Serious question: what is jazz?

[cosmic gumbo]

Jazz is what they played at whorehouses in Storyville to be the party music for drinking, screwing, and doing dope.

[christianm77]

The problem with defining jazz is the same is the problem with defining anything else: definitions rapidly become circular and you end up using the word to define the word. "Jazz is the music that sounds like jazz." We function in society by sort of intuiting what is that words mean and hopefully intuiting relatively similar to everybody else. Define "orange" or "verklempt." The more precisely we try to define something, the more difficult it becomes. In the definition of any word we can find the edges where that frays. For example in defining physics and chemistry, one does start to bump into places were the two overlap. At that point are we talking about physics or chemistry? The same thing happens with jazz and blues, jazz and rock, etc. Is Allan Holdsworth's music rock or jazz? I hear it as jazz. A 30s swing aficionado might hear it as rock. All we can do with any words is to define them well enough to be getting on with and tolerate a little ambiguity.

The joke being that Allan was an aficionado of 30s swing guitar, learning the classic Charlie Christian solos....

But I’m Allan’s case I’m not certain he would have been overeager to pigeonhole his music. While he had many jazz influences he also had classical ones, and presumably some rock influences (though he didn’t talk about that in the interviews I’ve read)

Anyway I get the distinct impression rockers are largely ambivalent about Allan. I think of him very much as a jazz improviser who made music ranging from the distinctly jazz to the very much prog rock, but that’s true of quite a few musicians of the era.

[strumcat]

Jazz is what they played at whorehouses in Storyville to be the party music for drinking, screwing, and doing dope.

Yep, Storyville is pretty much where jazz was born. Mahogany Hall, the best brothel in Storyville, where Jelly Roll Morton played, there on the right.

The Mahogany Hall Stomp, played by Louis Armstrong...
Louis Armstrong - Mahogany Hall Stomp - New York, 05.03. 1929 - YouTube

IMO, gypsy jazz is the purest surviving form of the real thing. A lot of what they call "jazz" now is only distantly related to it.

[JGinNJ]

Jazz is what they played at whorehouses in Storyville to be the party music for drinking, screwing, and doing dope.

Boy have I been doing it all wrong.

[christianm77]

Yep, Storyville is pretty much where jazz was born. Mahogany Hall, the best brothel in Storyville, where Jelly Roll Morton played, there on the right.

The Mahogany Hall Stomp, played by Louis Armstrong...
Louis Armstrong - Mahogany Hall Stomp - New York, 05.03. 1929 - YouTube

IMO, gypsy jazz is the purest surviving form of the real thing. A lot of what they call "jazz" now is only distantly related to it.

Plenty of people about playing the older stuff. It’s a bit of thing, you might say:

[John A.]

Okay, now look. Exactly what is classical music? No, really, I mean it, what IS it? What IS classical music?

It's music played with by tapping on one's collar bone. Oh wait, that's clavicle music. Never mind.

John

[ragman1]

So it's old-style racy whorehouse music which a lot of over-educated white folks are giving themselves brain damage about because they're bored with pentatonics...

I get it :-)

[mr. beaumont]

Jazz is what they played at whorehouses in Storyville to be the party music for drinking, screwing, and doing dope.

Sigh...and every day we stray further from tradition.

[christianm77]

I can tell you what jazz is definitely not - what happens when you teach a bunch of beginners chord scale relationships....

So my definition of jazz will always have to do with the rhythmic language. The harmony and melody is all shaped by that, and is negotiable in terms of style...

[ruger9]

Sigh...and every day we stray further from tradition.

That's the definition of "progress", and not just in music. Progress is antithetical to tradition. (and for the record, I'm more of a traditionalist myself, altho not a strict one- at one time, Bird was "progress". NOW he's viewed as "traditional." Who is today's Bird? IS there one? I doubt it. NOW please see the thread: "Sad State of Music" LOL)

[oldane]

Old lady: "Oh, Mr.Waller, what is this you call swing?"

Fats Waller: "If you haven't found out by now, mam, you never will."

[christianm77]

That's the definition of "progress", and not just in music. Progress is antithetical to tradition. (and for the record, I'm more of a traditionalist myself, altho not a strict one- at one time, Bird was "progress". NOW he's viewed as "traditional." Who is today's Bird? IS there one? I doubt it. NOW please see the thread: "Sad State of Music" LOL)

I don’t think that’s true

[strumcat]

It's kind of like sex. You might reach a certain age where you still remember how, you just can't remember why. You can do a whole doctorate on the "how" but it won't help any. You have to get back to the "why". Then the "how" falls right in line behind it. There might even be some good stuff in that doctorate you worked so hard on. The rest of it you can just keep around for laughs.

[ragman1]

This thread is heating up :-)

[ragman1]

When Beaumont uses words like antithetical you know something's happening...!

[rabbit]

...party music for drinking, screwing, and doing dope.

Wish I'd said that!

[ragman1]

You will, rabbit, you will... :-)

[strumcat]

Who is today's Bird? IS there one? I doubt it. NOW please see the thread: "Sad State of Music" LOL)

We need to send an expeditionary team to the real source of all major cultural innovation -- the world's leading red light districts. E.G. Storyville -> jazz, Hamburg -> Beatles, any of them -> top Paris fashion designers. Let's face it, that's where it all starts. Any volunteers?

[Uncle Vinnie]

“If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.”

Louis Armstrong
?

[Litterick]

Jazz, Black and White by Gene Lees is full of insightful anecdotes. Here is Cedar Walton, recalling his time in Art Farmer and Benny Golson's Jazztet: “Later on, Benny and Art agreed that there was too much music in the sextet. Sitting there reading, it was unnatural: you needed to just come out and play."

[oldane]

So my definition of jazz will always have to do with the rhythmic language. The harmony and melody is all shaped by that, and is negotiable in terms of style...

+1.

Here's an example of hard swinging jazz with awful lot of rhythm and almost no melody and harmony. Go to 9:10 to hear it.

[rabbit]

We need to send an expeditionary team to the real source of all major cultural innovation -- the world's leading red light districts. E.G. Storyville -> jazz, Hamburg -> Beatles, any of them -> top Paris fashion designers. Let's face it, that's where it all starts. Any volunteers?

Hmmm, sort of an adult 'Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle'...

...ever the intrepid adventurers.

Oh! The sacrifices we make for the sake of ART.

[citizenk74]

Hmmm, sort of an adult 'Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle'...

...ever the intrepid adventurers.

Oh! The sacrifices we make for the sake of ART.

Liked for reference to Moose and Squirrel.

[JazzNote]

I remember Pat Martino explaining that "jazz is a state of courage".

..... and i totally agree with the master.

[Litterick]

'I feel that jazz is not so much a style as a process of making music.'

Bill Evans