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Posted

Hi all,

I'd be interested in people's wisdom/recollections regarding NYC's "downtown jazz" scene of the 1970s-1990s; including but not limited to its links to other jazz streams of that and future periods - i.e. AACM, BAG, the 1970s loft scene, "Nonesuch jazz", "ECM jazz", MBase, British free improv, 2000s/2010s downtown jazz (is this distinct?), the edgier side of straight ahead jazz...

At the time it might have been overhyped (I imagine race might be a factor?), but a lot of interesting and influential musicians came out of here, some of whom have had big ripple effects elsewhere.  Bill Frisell, John Zorn, Tim Berne, Joey Baron, Medeski Martin & Wood, there are lots of people worth mentioning here.

FWIW... When I started listening to jazz back in the 1990s, coming in as a prog-rock listener, downtown stuff was often mentioned to me as THE future in jazz and THE natural heir to THE JAZZ TRADITION (often in direct distinction to / criticism of Wynton Marsalis and the Young Lions, but via omission also a criticism of contemporaneous African-American avant-gardists too).  I feel like now that this scene is "ancient history" we can maybe evaluate it a little more calmly/fairly.

Posted

Good thread idea; I'm a little young to have been there at the outset, but when I was getting into the music in the mid-90s, the work of Zorn, Berne, Frisell et al seemed overhyped and a bit too crisp. Now, two-plus decades later I have no problem listening to that music and quite enjoy Berne, Frisell, and earlier Zorn (Parachute etc.) stuff. Even Naked City I can deal with now. John Lurie I always liked and that remains the case. My tastes are a lot wider ranging these days, and thus things like Hal Willner's projects make a lot more sense.

Posted

I've revisited a few times through the years, and it's always left me cold in general.   I find the loft scene music a lot more to my tastes.  My tastes are also broader than they were in the past, but they aren't universal.

Posted

How do people feel about the analogy of 1950s west coast jazz : bebop :: downtown jazz scene: avant-garde jazz ?

35 minutes ago, Chuck Nessa said:

More attention needs to be payed to the "colored" musicians.

Yes!  Please say more :)

Posted
13 hours ago, Chuck Nessa said:

More attention needs to be payed to the "colored" musicians.

yeah, at the time I was first discovering creative music, I didn't want to hear anything that was not made by black players (with a few exceptions). That eventually changed.

Posted (edited)

When I discovered this music (and related music of all sorts) on record and in person I had no thought about the race of the musicians. Today I’m even less concerned if that’s possible.

Edited by Steve Reynolds

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