Twenty First Century Jazz

[John L]

I don't wear my father's clothes, but I also don't wear my son's clothes.

[JSngry]

You make it sound like the present doesn't matter. Only the past and the future matter, and even then, the past doesn't really matter all that much. I am suggesting that now matters much more than the past or the future, always has, always will. It may be a fleeting moment, but it is the most important point in time.

As a time of action, yeah, the present is definitely the most important point in time. But if you try to prepare for the present while it happens, you're gonna be S.O.L. "In the moment" is a vital notion, but I'm afraid it's been somewhat over-romanticized. You don't practice/rehearse/compose/etc. for the moment, you do it to be ready in the future - when "the moment" actually arrives. You want to have the tools to be able to handle it, and if you don't, your past will fuck up your present, and your future won't be all that you want it to be. Inspiration is indeed a matter of the moment, but being able to handle it isn't, except in those very rare occasions where we do something "over our heads". And I don't think that anybody would recommend depending on that happening as a matter of course...

Then why record, period? Isn't recording, to some degree, about documentation? We know this shit doesn't sell, so I won't pretend to make it about commerce.

Ok, as somebody who's participated in a few recordings, all of which I believed in at the time, and most of which I still do believe in, I can tell you that there's a certain amount of vanity involved. You think that you've got something to say, and you want it heard. So you make the record. It's a way of saying, "Hey world, I'm here". And yes, there is commerce involved, defintiely. You're hoping that enough people will hear the music and like it enough to want to hear more in the form of gigs & further CDs. There's that pesky future popping into the equation again!

Fair enough for all of that, we all need that sort of "validation", and god knows we all need to be operating out of hope rather than despair. But it doesn't mean that the music we make is really going to "matter". Now that's not the point of recording, but then again, you're wondering, if I'm reading you correctly, why so many jazz records today aren't that distinctive. It's because the people making them aren't. Doesn't meant that they're invalid as people or musicians, just means that what I read in a comic strip long ago is true - "Remember - you're unique. Just like everybody else."

And I'll apply that to my own recordings. The two QO sides were both labors of love, and I'm proud to have made them. But I'll not kid myself by pretending to think that they're anything other than vanity projects, things that we documented because we wanted/needed them to be documented. Even if somebody else had felt that want/need, how big a fool would I have to be to think that our music was anything other than a small drop in a vast ocean that evaporates and replenishes drops routinely and without concern?

No, we loved the music, we played it out of love, and we documented it out of love. But to think that we did it simply to "capture the moment" would be naive. We did it because A) we thought we mattered and needed to prove it to ourselves B) we hoped that the documents would build for the future & C) nobody had a day job at the time.

It would also have been naive for anybody, especially us (although this wasn't the most musically, uh..."cosmopolitan" group...), to have thought that we were making music that was anything other than a response to things much bigger and much older than us. To us it was "new" in some sense, but as far as the overall jazz scene, it was definitely "inside-out" (or what ever you call it), and nothing too radical at that. It's a sign of the scene that some people found us "avant-garde". HA! We weren't raising any new possigilities, and we certainly weren't asking any new questions. Hell, we were struggling just to answer some fairly old (in jazz trems) ones!

And that's where I think most of today's jazz musicians are today - the legacy is so deep at this point that it's all too easy to get weighed down by it and to feel that you've got to "honor" it in some form or fashion. And when you get to that point, you start, quite unconsciously, to make music about jazz rather than jazz itself (indeed, this happens with any music, I think, other than that which is entirely functional). I've only recently begun to see the ultimate futility in this myself. I'd convinced myself that I was a "jazz musician" who belonged in the "jazz world", and if that world was a small-getting-smaller one, it was like that because the rest of the world was wrong, a bad place to be avoided at all costs. Any pleasures to be found there had to be wrong, because everything about it was wrong.

Well, the rest of the world is wrong in a lot of ways about a lot of things, but that doesn't mean that we're any less wrong ourselves, and it doesn't mean that the world's pleasures are not there to be had by us too. We're as out of touch as the world is overly wired-in. We're as insular as the world is promiscuous. We're as closeminded in our highly focused broadmindedness as the world is ignorant of everything by having all of it at they're disposal. We're as wrong for being hellbent on defining who we are by who we aren't as the world is for willing to be any thing at any time because it's the thing to do. We're as wrong for mocking the party from the outside as the world is for going to into it thinking that it's real.

In short, we've become prisoners of our own making as well as prisoners of external circumstances. Not too much we can do about the latter until we fix the former. There are a few (or more) beautiful exceptions, but if you're wondering why new release after new release sounds like they sound, that's my answer.

And here's my solution - Fuck "jazz". Fuck "music". Fuck anything and everything except life lived without fear. Then let's see what songs demand to be sung, and then let's sing the hell out of them.

[JSngry]

I don't wear my father's clothes, but I also don't wear my son's clothes.

Nor do I. But I don't wear in 2006 what I wore in 1976 either.

Even if I could still fit into it, I wouldn't.

[JSngry]

I still hear things all the time in recordings of the 50s, 60s, or even earlier that take me places that I have never been.

Well, of course. But those are places you never will go, because those are places that don't exist anymore.

If the inspiration is to find those places that don't exist anymore, then...no thank. But if the inspiration is to find some places here, now that you haven't been before, then hell yeah!

That's all I'm saying - the past should inspire the present to create the future. It shouldn't inspire the present to rebuild the past.

[JSngry]

But what about that paean to Bird that you wrote on another thread? You said that we need to go back to hear Bird, but yet here you say relating to life through yesterday's recordings is the equivalent of "looking at photo albums all day."

I'm deeply inspired by my late father damn near every day. But I don't wear his clothes.

That doesn't seem to be a contradiction.

EXACTLY!!!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I agree with Jim. But...

There is more to say and it's late.

MG

[JSngry]

LATE? It's only 5 in the afternoon!

[.:.impossible]

Sangrey wrote: "Now that's not the point of recording, but then again, you're wondering, if I'm reading you correctly, why so many jazz records today aren't that distinctive. It's because the people making them aren't."

I don't wonder why so many jazz records today aren't that distinctive. I question the motive to release music that isn't that distinctive. I am not citing specific examples, nor am I insinuating anything to any of the recording musicians on this board.

MG, I'll be interested to read what part of Jim's posts you agree with.

I'm glad to see some discussion. I saw plenty of hits, but no replies... this seems like such a vital issue to me, that goes straight to the core of what this music is about. I began to wonder if no one else thought much about it.

[Alexander Hawkins]

I think Braxton is still making relevant music; as are many of the people who play with him.

I think the Braxton example gives the lie to the composition/improvisation dichotomy people have averted to above. People have been conquering this issue for a long while now (Ellington, Braxton, Threadgill, etc.)

[Alexander Hawkins]

I think Braxton is still making relevant music; as are many of the people who play with him.

As an illustration, this is a beautiful, and original, piece of work (IMHO, of course!).

And certainly singable melodies in there, FWIW.

[Alexander Hawkins]

Another thing with some interesting directions!

[.:.impossible]

I think 482 has a lot of great music to explore.

[Alexander Hawkins]

Agreed - I really enjoy all the stuff I have on that label.

[.:.impossible]

Sangrey wrote: "Now that's not the point of recording, but then again, you're wondering, if I'm reading you correctly, why so many jazz records today aren't that distinctive. It's because the people making them aren't."

I don't wonder why so many jazz records today aren't that distinctive. I question the motive to release music that isn't that distinctive. I am not citing specific examples, nor am I insinuating anything to any of the recording musicians on this board.

MG, I'll be interested to read what part of Jim's posts you agree with.

I'm glad to see some discussion. I saw plenty of hits, but no replies... this seems like such a vital issue to me, that goes straight to the core of what this music is about. I began to wonder if no one else thought much about it.

p.s. I think people are inherently interesting.

[JSngry]

Sangrey wrote: "Now that's not the point of recording, but then again, you're wondering, if I'm reading you correctly, why so many jazz records today aren't that distinctive. It's because the people making them aren't."

I don't wonder why so many jazz records today aren't that distinctive. I question the motive to release music that isn't that distinctive.

Same answer.

The motive of most the people releasing the music is the same as those making it. They think it matters, and no doubt to them it does. And a lot of it is "good" - fine musicians playing sincerely. But when you look at "distinctive", that then very much becomes a matter of distinctive relative to what? Does the perception become the reality?

Yeah, probably so. And I have come to the conclusion that too much of the current "jazz perception" in not one that sees all the possibilities of the world in which we now live. It's one thing to create an alternative reality to have a place of your own in which to grow & prosper, but it's another thing to create an alternative reality to have a place to run to and hide in.

Which is which? The results speak for themselves, and there again the perceptions will be the reality, and we all have different perceptions, so I'll not go there, at least not here. I will say, though, that it might behoove a lot of jazz musicians to open the curtains every once in a while, maybe even open the door and go for a walk outside the neighborhood.

But agoraphobia's a bitch...

[JSngry]

And btw - I still love this music, even the lesser efforts. I've put a lifetime into it, and that's for keeps. But I've lost my illusion/delusion that it is going anywhere other than where it's already been w/o some fundamental changes in outlook, and I don't see too much interest in that amongst my peers. If anything, I see hostility towards it. Too bad.

How are things in your town?

[Simon Weil]

And btw - I still love this music, even the lesser efforts. I've put a lifetime into it, and that's for keeps. But I've lost my illusion/delusion that it is going anywhere other than where it's already been w/o some fundamental changes in outlook, and I don't see too much interest in that amongst my peers. If anything, I see hostility towards it. Too bad.

How are things in your town?

Well...I've got a sense of disdain. Kind of "we don't have to take notice of that stuff anymore". I doubt there is really a true understanding of the core of Jazz, though. For what it's worth, I think a more viscerally powerful Jazz might do something to wake people from their stupor.

Like most popular culture sends people to sleep.

Simon Weil

[Chuck Nessa]

And btw - I still love this music, even the lesser efforts. I've put a lifetime into it, and that's for keeps. But I've lost my illusion/delusion that it is going anywhere other than where it's already been w/o some fundamental changes in outlook, and I don't see too much interest in that amongst my peers. If anything, I see hostility towards it. Too bad.

Probably why this thread was started.

My responses are too complex to type without much thought but I might return.

[clifford_thornton]

The motive of most the people releasing the music is the same as those making it. They think it matters, and no doubt to them it does. And a lot of it is "good" - fine musicians playing sincerely. But when you look at "distinctive", that then very much becomes a matter of distinctive relative to what? Does the perception become the reality?

Right. Listening to a Joachim Kuhn-Eje Thelin record and yes, if I hadn't heard dense and somewhat manic European free jazz before, this might move me heavily. It is certainly a good record for the genre - but distinctive? Well, I've heard a lot of these "kind" of records before, and it just ain't that, as good as it might be.

Then again, there are those recordings that by all accounts should be formulaic - of any genre - and they just hit it. So I'm not sure that a distinctive record can't be made now (or a distinctive gig, but hey, most of us here are going from a recorded history), even if the ostensible "parts" are all the same. I don't know if we can ask for another Spiritual Unity right now or not. But it doesn't have to be earth-shattering to be distinctive and valuable as art, and something we come back to time again.

[John L]

I still hear things all the time in recordings of the 50s, 60s, or even earlier that take me places that I have never been.

Well, of course. But those are places you never will go, because those are places that don't exist anymore.

If the inspiration is to find those places that don't exist anymore, then...no thank. But if the inspiration is to find some places here, now that you haven't been before, then hell yeah!

That's all I'm saying - the past should inspire the present to create the future. It shouldn't inspire the present to rebuild the past.

I think that we are all, in some sense, trapped in the time-generation that we occupy. Moving forward beyond our calling strikes me as no less artificial than moving back into the past.

My son is a big Hip Hop DJ and fan. What he gives me to listen to has a strange effect on me. On the one hand, I recognize and admire much of it as highly innovative, dynamic, and foward looking. I enjoy dancing to a lot of it. On the other hand, no matter how much I admire it, most of it will never be my music. I couldn't make it mine no matter how hard I tried. I am of a different vintage, and have different sensibilities that can no longer be changed. I am at the age where I am at least as much a part of the past as the future. And I accept that.

I think that we all just need to be true to ourselves, our time, and our sensibilities. I think that musicians should play the music that is in them, that is a part of them, that corresponds to their past, present, and future. The relevance to the past, present, or future of greater society will fall into place by itself. Trying to artficially project it into the future is no less a problem than hiding it somewhere back in the past.

[Uncle Skid]

In some ways, I think it is unrealistic to expect great progress in music month after month, year after year, decade after decade. In other ways, judging by the amount of recordings released by labels that claim they are barely making ends meet, there are plenty of people out there that think they are moving the chains.

I think this is really the core of the issue here: it is unrealistic. Myopic, in fact.

While I can't disagree with anything that Jim S. has written, I do believe that all of the gloom and doom is temporary. Not 1-5 years temporary, not 5-10 years, maybe not even 50 years...

John has really nailed it: "we're trapped"; [the music] "takes me places that I have never been"... the bottom line (for me anyway) is that there is so much beauty, power, and strength in "jazz" that despite the current (arguably) limited "jazz perception" of today, there's just way too much unexplored territory to not have a huge effect on future generations.

And it already has had that effect -- I only need to point out our gracious host to prove that point.

I generally consider myself a somewhat jaded, fairly cynical person. But, the hope that some young kid will discover a Steve Lacy record (for instance), even if it's 100 years from now, keeps me optimistic.

[.:.impossible]

Yes. I'm with you, but is there really doom and gloom, or is that just a longing for something that most of us never lived through, or will never again live through? It seems that there was so much progress over such a short period of time (decades). How long can a rate of discovery and change continue in any field?

What I still don't get is that we all (I think) realize that the rate of discovery and change has levelled off (for now), yet there are hundreds of small record labels releasing jazz record after jazz record.

We've got guys recording albums at a rate that not even there heroes recorded. Certainly they aren't trying to imply that they have more to say than their heroes did, are they?

I get this feeling that there were more jazz records released in 2006 than there were in 1966. It makes no sense to me. I don't know if it is true, but it certainly feels that way.

I'm having trouble putting my thoughts together. I love the music.

[WD45]

I think that we all just need to be true to ourselves, our time, and our sensibilities. I think that musicians should play the music that is in them, that is a part of them, that corresponds to their past, present, and future. The relevance to the past, present, or future of greater society will fall into place by itself. Trying to artficially project it into the future is no less a problem than hiding it somewhere back in the past.

That was the thing I was looking for. Well said!

And only in one paragraph!

[JSngry]

I think that we are all, in some sense, trapped in the time-generation that we occupy. Moving forward beyond our calling strikes me as no less artificial than moving back into the past.

My son is a big Hip Hop DJ and fan. What he gives me to listen to has a strange effect on me. On the one hand, I recognize and admire much of it as highly innovative, dynamic, and foward looking. I enjoy dancing to a lot of it. On the other hand, no matter how much I admire it, most of it will never be my music. I couldn't make it mine no matter how hard I tried. I am of a different vintage, and have different sensibilities that can no longer be changed. I am at the age where I am at least as much a part of the past as the future. And I accept that.

I think that we all just need to be true to ourselves, our time, and our sensibilities. I think that musiciansshould play the music that is in them, that is a part of them, that corresponds to their past, present, and future. The relevance to the past, present, or future of greater society will fall into place by itself. Trying to artficially project it into the future is no less a problem than hiding it somewhere back in the past.

Yes, but your own sensibilities need not be so set in stone as to be untouched by those coming behind you, do they?

Look, I'm fully aware that I am who I am, that I've lived how I've lived, and that there's no magical getting rid of that. But does that mean that I've got to not listen, enjoy, & maybe even be moved by things not of my generation or before? Not to somehow become somebody else entirely, to forget my old truths, but to just simply add to what I already know? Hip-hop per se has never bothered me, and I was into it pretty early on, still got a bunch of old Sugar Hill 12" that I still pull out. Same w/dance music - I was digging Funk back in the day big time along w/all the jazz. So if I liked those musics then, why shouldn't I like them now? And if they've evolved, why shouldn't I check out the evolutions? Life goes on, with you or without you. I fell into the coomon (and necessary) middle-aged "stupor" of hunkering down and narrowing focus, because when you're raising kids, that's kinda what you gotta do. But it doesn't mean that it's a stupor that must become permanent. I'm coming out of it, thank god, and I'm hearing some things that interest me coming out of the evolutions of what I once dug with a passion.

Now does that meant that I'm going to automatically dig all the evolutions? Hell no. So much hip hop now has become a big pile of sludge, and so much dance music has become mechanical/techno robot music. That's not for me, not at all. But what about the stuff that doesn't turn me off? Am I supposed to say, "Well, yeah, that's really hip, but hey, I'm too old for it, so I'll just leave it alone"? WTF is that? Goddammit, I'll like whatever I like, thank you very much! And probably like it more because I'm liking it with some perspective, not because it's all I know.

Now as far as how I let all that affect my music, well hey - I understand the motivation behind Miles' electric work better & better every day. He had a personal need to confront "popular culture" on his terms, to bring what he knew to what he maybe didn't know but was intrigued by. If in the end it meant having what was essentially an instrumental pop band, hey - it was a damn good instrumental pop band, showing the rest of us that that type music didn't have to be locked into formulas of obviousness and simplicity, that you could still paint pictures of grace and nuance in an idiom that often disdains such things. For me, that's every bit as important as refining "Stella By Starlight" (or even "Directions") further and further and further and further and...

So I don't know. I don't have Miles' resources, guts, money, career, or reputation. And I sure as hell don't have the cachet to get a bunch of young guys into a band to let me learn from them while I, hopefully, teach them at the same time. So me myself, hey, I'm probably through doing anything too much different than I've already done, although I hold out hope otherwise. But it kills me to see players younger than me just not giving a damn about doing anything other than what's already been done, even/especially on the "free" scene. The world is full of interesting music today, and some of it could easily lend itself to the skills that a good jazz player could bring to it (to say nothing of the spirit that a good jazz player should be able to bring to it, since to me, jazz is spirit first and foremost). Kahil El'Zabar's Juba Collective side is an example of what might someday be possible when jazz meets house w/o playing down to it (as well being an unfortunate example of what happens when you get a project like that recorded by somebody who doesn't understand either music...). And that's just one possibility. I've long admired Steve Coleman, and if it took him way much longer than I had hoped for to get that shit sounding as good as I hoped it someday would, the last few things of his I've heard have made it there. Finally. And there's other possibilities, so many other possibilities to make musics that are alive & relevant outside of an increasingly hermetic world.

But it ain't gonna happen if "jazz musicians" stay locked up in the cave, and leave the few truly bold & open spirits out there left hanging to look like fools inside the cave and like freakish anomolies outside it. That's their loss (although they'll not see it as such), but more importantly, it's the world's loss. But agoraphobia is what it is, so I'll know where to find those guys whenever I need to find'em.

Which, frankly, is probably going to be less and less as time goes on.

[JSngry]

You know, none of us lived through the Industrial Revolution, so we're all convinced that that paradigm is the paradigm. But we're all living through the Technology/Digital Revolution, and guess what? It ain't, not any more. Things like internal rhythm, listening focus, attention spans, etc. are going to change in a fundamental way (they already are), and they're going to stay changed (even as they continue to change).

Do we want to be strangers in our own world? Or do we want to find a way to keep the bad guys from totally taking over the dissemenation of the information that we all know to be true?

Ching-chinga-ching-chinga-BLAM! E-raced. De-leted. Fatal error.

Ya' gotta be a moving target these days.

Edited December 21, 2006 by JSngry