Moving On Up: Jay Z

[Guy Berger]

I don't believe that rap killed music. I just believe that rappers aren't musicians. Play an instrument and then maybe I'll pay attention to you....

That's silly -- you think singers aren't musicians?

Guy

[Shawn]

No. I don't think Samplers and drum machines are instruments.

[relyles]

No. I don't think Samplers and drum machines are instruments.

I think Guy was referring to singers such as jazz vocalists who may or may not play any instruments.

Are you more comfortable refering to them as artists? Couldn't an argument be made that it may be more accurrate to refer to those that play instruments as instrumentalists and those that create music in any form musicians?

[Scott Dolan]

I don't believe that rap killed music. I just believe that rappers aren't musicians. Play an instrument and then maybe I'll pay attention to you....

So would the term "artist" suit your needs?

[JSngry]

No. I don't think Samplers and drum machines are instruments.

Well, they don't play themselves.

I've been conducting an experiment for 10 years now. Bought me a drum machine back then and decided to see if it was an "instrument" or not. Figured that if it wasn't, it wouldn't need to be "played" by a "player". So I took it out of the box, plugged it in, turned it on, and waited for it to start doing something by itself. Sitll waiting...

Funny, my clarinet's the same way. Haven't touched it in something like 20 years, and it's not made a sound either.

You know who's not an instrument? Tony Romo, He's a tool.

[Alexander]

The thing I LOVE about hip hop is that it has actually broadened the definition of the term "musical instrument." A sampler or sequencer, if used to make music, is certainly an instrument. A turntable, when used by a DJ, is an instrument too! A beatboxer, using his mouth, can create beats that put a drum machine to shame! The problem isn't that rap killed music or that rappers (and DJs) aren't musicians, the problem is that our definition of music is too narrow.

[JSngry]

The problem isn't that rap killed music or that rappers (and DJs) aren't musicians, the problem is that our definition of music is too narrow.

Where the problem, if any, exists is with too many of these new musicians with these new instruments not having the vision to think beyond their immediate discoveries, discoveries with which I certainly have no issues whatsoever. But at some point, I hope that somebody/sombodies comes along and moves things along to the next (dare I say higher?) level of creativity & vision. There's defintiely shot happening underground, but it's waaaaay underground as best I can see.

Absolutely no reason why it (this growth of vision & potential) shouldn't happen other than a failure of spirit, and if one can concede a potential for failure, then one must also conceed the potential for triumph.

But who's there to offer the "moral support" for any of these cats to consider those potentials, and who's there to offer encouragement for them to keep pumpin'/pimpin' out the same old same old so the $$$ can be gotten while it's there to be had? And even worse, who's cynically exploiting all this raw talent from the POV that that's all "these people" are really good for?

If you're not part of the solution...

Seems like the classics never go out of style.

[JSngry]

The problem isn't that rap killed music or that rappers (and DJs) aren't musicians, the problem is that our definition of music is too narrow.

Along ths lines, what wth Varese, Stockhausen, Cage, AACM, and all the other sonic explorers of the 20th century asking the question "What is music?" for so long now, it's only natural that such a question would filter into the "mainstream", and it's only natural that different people would arrive at different answers.

It's also only natural that we, the "elite" (HA!) would not like a lot of those answers and that we would ridicule some people for having the temerity to assume that they were "qualified" to ask the question in the first place. I mean, is it really ok for Cage to have some guy sitting silently at a piano and presenting it as music and we all ponder the "meaning" of it all and not ok for some cat to create a sonic collage of samples for some other cat to rap over? Seems to me that in both cases, the question of what music is is being asked and answered in distinctly personal terms, and in neither case are the "old rules" being seen as set in stone.

Sorry, but the genie got let out of the bottle last century. Too late to put it back in now. So let's start dealing with reality instead of Rambo-esque retro fantasy-wish-fulfillment.

[.:.impossible]

No. I don't think Samplers and drum machines are instruments.

Generally speaking, rappers (MCs) don't use drum machines or samplers. Rappers (MCs) use microphones.

In the end, it doesn't matter whether or not I, or anyone, thinks that J Dilla was a musician. The sounds he combined, and the rhythms he combined them with, were musical.

[Scott Dolan]

No. I don't think Samplers and drum machines are instruments.

Well, they don't play themselves.

I've been conducting an experiment for 10 years now. Bought me a drum machine back then and decided to see if it was an "instrument" or not. Figured that if it wasn't, it wouldn't need to be "played" by a "player". So I took it out of the box, plugged it in, turned it on, and waited for it to start doing something by itself. Sitll waiting...

Funny, my clarinet's the same way. Haven't touched it in something like 20 years, and it's not made a sound either.

I don't believe you.

[JSngry]

And why should you?

[Soul Stream]

I'm not saying that d.j.s and rap aren't expressing themselves. They are. I'm saying that making a collage of already existing MUSIC, is exactly that. You're not creating new music, you're rearranging pre-existing music. Musicians are suffering.

Gigs are the lifeblood of making music. Whether you're a classical musician or a guy in a bar band. Ya need a gig. If the gigs are being taking by djs and rappers...well, you get the point. I say this as someone who is not bitter about his current gig situation, since I'm working more than ever personally. I'm just making real observations here on the ground. Observations from the front.

Did musicians in the Bronx lose gigs when Rap first was created and became there. You're damn right they did. Talented people came along who could spin and rap and the guy who was playing saxophone every night at that same club became a mailman. Now the mailman doesn't play his saxophone anymore and the d.j's running out of records to play behind the rapper, 'cause they ain't making music anymore.

[Joe G]

Not many rapper sightings in these parts.

Lots of karaoke, though. :rsly:

[Alexander]

I'm not saying that d.j.s and rap aren't expressing themselves. They are. I'm saying that making a collage of already existing MUSIC, is exactly that. You're not creating new music, you're rearranging pre-existing music.

In his book The Savage Mind' (1962, English translation 1966), French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss used the word bricolage to describe the characteristic patterns of mythological thought.

Jacques Derrida extends this notion to any discourse. "If one calls bricolage the necessity of borrowing one's concept from the text of a heritage which is more or less coherent or ruined, it must be said that every discourse is bricoleur."

A person who engages in bricolage is a bricoleur. A bricoleur is a person who creates things from existing materials, is creative and resourceful: a person who collects information and things and then puts them together in a way that they were not originally designed to do.

[JSngry]

Not many rapper sightings in these parts.

Lots of karaoke, though. :rsly:

Bingo.

So, I guess Dickie Wells & Curley Russell were victims of rap too...

The gigs now are with the new musicians making music the new way. When things change, bodies fall. Adapt or die, gracefully or otherwise. In the big picture, all that's being "lost" is gigs for competent (or better) replicators for whom there is a dwindling need (who needs a suckass funk drummer on a dance gig when you can have Clyde Stubblefield on your hard drive? Now, if you got a suckass drum sample, whose fault is that - the machine or the person who created the sample?).

The herd's being thinned, and boo-hoo about that. Sure, there's original, creative voices who are having to struggle, but where's the news there? Did computers kill Herbie Nichols? Anybody who's got the real thing will find a way to do it as long as they can hold on. And how long they can hold on has always been an issue.

But what about the young players who don't have the outlet? Hey - young cats who really want it/have it wil adapt, one way or the other. Everybody else is fucked, but oh well. It's about time. Let them be fans. We need more fans, not more craftsmen masquerading as "artists".

"Rearranging old music"? Yeah, like playing "Green Dolphin Street" for the 90000000000000000000000000000000th time on a club date with an unispired pickup band is a bold declaration of creative independence. Right. Or like cover/bar bands provide a real creative outlet. Of course they do.

Changing tastes, changing economics, hell, changing mindsets, failure by cavepeoples to accept reality, lots of things going on......

Waaaaay too many easy generalizations going on.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Gigs are the lifeblood of making music. Whether you're a classical musician or a guy in a bar band. Ya need a gig. If the gigs are being taking by djs and rappers...well, you get the point. I say this as someone who is not bitter about his current gig situation, since I'm working more than ever personally. I'm just making real observations here on the ground. Observations from the front.

This started a good while before Rap came along. What happened to the organists in the mid-seventies? The organ rooms started closing. A number of reasons. One was blaxploitation cinema - the black audience in the seventies was the only element of cinema audiences that was rising at the time. Another was people being able to get out of the ghetto into the suburbs - a less concentrated audience. Bob Porter wrote about the Mayor of Newark having a purge against the organ rooms because of drugs (Lou Donaldson's "The scorpion"). He also talked elsewhere (or maybe just to me) about RVG signing an exclusive contract with Creed Taylor as having an effect.

A further reason, which goes to the heart of your argument here, Soulstream, was Disco. Rap couldn't have got going had there been no Disco. Rap was built on technology developed for Disco, venues developed because of Disco and a mindset among the population that accepted that this was a good way of spending money in the evening.

And Disco started in Rudy Van Gelder's studio (2001, by Deodato).

MG

[JSngry]

the d.j's running out of records to play behind the rapper, 'cause they ain't making music anymore.

Dude, you have to have no idea about what's going on in the underground to make a statement like that. Jesus, I've just scratched the very surface of it, & I'm hearing shit that is totally irrelevant to a statement like that.

Cats are playing drum machines like a percussion orchestra, and samples are being morphed beyond recognition of their source, turned into something else entirely.

And sometimes - GASP - "real" players are being used right alongside all that.

Music is being made.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Oh yeah, drum machines. The Guinean popular scene is absolutely chock full of drum machines (as well as the traditional percussion instruments). Purists hate it - ask Mike Weil. I love it!

MG

[Soul Stream]

Not many rapper sightings in these parts.

Lots of karaoke, though. :rsly:

Bingo.

So, I guess Dickie Wells & Curley Russell were victims of rap too...

The gigs now are with the new musicians making music the new way. When things change, bodies fall. Adapt or die, gracefully or otherwise. In the big picture, all that's being "lost" is gigs for competent (or better) replicators for whom there is a dwindling need (who needs a suckass funk drummer on a dance gig when you can have Clyde Stubblefield on your hard drive? Now, if you got a suckass drum sample, whose fault is that - the machine or the person who created the sample?).

The herd's being thinned, and boo-hoo about that. Sure, there's original, creative voices who are having to struggle, but where's the news there? Did computers kill Herbie Nichols? Anybody who's got the real thing will find a way to do it as long as they can hold on. And how long they can hold on has always been an issue.

But what about the young players who don't have the outlet? Hey - young cats who really want it/have it wil adapt, one way or the other. Everybody else is fucked, but oh well. It's about time. Let them be fans. We need more fans, not more craftsmen masquerading as "artists".

"Rearranging old music"? Yeah, like playing "Green Dolphin Street" for the 90000000000000000000000000000000th time on a club date with an unispired pickup band is a bold declaration of creative independence. Right. Or like cover/bar bands provide a real creative outlet. Of course they do.

Changing tastes, changing economics, hell, changing mindsets, failure by cavepeoples to accept reality, lots of things going on......

Waaaaay too many easy generalizations going on.

Jim, you say it real good. But I ain't buying it. How is as this helping you. The musician. Are you a dinasour? Are you irrelevant. You've got a saxophone. Do you have nothing to say? Jim Sangrey playing Green Dolphin Street with a pickup band ain't shit? I hope you really don't believe all you expouse. Just because a d.j. has a laptop doesn't mean he's any more fucking creative or inspired than a dude with a saxophone playing GDS. That's a bullshit mindset. And yes, big bands are making a comeback. Check out Charles Tolliver's new release.

[JSngry]

How is as this helping you.

Uh, by freeing me of the nightmare of still having to make a living by playing "Mustang Sally", "Green Dolphin Steet" & "Nardis" (especially "Nardis!") when I'm 75 just to put some money in the pocket. That is not a future I'd wish on anybody.

Yeah, I still got a saxophone, but when you gotta use it to make a living instead of using it to make something you really believe in (and I still believe in Marchel Ivery playing GDS, just not me playing it), it's much more of a curse than a blessing.

Am I a dinosaur? Am I irrelevant? As a person, no, I hope not. But as a craftsman desperately trying to eke out a living by playing shit that is for all intents and purposes dead & irrelevant outside of the cave, God I certainly hope I am.

I've recently turned down a few such club dates, pickup bands playing Real Book tunes for $50.00. Fuck it. I hope it all dies, and soon. If that's all people care to make of music, fuck 'em. Life's too short to aggressively persue personal & spiritual mediocrity, and life's too interesting outside of that particular cave to live and die there.

Give me something to believe in. I can't believe in music being "important" just because it's a job, or because it's all I "know", or because I "love" it (besides, not all love is pure, and not all love is healthy). It's gotta mean more than that, and it does. When/if I can find something to believe in, I'll be there. Until then, if you want it like that, you can have it like that. Me, I got better things to do than get upset because the mode of making a living I've had in the past is no longer viable and/or relevant to the 21st century. I've got options in this life when it comes to just making money. People say, "oh, but at least you're doing something you love". Yeah, like I love playing tired ass shit with tired ass players. Can't get enough of that, let me tell you. Playing "Mustang Sally" & "Brick House" & "Ipanema" & GDS & Stella & all that other shit is better than being a plumber or something?

Why? Tell me why. For most of the people I know who believe that, it all comes down to that it's better to not have to deal with "regular" people any more than you have to. It's better to play bullshit than it is to deal with reality. Is that the best that music has to offer, an outlet for socially-challenged recluses? I think not. Is music your soulmate or your cheap ass street whore?

Give me something to believe in, not to fall back on. It ain't 1997 any more, and it sure as hell ain't 1957 any more. Music as who I am has little if anything to do with "playing gigs" if those gigs are nothing more than exericises in delusional futility. And the ones that are going away for the most part are. No tears here.

Edited January 14, 2007 by JSngry

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Playing "Mustang Sally" & "Brick House" & "Ipanema" & GDS & Stella & all that other shit is better than being a plumber or something?

Yes! (That mean, yes you're right, Jim, not that it's better than being a plumber.)

But it does depend. I've never been a plumber, but I have been a maintenance man in a laundry built in the 1890s and I can tell you, that really fucking sucked! But I've got a friend who's a plumber and loves it.

And what you're saying, Jim, is the real reason I never kept up the alto lessons. I couldn't see myself as ever being good enough to do anything worthwhile, in my opinion. All that stuff about needing the money for a double bed for my missus and me is just a smartass remark (though it's also true).

MG

[JSngry]

Just because a d.j. has a laptop doesn't mean he's any more fucking creative or inspired than a dude with a saxophone playing GDS. That's a bullshit mindset.

It's bullshit to think that a saxophone playing GDS is going to be intinsically more creative than a DJ w/a laptop. Either way, you're dealing with people doing something, so it's all going to come down to who the "theys" are and what they're bringing to the table as far as spirit, intellegence, and creativity.

If, IF the DJ is some cat with fire in the gut, a deep sense of musical curiosity, and wide open ears, and the saxophonist is some placid caveman regurgitator, you tell me A) who's most likely going to be more creative and inspired at any given moment; and then tell me B) which one you'd rather vibe off of.

If there's a difference in the answers to A & B, or if can't see that there actually is the possibility of a real-life choice to be made here, then please explain to me what is meant by a "bullshit mindset".

[Dan Gould]

People can call it innovation, evolution, revolution. Mostly it seems to be marketing and the modern death blow to music as played by musicians. If you haven't noticed around your town, live music has been basically replaced by d.j.'s and to a lesser extent rap. Live music survives more than thrives. It has been relegated by the d.j. culture to a corner of the garden left unattended. The 25 and under crowd has been weened on d.js and rap. That's what they know and love. Nothing wrong with change. That said, don't fool yourself into thinking is a step forward musically. Instead of a generation of artists, we have a generation of 'cut-and-paste' recycling behind their laptops. And people are consuming more than listening.

Add the fact that its utter, total 100% unadulterated garbage, and I'm with you 100%.

Maybe every generation reaches a point where current pop music is "crap" but in this case, there can be absolutely no doubt that its true.

"musicians" who don't create music. What a fucked up world.

[JSngry]

100% is an awfully big number, Dan...

You know, when you or anybody else says that they just don't like something, that as far as they're concerned it's worthless crap, hey, I can't/won't argue with that. Personal taste is something I highly respect, and besides, there's a helluva lot of good music out there. Nobody has to like it all.

But if we're going to play the "I don't like it, so it is crap" game, well, I'm gonna have to call bullshit, even if it means getting called on it myself for calling it in the first place. Not my first time down this road, and not just with this type music.

Music, "real" music (and let's define that in a way that doesn't define by exclusion, don't define what "real music" isn't, but instead defines what it is), is being made with samplers, laptops, all of that. Nobody "has" to like it, but let's keep it there and not make absolutist claims that won't hold up in reality, or that can only in the end come down to personal taste.

I'm going out for Vietnamese food.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

100% is an awfully big number, Dan...

You know, when you or anybody else says that they just don't like something, that as far as they're concerned it's worthless crap, hey, I can't/won't argue with that. Personal taste is something I highly respect, and besides, there's a helluva lot of good music out there. Nobody has to like it all.

But if we're going to play the "I don't like it, so it is crap" game, well, I'm gonna have to call bullshit, even if it means getting called on it myself for calling it in the first place. Not my first time down this road, and not just with this type music.

Music, "real" music (and let's define that in a way that doesn't define by exclusion, don't define what "real music" isn't, but instead defines what it is), is being made with samplers, laptops, all of that. Nobody "has" to like it, but let's keep it there and not make absolutist claims that won't hold up in reality, or that can only in the end come down to personal taste.

I'm going out for Vietnamese food.

I KNEW you'd say it better than I could. Have a good breakfast (or whatever).

MG