Difficult music

[paul secor]

(The Mark Turner I had in mind was the last one, Dharma Days, which seems to me music where, while I can sense its virtues, seems like it's taking place in its own rarefied bubble.)

Well, ok, that's just about exactly what it is. You've identified what "it is", as well as your current level of attachment/attraction to it. Nothing really "difficult" about that, eh? More like the act of a mature "listening artist" (apologies to Elder Dahn). What can, and often does, change is how far into that rarefied bubble you want to go/feel comfortable going at any given juncture of your life. And that is a function of your life, which is, as they say, subject to change without warning (and boy howdy is it ever...), not of the music, which by nature of it being a fixed quantity (i.e. - a recorded document/performance of certain specific people doing a certain specific thing at/in a specific time/place) is what it is.

So really, the question you're asking is a fair one, but any insight gleamed from the answers is inevitably going to be about the individual who's responding, not about the music itself. A corollary set of questions that might provide a more provocative range of responses would be to ask to purveyors of generally-perceived "difficult" musics why they do what they do, does it bother them that their music is peceived as difficult, do they feel that they "should" have a larger audience than they do, is their "message" one that can only be delivered in one specific manner, and who, if anybody, do they blame when that message is not successfully conveyed?

I think, based on both perception and experience, that a lot of people who provide us with this "difficult" music don't really, as a matter of principal, give too much of a shit about its "difficulty", and that is how it should be. Why they don't give too much of a shit is where things open up into some pretty interesting and widely diversified territory, not all of it necessarily "healthy", yet some of it being gloriously so.

For myself, if I'm not interested in the what - the music - I'm probably not going to be intested in the "why". If I were interested in the "why", I'd study philosophy, and that's probably the last thing I'd do in the lifetime I have.

That said, my reactions to the fixed quantities of various recorded musics have changed many times over my lifetime, as my life has changed (with or without warning).

[John L]

My take on "difficult" music is really simple:

Music is a basic pleasure of life along with eating sleeping and sex. I cannot imagine a desire to spend any amount of time dealing with music that does not evoke immediate pleasure or requires anything resembling "heavy lifting" to "appreciate".

Well, there you go. No two people are the same. I put a lot of effort and heavy lifting into music, eating, sleeping, and (especially) sex.

[Shawn]

What I find difficult are albums/sessions/concerts that are SO CLOSE to being something special...almost there...but then the payoff doesn't come. You know that you really want to like it and will probably revisit it several times just to be sure that...it doesn't quite fucking work.

[Nate Dorward]

So really, the question you're asking is a fair one, but any insight gleamed from the answers is inevitably going to be about the individual who's responding, not about the music itself.

Hm.... I don't know about that; indeed I suppose I was asking about music where the difficulty seems to be actually part of the music. Does this idea not make sense to you? (genuinely curious here).

A corollary set of questions that might provide a more provocative range of responses would be to ask to purveyors of generally-perceived "difficult" musics why they do what they do, does it bother them that their music is peceived as difficult, do they feel that they "should" have a larger audience than they do, is their "message" one that can only be delivered in one specific manner, and who, if anybody, do they blame when that message is not successfully conveyed?

I think my sense of "intrinsic difficulty" is that it's often a matter of music where expressiveness is not the major point--where the music is instead more like an intensely worked object. You can like it or admire the obsessiveness and skill with which it's put together, but there's a certain "it's just there" element which you have to deal with.

Two more instances of what I'm getting at: Evan Parker's solo album Monoceros--which is EXTREMELY different from the later EP solo discs, often matters of huge near-static slabs of fiercely held notes; and Ned Goold's March of the Malcontents, the new Smalls release. The latter is maybe an instance of what Shawn mentions as a frustratingly not-quite-there session--I really wanted it to be a great one as I liked The Flows and Backstabber's Ball a lot, but I dunno....

[JSngry]

So really, the question you're asking is a fair one, but any insight gleamed from the answers is inevitably going to be about the individual who's responding, not about the music itself.

Hm.... I don't know about that; indeed I suppose I was asking about music where the difficulty seems to be actually part of the music. Does this idea not make sense to you? (genuinely curious here).

Well, yeah, but only for a little bit. I don't really know about difficulty being "part of" the music, becuase except for the very most rudimental stuff, there's difficulty of one type/level/layer/whatever built into it just as a matter of it being the work of people(s) who had to think/learn/etc before doing what they do/did. And once that begins, even if one step of the way proves "difficult" for them, isn't that just how it goes and has gone and might still go since they made the decision to go there in the first place?

I mean, hell, Richie Cole is in no way "difficult music" other than it being hard to take for more than 10 seconds, but it wasn't "easy" for him to learn to play like that, and for a lot of people who don't have half a rat's ass of a clue about music, it is "difficult music", just becuase they don't know what the hell they're listening to. So I do think that ultimately the question of "difficulty" is in the probverbial Ear Of The Behearer and not some quantifiable quality that is intrinsic to the music itsel other that relative to any given audience at any given time, which is why early Ornette wigged out so many people then but the same shit is almost conservative to a lot of today's ears.

So yeah, I know what you mean, and I think I know why you're asking it. I just think that you're looking for at least some answers about the music itself when all that's really to be had are answers about the people who hear and make it. Not exactly the same thing, although at first -or even tenth - glance they might seem to be.

[JSngry]

A corollary set of questions that might provide a more provocative range of responses would be to ask to purveyors of generally-perceived "difficult" musics why they do what they do, does it bother them that their music is peceived as difficult, do they feel that they "should" have a larger audience than they do, is their "message" one that can only be delivered in one specific manner, and who, if anybody, do they blame when that message is not successfully conveyed?

I think my sense of "intrinsic difficulty" is that it's often a matter of music where expressiveness is not the major point--where the music is instead more like an intensely worked object. You can like it or admire the obsessiveness and skill with which it's put together, but there's a certain "it's just there" element which you have to deal with.

Ok, call me...whatever, but I really do think that purposely not stressing "expressiveness" is an expression in and of itself of a highly specific personal POV about life in general.

"Expression" is one of those things from which you can run (and many try) but you cannot hide. You can consciously not be "expressive" in a "traditional" manner, but the rejection of same is rooted in something, and that's what the rejection is at least partially an expression of.

A lot of the the uber-hip "post-modern" types hate hearing this type shit, but there it is.

[BruceH]

One person whose music I've always found difficult (as in difficult to listen to) is George Shearing. I just don't "get" him. Always found his stuff vaguely (or actively) annoying and just can't get into it.

[clifford_thornton]

Frank Stella by way of Werner X. Uehlinger:

"What you (hear) is what you (hear)."

[king ubu]

Interesting thread, Nate - I'm not nearly as proficient in talking about music, but I tried to post short reviews of some Potlatch discs, including the Rives solo disc you mention, on my blog:

the reviews:

http://ubu-space.blogspot.com/2007/06/potl...-2007-sale.html

the sound samples:

http://ubu-space.blogspot.com/2007/06/potl...sale-order.html

I think I quite exactly know what you mean with "difficult music", and I think I agree that it's not all in the ear of the behearer. Take for instance John Butcher (I'm hardly familiar with him by now, but I'm impressed by him as an instrumentalist very, very much) - his music is so extremely nuanced and controlled, and I sense there's something of importance, yet I can't actually say I play the discs of his I have very often - yet I have an urge to play them now and then, nevertheless, and as time goes by maybe I start to get a better understanding of the music...

To me, this most often applies to improv, less so to any kind of jazz, but then Mark Turner (I have his ballads album and that one's a nice one, showing all his Warne Marsh influence and his difference from all the other same age tenors) or maybe Kurt Rosenwinkel (leaves me totally cold, sorry) aren't the kind of musicians I listen all that often. Their music is too cold (and academic, too?) for my liking, just doesn't give me a lot, and there I frankly don't think there's much I'm missing... I don't get that feeling of "importance" (which is probably indeed subjective, but there has to be something in the music, inside, that makes me react that way, still).

[BruceH]

The most difficult music for me to listen to is what is commonly called "easy listening."

I hear ya.