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I see it this way. Jazz has always been popular but it's not as popular as it could be, or should be. It's not as popular as it should be b/c some improvisers play way too outside and go off into fusion land while playing to a jazz standard. When a non-jazz player hears that happen they simply turn off and all of a sudden they hate jazz b/c they don't understand it.
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02-05-2016 01:45 AM
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There's no passion in today's music. Not in the US. Thank got for Youtube where I can listen to older music.
And stay off my lawn!
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Originally Posted by henryrobinett
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Originally Posted by Stevebol
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Originally Posted by henryrobinett
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Right now I'm going through Ella's songbooks and to tell you the truth, I don't have a slightest clue why jazz isn't popular. This one comes from a man that grew on rock music, you know, the usual suspects, and then gradually, starting with the likes of Allan Holdsworth, Mike Stern, then John Abercrombie etc. etc. started to dive deeper and deeper into the jazz tradition. And today, here I am listening to Ella, and when she hits some notes my chest grows and I feel as I am almost starting to sweat. So why jazz isn't popular? I really don't know. Compared to this that goes into my headphones while I am typing, the music that today goes on the radio and other media is pure garbage, and that's an understatement.
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Ella is popular, it's just that people don't think of it as jazz. My wife knows more standards than I do, but she didn't think she liked jazz until she met me. And now she loves Bill Frissell, Barry Harris, Kenny Wheeler....
But she knows All the Things You Are when I play it.
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Originally Posted by aleksandar
I know a hip-hop producer who plays George Van Eps style solo jazz guitar, for example. He used to be my teacher :-)
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
just my idea in a post a while back
its not like other music in being primarily designed to be consumed (listened to without participation)
it is essentially participatory
you have a tune in your head and so does someone else and you sing/play/beat it out together trying to make the combination of your efforts sound and feel good
its a social practice not a social product (or at least the thing produced in the practice is secondary to the practice itself)
the ramifications of this picture are wide ranging
i think it captures the spirit of the music quite strongly
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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the first really huge music star in the modern era is (bing notwithstanding) frank sinatra
just as much as elvis and the beatles he created modern youth culture - and because he came well before elvis you could make a very strong case for him being more important in the creation of this culture (a culture that now, lamentably, dominates the cultural world)
but it is inconceivable that he should have become such a unique star without the tunes - and they are the tunes that constitute the repertoire of classic jazz (the most modern type that no-one could ever deny was jazz)
so we either have to start writing tunes of this extra-ordinary musical quality again
or re-discover the songbook yet again
(if we want to avoid the gradual decline of the music)Last edited by Groyniad; 02-05-2016 at 07:38 AM.
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"Why isn't jazz popular?" It isn't???
More seriously, I think jazz's peak popularity evolved from the era of dance bands that entertained young and old but focused on emotions rather than the cerebral for its own sake. People like dancing, sex, love....getting swept up in rhythm and feeling. When you get too far from that, they end up not as participants in a communal celebration of sorts but more like spectators or kids in class getting lectured to. That is not to denigrate or cheapen the intellectual side of jazz but to understand that successful musicians channel powerful emotional responses and make their listeners feel moved and swept away in the musical flow.
I think an artist like George Benson understands that and learned to entertain not lecture his audience. I often refer to a seminal night for me - February 27, 1973 - when I got to see George Benson perform at The Jazz Workshop in Boston. Wonderful night. Sitting literally five feet in front of George at a small table with my date. From the moment he stepped on stage he had this radiant smile as he played. The evening was recorded and one can find cuts on the 'net. He played stuff ranging from uptempo like Mambo Inn to ballads like What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life which he sang as well if I recall. He swept the audience up in his artistry but also in his enjoyment of playing the music. There were those moments where you felt the chills up your spine. And his guest that evening, a young Earl Klugh, was not bad either.Last edited by targuit; 02-05-2016 at 07:42 AM.
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Originally Posted by Groyniad
About the songs, I think that most of the jazzers today play the standards almost as if they don't care about the song, like is suppose to be just an opening statement for their long complicated solos, which often ends up sounding goofy.
Here is one exception:
I like how he is not soloing at all, that's just a mere transcription of Billie's song.
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Originally Posted by aleksandar
Of course by the 50s and 60s jazz was effectively out of the mainstream, in any case...
There's alway something interesting going on. Which reminds me to finally get around to properly checking out Kendrick Lamar.
There was plenty of cheap, lame music made in the past. It gets forgotten, and everyone remembers Duke Ellington and Jimi Hendrix, but these guys were not mainstream at the time. They were underground or at least off mainstream.
And there's always a market for good mainstream entertainment, too. Mark Ronson, Bruno Mars etc...Last edited by christianm77; 02-05-2016 at 08:11 AM.
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Originally Posted by nick1994
One friend of mine, a producer up in Virginia, says that now "All music is nichè music." There's more musical diversity and more sources of music. That, plus the historical time factor has created branches in every genre. There's modern country music, traditional country music, roots country music, western swing, countrypolitan, bluegrass, Appalachian, and more. All the changes that every genre has gone through are sort of frozen in time at different points, even pop music you pick your decade, 70s, 80s, 90s. So not only can you pick your genre, you can pick your era.
Have you noticed that there is very little rock music in the pop charts and radio? Same thing. Rock is still as popular as it needs to be, but there are sub-genres of metal, sub-genres of punk, classic rock, rock n roll, rock a billy, rhythm n blues, country rock, guitar rock, glam rock, and so on, and so on.
No genre is as popular as it used to be, at least not in the form that it used to be.
Radio itself started this. When I was a kid you hear all the music on the same radio station. There were less divisions between the genres, more overlap in fan's taste for the different genres.Last edited by kenbennett; 02-05-2016 at 08:29 AM.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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Ellington and Hendrix were underground?
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Originally Posted by lammie200
Of course if your art is being streamed at fractions of a penny to you while serving as the lifeblood creative content of some dandy Internet service, well you have a platform but the ticket is not too remunerative to the artist.
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Speaking of Ellington, his career had declined sharply by 1956. Then an interesting thing happened. As the crowd was leaving him at Newport he went back to raw emotion with Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue. A particularly attractive blonde was moved beyond control, and when the band was done swinging Ellington's career was officially revived. The audience needs raw emotion.
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Maybe it doesn't matter. Not even in a club.
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
He was really versatile. One of a kind. Underground? I'd say no.
Last edited by Stevebol; 02-05-2016 at 10:58 AM.
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Yes Ellington was a bit 'underground' in the sense that most of the (white) record buying public in the 1920's were listening to sweet dance bands.... They often play this stuff at vintage events, and the difference between this essentially white music and the real 'jazz' stuff... well it's err... black and white...
As I understand it the real deal jazz stuff, while known, was edgier, and of course there was the whole issue of racial politics. Happy to be corrected if this is untrue.
My dad describes Hendrix as having been 'underground' and part of the 'counterculture' as he was there, I defer to his knowledge. Most straights were into boom bang a bang or Sinatra at this point :-) Motown was huge of course, as well. The Beatles manage to straddle both worlds... But Jimi was proper counterculture.
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That's a question actually - was jazz ever popular, or was it just dance bands?
There's always been a tension between 'real jazz' and 'pop music' even going back into the early years. And jazz musicians still play pop to this day to earn a living, even if the styles have changed...
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I'm not sure about the term underground so much as 'counterculture'. Jimmy happened in the Sixties and I was there so to speak. Saw him perform two or three times live. The setting was that of the British invasion - Beatles, Stones, Who, etc. - and the Vietnam War was coming into the consciousness. Purple Haze was of course a big release for Jimi as well as the name of a well known and appreciated variety of pot, also part of the counterculture.
As far as I know, Jimi's roots were in the blues. But he has his Woodstock performance of The Star Spangled Banner as his 'defining moment' with the swoops of his whammy bar mimicking the bombs dropping. Jimmy was also a showman and had a bit of the "James Dean" thing going. He would appear on late night television and sort of defy category. A real character.
Sinatra was the older generation's star they had grown up with as a popular singer phenomenon in their youth. But in the early Sixties Sinatra's star had dimmed considerably and a movie role as a GI in WWII brought his career out of the shadows. Bigger than ever. I grew up hearing Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Sinatra, and others on the black and white and then color TV. The "Rat Pack" as Sinatra, Dean Martin and their buddies were nicknamed were big time.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
When confronted Sly would start throwing punches. He wanted to duke it out with Ali on the Mike Douglas show.
There were 2 Jimi's. The UK Jimi and the US Jimi. He left the US and went to the UK. He came back a star so not really underground in the US.
He had two loves. That's pretty common.
Ibanez archtop with 0.010 Thomastik strings and...
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