Jazz Populism?

[JSngry]

The fact that a large proportion of my audience isn't comprised of jazz people is ultimately incidental to the fact that I'm happy doing what it is that I'm doing.

Incidental, maybe. Coincidental, maybe not... comfort in one's own skin - and all that comes from that - is a pretty contagious quality, truth be told.

As far as thinking small...I've never had the opportunity to be directly involved in the logistics of a situation where it was necessary, or even feasible, to start by thinking big...but having been around enough "big" things (musically and otherwise), it seems to be that the principles are still the same. The scale changes, obviously, and with that comes a different, for lack of a better word, "slant" (or tone, or whatever), but yeah, at root it's still the same thing - know who you are, know what you do, find the people who want it, do your damndest to get it to them, and don't fuck up the relationship unless you need for it to end.

The devil is in executing the principles, not in the principles themselves.

[Chuck Nessa]

Is all this based on Joel's income?

[JSngry]

All what? The desire to make jazz "popular" again?

Seriously, if you got the capital to do it on a bigger scale, then hell yeah, carpe diem. But the principle of finding who it is who wants what you do, be it a few people on a chat board or agents who book festivals or people with record labels or whatever it is, and then giving them what they want (which is, after all what you do, and if it's not, then either you found the wrong people or else maybe there's a deal to made with somebody, even the devil, it all depends on what you really want and what you really do), hey, that's always going to be how things work, for as long as they do work, no?

[Chuck Nessa]

I just posted a question - not a judgment.

[mjzee]

Please allow this non-musician/big listener a few words. Inherent in the original question is the notion that one must "dumb down" music to appeal to an audience. This, of course, is the flip side of "they didn't get my music, so they must be idiots." The very premise is flawed. The audience can find challenging, inventive music appealing. Miles is a perfect example. In his autobiography, a recurrent motif from the '60's on, was (to paraphrase) "the critics hated my music, but I didn't care, because the audiences paid to see me and I was playing larger spaces." It seems that Miles really kept tabs on the audience, and not just because he loved the money. I think if Miles saw his audiences dwindling, he'd consider that a sign that something was deeply wrong.

I've stated these opinions before: the real problem with jazz is the rise of university teaching of the music, rather than learning it on the bandstand. I don't think musicians are even playing for themselves; they're playing for the approval of academics. Theory has replaced emotion. Audiences are voting with their feet: they're leaving.

Solutions? Play tunes people can recognize (the great American songbook, but also newer tunes - whatever you can make your own), be more tuneful, play with feeling but don't go "out" after 30 seconds (George Adams, anyone?), don't make hyena noises, and keep the beat. If you see people moving in their seats, you're accomplishing something.

The beauty of jazz is that people don't have to "understand" what you're playing; they'll feel it in their gut. My favorite story in that regard is from the booklet to Clifford Brown - The Complete Blue Note and Pacific Jazz Recordings: Jimmy Heath tells the story of a gig he played with Clifford at Spider Kelly's club in Philadelphia. "It was a little place on Mole St., near Market, and a woman who was completely out of her head, you know intoxicated, came up to the bandstand after the set. We'd been playing all the bebop heads we heard Dizzy and them play, and this lady comes up and says "I don't know what it is that you guys are playing, but you" - and she points right at Clifford - "are playing the hell out of it.""

[fasstrack]

Is all this based on Joel's income?

GOD HELP US ALL, I HOPE NOT...

Please allow this non-musician/big listener a few words. Inherent in the original question is the notion that one must "dumb down" music to appeal to an audience. This, of course, is the flip side of "they didn't get my music, so they must be idiots." The very premise is flawed.

I'm very sorry you read that into what I wrote. It is indeed a flawed premise and if you read again what I wrote it is not mine.

FWIW, mjzee, everything else you said I couldn't agree with more, and well-put.

[JSngry]

Alright then, there's three for ya'. Carpe diem!

[ep1str0phy]

Solutions? Play tunes people can recognize (the great American songbook, but also newer tunes - whatever you can make your own), be more tuneful, play with feeling but don't go "out" after 30 seconds (George Adams, anyone?), don't make hyena noises, and keep the beat. If you see people moving in their seats, you're accomplishing something.

Point taken, although I've been in situations where either I and/or the band performing did the opposite of all of those things and did get people moving in (and not from) their seats. Again, I think it has something to do with the particular audience you're catering to. There are a lot of people (not a giant number, but a significant one) who won't attend shows due to regular pulse, recognizable tunes, etc.

[AllenLowe]

I like Hyena noises - especially those mating calls.

[JSngry]

Solutions? Play tunes people can recognize (the great American songbook, but also newer tunes - whatever you can make your own), be more tuneful, play with feeling but don't go "out" after 30 seconds (George Adams, anyone?), don't make hyena noises, and keep the beat. If you see people moving in their seats, you're accomplishing something.

Point taken, although I've been in situations where either I and/or the band performing did the opposite of all of those things and did get people moving in (and not from) their seats. Again, I think it has something to do with the particular audience you're catering to. There are a lot of people (not a giant number, but a significant one) who won't attend shows due to regular pulse, recognizable tunes, etc.

And agazin, that's the point - don't waste time trying to get in where you know they don't want you. Go where they do want you and build there, wherever "there" may be". If/when you can get enough going on there, then it's only natural that curiosity seekers (ranging from sincerely curious to shallow trendmongers to truly destructive malevolent souls) start wandering in. Them, you welcome (warmly and sincerely), but to your world. You don't have to beg to be let into theirs, because hell, you've got your own world already, and even if it ain't all sparkly and stuff, it's still yours. But their always room for more, and a sincerely curious non-understanding soul is no threat to anybody, If anything, they're a virtue, because they come for all the right reasons, dig?

This whole premise of "jazz populism" is based on the premise that jazz in general can be brought back into "the mainstream". Well, disabuse yourself of that notion ASAP, because unless you're Lincoln Center, McCoy Tyner, Joe Lovano, or a handful of other "big names", your music will be underground. Now, some of us have had experience living in an underground culture and some of us haven't, but all of us who want to live a normal-enough, healthy-enough, and happy-enough live with jazz as a key component need to stop thinking in terms of mainstream musical survival. IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN.

And that's ok. Build with what you got, not what you don't got. Strengthen your own neighborhood, don't go looking to move into somebody else's unless you'd really rather live there. Visit freely, but always remember where home is. Don't be afraid, but don't be stupid either. Love everybody, but be very careful about who you like.

An underground that has its shit together can outlive a nation of mainstreams that don't. It may never thrive, but it will always survive, and survival is the name of this game.

[fasstrack]

Another few additions to my opening remarks: Since I was talking about musician attitudes and their affect on the audience, why not dive a little and see what Mr. Freud and meshpucha (sp)might have thought. Attitude--personality type--neuroses--presence/lack of mommy's hugs=who is attracted to a given undertaking and why. NO BRAINER, and again I couldn't have been the first one to have commented on this....

So why did solos and the kind of person attracted to soloing get to be so much in the forefront (remember, old Lee's book was about soloing exclusively)? Some well-known history: solos occured before Louis, Bix, etc. were recorded playing them and probably by some great unfortunates who remain undocumented. Solo length on recording was short, owing to limited space on 78s, more importantly the communal,. collective nature of jazz performance, period (specifically improvised or even set counterpoint and ensemble playing generally being much more prominent in jazz groups. Also the importance of composer-arrangers from the '20s on who relied (and to beautiful effect IMO)much more on thorough-composition and small solo sections. Remember there weren't even documented tenor solos before Hawk in the late '20s. One earlier masterpiece of thorough-composition, Nat Leslie's Radio Rhythm, recorded by the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra (1933?)had, if memory serves, no solos at all, or maybe a few bars tops.

Fast forward to the post-war era and the conflagration of several things: introduction of the LP and longer allowable recording times, including solos---and contemporaneously:

Bebop and its virtuosity, the advent of a soloist-driven music though with great ensembles, the great intellectual leap forward it was, attracting thinkers, and all the followers it spawned, the social force it was as its progenitors were tired of being entertainers---all that and more...

The end of the big band era by the later 40s-early 50s and the change from a dance music to a listening one with customers turning their attention to these great soloist now coming out in droves.

A thing that hit me also yesterday was the killing of progressive thought and acts culminating in McCarthyism, the Rosenberg executions, etc. by the earliest '50s, the general repression and conservativism in the air forcing weirdo, thinking, creative types that were going to anyway to find venues for expression where they would at least be left alone. It (the new post-war jazz scene) was definitely one of the only shows in town for black musicians to protest or act anti-social even and be somewhat ignored by Whitey (I mean power structure Whitey) who wasn't all that tuned in to bebop, thereby looking the other way. And while he was looking the other way, to our eternal gratitude, acts of both protest and genius were taking place. Truth and passion will always out and besides it just feels so good to play... I'll leave it to you all to broach the effect on the audiece, good or bad. But to me, and I suspect many others, these are the facts.

Edited April 7, 2011 by fasstrack

[fasstrack]

'Goodnight, Chet'. 'Goodnight, David'.

Time to play music.

'Music speaks louder than words' Charlie Parker

[Chuck Nessa]

Yikes!

[Chuck Nessa]

A thing that hit me also yesterday was the killing of progressive thought and acts culminating in McCarthyism, the Rosenberg executions, etc. by the earliest '50s, the general repression and conservativism in the air forcing weirdo, thinking, creative types that were going to anyway to find venues for expression where they would at least be left alone. It (the new post-war jazz scene) was definitely one of the only shows in town for black musicians to protest or act anti-social even and be somewhat ignored by Whitey (I mean power structure Whitey) who wasn't all that tuned in to bebop, thereby looking the other way. And while he was looking the other way, to our eternal gratitude, acts of both protest and genius were taking place. Truth and passion will always out and besides it just feels so good to play... I'll leave it to you all to broach the effect on the audiece, good or bad. But to me, and I suspect many others, these are the facts.

I would like to hear your expanded explanation of this - since they "are the facts".

[fasstrack]

A thing that hit me also yesterday was the killing of progressive thought and acts culminating in McCarthyism, the Rosenberg executions, etc. by the earliest '50s, the general repression and conservativism in the air forcing weirdo, thinking, creative types that were going to anyway to find venues for expression where they would at least be left alone. It (the new post-war jazz scene) was definitely one of the only shows in town for black musicians to protest or act anti-social even and be somewhat ignored by Whitey (I mean power structure Whitey) who wasn't all that tuned in to bebop, thereby looking the other way. And while he was looking the other way, to our eternal gratitude, acts of both protest and genius were taking place. Truth and passion will always out and besides it just feels so good to play... I'll leave it to you all to broach the effect on the audiece, good or bad. But to me, and I suspect many others, these are the facts.

I would like to hear your expanded explanation of this - since they "are the facts".

Maybe tomorrow. Me go beddy-bye now....

[fasstrack]

A thing that hit me also yesterday was the killing of progressive thought and acts culminating in McCarthyism, the Rosenberg executions, etc. by the earliest '50s, the general repression and conservativism in the air forcing weirdo, thinking, creative types that were going to anyway to find venues for expression where they would at least be left alone. It (the new post-war jazz scene) was definitely one of the only shows in town for black musicians to protest or act anti-social even and be somewhat ignored by Whitey (I mean power structure Whitey) who wasn't all that tuned in to bebop, thereby looking the other way. And while he was looking the other way, to our eternal gratitude, acts of both protest and genius were taking place. Truth and passion will always out and besides it just feels so good to play... I'll leave it to you all to broach the effect on the audiece, good or bad. But to me, and I suspect many others, these are the facts.

I would like to hear your expanded explanation of this - since they "are the facts".

Chuck, with all due respect, I think I'm talked out and it's time to let this rest. And judging from the hits in the last week so does everyone else. If you think that's a cop-out you may be right but I'll take my medicine and move on. Maybe I'll get a second wind later or somneone else will find this and put in their 2C.