Is jazz a dying art?

[jzucker]

anyone who thinks that more people are making a living playing now than 50 years ago ain't trying to make a living playing. This pertains to *ANY* kind of music, not just jazz.

[fumblefingers]

no doubt. its harder to find live music now than in past times. being in the club business in the late 70s i watched disco kill live music. rap and hip-hop followed.

today we have "celebrity" DJs. they spin records and say things like "yeah!" "how ya'll doin' tonight" and so on.


so i don't wonder about local musicians and working man types, even mid-tier players and sidemen. (not meaning to be crude with terms here). i know there is less work, up and down and all around.

i guess my point was - and again, confining the observation to guitarists only - there seem to be as many if not more top guitarist leaders earning a living today than there were in the 40s and 50s. For example, how many of those guys were there? Most guitarists were sidemen weren't they? OTOH Barney, Tal, Johnny Smith were band/recording leaders - but (other than Django) who else on guitar before Wes? I wasn't around in those days so can't say too much about it, but top guitarists seem to have moved up a bit as far as I can gather. (Tal left to paint signs, Barney did studio work in LA, did "Great Guitars", but after all that died poor, Johnny left NY for Colorado Springs to open a music store and be a commercial pilot - crop dusting was it?) Contrasting that with today, there are probably 20 or so top guys who can play live music, record, and teach a little and at least make ends meet - if not better. Or maybe I'm incorrect.

I would not think that things would be as healthy for a lot of horn players.

[cosmic gumbo]

The glut of guitar players today means it is even harder for guitarists to find work. There's a lot more working horn players than there are guitarists.

Major jazz artists have always had to depend on performing abroad for a large portion of their gigs, but as time has gone by, many of these foreign country's gov'ts have heavily subsidized and promoted the growth and development of jazz artists in their own countries so that most now have a generation of world class players that have heavily reduced the demand for US artists, meaning a lot less gigs.

Too bad our gov't can't do the same for jazz, but our country has different values and priorities, though every professional symphony in the US is partially subsidized by city, state, and federal funds, so classical orchestra musicians are not dependant on a free market economy to have their careers.

You'd think someone as big and successful as Pat Metheny would have had enough work keep his "Pat Metheny Group" together, but he couldn't, so everyone has multiple projects going to keep some type of revenue coming in. Of course this creates a logistics disaster for most groups. Does any big artist have enough work to keep their core group of sidemen supported year round? I doubt it. That doesn't sound like a healthy business climate to me.

[fumblefingers]

probably not year round, agreed. so they have to charge a healthy sum for gigs to make it last.

what do these foreign countries do for their players i wonder, and how does that compare to a full ride scholarship here?

[Stevebol]

We need to create our own genre of dance music complete with a manifesto.

[fumblefingers]

or get sexy babes to play it. that seems to work for other styles.

[christianm77]

A complex question.

Old jazz - pre-war music and vocal swing music is big here in London. It's a 'style' - I played a party the other night that was set up like a speakeasy with actors playing the role of gangsters, dancing girls, gamblers and so on. There were sudden bursts of gangster movie violence, police raids and so on. And cocktails....

We were to set up in a corner and play 30's swing (slight anachronism, but hey I'm not playing banjo.) Me and many of my jazz colleagues have played loads of these gigs - this particular party alone is running four nights a week until May. Jazz and swing age parties were big business before the Great Gatsby came up. We've been doing this stuff for years.

Obviously, it's great fun and very educational for me getting into Eddie Lang, Django and so on (obviously you could take it less seriously and still get the gigs, but where's the fun in that?) However, you have to ask what is the creativity of this music, and how what we do does anything more than stereotype an archaic form of the music, however great that music is and how much we love playing it.

On the other hand, there are an ocean of skilled young musicians playing their originals in 13/8 and so on (sometimes the same guys.) Needless to say, this music mostly appeals to other musicians. Many trad jazzers I know are also active in free jazz - the two seem to go together.

As far as 'extending the tradition' goes most players run up against the fact that we've had so much variety in jazz from King Oliver to Archie Shepp. Most contemporary jazz I hear moves more towards the straight eights thing and basically sort of instrumental prog rock. Some of it's great though but I don't think of it as jazz per se, in the sense that the legendary 'man in the street' would think of it.

Free music has become it's own thing (and is the music that lay audiences tend to fear from jazz gigs) leaving modern jazz in an awkward position, summed up by the continuing influence of the Young Lions - be modern, but not modern, they say.

From this point of view allegedly innovative musicians such as Kurt Rosenwinkel are in fact rather traditional, and likely to become more so. Kurt hasn't assimilated, say, Derek Bailey into his working style - instead he's like master of straightahead and fusion playing that's come before and has synthesised it into his own voice, but one one that moves between progressive rock basically (Aaron Parks, say) and straightahead.

One Kurt album I thought particularly intriguing was Heartcore, because of the way it was produced. It seemed to have reference points beyond the usual. But that was a while ago now!!

So we have this continuum of bands that tend to have fairly standard line ups (although no bass or no piano bands are quite hip) exploring broadly speaking a similar language of metronomic, metrically modulating, polyrythmic time and a non-functional harmonic approach. This music, TBH, can sound great but often sounds kind of samey and in many ways is as standardised as bebop or trad. The guitarists tend to play 335s, wear wooly hats and use lots of reverb. And play those fecking modal intervallic voicings all the time.

This music seems limited in appeal.

For myself, I think there is a vast appetite for jazz that swings and is based on tunes people recognise. That might sound mega-conservative, but people like Brad Mehldau would often fall into this category.

There is some awesome stuff out there - Terence Blanchard blew me away at a festival in the summer - fantastic contemporary jazz... The Robert Glaspar stuff is obviously very contemporary in it's pop influences. He seems to have following.

On the other hand when I write my own stuff a lot of it I barely think of it as jazz at all. I have to make myself write 'jazz' stylistically. I'd rather think of it as music.

TL;DR music college jazz is not the only way!

[christianm77]

PS: FWIW, I play around 200 gigs a year, and 95% of that is jazz. I know others who do more.

[christianm77]

Can GenX and GenY make the kind of living that Ron Carter did playing straight-ahead? (Ron Carter has a large apartment in NYC. He doesn't have to take the train)

GenX and Y face completely different economic realities to the Boomers (or older) regardless of their chosen profession.

Also Ron is near the apex of the pyramid, I'd say.

[cosmic gumbo]

[fumblefingers]

GenX and Y face completely different economic realities to the Boomers (or older) regardless of their chosen profession.

Also Ron is near the apex of the pyramid, I'd say.

in others word, "no".

i agree. the question was a bit rhetorical, to be honest.

[Rick5]

I recently saw a killer quartet at one of the most well-known jazz clubs in D.C. The leader was someone who is well known with many recordings. There were maybe 15 people there (tops). Maybe half of the people were actually paying any attention at all to the music. Looking around, it was background music for conversations to the others. I planned on going for the early set only, but stayed for both sets. It's possible that the second set had 20 (no more than 25 at the absolute most) people (with some people sticking around after the first set). It was pretty depressing to watch these amazing musicians basically play to an empty room (although I loved it and was blown away).

[GuyBoden]

I recently saw a killer quartet at one of the most well-known jazz clubs in D.C. The leader was someone who is well known with many recordings. There were maybe 15 people there (tops). Maybe half of the people were actually paying any attention at all to the music. Looking around, it was background music for conversations to the others. I planned on going for the early set only, but stayed for both sets. It's possible that the second set had 20 (no more than 25 at the absolute most) people (with some people sticking around after the first set). It was pretty depressing to watch these amazing musicians basically play to an empty room (although I loved it and was blown away).

I used to play in a local pub in the town centre every Tuesday night, one night the audience consisted of just one man and his dog, and the dog looked more interested in the music than him. Unfortunately this is the truth, so you've got to play because you love playing your music.

[jasaco]

Any idea how I can get in touch with that dog?

[GuyBoden]

Any idea how I can get in touch with that dog?

Tel:096854 947311892, based on that night's dog audience success, I've been thinking of playing a tour of Dog's Homes.

[jasaco]

They really like it when my archtop starts to howl... suddenly it's a sing-along!

[GuyBoden]

[eccegeorge]

I don't think jazz is dying. I think jazz fell out of the mainstream decades ago. We can't forget that. Just look at all the awful things Miles had to do late in his career to try and get young people to listen . . . If you accept that jazz is always going to be an art form that lives in a small subculture and will never compete with popular music again (those days are OVER) jazz is actually flourishing in universities, and among people who are disillusioned with the ever-increasingly crappy stuff they hear on the radio.

For what it is worth, jazz has been growing and thriving here in Nashville. We have an ever-growing community of jazz enthusiasts, and are lucky enough to have some world-class musicians. I went to a show last weekend at our art museum that was 2 straight hours of a group playing through Kind of Blue and talking about the album. There must have been 150 people there, and folks standing in the back. And this in the town that is probably the worst offender when it comes to dumbed-down popular music.

What I do think is dying is just an appreciation for music theory in general. People just don't know it, and it is an ever-declining part of school curriculum. People roll their eyes if I ever DARE mention any theory when talking about music. It's like a taboo. People love to talk about music acts and music lyrics but they hate to talk about music. Every week some guy comes on NPR and spends 20 minutes reviewing an album and never once mentions the actual music. It can be the worst nonsense you have ever heard, and the guy talks about it like it's some highly sophisticated art. Even in groups of people who are otherwise snoody and cultured, who will talk about great literature and film and art and will thumb their noses at anything mainstream, even THOSE people are totally accepting of the worst pop music and never give it a second thought. That is what I think is odd. Why do people who appreciate great art in every other genre listen to such bad music?

One great barometer of how little people care about music is Jeopardy. It never fails. They can get three people on there who know virtually everything about everything, and they'll ask the most simple music theory question, and the buzzers go silent. These people know the 3rd largest lake in Nepal, but they can't tell you what an arpeggio is . . . It's bizarre.

[cosmic gumbo]

What I do think is dying is just an appreciation for music theory in general. People just don't know it, and it is an ever-declining part of school curriculum. People roll their eyes if I ever DARE mention any theory when talking about music. It's like a taboo.

I don't recall anyone from four generations of my family ever receiving music theory in public school, even the ones in music programs. Music appreciation, yes...theory, no.

When laypeople are discussing computer games, do they really want to hear someone talk about programmers code?

[elixzer]

It is absurd to even contemplate Jazz a dying art. You might as well ask 'is breat/soul/heart/passion...a dying art

Is Blues a dying art? No. Is Soul? is Funk?...............is MUSIC ? No. Music cannot die, or better its movement is both living and dying living and dying

IF you are asking that question though from a monetary angle. Well that is different because that isn't music to me

Music IS heart and soul, and all its expression cannot die as in end-totally

[eccegeorge]

I don't recall anyone from four generations of my family ever receiving music theory in public school, even the ones in music programs. Music appreciation, yes...theory, no.

When laypeople are discussing computer games, do they really want to hear someone talk about programmers code?

I wasn't in school that long ago. We had music class in elementary school that covered very basic notation, and we got to play though songs on our little recorders. We even had quizzes, and listened to classical music, watched the Sound of Music, etc. I had music class every year of elementary school. I also had a music appreciation course in both middle and high school that covered some basic theory. My wife is a school teacher now, and she assures me that both programs have been cut.

I'm not talking about sophisticated music theory, I am talking about the very basic ideas about how music works, and exposing kids to what is distinctive about different musical styles. I'm talking about just a shred of the depth that kids get with literature, social studies, history, science, math, etc. I think music is just as important as those things.

And with regard to bringing up music theory in discussion, I'm not talking about sitting around talking about what artist or song somebody enjoys. I'm not talking about the kind of discussion where someone says, "Yeah, I really like the Beatles." I totally agree it would be obnoxious to bring up music theory in that context. But I'm talking about people who actively and passionately discuss what makes good music/bad music. I think if someone says "Paul McCartney was a genius songwriter," it is perfectly acceptable to bring into the discussion the basics of how a song is actually formed. I think is someone says "Eric Clapton was the greatest guitarist of all time," it is perfectly acceptable to bring into the discussion the basics of how one actually plays guitar, and what improvisation is.

There is really two sides to the coin. If someone is saying that they enjoy this type of music, or like to dance to that type of music, that is one thing. But when someone, as most do, wants to get into a substantive discussion about what is or is not great music, or who is or is not a great musician, I think they should at least have some basic understanding of how music works, and how musicianship works.

[GuyBoden]

I like applying Jazz sensibilities, like improv, harmony etc too many different music genres. IMHO, in my ears, it doesn't need to swing in the traditional sense to be Jazz, but also, it can swing in the traditional style, it’s not an either-or situation.

[zigzag]

I'm on the Jazz Committee in the small South Carolina town where Dizzy Gillespie was born, right down the road from where John Coltrane was born. Every year, we have a festival to celebrate Diz's birthday. The whole town is devoted to making the festival work. There is a parade, sidewalk chalk art, a charity golf tournament, jazz mass, kids events, and basically three days of jazz related activities and music over an early October weekend. On Friday and Saturday nights, 2nd street is lined with venues hosting live acts from as far away as New York and Miami, but mostly more local. Visitors to the festival come from almost as far away. It really is a magical weekend for me and for a lot of others.

Problem is that, even though the event does make some money for the town, you can't count on even enough local support to fill the venues every night, and about half are there just to get out. Many wouldn't even be there if the big games were not on big screen TVs, and consequently, bands are competing with TVs for attention. This can be very disconcerting to the bands, and it is embarrassing for me. When it is mentioned to me by the bands, I just shake my head and explain that I guess we're lucky that they are there and not watching at home.

My point is that most of the people there are there to be seen, to get out and be a part of a community activity. That is a good thing. But sadly, probably less than half are out for the music or even really care for jazz at all. The bands that get the most attention and the ones who really want to come back are the ones that really swing and can pull in the audience. Last year, Burt Ligon brought a few of his people and played a laid back set in a very low keyed, classy restaurant. There weren't 10 people in the audience the whole night. He and his band played some great stuff. We had a very talented keyboard player that did a lot of Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Bill Evans; very thin audience for that. No football on TV.

I went to the Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans four years ago. Probably less than a fifth of the bands played jazz. I was in NOLA two years ago around Thanksgiving and went to Preservation Hall one night. I stood in line for an hour to get in, they sold out, and it was mostly standing room only.

I'd like to invite Ravi Coltrane to play, but I'm afraid people won't get him. People don't flock to virtuosity if they don't get it.

[elixzer]

it is rigidity. I don't want that rigidity to kill the spirit of musicians who are fluid and love exploring music

[kris]

• Is jazz a dying art?

not sure...some jazz musicians still practise at home...:-)