In 150 years when we are all dead, what jazz artists will be remembere

[ejp626]

If you look at literary history, you get a sense of how significant the shifts are, at least within the canon as taught in schools and universities. I guess Dickens was always popular, even if he was passe in schools, but for quite a spell the Bowlderised (and Lamb) versions of Shakespeare were what people knew. Tennyson (and Longfellow) were huge, but who reads them now? For maybe 20 years, Eliot and the other modernists managed to rescue certain poets from obscurity, like John Donne, but I think they are slipping back again.

What I suspect is that, just as now, almost everything will be available, but there will be fewer artists/writers/musicians with mass followings. So there will certainly be groups of people who are as versed with the Bop and postbop movement as we are, but this music will not be generally known. If I was going to pick a single figure off the list, it would be Miles, simply because he has such a critical mass of marketing behind him. Probably people 150 years from now will just not care as much about -- oh, to understand Miles, you need to know Roy and Clifford and Louis, though there will be some serious jazz fans to make those connections. That's just my feeling. The further one goes back, the more likely one is to pick individual figures and ignore the broader context. There will also be 150 years of new product to compete with the older stuff, and that will surely squeeze out a lot of purchases of mid 20th C music. Of course, if you can essentially download the entire Blue Note catalog for $100 (since it will have all passed into PD), then maybe people will still pay attention and know these musicians.

Will big band music have any kind of following? Will it be seen as a fascinating approach that is completely unworkable in those days, since most people create music independently on computers? Or will it just be irrelevant? Will the standards be so ancient that people just can't get into the vocalists, such as Billie, Ella or Sassy?

All intriguing questions. As someone said, it's a shame that I won't be around to find out how it ends...

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

That's why Joe today knows Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, Tommy Lee, and a host of "movie stars", but hardly anyone of cultural merit.

Those people DO have cultural merit; they reflect contemporary culture.

MG

[jazzman4133]

Tiny Tim

[JSngry]

That's why Joe today knows Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, Tommy Lee, and a host of "movie stars", but hardly anyone of cultural merit.

Those people DO have cultural merit; they reflect contemporary culture.

MG

Yep.

[.:.impossible]

That's why Joe today knows Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, Tommy Lee, and a host of "movie stars", but hardly anyone of cultural merit.

Those people DO have cultural merit; they reflect contemporary culture.

MG

Yep.

They also have 'sex tapes'.

[JSngry]

Like the man said...