Simon Weil

I'm taking this bit out because I basically agree with the rest of your post. It's interesting that you pick the word "roll", given that this is a jazz group. I mean "rock and roll", "let's rock", "ready to rock", "let's roll" etc are the connotations. See, "swing" would be the more obvious choice. Except, of course, it doesn't work - the dictionary definition is: "To sway or wave to and fro, as a body hanging freely...to oscillate...to move forward with a swaying gait..." To sway or oscillate would fit much better with the idea of a tradition, in that's basically about staying on one spot - and there's some element of relevance to Jazz in that a swing tune can go on as long as you want - as long as you have soloists. To move forward with a swaying gait perhaps more accurately conveys the idea of Jazz swing - but it doesn't have the directness of "roll". You're conveying the sense of "tradition" as a kind of turbo-charged car, Tom. But I don't know that this is quite right. In terms of traditionalist Jazz, let's say Wynton et al, it's true that being inside the music can convey a sense of this sort of power. But I don't think that Wynton's Jazz really does "roll" in the outside world - attracting people to it. I think that's because it's an attempt to get back to some nebulous (Jazz) past when the rest of the world has moved on. It's just kind of hanging there. Simon Weil

The thing about invented traditions is that they've basically got this centre of mush - factitious relationship to the past is how Hobsbawn puts it. This is why they've got to define themselves by exclusion - like by what's outside - because there's nothing at the centre. It certainly looks like Wynton et al do that - but, to be straight with you, I haven't really done enough research to be sure. Where I do know it's the case - because I spent years researching it - is in Wagner's (the composer) idea off Germanness. He actually says he doesn't know what "German" is - and ends up defining it as the opposite of Jewishness. And I do think he's representative. Simon Weil

My sense of the term "African-American" is of a person squaring up his shoulders and sticking his chest out - so I think that's about national pride. Kind of a people pulling themselves up to their full height after the humiliations of slavery and segregation. So I think a pride in their heritage comes into that, in that by dressing up in dashikis, blacks were able to identify themselves with pre-slavery ancestors = people who could carry themselves around unabashed - without the fear of the whip. I'm not sure it's about inventing an identity so much as seeing their identity in as positive way. I don't think they invented the tradition of African forebears so much as brought it out. Any musical ramifications? Simon Weil

This is quite a big subject (anyway I think it's big) and I need to go away and try to think about it. I am going to answer, Mike...but not yet awhile. Also I think Ubu probably deserves a better answer than the one I gave. Not usually the way with (my) internet discussions, but I need the time to think. So...Please bear with me. Simon Weil

Well, the thing is you're an ex-speech-writer. Inasmuch as trying to get your guy recognised as the legitimate heir to whatever is going to be central to what you do (did), I think the malleability of the tradition is liable to very much in your mind. So, with respect (and it would be an interesting conversation to talk about your experiences in this regard), I don't think you're terribly representative. Right, the invention of tradition in the sense of the sense of traditional dress is very much what the book is about (or at least large chunks). The thing about language, I think, is probably different. There seems to be an accepted view (maybe going back to Herder) that language is central to national identity. So then you've got to have a language to be a distinctive national entity - like Israel's got Hebrew. Kind of without "our" language, specific to "our" lot we cannot express "our national soul" properly. So your mate upstairs would have been involved in inventing the Welsh national soul, I guess. And, erm, Jazz can be construed as a form of language - which is, I think, where Wynton and his lot are coming from when they talk about Jazz as a democratic music conveying the soul of America. Right. I think this (from above) more or less covers fundamentalism: "...insofar as there is such a reference to a historic past, the pecularity of 'invented traditions' is that the continuity is largely factitious. In short, they are responses to novel situations which take the form of reference to old situations, or which establish their own past by quasi-obligatory repetition. It is the contrast between the constant change and innovation of the modern world and the attempt to structure at least some parts of social life within it as unchanging and invariant, that make the 'invention of tradition' so interesting for historians of the past two centuries..." Again, Wynton and his lot do the fundamentalist thing when they talk about "blues" and "swing" as being the unchanging and invariant fundamentals of jazz (see, Ubu, now I am doing the Wynton/Lincoln Center subject). But, actually, of course, this isn't so. I mean early Ellington doesn't swing, and James P. Johnson is not a blues player - so, what are they going to do, remove these guys into proto-jazz or something? OK, lets take a wider look than just Wynton, using a dictionary definition of "tradition": "...(L. traditio, f. tradere...hand over, deliver...)...The action of handing down something, from generation to generation, transmission of statements, beliefs, customs etc. esp. by word of mouth or unwritten custom; the fact of being handed down thus...A long established and generally accepted practice or custom; immemorial usage. Also spec. the principles held and generally followed by any branch of art or literature, acquired from and handed down by experience and practice..." The thing is, if you look at the different generations in Jazz - lets say the Armstrong generation, the Parker generation and the Coleman one - the process by which each generation comes into being is not so much a handing down of customs, rather than a ripping up of old customs and replacing with new. This occurs to such an extent, that the preceding generation sees the new as playing something alien - a foreign language. Thus Armstrong saw what Parker was doing as "chinese music" and I'm pretty sure you could say the same about the response of the boppers to Ornette (as a whole, that is). Now, someone like Ayler certainly did see himself as part of what went before. I mean the innovators generally do. But, in these sort of major events in Jazz - those that have after all made the history of the music - their predecessors generally don't. What, then, are we to make of view of jazz as a tradition? Well I think it's only a tradition in retrospect. Simply because the process of generation-forming is not tthat of handing down of customs, the traditional process - rather it is the introduction of major new practices. Got "The Age of Empire". Missed the TV programme. Simon Weil

You could practically do it standing on your head with Wynton. It's kind of too easy. But the thing that really interested me was the wider ramifications. People do use the concept of "the tradition" in Jazz and I think it matters. Like it gives people some sort of sense of solidity to feel there is that thing there - "The tradition". Yet I don't have any firm sense of what it means - or rather, when I think about it, the sense is of a marshmallow (mushy) centre. I do have a sense of what Jazz is (though I wouldn't like to define it), so that's not the problem. My suspicion is that the reason I get that sense - of a centre of mush - is that the idea of "the tradition" in Jazz is a fallacious one. That is it isn't just a Lincoln Center problem - and if you got rid of those guys, you wouldn't have the problem. Rather "the invention of tradition" is a problem for Jazz as a whole. It's about creating an identity for Jazz with "bullshit historical lineages". And.... Simon Weil

This is the title of a book edited by Eric Hobsbawn (Jazz critic under another name) and Terence Ranger. I got it through Amazon because I was interested in the article on the British monarchy. Then it occurred to me that the whole idea of the invention of tradition has some interesting ramifications for Jazz. So, here are some bits from the introduction(pp1,2,8): "...the contrast between the constant change and innovation of [Post 60s Jazz] and the attempt to structure at least some parts of [Jazz as traditional] within it as unchanging and invariant" seems pretty much where we are. And, I kind of feel, unnatural. Simon Weil

He uses full distortion here and there: most notably on Gary Thomas' 'Till We Have Faces; occasionally with the PMG (Half Life of Absolution from Live in Europe), one track on the new M/M, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. He's not known for that type of tone, though, clearly. I think the synth is his answer to it... take it from me - distortion is a wild and crazy animal, hard to control. It often seems to be "not quite right", especially for jazz-type lines. You might check out Frisell's contribution to Cuong Vu's It's Mostly Residual. Nothing candyass about it, and a great fuzztone. Does Zero Tolerance for Silence fit the bill? For some reason I can't find the energy to pull it out and listen to it and find out how fuzzy it is. Is it even Jazz? Zero Tolerance is his noise record. To compare with fuzz guitar in rock really kind of misses the point. In the sense that fuzz guitar fuzzes something, then you still have the something under there and you can hear it. Here there's just pure fuzz with nothing underneath. I have a rather strange relationship with this record, in that, in my narrative of Pat Metheny, this is where he lost it. It isn't that it's a bad record - or a dishonest one. It's just that, in going into pure noise, he totally loses contact with himself. When you say "is it even Jazz", you're on the right lines. No, it isn't. If you want to argue that Jazz is in some sense about personal voice, there is no personal voice here. I defy anybody to say this record is by Metheny on the strength of listening to it. It's just an anonymous fairly interesting noise record. My argument is that from then on, he somehow loses contact with himself - as exemplified by his next, terrible, record We Live Here - and he never really gets it back. Now I know he's had over a decade of putting out records since then, and people will doubtless be angry with me for abusing their hero. But I think he's fallen into pretension and convolution on his own stuff (which mind you I've given up on) as though he has his own myth to live up to. It's when he plays with others that I can still listen to him. I'm someone who gets accused of pretension when I do my intellectual stuff - but I kind of think Metheny/Meldhau is likely to be "pretentious, nous?". Without hearing it. Simon Weil

But isn't that the dread secret of any music going - that it's basically about "conducting one's social activities in a [musical] setting" - or with music as an enabler to them. I mean why do so many people go to concerts in groups rather than solitarily? Because music, for them, is not about the solitary experience of listening to music, it's about getting it on socially in a musical environment. The you have stuff to do with the "frame" - which, in itself, is part of the enabler nature of the music. I mean "look who we are, we go to jazz" is more or less the thought. Like you say, made you feel even better. But what happens if something in the music gets to you? Then you're not paying (full) attention to the social group of which you're part, but are being distracted and listening to the music. In other words the music and the social activity are in competition. This why people talk so loud in Jazz clubs, to blot out the competition. The implication, then, is not that people only have a superficial understanding of the music - rather it is that it is, potentially, good enough to be in competition with the social activities that are the real basis for most people going to jazz clubs. A(m/b)using, huh? Simon Weil

The only time I ever really liked the BBs was when I heard them live on a one day festival bill at Wembley in the 70s. They were wonderful. What they did was play an "Endless Summer" of their hits on a summer's day to an admiring audience. They had a good band, they didn't fluff and they cooked. To me there's something reminiscent in that of: "The [sunday] afternoon with students. They don't feel the real problem; however, their nostalgia is evident. In this country where everything is done to prove that life isn't tragic, they feel something is missing. This great effort is pathetic, but one must reject the tragic after having looked at it, not before." American Journey/Albert Camus [Refers to 1946] I just feel you guys want always to ride round in your cars, surf always on the waves, not really want to get to middle age. Or maybe just endlessly relive your youth. Simon Weil

I think "disconnect" is the word, but I'm never quite sure whether it's in me or in him. I think there probably is feeling in there, but somehow it seems to inform his work rather than speak from it. I kind of think he really needs a big shock and then we'd really hear what he has to say. I guess "smug" would fit with that. Or else... Simon Weil

I don't get him - which doesn't mean anything, one way or another. I did see him in concert with Zorn a few years ago and he had this solo slot which was absolutely burning. I could well see how he would be full of himself on the back of things like that. I mean the whole thing conveyed "this is The Man, he is it, he is now" kind of vibes. But then he didn't do much for the rest of the concert. So, I don't know... Kind of lacks the tragic element; a bit hermetic - overfinishedly technical - for my taste. But it's a style issue. Simon Weil

Right, I had the impression it was "the media" rather than the musicians who'd started it - like some bright spark came up with the label. But people like Kenny G now seem to be labelling their music as some variant on Jazz (He didn't originally) - so I think you've got to hold them up as responsible also. Mind you, if the record companies didn't see money in it, you can be damn sure no-one (much) would call this music "Smooth Jazz". I mean they can just withdraw supplies. Yup, record companies the friends of Jazz. It does make sense. My initial image of a hollowed-out society came from a town in the West of England. I used to go round on my bike, visiting various places in the country - and there was this one place, quite a historic place, which essentially had the heart knocked out of it. It had been run-down and the local authority had "rationalised" the centre - which had previously been a warren of little streets. They'd replaced it with an entirely new development full of boutiques and entirely commercial. In the process, they'd rendered it entirely anonymous. This is what happens when "only the commercial impulse is left". So I entirely agree. For what it's worth, I quite like the Ramsey Lewis I've heard. Simon Weil

I'm not claiming there would be any intrinsic value in such an exercise; I would simply like to have some magical knowledge about people's buying habits; how many CDs they have and and what they are. It's easy for me with my twisted worldview to assume that everyone I pass on the street frequents the same haunts that I do digging for obscure vinyl. Of course, that's not the case. I guess what you could do is devise some sort of questionaire along these lines (How many CDs do you own etc) and then post links to it in various internet forums. People would reply to it and then, when a certain number of results had come in, you could go back to these forums with the info. This way people would put the time in (to answering the questionaire), but would get something back - a general view of how people listened to music and, implicitly, their place within that. Onto that you could graft a few Jazz-specific questions. I think some of the "what is Jazz" questions are workable-around - as is some element of the "damn lies and statistics" thing. But even if they're not, who cares. It'd still be fun. Simon Weil

This is the sort of question that comes up periodically. I mean how many people do listen to Jazz, how do they relate to it and why? And all the ancillary questions of its general perception in the population at large - not just in America, but throughout the world. I dare say such information exists in the files of marketing companies -- who, however, are not letting on except at a price. What I'm wondering is if it would be possible to devise some sort of survey to find out. After all, it's an intrinsically interesting subject. And perhaps Jazz might find something in such a survey to help it out of the hole it seems to be in. It'd be fun to do something like this. Simon Weil

A very large statement. Would it stem, do you think, from Vietnam? Or is that too local a matter, when thinking about the entire West? Are you thinking, indeed, of Switzerland, Norway, Belgium, New Zealand etc etc when you make a statement like that? Or is it just America? MG If anyone's interested, my answer's here in politics. Happened to me and MG before, that. Simon Weil

I'm not sure that's right. There's been a big thread over at AAJ on the social comparison between the fifties Cool Jazz and Smooth Jazz. What seems to have emerged at the end is that the right comparison is with the very watered down material by the likes of Jackie Gleason, Les Baxter, George Shearing and Arthur Lyman, which was hugely popular in the late fifties (while the hardcore jazzmen scraped only 9 albums into the charts in that period). It has been suggested that the Gleason etc albums were aimed at, and bought by, middle class suburban whites and that most Smooth Jazz (with the exception of a few like Kenny G) is aimed at, and bought by, middle class suburban blacks. I think Smooth Jazz is sui generis in that it relates to people's perceptions of Jazz and draws on that to sell itself. That is I think the core of its relationship to its public is its name. This says to the general public: "This is Jazz - but smoothed out". In terms of your analysis, this would be Jazz but watered down. I don't think it's watered down, I think it's hollowed out. I think people need to think they are of value and what they do is of value. I think that Smooth Jazz plays on this in a cynical way, by drawing on the cultural capital of Jazz to assert, in its name, that this music itself is something of value. If people just said it was instrumental pop - i.e. something without necessary pretentions to such value - I wouldn't have a problem. I think the last 30+ years, people in the West have spent hiding themselves from the fact that their societies have become hollowed out - lost their meaning and value. And now they're starting to wake up. Some of them. Simon Weil

And the hardest of Hard Bop. The 50s-60s BN, Prestige, etc. stuff that "we" revere on this board as music for "listening" was in its time just as often as not hardcore inner city, social, bar music. Some people came to listen, but just as many, if not more, came for social activity and just used the music as their ambiance, for the not least of reasons that it was music that was in sync w/the rhythms and textures of their everyday life. They didn't have to sit and "think" to get it. It just hit them naturally where and how they lived. Well, it was part of their lives - part of the "rhythms and textures" - part of the fabric of their life. And those musicians were themselves, in part and at times, johns and junkies, thieves and lovers. Yup, Culture.... Simon Weil

Agreed. I was simply defining "functionality" in the way you mean "mood music." Ahhhh.... Well, I think that probably is true. But it's more to do with the general vibe thing - where I think people can probably pick up the weight and the density of the music, the texture, stuff like that - rather than the specific line that's being played. I think these sorts of things influence people in general, but the Jazz audience tends not to dwell on them, rather concentrating on those things that a sort of rational, technical - musical, hearing can bring to the fore. This is actually why I think people can tell if the music played is mediocre or not - because the weight and texture conveys something about the depth of content - and these sorts of things are accessible, as you say subliminally, to the general audience. I'm not quite sure I understand it either. I mean I actually tend to listen to Jazz records as background as a way of finding my way into the music: First hearing for the weight and texture and vibe - and then, when that has goes in, finding that I listen more specifically. In fact, I think there is probably something artificial in the idea of background music. Like there is actually a spectrum from that to "serious" listening and it's unreal to split one off from the other. Also I think that people in general are capable of understanding a lot (as well as being dumb). But that sort of view is out of fashion. Simon Weil

But that's mood music. I mean you're putting yourself in the right mood for doing the dishes (? Something up: Fats Waller) or chatting away (Laid back: 50s Miles ballads) - or, with Jim's stuff, picking people up or whatever (Funky Organ Combo). If that is so, it's the same function as Film music - that is music used to evoke emotion. Only here it is done in a much more diffuse way - one CD evoking a general mood, rather than the very targeted (and they hope) precise way film music is used. In which case, it looks like we're saying music used functionally is, more or less, music used to evoke emotion. If that is so, I still hold to my original position - where Jazz is at the other pole to Film Music. There isn't much immediate emotion evoked for the ordinary listener. It's OK as background, but if Mr Average tries listening to it he wonders when it's going to stop wittering away and say something. I think Smooth Jazz is a cynical construct. It mellows a lot of people out. But the mood it creates is fake. And, of course, people look down on background listening... Simon Weil

I understand your point, but don't you think there are people out there who "use" jazz functionally, for better or worse? Unless you know what you're doing (aka how to listen), I don't think you can use Jazz functionally - just because you can't penetrate beneath the surface. So, yes, there are people who use Jazz functionally, but they'd have to be a subset of the Jazz as art crew - i.e. not the general public. I do think there's a certain sort of use, which revolves around the perception of Jazz as somehow a "higher" form of music, "cool", where a person will put on a Jazz record to prove he's a quality sort of person - either to himself or to others. The obverse of this is the perception, in the wider community, that Jazz people somehow think of themselves as a cut above - as better than the rest. When combined with the current, mediocre, crop of Jazz musicians this creates a sense that Jazzers are just full of it. I.E. It pisses people right off. Simon Weil N.B. I still think direct emotional content is a point that is ignored at Jazz's risk.

That's more or less how I heard Jazz when I was still a a rock fan - as noodling - and, if I want, I can still hear bop like that. The technical aspects of the music, which are often paramount, tend to play into that. If you look at Film music, where music is used functionally, its function is to convey mood. Realising emotion is like what music is for when it is reduced to this entirely functional form. That's at the opposite pole to what seems to the untrained ear the emotionless technical noodling of bop. Jazz sees itself as an art. That is at the opposite pole to a purely functional use of music, such as the above. It may be why Jazz is so disliked, because it simply won't provide (unless you're initiated and/or trained) this emotional release. It's still there, but you have to work like hell to get to it. This makes people frustrated. I still remember the effect hearing Tommy Flanagan's version of Friday the 13 had on me. Here was simple communication, easy to digest, in a compact evocative tune. It convinced me that bop wasn't this incomprehensible jive. I think Jazz needs to work at this sort of communication. Simon Weil

True, but then the lyrics are really the dominant factor on this record. And they are painful. Oh God. I think this record is credibility shaking. Simon Weil

There are people who can have really long conversations with - you cover all sorts of stuff and it seems kind of interesting. Nothing untoward happens and everything seems kind of fine. But then you go home and the conversation doesn't feel quite right - like food that's gone off somewhere. Like there's some rot in there somewhere. And a few days later you start feeling ill. Neat trick if you can manage it. Simon Weil

Might be. There is the locker room thing to do with the "gorgeous babes" posts which certainly is threatened by women's presence. But then, on the other hand, there is a kind of civilised thing - to do with a fair degree of restraint with which people go at each other. Women are generally reckoned to have a "civilising" influence in social situations. There is no doubt that Jazz is a kind of "male" lake - and historically that has been built on a fair degree of sexism. I know when I've brought up the subject people have got uneasy, but one can hardly deny that Jazz is one of the most "male" of all the arts. Certainly compared to classical music or pop - with their numerous female stars - the difference is most striking. You know, Jim maintains this place is like a bar - and it's his forum. But then, when a woman walks into a bar that's kind of different from when a woman goes into a coffee shop. I think Jazz needs to change to survive. I'd say that change would involve women (substantially). Or not. Simon Weil I disagree with you. Tough jazz players were traditionally males, but we had great female singers, now things are changed. Like everythings as well. I think this is true, but probably not in the way you mean it. In society at large you now get a "glass ceiling" to prevent women, in anything other than smallish numbers, reaching the very top in their professions. Now you can argue that no such ceiling exists in Jazz, but still there are very few women at the absolute top. Well, if you want, to take an offshoot of Jazz - Euro-free improv. My observation is that it is a substantially more women-friendly zone than Jazz itself. I'm thinking about a festival in London in 2001 in particular - maybe 1/4+ of the performers were women, likewise the audience. How do you explain that in terms of the youth of the form? I don't think you can - it's younger than Jazz (evidently). I think it's a vibe thing. Women (e.g. Joelle Leandre) pick up that this is a relatively friendly cultural place and go there. Right, so I guess your argument would be that when society became more open for women there was already a backlog of competence amongst women - and thus plenty of females available to take the new opportunities in classical. But the fact is more than half the members of (American) school Jazz bands are female(I've mentioned this before). So you currently have just this vast backlog of competence amongst American females in Jazz and zippo (or nearly so) result in Jazz as a career. I agree with you on that. Well, alright. Let's take Madonna, who I happen to hate. She sort of became emblematic of pop in the 80s. People read all sorts of deep post-modern meaning into the stuff. Gawd know how much of it is true. I don't. But the key point is she became an absolute central figure in pop. AND YOU JUST DON'T GET THAT IN JAZZ. You can argue that she's sexually off or full of it or whatever you like. But the fact once you get that in a form, a woman a key and central figure, you can't go back. Floodgates open. But, on the other hand, take my coffee shop vs bar comparison. Jazz is a pretty staple background music for coffee shops, not so for bars. Yet coffee shops look to me the more female friendly environment. What does that prove. Nothing neccesarily. Or maybe it does prove something. Beatles mania was an opportunity for girls to let their hormones loose. Absolutely bloody terrifying for an 11year old. And of course you still get that with "boy bands" etc.. Not quite the same thing as women going to a jazz gig or chatting away with Jazz in the background (though, mind you that flavour of the month Brit light-Jazz vocalist might benefit from it, to some degree). I think it would stop Jazz looking quite so insular. Simon Weil