Bill Dixon Soul Note Box

[JSngry]

The only thing I think is even partially useful is to ascertain how successful anybody is in meeting their goals/needs. and even there, you get into some sticky ground, because you're depending on your understanding of what those goals/needs are, which will of necessities both innocent and not be subject to limitations, prejudices, preferences, misunderstandings, and manipulations.

Really, all you can do is share your likes/dislikes/passions, and see what takes with who. Beyond that, hey, fuck it.

[Joe]

The only thing I think is even partially useful is to ascertain how successful anybody is in meeting their goals/needs. and even there, you get into some sticky ground, because you're depending on your understanding of what those goals/needs are, which will of necessities both innocent and not be subject to limitations, prejudices, preferences, misunderstandings, and manipulations.

Will you please stop being so damn humane?

[JSngry]

Sorry, it's in my blood, even if Wagner isn't.

[David Ayers]

Gershwin.

There, I'm done.

[ep1str0phy]

Really, all you can do is share your likes/dislikes/passions, and see what takes with who. Beyond that, hey, fuck it.

I have to wonder whether the controversy over this sentiment has to do with a Western-derived desire to hierarchicalize and compartmentalize. Virtuosity per se was conceptualized within the Western concert tradition, after all.

The idea that you could weigh the artistic contributions of musicians in wildly divergent fields (i.e., the legitimization of Monk via Chopin, the legitimization of Bird via Stravinsky, the legitimization of Coltrane w/relationships to Slonimsky or Hanon texts, Threadgill via Varese, etc.) provides a really potent pedagogical tool--and it's absolutely part of the Western art/science tradition to want to take apart, re-arrange, and assess with something at least resembling objective certainty. Not to belittle relationships that could have been and in many cases genuinely were/are there (Threadgill/Varese, for example, which I've seen the science for and is pretty clear), but I think a lot of the aforementioned phenomenon has to do with the psychological inability to come to terms with abstraction and/or spiritual and/or emotional logics.

Speaking to a term that Moms invoked a little earlier on, these sentiments are totally anti-intellectual in certain basic/Western-relative respects, but sometimes that's a good thing--at least partially in Dixon's case and most certainly with regard to someone like Coltrane.

Speaking to this, a Cecil Taylor quote I came across on the liners to "Live in the Black Forest" yesterday (and we always talk about CT with reference to a European concert piano tradition): "I think that music is of course natural and spiritual. I think that the conception that gave birth to Jelly Roll Morton or Fats Waller or Charlier Parker or John Coltrane was, among other things, a religious one... I think that it has to do with recognizing the greater creative forces and understanding that every living thing is a part of that garden of nature's activities. To celebrate life means that you recognize the beauty of life as it exists in all things..." I mean, who talks about this music in these terms? We're ill-equipped.

[clifford_thornton]

Funny, I always get shit on whenever I yammer on about Cecil as primarily within the black music / jazz tradition and scope.

[JSngry]

Speaking to a term that Moms invoked a little earlier on, these sentiments are totally anti-intellectual in certain basic/Western-relative respects, but sometimes that's a good thing--at least partially in Dixon's case and most certainly with regard to someone like Coltrane.

"Intellectual" is a totally relative concept, eventually. For too many (imo) people, it's little more than a mirror in which they can preen & prepare to fight off the demons of "things unknown", a crude weapon forged in the tepid heat of a poorly executed insecure vanity.

(and we always talk about CT with reference to a European concert piano tradition

We do? Although I acknowledge it's presence, that is definitely not the way I talk, think, or feel about him. Never have, and have never really felt the need to. "88 tuned drums", the cliche of yore, that's where I've always heard it.

[ep1str0phy]

"Always" is a poor choice of words, but I think I've heard Rachmaninoff and Cecil mentioned in the same breadth too many times to count. I think both traditions are part of the same story (at least to Cecil), and to discount one or another is to engage with very selective listening/conceptualization. CT:

"I listen to a lot of different music. For instance, today I listened to Chinese Classical music--which I really didn't dig too much, but I'll listen to it again--I listened to Islamic chants that really knocked me the fuck out. And just single voices. I listened to Duke Ellington's Orchestra circa 1945-- there was one piece that was just amazing. I listened to Victoria de los Angeles singing Purcell's "Diedere and something or other..." and then I listened to Gary Grafman playing the first movement of the Brahms piano concerto. Brahms, boy I tell you--then I listened to Leonard T. Price singing the last movement of Richard Strauss' "Solome." Boy--what what a-- wheeew--boy, that guy--I have to go to see that guy. A lot of shit was up. And then, of course, of course--I listen every day to something by Ligeti. Today I heard "Ramifications" and this choral piece, and "Atmospheres." Then I listen every day to [he chuckles] Marvin Gaye, of course. Then I put on Sarah Vaughn, then I put on Xenakis--oh, this fucking guy--this orchestra piece, and then I'm--god, I mean I practiced the piano four hours today. I spent two hours completing another section of this poem this morning. I cooked, I mopped all the floors in this house, and I've done all this stuff. And not one cigarette I can't understand it. No champagne, anything..."

Edited April 27, 2011 by ep1str0phy

[ep1str0phy]

I think the "things unknown" play a larger role in "the music" than most people are willing to acknowledge, or at least emphasize. I'm pretty convinced this is why no one ever talks about Rahsaan Roland Kirk in the same breadth as Messrs. Coltrane, Ornette, Miles, etc.

[JSngry]

It appears to be (at least) as important to Cecil as the European concert tradition everyone associates with him.

Who is this "everyone"? I came to Cecil around 1972, and...it was all about "jazz" then, although the Euro-element was never denied (why should it be?) or minimized (ditto). But the overriding/underlying "esthetic" was plainly understood to be "African-American", even among many who did not really care for him.

So when did all this change? I mean, geez, just listen to the duets with Max...as plain as the nose on our face...

I think the "things unknown" play a larger role in "the music" than most people are willing to acknowledge, or at least emphasize.

You know it does. Or did...

[ep1str0phy]

The better portion of Taylor "overviews" I've encountered make a point of signaling, up front, "classical training." A more measured analysis (still emphasizing the classical element), which is kind of a "classic" example, is Ekkehard Jost's book (a European dude, keep in mind, evaluating free jazz with more traditional/formalized analysis):

In terms of Cecil's percussivity:

"[...] He started taking piano lessons at the age of five. A few years later he also began to study percussion, with a timpanist who at that time was playing under Toscanini; we can ascribe some significance to this fact in view of Taylor's later stylistic evolution."

More generally:

"Without considering direct influences (i.e., models), we can assume that Taylor heard his own ideas confirmed in the playing of Tristano and Brubeck, ideas whose realization he could not yet envision because of his preoccupation with "Occidental" ways of musical thinking. Taylor doubtless had in mind, like Brubeck and Tristano, the integration of European avantgarde elements into a jazz context."

And I feel like the Anglicization of Cecil's playing happens often. Here's on example (literally the first review I opened up after searching for the Wilmer chapter on Cecil online... I lent someone my copy of "As Serious..."!):

"The performance also included more placid, pastoral segments than one normally expects from his trios. Grimes' frequent use of a bow and akLaff's reliance on brushes certainly contributed to the greater emphasis on soft textures.

The pianist apparently steered them in that direction, as demonstrated by his willingness to allow more space between notes, to the point of sounding almost minimalist on occasion. In fact, he closed the first set with a brief solo more reminiscent of Eric Satie's impressionism than any jazz style. And yet it was classic Cecil Taylor, delivered in a context that only he could generate. It also happened to be the most achingly beautiful passage that this listener has experienced at a Taylor concert over the past 20 years." (http://articles.courant.com/2006-10-23/features/0610230467_1_taylor-concert-cecil-taylor-henry-grimes)

[JSngry]

"Always" is a poor choice of words, but I think I've heard Rachmaninoff and Cecil mentioned in the same breadth too many times to count. I think both traditions are part of the same story (at least to Cecil), and to discount one or another is to engage with very selective listening/conceptualization. CT:

"I listen to a lot of different music. For instance, today I listened to Chinese Classical music--which I really didn't dig too much, but I'll listen to it again--I listened to Islamic chants that really knocked me the fuck out. And just single voices. I listened to Duke Ellington's Orchestra circa 1945-- there was one piece that was just amazing. I listened to Victoria de los Angeles singing Purcell's "Diedere and something or other..." and then I listened to Gary Grafman playing the first movement of the Brahms piano concerto. Brahms, boy I tell you--then I listened to Leonard T. Price singing the last movement of Richard Strauss' "Solome." Boy--what what a-- wheeew--boy, that guy--I have to go to see that guy. A lot of shit was up. And then, of course, of course--I listen every day to something by Ligeti. Today I heard "Ramifications" and this choral piece, and "Atmospheres." Then I listen every day to [he chuckles] Marvin Gaye, of course. Then I put on Sarah Vaughn, then I put on Xenakis--oh, this fucking guy--this orchestra piece, and then I'm--god, I mean I practiced the piano four hours today. I spent two hours completing another section of this poem this morning. I cooked, I mopped all the floors in this house, and I've done all this stuff. And not one cigarette I can't understand it. No champagne, anything..."

Also from CT:

Anybody's music is made up of a lot of things that are not musical.Music is an attitude, a group of symbols of a way of life, whether you're conscious of it or not. Any music is an expression of those who created it. so that jazz would naturally have to be an expression of the American Negro, his feelings, within the tradition of his folk songs, the church, those swinging funeral bands. Simply the feeling of the American Negro within that tradition. That's what it is. It's quite simple, really. And, of course, it naturally reflects the social and economic and educational attitudes of the players. And that's why the fools don't think I play jazz.

Now there's one thing I can say about critics. Certainly they did attempt to raise the level of writing about jazz. And my appeal to certain of these people, I can understand. But it;'s also like being grateful for small favors. And most of their information was inaccurate. The trouble was they couldn't hear. It was certainly valid for them to say "I heard such-and-such a composer", and perhaps so, but what I also heard, and what was also there, were jazz personalities and jazz musicians which they didn't identify because their reference eluded that. Like Horace Silver, like Thelonious Monk, like Duke Ellington, like Milt Jackson, like Miles Davis, all that was there.

Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker wrote heads that have all the energy and all the rhythmical and musical qualities of a symphony in twelve measures. They say I follow Europe, but every hipster knows that the Europeans are looking, really, at jazz. The long form is exasperated. Nobody writes long form music any more. It's nineteenth century. The sonata is out, old-fashioned. That's what all Webern is about. So, it means that what they're trying to get to is the kernel, the short musical statement. When they come to the point where everything else happens, where the development is, that's good. Why not just give me that? That's music, that should stand by itself.

Sure, these quotes are from a long time ago, and sure, Cecil Taylor says a lot of things. But I think that to think of him as somebody who creates in a world where his "African-Americanism" is just one equal among too may others to mention, is to miss the point of why Cecil Taylor is Cecil Taylor. One more quote from him, again, an old one, but note the importance he places on self-awareness & realization, no matter who you are:

All white musicians try to cop the feeling. That's all they're involved in, copping the feeling. What any musician must do, and this is why most white musicians fail in jazz, they never come to grips with themselves and their own musical traditions. They always get involved in competing. What they should do is recognize the function that they have in a jazz group and to function out of it with the whole history of America which is theirs. That's what America is. All these people. And to know what to do with all these things, blend them and make them go on, that's what creating the new music is about.

Substitute "the world" for "America" and it's still a highly relevant quote, perhaps more than ever. But nowhere do you see a mention of "fading out" or consciously "blending out" (as opposed to "blending in") your core self/being/history/roots/whatever, of doing anything other than bringing who you are to the table and then going from there, as you are. Nowhere. Of course you evolve, but you grow from the roots up, always.

Edited April 28, 2011 by JSngry

[soundenvelope]

Getting back on topic:

I will avoid joining in the the back and forth regarding Bill Dixon's significance as a composer. The obvious reply would be that to have that debate one/we would first have to agree with the parameters/definition of being a composer and whether the term/definition in question was germane to a certain tradition of music.

What I wanted to add to the thread was a feeling of sadness regarding the incomplete quality of the Cam Jazz box sets, particularly in the case of Bill Dixon's ouevre. Anyone who has the original vinyl will understand my point, particularly in the case of In Italy, Volumes I & II and November 1981. Both releases has considerable printed material included.

I may have to scan what I have and/or transcribe the material and post it on Bill Dixon's Facebook page.

[clifford_thornton]

Agreed, Stephen - though the music is, for lack of a better term, the "reason," there's a lot more to explore in Bill's work. The artwork and the text feels very necessary. And though I'm lucky to have a few concert broadcasts, they feel naked without other aspects.

[7/4]

sounds like an excellent idea!

[soundenvelope]

..Dixon was a quirky black dandy with an excessively high opinion of his own philosophy (and yes, I've heard him speak for hours)-- that's COOL!! But it ain't a whole lot more and sure is shit ain't a patch on hundreds of 20th century composers (that you ignore), instrumentalists (that you ignore) or, as trans-formal conceptualist, ELVIS PRESLEY (that you lie to yourself about).

Reading this reminds me why I spend so little time in music forums.

I've nothing against differing opinions, humor or even occasional sarcasm used in a 'community' context. And, while I do not necessarily mind the heat, being discourteous is never hip.

Invective should never be welcome here.

Edited July 22, 2012 by Stephen Haynes

[David Ayers]

..Dixon was a quirky black dandy with an excessively high opinion of his own philosophy (and yes, I've heard him speak for hours)-- that's COOL!!

But it ain't a whole lot more and sure is shit ain't a patch on hundreds of 20th century composers (that you ignore), instrumentalists (that you ignore) or, as trans-formal conceptualist, ELVIS PRESLEY (that you lie to yourself about).

Reading this reminds me why I spend so little time in music forums.

I've nothing against differing opinions, humor or even occasional sarcasm used in a 'community' context. And, while I do not necessarily mind the heat, being discourteous is never hip.

Invective should never be welcome here.

It's a style - it's to do with how you manufacture a position which will be attended to. It calls for a well-ramified response and, when it gets something else, the point of view it represents remains dominant.

[jlhoots]

..Dixon was a quirky black dandy with an excessively high opinion of his own philosophy (and yes, I've heard him speak for hours)-- that's COOL!!

But it ain't a whole lot more and sure is shit ain't a patch on hundreds of 20th century composers (that you ignore), instrumentalists (that you ignore) or, as trans-formal conceptualist, ELVIS PRESLEY (that you lie to yourself about).

Reading this reminds me why I spend so little time in music forums.

I've nothing against differing opinions, humor or even occasional sarcasm used in a 'community' context. And, while I do not necessarily mind the heat, being discourteous is never hip.

Invective should never be welcome here.

Moms is the resident "troublemaker" on many topics. I take him with a (very large) grain of salt.

[soundenvelope]

"It's a style - it's to do with how you manufacture a position which will be attended to. It calls for a well-ramified response and, when it gets something else, the point of view it represents remains dominant."

One simply wishes the roots and branches would speak up a bit more loudly regarding the invective and discourteous speech.

To reiterate, that sort of behavior, fundamentally self-indulgent, is never okay. For me, it is a form of violence.

Edited July 21, 2012 by Stephen Haynes

[7/4]

"It's a style - it's to do with how you manufacture a position which will be attended to. It calls for a well-ramified response and, when it gets something else, the point of view it represents remains dominant."

One simply wishes the roots and branches would speak up a bit more loudly regarding the invective and discourteous speech.

To reiterate, that sort of behavior, fundamentally self-indulgent, is never okay. For me, it is a form of violence.

No kidding.

Good to see you here, I hope you stick around...otherwise, you always write interesting things elsewhere and I'll see you there.

7/4 aka David Beardsley

Edited July 21, 2012 by 7/4