Why Jazz is Unpopular: The Only Reason

[jazzintel]

From the book Stealth Jazz: Behind the Curtain (Tom Smith: Copyright 2017; Bunk Johnson Publishing).

http://tomsmithjazz.wixsite.com/music/single-post/2019/04/20/WHY-JAZZ-IS-UNPOPULAR-THE-ONLY-REASON?fbclid=IwAR3mPZv_u03MESMXm1DRpwKgrnNm4Ph_SS_Dtk86oECZIOZQApVuKMqc_iU

 

 

 

 

 

[sgcim]

2 hours ago, jazzintel said:

From the book Stealth Jazz: Behind the Curtain (Tom Smith: Copyright 2017; Bunk Johnson Publishing).

http://tomsmithjazz.wixsite.com/music/single-post/2019/04/20/WHY-JAZZ-IS-UNPOPULAR-THE-ONLY-REASON?fbclid=IwAR3mPZv_u03MESMXm1DRpwKgrnNm4Ph_SS_Dtk86oECZIOZQApVuKMqc_iU

 

 

 

 

 

Yeah, sounds good to me...

[The Red Menace]

Because music fans suck?!? ☝️

[Ken Dryden]

Five minutes would be more than enough time to realize I didn't need to read any more...

 

[JSngry]

I think jazz would be more popular if more people liked it.

Seriously!

I read into the blog past just the one link here. There's some thinking going on there.

 

 

[lipi]

Well, now I'm annoyed, because this made me kind of curious about one of the books advertised on this goofball's site!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1791874533

I don't suppose anyone here has read it?

[Brad]

There’s five minutes I can’t get back 

[AllenLowe]

this book is A Must to Avoid. To quote Herman's Hermits.

[Scott Dolan]

11 hours ago, Brad said:

There’s five minutes I can’t get back 

You held out for five minutes?! I allowed some leeway for the first paragraph, that’s your hook, he just baited it with a healthy helping of hyperbole. 

But he mercifully put me out of my misery with the second paragraph. 

Sold high, fucking bailed. 

My tolerance for general batshittery is at an all time low these days. 

[JSngry]

Somewhere on that blog (I dug deeper than the promo blurb), there's a thing about Wynton turning into Colonel Sanders that is priceless.

There's also a reference to Adorno, which is always a hard stop for me, always, but I can't say that the author is particularly wrong about anything. He just states in in ways that are too...."academic" for my liking.

Besides - I am more than happy to engage with Pop Culture on its own terms, but...eyes wide open about that. Knowing what is driving the market that creates the environment that supports it is one thing, liking the music itself is a different thing. I have room for both. I guess my question is - I already know this stuff, so now what? I think I've already decided that too. Eyes and ears wide open every step of the way.

The guy's no dummy, though. I would think his should be considered apart from their trappings. Like I said, he ain't particularly wrong about anything.

 

[Brad]

Well, it was probably less than five. As Jim said, how he states it is the problem and the way he does obscures the message.  

[Scott Dolan]

47 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Somewhere on that blog (I dug deeper than the promo blurb), there's a thing about Wynton turning into Colonel Sanders that is priceless.

There's also a reference to Adorno, which is always a hard stop for me, always, but I can't say that the author is particularly wrong about anything. He just states in in ways that are too...."academic" for my liking.

Besides - I am more than happy to engage with Pop Culture on its own terms, but...eyes wide open about that. Knowing what is driving the market that creates the environment that supports it is one thing, liking the music itself is a different thing. I have room for both. I guess my question is - I already know this stuff, so now what? I think I've already decided that too. Eyes and ears wide open every step of the way.

The guy's no dummy, though. I would think his should be considered apart from their trappings. Like I said, he ain't particularly wrong about anything.

 

No, he’s not particularly wrong, but as you and Brad already noted, the trappings. 

Comes across as a first year philosophy major that has read way too much Adorno/Marx/etc., but is still to young and inexperienced to fully comprehend any of it. 

[JSngry]

The guy's got plenty of real-world experience (check out his credentials, they're not at all wholly "ivy-tower"), so I accept his mode of expression as a conscious choice. Not the choice I would make, for sure, but that's ok. It wouldn't be ok if I didn't sense the value of what was being said, though. And mileages are going to vary on that. And any guy that can give fully articulated props to Benny Morton is ok by me.

The need for being multi-lingual  (or multi-modal, I suppose...yuck) within English itself is a need that is only going to grow as we go. We are being separated by our own language in this culture. And to the man's point, ironically enough (or perhaps not!), it's a separation that is being exploited for all it's worth by all who have something to gain.

I'm not going to be getting the book, because like I said - I wouldn't know what to do with it. But what he's saying is worth of a lot of consideration, I think, if you have the willingness to read past the jargon.

[Scott Dolan]

Which I do not. While I can sometimes appreciate over-intellectualism for the sake of it when done right, I just don’t think he does it right. 

[JSngry]

Worth noting that not only does he reference - on the blog anyway - social theories and theorists, but also names names of those who are actually engaging in the process, real time people and real time events. He neatly points out Stanley Crouch's schizophrenic identity gambits and points out where all  that's coming from, specifically.

It's real stuff not too-commonly covered past the superficial (if at that), in spite of the jargon. If it's the jargon that loses him readers, that's too bad for everybody. But you know, we all make choices....

[sgcim]

There's a strong triggering effect of some words that really turn people off. I was just banned for a week from another music forum, because I wanted to start a discussion about the Firesign Theater. I thought of the funniest thing I could think of for the title of my post, and I came up with "Commie Martyrs High School". The A-hole moderators thought I was trying to start a political thread!

[JSngry]

And probably, this should be looked at as history above all, because whatever happened in that Jazzworld is not reversible. And god only knows where the new Jazzword that has severed connections with that old one is going to land. Or if it's even going to be a Jazzworld at all.

[sgcim]

This should probably go under this topic:

https://dailybonnet.com/jazz-festival-accidentally-books-jazz-artist/

[Scott Dolan]

What do you mean by “severed”? I see a pretty definitive continuum that somewhat reached a stopping point, then turned revisionist. 

Or, are you speaking of the European Improvisation offshoot? 

7 minutes ago, JSngry said:

And probably, this should be looked at as history above all, because whatever happened in that Jazzworld is not reversible. And god only knows where the new Jazzword that has severed connections with that old one is going to land. Or if it's even going to be a Jazzworld at all.

 

[Shrdlu]

A most enlightening article. How did I manage without it for so long?

Sgcim, I have a pretty good idea which forum you mean. I posted there for a while, but they are so dumb that they can't undertand irony and hyperbole, or, in fact, an obvious joke. They deleted one of my posts under their troll rules, and deleted another because they thought it was political. I don't intend to hang around to be insulted, so they can get stuffed. I don't really care: it goes under the heading of "Meh".

[Big Beat Steve]

20 hours ago, Ken Dryden said:

Five minutes would be more than enough time to realize I didn't need to read any more...

 

This discussion finally has made me curious enough to have a go at the blog myself but past the first few (several) paragraphs I gave up and still not sure if someone's been pulling the readers' leg(s) with THAT much (pseudo-) academic blurb or not.

 

FWIW, what made the writer think that the bandleader pictured under "Swing music's intellectual purge" was EVER considered a SWING (hence, jazz) musician?? THAT one was outside swing most all of the time. So what point was he trying to make or IS he trying to pull someone's leg after all? And this is only one such moment from the few paragraphs I have read IMHO.

[sgcim]

26 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

This discussion finally has made me curious enough to have a go at the blog myself but past the first few (several) paragraphs I gave up and still not sure if someone's been pulling the readers' leg(s) with THAT much (pseudo-) academic blurb or not.

 

FWIW, what made the writer think that the bandleader pictured under "Swing music's intellectual purge" was EVER considered a SWING (hence, jazz) musician?? THAT one was outside swing most all of the time. So what point was he trying to make or IS he trying to pull someone's leg after all? And this is only one such moment from the few paragraphs I have read IMHO.

He was mentioned in the Big Band/Swing episode of Ken Burns' Jazz documentary. I mean, if Ken Burns, Wynton and Stanley Crouch called him Swing, he must be Swing, right?

[JSngry]

And there we pretty much have the dichotomy/severance/whatever between the current Jazzworlds - there's the JALC Jazzworld, and then there's the, for lack of a better term, Big Ears Jazzworld (which may only sometimes consider itself "jazz", and vice-versa).

I'm sure there has been and will be a LITTLE bit of overlap, but not much. And to imagine there being more is going to take some pretty radical ideological shifts that show no signs of occurring anytime soon. I could be wrong, though!

[JSngry]

Ok, read this: http://tomsmithjazz.wixsite.com/music/single-post/2019/04/07/A-POSTMODERN-RADICALIZATION?fbclid=IwAR3mPZv_u03MESMXm1DRpwKgrnNm4Ph_SS_Dtk86oECZIOZQApVuKMqc_iU

 

Quote

But paradoxically, Gramsci's hegemony is most common with cuisine franchising (Starbucks, McDonald's, etc), and includes promotion-indoctrination strategies administered gradually over time, that are similar to how organizations like Jazz at Lincoln Center are formed.

Whoa... hold up.

Are you saying that capitalism and their cultural nonprofits sometime borrow from Marxism?

Yes I am.

Hello!

[T.D.]

Well yeah, the text about "controllers" linked to in the original post had Gramsci (a big name in certain circles, esp. Marxist academia) written all over it. Various recent authors (e.g. Sheldon Wolin, whose book Democracy Incorporated I couldn't finish, and Chris Hedges, whose work I find easier to read) have discussed "inverted totalitarianism" and "corporate totalitarianism", which also seem related to the original post. I find all that stuff plausible on some levels, but shoehorning jazz into such frameworks feels a bit forced IMO.

Edited April 24, 2019 by T.D.