Perhaps Not Surprising (Jazz Has Become The Least-Popular Genre In The

[David Ayers]

For sure. There are loads of people playing interesting music, and the generic question of jazz fades entirely if the generic line includes improv. Some of the people who do improv are not really doing it from a jazz background, or at least with no overt sense of jazz style. So what? I hear quite a lot of laptops and other electronica in improv gigs these days, and a lot of jazz-tradition improvisers either play with those people or bring the laptops etc. to the gigs themselves.

I made the point already that sales of recorded music are not really an index of the state of health of music. It seems to me that there are more people playing interesting music than that particular market can really accommodate, and also that the recordings exist, if that is what people want, even if they are not widely distributed. As an example, I mentioned in another thread that Frode Gjerstad has just passed the 100 mark in terms of his own recordings. If you check out people you have never even heard of and just on the scene they often turn out to have ten or more in various formats.

And 2% of a billion dollar market? Sounds like quite a lot to me.

Edited March 13, 2015 by David Ayers

[Teasing the Korean]

My pal Travis is fired up to see Open Loose on April 25th.

When it comes down to it, Bev is correct - it's a false narrative.

The actual music being played (at least the sort of current jazz I'm most interested in) can be astounding, exciting, original, innovative or all of the above.

What is missing is many jazz fans don't see enough live jazz to realize the vibrancy of the current music and musicians.

So what if it is played in small rooms. Well of course it would be nice - but pretty sad jazz listeners don't take advantage to see great bands/musicians playing in small rooms. Then they would play more often and in larger rooms.

Don't give me the $$ angle. We have listeners here paying fortunes building collections of music from the past who rarely support the music where it lives and where is best heard - up close and personal in live settings

Giants Walk this Earth

Get Ready to Receive Yourself

No one is denying that these artists exist: It is just that they will never achieve the kind of broader cultural relevance and resonance that their counterparts from 50-80 years ago achieved.

There are also great classical composers today, but there will likely never be new classical piece that becomes as well-known as the Nutcracker Suite.

There were painters who described themselves as "impressionists" well into the 1950s. No one remembers their names. There are probably poets today writing Shakespearean sonnets that are technically very good, but they will not make it into a Norton Anthology. And there may be architects who design gothic castles in their spare time.

As Milan Kundera wisely observed, art forms have life spans just like artists.

Edited March 13, 2015 by Teasing the Korean

[Teasing the Korean]

Something happened shortly after World War II. I don't know why, but the English-speaking world lost interest in instrumental music.

Electronica would like to have a few words with you.

[clifford_thornton]

Pretty much everything that Karl said.

[Hot Ptah]

William Lenihan: I agree with Eric Person and virtually any other practicing jazz musician that jazz is not the cultural force it once was. Jazz 'as it once was', represented in musical form more of what the society was. (this, of course is a big question). America's social and psychological dynamic is not what jazz is, or was. The society that spawned jazz is gone. Like classical music - where America is no longer 'europeanized', with old world values of art and music - the values of this music no longer communicate.

Jazz has become more about 'doing jazz' and not providing or provoking any musical experience the audience could possibly have. This is the antithesis of the jazz experience given to us by Miles, Coltrane, Evans and others.

The movement of the 1980's, and ironically jazz education helped to diminish real, true-emotional connection with jazz.

That is a quote from one of those responding to the article.

Just what the hell does the sentence I bolded mean? That it's not enough to go and listen to the music. If so, that's a commentary on the people of today who feel they need to be involved in the experience.

What I took the sentence "Jazz has become more about 'doing jazz' and not providing or provoking any musical experience the audience could possibly have" to mean is that some musicians now perform a technical kind of jazz, in which complicated time signatures and harmonies are negotiated competently as an end in themselves, but which has no direct emotional contact with the audience. I have witnessed concerts like that in recent years.

[uli]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYBNrcTyl9E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykkp3F2bjRQ

[AllenLowe]

I also agree with Karl; though I will maintain that even very good players are issuing too much disposable music.

Let me add that I no longer think we are in a post-modern era; I actually think we are now post-historical, meaning that there is no more real timeline or any real linearity of creative events, due to the crazy complications of contemporary communications. Everything is happening now, yesterday, and tomorrow; I am quite serious about this - just hit back-page on the internet and you are going back in time. It is like a sky in which every available space has a plane in it; have you ever experienced the phenomenon, while driving, in which you cannot tell if you are going up or down on a highway? That's the way I feel about contemporary life and art.

It is confusing and at times discouraging, but I also like it because it makes me feel that being "contemporary" is becoming more and more irrelevant; especially given the continuity and continuum of African American art forms and expression.

Edited March 13, 2015 by AllenLowe

[A Lark Ascending]

We have to make sure we don't confuse two different things.

a) What we like. There's no imperative to like anything. We all choose a route through the music, mainly guided by our own personal hinterland that determines whether something new connects or doesn't (and yes, some listeners deliberately challenge their own hinterland). If you've been listening awhile there is going to be a fair bit of old music - there's more of it and the music you acquired when it was new is now old. Whether you choose to address newer music is a personal choice - I listen to loads of old stuff but I'm still trying to recapture that wonderful time in my late teens when everything was new (some hope!), so need to try the unfamiliar quite regularly.

b) Why jazz attracts less attention than it once did. A different thing altogether - I'd argue that the 'museum' aspect has prevailed over the 'new music' aspect. Fine for listeners already deeply involved but a turn-off, I suspect, to the uninitiated.

*******************

I find it hard to believe improvised music will not constantly be of interest in one form or another. The sheer excitement of a great player (or group of players) altering, even constructing music in the moment. But does it need to sound like what we think of as jazz? David refers to the improvised music that does not come from a jazz background. Maybe part of the limited appeal of jazz (by contrast with the past) is that it often does sound to the outsider like the same blues sequences, standards or swingin' rhythms (and yes, we know that there is a lot more out there in 'jazz' than that but it's often how it gets presented beyond the hardcore listeners). I know I found that old-fashioned and alienating in the mid-70s and made my connection from other routes, gradually coming round to the core approach (though never buying into it exclusively).

Edited March 13, 2015 by A Lark Ascending

[Steve Reynolds]

I also agree with Karl; though I will maintain that even very good players are issuing too much disposable music.

Let me add that I no longer think we are in a post-modern era; I actually think we are now post-historical, meaning that there is no more real timeline or any real linearity of creative events, due to the crazy complications of contemporary communications. Everything is happening now, yesterday, and tomorrow; I am quite serious about this - just hit back-page on the internet and you are going back in time. It is like a sky in which every available space has a plane in it; have you ever experienced the phenomenon, while driving, in which you cannot tell if you are going up or down on a highway? That's the way I feel about contemporary life and art.

It is confusing and at times discouraging, but I also like it because it makes me feel that being "contemporary" is becoming more and more irrelevant; especially given the continuity and continuum of African American art forms and expression.

I like this post, Allen

The lack of a lineage in this music IMO started in force with what is now (maybe historically) termed European Free Improvisation (EFI)

Up until that point there was still much cross pollination within/between the "mainstream" and "free jazz" camps/viewpoints. Art Taylor and Philly Joe Jones as some famous example of classic jazz drummers consorting with the outcats.

Sure we have later example like Ed Thigpen playing in John Lindeberg's stellar 1990's groups or even now Billy Hart making an appearance with the Maneri/Ban quintet but for all intents and purposes, there have been a split or splits between different strains of jazz or improvisational music.

It has become more notable especially within the mainstream that the avant-garde musicians are rarely or ever included within whatever continues to exist in that area. It was notable that Paul Motian would include younger musicians from various backgrounds in his ensembles no matter what their connection to the lineage was. Much less true for the stalwart mainstream musicians. Same guys, same frameworks, therefore to my ears, very little real excitement.

The excitement and innovation occurs on the margins. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I remember first hearing Ellery Eskelin's trio with Andrea Parkins and Jim Black. Live and on record. Very fresh, exciting and truly new. Music as exciting as that does exist. As Allen mentioned it is hard to find the needles in the haystacks. Most of the musicians I follow closer than others still put out recordings that don't measure up. Self editing seems to have always been a problem with recorded jazz. Look at some of the very rote 1950's blowing sessions. Some of those that are collected with some fervor!!!

I have found that live shows by great musicians are pretty typically pretty damn great.

[sgcim]

Over the past fifteen years or so, I've put my butt in as many or more seats in Chicago venues that presented the music of the local avant-garde scene than I did in any club or concert seats when I was reviewing jazz performances regularly for the Chicago Tribune from the late '70s to the late '80s and in all the years before that, from the time I could get into places that sold alcohol. But in the last several years (I'm now 72) my attendance has dropped off a good deal -- in part because I've remarried and have a 13-year-old stepdaughter, which means that my wife wakes up at 6:45 a.m. to drive her to school, which means that I pretty much wake up at the same time, which makes staying up late the night before less attractive; in part because it seems like the very yeasty Chicago AG scene began to get a bit less yeasty about the time my attendance began to fall off; in part because my favorite venue folded and one of the chief newer ones doesn't feel that comfortable to me (the folded favorite one was the most comfortable place, physically and terms of atmosphere, that I've ever listened to music). I should add that I don't like to go to the chief local mainstream venue for the lack of a comfortable atmosphere reason; also there just aren't many people who play there that I have a strong desire to see these days. Benny Golson, for example, would be an exception; venerable he is but still fervently creative. Not to insult his memory, but in the latter portion of his career I had no desire to catch, say, Clark Terry because I felt I'd already heard most everything he was going to play.

Sorry if I'm being too discursive, but perhaps my behavior and feelings are indicative of some aspect of the lay of the land. I would say that my general stance -- details of age and second-marriage life taken into account -- is that basically I want to hear NEW music: either music that's stylistically novel in the sense that part of the pleasure it gives me, when it's good, is the pleasure of figuring out the novel what and how of what is being said, or music that is stylistically familiar to me but still feels like it's being made "in the now" (Golson or Lee Konitz might be good examples). If the music isn't new in one of those two senses, I'm not that interested anymore.

According to a trumpet player friend of mine, Clark Terry couldn't even play the trumpet for the last 20 years.

He saw people like Clark at Town Hall in Queens about 20 years ago, and he had difficulty even getting notes out.

The same thing happened with his idol, Freddie Hubbard- he could barely play towards the end.

IMHO, Lee Konitz is a shadow of what he used to be...

Jazz musicians are like athletes in that sense.

[clifford_thornton]

How does European Free Improvisation interrupt the idea of a jazz lineage? I don't follow.

[Larry Kart]

Sgcim: Disagree about Lee, based on some (but not all) recent Konitz recordings and some live performances as well. The athletic side of music-making has never been as crucial for him as it would be for -- to cite one of your other examples -- Freddie Hubbard.

[jlhoots]

I saw / heard Lee live in a quartet last night.

It was a little sad & surrealistic.

He sang (scatted?) on every song.

Appeared to be out of breath. Maybe it was the altitude.

When he played mostly it was 8 bar segments.

Set overall was quite short.

Hope he's O.K.

BTW, George Schuller played very nicely.

[Steve Reynolds]

How does European Free Improvisation interrupt the idea of a jazz lineage? I don't follow.

In my view, EFI was a direct result of certain musicians deliberately separating what they were doing from the jazz tradition. Deliberately not playing the rhythmic and melodic devices that were still part and parcel of the more traditional American Free Jazz scene/movement at that time. So severe a break it was (looking at it in hindsight), it really was a factor in breaking the music up into different lineages. I have always thought of Evan Parker as a post Coltrane tenor saxophonist whose history/career ran independently of guys like Frank Wright, Charles Brackeen - and later on David Murray or Joe Lovano.

There was almost no connection between this musicians except for Derek Bailey's Company interacting with some of the more outré American jazz guys like Braxton, Lewis and Zorn.

Maybe I am looking at it more symbolically than it was in actuality, but EFI in some ways was the first purely radical improvisational movement that reacted against the tradition - with efforts not to incorporate forms that were pretty much a given in any sort of jazz - from trad to free jazz of that era.

Now there are many musics within musics that add/subtract elements from all sorts or parts of the tradition. This focus and "narrowness" of approach opened up a timelessness in much of that music. A timelessness that exists in the best of all music.

[GA Russell]

We have to make sure we don't confuse two different things.

a) What we like. There's no imperative to like anything. ...

Bev, may I mention your name the next time someone posts that I have a duty to attend the concerts and buy the records of those who are living?

[clifford_thornton]

How does European Free Improvisation interrupt the idea of a jazz lineage? I don't follow.

In my view, EFI was a direct result of certain musicians deliberately separating what they were doing from the jazz tradition. Deliberately not playing the rhythmic and melodic devices that were still part and parcel of the more traditional American Free Jazz scene/movement at that time. So severe a break it was (looking at it in hindsight), it really was a factor in breaking the music up into different lineages. I have always thought of Evan Parker as a post Coltrane tenor saxophonist whose history/career ran independently of guys like Frank Wright, Charles Brackeen - and later on David Murray or Joe Lovano.

There was almost no connection between this musicians except for Derek Bailey's Company interacting with some of the more outré American jazz guys like Braxton, Lewis and Zorn.

Maybe I am looking at it more symbolically than it was in actuality, but EFI in some ways was the first purely radical improvisational movement that reacted against the tradition - with efforts not to incorporate forms that were pretty much a given in any sort of jazz - from trad to free jazz of that era.

Now there are many musics within musics that add/subtract elements from all sorts or parts of the tradition. This focus and "narrowness" of approach opened up a timelessness in much of that music. A timelessness that exists in the best of all music.

Yeah, I know there was an attempt to radically redefine improvisation on their local, white (importantly) terms. However, I take its actualization on those terms with some grains of salt. Each case is different, too - there's a fairly wide gulf between, say, "Collective Calls" and the Schlippenbach Trio/Quartet. One could say the same about AMM of the Gare/Prévost persuasion (jazz) and the Cardew/Rowe persuasion (aleatoric and heavily electro-acoustic), and I find the SME to be very much jazz music, even at its most abstract.

[Steve Reynolds]

How does European Free Improvisation interrupt the idea of a jazz lineage? I don't follow.

In my view, EFI was a direct result of certain musicians deliberately separating what they were doing from the jazz tradition. Deliberately not playing the rhythmic and melodic devices that were still part and parcel of the more traditional American Free Jazz scene/movement at that time. So severe a break it was (looking at it in hindsight), it really was a factor in breaking the music up into different lineages. I have always thought of Evan Parker as a post Coltrane tenor saxophonist whose history/career ran independently of guys like Frank Wright, Charles Brackeen - and later on David Murray or Joe Lovano.

There was almost no connection between this musicians except for Derek Bailey's Company interacting with some of the more outré American jazz guys like Braxton, Lewis and Zorn.

Maybe I am looking at it more symbolically than it was in actuality, but EFI in some ways was the first purely radical improvisational movement that reacted against the tradition - with efforts not to incorporate forms that were pretty much a given in any sort of jazz - from trad to free jazz of that era.

Now there are many musics within musics that add/subtract elements from all sorts or parts of the tradition. This focus and "narrowness" of approach opened up a timelessness in much of that music. A timelessness that exists in the best of all music.

Yeah, I know there was an attempt to radically redefine improvisation on their local, white (importantly) terms. However, I take its actualization on those terms with some grains of salt. Each case is different, too - there's a fairly wide gulf between, say, "Collective Calls" and the Schlippenbach Trio/Quartet. One could say the same about AMM of the Gare/Prévost persuasion (jazz) and the Cardew/Rowe persuasion (aleatoric and heavily electro-acoustic), and I find the SME to be very much jazz music, even at its most abstract.

I also find pretty much all of it to be jazz music. I do think my (our collective?) ears may have been opened/altered/assuaged over years of listening to better hear things like Quintessence as a jazz record. Place us in 1971 or 1972 or 1973 being there and one wonders what we are thinking or hearing.

We all know friends who were listening heavily to the Loft scene at that time and may have been a bit exposed to Bailey, Parker, Stevens et al - but that exposure was very limited at that time. Would love to have experienced being involved in the local scene in 1972 and then taking a plane to hear Schlippenbach Trio and/or Tony Oxley playing those tunes with Derek Bailey and see how I would have responded to that.

It is violently different music - just as to me - EAI is radically different than any other improvisation I had heard before Weather Sky or Schnee or Dach.

[David Ayers]

We have to make sure we don't confuse two different things.

a) What we like. There's no imperative to like anything. ...

Bev, may I mention your name the next time someone posts that I have a duty to attend the concerts and buy the records of those who are living?

So you prefer to attend concerts by...the dead?

[Scott Dolan]

And that's where you and I part, Steve, and always has been. I don't hear even the slightest bit of Jazz. I hear Cardew and Stockhausen being played using small groupings and instruments traditionally associated with Jazz. It's classical European improv, just using an "updated" arrangement of instruments.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Nothing wrong with that, but it's not Jazz.

Edited March 13, 2015 by Scott Dolan

[clifford_thornton]

Yeah, the late '70s were the time when people like Parker and Bailey started playing in the US (brought over in part by Henry Kaiser, if memory serves). Bradford Graves, who founded Soundscape in '79 along with Verna Gillis, had a pretty extensive collection of European free music from the '60s and '70s. I think that people in NYC were fairly aware of that music - in the '70s, one could buy FMPs, ICPs and Incus records from New Music Distribution Service, which was set up as an arm of the Jazz Composers Orchestra Association (Carla Bley/Mike Mantler).

Stollman claims he was trying to put out Machine Gun in a US edition in the early '70s, so he was aware of Brötzmann, and he'd already released records by Gunter Hampel, Pierre Courbois, Peter Lemer and Nedley Elstak (all released in 1968, I think). These folks were cropping up in DownBeat scene reports at the time, too, so people in the US were definitely aware of European free music as part of this creative arc.

EFI is a pretty broad-brush term, as is jazz. One could conceivably say that the Bead Records scene is just as much a part of it as Franz Köglmann (studied with Bill Dixon and Steve Lacy, very much applying West Coast Jazz tonal organization to free etudes) or the Don Cherry-inspired romps of the Stockholm crew.

[Larry Kart]

I saw / heard Lee live in a quartet last night.

It was a little sad & surrealistic.

He sang (scatted?) on every song.

Appeared to be out of breath. Maybe it was the altitude.

When he played mostly it was 8 bar segments.

Set overall was quite short.

Hope he's O.K.

BTW, George Schuller played very nicely.

Sorry to hear that. But a friend who may have the most acute ear of anyone I know heard Lee in Chicago recently and was very impressed.

[Steve Reynolds]

And that's where you and I part, Steve, and always has been. I don't hear even the slightest bit of Jazz. I hear Cardew and Stockhausen being played using small groupings and instruments traditionally associated with Jazz. It's classical European improv, just using an "updated" arrangement of instruments.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Nothing wrong with that, but it's not Jazz.

You know that for me, I really don't care if it is called jazz or not. Certainly there are strains of SME (as one example) that stretch or even break some line between jazz and something else. What we agree on is that it is radically different. The "swing" element of the drummer and bassist is deliberately eliminated thereby obfuscating or disowning any seeming connection to the great American jazz tradition.

What has happened is that some of the later (or second generation) improvisors have reconnected some jazz influences back into the music. Paul Dunmall and Mark Sanders are two examples - listen to Mujician's Birdman to hear a clear free jazz recording that has rock and EFI influences.

There are many recordings/musicians/bands that cannot be pigeonholed as Clifford states above.

The AMM story is purely one on another plane where the music is almost anti-jazz - yet some musicians in or associated with the group over the past almost 50 years play jazz or jazz related music(s).

Edited March 13, 2015 by Steve Reynolds

[GA Russell]

We have to make sure we don't confuse two different things.

a) What we like. There's no imperative to like anything. ...

Bev, may I mention your name the next time someone posts that I have a duty to attend the concerts and buy the records of those who are living?

So you prefer to attend concerts by...the dead?

David, I understand that there are Irish wakes in Boston which I would enjoy more than the concerts of many of today's jazz musicians!

[Scott Dolan]

You know that for me, I really don't care if it is called jazz or not. Certainly there are strains of SME (as one example) that stretch or even break some line between jazz and something else. What we agree on is that it is radically different. The "swing" element of the drummer and bassist is deliberately eliminated thereby obfuscating or disowning any seeming connection to the great American jazz tradition.

What has happened is that some of the later (or second generation) improvisors have reconnected some jazz influences back into the music. Paul Dunmall and Mark Sanders are two examples - listen to Mujician's Birdman to hear a clear free jazz recording that has rock and EFI influences.

There are many recordings/musicians/bands that cannot be pigeonholed as Clifford states above.

The AMM story is purely one on another plane where the music is almost anti-jazz - yet some musicians in or associated with the group over the past almost 50 years play jazz or jazz related music(s).

Very nicely stated, Steve.

I think after all these years (remember we first met on Freejazz.org??!!) that not only do we agree to disagree, but that we also somehow agree with each others disagreements to a certain degree! Do the math on that one!

If I had to bottom line it, I'd say that just because it's improvisation, that doesn't automatically make it Jazz. On that I'm actually thinking we agree. I guess it's kinda like saying Symphony Pop is Classical. Is it really? Not to my ears. Yes, they do share a lot in common, but so does Country and Rock.

Either way, each genre stands on its own. IMO, that should be honored.

You're absolutely right about the crossover aspect, but that's a wormhole I'd rather not go down...

[Neal Pomea]

I think when it comes to "jazz" most people just aren't going to appreciate improvisation over content. That's like venerating method acting over drama or a story.

Don't know what Allen means by post-modern but it sounds like I've been post-historical for years! Presently appreciating music of the past and not appreciating contemporary music so much, without it meaning I am living in the past! Like Ali Farka Touré saying his Timbuktu is not at the end of the world, it's at the center!

Edited March 13, 2015 by Neal Pomea