George Lewis to do book on AACM

[JSngry]

Not sure why we have a tendency to eat our children.

Because it's like suicide, only you don't have to die.

[AllenLowe]

give me a break guys, these are real issues - Lewis doesn't need protection from real criticism - just because we admire many things about him does not mean we have to like everything he does - he doesn't fawn over me, I don't fawn over him - neither of us has an obligation to the other to rubber stamp anything we do - the biggest favor we can do him is too take him seriously, and not treat him like he needs a press agent to sell his product to the undecided- and it's a BOOK, so LANGUAGE is relevant -

Edited August 1, 2008 by AllenLowe

[Chuck Nessa]

give me a break guys, these are real issues - Lewis doesn't need protection from real criticism - just because we admire many things about him does not mean we have to like everything he does - he doesn't fawn over me, I don't fawn over him - neither of us has an obligation to the other to rubber stamp anything we do - the biggest favor we can do him is too take him seriously, and not treat him like he needs a press agent to sell his product to the undecided- and it's a BOOK, so LANGUAGE is relevant -

Not what I said. Relax. Not everything I type is about you.

Edited August 1, 2008 by Chuck Nessa

[Lazaro Vega]

And I really don't find the language that troublesome. Given that Clem thinks I'm a moron in the reading cata-goy, take that as you will.

[1009]

I'll out myself as a grad student in a humanities discipline (although I'll go no further!). I absolutely loved Lewis' book & found it pretty refreshingly free of obscurantist jargon. I've already admitted my bias; what I'm wondering is if anyone who had a problem w/ Lewis' language could provide an example of some text that was needlessly verbose and/or made use of professional academ-ese.

Just a page reference maybe? So that I know what to look at.

(Haha. Prepositions!)

[Larry Kart]

I'll out myself as a grad student in a humanities discipline (although I'll go no further!). I absolutely loved Lewis' book & found it pretty refreshingly free of obscurantist jargon. I've already admitted my bias; what I'm wondering is if anyone who had a problem w/ Lewis' language could provide an example of some text that was needlessly verbose and/or made use of professional academ-ese.

Just a page reference maybe? So that I know what to look at.

(Haha. Prepositions!)

On page XXX, at the tail end of Lewis's vigorous defense of his use of some sorts of professional academ-ese in writing about jazz -- this passage bouncing off a querulous review by Stanley Dance of two anthologies on jazz edited by Krin Gabbard (never thought that Dance and Lewis would meet in the same paragraph):

"For me, however, the interdisciplinary approaches to black music and improvisation in the Gabbard texts -- the works of Nathaniel Mackey, Robert Walser, Lorenzo Turner, John Corbett, and Scott DeVeaux among others (as well as the references to Adorno and Barthes) were inspiring, announcing a new generation of writers on improvised music who were, first, declining to conflate oversimplification with accessibility; second, asserting common cause with intellectuals in other fields concerning the ways in which music could announce social and cultural change; and finally, seeking liberation from the Sisyphean repetition of ersatz populist prolegomena that seemed endemic to the field."

I have said in prior posts why I find Lewis's strategy here to be necessary for him and mostly convincing in action, but this is a mouthful, no? Also the old copy editor in me thinks that there should be a second dash in that sentence, before "were inspiring."

Sorry, Chuck, but he asked.

[1009]

OK, I'll go along w/ that 2nd dash. Again, one must keep in mind my perspective, but this doesn't strike me as all that jargon-y. For me this is pretty successful passage, the purpose of which is summed up in that "declining to conflate oversimplification with accessibility" bit. I guess I read it as a bit tongue-in-cheek, but purposefully so: sort-of a strategic (perhaps straw-man?) attack on "populist" jazz writing.

"Strategic" is the word, I think. Certainly not directed at everyone or for all times.

But now that I write this I fear we get into a never-ending "Well, this is jargon" / "Well, it sounds fine to me" back&forth. For his part Lewis seems confident that his work is far from the final word, even on the AACM, so maybe we should just consider it a valuable piece of criticism & historiography & look forward to the next one.

[Alexander Hawkins]

Strikes me we're all reading off very nearly the same hymn sheet...

BTW - to change tack - the photos are really fantastic!

[Alexander Hawkins]

p.s. Larry - yes!!! That's precisely the passage I was talking about earlier. And I think Lewis could well just be having a joke here!

[AllenLowe]

well, if I ever get the energy to go back into the book I will try to pull out some passages. including a few in which new words were invented - truthfully, books like this, important as they are, exhaust me - I'm always editing in my head as I read them and there are some sentences I find myself reading over and over, just to fathom the word order.

that said, nine out of ten grammarians recommend this book, for their patients who chew vocabulary -

Edited August 2, 2008 by AllenLowe

[AllenLowe]

just to pull a Larry/copy editor thing, I woould take the following:

"declining to conflate oversimplification with accessibility"

and turn it into:

"refusing to equate oversimplification with accessibility"

he's using "conflate" in a way that I would question - the word means to combine or fuse - technically correct here but imprecise - though it sounds fancier in an academic way - "equate" is really what he means - this is a perfect example of the problem. And they are not "declining" anything, as they are not responding to a request - they are just refusing to do something - once again, "declining" has a more passive, academic sound -

Edited August 1, 2008 by AllenLowe

[Niko]

mathematicians (and physicists even more so) like to say this is the writing style of someone who has never seen anything complicated

postmodernist essay generator (not that well-done but i like the idea)

http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

[Larry Kart]

OK, I'll go along w/ that 2nd dash. Again, one must keep in mind my perspective, but this doesn't strike me as all that jargon-y. For me this is pretty successful passage, the purpose of which is summed up in that "declining to conflate oversimplification with accessibility" bit. I guess I read it as a bit tongue-in-cheek, but purposefully so: sort-of a strategic (perhaps straw-man?) attack on "populist" jazz writing.

"Strategic" is the word, I think. Certainly not directed at everyone or for all times.

But now that I write this I fear we get into a never-ending "Well, this is jargon" / "Well, it sounds fine to me" back&forth. For his part Lewis seems confident that his work is far from the final word, even on the AACM, so maybe we should just consider it a valuable piece of criticism & historiography & look forward to the next one.

Because I agree with Chuck's basic point -- this is an important book if you have any interest in the subject -- I'm not going to get into and further back and forth about whether this or that sentence or phrase in it is jargon-y. If I open my yap again, it will about other things.

[AllenLowe]

well, I did hear that it is being translated into Esperanto -

all seriousness aside, I do like the book; some of my comments may sound like nitpicking, but if I didn't admire the work I wouldn't go to the trouble -

and my kids, by the way, taste just like chicken -

[AllenLowe]

whenever I have the last word in a thread, I figure it must be because the last thing I said was so brilliant and reeking of deep wisdom that I have left everyone else speechless - and I figure if JSngry agrees with me, if he thinks I am brilliant beyond words, he will now say "well then..."

Edited September 14, 2008 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

Well now...

Edited September 28, 2008 by JSngry

[Uncle Skid]

I like the book by the way, just feel it is, at times, too much of a chore to read it - and I will mention, by the way, that I am in a small minority here, judging by what reviews I have seen (Kevin Whitehead gave it a rave on Fresh Air this week) -

Whitehead's review available online here.

I also found a few sections to be "a chore", but overall, I agree with his assessment: "it's rich, and dense, and gratifyingly readable".

While certainly a well-written and thoroughly engaging history of the AACM and the music, my impression is that it is much, much more than that...

[AllenLowe]

I told this story in another thread that died - I recently called Columbia University jazz studies and I got some clueless kid on the phone; he said "hold please" and about a minute later someone else picked up and said "this is George Lewis." I introduced myself and I expected him to say "aren't you that asshole who's been criticizing my book?"

[Uncle Skid]

Somehow, I doubt that Mr. Lewis would say that... in fact, I'd bet he would welcome criticism!

[AllenLowe]

I actually was very taken aback, but he was very nice; I mumbled "I'm a friend of Chuck Nessa," thinking it was kind of like a talisman; unfortunately, at first he couldn't place the name-

Edited September 14, 2008 by AllenLowe

[Lazaro Vega]

That Lewis reveals Muhal's contact with the Schillinger system, and his discussion of what that gave Muhal musically, is something that should have been known a long time ago. It certainly helps to enter more deeply into Muhal's musical world, as Blue Lake will again tonight after 10 p.m.

[A Lark Ascending]

200 pages into this and finding it a very nice read. It's territory I'm only dimly familiar with (Alyn Shipton's enthusiastic chapter in his 'New History of Jazz' made me want to find out more).

I was initially terrified by the preface which is dense sociology-speak as mentioned above. But from there it's a very well told tale with just the occasional paragraph where the strange language of sociology takes over.

Anyone without specialist knowledge who has an interest but feels a bit scared by it should just plunge in.