Making a Case for the ‘Cult’ of Jazz

[7/4]

June 29, 2008

Making a Case for the ‘Cult’ of Jazz

By TAMMY LA GORCE

SOUTH ORANGE

He may have won 17 Grammys and dozens of other musical accolades, but that doesn’t make him a popular guy.

At least that’s what the guitarist Pat Metheny had to say to about 100 sweat-drenched New Jersey high school jazz musicians here earlier this month.

“In 2008 the culture is openly hostile to jazz,” Mr. Metheny said at the South Orange Performing Arts Center during a 90-minute question-and-answer session — a “high school master class” — organized by Jazz House Kids, a Montclair group devoted to jazz education. “The fact that we’re sitting here having this conversation on a 100-degree day, it’s almost like a cult thing.”

“In your 14 or 15 years on earth you’ve gravitated toward .001 percent of people — people who are hip,” he said. “But you’re rubbing up against the extremes of culture,” he warned.

This did not discourage the clusters of students who boarded buses from Mountain Lakes High School, Millburn High School, Columbia High School in Maplewood, Randolph High School and Arts High School in Newark.

“It was awesome the way he explained how he started out and his experiences as a jazz player,” said Michele Arenas, a 16-year-old pianist and member of Randolph High’s jazz band. “It made you want to work hard.”

Ms. Arenas was one of just a handful of girls in the audience. “Somehow, jazz appeals to them more,” she said, meaning boys.

Tim Egan, 18, a saxophone player at West Orange High, said, “What I took from it is that music is hard, and that I need to have a lot of confidence and keep at it.” He drove himself to the arts center even though his school had canceled the trip, and the school day, because of triple-digit temperatures.

For the nonprofit Jazz House Kids, formed in 2002 by the vocalist Melissa Walker, 43, getting Mr. Metheny to speak was a big deal, if not a surprising one. Ms. Walker’s husband, the bassist Christian McBride, is a member of the Pat Metheny Trio.

In addition to organizing events like the one with Mr. Metheny, Jazz House Kids conducts programs for students from second through eighth grades at schools throughout New Jersey.

Its “Let’s Build a Jazz House” workshop series introduces up to 100 students at a time to jazz culture and history and lets children explore individual instruments. A performance by professional musicians is part of the package.

Jazz House Kids also offers retreats for teachers interested in incorporating jazz into class work. Though only seven schools of about 40 that Ms. Walker had invited participated (St. Benedict’s in Newark joined West Orange High in canceling because of the heat), she said she was pleased with the turnout.

“Some schools have already ended their school year, and others had conflicts,” she said.

Whether they had conflicts or not, those that passed up the event missed a rare opportunity.

“This was pretty special,” said Mr. Metheny, 54, a Missouri native who lives in Manhattan and played a five-minute song for the group in addition to answering questions. “I’m usually doing 29 concerts every 30 days. I guess I get to do something like this maybe three or four times a year.”

If the tone of his question-and-answer session lacked both scholarly formality and sugar coating, it’s because that’s the nature of the music, Mr. Metheny said, and he is a believer in following its bylaws.

“The institutionalization of jazz is something that rarely works,” he said. “As soon as you start to go there, it turns into this murky-brown mall-like thing. But what Melissa is doing with Jazz House Kids actively resists that.

“This presentation was alive,” he said.

That may have had something to do with where it took place. “New Jersey has always been something different,” Mr. Metheny said. “There’s a level of passion mixed with a lack of jadedness here — an unbridled enthusiasm. We’ve been a lot of places, but people never give it up like they do in Jersey.

“It’s really cool.”

[Shawn]

Somewhere in NY a head just exploded.

[7/4]

“In 2008 the culture is openly hostile to jazz,” Mr. Metheny said at the South Orange Performing Arts Center during a 90-minute question-and-answer session — a “high school master class” — organized by Jazz House Kids, a Montclair group devoted to jazz education. “The fact that we’re sitting here having this conversation on a 100-degree day, it’s almost like a cult thing.”

“In your 14 or 15 years on earth you’ve gravitated toward .001 percent of people — people who are hip,” he said. “But you’re rubbing up against the extremes of culture,” he warned.

I feel like I could be culturally trapped in the sticks, but I'm only 10 miles from NYC.

[7/4]

Somewhere in NY a head just exploded.

Life goes on...

[7/4]

I feel like I could be culturally trapped in the sticks, but I'm only 10 miles from NYC.

A recent conversation with a local...

them: So what are you listening to?

me: Henry Cow.

them: That's Jazz right?

me: more like progressive rock...

them: I don't like progrock.

me: there's not much rock, it's not like Rush or Yes. The group is named after Henry Cowell.

them: is he Jazz?

me: no. He's a classical composer.

them: I've never heard of him.

....and so on.

[seeline]

"The culture is openly hostile to jazz."

I wonder if he gave any examples to back up this statement?

Looks like he could have worded it better... For one, I'm genuinely puzzled by his use of "the culture." What culture (or sub-culture) is he referring to? Seriously.

Edited to add: this sounds a lot like some of the recurring posts on another board...

Edited July 1, 2008 by seeline

[blajay]

What paper is this from?

[7/4]

What paper is this from?

New York Times, Jun 27, 2008

[Teasing the Korean]

Edited to add: this sounds a lot like some of the recurring posts on another board...

I was thinking that EXACT same thing.

[7/4]

Edited to add: this sounds a lot like some of the recurring posts on another board...

I was thinking that EXACT same thing.

Can't say I'm real familiar with the other boards, I don't check 'em out too often.

[Teasing the Korean]

Can't say I'm real familiar with the other boards, I don't check 'em out too often.

You're not missing much.

[7/4]

Can't say I'm real familiar with the other boards, I don't check 'em out too often.

You're not missing much.

That would be why I barely check 'em out. Just the musicians forum at AAJ and the ECM folder at JC....

[seeline]

That would be why I barely check 'em out. Just the musicians forum at AAJ....

Which is exactly where these kinds of posts show up on an all-too-regular basis.

One of the reasons I'm saying that: I was banned permanently less than 2 weeks ago, partly for making some noise about this kind of narrow-mindedness.

Edited July 2, 2008 by seeline

[7/4]

I didn't notice them, I'll look for them...I don't know those people. I'd rather discuss it here if anyone is up for it.

.

[seeline]

There's a group of people there who tend to focus on how bad off they are because nobody listens to jazz, or likes it, etc.

"Here" is a far better place to discuss, I think!

[7/4]

There's a group of people there who tend to focus on how bad off they are because nobody listens to jazz, or likes it, etc.

"Here" is a far better place to discuss, I think!

I'm reading it now.

I'm just frustrated with the locals around here, there just has to be more to life than TV, movies and sports - I wish these people knew it.

[seeline]

I'm now living in a very small town, and I hear you... Because without the internet, i think I'd go completely bats. (And not just from lack of live jazz + other kinds of music I like.)

[7/4]

The irony is that I live right outside of NYC, I just don't have the time to hang there all the time like the old days.

How close? Our pollution blows into NYC and makes theirs worse.

.

[clifford_thornton]

(And not just from lack of live jazz + other kinds of music I like.)

What about jive lazz?

[Joe G]

"The culture is openly hostile to jazz."

I wonder if he gave any examples to back up this statement?

Looks like he could have worded it better... For one, I'm genuinely puzzled by his use of "the culture." What culture (or sub-culture) is he referring to? Seriously.

He has used this phrase or one close to it in interviews several times over the last several years. American culture in general is what I think he means. A popular culture that adores American Idol is probably not going to have any patience for someone developing themselves and their work over long spans of time. Based on my own experience, I feel he is, in general, talking about the great amount of resistance that a jazz or improvising musician often encounters in trying to get his or her work out there. People have a lot of negative connotations that arise when the word "jazz" is mentioned. Club owner to musician: "We tried jazz and it didn't work."

[seeline]

Fair enough, as far as what you're saying, but I think statements like "openly hostile" set up an Us vs. Them dichotomy that doesn't really serve his cause - especially when he's doing HS education gigs. I can see why he might try to appeal to the kids on the basis of "If you do this, you're so cool that nobody else gets it except for other people who play this stuff," but...

To my mind, it seems to be creating barriers where none have to exist.

I guess I'd like to see a more nuanced explanation from Metheny himself. As is, "the culture" reminds me way too much of the use of this phrase - "the gay lifestyle" - by a lot of people who are upset and (maybe) threatened by the idea that gay people exist. Yes, there's a stereotypical gay subculture, but there's no single "gay lifestyle." (I'm not meaning to get on a religious or political tangent here; it's the 1st comparison that came to mind, in terms of how language is being used.)

It seems to reduce "pop culture" to being all bad, and making jazz into some sort of all-good, "high culture" pursuit that's only going to be grasped or enjoyed by a select handful of initiates - kinda like the Masons.

Edited July 2, 2008 by seeline

[JSngry]

"The culture" has always been "hostile" to jazz in one form or another. What's changed is that there used to be a "jazz culture" that was big and broad enough to take care of all that, a system of highways with loops, feeder roads, interstate, local, county roads that all went somewhere, and there really was no way you couldn't get there from here unless you really didn't want too. Some folk bitch about all the Cannonballs, Eddie Harris, etc. bands/gigs, but... that shit was part of an overall fiber, and as such, it served the role for some of getting on the road from here to there, and it made the trip seem pretty damn natural too. Transportation the way you want it to be!

Nowadays, it's all about "I'm playing the real shit and everybody else is jivin' ". Ain't no highway system there, unless it's a self-absorbed highway to hell and/or oblivion, whichever is more American Classical.

It's come to this - talking to teenagers to get them to get on a road that ain't going nowhere in the hopes that the increased traffic will force the road to miraculously change direction.

When that works, let's try giving everybody cancer so that it can cure itself!

On the other hand, ain't nothing wrong with "jazz" that killing it off so it can begin to grow again won't fix (and that goes quintuple (at the very least) for what passes as the "jazz culture" of the last 25 or so years).

Don't laugh (or curse), that's how forests and forest fires work.

Edited July 2, 2008 by JSngry

[AllenLowe]

"I'm playing the real shit and everybody else is jivin' "

actually, when it comes to Maine, I pretty much feel this way about myself -

(there's a few others, yes, like our own Tom Keith) -

isolation is a problem - add age as an issue and you'll be ready to explode -

that's why I feel musicians should organize, and I'm currently working on something with someone else on this board which addresses not only the need to take control but also the occasional power of the internet - hate the way everyone else is doing it? Than do it yourself - like a lot of other people I've been burned more than once (and currently am on an informal blacklist in Portland Maine due to public complaints about arts-group corruption) - I even decided to make a film about it -

of course this is not the solution to everyone's problem, but self-empowerment makes a BIG difference (why do I suddenly feel like L. Ron Hubbard?).

[Teasing the Korean]

Maybe Pat Metheny is mixing up his own cult with the "cult of jazz." They don't necessarily overlap.

[seeline]

Maybe Pat Metheny is mixing up his own cult with the "cult of jazz." They don't necessarily overlap.

I think you've got it!