Why the need to gig?

[bediles]

Adam Neely is a YouTube influencer. Why should we care about his definition of jazz?

We shouldn't. Find him mostly insufferable and smug.

[pamosmusic]

Besides, as Adam Neeley tweeted:
The problem with the Marsalis definition of jazz as having 1) swing, 2) blues, and 3) improvisation...

...is that bluegrass music fits that definition perfectly, and Bossa Nova has none of it, but jazz school students study Jobim, not Earl Scruggs.

Genre is a weird thing.

Also Adam is incorrect about Bossa music. He’s a very knowledgeable dude and I’m guess would have a much more nuanced opinion about this in a twenty minute explainer video — a tweet is just a tweet.

This discussion has been had on the forum but Jobim loved blues, the music does swing, and of course there is improvising. It’s also kind of wrong in that people say Bossa IS jazz. The songs have been embraced by jazzers and performed as jazz, but I’m not sure anyone is arguing that Joao Gilberto is a straight ahead jazz musician.

His point is taken on bluegrass, though I’m not sure what conception of swing a person could be working with to say that bluegrass swings but Bossa doesn’t.

[mr. beaumont]

As for GS as a bossa...

Really better as a duo. The melody takes you up into the tinny range on guitar, and playing it an octave lower makes the chords muddy. But anyway, if I played this while somebody was eating Chicken Parmesan, I don't think they'd mind

I'm probably the biggest Giant Steps defender here anyway. I think it's catchy.

[Al Haig]

I think Adam's point is actually correct. Jazz is more elemental than surface characteristics. To me the phenomenon of jazz is the continuous (improvised) harmonically fluid melody. So it can have other grooves besides swing, even though swing was foundational, and it can have other inflections than blues, even tho that is foundational too.

[AllanAllen]

Imagine calling giant steps in G at a jam. lol.

[pamosmusic]

Useful to remember what Wynton or Branford would mean when they talk about swing also. They’re not necessarily talking about an elongated, triplet subdivided eighth note. They’re talking about a rhythmic “bounce” and elasticity that’s more general. There’s a spot in the Ken Burns thing I think where Wynton specifically talks about why brazilian music swings.

(they’re also two different people and presumably are not required to have identical opinions about the music they play — I believe the definition is usually attributed Branford)

[Al Haig]

I think it's catchy.

Sounds legit.

[Cunamara]

Bill Frisell plays tons of popular tunes that aren't jazz standards, and he wouldn't be recognizable as jazz to someone like Grant Green, probably, but there is a straight line from Grant Green to Bill, so we throw him in the jazz bucket.

Bill Frisell plays Bill Frisell. He is on his own journey and basically is his own genre. Ditto McLaughlin, Holdsworth and some others.

[kris]

The key to playing/gigs/ in restaurants is playing beautiful and well - known melodies.
Playing tumes of pop artists is often necessary.I did so when I had long -term contracts.
However, I always had real jazz concert playing in my head and I missed it.
And it is sad that the jazz clubs disappear and more and more restaurants are being created.
These are my humble observations about "jazz gigs" in restaurants.

[Litterick]

Adam Neely is a YouTube influencer. Why should we care about his definition of jazz?

He is not defining jazz. He is drawing attention to the fault in an influential definition of jazz. What he does for a living is irrelevant.

[Litterick]

Useful to remember what Wynton or Branford would mean when they talk about swing also. They’re not necessarily talking about an elongated, triplet subdivided eighth note. They’re talking about a rhythmic “bounce” and elasticity that’s more general. There’s a spot in the Ken Burns thing I think where Wynton specifically talks about why brazilian music swings.

(they’re also two different people and presumably are not required to have identical opinions about the music they play — I believe the definition is usually attributed Branford)

No, it was Wynton:

“There are three elements of jazz that have to be present.
One is improvisation, which is the “I” part, freedom to express yourself. The second is Swing, which is the opposite of the “I”, it’s the “us”. Swing is a matter of coordination and balance. It teaches you diplomacy. Yes, you have freedom, but other people have freedom too, so how are you going to have that together? How is your freedom going to go from “yours” to “ours”? Then, the Blues aesthetics is our spiritual view, which is optimism in the face of adversity. An optimism that is not naive. This is life, bad things happen. That’s a fact of being alive. There’s no perfection. If you’re out here, you are paying dues. How do you deal with those dues? How do you use what you have to be resilient and to deepen your humanity through the tragedy and the struggle. And how can you express the depth of that humanity that is earned in a way the will uplift people? The feeling that we call soul comes out of the Blues aesthetic and it’s also an essential ingredient to our music… All three of those things must be present.”

[Litterick]

Also Adam is incorrect about Bossa music. He’s a very knowledgeable dude and I’m guess would have a much more nuanced opinion about this in a twenty minute explainer video — a tweet is just a tweet.

This discussion has been had on the forum but Jobim loved blues, the music does swing, and of course there is improvising. It’s also kind of wrong in that people say Bossa IS jazz. The songs have been embraced by jazzers and performed as jazz, but I’m not sure anyone is arguing that Joao Gilberto is a straight ahead jazz musician.

His point is taken on bluegrass, though I’m not sure what conception of swing a person could be working with to say that bluegrass swings but Bossa doesn’t.

I will leave you to your stretching exercises.

[Ukena]

Adam Neely is a YouTube influencer. Why should we care about his definition of jazz?

You absolutely do not have to care about anything he says. But to characterize him as a YouTube influencer is unfair – he is a gigging and touring musician, and a very accomplished bassist. He also has a huge amount of musical knowledge, covering an awful lot of music history and theory. He's pretty smart, too.

He makes more money playing music than you do, and he gigs a lot more than you do. His main gig is music, not YouTube videos, which he has stepped away from for the most part, to Patreon. You're selling yourself short to be so cavalier about him.

[ruger9]

We shouldn't. Find him mostly insufferable and smug.

Sounds like Sting.

[ruger9]

Useful to remember what Wynton or Branford would mean when they talk about swing also. They’re not necessarily talking about an elongated, triplet subdivided eighth note. They’re talking about a rhythmic “bounce” and elasticity that’s more general.

Love that.

[pamosmusic]

I will leave you to your stretching exercises.

I will leave you to your incuriosity

[ruger9]

No, it was Wynton:

“There are three elements of jazz that have to be present.
One is improvisation, which is the “I” part, freedom to express yourself. The second is Swing, which is the opposite of the “I”, it’s the “us”. Swing is a matter of coordination and balance. It teaches you diplomacy. Yes, you have freedom, but other people have freedom too, so how are you going to have that together? How is your freedom going to go from “yours” to “ours”? Then, the Blues aesthetics is our spiritual view, which is optimism in the face of adversity. An optimism that is not naive. This is life, bad things happen. That’s a fact of being alive. There’s no perfection. If you’re out here, you are paying dues. How do you deal with those dues? How do you use what you have to be resilient and to deepen your humanity through the tragedy and the struggle. And how can you express the depth of that humanity that is earned in a way the will uplift people? The feeling that we call soul comes out of the Blues aesthetic and it’s also an essential ingredient to our music… All three of those things must be present.”

Huh. That describes my band's version of La Grange the other night. Not joking.

[pamosmusic]

There was an interesting kerfuffle a few years ago when Branford Marsalis said that Glasper and Kamasi Washington weren’t jazz musicians.

Washington I don’t think said anything publicly but Glasper was not a fan.

A bit of a different thing in that Branford wasn’t saying that the music Glasper was making at the time wasn’t jazz (kind of doubt Glasper would’ve cared all that much, other than to think it was a waste of argumentative energy) … but Branford said something along the lines of how Glasper didn’t have a lot of jazz language or something like that. Which is another discussion and a bit insulting.

In general I feel like there are productive ways to have the discussion but mostly we don’t have them. They would universally involve some appreciation for the contributions of people keeping the tradition alive (referring to them as reactionary, outdated, or chamber music is silly) and for the contributions of people branching out into other things (saying they don’t have jazz vocabulary or that they’re noise or jazz school music or whatever is equally silly).

[kris]

Where are the real jazz gigs currently?

[AllanAllen]

You absolutely do not have to care about anything he says. But to characterize him as a YouTube influencer is unfair – he is a gigging and touring musician, and a very accomplished bassist. He also has a huge amount of musical knowledge, covering an awful lot of music history and theory. He's pretty smart, too.

He makes more money playing music than you do, and he gigs a lot more than you do. His main gig is music, not YouTube videos, which he has stepped away from for the most part, to Patreon. You're selling yourself short to be so cavalier about him.

I just checked out his Spotify Top 10. Those are very professional recordings.

[digger]

Where are the real jazz gigs currently?

Which is kind of where the thread started - folks bemoaning the lack of jazz gigs made me ponder on do folks want to play jazz, or play jazz gigs? If the latter then the lack of gigs is an issue, but if the former then just carry on and play.

Anyway, the above has been answered, but to (partly) answer your new question (and to continue the theme of what is jazz), here in my neck of the woods we've just had the announcement of the line-up for this year's Cheltenham Jazz Festival, which I guess is a "real" jazz gig (I have played it a few times on the free stage - which is probably way more payment than my jazz playing will ever justify!). This year's main acts include those real jazzers Roger Daltrey, Lulu, David Gray, Lisa Stansfield, and Katie Melua. But in the festival's defence there are lots of other jazz artists on the smaller stages and venue. Also in the festival's defence I guess that Mr and Mrs General Public probably wouldn't turn up in great numbers for pure jazz artists, hence the aforementioned main stage line-up (in a similar way, the Cheltenham Literature Festival tends to really be the Cheltenham Festival of TV Personalities Who Have Written Books).

Anyway, I digress.

[AllanAllen]

Where are the real jazz gigs currently?

Is it time to define real jazz, so we can debate that for 10 pages.

[pamosmusic]

I just checked out his Spotify Top 10. Those are very professional recordings.

Yeah he plays with some friends of mine, actually.

got an Adam Neely headstock go-pro on this one obvs

[AllanAllen]

I should be the reference of why you shouldn't give much weight to opinions online.

[pamosmusic]

This feels relevant:

Billy Hart Has One Foot in Jazz’s Past and the Other in Its Future - The New York Times