Why Isn't Jazz Popular?

[voxo]

ok lets get back to some serious stuff.The Trumpet asks the question..to which the woodwinds "answer" the first six times in an increasingly erratic way. Ives wrote that the woodwinds' answers represented "Fighting Answerers" who, after a time, "realize a futility and begin to mock 'The Question'" before finally disappearing, leaving "The Question" to be asked once more before "The Silences" are left to their "Undisturbed Solitude".

[voxo]

sitting in a room..Dark..listening to it..not recommended

[fep]

I'm a big Dead fan and several other Americana bands with a lot of improv and jazz elements. To me they are jazz. Do they tick all the boxes, no but enough to where I think they land in the genre.

It's like a crow vs a penguin. Both are birds, but crows have almost all of the features of a bird, while penguins lack several (feathers, flight etc.). But both are birds. Jazz (to me) has a lot to do with improv and the attitude of the performers. I see a lot of cross over.

There is a long-form element to the Dead. Being wrapped up in a song/music that is of a longer length can change your mental state, I believe studies have put it somewhere around 10 minutes and longer. This goes both for the performers and the audience. At a Dead concert, this can happen even without the drugs. Dead-heads know this, those that "don't get the Dead" don't.

Not sure this applies to most jazz.

The Dead and Dead and Company have been and continue to be tremendously successful in attracting audiences and making money.

[ChazFromCali]

I think Pop Music people have better hair. Could be that simple.

[whiskey02]

There are just so many correct answers to the OP question. In no particular order;
Jazz was never popular. A full capacity jazz club in the 50's 60's mean 125 people. Also, don't forget that any night club be it jazz, blues, rock, strippers or dancing is primarily in the alcohol business.
Attention spans in modern society are such that for the last 35 years, a 2 minutes pop song video flashes images that routinely last less than 2 seconds.
Many jazz musicians live in a self constructed bubble inhabited by other instrumentalists who somehow think that the whole world is waiting to hear them blow minds with their unique ability to shred (far outside) the changes on giant steps and attya.
The options available to and competing for consumer's entertainment dollars has never been close to the enormity of choices that currently exist.
We are DEVO.

[DMgolf66]

well if you find it hard work to listen to why torment yourself?

Same reason people eat crabs. Alot work to get to the meat, but it's delicious.

[SOLR]

The Elitist nature of "modern" Jazz music certainly does not help....but TV is the culprit...

I'm playing a round of golf recently with an occasional golf partner, we don't really know each other outside of golf.... he asks me what are you going to do this winter? (end of our golf season is soon) I answer I'm going to play more guitar...."Great !what style do you play?" he asks, I say JAZZ! he answers "ohh, I like country"...end of that conversation right there he never talked about it after that...

Not exclusive to Jazz though also true story:
I'm engineering sound at FOH and recording for a ballet company..end of number, lady in front of console turns around and asks me"who composed that last piece" I answer Stravinsky, she turns to her husband sitting next to her and says "we don't like Stravinsky do we?"

I should add that Stravinsky was known for having borrowed extensively from jazz rhythms, or was it the other way around?

During my hippie days our "café" played all the usual suspects : Hendrix, the Doors, Dylan the Cream, Zeppelin,etc..but, only one jazz track, Brubecks "take five"....


S

[Litterick]

Donald Fagen likes Stravinsky:

So when it comes time to sleep, a problem for anyone on the road after a show, but an ongoing and worsening one for Fagen. So instead of reading, or watching an old movie, he puts on Stravinsky. Comforted, evidently, by the brilliant complexity of the music, he’s able to duck out of consciousness for a while.

[Christian Miller]

I wouldn’t say Stravinsky (who was a big jazz fan) shared much of a rhythmic language with jazz, as evidenced by his piece for actual jazz players (the Woody Herman orchestra), the Ebony concerto, which does not swing at all (we know Woody could too obv.)

exhibit a

exhibit b

it is a brilliant piece of music though, and utterly in Stravinsky’s sound world. I would add that some works written by classical composers for jazz instrumentation do swing, Bernstein for instance

anyway this David Bruce vid is typically insightful

[kris]

I wouldn’t say Stravinsky (who was a big jazz fan) shared much of a rhythmic language with jazz, as evidenced by his piece for actual jazz players (the Woody Herman orchestra), the Ebony concerto, which does not swing at all (we know Woody could too obv.)

exhibit a

exhibit b

it is a brilliant piece of music though, and utterly in Stravinsky’s sound world. I would add that some works written by classical composers for jazz instrumentation do swing, Bernstein for instance

anyway this David Bruce vid is typically insightful

"...the Ebony concerto, which does not swing at all..."
The beauty of this music is that it is brilliantly written.
Write down swinging notes ... it would be difficult, I guess.

[SOLR]

I wouldn’t say Stravinsky (who was a big jazz fan) shared much of a rhythmic language with jazz, as evidenced by his piece for actual jazz players (the Woody Herman orchestra), the Ebony concerto, which does not swing at all (we know Woody could too obv.)

Stravinsky's "soldiers' tale" where he uses the early Jazz rhythmic form of ragtime .. an interesting article also about his influences ...

S

[rictroll]

IDK

What is jazz about these days?

Guys blowing endless solos over ATTYA. What is the listener likely to take away from that?

Especially when those solos sound an awful lot like those on the previous song.

[SOLR]

Because nobody plays like this

...???

or this

vintage GB...notice the audience just bobbing heads to the beat....

We need more blues in our daily jazz.....

S

[Christian Miller]

Stravinsky's "soldiers' tale" where he uses the early Jazz rhythmic form of ragtime .. an interesting article also about his influences ...

S

yeah I think these days it’s easy to overestimate how much music people heard outside of performance at this time, and how score centric composers were. Ragtime is scored music so accessible to the composers of that era. Jazz swing, being un-notatable was not …

Anywya the story reminded me of this; Shostakovich composing jazz without actually hearing any if I remember the story right haha

[Christian Miller]

Because nobody plays like this

...???

or this

vintage GB...notice the audience just bobbing heads to the beat....

We need more blues in our daily jazz.....

S

that early Gb tone is RAW

A girl once came up to me after a gig playing hard bop and said ‘hey! What’s this music called, I love it? It’s like blues but more sophisticated!’ No, really.

[JWMandy]

Same reason people eat crabs. Alot work to get to the meat, but it's delicious.

Yeah.... all of which holds until you discover the crabcake... the lazy man's answer to 3 hours of picking.

Which is to say in some measure if the virtuosity hides the beauty and artistry of the music - however you define that - so that the artist becomes more important than the art, the audience will fail to engage. Jazz writers recount that Bop comes into being in part to prevent the commercialization of "their music" by folks outside the instrumentalist's cadre. In a word, a choice was made to prefer art to commercial success, and "ownership" by the artist. It divided "the community" at the time, and spilit the audience. The "pop" of Bop was not accepted as a guiding principle. And if so goes the history, than popularity just wasn't the objective... and success in that pursuit meant ...surprise.... jazz became a small venue thing.

But fairly.... folks will remember the bands fans referred to as "sell outs" in rock, too... when they found success by narrowing their creativity to what would sell widely. Some felt "getting their due" in discovery was to abandon "the cool". Others? Making a $ was okay, too. Is it really.... so much different than beer? Ask Budweiser about their IPA craft beers... wait... they don't have any? Right.

Form follows the sought after function. Jazz writers recount how prior to Billie Holiday, most bands chose their singers were hired for their looks. No, rephrase that... the bars that paid the bands specified the owner's girl friend would be the singer? Something like that seems to be the theme of a lot of movies set in the 1930s. Could she sing? Hmmmm.... maybe, but a lot of folks sure enjoyed looking on while they figured that one out. Band members? Maybe not so much, but it did put food on the table.

I remember my surprise in learning that all the classic jazz songs were originally hits with lyrics... and that the version with singers tended to be much more popular, and shorter. Pop music has always struggled in moving past the 2:30 min mark. Exceptions are manifest, but remain exceptions. Like movies where "the long slow pan" became a fad... sometimes you just want to go up tempo and get it over with. Artistry and taste put vituosity into a context where they can get their play, appreciation, etc.

[Marinero]

Yeah.... all of which holds until you discover the crabcake... the lazy man's answer to 3 hours of picking.

Which is to say in some measure if the virtuosity hides the beauty and artistry of the music - however you define that - so that the artist becomes more important than the art, the audience will fail to engage. Jazz writers recount that Bop comes into being in part to prevent the commercialization of "their music" by folks outside the instrumentalist's cadre. In a word, a choice was made to prefer art to commercial success, and "ownership" by the artist. It divided "the community" at the time, and spilit the audience. The "pop" of Bop was not accepted as a guiding principle. And if so goes the history, than popularity just wasn't the objective... and success in that pursuit meant ...surprise.... jazz became a small venue thing.

But fairly.... folks will remember the bands fans referred to as "sell outs" in rock, too... when they found success by narrowing their creativity to what would sell widely. Some felt "getting their due" in discovery was to abandon "the cool". Others? Making a $ was okay, too. Is it really.... so much different than beer? Ask Budweiser about their IPA craft beers... wait... they don't have any? Right.

Form follows the sought after function. Jazz writers recount how prior to Billie Holiday, most bands chose their singers were hired for their looks. No, rephrase that... the bars that paid the bands specified the owner's girl friend would be the singer? Something like that seems to be the theme of a lot of movies set in the 1930s. Could she sing? Hmmmm.... maybe, but a lot of folks sure enjoyed looking on while they figured that one out. Band members? Maybe not so much, but it did put food on the table.

I remember my surprise in learning that all the classic jazz songs were originally hits with lyrics... and that the version with singers tended to be much more popular, and shorter. Pop music has always struggled in moving past the 2:30 min mark. Exceptions are manifest, but remain exceptions. Like movies where "the long slow pan" became a fad... sometimes you just want to go up tempo and get it over with. Artistry and taste put vituosity into a context where they can get their play, appreciation, etc.

Well reasoned post, JW!
Marinero

[Litterick]

To which jazz writers are you referring, JWMandy?

My understanding is that bebop was created by musicians who played for pleasure in small groups after a night's work playing in big bands. During the 1950s, those big bands faded away, because people did not go out dancing so much, when they had record players, television and other distractions. The small combos were the remnant of jazz. It is not that the makers of bebop were shunning popularity for purity. Like the makers of post-bop, West Coast jazz, the Third Steam and everything else, they were what remained.

Your comment about female singers is very unfair to the many talented women who sang with bands.

[docsteve]

To which jazz writers are you referring, JWMandy?

My understanding is that bebop was created by musicians who played for pleasure in small groups after a night's work playing in big bands. During the 1950s, those big bands faded away, because people did not go out dancing so much, when they had record players, television and other distractions. The small combos were the remnant of jazz. It is not that the makers of bebop were shunning popularity for purity. Like the makers of post-bop, West Coast jazz, the Third Steam and everything else, they were what remained.

You should read Dizzy's autobiography. When they created Bebop, they played those weird heads over familiar changes exactly to confuse their audience. It was like "Can you play How High The Moon" and they came up with Ornithology.

BTW that book should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of jazz.

[Stevebol]

To which jazz writers are you referring, JWMandy?

My understanding is that bebop was created by musicians who played for pleasure in small groups after a night's work playing in big bands. During the 1950s, those big bands faded away, because people did not go out dancing so much, when they had record players, television and other distractions. The small combos were the remnant of jazz. It is not that the makers of bebop were shunning popularity for purity. Like the makers of post-bop, West Coast jazz, the Third Steam and everything else, they were what remained.

Your comment about female singers is very unfair to the many talented women who sang with bands.

I don't see why they would have. They were bored with the bigger band dance gigs and were experimenting. Admittedly they were elitist and the new music took a certain level of virtuosity.
That stuck. It became institutionalized 'art' music. Whatever. No one ever learn to play dance music in college.
It's too fast for me. I'm a slow poke.

[Stevebol]

To which jazz writers are you referring, JWMandy?

My understanding is that bebop was created by musicians who played for pleasure in small groups after a night's work playing in big bands. During the 1950s, those big bands faded away, because people did not go out dancing so much, when they had record players, television and other distractions. The small combos were the remnant of jazz. It is not that the makers of bebop were shunning popularity for purity. Like the makers of post-bop, West Coast jazz, the Third Steam and everything else, they were what remained.

Your comment about female singers is very unfair to the many talented women who sang with bands.

Like a friend says, bop is blues on steroids. That's not a popular opinion but I agree.
300 BPM nervous blues.

I have the 300 BPM Blues. I might have tapped out about 240? I don't know, man.

[Christian Miller]

Musicians apparently got paid better for playing clubs rather than dancehalls

[Stevebol]

Because nobody plays like this

...???

or this

vintage GB...notice the audience just bobbing heads to the beat....

We need more blues in our daily jazz.....

S

The academics won't stand for it. It's kind of ironic since they worship Bird. Bop would have happened without him.
They can blather on about similarities between jazz and classical, as if a lot of people don't know that already.

BB King pointed out that the common link between all music is melody.

[Stevebol]

Why isn't jazz popular?
Because people don't like it?

Not to be condescending.

[Stevebol]

Musicians apparently got paid better for playing clubs rather than dancehalls

That's definitely a possibility. Less mouths to feed.