John Gennari's BLOWIN' HOT & COOL

[Chuck Nessa]

Or just talking to older folks while they're still around, which I believe is Chuck's point.

That don't fit the theories dude. Those folks work better in a vacuum. It would be great if everyone would die so their "facts" were the word.

[Lazaro Vega]

"But the time has come for an approach that is less invested in the ideology of jazz as aesthetic object and more responsive to issues of historical particularity. Only in this way can the study of jazz break free from its self-imposed isolation, and participate with other disciplines in the exploration of meaning in American culture."

LV: So, does the book include the Chicago writers witnessing the musicians of the AACM?

L.K. No, not a word, except for mentioning that the late adolescent Howard Mandel went down to Hyde Park on weekends to hear some "head-changing" things. Then Mandel is said to have wondered "if the effect was all that different from when, during the same period, he took in concerts by the Jefferson Airplane, Vanilla Fudge, Jini Hendrix, Cream, the Doors, and other rock/pop acts."

I guess when you attempt to replace the aesthetics of jazz history from the front of the conversation with the history you know best, or the one most prominent in the culture, it allows the dominant culture to be applied to anything.

You can’t know Shastakovich’s music intimately without a firm grasp of Russian and Soviet history, but that was an aesthetic choice first -- the artist chose to respond to his particular historical circumstance. In jazz, perhaps, the artist found music as one way out of their particular historical circumstance and the aesthetics of the music were one of the proudest points in that flight from oppression, degradation, prejudice...or, especially, the pseudoscientific rationalizations for inferiority.

It’s not hard to imagine Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker being to the creative imagination what Joe Louis, Jesse Owens and Jackie Robinson were to athletics, and all to the collective life of Black Americans. Their accomplishments were a big in your face to the historical particularity of their time. There are many ways to measure music’s impact on society, but it seems a wee misguided to give a back seat to jazz’s aesthetic evolution because that was one of the clearly understood strengths of it among musicians of every stripe and jazz music's fans. Economic response to music isn’t reliable, especially with jazz in America. But if you ever listened to old folks talk about jazz musicians -- there was an understanding that not everyone could do what Coleman Hawkins could do on a saxophone. And that understanding wasn’t casual, it was, “Brother, believe it.”

Black men and women as radio listeners -- retired steel workers, janitors, engineers, dancers, musicians and teachers of the older generation -- are people who shared their enthusiasm for jazz with me, and all of them dealt with it from an appreciation of the aesthetic accomplishment jazz musicians achieved and were calling this nice kid to make sure I realized it. And if I fucked up and said something glib that lessened what they perceived as the image of their heroes, the phone became a weapon of mass humiliation.

There is a place for jazz criticism to be “more responsive to issues of historical particularity,” but to me that seems as if it needs to be cued by the artist: Charles Mingus and Archie Shepp, the New York Art Quartet, Duke Ellington all made music that responds directly to their own historical/social and especially racial particularity. The type of work he’s advocating would seem appropriate there.

But otherwise it appears to me without having taken the plunge into this work that he missed an important critical stream running through jazz while Crouch/Murray and company were getting most of the attention. But if you’re not going to deal with criticism from primarily an aesthetic point of view, then missing Mandel, Whitehead, Lange, Corbett (not to mention Figi, Martin, Litweiler and Kart) who witnessed, reported on and drew conclusions about the last major conceptual/stylistic upheaval in jazz is apparently not important.

[Lazaro Vega]

"Only in this way can the study of jazz break free from its self-imposed isolation..."

This is so much melting ice that a Kyoto Agreement is in order.

Was jazz's isolation from the mainstream of America self imposed? Why, then, did it take Benny Goodman and Elvis Presley to bring black music to the American middle class? If the music is happening in some form of isolation, re: The Invisible Man, how could writers be working in the free and clear?

Again, if jazz were to break through from it's popular/economic isolation brought on by a perceived aesthetic malaise, this critical/intellectual isolation would become irrelevant. But since jazz is in the doldrums, since the band business is at it's nadir, what's going down right now in the still isolated world of jazz criticism and the small world of academic jazz study takes on far too much importance for future generations, whether it breaks free or not.

[AllenLowe]

amen, again. Deveaux's statement abotu breaking free from isolation is ironic, given how isolated from reality most academics in this field appear to be - another problem with all this, as I've said before, is the desire by some writers to claim a certain "American" space, as in American studies, to show how fatihfully jazz (and other American, ususally vernacular) music fits into the so-called American scheme of things. Think about Wynton and Crouch crawing on Ken Burns about how democratic jazz is and thus how American it is, a big bunch of BS. It's really an attempt to corral something that cannot be corraled so gliby because, as others have indicated here, the first impulse in creating the music is personal and expressive, and thus aesthetic. Like Gilman said, people like Armstrong and Ellington are writing a counter-history to American life, which is far different and much more complex than merely, as Wynton and Courch would have it, reflecting some sort of socio-historical circumstance. Much as they might fit certain sociological categories, thir work far transcends such categories. One writer who has really gone off the deep end in this is Greil Marcus. His first book on Elvis et al is really quite smart; from there it has all been down hill, I think, as more and more he has tried to cram the round peg of American culture into the square hole of cultural theory. His justifications for "Americana" as a point of study are getting more and more silly and absurd.

Edited October 2, 2006 by AllenLowe

[Simon Weil]

I've thought about this some more, and I just want to go back to:

There is an extract from the Gennari book here.

...there's his analytic schtick:

Two young white men [Feather and Hammond] without dates, in a room full of good-timing cheer and ecstatic bodily release, position themselves between the musicians and the audience—here, in microcosm, was the Ur-stance of the jazz critic: poised on the seam between artistic creation and popular consumption, close to but also crucially distinct from the dancing mass body, caught up in an imagined sense of privileged intellectual and emotional communion with the music. Overlaying this subtle geography of inside/outside was both a self-consciousness about racial and class difference and a correspondingly self-justifying sense of exceptionalism, a conceit that the critic’s exalted purpose exempted him from the conventional patterns of cross-racial exchange.

What most bothers me about this passage is the anonymity it reduces Feather and Hammond to. It's like they only exist as nexuses of social forces for Gennari. It's kind of daft, in that one remembers them as clearly defined individuals. I'm making the point because it seems to lead to a greater one about deconstruction and the perils of that approach for Jazz generally.

The fact is Deveaux's book strikes me as somewhat like that, as taking away from the individuality of the musicians to make for his case of socio-economic basis. I think that's why I don't like it, because the multiplexity of the musicians' characters gets lost in the mix. Other people will talk about the aesthetic basis of Jazz, but for me it's really about people. When Claire Daly says "Oh, there I am," she really gets to the heart of it.

I mean, surely that's what Jazz is about in its origin, at least in part, the assertion of (some) black people's identity in the face of a system that seeks to deny them it.

And, in a world which seeks to make people more and more anonymous, we still need that.

Not just blacks.

Simon Weil

Edited October 3, 2006 by Simon Weil

[AllenLowe]

strange thing, however, is that there is a good deal of truth in that particular passage - I'm just not sure that it applies to Hammond and Feather -

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I've thought about this some more, and I just want to go back to:

There is an extract from the Gennari book here.

...there's his analytic schtick:

Two young white men [Feather and Hammond] without dates, in a room full of good-timing cheer and ecstatic bodily release, position themselves between the musicians and the audience—here, in microcosm, was the Ur-stance of the jazz critic: poised on the seam between artistic creation and popular consumption, close to but also crucially distinct from the dancing mass body, caught up in an imagined sense of privileged intellectual and emotional communion with the music. Overlaying this subtle geography of inside/outside was both a self-consciousness about racial and class difference and a correspondingly self-justifying sense of exceptionalism, a conceit that the critic’s exalted purpose exempted him from the conventional patterns of cross-racial exchange.

What most bothers me about this passage is the anonymity it reduces Feather and Hammond to. It's like they only exist as nexuses of social forces for Gennari. It's kind of daft, in that one remembers them as clearly defined individuals. I'm making the point because it seems to lead to a greater one about deconstruction and the perils of that approach for Jazz generally.

The fact is Deveaux's book strikes me as somewhat like that, as taking away from the individuality of the musicians to make for his case of socio-economic basis. I think that's why I don't like it, because the multiplexity of the musicians' characters gets lost in the mix. Other people will talk about the aesthetic basis of Jazz, but for me it's really about people. When Claire Daly says "Oh, there I am," she really gets to the heart of it.

I mean, surely that's what Jazz is about in its origin, at least in part, the assertion of (some) black people's identity in the face of a system that seeks to deny them it.

And, in a world which seeks to make people more and more anonymous, we still need that.

Not just blacks.

Simon Weil

This makes me think of Taine's history of English Literature. It has always been criticised because it left personal genius out of the account, treating Skelton and Shakespeare on even terms. But Taine was using English literature to find out something about what it was like to be English, so he was concerned about what the different writers had in common, not what separated one from another.

It's legit to seek this sort of information from any kind of art, because it doesn't come in a vacuum. It's even legit to seek it exclusively, within a context in which others are seeking other information exclusively. If that approach were the only one, it would lead to wrong conclusions. But as part of a whole range of approaches, there's no reason why this shouldn't be regarded as equally interesting, provided one recognises that, like the view that concentrates solely on aesthetics, it's only part of the story.

MG

[AllenLowe]

in this regard, it is quite true that their have been musicians (of all genres) whose music I did not really, at first, understand or appreciate, until I knew a little bit about them, their lives, or the context in which they performed. More than once, such information and/or background has illuminated the music in sudden and surprising ways, and led to a much deeper way of listening - I have heard this context referred to as a "social construct" (accent on the first syllable), I think, so, yes, many times this kind of thing is invaluable. As with everything, it depends on the writer; the prime problem with so many academics whose work I've read is that they really do not understand the music in detail, or have not, really, listened to enough of it. So it is rare to find a writer who can satisfy this critical standard from both sides, in the historical context and from the aesthetic/technical point of view. Once again, too many seem to just spend enough time with the music to make sure that they have information that fits their ideological precepts.

On the other hand, I have seen criticism of the general standard of jazz/pop critics as being mere "hobbyists"; this has come from some so-called professionals, and I have been at the other end of this (a proposal I did for the NEH described me derisively as such, because I do not have a degree in music or related field) - truthfully, it IS a problem, and too many critics are deficient in too many ways. On the other hand, time after time, the most perceptive things that I have read are by journalists.

Edited October 3, 2006 by AllenLowe

[Simon Weil]

strange thing, however, is that there is a good deal of truth in that particular passage - I'm just not sure that it applies to Hammond and Feather -

It strikes me like the sketch for a character in a novel.

Simon Weil

[Simon Weil]

I've thought about this some more, and I just want to go back to:

There is an extract from the Gennari book here.

...there's his analytic schtick:

Two young white men [Feather and Hammond] without dates, in a room full of good-timing cheer and ecstatic bodily release, position themselves between the musicians and the audience—here, in microcosm, was the Ur-stance of the jazz critic: poised on the seam between artistic creation and popular consumption, close to but also crucially distinct from the dancing mass body, caught up in an imagined sense of privileged intellectual and emotional communion with the music. Overlaying this subtle geography of inside/outside was both a self-consciousness about racial and class difference and a correspondingly self-justifying sense of exceptionalism, a conceit that the critic’s exalted purpose exempted him from the conventional patterns of cross-racial exchange.

What most bothers me about this passage is the anonymity it reduces Feather and Hammond to. It's like they only exist as nexuses of social forces for Gennari. It's kind of daft, in that one remembers them as clearly defined individuals. I'm making the point because it seems to lead to a greater one about deconstruction and the perils of that approach for Jazz generally.

The fact is Deveaux's book strikes me as somewhat like that, as taking away from the individuality of the musicians to make for his case of socio-economic basis. I think that's why I don't like it, because the multiplexity of the musicians' characters gets lost in the mix. Other people will talk about the aesthetic basis of Jazz, but for me it's really about people. When Claire Daly says "Oh, there I am," she really gets to the heart of it.

I mean, surely that's what Jazz is about in its origin, at least in part, the assertion of (some) black people's identity in the face of a system that seeks to deny them it.

And, in a world which seeks to make people more and more anonymous, we still need that.

Not just blacks.

Simon Weil

This makes me think of Taine's history of English Literature. It has always been criticised because it left personal genius out of the account, treating Skelton and Shakespeare on even terms. But Taine was using English literature to find out something about what it was like to be English, so he was concerned about what the different writers had in common, not what separated one from another.

It's legit to seek this sort of information from any kind of art, because it doesn't come in a vacuum. It's even legit to seek it exclusively, within a context in which others are seeking other information exclusively. If that approach were the only one, it would lead to wrong conclusions. But as part of a whole range of approaches, there's no reason why this shouldn't be regarded as equally interesting, provided one recognises that, like the view that concentrates solely on aesthetics, it's only part of the story.

MG

I've done some work on Wagner's antisemitism and at one point I was trying to connect it up to Hitler. The problem was I couldn't get any sense of who Hitler was (apart from being evil and etc.). So then I didn't know how to weigh the various statements Hitler made about Wagner. I couldn't decide if he meant, or to what degree he meant (if at all) the things he said. See, that's what personality does for you (or at least for me). It gives some sense of groundedness - this person would do that sort of thing (or would be acted upon in that sort of way). Because Deveaux leaves that out, the sense of the people involved, it just leaves all the analysis up in the air, for me.

I just think you need personality.

Simon Weil

Edited October 3, 2006 by Simon Weil

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I just think you need personality.

Simon Weil

Especially since John Patton is on piano!

MG

[Simon Weil]

Just a surprising note that after having read The Nation review, and not the book, that the Crouch/Murray “camp” is not countered by other critics of the time...Art Lang, Howard Mandall, Kevin Whitehead, John Corbett....are those guys in there? That seems a glaring omission as there was some counter voices, in terms of ideas and insight, to the louder critical tract.

Only Mandel is mentioned of those guys, but that part of the book kind of dissolves into more or less inconsequential "can't we all get along" talk anyhow, plus the issue of Marsalis/Murray/Crouch/JLC is framed almost exclusively in racial terms. That bothers me less, though, than the air of "I just give up" that this final portion seems to radiate. For example, the final three sentences of the book are: "Jazz criticism ... is nothing less than the rowdy conversation that gives jazz its incisive edge in shaping the contours of America and New World modernity. Jazz criticism is the noise -- the auditory dissonance -- that gives the music cultural meaning. May the noise forever clamor, and may we listen and learn."

Sounds like a university president addressing the graduating class. BTW, I love "...the noise, the auditory dissonance...." It's like "the dirt, the unclean matter that soils."

I actually think "can't we all get along" is core to his vision. My impression, looking at the Marsalis etc passages, is that he's informed in that core approach by Tom Piazza's writing in Blues up and Down ("Lincoln Center and It's Critics Swing Away" is footnoted). Piazza's a kind of Marsalis apologist who disappears the ruthless authoritarianism of J@LC's vision. You just can't get along with it. It either wins or not.

Admittedly I've only got the book this morning, but my impression is that it is kind of trenchant on the surface (He sees it as having an "incisive edge" I imagine) - and is attractive for that reason - but underneath he won't bite the bullet.

Or, at least, not in the present.

Simon Weil

Edited October 4, 2006 by Simon Weil