Why Jazz Isn't Cool Anymore

[JSngry]

Yes, hubris vs hubris. That would be part of the ramble, and also part of the reason why his mission against colonial mentality will ultimately fail. He's a practitioner as well as a victim.

[Spontooneous]

Yes, hubris vs hubris. That would be part of the ramble, and also part of the reason why his mission against colonial mentality will ultimately fail. He's a practitioner as well as a victim.

Exactly. He sounds like my racist uncle.

Check out the turd bomb that NP dropped in the comment section of a Kansas City jazz blog where someone dared to question him. link

[JSngry]

He just needs to figure some stuff out that's already been figured out. I suggest he go talk to George Lewis and/or Anthony Braxton.

[AllenLowe]

amen to that - it's weird reading his stuff because I can't quite get a handle on how serious he is - and I'd like to ask him a few things about the ODJB - if they stole their stuff from black musicians, where's the black band that sounds anything like they do? (well, Sweatman at times, but in a way that tells me the Sweatman band took from ODJB, not the other way around, since they sound nothing like this until AFTER the ODJB records) -

[JSngry]

I think he's being intentionally provocative, but I really don't think he understands the depth of what he's dealing with, the width and breadth of the whole "colonial" mentality. It's not just black folks and it's not just jazz that are affected.

As far as the ODJB/theft issue goes realative to the entire "black music" thing, Payton has referred to them as a blackface version of black New Orleans music, so looking for an "exact copy" to prove theft is to miss the point. He's talking about the attitude behind the music, and as much as he's simplifying (which is a lot), he's also not wrong, either.

The thing that makes all this so traci-comic is, again, that all this had been sorted out by the pre-Wynton players, the ones he threw under the bus/rug as not being "real" jazz. Now Paytin's busting on Wynton (see above, please, that's the best thing I've read about the JALC bullshit in years) with rhoetoric from 1957 or something. The whole thing is like fishing for years in a lake with just one fish in it. You keep catching the same fish and yeah, it changes over the years, but it's still the same damn fish. At some point, there's other lakes with more/different fish in them, so just...catch that one fish, filet it, eat it, and then go on to another gahddam lake, all right?

[AllenLowe]

once again agreed, in the basics; though I find nothing blackface about the ODJB and in truth we just don't know enough about the actual music between 1900-1917 in N.O. to really grasp the lineage; even as we make the assumption that this is black music in those years, the co-development of white players was intense and complicated. But we can agree or disagree on this; what bothers me is Payton's willful ignorance that these are even questions that need to be asked, and questions to which we have no definitive answers.

[Face of the Bass]

What's sad to me is the irrelevance of Nicholas Payton when compared to his supposed mastery of Black American Music. Also, I'd be curious to know what percentage of Payton's audience is white...he accuses Pelt of being an Uncle Tom, happy to stay on the plantation, but then where's the evidence that Payton ever left that plantation himself? Because he doesn't use the word "jazz." Oooohh...that's so revolutionary.

I also like the irony of how he basically accuses Pelt of being a tool for whites by stoking black-on-black disagreement, but actually he's the one taking the argument to a whole other, much more personal, level. If Payton were to apply his own logic to himself, he would find that he himself is the very thing he is accusing everyone else of being.

[Larry Kart]

Now Paytin's busting on Wynton (see above, please, that's the best thing I've read about the JALC bullshit in years)....

No -- my account of Wynton and the J@LC B.S. in my book "Jazz In Search of Itself" is the best thing that's ever been written or ever will be written on this topic. I defy anyone to say otherwise, and they're liars if they do. In fact, I'll hunt them down, f--- their wives, and eat their children.

[Shawn]

Now Paytin's busting on Wynton (see above, please, that's the best thing I've read about the JALC bullshit in years)....

No -- my account of Wynton and the J@LC B.S. in my book "Jazz In Search of Itself" is the best thing that's ever been written or ever will be written on this topic. I defy anyone to say otherwise, and they're liars if they do. In fact, I'll hunt them down, f--- their wives, and eat their children.

[AllenLowe]

has someone hacked Larry's account? He's might feisty today. Either that or I'll never hire him as a baby sitter again. And no wonder my wife looks so happy today. Though she did mumble something in her sleep about Harry Potter....

though I do agree with him about his Wynton article.

Edited December 11, 2011 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

Now Paytin's busting on Wynton (see above, please, that's the best thing I've read about the JALC bullshit in years)....

No -- my account of Wynton and the J@LC B.S. in my book "Jazz In Search of Itself" is the best thing that's ever been written or ever will be written on this topic. I defy anyone to say otherwise, and they're liars if they do. In fact, I'll hunt them down, f--- their wives, and eat their children.

Sorry, but "best ever and "best in years" are not mutually exclusive. Payton's line about the soda pop is priceless!

C'mon in for the wife and kids, but, just remember - you'll be in Texas, and you know we're all crazy gun freaks down here, wives and kids included.

[AllenLowe]

I take it all back - Nicholas Payton is right! only someone whose mind has been colonized and held hostage by white men - no, occupied by Aliens - could have made a CD this bad -

http://www.amazon.com/Bitches-Nicholas-Payton/dp/B005VKJ4DI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323642248&sr=8-1

[JSngry]

I listened to the samples and am actually considering a purchase. I like what it sounds like he's trying to do.

[David Ayers]

"Bitches - leading me astray"

Awww how sweet - he's just an old-fashioned bigot at heart.

[Free For All]

I listened to the samples and am actually considering a purchase. I like what it sounds like he's trying to do.

I listened to the samples too, but I didn't really hear much that I liked. (my opinion has nothing to do with all this recent hubbub (I've been a fan of his for a long time), it just didn't interest me). YMMV.

[AllenLowe]

aside from the bad singing, bad lyrics, and annoying music, the CD's fine.

[Chuck Nessa]

I checked and I do not have any recordings by this guy. Does someone think he's important for something?

[JSngry]

I listened to the samples and am actually considering a purchase. I like what it sounds like he's trying to do.

I listened to the samples too, but I didn't really hear much that I liked. (my opinion has nothing to do with all this recent hubbub (I've been a fan of his for a long time), it just didn't interest me). YMMV.

The singing (other than that by Saunders Sermons, whose solo CD of a few years ago keeps getting played here in spite of (or quite possibly because of) it being a "small" project in every way) left me cold, but I liked the rhythms & the keyboard textures. Also heard some pretty interesting melodic/harmonic contours in some of those samples.

Of course, 29 second samples don't really tell you much, but I heard enough that sounded interesting enough that in a weak moment, I might go ahead and pick it up.

I checked and I do not have any recordings by this guy. Does someone think he's important for something?

Other than as part of the ongoing post-Wynton spectacle, oh hell no.

[Larry Kart]

I checked and I do not have any recordings by this guy.

Nor do I, though I have heard him on record and was not impressed. Just another of those post-whatever guys from N.O. Kinda colonial, if you know what I mean.

[David Ayers]

You gentlemen need a streaming service!

I find that I have Into the Blue (2008) Sonic Trance (2003) Dear Louis (2001 - Louis who, I wonder?), Gumbo Nouveau (1995 - like nouvelle cuisine geddit geddit) and a number of appearances.

All I have to do now is listen to it...

Those are all major labels recordings, btw, so someone must be listening...

[Leeway]

I take it all back - Nicholas Payton is right! only someone whose mind has been colonized and held hostage by white men - no, occupied by Aliens - could have made a CD this bad -

http://www.amazon.co...23642248&sr=8-1

I didn't expect it to be that bad!

[.:.impossible]

I think I mentioned this once before, but I heard him play earlier this year down in Post New Orleans as a guest with a white pianist and two of The Meters for a tent full of white folks. He played fine. I have never knowingly heard him before or after, though I've known his name for some time, for some reason. For what it's worth, the white guy and the two Meters were playing some top-notched shit. Payton walked out in his football jersey, played strong, fast, high, then walked off. From what I can recall, he did pretty well. I think the white guy mentioned that Payton has a Grammy?

[Shawn]

He was playing with white dudes for white dudes?

That Uncle Tom Motherfucker

[.:.impossible]

According to wiki, and there is an interesting bit at the end of the bio, he won a Grammy in 2007. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Payton

[.:.impossible]

And here is a brief review of the performance. I was amazed by Modeliste and Porter, knowing them from a strictly backbeat world. Hot damn. Torkanowsky was a discovery for me. It was revelatory to hear someone whose name I had never seen here or elsewhere, taking the music fluently and seamlessly in any and every direction with such technique. The horns were superfluous in my opinion. This was one hell of a trio!

http://www.nola.com/jazzfest/index.ssf/2011/05/pianist_david_torkanowsky_take.html?mobRedir=false