is this the way to market 'jazz'?

[alocispepraluger102]

Marketing jazz is a scary concept. A large number of people out there just think "music for old people" when they hear the term, many others think background music for dinner parties and restaurants. I was doing all the audio/visual for a wedding a few weeks ago and the client asked me to put on "some boring piano jazz while we eat". I played great stuff for them (Red Garland, Duke Pearson, Dave Brubeck, Ahmad Jamal) but they wouldn't have known the difference if I had used a generic production library disc instead.

that's worth repeating.

[wesbed]

jazz certainly has a stigma with the vast majority. why???

Because jazz isn't 'simple.' Jazz takes time and thought to learn appreciation. The music must flow over and through. Sometimes it's easy, warm and cool all at the same time. Sometimes it's a rough struggle and the appreciation takes longer. When the appreciaton and the understanding finally arrives, however, it's an incredible experience.

The vast majority is not going to put forth the effort, doesn't want to put forth the effort.

Jazz isn't simple and it cannot be 'simpled' down for the vast majority. Else, it's no longer jazz.

[Big Beat Steve]

Because jazz isn't 'simple.' Jazz takes time and thought to learn appreciation. The music must flow over and through. Sometimes it's easy, warm and cool all at the same time. Sometimes it's a rough struggle and the appreciation takes longer. When the appreciaton and the understanding finally arrives, however, it's an incredible experience.

The vast majority is not going to put forth the effort, doesn't want to put forth the effort.

Jazz isn't simple and it cannot be 'simpled' down for the vast majority. Else, it's no longer jazz.

Wrong on several accounts - sorry. What you say might be true (and probably is) for all those who are only prepared to consider it jazz if it was produced (stylistically speaking) post-Electric Miles or maybe post-Miles Davis Quintet or (at the very, very widest) post-Bird.

SWING is quite accessible and a lot (waaaay past Glenn Miller) is comparatively "simple", danceable and just plain fun (or would you deny that Swing is jazz?). Not to mention "classic jazz" (popularly summarized as "Dixieland"). And Swing therefore can serve as an entrance door to subsequent styles of jazz as it allows people to find their way GRADUALLY in those areas of jazz as and when they are prepared to listen and explore that music by way of musical CONTINUTY (which does exist). I've witnessed several cases myself where this has worked. This still concerns only a minority but MANY more than the current audience of what many (self-proclaimed) "progressive" fans of jazz consider outright jazz.

Apart from music of the swing era or current bands playing in that idiom ("recreations" or not), many of the less punk-ish "Neo-Swing" bands of the 90s onwards would have served that bill of being an introductory card to jazz very well and yet most "progressive" jazz fans saw fit to diss those bands as unfit for any consideration because in their exes they were not even remotely linked to jazz. Probably because to those "progressive" jazz fans anything from the swing era (stylistically speaking) is just old hat and not "jazz" enough. Your loss, this snobbish attitude ... So if attitudes like this mean that jazz (as understood by those who consider themselves "real" jazz fans) remains limited to far-out, weird, screwy "noise" (which is how many non-jazz listeners would perceive those styles of jazz at their first enounter) then you are slamming the door in the face of those who'd be willing to try and increase the jazz audience. Your loss again ...

Edited August 17, 2012 by Big Beat Steve

[David Ayers]

You guys seem to have forgotten that jazz was a major commercial music and that sex has always been part of its marketing. The cult of the individual instrumentalist and of the obscure record or niche recording - which is where the few modern elderly toe-tappers now get their arid sustenance - is not, it is true, a sexy enclave, but is only one facet of (the aftermath of) jazz.

I'll suggest again that jazz is something we would move on from, not something we should imagine that supposedly benighted others should move towards.

PS jazz is not a difficult music - hard to play well maybe but not hard to follow. It has an ageing fan base, that's all.

[ValerieB]

She's really not all that. I'd rather see them market her playing a piano passionately.

TOUCHE, JAZZBO!!!!! couldn't agree with you more but it will never happen.

[Dan Gould]

PS jazz is not a difficult music - hard to play well maybe but not hard to follow.

That's about the most ridiculous statement you've ever made.

Jazz has two problems: Its image as something "old" people like, and the fact that the music is not simple and easy to follow the way the 60-70 years of pop music that followed jazz' commercial heyday is simple and easy to follow.

[David Ayers]

Seems I'm not alone.

Linernotes by Peeter Uuskyla:

PETER BROTZMANN asked me to write some notes about me walking the quite hard and dirty road of musicmaking. The liferoad of the one life you have. Been fighting all the time for playing untouchable sounds of simple music, my definition of beauty. Untouchable, therefore powerful. Simple, therefore universal, for everyone. Music that belongs to everybody. Take it or leave it, but you are not able to keep the music only for yourself. That is the strength. Sometimes the struggle is too hard and you just have enough of the terrible conditions around the playing. The lowbudget touring, the stupidity among the curators, the organizers, the ones with power to decide who plays where and what. Geniusgrants killing natural musicmaking because of simple music being just too simple, not being complex and confusing enough. To illustrate bigheaded nonsense with living music makes you fall into a trap where pure joyful musicmaking is forbidden although sold as free jazz, freely improvised, spontaneous, creative music!

[Big Beat Steve]

Seems like not everybody's definition of simplicity is the same, least of all in jazz.

[Dan Gould]

Indeed.

[alocispepraluger102]

Seems I'm not alone.

Linernotes by Peeter Uuskyla:

PETER BROTZMANN asked me to write some notes about me walking the quite hard and dirty road of musicmaking. The liferoad of the one life you have. Been fighting all the time for playing untouchable sounds of simple music, my definition of beauty. Untouchable, therefore powerful. Simple, therefore universal, for everyone. Music that belongs to everybody. Take it or leave it, but you are not able to keep the music only for yourself. That is the strength. Sometimes the struggle is too hard and you just have enough of the terrible conditions around the playing. The lowbudget touring, the stupidity among the curators, the organizers, the ones with power to decide who plays where and what. Geniusgrants killing natural musicmaking because of simple music being just too simple, not being complex and confusing enough. To illustrate bigheaded nonsense with living music makes you fall into a trap where pure joyful musicmaking is forbidden although sold as free jazz, freely improvised, spontaneous, creative music!

wow. no arguments here, whatsoever, with those statements.

[Dan Gould]

Maybe we can test these assertions by each of us finding a friend or two who doesn't like jazz, ask them why they don't, and then tell them that the music is simple, so why can't they follow it? Or simply ask them, 'do you think jazz is easy to follow or hard to follow?"

I'm pretty sure what the answers would be.

[JSngry]

I don't know if "easy" or "difficult" has very much to do with it as much as it is that the music makes a sound that isn't part of the everyday conversation, except when used as attitude signifier in commercials and such.

It's like, what can you do with today's "jazz"? Dance to it? No. Singalong with it in giddy glee? No. Fantasize about people and places that you can get to if you just make a few moves? No. Plan revolutions, personal and otherwise? No. Seduce exotic women with exotic desires? No. I'm sure there are those who still do, but once again...handfulls of specialists, etc.

Pretty much what you can do is either sit there and "listen", or use it for ambient sound in the service of projection a sense of superior sophistication. Not particularly...kinetic activities, these, no matter how much kineticism is involved in the music making. In one case, the musicians want everybody to sit still and shut up, in the other, the clients want the musicians to stay in the background and project their aura outward into the room, as if it emanates from behind an invisible wall.

People will sit still and watch the kineticism of an athletic event because they at least know what it feels like to run, to be pursued, to win, and to lose. And they're free to show some kineticism of their own throughout the observed activity. You get kinetic in the audience at a jazz gig these days, watch what happens. And people will accept having presupposed attitude sprayed upon them if its an attitude that gives them a sense of self-justification, Lincoln Center be doing that aplenty, but there's more people in the world for whom that "self" is not their self, so they really don't care. America's Got Talent!

Tell me that in a world where information is everywhere, and obtainable any way, and damn near instantaneously, the natural collective impulse is going to be to go somewhere, anywhere, and still still for a couple of hours to hear people take 5-20 minutes to play one song that ultimately says...what, exactly? How do you market that activity as anything other than a niche product? If people can hear John Coltrane climb his mountains in their head while literally climbing a mountain of their own somewhere, what's their incentive to go sit still for a couple of hours to listen to some non-John Coltrane basically give you a slide show of John Coltrane's mountain climbing? How do you market that? Why do you market that?

"Jazz" will be "popular" again when it does something that people consider that they might enjoy doing (or at least being engaged in) in a way that encourages and inspires them to do it more often and more better. Right now, practicing long hours in order to either project Accumulated Cultural Greatness or to have Accumulated Perceived Coolness projected on to them (both in a more or less passive state, it's not about doing what will/can be done nearly as much as it is reflecting what has been done) is not something most people would aspire to, no?

Edited August 17, 2012 by JSngry

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

You guys seem to have forgotten that jazz was a major commercial music and that sex has always been part of its marketing.

Indeed - just check the 'sexiest album covers' thread, or several other threads of that nature.

Humour, too, has played a part. Funny hats, anyone?

But this particular lady is neither funny nor very sexy, it seems to me. Of course YMMV.

MG

[Larry Kart]

Yes, Jim -- not easy or difficult but appealing. Easy can appeal, as can difficult. But not appealing can be turned into appealing hardly ever. OTOH I see no need to apologize for the wide range of music that's appealed to me over the years, nor any need on my part (beyond a certain reasonable point of paying attention/gathering information/satisfying curiosity) to try to get with stuff that appeals to others but not to me. Further, if what appeals to me turns out at the moment or down the road to be a "minority" matter, so be it. In the end, as Keynes put it, we're all dead.

[JSngry]

Your non-solicited, non-tendered apology has been duly non-noted!

[ValerieB]

i've been a jazz fan all my life (since a teenager, to be more specific) and i have never "understood" most of what i've heard as i'm not a clinician. i enjoy what i enjoy and that's enough for me. and i've certainly enjoyed relatively "simple" jazz as well as "complex" charts. it matters not, i just pay attention and most of the time just groove with it. but then, as most folks know, i'm a pretty simple person!

[John Tapscott]

Because jazz isn't 'simple.' Jazz takes time and thought to learn appreciation. The music must flow over and through. Sometimes it's easy, warm and cool all at the same time. Sometimes it's a rough struggle and the appreciation takes longer. When the appreciaton and the understanding finally arrives, however, it's an incredible experience.

The vast majority is not going to put forth the effort, doesn't want to put forth the effort.

Jazz isn't simple and it cannot be 'simpled' down for the vast majority. Else, it's no longer jazz.

Wrong on several accounts - sorry. What you say might be true (and probably is) for all those who are only prepared to consider it jazz if it was produced (stylistically speaking) post-Electric Miles or maybe post-Miles Davis Quintet or (at the very, very widest) post-Bird.

SWING is quite accessible and a lot (waaaay past Glenn Miller) is comparatively "simple", danceable and just plain fun (or would you deny that Swing is jazz?). Not to mention "classic jazz" (popularly summarized as "Dixieland"). And Swing therefore can serve as an entrance door to subsequent styles of jazz as it allows people to find their way GRADUALLY in those areas of jazz as and when they are prepared to listen and explore that music by way of musical CONTINUTY (which does exist). I've witnessed several cases myself where this has worked. This still concerns only a minority but MANY more than the current audience of what many (self-proclaimed) "progressive" fans of jazz consider outright jazz.

Apart from music of the swing era or current bands playing in that idiom ("recreations" or not), many of the less punk-ish "Neo-Swing" bands of the 90s onwards would have served that bill of being an introductory card to jazz very well and yet most "progressive" jazz fans saw fit to diss those bands as unfit for any consideration because in their exes they were not even remotely linked to jazz. Probably because to those "progressive" jazz fans anything from the swing era (stylistically speaking) is just old hat and not "jazz" enough. Your loss, this snobbish attitude ... So if attitudes like this mean that jazz (as understood by those who consider themselves "real" jazz fans) remains limited to far-out, weird, screwy "noise" (which is how many non-jazz listeners would perceive those styles of jazz at their first enounter) then you are slamming the door in the face of those who'd be willing to try and increase the jazz audience. Your loss again ...

Sorry - I agree with Wesbed. I think he's right on.

[jeffcrom]

I wrote a long-ish post, then took a deep breath and stepped away from the minefield.

[Big Beat Steve]

Sorry - I agree with Wesbed. I think he's right on.

Opinions and tastes do differ after all, so no problem.

Maybe to clarify things, it would be wise to define which styles of jazz we are actually talking about throughout.

I still feel there is enough jazz that is fairly simple to grasp (and NOT simple in the sense of the Brötzmann quote posted above!) and accessible to everyone and will immediately make you want to tap your feet to. As far as THESE styles of jazz are concerned, the effort required is not any bigger than the effort required with the varioous styles of rock and popular music where the casual listener who is not a fig fan of any particular style yet would have to make just as big an effort to tune in to, say, house or techno or rap if all he so far has actively enjoyed is "classic rock" or Brit pop or grunge or whatever (and vice versa).

OTOH there ARE styles of jazz that can only sound weird and unhinged and dissonant and do not immediately make sense to the uninitiated. But why start with the most inaccessible areas of jazz if you want to want to get others started on jazz? Why not open up ways of easing them in in a gradual way into an EVOLUTION of jazz? Maybe because to a certain species of jazz fans those jazz styles that are far simpler and more immediately enjoyable in a "party" sense of experience are far too lowbrow (or should I say "lowly"?) to them as they are all cerebral in their jazz thinking?

Just wondering ....

I wrote a long-ish post, then took a deep breath and stepped away from the minefield.

That post sounds like it would have been interesting food for discussion, though.

Edited August 18, 2012 by Big Beat Steve

[Shawn]

Guitar jazz seems to be a really easy thing for most rock fans to grasp, it's something they are familiar with. Much easier for them than jumping directly to horn players. Late 60s soul jazz is also a good accesible way for them to start getting used to the sounds. Those are the routes I usually take. Stanley Turrentine seems to be a perfect sax player to start with, his stuff seems to connect with just about anyone. Can't go wrong with Eddie Harris either.

[David Ayers]

Even in 'modern' jazz, heavier music has been fairly popular - Bitches Brew, A Love Supreme. Miles played to large crowds for decades.

[cih]

Do people really progress through listening to music in order of advancing complexity*? I doubt it very much (if people like something they tend to stick - they won't be 'trained' up). I don't think you can assume that the best way in to jazz is via the more conventional sounding stuff. I suspect many people would be open to jumping straight into Albert Ayler* if they trusted that they weren't having the wool pulled over their eyes (people are cagey). And it's not difficult like reading Wittgenstein would be difficult, that is - you can respond to it at a very significant level from the start, even if someone else with a greater knowledge/experience can extract more from it.

Re. the Krall album cover - a picture of a sexy woman (putting aside opinions on her eligibility for that decription) can say more about the actual music than a photo of somebody playing a piano.

*complexity is probably the wrong word

Edited August 18, 2012 by cih

[Big Beat Steve]

Do people really progress through listening to music in order of advancing complexity*? I doubt it very much (if people like something they tend to stick - they won't be 'trained' up).

Again, IMO it all depends. I wouldn't claim it is the only route but I think it is one that does work.

I remember the case of a fellow collector who had been (and still is) very much on 50s rockabilly plus black rock'n'roll, including early post-war R&B, and his interest in those R&B combos had led him to explore post-1945 bebop to some extent (Gene Ammons, for example, is one who'd easily straddle the fence). Though it's never become his favorite musical forte ever since those R&B combos were a sort of stepping stone towards bebop.

Another friend who's pretty knowledgeable about swing as well as R&B and jump blues the other day asked me about recommendations for 40s bebop too because his curiosity had been aroused. And this one does a lot of DJing himself and has often confirmed that whenever he does a soul/black music (60s/early 70s) night, a certain dose of gutsy 60s Soul Jazz goes over with no problem at all even with those among the public/dancers who otherwise had not progressed far beyond Motown.

So there ARE ways to get people interested ....

May be harder with those listeners who are into totally different music but punk music lovers have been known to embrace the more punk-influences 90s Neo-swing bands, for example ...

No guarantee they'd ever get straight into Ayler/Coltrane, etc., but who knows ... Of course others may advance in that direction from their rock preferences via jazz rock, etc.

When exploring new musical styles (and this is particularly true for jazz) IMO it does help in most cases if you find something there that you immediately can relate to from your previous listening habits (instead of being dumped in totally unfamiliar territory).

Edited August 18, 2012 by Big Beat Steve

[David Ayers]

And then as people 'progress' further - leave jazz - behind - ?

[robertoart]

The Brotzmann liner notes are a bit disengenuous in a way. Sure his European Fire Music approach is raw and direct, but it's also aurally alienating and difficult for anyone without an already attuned ear. The original negating integrity of the music can also be used for the same intents and purposes of Dianna Krall music - to inverse effect re-jsangrey's point "use it for ambient sound in the service of projection a sense of superior sophistication". Just depends on what dinner parties you get invited too. Although to be fair to the Brotzmann writer, I suppose they're talking about a kind of Third Streamy artfulness and detachment - that they would see as having corrupted their original aesthetic . But it's asking a lot for the post Brotzmann generation of academically trained musicians to 'maintain the rage'.

With regard to the Krall 'not all that' criticism, I guess she joins a long line of tradition in the marketing choices made by the pop/crossover brigade. Obviously Herbie Mann dominates this deluded bunch.

Edited August 18, 2012 by freelancer