New Project: Looking for Suggestions

[John L]

Maybe you can say that Bird was both vertical and horizontal in that sense. He certainly played brilliant melodic blues lines that can stand on their own, and took plenty of liberties with rhythm.

[JSngry]

I remember that thread, where you and Jim heatedly disputed Max Roach and Tony Williams' later work. I remember being confused at the time by your quite personal definition of horizontality vs. verticality. If this quote from that thread is anything to go by:

My feeling is that drum playing for many became more "vertical" after Elvin, as the time-keeping emphasis moved away from the high hat and ride cymbal and got spread around the drum set - the drum sound became almost more suspended, and vertical in the sense that the time keeping centered more around ringing and resonant sounds that sustained themselves above and around the beat instead of maintaining a metronomic relationship to the beat - I realize this is a little vague, but it's somewhat akin to the difference between Lester Young (vertical player) and Coleman Hawkins (horizontal) - the vertical player is more concerned with longer-held sounds or notes that suspend themselves above and around the points of rhythmic demarcation; the horizontal player is basically walking in a relatively straight and continuous line.

--then it's mostly a description of rhythmic phrasing, no? Which is what confuses, since "vertical" is often used to refer to harmony, versus "horizontal" to refer to line and melody. With regard to the blues, you said that you think jazz players play horizontally whereas the blues is vertical, which, going by your definition above, would mean jazz players are more metronomic. Are you thinking of jazz players stringing together long lines of eighth-notes, whereas blues players have more idiosyncratic phrasing?

Ok, I remember that now...totally non-traditional, contrarian, actually, definitions of horizontal & vertical as it pertains to Young v. Hawkins, but oh well, why not...

Anyway...

My problem with this whole line of thought is that at face value it seems to be missing the point of the creation of an altogether new time/space paradigm(s) (you can call it a new reality if you like, although with that comes many more factors, essential and otherwise, but hey, any reality begins and ends with a consensual (although not necessarily conscious) acceptance of a time/space paradigm of more or less set parameters) as being what is to me at the core of the African/American collisions/collusions under consideration. "Vertical" & "horizontal" are relevant but not essential to this ongoing creation, since in this game, they have both been under negotiation from the git-go.

Perhaps also worth noting is that arguing/exploring/questioning/attempting to discover the point might be fun, but it's probably moot by now... I'm beginning to think that "we" (as in all or almost all of us) try to get our own personal ownership on the past in order to better take ownership of the present, which is ok, and all, since the classics never go out of style, but an ever-growing part of me wonders what would happen if we let the past be the past and instead of trying to own the present, just own nothing more than ourselves. I can see that one going either way, but geez, everybody's got a story, ya' know, and if somebody's right then somebody's wrong, and boy howdy, we just can't let wrong go unrighted, even if at this point nobody really knows which is purely which (ain't never been nobody who was really there, not considering how many different theres there were and for how many different peoples they existed, and even then, none of them were the reality, which ought to be pretty obvious but seldom is, it seems...) and in the meantime, there's life to be lived right now...

But maybe not. I'm just saying that as nice as "heritage" is, it's ultimately just a place to be from on the way to someplace else, and unless you believe in empires and shit, sooner or later "heritage" threatens to become a crutch rather than a launcher.

Sooner or later. We all move at different speeds. But dammit, when you do get there, go there! Evolve or die, etc.

Edited November 3, 2008 by JSngry

[JSngry]

Maybe you can say that Bird was both vertical and horizontal in that sense. He certainly played brilliant melodic blues lines that can stand on their own, and took plenty of liberties with rhythm.

Or maybe you could say that Bird was so thoroughly evolved that there was a holistic unity to his work, a unity such that "horizontal", "vertical", etc. ceased to exist unless one needs to seem them that way, when it would appear that he himself did not have that need...

[AllenLowe]

well, it depends how one uses history - one can be Jaki Byard - or one can be _____(you fill in the blank) - but I do think the vertical-horizontal thing speaks directly to African American musical practices - and after all the blues is essentially a modal music in its origins and a vertical music in its original practices - and the thing about the old stuff is that sometimes, as the saying goes, it's so old it's new. Many painters discovered this (remember cave paintings? Radically fresh, undisturbed by certain assumptions). Picasso thought this (re-African paintings) - I find all this music actually quite liberating, the older the better.

as for: "an ever-growing part of me wonders what would happen if we let the past be the past and instead of trying to own the present, just own nothing more than ourselves."

well, we are never more ourselves than when we understand that we are ourselves past, present, and future - that the past, in my opinion, is always happening again and again. It repeats itself in dreams, memory, associations, language, et al. So it cannot be escaped, even when we think we are escaping it.

[JSngry]

I do think the vertical-horizontal thing speaks directly to African American musical practices - and after all the blues is essentially a modal music in its origins and a vertical music in its original practices -

Function, sir, function. All the architectural observations that can be mustered are so much so much if one doesn't discern what to what use they are being put. And then, form explains function instead of form creating function.

As for "original practices" & "origins", how far back are we going anyway? 19th century? 18th? Earlier? And where? Just America? Africa? Cuba? Haiti?

And if the answer is "we can only go back as far as we have documentation", Wellsir, there you are. Forms then really have no meaning apart from function. And although function is no more traceable than form after a while, I think it's safe to say that more people have music as a functional accessory than they do as anything else, so it's my hunch that form is in the service of funtion for anything that's more than an "exercise".

Although, really, this is all besides the point. It really ain't either/or & it ain't one or the other. It's all one. "Deconstruction" has been a clever parlor game of sorts for a few decades now (and occasionally more than that) but really, "vertical", "horizontal", "diagonal", what the fuck ever, it really doesn't matter. It really doesn't. People do what they do for the reasons they need to do it. And if they need to break it down in order to be able to see it in terms they can rationalize, ok. But it was there before, and it'll be there after, and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

It's the shit that can't be seen that makes people want to see it in the first place.

Oh, the irony...

[Hot Ptah]

Allen, to get back to the first post in your thread, Chuck Haddix of the University of Missouri-Kansas City supervises the Marr sound archives there, which reportedly has a truly massive collection of early blues records.

Chuck does a radio show every Friday and Saturday night on public radio which reveals his depth of blues knowledge. He has also had a biography of Charlie Parker published within the past few years.

[JSngry]

well, we are never more ourselves than when we understand that we are ourselves past, present, and future - that the past, in my opinion, is always happening again and again. It repeats itself in dreams, memory, associations, language, et al. So it cannot be escaped, even when we think we are escaping it.

There is no past beyond a successions of presents that we have handled one way or the other. The only way that the past keeps happening over and over is if we do not take control of the present to make it otherwise. Easier said than done, and sometimes only possible in theory (and always easier individually than collectively), but hey...

[AllenLowe]

thanks, Hot Ptah, will be in touch with him -

[seeline]

Allen, I like the idea very much and am wondering how - at this point - you see Tin Pan Alley factoring into it all?

[AllenLowe]

I will try to look at blues as written by "professional" songwriters - people who did it as a vocation; as a matter of fact, Peter Muir's work deals with just that. The most intriguing (and unanswerable)question is which came first, the professional songwriter version of the blues or the country version. At various times in my life I would have said one or the other; now I'm really not sure. Of course in African American traditions the roles are sometimes merged and intertwined -

[seeline]

I wonder if it's even possible to nail this down? My guess is that it's a "both/and" thing; that it was all happening at the same time, or nearly the same time.

At any rate, sounds like a fascinating study! All the best to you on it - quite a massive undertaking, no?

[AllenLowe]

yes, too massive. I'm feeling compelled after a recent personal ecounter, let us say.

[JSngry]

Are we seriously entertaining the notion that white songwriters just all of a sudden started writing "blues" songs out of some random impulse & that black performers said, "hey, I like that, wish I'd thought of it!"?

Or are we seriously defining "blues" only as a song form, outside of & wholly apart from its function?

I mean, yeah, the cross-cultural pollination is inevitable, it's the story of America, really, but c'mon...

[seeline]

Jim, I think we're talking (mainly) about professional songwriters who were black... (Check this post.) The industry has never been exclusively white.

yes, too massive. I'm feeling compelled after a recent personal ecounter, let us say.

Yep - I saw your opening post. If it had been me, I think I'd be trying to figure out how to take this on.

It's a daggoned shame that Doug Seroff's books are so pricey. I wonder why his publisher thinks that they're basically "library only" purchases?

Edited November 3, 2008 by seeline

[JSngry]

Oh, so this is basically a dissection of "songwriting" then, rather than "impetus", the roads built for the car rather than the car itself.

Enjoy, if that's you thing.

[seeline]

????

I think anyone dealing with music history is going to run into all sorts of things that appear to be contradictory (or mutually exclusive) but aren't. There were black actors, actresses, songwriters, lyricists, etc. in vaudeville. Obviously, I can't speak for Allen, but I think chasing after "roots" while willfully ignoring other things that were going on at the same time is dangerous. (and ultimately leads to what you get with Alan Lomax late in his life - a repudiation of things about which he knew better in order to shore up a pet theory - in his case, that the blues originated in the Delta.)

but you know what? One of the reasons I got kicked off the AAJ board was this: some there claim that blues is African music. I disagree - African-derived, yep. With lots of traces of different kinds of African music: yep. But it developed here, not there.

So really, I think I'd rather just agree to disagree, OK?

Edited November 4, 2008 by seeline

[JSngry]

I realize that that previous post might come across with a dismissive tone, which is certainly not my intent. It's just that for me, at this point, "impetus" would be analogous to "god" & "mechanisms" to "religion".

Religion, of course, is an important definer of any civilization, but for me, at this point, I understand it well enough (through my own lens, anyway) to just not find it all that important anymore. "god", otoh.... hey, that;s another matter.

An exaggerated analogy, perhaps, but perhaps not. I guess it all comes down to people looking for what they need to find, for whatever reason they need to find it.

It's all good like that, I suppose.

[Chuck Nessa]

?

[JSngry]

but you know what? One of the reasons I got kicked off the AAJ board was this: some there claim that blues is African music. I disagree - African-derived, yep. With lots of traces of different kinds of African music: yep. But it developed here, not there.

Hey, to claim that blues is "African" music is just absurd. Really.

What I wonder about though, is the attempts (and since I really don't follow the "critical controversy" too much, I can't/won't claim anybody's motives) to make blues into some sort of "hybrid" music in its "essence", which I think is way off-base unless one equates form entirely with function.

OTOH, we all project our own needs onto what we perceive as being "essence", so that's going to be a ball that never stops rolling, and an argument that is never settled.

[JSngry]

?

yeah?

[seeline]

Well, their current resident sage gets very angry when people disagree with him.... And that, in a nutshell, is how and why I got ousted, though technically, it was over a couple of photos of guys wearing cowboy hats. (That was perceived as disrespectful to said person, and I was ordered to apologize, then banned from M2M and the board... I couldn't see apologizing for something that had zero malicious intent behind it and was in no way meant to be "disrespectful" to anyone.)

At any rate, ever come across this book? (I want my own copies of the Doug Seroff books that Allen keeps talking about, but 1 copy of each, ordered at the same time, would set me back well over $100.00, so I think I'll wait 'til my ship comes in, or whatever... )

Edited November 4, 2008 by seeline

[JSngry]

If it's any indication of where I'm at now (and if it matters, which it surely doesn't...), "songs" are now a necessary evil that are simultaneously becoming less necessary and less evil.

[Teasing the Korean]

Allen, not sure how relevant any of this stuff would be to your project, but it's probably worth poking around on, if you haven't already:

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/index.php

[John L]

Perhaps also worth noting is that arguing/exploring/questioning/attempting to discover the point might be fun, but it's probably moot by now... I'm beginning to think that "we" (as in all or almost all of us) try to get our own personal ownership on the past in order to better take ownership of the present, which is ok, and all, since the classics never go out of style, but an ever-growing part of me wonders what would happen if we let the past be the past and instead of trying to own the present, just own nothing more than ourselves. I can see that one going either way, but geez, everybody's got a story, ya' know, and if somebody's right then somebody's wrong, and boy howdy, we just can't let wrong go unrighted, even if at this point nobody really knows which is purely which (ain't never been nobody who was really there, not considering how many different theres there were and for how many different peoples they existed, and even then, none of them were the reality, which ought to be pretty obvious but seldom is, it seems...) and in the meantime, there's life to be lived right now...

But maybe not. I'm just saying that as nice as "heritage" is, it's ultimately just a place to be from on the way to someplace else, and unless you believe in empires and shit, sooner or later "heritage" threatens to become a crutch rather than a launcher.

Sooner or later. We all move at different speeds. But dammit, when you do get there, go there! Evolve or die, etc.

Jim: Can't there be a value in understanding better the origins and nature of the blues separate from any desire to "take personal ownership of the past to better take ownership of the present?" In fact, I would say that questions about the origins of the blues and the relationship between blues and classic jazz are becoming increasing irrelevant for understanding what is going on in music today.

On the other hand, for those of us who believe that the 20th musical century was the "blue century," a better understanding of the blues seems highly worthwhile in and of itself: a better understanding of the past for more meaningful appreciation of the past.

[JSngry]

Jim: Can't there be a value in understanding better the origins and nature of the blues separate from any desire to "take personal ownership of the past to better take ownership of the present?" In fact, I would say that questions about the origins of the blues and the relationship between blues and classic jazz are becoming increasing irrelevant for understanding what is going on in music today.

On the other hand, for those of us who believe that the 20th musical century was the "blue century," a better understanding of the blues seems highly worthwhile in and of itself: a better understanding of the past for more meaningful appreciation of the past.

Fair questions all. In order:

Can't there be a value in understanding better the origins and nature of the blues separate from any desire to "take personal ownership of the past to better take ownership of the present?"

Sure, I suppose so. That's a personal thing if ever there was one. I'm just saying that "finding" history this far from the reality is inevitably going to be an incomplete affair, and blanks will equally inevitably be filled in far more often than not. When things start getting subjective like that, "agendas" by necessity come into play. Nothing necessarily malevolent about it, either. The thing is, tough, why would you want to discover the undiscoverable if not to "own" it? Again, nothing intrinsically malevolent about that, not at all, it's often healthy, in fact, but mythologies inevitably spring up, which is why we have "religion" far more often than we have "god", and frankly, in so (too?) much American music "blues" has become "religion".

So where's "god"? Not in the "history", I don't believe. But that's just me.

In fact, I would say that questions about the origins of the blues and the relationship between blues and classic jazz are becoming increasing irrelevant for understanding what is going on in music today.

I would say exactly the same thing as well, and for many different reasons.

On the other hand, for those of us who believe that the 20th musical century was the "blue century," a better understanding of the blues seems highly worthwhile in and of itself: a better understanding of the past for more meaningful appreciation of the past.

I'm of quite mixed feelings about this one, actually, if for no other reason than that too often, imo, "understanding" one's past too easily turns into nostalgia and/or self-congratulation. Yuck. But then again, there's always "revisionists" who try to convince us that everything we know is wrong, especially that which we saw firsthand. Yuck again.

What I think needs to be understood is that when Africa came to America, the commonly understood/accepted time/space parameters (i.e. - "reality") I mentioned earlier were in one place, and now they are in another altogether, and not just in music either. If there was indeed a "cultural battle", Africa has won it, hands down. Not by domination, but by insinuation. Hell, the notion of "digital reality" as it pertains to time, space, and place is nothing if not the "African" sense of omniversiality beginning to be realized by simple technological evolution. Digital = Africa For Dummies? You tell me!

Seriously, for me (and I stress, just for me, this is entirely personal), "looking back" can only get you so far, because after a while, you do gotta fill in some blanks by yoursel, and then it's no longer history, but specualtion based in history. Now, the future is pretty much all blanks, but unlike the past, it's someplace you can/will actually go to, at least as long as you're alive. Lord knows, I value knowledge and understanding, and you can't have that w/o knowing the past and knowing it well, but at some point (and it's a point I've reached myself al ot over the last few years), it's like...why you wanna keep on making up this specualtion based in history behind you when you can have a real reality in front of you?

Then again, that's just me.