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Originally Posted by oldane
Duke Ellington was much more famous than Charles Ives, Gunther Schuller, Elliott Carter, Virgil Thomson, Steve Reich, Samuel Barber, John Adams, even Aaron Copeland. They won Pulitzers. The Pulitzer judges (then) did not consider jazz "serious" music; not that they considered pop music more "serious" or important.Last edited by MarkRhodes; 02-06-2016 at 10:41 PM. Reason: punctuation
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02-06-2016 10:29 PM
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Please songs like ATTYA with a rock back beat and make it aurally attractive and play regularly (maybe on a live streaming platform) and you'll have a chance at growing a fan base. Uh oh, no yelling please. LOL
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Just got back from a week long cruise filled with geezers (including myself). They had a piano bar. Guy plays nothing but 70's on. A performer got on at Grand Cayman, he played Sammy Davis, Jr. In Vegas in a Rat Pack show, so I expected to hear some GASB tunes. He asked how many folks liked Jazz, got decent applause, then asked how many liked rock and the place exploded. So, a rock show. He did 2 Davis numbers and they were great, then back to an hour of rock and R&B. The crazy thing is, there was a 9 piece band on board and they were terrific jazz performers. They lifted the SNL theme song and changed up the melody a bit for every opening, had a great tenor player. When they had the chance to just play filler, there was great improvising going on. Last night of the cruise was Al Jardine and the Surf City All Stars. An hour and a half show, a bit of shark-jumping on a lot of numbers, but the crowd was on it's feet. Ran into Mr. Jardine on the Promenade and went to say hello, then realized I had nothing to say to him other than "Good show", so just nodded and moved on. He was looking tired and ragged.
I bet if you could find enough WWII vets still alive to fill a cruise ship, you might hear some decent jazz. Other than that, outside Manhattan, no one seems to care anymore (I don't know a lot about West Coast jazz towns). A lot of this music is 50-80 years old; no one really gives a shit about those songs anymore except folks like us. Of course, just my opinion.
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I don't know about that bit of Manhattan being the only place people like jazz. Philly has more jazz happening than NYC these days.
And here in Harrisburg, Steve Rudolph is still a fixture at the Hilton up on Market Square. Harrisburg also has a Friends of Jazz society and they bring big name acts through here pretty regularly.
but west of the Poconos, its nothing but cow towns, I'll give you that
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Good to know. I'll be in Philadelphia pretty soon so will check it out. I don't travel there often, mostly to NYC so that's pretty much what I know.
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Originally Posted by ah.clem
PS:
Improvisation isn't dead. It's actually going stronger than ever. Some of the biggest grossing bands are JAM BAND bands. Dave Matthew's sidemen are full on Jazz men who explore the contemporary realm of rhythm.
Notice how Scofield literally does a full rotation on the Jam band scene and then turns right around and releases a "straight ahead Jazz" record.
I also think that since the development of Jazz was contributed to mightily by "instrumentalists", we as instrumentalists are somewhat trapped in the rhythmic forms of "the past" so to speak whereas singers are given freer reign to sing and be "jazzers" over more adventurous and/or contemporary rhythms.
Finally, please listen to this "JAZZ SINGER" (yup, read her wiki page) who has sold... 2.5 MILLION RECORDS TO DATE! Her rhythm choices literally span the early beginnings of jazz to more contemporary rhythms. Her singing is to me not much different from the people she's obviously inspired by.
All I can say is I hope instrumentalists are taking note.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caro_Emerald
Last edited by West LA Jazz; 02-11-2016 at 08:27 PM.
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If people don't like your ultra-sophisticated, exquisitely prepared bean salad, it's probably not because they're stupid. It's probably because it doesn't taste good.
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Ha.
Jazz is popular.
It's just not as popular as 2019 "pop" music.
It's more popular than say Ska music and Ska music is "popular".
It's all relative. ;-)
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It's very popular... among jazz fans :-)
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Originally Posted by ragman1
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Originally Posted by strumcat
How could it fail?
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Btw I’m going to be putting out a couple of new recordings soon, so I’ve found this thread valuable for motivation.
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One reason I think is it's become too complicated for many listeners to grasp. Another is the way people live nowdays, in huge, noisy cities, stressful lives, ideal soundtrack is heavy metal, not strings and horns! Another reason is, it's good music, and music business today, same as tv and Cinema seems to have a plan promoting awful stuff.
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It depends on what you mean.
If you mean less popular than for example pop/rock, it is because it is less accessable.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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Originally Posted by rabbit
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I used to love this when I was little. This is the one that has the talking jack-o-lantern. I have a 2 almost 3 year old niece and I would love to show it to her but the blasted thing isnt on DVD WHY?
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Originally Posted by Alter
E.g. so many of my rock \ blues guitar player friends would say "I don't like jazz" with most admitting they haven't listen to much, if any. The opened-minded ones asks for direction; I don't play give them a Tal Farlow or Jim Hall album! Instead I give them Green Street by Grant Green. 90% came back with 'love that album,,, especially the tunes written by Green. DUH, since those are blues-riff-base tunes compared to the two standards on the album; Round Midnight and Alone Together. They could relate what they know to these jazz tunes, especially after we play them together.
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Originally Posted by jameslovestal
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I think most modern Fusion is super organised. They do this thing where it sounds like random notes on random chords, and then they do the tricky stops (tm) super tight to demonstrate that they know what they are doing.
And they wonder why people don't like jazz? :-)
Dixieland jazz is definitely much more random than fusion. Unless it's Jelly Roll or something, which was literally all composed.
The thing is music might not sound organised to the lay ear, but often it is. Trout Mask Replica was rehearsed for months, for instance, and to most people would sound like a random cacophony.
Even the trained musical ear isn't a good guide in this.
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Maybe we just need to listen to what Chuck Berry had to say;
I have no kick against modern jazz
Unless they try to play it too darn fast
And change the beauty of the melody
Until it sounds just like a symphony
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Most non-musically oriented people, people with no ear or who know little about music except they like or don't like it, don't like dissonance. Jazz is much of the time dissonant. It's the lowest selling form of music due allot to this and that real jazz players don't grab and wave their crotches at you as today's rock and rap does..Jazz can be very sexy, but it's not selling sex..It's also no longer a dance form, the way it began as. This too has a bearing on its popularity. It's a true American art form based on improvisation; again too dissonant for the masses, "But Beautiful" to the audience it does have and to those who play it....M
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My response to the title of this thread would be that it’s too vague a question. There are many very different kinds of music called “jazz” and many very different audience segments. Give me the name of a specific jazz artist and a specific audience segment, and I can probably come up with a plausible explanation of why they aren’t popular in that segment.
In general, people choose to listen to types of music that suit their lifestyle. So my explanations would probably relate to that idea.
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Let's re-frame the question: why are lesser forms so popular?
Today, as I post, this video shows 958,785,774 views. There are other versions with additional views:
I don't have or watch Television and instinctively keep a safe distance from current 'pop' culture.
"The end is nigh," so while we can, let us enjoy the luxury of debating the unpopularity of Jazz.
Henriksen Blu 6 w/ gig bag
Today, 03:29 PM in For Sale