Simon Weil

It really is something else I'm talking about - I mean it's to do with what gets people to take an interest in specific facts at a specific time. That is, for years, I've thought that when (and I think it's when) the anti-sexist tide hits Jazz, Wynton is a terrible guy to have in place as its figurehead.

Can't you see your post put me in a box? Either I replied to it honestly with as much as I could say from my experience or I left you (and others) with what I thought might be a false sense of security.

My post was an answer to that. I thought "well, I don't know that it's so absolutely clear - at least not in my mind".

I was being honest. Strangely.

My intent has simply been to draw attention to this issue. If people don't want to confront it that's up to them. It seems, to me, akin to sticking your head in the sand when there's a wave coming up the beach.

This is hard for me - It seems to me there might easily be women out there. I did have one engagement which suggested to me that the specific woman might have had an experience along those lines.

The two articles I had suggested (2001) that the lack of women in his band was down to sexism and (2007) that he had a deep-seated negative view of women that required them to be "offstage".

Thanks guys.

I'm a long-term hater of Wynton - and my criticism of him has focused around his treatment of women. I wrote a couple of articles about that 20 and 14 years ago. It has seemed blindingly obvious to me that he's a sexist and gets away with it. That's in the past. What is current is the flow of anti-sexist drive in the wider culture right now. I'm looking at Wynton - and specifically him as a sort of figure-head for Jazz in the wider culture - and going "This is an accident waiting to happen".

For me, the question was how does this relate to the studio recording - in that that seems to have some sort of perfect settlement of form with content, which I think is defining for a lot of people who listen to it. For me, so far, the big difference is the tension between the form and the content. It's like wherever Coltrane and his musicians are, the settlement of the studio album doesn't work anymore and they're striving for somewhere beyond. The sort of "perfect answer" of the studio album isn't there anymore - which I think is going to be a disappointment for a lot of people - but it's still amazing to be there in the club listening to them going beyond.

I once bought the 6CD Mingus Atlantic set from Amazon.co.uk for a similar price. They had it down as 1 CD. Even though Amazon.co.uk has this as 6CDs, I'm guessing somewhere they have it down as one.

Oh lord, it's the other way around...the things that so many people think that they themselves can't understand....it's frustrating beyond words too many times. It's reverse-snobbery. The assumption that I cannot possibly understand X because it's not my profession, C'mon people... I think both happen. I'm guessing, but the root of it is people don't want to think outside their box, because then they'd have to look at the whole. If you apply "be true to yourself so as to be true to the world" (reversed), you end with they'd have to look at themselves. Which is why we live on the surface, to avoid that.

We live in a society where the analytic is privileged above the instinctive. And I see that in the "I'm a musician, I see stuff" approach. Musicians have privileged access to specific analytic musical skills and da da da...Not that I disagree. But I also think there's a line somewhere where people decide "I'm a musician [Or photographer or whatever] and you're not and therefore you can't understand." My hunch....is people do have the required non-analytic skills, undeveloped, repressed - but we've created a society which desires to live on the surface, so such skills are not deployed. I also think it's been past its sell-by date for a few years.

I don't know - whether "most people" have that skill set or not. I observe - not in music, but in a general way, that people can pick on things in a highly nuanced way when they care to.

It depends what you mean by "cumulative sound". That is certainly how I listen to the music - and perhaps things - in general . But, on the other hand, and for whatever reason, I can pick up on things down in the mix (both in music and in the wider arena) in a below the surface way.