shaping up to be a going-to-have-to-be-satisfactory-whether-we-like-it-or-not answer...

Oh, it's a team effort, belive me....