Don't Call Me A Jazz Musician

[bretprimack]

Bret Primack, the Jazz Video Guy, has just posted "Don't Call Me A Jazz Musician" featuring Gary Bartz discussing his tenure with Miles Davis. The episode also includes some rare video of the 1971 incarnation of the Miles Davis band that includes Mr. Bartz, Keith Jarrett and Grammy winner Jack DeJohnette.

'Trying to answer the age-old question What Is Jazz is like pondering a zen koan," Bret explains. What started as the creation of former slaves in New Orleans has become a global umbrella of improvisation for many types of music. But what Billy Taylor calls America's classical music still gets no respect. Because of its origins, racism and back of the bus status for so long, many people simply don't take the music seriously, even though it's one of humankind's most unique forms of creative expression. And because the music has been largely ignored in the mass media, many people have a very one sided-idea of just what Jazz is. Perhaps they heard one track on the radio, or someone played them something, and they just didn't get it, they didn't hear it, so they assume all Jazz sounds the same. Bret believes that "one man's Kenny G is another's Albert Ayler."

Gary Bartz doesn't want to be called a Jazz musician. Although he's one of the best alto players on the planet, he doesn't want his music categorized. His former employer Miles Davis felt the same way. Bret remembers the "the first time I heard Gary live, in 1971, when he was playing with Miles in a band that included Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette at the Café A Go Go on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village (Richard Pryor opened for Miles). The music was loud, funky, electric and for purists, not the garden variety straight ahead Jazz of their tastes. But that didn't stop Miles, who took his music further and further away from where he started with Bird and bebop."

http://www.jazzvideoguy.tv

[Shrdlu]

It sounds very deep to say "I don't want it to be called jazz". Trane also said that.

But what's really wrong with calling it jazz? It never bothered me at all.

[Jazzmoose]

Bret believes that "one man's Kenny G is another's Albert Ayler.

There's something very disturbing about that sentence...

[Christiern]

It was not uncommon for musicians to express a dislike for the term, "jazz", in the 1970s, when we saw an awakening of sorts—the "Roots" aftereffect, which was both positive and detrimental. They often mentioned the word's past sexual connotation as a reason why the music should be called something more dignified.

Miles mentioned that to me, as did Jimmy Heath when he was a guest on my TV show—I have a clip of that, somewhere. Anyway, it was the thing to say back in the afro hair/dashiki period. I saw it as a PC flurry that would eventually become nothing more than a subject for Primack posts, and the like.

I was right and even Jimmy Heath reverted to "jazz" before razors hit the last afro.

[AllenLowe]

I remember Max Roach complaining, as well, that the term 'ragtime' was demeaning - these, however, are all VERY complicated subjects which relate to my recent tempest with Marsalis. Jazz's past, and its deep mix with the African American vernacular makes for some strange bedfellows (both literally and figuratively, considering Jelly Roll Morton's roots). Reminds me also of reading about how Pigmeat Markham was pressured by the Los Angeles NAACP to change his act, which they considered (and this was the 1940s, I think) demeaning and tom-ish. This ruined him professionally, ironically or not. But, as I said, it gets more complicated the more you get into it, from Amos and Andy (the old tv series, NOT the radio show) to black vaudeville.

I'm also bothered by the following: "What started as the creation of former slaves in New Orleans" - and I'm not getting into the hoary old argument about where jazz began. I am just thinking that those former salaves did many other musical things as well, things that jazz people seldom if ever acknowledge, from cajun music to string band music to rythm and blues (Professor Longhair, et al) - if we are going to discuss the social implications of the music, we have to acknoweldge ALL the music and not just jazz -

Edited February 17, 2009 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

Way back in 1983 or so, one of the WSQ, Bluiett maybe, told me that they called their music "black classical" instead of "jazz" because "classical" music got paid a noticeably higher airplay royalty than did "jazz" or other "popular" musics.

[Teasing the Korean]

Any attempt to label a genre is limiting. Still, you need words and labels to have a conversation. I understand where people are coming from, but there is no magical answer.

[Hot Ptah]

It is my perception that once a jazz musician says that he or she is really a "classical" musician, as in "jazz is America's classical music", any hope for a smidgen of commercial success is gone--unless public subsidies are considered commercial success. If you want to alienate young listeners, and many older listeners who might be mildly open to jazz, just call yourself "really a classical" musician. That will be the death knell of album sales and concert ticket sales, as popular music fans won't dream of checking you out, and classical music fans won't accept you either.

[JSngry]

It is my perception that once a jazz musician says that he or she is really a "classical" musician, as in "jazz is America's classical music", any hope for a smidgen of commercial success is gone--unless public subsidies are considered commercial success. If you want to alienate young listeners, and many older listeners who might be mildly open to jazz, just call yourself "really a classical" musician. That will be the death knell of album sales and concert ticket sales, as popular music fans won't dream of checking you out, and classical music fans won't accept you either.

"Classical" music is a support system of its own. I'd not consider public subsidies a "failure" if the alternative is being broke.

There's money to be had there, believe me.