The Freedom Principle - Jazz After 1958

[Kalo]

Guy Berger Posted on May 10 2005, 09:56 AM

Are McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea, and Herbie Hancock peripheral to the main thrust of the music?

I would say that Tyner and Hancock are pretty central, and that Corea and Jarrett are very much less so. And I can't say I'm a big fan of any of them (which is no reflection on their talent as musicians).

Look, if you say that Keith Jarrett's recorded too much, or that some of his music is pretentious wank, or that he's overrated in certain (not necessarily jazz) circles, or that some of his fanatic followers are annoying, then I won't disagree with you.

So where's the argument? We all come to this vast music from different directions. I never found Jarrett to be all that compelling, though I have enjoyed a few of his recordings over the years. I'm more of an Ellington/Monk/Weston guy where piano's concerned, though I can appreciate other styles. That's just my taste

I have to admit that Jarrett kind of irks me, and it might have something to do with both the pretensions I hinted at above and, as you imply, his being overrated in demi-jazz circles.

But give me the choice between Keith J and Kenny G and I'll take the J any time. B-)

[johnlitweiler]

I love and admire John's book and have learned a lot from it, and from his other writing, over the years. A possible side issue, by way of a quote from Hans Keller's essay on Mozart's chamber music in "The Mozart Companion":

"Most critics have never grasped the essential difference between analysis and description. Description gives a verbal account of what you hear and is essentially unnecessary. Can anyone seriously suggest that a music-lover has to be told that a contrasting theme is a contrasting theme? Verbal or symbolic analysis, shows, on the other hand, the elements of what you hear...the unitive forces behind the manifest music..." etc.

I would prefer "tries to show" to "shows" and would add "the issues at work in" to "the elements of" -- especially when we're talking about a music like jazz, whose relationship to us tends to be so close-up and whose underlying "language" principles at any key point may be in the process of shifting about a good bit, and in arguably novel ways.

Paragons of real musical analysis to my mind are Charles Rosen and the late Carl Dahlhaus; they try to give you the whole ball of wax, from the crucial atomistic detail to the broadest socio-historical perspective, which all things implicitly or explicitly bearing on everything else.

In that vein, a favorite passage from "The Freedom Principle":

"What the Tristano circle created was termed cool jazz for its difference from the emotional fires of bop, though in fact it was a no less passionate quest for lyricism. A more literally detached emotionality arrived with the West Coast jazz inspired by both Tristano and Miles Davis's 1949 Birth of the Cool nonet, a muted, scaled-down big band. The relaxed, subdued atmosphere of West Coast jazz had a healthy acceptance of stylistic diversity and innovation, but it also accepted the emotional world of pop music at face value; even original themes are treated like more hip, more grown-up kinds of pop music. In bop's freest flights it could not escape reality, but these Californrians were not aware of the conflict of values that was the source of bop."

No technical description here but IMO a brilliantly compact, axe-to-the-frozen-sea account of what the underlying issues and elements are, an account that's essentially congruent with the most atomistic examination of the musical details. On the other hand, I once pointed out this very passage to a very smart jazz critic, who then read it and said, "I don't know what he's talking about."

Yes, and this and other insights are why I'm in awe of Mr. Kart.

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By the way, some favorite Kart writings (comedy, Gene Ammons, and Ed Wilkerson come to mind today) aren't in Jazz In Search Of Itself. Let's have a sequel.

/

[johnlitweiler]

Didn't mean to quote Larry's whole posting, just the 3rd paragraph, about Jazz's relationship to us is so close-up, etc. -- that's the sort of insight that makes you say, Of course! That why I respond that way!