Can Jazz Be Saved?

[JSngry]

most dancers are lousy dancers anyway, so what's the point?

You've been playing for the wrong dancers...

[Larry Kart]

when I play I don't want people dancing - I don't go to where they're working and start shakin' it -

So,,,you're saying that you want people to leave home, spend money, and just sit there and watch you work?

Gee, when you put it that way, it's a miracle anybody goes out!

But that's what I go out to do about three times a week and am almost always richly rewarded. About the dancing, you might say that I'm dancing in my head. I certainly don't sit there solving formulas, drawing diagrams, and wondering about sententious remarks I might make. To borrow an old phrase, It's the most fun I can have with my clothes on.

[JSngry]

when I play I don't want people dancing - I don't go to where they're working and start shakin' it -

So,,,you're saying that you want people to leave home, spend money, and just sit there and watch you work?

Gee, when you put it that way, it's a miracle anybody goes out!

But that's what I go out to do about three times a week and am almost always richly rewarded. About the dancing, you might say that I'm dancing in my head. I certainly don't sit there solving formulas, drawing diagrams, and wondering about sententious remarks I might make. To borrow an old phrase, It's the most fun I can have with my clothes on.

Well sir, you're dancing while people are WORKING by god, even if it IS in your head. Have you no RESPECT for the ARTIST?

Seriously, I've heard stories, too many to number, where a band gets a good groove going and somebody DARES to let out a whoop or something, and people call security and have them bound and gagged and thrown to the wolves or some nonsense and the band approves and...sorry, but anybody who wants that type scene of "enforced coolness" is more than welcome to it...hell, if I can get people to holler at something I play in a "jazz" context, I feel like I'm making my point!

And if I can get'em top move, hell, they might accidentally take it out to the street with'em for their real life.

Edited August 11, 2009 by JSngry

[.:.impossible]

Who gives a shit what is hip anymore?

Some people think dressing up like a medieval lute player while his buddies battle it out with foam swords every Saturday morning at the local park is hip. Some people think bent-circuit children's toys are hip. Some people think beat-boxing is hip. Some people think recreating a Scriabin piece in midi is hip.

Shit, I think the vibraphone is hip. Most people don't even know what the fuck a vibraphone is, and when they see it, it immediately becomes a xylophone.

And then there are the people that visit this board... a very small sample of the population. All of these groups think what they are doing, what they are into, is hip.

Nothing needs saving. Everything needs nurturing. You never know what the next trend will be... if its be-bop or Albert Ayler, you can say you've been there all along. BFD.

[Hot Ptah]

I think that this thread got off track a bit, probably my fault, with a dancing/no dancing distinction. In my humble opinion, the jazz audience could be larger among younger people if jazz was considered fun and "cool' again, whether or not there was any dancing involved. The Mahavishnu Orchestra was not a big dance band, but it was a gateway into acoustic jazz for a lot of people. I think that there needs to be something to serve as a positive gateway into jazz for young people today--no matter what it is. I don't know what it is or should be--but there should be something.

[fasstrack]

Some people think dressing up like a medieval lute player while his buddies battle it out with foam swords every Saturday morning at the local park is hip.

If they paid me enough I'd dress up like a medieval lute player-----or Scaramouche

[fasstrack]

As artists, jazz musicians have sought to explore music in a much more intellectual context than an easily accessible, played-for-the-masses context. They

I really disagree with this. And history also disproves it, since until the 40s jazz musicians were considered entertainers, or worse, black entertainers, by white society----and that mindset is very difficult to break when one is trying to survive. It's a tribute to the geniuses that did do their thing and moved music forward that they could do it in the context of work. It's an uphill battle, and even dangerous career-wise, or, back then, even survival-wise.

I have a recording of a concert I played where I asked Eddie Locke to talk about the meaning of jazz to the young people there who were ignorant of it. He made a huge point of the social aspects of the music and its' function as dance music, and said verbatim 'once in the night there would be a little time called 'hot time', where they would play solos like we're doing tonight'. And he played with some of the great soloists. They had discipline and knew what a gig required. I'm sorry, but to think anything else is simply naive. I think perhaps a better way to put this might be 'when they got together in places like Mintons or privately they exchanged ideas they couldn't get at on the commercial gig'.

Here's Lou Donaldson, from that NY Times profile (found here):

"Today, at 82, he remains a leading exponent of this soul-jazz approach. But even at its bluesiest, his playing remains informed by bebop. If the economics allowed it, he said, he would delve more into the bop canon.

“I’d like to be playing that every night,” he said. “But unfortunately, that’s not the case today.” At most of his outdoor concerts, he said, the audience demands his soul-jazz favorites — and he delivers. Those favorites, he said, will figure prominently on Aug. 18, when he brings his quartet to Mount Vernon for a free set, produced by Jazz Forum Arts and Jazzmobile, in City Hall Plaza."

Yeah. He found a way to entertain----being funny using the same lines that work, singing a comical blues, etc.----and he plays and doesn't change his playing. Lou is not near the top of popularity, but he works consistently and always worked. he bought a house from working.

There aren't many young players I can think of that would think to do that (entertain and still play well) or know how anymore. Wycliffe Gordon is one. I heard him on the radio and he played good and entertained without talking down musically or with words.

[fasstrack]

I just wanted to add one quick thing: I lived in Holland twice, and in Europe they're much more cerebral about their jazz. They expect you to be 'deep', and have a 'tude. If you try to entertain there you might get hurt. They also don't react physically or move to music. Weird after I played for black folks in the States so many years. One guy I knew, a pianist named Peter Beets who plays swinging 'American' piano, got a rise out of a crowd. The rest of the time they want to sit in their seats and sort of space, but are enjoying it in their own way.

[Larry Kart]

I think that this thread got off track a bit, probably my fault, with a dancing/no dancing distinction. In my humble opinion, the jazz audience could be larger among younger people if jazz was considered fun and "cool' again, whether or not there was any dancing involved. The was not a big dance band, but it was a gateway into acoustic jazz for a lot of people. I think that there needs to be something to serve as a positive gateway into jazz for young people today--no matter what it is. I don't know what it is or should be--but there should be something.

The Mahavishnu Orchestra (and countless other interesting and very popular outfits down through time -- for the young Sonny Rollins it was Louis Jordan) have no doubt served as "gateways," but what they did was not conceived or executed by them in "gateway" terms and/or in order to perform some "gateway" function. Think that way and you've got Wynton trying to be Leonard Bernstein at one end of the spectrum and Lord knows what at the other. To put it another way, if the people making the music aren't doing what they really want to do, why should they expect that anyone else would really want to experience it? IIRC, the Mahavishnu Orchestra played balls out con amore -- as did (for that matter) Roscoe Mitchell.

[AllenLowe]

I've always been bugged by the dance-to-the-jazz-group thing; it's always populated, at least in my experience, with uninteresting exhibitionists.

on everything else, btw, I agree with Larry - I'm a deep listener; I stay very still.

as for the dancing, how about those without legs? Think how they must feel...........

[fasstrack]

I think that this thread got off track a bit, probably my fault, with a dancing/no dancing distinction. In my humble opinion, the jazz audience could be larger among younger people if jazz was considered fun and "cool' again, whether or not there was any dancing involved. The was not a big dance band, but it was a gateway into acoustic jazz for a lot of people. I think that there needs to be something to serve as a positive gateway into jazz for young people today--no matter what it is. I don't know what it is or should be--but there should be something.

The Mahavishnu Orchestra (and countless other interesting and very popular outfits down through time -- for the young Sonny Rollins it was Louis Jordan) have no doubt served as "gateways," but what they did was not conceived or executed by them in "gateway" terms and/or in order to perform some "gateway" function. Think that way and you've got Wynton trying to be Leonard Bernstein at one end of the spectrum and Lord knows what at the other. To put it another way, if the people making the music aren't doing what they really want to do, why should they expect that anyone else would really want to experience it? IIRC, the Mahavishnu Orchestra played balls out con amore -- as did (for that matter) Roscoe Mitchell.

I personally think the more genuine you are in doing what you do (in terms of believing in it yourself and what you like musically), the more of a chord you will strike with people. But it has to have real feeling, not BS '2nd-guessing' feeling re what people 'want to hear'. You sort of have to trust that people feel similar things, and the artist is a 'funnel' and can mix it up and articulate it in ways others can't, maybe by hanging in that 'dream state' more. You don't have to sacrifice intellectual content or try to 'adapt'. People will smell that every time. You sort have have to trust that certain things are universal and that if it flows your feeling will be felt by others, whatever the content. Mostly only other musicians care about the musical content, but I've also been amazed how much people can hear, and have learned over the years to trust that.

And say hello once in a while.

[JSngry]

Yeah, far too often the music is not the problem, it's the people who are making it. Too much navel and/or mirror gazing, not enough, for lack of a better term, sirit of "outreach" , whcih is most decidedly not about "commercialism" or anything like that. Too ofthen I hear/see people playing who give out the vibe that the audience is either an inconvinience or a classroom or a jury or...anything other than some people to share something with.

Larry, you talk about Roscoe, hell everytime I've seen him, he wasn't exactly extroverted, but thru body language and playing demeanor, I never once felt that I was anything less than welcome in the room. It's just a vibe tha people give off no matter what/how they paly, a vibe that says, here, this is for you, from me, you're welcome to it!

And that is not a function of musical style, that's a function of basic personality, which means that if there's a root problem, the source is the deliverer, not what is being dleivered. A small audience can still be a loving audience, but a consistently disinteerested audience of any size is,,,jsut not cool.

[Aggie87]

I just wanted to add one quick thing: I lived in Holland twice, and in Europe they're much more cerebral about their jazz. They expect you to be 'deep', and have a 'tude. If you try to entertain there you might get hurt. They also don't react physically or move to music. Weird after I played for black folks in the States so many years. One guy I knew, a pianist named Peter Beets who plays swinging 'American' piano, got a rise out of a crowd. The rest of the time they want to sit in their seats and sort of space, but are enjoying it in their own way.

This may be true for some audience members in Europe, but it's simply not true for all of them. You're making far too large a generalization.

I've seen audience members in Europe dancing in the aisles during jazz performances, by larger well known performers like Herbie Hancock, and lesser, local groups in jazz kellers.

[fasstrack]

I just wanted to add one quick thing: I lived in Holland twice, and in Europe they're much more cerebral about their jazz. They expect you to be 'deep', and have a 'tude. If you try to entertain there you might get hurt. They also don't react physically or move to music. Weird after I played for black folks in the States so many years. One guy I knew, a pianist named Peter Beets who plays swinging 'American' piano, got a rise out of a crowd. The rest of the time they want to sit in their seats and sort of space, but are enjoying it in their own way.

This may be true for some audience members in Europe, but it's simply not true for all of them. You're making far too large a generalization.

I've seen audience members in Europe dancing in the aisles during jazz performances, by larger well known performers like Herbie Hancock, and lesser, local groups in jazz kellers.

You're right. I only saw the tip of the iceberg. I'll probably live there again and longer. But I did see what I saw, and it's cool to react like that. It's a different culture, at least in Holland. I also lived with a guy in Den Haag that was in a Flamenco instrumental/dance troup, and they blew me away. I can imagine people dancing on the tables.

I have a lot to learn, though. Thanks for busting me on my hasty conclusions.

[Noj]

We see the same popular backlash in the visual arts, where people who were accustomed to and knew the language of representational art are put off and even a little pissed off by non-representational/abstract art. The traditional tools of mimicking reality in a painting or a sculpture were abandoned by many artists in order to do what the camera could not, and in order to continue to grow and push the boundaries and add new definitions to their collective "language." At the same time, this left people who weren't following the new movement(s) twisting in the wind a bit, and if those people weren't willing to learn the new language or adapt their tastes to include the new thing that was happening it ceased being relevant/interesting/entertaining for them. Of course, those people were oblivious to the point, but still entitled to their tastes.

There's many examples of even the most controversial and widely rejected artwork becoming as common as graphics on coffee cups at Starbucks. Sometimes it takes a while for the appeal to sink in and become a part of the collective unconscious. In jazz, perhaps the likelihood of that happening is reduced since it was always the art establishment which stood by its most controversial creators and gave them the stage--whereas the Lincoln Center folks and cats like Wynton Marsalis appear more interested in hoisting up the traditions which cutting edge artists sought to go beyond.

Back on the visual arts front, what's happened is the fine art world has allowed itself to splinter and not be held to any one movement. Eclecticism has won. There's room for the cutting edge art, and room for exploring traditional techniques. So long as the viewers are entertained, anything goes. If it can be contextualized, it can be art. If it has an audience, it is art. Even if it's complete crap by any one person's take on things. In fact, if it adds to the dialogue and gets people talking, it's accomplished a goal.

[papsrus]

Can dancing be saved?

A central point of contention here is not the music at all, but the appropriate audience reaction to it. As a performer, would it offend anyone here if people got up and started shuffling around and enjoying themselves during your performance? Your solo? (gasp!) If so, there's your answer.

I would love to see some spontaneous hootin' and hollerin' break out at the Lincoln Center. The purists would implode. The ushers would start scurrying around with their flashlights. The house lights would go up. The band would stop playing. .... WTF is this? Sit down you philistines!

I'm shuffling around right now. To jazz. Feels good.

[fasstrack]

We see the same popular backlash in the visual arts, where people who were accustomed to and knew the language of representational art are put off and even a little pissed off by non-representational/abstract art. The traditional tools of mimicking reality in a painting or a sculpture were abandoned by many artists in order to do what the camera could not, and in order to continue to grow and push the boundaries and add new definitions to their collective "language." At the same time, this left people who weren't following the new movement(s) twisting in the wind a bit, and if those people weren't willing to learn the new language or adapt their tastes to include the new thing that was happening it ceased being relevant/interesting/entertaining for them. Of course, those people were oblivious to the point, but still entitled to their tastes.

There's many examples of even the most controversial and widely rejected artwork becoming as common as graphics on coffee cups at Starbucks. Sometimes it takes a while for the appeal to sink in and become a part of the collective unconscious. In jazz, perhaps the likelihood of that happening is reduced since it was always the art establishment which stood by its most controversial creators and gave them the stage--whereas the Lincoln Center folks and cats like Wynton Marsalis appear more interested in hoisting up the traditions which cutting edge artists sought to go beyond.

Back on the visual arts front, what's happened is the fine art world has allowed itself to splinter and not be held to any one movement. Eclecticism has won. There's room for the cutting edge art, and room for exploring traditional techniques. So long as the viewers are entertained, anything goes. If it can be contextualized, it can be art. If it has an audience, it is art. Even if it's complete crap by any one person's take on things. In fact, if it adds to the dialogue and gets people talking, it's accomplished a goal.

I like Nicholas Slominsky's take on 'non-acceptance of the unfamiliar' in Lexicon of Musical Invective. He pretty much nails it, and people making real breakthoughs in all the arts pretty much have always caught hell. Maybe that has something to do with my trying to fuse a little entertainment into the purely musical aspect.

As far as Wynton goes, don't count him out. There's a lot more to him than meets the eye, and I think he's grown a lot. True, he mouthed off a lot stupidly early on, but that was then. I personally appreciate that there's an oasis on an expensive piece of real estate in Manhattan where I can walk in off the street and sit down and see pictures and bios of Charie Christian, etc. in a jazz hall of fame. It was an amazing coup to pull that off. He also has to please the monied interests that keep that place going, and that can't be easy. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes. I hope they get edgier and more innovative with their programs, too. With a track record of attendance maybe they can----or maybe they will be trapped chasing the money. Only time will tell. Meanwhile, I have no doubt Wynton digs and is all for musicians and their progress from his actions, my small contact with him, and the fact that he gave Tommy Turrentine a trumpet when he heard he didn't have one. Apropos of nothing, except that it pissed me off, Wynton can speak for himself and doesn't need my help---- he does it very well, but I thought the late Joe Zawinul showed no class whatsoever dissing him in the NYT in an interview when JALC presented him and his music. He should've either said 'thank you' or squelched his big ego and said nothing.

I'm personally struggling all the time with keeping an ear to bringing the audience back and keep them while growing and taking chances musically. There's a way, there must be.

Edited August 11, 2009 by fasstrack

[AllenLowe]

one night at the Angry Squire, 1970s, a guy at a table near the bandstand kept singing along with Barry Harris' trio - he would croon the lyrics to whatever standard they were doing -

finally, he was singing, in tune but with a silly, deep vibrato:

"don't.....blame me..."

and Barry stopped the band and told him he "should go to one of them sing-a-long bars."

that's how I feel about dancers. They need to go to one of them dance-a-long bars.

Edited August 11, 2009 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

That's certainly something to tell somebody who didn't like what was being played and who was expecting to have their personal desires catered to above all other considerations, but why would you tell that to somebody who was digging what was being played, as long as it wasn't disrupting the audience? Hell, somebody lets it get to feeling good to 'em and they wanna get up in the back of the room or something and let it continue there, I count that as a good thing!

[Hot Ptah]

I think that this thread got off track a bit, probably my fault, with a dancing/no dancing distinction. In my humble opinion, the jazz audience could be larger among younger people if jazz was considered fun and "cool' again, whether or not there was any dancing involved. The was not a big dance band, but it was a gateway into acoustic jazz for a lot of people. I think that there needs to be something to serve as a positive gateway into jazz for young people today--no matter what it is. I don't know what it is or should be--but there should be something.

The Mahavishnu Orchestra (and countless other interesting and very popular outfits down through time -- for the young Sonny Rollins it was Louis Jordan) have no doubt served as "gateways," but what they did was not conceived or executed by them in "gateway" terms and/or in order to perform some "gateway" function. Think that way and you've got Wynton trying to be Leonard Bernstein at one end of the spectrum and Lord knows what at the other. To put it another way, if the people making the music aren't doing what they really want to do, why should they expect that anyone else would really want to experience it? IIRC, the Mahavishnu Orchestra played balls out con amore -- as did (for that matter) Roscoe Mitchell.

I agree with everything in this post. So, when it happens that a group of musicians come along at the same time, doing what they really want to do, doing it with passion, and gain some popularity with it, AND serve incidentally as a gateway into jazz--

is that just an amazingly lucky set of circumstances all coming together at once, which happens once every several decades?

[JSngry]

Ain't no "luck" to it. It's people carpe deiming on their time and place, and it is to be encouraged!

[Joe]

See, I don't see where, how, and why dancing, partying, and LISTENING are of necessity mutally exclusive...never have, really.

That's the Western canonical / concert music-as-ideal tradition: listening requires a certain kind of attention, is essentially intellectual in nature: listening as a gateway to being awed.

But one of the things about jazz that made it vital was its offering an alternative to and commentary on -- and not even consciously -- to the dualism implied by Western art music (and, really, only a gradual and late-arriving development in the history of same). You can and do listen with your entire body; sensation and perception are not wholly brain activities; not every profound experience needs to be sublime and eternal and rational.

The jazz I still enjoy, and listen to, is still in the spirit of these alternatives. As long as there is "true" improvising going on, I'm down. The great thing about the contemporary music scene, IMO, is that improvisation is so highly valued in it, and across a whole range of genres and practices.

Jazz, then -- only not as Teachout understands it = victim of its own influence.

[JSngry]

You can and do listen with your entire body; sensation and perception are not wholly brain activities; not every profound experience needs to be sublime and eternal and rational.

We miss you out here, Joe. For real.

[AllenLowe]

"You can and do listen with your entire body"

my left big toe frequently catches radio signals from Mars - they say they're coming here to dance -

[JSngry]

Bring 'em here, we can use an influx of new talent.