Making a Case for the ‘Cult’ of Jazz

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Just got back from a 2-night, 3-day 25th anniversary lockup/in w/LTB at an Omni hotel,

Happy anniversary! Hope it was as good as it might have been.

Also in/at the hotel the same time as us - a group of about 20 KAL hostesses

KAL=Kan't Arf Larf?

MG

[Larry Kart]

About the latter, I couldn't help but think that that music was made by a band that was 4/5 hardcore junkies who even now would probably scare the living shit out of everybody staying there and 99% of the people working there.

[JSngry]

Thanks! It was better than either one of us dreamed, and we were having pretty fervid dreams.

KAL = Korean Air Lines

[Larry Kart]

Now that you mention KAL, I don't know what LTB means.

[JSngry]

Sorry, LTB = the Lovely and Talented Brenda, my wife.

It's a term I've used here and at the BNBB for a long time, but sometimes I forget that not everybody's gonna know that. My bad there.

[Larry Kart]

Kinda thought it might refer to your wife in some way; now I know it's homemade.

[AllenLowe]

somehow this all reminds me of when a friend of mine, about 30 years ago, was working for a friend of his who ran a skin mag - lots of naked pictures, women doing odd things, the usual Hustler-type stuff - it was my friend's job to write the captions, and he had the women each talking about her favorite music - like Lennie Tristano and Charlie Parker, also had them spouting theories on improvisation and Tristano's rhythmic quirks, talking about their preferences for later vs earlier Lester Young - it was a scream, and each of the women sounded like an ethno-musicology major - hilarious stuff that I wish I'd saved - and the point is that they correctly assumed nobody would notice or give a crap, and nobody did -

not sure how it relates to all this, but it does say something about not only indifference to jazz but about how the discussion of the music is so foreign to most people that they don't even notice that it's happening -

[Big Beat Steve]

But if I think that it still "matters" for anything other than personal pleasure or a window into a specific time, place, and culture, then I am being seriously delusional, because it doesn't. It just doesn't. I mean, if oatmeal-legged stage-grandmothers and totally emasculated teenage boys can sit still while hearing Trane & Philly Joe slash their way through two choruses and not so much as even squirm in their seat just a little bit, then any illusions that this music is still truly (i.e. - intirnsically) "hip" or "cool" are just plain, freakin' nuts.

I'm not so sure about that. Isn't it a bit like MG said above: The frist step to tolerating and accepting the music (i.e. modern jazz - though to those outside the jazz world the notion of "modern" in connection with some 40 to 60 year old music must be abit odd) is NOT to run away or protest loud as soon as the first few bars are played across speakers.

Of course some (probably the majority) will just take it in as a background tone pattern like they'd take in elevator muzak, but unless this jazz dispensed was just the more universally palatable Shearing and Brubeck fare (and apparently, from your description, it wasn't) then accepting this music even as background music over any lengthy period of time takes some serious adaptation and a degree of tolerance that still isn't found everywhere. And IMHO this IS the first step to getting into this music in some way. Kinda late, but better than running away screaming, isn't it? And who knows - maybe there are a few out there among this crowd who find it hip enough to take in their supper not to some sugary sounds of one zillion Mantovani or Faith strings but to some jazz blowing or tinkling? If only one or the other of those who might actually find this kind of musical background "kinda hip" will be intrigued enough to check out some jazz CD sampler or to even attend some jazz open air some time (if only out of sheer curiosity or because "it's the thing to do") then this isn't a bad thing either.

Actually, I wish my better half wouldn't squirm the way she does when I play a certain kind of bop/cool in our music room at home. So are all those hotel guests hipper than my better half ? (I mean, they can't ALL the tone deaf! )

[JSngry]

(....though to those outside the jazz world the notion of "modern" in connection with some 40 to 60 year old music must be abit odd)

Dude, I'm in the "jazz world" & it strikes me as a bit odd.... You got kids in high school now taking classes to learn how to play bebop. How modern can that be?

I mean, ok, 2-3 more people buy a CD sampler, and then buy some OJCs & RVGs. A few more kids show up on the playground.

And then what?

Has it ever happened that a society has a collective awakening that there was really, really good music made in the past, and that it was so good that everybody stopped what they were doing musically and went back to what people used to do? Ever? Lord knows, there's schools across the world cranking out clones dedicated to the hope & proposition that this is going to happen any day now.

Tell you what - I'll take a nap, and y'all wake me when this comes to pass.

Cancel that, I'd like to wake up at some point before I die...

The very best to be hoped for in any cultural dynamic is that people develop enough discernment to not automatically accept that which is spoon-fed them (and not just musically) and apply that faculty to their life in the here and now.

But somehow, I don't think that "getting into" 50-60 year old music because you heard it piped into the restaurant of a "nice" hotel really represents any sort of independent-minded honing of one's critical thinking skills....

Is it "good music"? Well hell yeah, of course it is. But that term implies a myriad of things to a myriad of people, and at least as often as not what it implies to more than a few people runs 50% or more contrary to what that meant in terms of the music in its own time, and irregardless of whether or not that ultimately "matters" the net result is that music that was once "dangerous" (or at the very least, "counter") to The Establishment now is part of that same Establishment, and either the music makes The Establishment "hipper" (in which case, What A Wonderful World This Would Be), or else...

Look around. You tell me.

[seeline]

As MG pointed out, jazz serves as background music - and is accepted as such. You could say much the same for many other genres of music, including classical.

there's nothing "wrong" about that per se. (I think, anyhow...)

At least Starbuck's has been making an effort to sell the music, in addition to playing it in their shops!

[JSngry]

Absolutely nothing wrong with it, other than the possibility that any piped in music can theoretically be seen as intrusive and/or propagandistic. I can go there from time to time, but not anywhere resembling always.

But...

There seems to be a school of thought that absolutely rejoices at the notion of hearing Stanley Turrentine, et al as background music, as if it signals The Dawning Of A New Day, when Enlightened Men & Women will walk the Earth. Pop Culture as we know it will disappear, the airwaves will be dominated by Finger-Tappin', Poe-Snoppin' Good Ol Swing Swang Swungin' JAZZ!!! and The Hip Shall Rule Eternal.

Ain't gonna happen, not now, not ever. And if it accidentally does, it ain't gonna be as fun as one might think, unless one is in fact one of those who fails to see the inherent contradiction in the terms "hip" and "masses". I celebrate both, feel both, but in no way for the same reasons and in no way do I see them as anyway "the same", as if the only reason "the masses" aren't "hip" is a simple matter of lack of exposure, and If Only They KNEW.... That, Dear Friends, is the height of both ignorance and arrogance.

Apples & oranges, never met Twain, render into Ceasar & all that.

And please, close the door - can't you see I'm dressing?

[JSngry]

To tie this back in to something else, even though I was adamant in my appreciation of Kenny Burrell in another thread, that admiration is based on context. Burrell's importance/relevance/whatever is as much a part of his place in the continuum of his time as it is anything, perhaps even more so. If all of jazz, or even all of music, operated from the Burrell ethos - hard-working, substantive, but also always "proper", then what would our culture be except a highly efficient machine cranking out highly effective machine babies.

Which is not a bad thing as long as you also got some other shit going on. Better those type than many others. But if that's all you got, then you ain't got much afaic, except for "better" machines. And if the only way to get "mass acceptance" for "jazz" is to make it "safe" (or if it just naturally becomes "safe" as a part of cultural evolution), then what are we getting out of the deal?

Not much except a newer version of the Same Old Same Old as far as I can see, and although that's cool in a "Pop Culture" type Instant Gratificational way, human nature being what it is, the Old Cool becomes the New Respectable and only The Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

[Larry Kart]

...render into Caesar...

Sounds like a nasty recipe.

[JSngry]

Eat two!

[Larry Kart]

I come to baste Caesar, not to marinade him.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

There seems to be a school of thought that absolutely rejoices at the notion of hearing Stanley Turrentine, et al as background music, as if it signals The Dawning Of A New Day, when Enlightened Men & Women will walk the Earth. Pop Culture as we know it will disappear, the airwaves will be dominated by Finger-Tappin', Poe-Snoppin' Good Ol Swing Swang Swungin' JAZZ!!! and The Hip Shall Rule Eternal.

Is there? I think it's great to go into somewhere and hear Stanley, as I do when I'm arrested mid-stride by Grant Green on a TV programme. But that's for my pleasure.

Ain't gonna happen, not now, not ever. And if it accidentally does, it ain't gonna be as fun as one might think,

Indeed, it DID happen, in the late seventies/early eighties (well in Britain), and indeed again, it wasn't as much fun as I'd have liked it to be. And for the reasons you've given; basically, the past is a foreign country and people react to the past in a present day tense; what else could they do?

But there's a pragmatic aspect to this, which I'd expect you to notice. The first effect of the Acid Jazz thing in Britain was that the prices of second hand Soul Jazz LPs went through the roof. I wasn't too pleased; I'd been buying this stuff real cheap. But the second effect was that the stuff began to come out on CDs - more than began; Fantasy issued about 100 twofers of that material that I doubt would have seen the light of day otherwise. I was pleased about that. The third effect was the use of jazz samples in Hip Hop. The fourth effect was that many of the musicians got paid. And by any standard, THAT is a damn good thing. And the fifth effect seems to have been a general broadening of the minds of he "hip" - you've remarked on this yourself in the context of dance music. And that is ANOTHER good thing.

The world turns and people find all kinds of stuff useful.

MG

[JSngry]

So...the best that ultimately happens is that the music extends its shelf life as a marketable commodity?

And that benefits who, how?

I had an experience in college, ca. 1977. I had just turned on the TV, and there was a rerun of Bewitched. At first I enjoyed it, but then it dawned on me - as a member of the Baby Boomer Generation, I was already being targeted for lifelong assault by The Powers That Be. I was being set up to be told that whatever I thought was cool was cool, and would be for as long as I wanted it to be. I wasn't going to have to really "understand" it, deal with it, I was just going to have to think I did, and failing that, just act like I did. But as long as I wanted it, as ;ong as it could be sold to me, I was going to be able to get it one way or the other.

And so it went.

[Jim Alfredson]

But if I think that it still "matters" for anything other than personal pleasure or a window into a specific time, place, and culture, then I am being seriously delusional, because it doesn't. It just doesn't. I mean, if oatmeal-legged stage-grandmothers and totally emasculated teenage boys can sit still while hearing Trane & Philly Joe slash their way through two choruses and not so much as even squirm in their seat just a little bit, then any illusions that this music is still truly (i.e. - intirnsically) "hip" or "cool" are just plain, freakin' nuts.

I'm not so sure about that. Isn't it a bit like MG said above: The frist step to tolerating and accepting the music (i.e. modern jazz - though to those outside the jazz world the notion of "modern" in connection with some 40 to 60 year old music must be abit odd) is NOT to run away or protest loud as soon as the first few bars are played across speakers.

Of course some (probably the majority) will just take it in as a background tone pattern like they'd take in elevator muzak, but unless this jazz dispensed was just the more universally palatable Shearing and Brubeck fare (and apparently, from your description, it wasn't) then accepting this music even as background music over any lengthy period of time takes some serious adaptation and a degree of tolerance that still isn't found everywhere. And IMHO this IS the first step to getting into this music in some way. Kinda late, but better than running away screaming, isn't it?

You're over-thinking this. The reason people, young and old, don't bat an eye is not because they tolerate or accept jazz music, it's because we are inundated with music everywhere we go and nobody pays any attention to any of it.

I get weird looks from people all the time because I ask for music to be turned down in restaurants or the doctor's office or the gas station, etc. Most people don't even notice it's there.

[JSngry]

There seems to be a school of thought that absolutely rejoices at the notion of hearing Stanley Turrentine, et al as background music, as if it signals The Dawning Of A New Day, when Enlightened Men & Women will walk the Earth. Pop Culture as we know it will disappear, the airwaves will be dominated by Finger-Tappin', Poe-Snoppin' Good Ol Swing Swang Swungin' JAZZ!!! and The Hip Shall Rule Eternal.

Is there? I think it's great to go into somewhere and hear Stanley, as I do when I'm arrested mid-stride by Grant Green on a TV programme. But that's for my pleasure.

I used to enjoy it, because the places where such a thing would happen used to be at least reasonably congruent to the context of the original music. But when it gets this far gone, it's actually kind of creepy. If you stop to think about it, which at the time, I didn't, having far more pressing and pleasant matters to tend to.

Ain't gonna happen, not now, not ever. And if it accidentally does, it ain't gonna be as fun as one might think,

Indeed, it DID happen, in the late seventies/early eighties (well in Britain)...

Was that actually a mass movement, or a "subculture". I was always under the impression that it was the latter. was I wrong?

And the fifth effect seems to have been a general broadening of the minds of he "hip" - you've remarked on this yourself in the context of dance music. And that is ANOTHER good thing.

Dude, haven't you been reading consensus of the board? That is a HORRIBLE thing, an ABOMINATION!

Seriously, I think it's a helluva lot better that the essence of the music be kept alive in non-literal form than literal. Non-literal is by nature more fluid, and therefore harder to capture/conquer. And the samplings/deconstructions/remixes/what-have-yous do a much better job of representing a certain essence of the music, I think (I mean, the culture has evolved to the point where one phrase of Bird can communicate his essence just as truly as an entire box set - if presented knowingly, and that's a huge "if"...), than does just plucking it whole from its home, washing it clean, and placing it back "whole" again (but what a hole there is in that whole!) into a context where the music is a slave to a foreign master(s), The Freedom Principle in the service of....something else altogether.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

So...the best that ultimately happens is that the music extends its shelf life as a marketable commodity?

Yes, I think so. The alternative is that it doesn't.

As far as we know, no music has lived for more than two thousand years (yet), so the alternative seems to be the rule, even if there turn out to be some exceptions, such as the music of North Africa, which is heading for 1,300 years as a living tradition now.

And that benefits who, how?

Whoever benefits, benefits. I do happen to know that Mozart isn't benefiting, nor his family But I won't say that no one is benefiting, or should benefit, from the fact that what he did has had an extended shelf life as a marketable commodity.

I had an experience in college, ca. 1977. I had just turned on the TV, and there was a rerun of Bewitched. At first I enjoyed it, but then it dawned on me - as a member of the Baby Boomer Generation, I was already being targeted for lifelong assault by The Powers That Be. I was being set up to be told that whatever I thought was cool was cool, and would be for as long as I wanted it to be. I wasn't going to have to really "understand" it, deal with it, I was just going to have to think I did, and failing that, just act like I did. But as long as I wanted it, as ;ong as it could be sold to me, I was going to be able to get it one way or the other.

And so it went.

Absolutely. Resist Authority. Fight the power. Make up your own mind. Don't accept that even those who argue authoritatively, sanely and persuasively (such as yourself) are necessarily right.

MG

[7/4]

Absolutely. Resist Authority. Fight the power. Make up your own mind. Don't accept that even those who argue authoritatively, sanely and persuasively (such as yourself) are necessarily right.

.

[AllenLowe]

well, Jim got it right - I think we discussed this in relation to downloading in another thread some time ago - everything is disposable, a CD project is now just another dissectable commodity - kinda like medical students taking apart a body post-autopsy, to paraphrase Mingus, I think -

[JSngry]

And that benefits who, how?

Whoever benefits, benefits. I do happen to know that Mozart isn't benefiting, nor his family But I won't say that no one is benefiting, or should benefit, from the fact that what he did has had an extended shelf life as a marketable commodity.

Ok, you tell me - what's your guess as to the ratio of people who have actually benefited from Mozart in a non-economic sense to those who have made big bucks off of him thanks to those who used him as a battering ram in the remarked-upon-in-another-thread Cultural Indoctrination Phase Of The Class War?

I'm not saying that nobody should benefit in any of these ways, just that if/when the world gets to a point where Bird & Trane replace (or even coexist with) Mozart & Beethoven in the Panthepon Of Great Artists, does that mean that the Cultural Indoctrination Phase Of The Class War is over, or does it just mean that it's updated its weaponry?

i know, we won't know for sure until (or if) we get there, but If I was a betting man, I'd lay odds on it being the latter.

I can hear some people saying, "Jesus, Jim, what will it take to make you happy? Why is it so bad that people are hearing good jazz?"

Simple - they're not hearing it, at least not when it's used as background music or any other "safe", "Establishment" purpose. They're being targeted and conditioned by it.

If they are hearing it, it's in spite of the intent of its placement, not because of it.

What will it take to make me happy? Equally simple - for people to wake up and get a grip on how they're being played. Once that happens you can choose the whens and hows of how you get played, because let's face it, sometimes the good of getting played outweighs the bad. But it needs to be a voluntary act.

As it pertains to the jazz of the past, ideally I would like for people to simply be able to hear the very real blood, sweat, tears, and cum that is in the best of it, as well as the dignifying of same that it so compellingly created. And then - do they same in their lives, in their times.

Do I seriously expect this to ever happen? Oh hell no! And aside from the little diversions of posting to this board and occasional real-life conversations, I don't let it ruin my day, if you know what I mean. But if and when I see a chance to give a loving whomp upside the head of a collective delusionality, I'll do so. Hey, that's what friends are for!

Now, what, if anything, this has to do with Pat Metheny, I don't know. so somebody whomp me upside my head, ok?

[Alexander]

But if I think that it still "matters" for anything other than personal pleasure or a window into a specific time, place, and culture, then I am being seriously delusional, because it doesn't. It just doesn't. I mean, if oatmeal-legged stage-grandmothers and totally emasculated teenage boys can sit still while hearing Trane & Philly Joe slash their way through two choruses and not so much as even squirm in their seat just a little bit, then any illusions that this music is still truly (i.e. - intirnsically) "hip" or "cool" are just plain, freakin' nuts.

I'm not so sure about that. Isn't it a bit like MG said above: The frist step to tolerating and accepting the music (i.e. modern jazz - though to those outside the jazz world the notion of "modern" in connection with some 40 to 60 year old music must be abit odd) is NOT to run away or protest loud as soon as the first few bars are played across speakers.

Of course some (probably the majority) will just take it in as a background tone pattern like they'd take in elevator muzak, but unless this jazz dispensed was just the more universally palatable Shearing and Brubeck fare (and apparently, from your description, it wasn't) then accepting this music even as background music over any lengthy period of time takes some serious adaptation and a degree of tolerance that still isn't found everywhere. And IMHO this IS the first step to getting into this music in some way. Kinda late, but better than running away screaming, isn't it?

You're over-thinking this. The reason people, young and old, don't bat an eye is not because they tolerate or accept jazz music, it's because we are inundated with music everywhere we go and nobody pays any attention to any of it.

I get weird looks from people all the time because I ask for music to be turned down in restaurants or the doctor's office or the gas station, etc. Most people don't even notice it's there.

That's my feeling. Music has become background noise. No one pays the slightest attention to it. When I hear something good and point it out, people are often surprised because they hadn't noticed it.

What people need to appreciate music is some QUIET. If they went a few hours of the day without hearing any music at all, they might appreciate the music they hear more...

[Niko]

saw Helge Schneider's movie Jazzclub yesterday and was strongly reminded of this thread

Steinberg (played by Jimmy Woode) on Jazz (in german, the others basically say "this sounds good say it again")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L73dd1UwQzc

the trio (Schneider, Woode, Pete York) playing... ("watch what happens when a customer happens to enter the jazz club...")

edit to add one more, the jazz musician in his part-time job as (fake latino) call boy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jONRsxtCZTM

Edited July 7, 2008 by Niko