Wynton's Sheet Music

[Guest bluenote82]

I want to honestly ask all of you this question why do you think Wynton's music/opinions about music are so controversial? Please don't give me smartass answers I would like an intelligent response, because I'm just curious.

[7/4]

No, really man. look where he's from.

Nowheresville.

[7/4]

I want to honestly ask all of you this question why do you think Wynton's music/opinions about music are so controversial? Please don't give me smartass answers I would like an intelligent response, because I'm just curious.

To get to the other side.

Couldn't help it...

[Larry Kart]

I want to honestly ask all of you this question why do you think Wynton's music/opinions about music are so controversial? Please don't give me smartass answers I would like an intelligent response, because I'm just curious.

Surely there's nothing that any of us could say on this subject that you, at this late date, haven't heard a thousand times before. Or could it be that you trying to start something like that Wynton thread on AAJ that you said you were so proud of? Honestly?

[kenny weir]

Please don't give me smartass answers

I'd say posing that question is itself a pretty smartass stunt.

Edited February 20, 2008 by kenny weir

[Jim Alfredson]

It's already been gone over a million times before and I doubt anybody is going to change your mind. So enjoy what you enjoy and don't worry about it.

[Guest bluenote82]

I want to honestly ask all of you this question why do you think Wynton's music/opinions about music are so controversial? Please don't give me smartass answers I would like an intelligent response, because I'm just curious.

Surely there's nothing that any of us could say on this subject that you, at this late date, haven't heard a thousand times before. Or could it be that you trying to start something like that Wynton thread on AAJ that you said you were so proud of? Honestly?

I think you've got me all wrong here, Larry. I don't want to start any trouble with anybody. My intentions on the AAJ board were not to get people mad at me, but they simply insisted on being unkind and unfriendly, so I responded with mean reponses.

I've got a new start here on Organissimo and I don't want to ruin it. Since I'm new here, there's alot of people I don't recognize and maybe I can hear their honest opinions.

But it's like one of the guys said while ago, I've heard it all, so maybe I shouldn't have asked that question....

I will say to Jim Alredson, he's right, I shouldn't worry about it. Hell there are a ton of people who hate Bill Frisell, but I love him. Jim and Larry are right: if you really like someone, then nobody will change your mind.

Edited February 20, 2008 by bluenote82

[Aggie87]

I think you've got me all wrong here, Larry. I don't want to start any trouble with anybody. My intentions on the AAJ board were not to get people mad at me, but they simply insisted on being unkind and unfriendly, so I responded with mean reponses.

Instead of re-inventing countless conversations, why not do some searches on both this board and AAJ about Wynton. Everything you've asked has been gone over before. In fact your comments aren't exactly new either, but do exhibit symptoms of someone who's got alot more jazz ahead of him to explore, than he has already done exploring.

There's alot of good music out there, check it out before deciding Wynton's one of the best. I don't think you've done enough "consuming" yet. In fact, I think it will take years before you can come to a reasonable conclusion. Most people here probably have 10, 20, 40 more years of listening experience than you do. Stick around and have patience.

Oh, and if people give you what you consider to be unkind and unfriendly comments, rise above it and don't respond with mean comments. Just a suggestion - it will help your credibility.

[JSngry]

I want to honestly ask all of you this question why do you think Wynton's music/opinions about music are so controversial? Please don't give me smartass answers I would like an intelligent response, because I'm just curious.

Simple - because he's said a lot of shit that's simply not right, a lot of opinion not substantiated by fact. And then institutionalized it as "truth". And then got rich off it. And put a permanent deformity on the jazz marketplace & mindset in the process. Fortunately, there's a new generation coming along that seems to have little or no use for him and his "ideology". But the damage has been done.

I'll not "debate" or otherwise discuss beyond this, because it's all here in the archives (and more than once). But that's why, and that's an answer to your question.

[Guest bluenote82]

I think you've got me all wrong here, Larry. I don't want to start any trouble with anybody. My intentions on the AAJ board were not to get people mad at me, but they simply insisted on being unkind and unfriendly, so I responded with mean reponses.

Instead of re-inventing countless conversations, why not do some searches on both this board and AAJ about Wynton. Everything you've asked has been gone over before. In fact your comments aren't exactly new either, but do exhibit symptoms of someone who's got alot more jazz ahead of him to explore, than he has already done exploring.

There's alot of good music out there, check it out before deciding Wynton's one of the best. I don't think you've done enough "consuming" yet. In fact, I think it will take years before you can come to a reasonable conclusion. Most people here probably have 10, 20, 40 more years of listening experience than you do. Stick around and have patience.

Oh, and if people give you what you consider to be unkind and unfriendly comments, rise above it and don't respond with mean comments. Just a suggestion - it will help your credibility.

I'm not going to argue with you Aggie87, but I don't think you know enough about me to make an assumption of what jazz I've explored. You may not remember me saying this, but I've been listening since I was 4 years old, I'm almost 26 now, so that's 22 years of jazz listening experience. I've explored more jazz musicians than most people my age, in fact, I've explored more jazz then people who have been listening since 1940.

Here's the problem, many people only explore a small percentage of jazz like for instance big band or bebop. I've exlored everything from progressive big band to fusion to world jazz to avant-garde to free jazz to post modern bebop and everything in between. Not only am I versed in the history of the music, but I'm well aware of what's out there today.

But at the end of the day, I still like bebop the best. It's what I enjoy the most. How many bebop muscians were there? Thousands, so it's really almost impossible to check out everybody. Jazz is covers a very vast spectrum of music, so people who've been listening 50 years are still finding more and more out.

All I merely said was Wynton was ONE of the best trumpeters I've heard and this opinion is based on 22 years of listening to trumpeters, because the trumpet is my favorite instrument.

Edited February 20, 2008 by bluenote82

[Chuck Nessa]

Such an experienced young man.

I have about six thousand records older than you, not counting the 20,000 I sold. Stop being so impressed with yourself and learn.

[Guest bluenote82]

I want to honestly ask all of you this question why do you think Wynton's music/opinions about music are so controversial? Please don't give me smartass answers I would like an intelligent response, because I'm just curious.

Simple - because he's said a lot of shit that's simply not right, a lot of opinion not substantiated by fact. And then institutionalized it as "truth". And then got rich off it. And put a permanent deformity on the jazz marketplace & mindset in the process. Fortunately, there's a new generation coming along that seems to have little or no use for him and his "ideology". But the damage has been done.

I'll not "debate" or otherwise discuss beyond this, because it's all here in the archives (and more than once). But that's why, and that's an answer to your question.

That's a fair enough answer. I'll leave it at that.

But I will say and this is in no way an argument, I never have listened to musician's opinions. I have always listened to the music. No musician I've heard makes any damn sense anyway. They want to throw this philosophical bullshit at you and expect you to "get it." Like for example, somebody like Bud Powell, the man talked crap, but he damn well could play. A good DVD I think everybody should at least watch is "Play Your Own Thing," which is the story of jazz in Europe. It has very interesting information about icons like Ben Webster, Bud Powell, Miles Davis, etc.

I just listen to the music and judge whether or not it is something I like.

[Guest bluenote82]

Such an experienced young man.

I have about six thousand records older than you, not counting the 20,000 I sold. Stop being so impressed with yourself and learn.

Yeah, but how many of those "thousands" of records you own are actually good? That's what's important.

Having said that, I own about 3500 jazz cds.

[Aggie87]

Such an experienced young man.

I have about six thousand records older than you, not counting the 20,000 I sold. Stop being so impressed with yourself and learn.

Yeah, but how many of those "thousands" of records you own are actually good? That's what's important.

Having said that, I own about 3500 jazz cds.

You have alot of learning to do, buddy. Your Bud Powell comment is pretty telling.

You do realize you're not talking with a bunch of teenagers in here, right? Because that's how you're coming across.

[Guest bluenote82]

Such an experienced young man.

I have about six thousand records older than you, not counting the 20,000 I sold. Stop being so impressed with yourself and learn.

Yeah, but how many of those "thousands" of records you own are actually good? That's what's important.

Having said that, I own about 3500 jazz cds.

You have alot of learning to do, buddy. Your Bud Powell comment is pretty telling.

You do realize you're not talking with a bunch of teenagers in here, right? Because that's how you're coming across.

I guess you never watched the DVD "Play Your Own Thing" and heard what Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen said about him? We all know that Niels played with Powell when he was staying in Europe. Anyway, you should get that DVD and watch it. You might just learn something.

[Aggie87]

You might just learn something.

Thanks, I'll take your advice under consideration.

[Guest bluenote82]

You might just learn something.

Thanks, I'll take your advice under consideration.

Aggie87, I don't know you, but from what I can gather you assume things about people too quickly. I have said nothing to you out-of-the-way and you treat me like a damn dog. Do you treat everyone like this?

[marcello]

Such an experienced young man.

I have about six thousand records older than you, not counting the 20,000 I sold. Stop being so impressed with yourself and learn.

Yeah, but how many of those "thousands" of records you own are actually good? That's what's important.

Having said that, I own about 3500 jazz cds.

I can't resist.

Even without knowing you, I can safely say that Chuck's beer farts have more experience than you.

Don't take that the wrong way, because it applies to me too.

I just know how to accept the fact.

[kenny weir]

I can safely say that Chuck's beer farts have more experience than you.

Hmmm ... vivid imagery!

[Guest Bill Barton]

I can safely say that Chuck's beer farts have more experience than you.

Hmmm ... vivid imagery!

Chuck's beer farts likely have more experience than the rest of us combined.

This thread has been artfully derailed and rerouted in a number of different directions, all of them circuitous. It's kind of a time-warp thread, eh? Is it really 2008? Didn't all of this take place a decade ago in the online-jazz-bulletin-board bardo?

I'm waiting for those time travelers from the future now... They have the answers.

[Christiern]

BN, I think you need to understand that there are people here who judge Wynton by his music, people who have heard an immense range of performances, including his, and draw from from that listening experience the conclusion that Wynton's playing/composing does not measure up to the hype that keeps him in the spotlight. There are some of us who simply do not see awards and positions of power as yardsticks for greatness. Once you understand that and realize that it is possible to make artistically-based evaluations that are polar opposites of your own, I think the "controversy" will seem less personal to you.

[Niko]

I want to honestly ask all of you this question why do you think Wynton's music/opinions about music are so controversial? Please don't give me smartass answers I would like an intelligent response, because I'm just curious.

is it smartass to say he was not controversial (unlike pat metheny, oscar peterson and so many others) until you arrived? besides anything else the attitude behind the music makes me feel uneasy about it; imho many of us would see him differently (and find him more interesting) if he had recorded his music in late 1923 in a cellar in sweden... he didn't (but how would we see Kenny G if he had put out exactly the same music 90 years ago...)

[AllenLowe]

good point - and I have heard some Marsalis performances "blind" (as in on the radio and I didn't know who he was) and was quite impressed - thing about Wynton, and I know this has been said already (maybe by Larry Kart?) is that his playing impresses but does not MOVE me -

Chuck's beer farts, on the other hand, are major works of 21st century post-expressionist, neo-minimialist, school-of-edc, post-bop masterpieces -

and BTW, I know I shouldn't talk, but I think some of us are being a mite harsh with bluenote82 -

Edited February 20, 2008 by AllenLowe

[Larry Kart]

OK Bluenote, here's a full blast, most of the section "The Neo-Con Game" from my book "Jazz In Search if Itself" (pub. 2004) -- you can find it at Amazon if you want, The framing italicized passages were written in 2004, the individual pieces were written at the dates that stand in front of them. THis isn't all about Wynton himself, but I think it's all relevant:

Most of these pieces revolve around the advent in 1980 of trumpeter/composer Wynton Marsalis and the several sorts of jazz neo-conservatism or revivalism that he and his associates began to propose--first a return to a kind of classicized version of the Miles Davis Quintet of the mid-1960s, then a series of visits to chosen styles of the jazz past (New Orleans polyphony, thirties and forties Ellington, etc.). Such impulses have surfaced in jazz before, at least as far back as the late-1930s (the so-called New Orleans Revival that centered around Lu Watters and his Yerba Buena Jazz Band), and it should not be forgotten that three years prior to Marsalis’s arrival on the scene, the similarly young and similarly revivalistic tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton made his first recording. What was different about what might be called the Wyntonian Era, though, is that never before had a return to selected aspects of the jazz past been presented--and, to a remarkable degree, accepted--as an event of central aesthetic importance. That it was not such an event is the conclusion these pieces eventually reach, but that it could be regarded as one at all is significant--not quite a sign that jazz was dead or dying (although that was one thought that came to mind at the time) but evidence that the weight of the music’s past, relative to its present and to its possible futures, was something that jazz was grappling with as never before. A cut-and-paste, mix-and-match attitude toward the jazz past has been one result....

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ART

In a 1981 review of a performance by Rosemary Clooney, I wrote this about two members of her band, tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton and cornetist Warren Vaché: “Not so gratifying [as Clooney] were Hamilton and Vaché, relatively young players who began by emulating Swing-era stylists and who have yet to find a personal manner. More disturbing than the revivalistic impulses of Hamilton and Vaché, though, are the ways in which they misunderstand and cheapen the style they profess to admire. Each man presents a surface cosmetic warmth, with Hamilton crooning á la Ben Webster, and Vaché putting a burry, Bunny Berigan-like edge on his tone. But the techniques that Hamilton and Vaché apply in such a haphazard fashion were part of a specific musical-emotional language. To hear that language being trifled with is both musically and morally disturbing.”

That review led to a dialogue in Down Beat magazine with critic John McDonough, who saw the desire of Hamilton and Vaché (and that of other young musicians) to work within the stylistic patterns of the jazz past as a very positive development. This was my response to McDonough’s piece:

[1982]

If we were building the ideal jazz musician, we would probably want to make him an innovator. But innovation is not the question here. Instead it is the degree of honesty and understanding with which specific players deal with the music’s past.

First a distinction should be made between those jazz artists who have been inspired by their predecessors (Louis Armstrong’s Swing-era disciples and the host of Lester Young acolytes of the 1940s would be good examples) and, on the other hand, those players whose approach to the jazz past is essentially revivalistic--as the music of Scott Hamilton, Warren Vaché, and many of their contemporaries seems to be. No matter how humbled he may be by his model, the disciple of the first sort doesn’t wish to recreate the music of Armstrong or Young. Rather he hears something in the inspiring artist that speaks to something in him--a musical/emotional message that the disciple wishes (and needs) to expand upon and, as much as possible, make his own. The revivalist, however, regards the chunk of the jazz past that attracts him as an essentially completed act. And often he is drawn to the past of jazz in part because it belongs to the past--because the music speaks of values that seem to have been needlessly abandoned and that the revivalist wishes to reanimate, preserve, and inhabit. Injecting one’s own personality into the music is at best a side issue, the goal instead being to accurately bring to life what is no longer as alive as it once was.

Now jazz revivalism has an intriguing, quirky history; and I would not want to be without the music of Lu Watters, Graeme and Roger Bell, or Dave Dallwitz. But revivalism works best when it deals with styles in which the soloist added color and point while the ensemble remained the dominant force; it runs into special problems when the style being recreated is one that relies on the soloist’s ability to express an individual instrumental personality. Leaving aside the question of whether or not Hamilton and Vaché are self-conscious revivalists, their music certainly is based on late Swing-era styles in which individual instrumental personality was paramount. We love Ben Webster and Don Byas, Buck Clayton and Bobby Hackett not just because their music was beautiful in the abstract sense, but also because it told their stories, revealing something essential about the kind of men they were. And this storytelling aspect of the music was expressed in a very precise musical/emotional language--one in which the individual artist’s tonal and rhythmic inflections (the growls, smears, slides, and so forth) were both his trademark and the means he used to convey his evolving emotional messages. And this storytelling, languagelike aspect of the music has, like all languages, some specific rules of diction, grammar, and syntax.

It is there that I part company with most of today’s more-or-less revivalistic players, whether their models come from the thirties and forties (as Hamilton’s and Vaché’s do), from the fifties (as do those of Lew Tabackin and Richie Cole), or from the quite recent past (as is the case with David Murray). To my ears, these musicians often speak the language they profess to love in a haphazard, inaccurate, even vulgar fashion, making gram¬matical and syntactical errors in the realm where notes are translated into emotion that are as disturbing as if they had flubbed the changes or turned the beat around. Place a typical Hamilton performance alongside a solo from such a master storyteller as Ike Quebec (or compare a Lew Tabackin effort with something by Sonny Rollins, or listen to David Murray next to Albert Ayler), and one hears countless musical/emotional gestures that have been mishandled or misunderstood, as though the perhaps unwitting emulator were wearing a tweed jacket with candy-striped pants.

So it’s not just the emulative aspect of these players that is troublesome, because my knowledge (such as it is) of the music that inspired them tells me that they aren’t even good emulators, let alone personal craftsmen. (A question for another day is whether one can be a craftsmanlike disciple of Albert Ayler, Eric Dolphy, or John Coltrane--in the same way that one could, and perhaps still can, be a craftsmanlike disciple of Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, or Don Byas.)

That a number of these young revivalists have been praised, and sometimes hired, by such masters as Buddy Tate, Buck Clayton, Roy Eldridge, Benny Goodman, and Earl Hines, does not automatically settle the aesthetic issues in their favor. It’s understandable that many older players (and those critics who have great affection for their music and may not care that much for later developments) would be cheered to find younger men paying homage to the past, for no one likes to feel lonely and most of us like to be flattered. But even if there were no trace of self-deception in the praise of Hines, Tate, et al., that praise is refuted by their own lastingly vital music, which remains the standard by which their would-be disciples must be judged.

While I certainly wish that there were as many personal craftsmen at work in jazz today as there were in 1935, 1945, and 1955, I believe that the craftsman approach to jazz is, for a number of reasons, becoming harder and harder to sustain. In any case, if jazz is about to turn itself into a largely revivalistic, repertory music--a kind of living museum in which everyone from Johnny Dodds to Albert Ayler is fair game--it seems all the more important to protest when one hears jazz’s glorious past being reproduced in ways that are musically and emotionally inaccurate. To do otherwise would be to admit that we no longer hear the difference.

MARSALIS AT TWENTY-ONE

[1983]

Any way you look at it Wynton Marsalis is a phenomenon. Already one heck of a jazz player at age twenty-one, Marsalis is “the crowned prince of the trumpet” according to critic Stanley Crouch--a judgment the public seems to endorse. In 1982, Mar¬salis won Down Beat magazine’s Reader’s Poll awards for Musician of the Year, Album of the Year, and Best Trumpeter. And in addition to his jazz prowess, Marsalis is very much at home in the classical realm. One of his two current albums on the Columbia label, Think of One, is a jazz date, but the other features Marsalis’s performances of the Haydn, Hummel, and Leopold Mozart concerti--demanding works that he handles with such ease and flair that one can understand why classical virtuoso Maurice André has hailed him as “potentially the greatest trumpet player of all time.”

Also part of the Marsalis phenomenon is the zeal with which Columbia has been promoting his career. The label’s efforts probably wouldn’t pay off unless there were considerable musical substance to back up the human-interest side of the story (Marsalis’s youth, his dual musical expertise, the fact that his father, Ellis Marsalis, is a celebrated jazz pianist, and so forth). But when a jazz musician is profiled in such mass-market publications as People magazine and Newsweek (as Marsalis has been), you can be sure that the public-relations department is going all out. (In addition to the Maurice Andre quote and similar verbal bouquets, Columbia’s latest Marsalis press release includes this gem: “‘The young man I’d like to have marry my daughter’--Bill Cosby.”)

Leaving aside his qualifications as a potential son-in-law, Marsalis certainly is a remarkable young musician. But while one doesn’t doubt the sincerity of those who refer to him as “the crowned prince” or “potentially the greatest trumpet player of all time,” a more balanced view of Marsalis’s career would seem to be called for. The first thing (and in some cases the only thing) people notice about Marsalis is his virtuoso technique. He has as much speed and range as any trumpet player who isn’t into sheer trickiness, plus ideas that demand all his virtuosity for their proper execution. In jazz, however, sheer instrumental skill can be deceptive, and Marsalis, who blends a vigorous ego with a healthy sense of self-criticism, is aware of that fact.

“I know I can play fast and high,” he has said, “but that’s not what jazz is all about. Take Don Cherry, who is a phenomenal jazz trumpet player. He can’t really play the trumpet technically, but that makes him get down to the essence of the music, whereas I have so much technique that it gets in my way. I’ll just be playing stuff because I can play it, which distracts me from what I should be playing. Sure, my technique helps me get over a lot of obstacles. But in the long run, those obstacles are the stuff I have to work on--melodic phrasing, using space, developing my ear, and so forth. My biggest problem is figuring out what to play. So much stuff has been played already that it takes time to come up with something new.”

Listening to the recordings he has made as a leader and as a sideman and recalling his in-person performances with Art Blakey, Herbie Hancock, and his own group, one knows what Marsalis means when he speaks of his technique getting in the way and the difficulty of coming up with something new because “so much stuff has been played already.” At times, Marsalis still indulges in flurries of notes that are technically remarkable but of only momentary musical interest, and he has yet to shed his stylistic resemblances to Miles Davis and Freddie Hubbard--which is to be expected, given his youth. “I don’t have enough stuff behind me to say I’m playing more than Miles and everybody,” Marsalis has said. “No, man, that’s not how it’s done. You have to wait your turn, play and learn.”

Such modesty is attractive, especially coming from a young man who is increasingly surrounded by media hype. And it’s also nice to know that Marsalis thinks of his fabulous chops as both a hindrance and a help. Yet one hopes that he doesn’t decide that he would be better off musically if he sobered up and slowed down. Every artist has his innate temperament, and Marsalis’s is (and probably always will be) extremely flamboyant. Almost without exception, his most im¬pressive efforts are those that are most virtuosic; and one feels certain that this fondness for mu¬sical fireworks is not just a byproduct of Marsalis’s youth but an expression of his true nature. In that sense, he might be considered a modern-day counterpart of the late Charlie Shavers, a similarly fiery, technically daz¬zling player who quite rightly never calmed down.

As for the echoes of Miles Davis in Marsalis’s music, that, too, is an aspect of his style that deserves a second look. Marsalis certainly admires Davis, but his deepest affinities are not with the trumpeter himself but with a specific Davis band--the superb mid-l960s quintet that included tenor and soprano saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Tony Williams. Marsalis obviously feels that the innovations of that group have yet to be superseded, because almost every performance on the two albums he has made under his own name pays homage to the style of the mid¬sixties Davis Quintet. But who was primarily responsible for the style of that band? Giving Davis all the credit he deserves for choosing his musical partners and maintaining esprit de corps, a case can be made that Shorter, Williams, and Hancock were at the heart of things. And it is the ideas of those men that Marsalis seems to be building upon, even though that involves some Davis references on his part. In fact, Shorter may be the most powerful influence on Marsalis’s music, if one accepts the premise that Marsalis is at his best when his solos take on an aura of flamboyant fantasy and serio-comic wit.

When Shorter first emerged, he was, like Marsalis, an astonishing virtuoso, capable (as they say) of “playing around corners.” Shorter could juggle notes at any tempo, and there seemed to be no harmonic possibility he couldn’t hear and instantly express. Inseparable from his virtuosity, though, was the emotional tone of Shorter’s playing--the way he would chose the most oblique paths and follow them to the edge of all sorts of musical cliffs with a deadpan, Buster Keaton-like logic. Inventing and then solving previously unimaginable musical puzzles, Shorter did seem to be a mordantly witty comedian at times. But his world also had a near-surrealistic aura of fantasy to it, as though his logic, humor, and superb technical command were necessary to fend off the attacks of marauding demons.

That side of Shorter’s music lessened over the years, but neither Marsalis nor his older brother, saxophonist Branford Marsalis, has forgotten it--with Branford preserving the more literal aspects of Shorter’s style while Wynton expands upon its core of fantasy and takes it into less haunted, more optimistic realms. (The Columbia double album Jazz at the Opera House, much of which pairs Marsalis and Shorter, is a perfect example of how close these two musicians are to each other, as Marsalis’s flamboyant translation of early-Shorter ideas to the trumpet ins¬pires Shorter to return to the same kind of musical thinking.) Williams’s playing is vital to Marsalis as well, so much so that on the double album they made in 1981 under Hancock’s leadership, Quartet, there are times when one feels that the normal soloist-accom¬panist relationship has been re¬versed and Marsalis is embellishing Williams percussive “melody.”

As for Marsalis’s recordings under his own name--Wynton Marsalis, Think of One, and his album of classical trumpet concerti--powerful though they are, they lack some of that feeling of gleeful fantasy and savage release that is so promi¬nent on the Opera House album and on the date Marsalis made as sideman with saxophonist-composer Chico Freeman, Destiny’s Dance. Perhaps, at twenty-one, Marsalis is still somewhat inhibited by the burdens of leadership. Perhaps, conscious as he is of “how much stuff has been played already,” he finds it stimulating to bounce his ideas off his musical mentors. In any case, Wynton Marsalis definitely is a man to listen to and a man to watch--a jazz whiz kid who should live up to his already impressive credentials.

THE DEATH OF JAZZ?

[1985 ]

“The old ones are going, and the young ones aren't growing.” Bolstered by a few qualifications, that little rhyme pretty much sums up the state of jazz today. The most important body of music yet produced in America, jazz is a child of this century--an art whose component parts began to come together around 1900 and one that grew with such remarkable speed that in only twenty-five years it had produced at least four major figures (Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet,Jelly Roll Morton, and Bessie Smith) and a number of undeniable masterworks. But as we near the end of the century that gave birth to jazz, there are signs that this glorious music is about to pass away from us--not ffrom lack of popularity (at the moment, jazz is doing better in the marketplace than it has for some time) but because the music's artistic vitality is more and more in doubt.

Always able until now to renew itself from within, jazz seems be circling back on itself, forgoing its history of near-ceaseless invention in the name of various kinds of re-creation and revivalism. Also in the air is the related notion of a jazz fusion or blending--not so much with rock anymore (the big idea in the 1970s) but with Western concert music and/or musics from other cultures, with the result being a so-called “world music.” In any case, quite a few observers believe jazz has entered its neoclassic phase, an era in which the music will devote itself, in the words of critic Sam Freedman, to producing “personally stamped recombinations of existing knowledge.”

There is nothing new about the neoclassic impulse, which first surfaced in jazz in the early 1940s, when Lu Watters and Turk Murphy tried to re-create the music of such twenties figures as King Oliver and Kid Ory. And one can see the logic in these and other attempts to revive the past, for the evolution of jazz has been so swift that all sorts of fruitful positions were abandoned long before they were played out. What is new, though, are the nature and extent of the neoclassicism that runs through so much of jazz today.

The first generation of jazz revivalists were few in number and confined themselves to early styles. Now, however, almost the entire jazz past has been colonized by re-creators of one sort or another, including many who try to emulate and, in some cases, tame the music of such radical players of the1960s as John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Albert Ayler. And while these developments have produced some attractive music, one wonders about the well-being of an art that has so totally devoted itself to re-examining its past, especially when this trend coincides with a series of events that may have had much do with inspiring it--the passing from the scene of more and more of the first-, second- and third-generation creators who were, in effect, the music's living tradition.

“I think a lot about my buddies that left,” said drummer Roy Haynes a few years ago, and the litany of loss he was referring to has indeed become overwhelming. In the bebop era, when the use of drugs was widespread, one came to expect the early deaths that robbed us of Charlie Parker, Fats Navarro, and so many others, long before their time. Then there were further shocks, as such young and middle-aged masters as Clifford Brown, Booker Little, Lee Morgan, Scott LaFaro, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, and Albert Ayler died when their creativity still was in full flower. But time itself has taken over now, and in recent years we have (to name only a few) said farewell to Count Basie, Thelonious Monk, Earl Hines, Erroll Garner, Charles Mingus, Vic Dickenson, Art Pepper, Sonny Stitt, Al Haig,Wilbur Ware, Kenny Clarke, Blue Mitchell, Kenny Dorham, Russell Procope, Cozy Cole, Budd Johnson, Ray Nance, Bill Coleman, Shelly Manne, Hampton Hawes, Bill Evans, Don Ellis, Paul Desmond, Red Garland, Joe Venuti, Mary Lou Williams, and Barney Bigard.

But why can't jazz continue as it always has, generating vital new artists to take the place of those who are gone? And why should there be any doubts about this neoclassic phase? Isn’t paying homage to its past one of the healthiest things any art can do? To answer those questions (or at the very least to speculate about them) some historical background has to be sketched in. In its earliest days, jazz was three kinds of music in one--a folk music, an entertainment (or popular) music, and an art music. It was a folk music because it was invented by a “folk” (i.e., black Americans) and met that particular group's social needs. It was an entertainment music because it had the power to delight large numbers of people who did not belong to its original folk audience. And it was an art music because--unlike a folk or entertainment music but very much like the music of the Western classical tradition--jazz had an inherent need and ability to transform itself, to build on its own discoveries and produce works that could withstand and reward contemplation.

Almost without precedent in the history of art, this harmonious, three-way blend gave jazz a great deal of its initial thrust. Imagine how exhilarating it must have been to work at the limits of one's artistic capacities while also fulfilling the needs of those closest to you and giving pleasure to the world at large. But this balance, epitomized by the early career of Louis Armstrong, soon began to break down. An “art for art's sake” approach first cropped up among some white jazz musicians in the 1920s. And while the relationship between black jazz artists and the black audience was mutually gratifying for at least another decade, that broad sense of agreement began to waver in the mid-1940s with the advent of bebop--a music of undeniable power but one whose aura of emotional tension and extreme rhythmic and harmonic virtuosity made it very difficult to take as entertainment (certainly it was not a music that one could easily dance to).

From that point on, then, the audience for jazz has consisted largely of “fans” of one sort or another, groups that expanded or contracted as a particular style of the music met or failed to meet their social and aesthetic needs. While it was still possible for jazz musicians of major stature to be popular, too, the time when that was the norm was over. And with the advent of rock, which transformed the music industry into more of a bottom-line affair than it had ever been before, it became increasingly difficult for jazz artists of any sort to make their music available to those segments of the public that might want to hear it.

So jazz, which always had been an art music in the most positive sense, now became an art music in another sense, too. Able to address the human condition with a unique intensity and depth, jazz found itself, for that very reason, ill-equipped to survive in a marketplace that was geared toward the needs of adolescents. (Of course, the same could be said of the symphony, the opera, or the ballet, but the audience for those arts has the social standing and economic clout to subsidize its tastes.)

Meanwhile, on the creative front, jazz was passing through its most tumultuous upheaval to date with the advent in the early 1960s of the avant-garde, or so called “free jazz,” which dispensed with many of the music's most familiar harmonic and rhythmic signposts and often ventured into realms that were as abstract and sonically violent as the more extreme products of the classical avant-garde. Hailed by some and dismissed by others, the advent of the avant-garde split the jazz community as never before, and almost everything that has happened since can be seen as a response to that event.

On one hand there was what might be called the “pastoral reaction,” the harmonically suave, impressionistic approach that was pioneered by pianist Bill Evans and that led to Gary Burton, Keith Jarrett, and, arguably, the aural pablum of George Winston. Embraced by a host of players who were put off by free jazz, this music allowed its practitioners to feel they were still moving forward. And in one sense they were, conquering in the name of jazz the territory that had been previously been explored by Debussy and Ravel. The implicit dreaminess of this music is a problem, though. Before this, jazz had always been art of emotional realism--a music whose most intoxicatingly joyful artists (say, Armstrong or Erroll Garner) did not take their audiences away from the actual world but instead spoke of those things in life about which one could, indeed, be joyful.

As for today's neoclassicism, it ostensibly seeks to revive the values of warmth, soul, and forthright swing that once were the hallmarks of jazz and, in the process, reach out to a wide audience in the same uncompromising way that Armstrong, Basie, and Ellington were able to do. Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and saxophonist-composer David Murray are among the key figures in this trend, and listening to them one finds much to admire. Marsalis, in particular, is an artist of great technical and intellectual gifts, seemingly capable of realizing any idea that comes to mind. And one also has no doubt that his heart is in the right place. Lurking behind the neoclassical enterprise, though, there is a lingering sense that it is more a willed event than a natural one, despite its eagerness to restore to jazz those qualities that were, indeed, natural to the music before free jazz came along.

Warmth, soul, and swing certainly are among the hallmarks of a Ben Webster or a Dexter Gordon, but for them these things seem not be sought after in themselves. Instead they are an inevitable byproduct of the act of playing jazz, virtues that arise as a matter of course when one makes musical and emotional contact with the material at hand. And it is this sense of contact with the material that seems to be lacking in so many of today's neoclassicists, perhaps because the medium of line-against-harmony that their predecessors found so usefully resistant no longer provides them with the same kind of challenge. In David Murray's case, it is logical that this should be so, for he once was a fervent disciple of the most radical free-jazz saxophonist, Albert Ayler. As critic J.B. Figi said of another young neoclassicist, Murray “fills roles rather than playing from self,” and one can hear the difference on the version of “Body and Soul” that appears on Murray's recent album Morning Song. Sticking to the harmonic pattern of the tune until he ends his warm-toned solo with an Ayler-like squeal, Murray leaves one with the feeling that his relative orthodoxy is very much a matter of conscious choice and that his decision to play “Body and Soul” in this way ought to be a cause for congratulation. In fact, to the degree that the solo has any emotional content, it seems to lie in that dramatized sense of choice, in Murray's eagerness to gratify his and his audience's desires to experience in the present a way of playing jazz that a short while ago seemed to belong only to the past. But aside from his need to please us in this manner, who David Murray is remains a mystery--which is odd, because the style Murray seeks to emulate was one that called upon the soloist to declare and explore his identity in every note and phrase.

There are other neoclassicists who are very aware of these problems and have come up with intriguing solutions. In particular, there are the slyly ironic Henry Threadgill and Chicagoan Edward Wilkerson Jr., a genuine romantic whose involvement with the materials at hand is never in doubt. But Threadgill and Wilkerson may only be neoclassicists in disguise, artists whose jousts with the music's past really have more to do with the specific musical issues that were raised by free jazz and that still need to be dealt with if the music is going to become something more than a museum that mounts a series of jazz-tinged puppet shows. I am afraid, though, that this is what jazz may have in store for it, as the creators for whom the making of the music is not a self-conscious act continue to pass away and the younger generation keeps trying to evoke the spirit of the past by trying on its outward forms. In the words of Igor Stravinsky, who certainly knew what neoclassicism was all about: “The borrowing of a method has nothing to do with observing a tradition. A method is replaced; a tradition is carried forward in order to produce something new. It appears as an heirloom, a heritage that one receives on condition of making it bear fruit.”

THE DEATH OF JAZZ? REVISITED

[1986]

A little more than a year ago I raised some doubts about the present and future course of jazz, in a piece whose title alone (“The Death of Jazz?”) stirred controversy. No less controversial, it seems, was the piece's basic point: That today's so-called neoclassical trend in jazz (in which a good many young players are trying to work within styles that were prevalent in other eras, particularly the mid-1960s) is not the healthy sign that many listeners and critics believe it to be.

Fueled by a desire to return to traditional jazz values, such music has an understandable appeal--not only because it sounds reassuringly familiar but also because it has arisen at a time when much of American society seems to thinking along conservative lines. But once jazz becomes more concerned with preservation than growth, doesn’t that amount to a break with one of the most fundamental aspects of the music's tradition: the need of each player to explore and express his or her personal identity? And if jazz does turn into something of a repertory art, which seems likely if the neoclassical trend continues to grow, where will that leave future generations of would-be creators who will be told, in effect, that others have felt more while they have felt less?

With those thoughts in mind, it seems like a good idea to look at the latest evidence: the music that such neoclassical young lions as trumpeters Wynton Marsalis and Jon Faddis have been making in recent months. But first a word or two should be said about the aggressively propagandistic critical prose that tends to surround this music--if only because a steady dose of it leads one to think that the journalistic fans of jazz neoclassicism are at least as interested in trend-making as they are in the music itself. Village Voice jazz critic Gary Giddins is the man who came up with the neoclassical label. But it is his colleague Stanley Crouch who has been the most strenuous and visible backer of the trend, thanks to the many liner notes he has written for the albums of Marsalis and friends. In that role Crouch is seldom content to celebrate the specific musical virtues of the album at hand. Instead, the technically impressive but rather straightlaced music ofMarsalis and his neoclassical colleagues is played off against the supposed “decadence” and “fumbling” of the jazz avant-garde--as though jazz had careered off the tracks in the 1960s and the neoclassical trend were a kind of rebellion in reverse, an attempt to bring order and sanity back to the music.

“These young men aren't about foisting the clichés of twentieth-century European music on jazz,” writes Crouch of a group called Out of the Blue, which tries very hard to sound like the clock had been turned back to 1965. “It is an ensemble luminously in tune with integrity.” But if “integrity” and “foisting” are indeed the issues, it seems fair to ask how the music of Out of the Blue's eponymous first album stands up alongside a representative and stylistically similar album from the late 1960s: tenor saxophonist Tyrone Washington's Natural Essence, which includes trumpeter Woody Shaw and alto saxophonist James Spaulding. The two groups share the same instrumentation and the same musical techniques, as the heated rhythmic angularities of bebop are linked to free-floating modal harmonies. And even if Out of the Blue's trumpeter Mike Mossman and alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett haven't directly modeled themselves on Shaw and Spaulding, they certainly sound as though they have. But the emotional tone of the two albums is quite different. While most of the members of Out of the Blue sound as though they thought of their music as a style (that is, as a series of rules one must adopt and accept), the music of Washington and his partners is fundamentally explosive, a discontented elegance that keeps zooming off in search of extreme emotional states. In fact a passionate need to exceed itself lies at the heart ofWashington’s music. And while stylistic patterns can be found on Natural Essence, they only emphasize the mood of turbulence and flux--defining the brink over which Washington constantly threatens to jump. So even though the music of Washington and his mid-sixties peers was less openly radical than that of Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman, it was by no means a separate phenomenon. Indeed, the strains of transition that supposedly were confined to the jazz avant garde may have been even more violently felt in the music that lay, so to speak, just to the Right of it.

One wonders, then, how a music that was virtually tearing itself apart can serve as a stylistic model for today's jazz neoclassicists--for at the root of all neoclassical movements there lies a desire to transform the erratic flow of artistic change into a smooth-running, orderly process. And one wonders as well how this self-conscious return to the recent jazz past is affecting those who are actually playing the music. An example of what may be involved is Wynton Marsalis’s most recent album, Black Codes From the Underground, which leaves one with the feeling that making a personal statement on his horn no longer is Marsalis’s goal. Indeed, his otherwise admirable desire to embrace the entire jazz trumpet tradition seems to have transformed the typical Marsalis solo into a kind of musical seance--as though each phrase he plays has so many sources in the music’s past that this outweighs whatever meaning those notes might have to Marsalis in the here-and-now.

Even more explicit tribute is paid to the past by another young trumpet virtuoso, Jon Faddis, on Legacy. A protégé of Dizzy Gillespie, Faddis emulates Gillespie's style on “Night in Tunisia”and “Things to Come” and then ventures back to Louis Armstrong (“West End Blues”) and Roy Eldridge (“Little Jazz”). But Faddis’s taste for flamboyant high-note blasts seems linked to a rhythmic and melodic rigidity that makes caricatures out of his Armstrong and Eldridge tributes. The Gillespie salutes work better, because the angularity of that master’s style conceals some of Faddis’s stiffness. But after listening toFaddis’s handsomely austere reading of Thad Jones’s “A Child is Born,” one wonders whether Faddis ought to have taken Jones, not Gillespie, as his model.

One can see the logic in what Faddis has tried to do, for it is tempting to think that the artistic past is still open to colonization, an endlessly fertile plain that will sustain new creative harvests. And at one time jazz did function in that way, as several generations of musicians were able to build directly upon the styles of Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and Lester Young without compromising their own musical and emotional growth. But at least as far back as the bebop era, the rate and nature of stylistic change in jazz began to accelerate; and it would be hard to think of any period in the last forty years during which the music was not urgently transforming itself. So there would seem to be something illusory in the hope that solid ground can be found in the jazz styles of the mid-1960s (particularly the music of the Miles Davis Quintet )--which is where most of today’s would-be neoclassicists plant their flags--for that music was always unstable, an art of emotional and technical brinkmanship.

Perhaps today’s jazz neoclassicists ought to ponder these words from composer-critic Virgil Thomson. Distinguishing between an “objective” music in which one can “represent other people’s emotions” and a “music of personal lyricism”(which would seem to be the kind of art that jazz is), Thomson goes on to explain that “you can write or execute music of the most striking evocative power by objective methods, but you cannot project a personal sentiment you do not have. If you fake it knowingly, you are dramatizing that which should be transmitted directly; and if you fake it unknowingly, you are, merely by deceiving yourself, attempting to deceive your audience. Naturally, experienced persons can teach the young many things about the personalized repertory. But there is no set way it must be rendered, and any attempt to impose one on it takes the life out of it.”

THE MARSALIS BROTHERS FURTHER ON

[1984]

Any way you look at it, twenty-four-year-old saxophonist Branford Marsalis is a significant figure in contemporary jazz. One year older than his brother, trumpet whiz Wynton Marsalis, Branford exemplifies today’s neo¬conservative style, which tries to tame, codify, and toy with the music of the radical jazz innovators of the 1960s: John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, and Ornette Coleman. As one listened to Marsalis at Rick’s Cafe Americain, it was clear that he not only has memorized almost every lick that Coltrane et al. ever produced but also possesses a technical expertise that allows him to reshuffle these licks in some very shrewd ways. As one fan remarked, “This guy can do anything.” The problem, though, is that Mar¬salis often seems lost in the midst of all these potential moves, unsure whether he wants to play clever, even satirically mocking games with the recent jazz past or respectfully emulate it.

Satire of some sort might be the more fruitful approach, for it fits the seemingly innate foxiness that Marsalis shares with his brother. But Rollins and Shorter already have taken that route--the former favoring Falstaf¬fian humor, the latter indulging in near-surrealistic distortions--and that leaves Marsalis with the unenviable choice of exaggerating the already exaggerated or, on the other hand, merely toning it down.Toned-down Coltrane, which is what Marsalis offers the rest of the time, is another matter, because the implicitly romantic, and at times even desparate, aura of quest that permeates Coltrane’s music would seem to call for a similiar approach on the part of his disciples. What Coltrane left behind was not a “hip” style but a drive toward ecstatic transcendence; and when Marsalis fiddles with Coltrane’s techniques while he holds the implicit emotion of the music at arm’s length, the results can be distressing.

Within Marsalis’s music, though, there is a third option, which may be the best way out for him. Given his agile mind and fingers and his basically cool temperament, Marsalis sometimes sounds like an updated Stan Getz--a musical gem cutter who would like to inhabit a world where subtlety of technique is an end in itself. From that point of view, the most satisfying piece Marsalis played Monday night was “Shadows,” a moody ballad written by his pianist, Larry Willis, which allowed the leader to build a solo that relied on an exquisitely shaded purity of tone and some sly harmonic shifts. When the temperature rose, as it did most notably on “Solstice,” Marsalis alternated between his neo-Coltrane manner and a close-to-the-vest version of Shorter’s and Rollins’s comedy. The latter style worked better for Marsalis, but even here there was little sense of emotional commitment, as though he were unsure whether he wanted to laugh with or laugh at his stylis¬tic models.

The problems Branford Marsalis is wrestling with may be those of youth, and perhaps the passage of time will solve them. But in the midst of his often dazzling virtuosity, Marsalis seems to be playing at playing jazz instead of just playing it--as though his involvement with the music were based on a paradoxical need to fend off its emotional demands.

[1985]

Wynton Marsalis is a remarkable trumpet player--pure of tone, long of breath, and able to juggle notes the way angels are supposed to dance on the head of a pin. But despite the passel of Grammy awards he already has won, and despite the warm reception he received Friday night, Marsalis is, at age twenty-three, not yet a remarkable jazz musician; nor do I think he will ever become one.

Why that should be so is something of a mystery, for Marsalis’s commitment to the real thing would seem to be intense. He has spoken out with much forcefulness and wit against the idea of diluting jazz in any way, shape, or form, and the popularity he has won is not the result of any overt compromise on Marsalis’s part. Even his recent trumpet-with-strings album was a rather sober affair; and the quintet Marsalis brought to the Vic Theater (saxophonist Branford Marsalis, pianist Kenny Kirkland, bassist Charnett Moffett, and drummer Jeff Watts) definitely was a straightahead outfit. But the effect of Marsalis’s music is oddly and disappointingly bland--in part, I think, because of the stylistic choices he makes, but mostly because he seems to have cast himself in a role that doesn't allow his true musical personality to shine through.

Both in-person and recorded evidence (notably his early work as a sideman with Art Blakey and the album on which he appeared as part of an all-star group that included Wayne Shorter and Charlie Haden) suggest that Marsalis is at his best when he permits the more impish, fanciful side of his music to emerge. There is, one suspects, an innate foxiness to the man--a need to set off musical fireworks just for the fun of it--that is ill-served when Marsalis dons the robes of the noble young prince of the realm and plays with a solemnity that threatens to become hollow.

On “The Nearness of You,” for instance, one was impressed by the sheer expertise of Marsalis’s playing--the delicate thread of tone that was so lengthily and, it seemed, so effortlessly sustained. But this was a romantic ballad, after all, and despite Marsalis’s apparent

adherence to the mood, there was very little lyricism involved--the dominant impression, instead, being a kind of blatant tastefulness (if that isn't a contradiction in terms). On the uptempo tunes a similar at-arms-length feeling prevailed; and throughout the band, with the possible exception of Kirkland's peppy but rather mechanical bluesiness, control for its own sake seemed to be the issue --with each solo filling in a form that, by jazz standards, felt much too predetermined. There was, in other words, very little sense of resistance being overcome in Marsalis’s playing, aside from the resistance of the trumpet itself; and while the latter approach holds certain charms, they are, at best, only charming.

One problem may be that the differences between Marsalis’s music and that of Miles Davis’s mid-1960s quintet, aren’t that significant; indeed, Marsalis and his young partners sound as though they are working within a tradition that is already so familiar to them that it is almost played out. Now, perhaps as yet unexplored and artistically useful knots and whorls still can be found in this style of music. But if they can be uncovered, Wynton Marsalis gives few signs that he is the man to do it.

Almost twenty years have passed, and it now seems clear that despite the prominence that the engines of cultural politics and publicity have given to Wynton Marsalis, his music (especially his latter-day orchestral work) is a non-issue aesthetically and has been for some time. Such Marsalis pastiches as the oratorio Blood on the Fields (1997), the suite In This House, On This Morning (1993) and the ballets Citi Movement (1991), Jazz (1993) and Jump Start (1995) seem to come from a strange alternate universe --one in which some of the surface gestures of Duke Ellington (Marsalis’s chief model) have been filtered through the toylike sensibility of Raymond Scott.

Marsalis remains a skilled instrumentalist, but he has never been a strikingly individual soloist. As for his orchestral works, their relative poverty of invention becomes clear when they are placed alongside the likes of George Russell’s Chromatic Universe and Living Time, Oliver Nelson’s Afro-American Sketches, Bill Holman’s Further Adventures, Muhal Richard Abrams’s The Hearinga Suite, Bob Brookmeyer’s Celebration, John Carter’s Roots and Folklore, and, of course, the more successful orchestral works of Ellington himself. A brief comparison between one of the major vocal episodes in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Blood on the Fields, “Will the Sun Come Out?” (sung by Cassandra Wilson), and the opening vocal movement of Ellington’s otherwise instrumental Liberian Suite (1947), “I Like the Sunrise” (sung by Al Hibbler), might be revealing. The works are comparable in theme--the subject of Blood on the Fields is slavery in America, while Liberian Suite was commissioned by the West African republic of Liberia, which was founded by freed American slaves in 1847--and both “Will the Sun Come Out?” (which lasts nine minutes) and “I Like the Sunrise” (half as long) are meditative semi-laments in which hope, pain, frustration, and doubt are meant to joust with each other. The melody of “I Like the Sunrise” has an equivocal, sinuous grace (climbing in pitch toward a point of harmonic release it cannot reach, it expressively stalls out on the words “raised up high, far out of sight”), while the key turn in the lyric--“I like the sunrise…it brings new hope, they say” (my emphasis) is commented upon and deepened by a tapestry of orchestral and solo voices (particularly those of baritone saxophonist Harry Carney and clarinetist Jimmy Hamilton). By contrast, the three verses of “Will the Sun Come Out?” go almost nowhere in twice the span of time. The melody itself, despite Wilson’s attempts to shape it, is hardly a melody at all but a lumpy recitative that sounds as though it had been assembled bar by bar, while the ensemble’s instrumental interventions and the solos of pianist Eric Reed merely distend things further. It could be argued that within the overall dramatic scheme of Blood on the Fields, “Will the Sun Come Out?” is meant to be an episode of near-paralysis, and that the music ought to mirror this. But listen to “Will the Sun Come Out?” and ask yourself how often you have heard nine minutes of music pass this uneventfully.

Why, then, the Marsalis phenomenon, such as it has been and perhaps still is? One struggles to think of another figure in the history of jazz who was a significant cultural presence but not a significant musical one. Dave Brubeck? Perhaps, but there is no counterpart in Marsalis’s music to the lyrical grace of Paul Desmond or to those moments when Brubeck himself was genuinely inspired. Paul Whiteman? Yes, in terms of the ability to marshal media attention, but if we credit Whiteman with all the music that was produced under his aegis, the comparison probably would be in his favor. Think again of Whiteman and Marsalis, though, not in terms of the kinds of music they made but of the cultural roles they filled. In both the 1920s and the 1980s (when Marsalis arose) the popularity and respectability of jazz were felt to be key issues--the difference being that in the twenties some part of the culture found it necessary and/or titillating to link a popular but not yet “respectable” music to the conventions of the concert hall, while in the eighties jazz had come to be regarded as a music of fading popular appeal that needed the imprimatur of respectability in order to survive--and to be subsidized, like the opera, the symphony orchestra, and the ballet. Thus the tuxedoed Whiteman, wielding his baton like Toscanini; thus Marsalis the articulate whiz kid, equally at home with Miles Davis and Haydn and foe of rap and hip-hop. But while the byplay between notions of what is lively and what is respectable may be an unavoidable part of the cultural landscape, a music that springs from such premises, as Marsalis’s so often seems to do, eventually stands revealed as a form of packaged status whose relationship to the actual making of music always was incidental.

[Larry Kart]

Refresh, baby.