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Coltrane=JAZZ
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06-28-2022 04:24 AM
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Originally Posted by kris
But to Marinero, a failed artist.
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"Evidently however, these substances can have therapeutic and creative value"
" I know that if Coltrane had suffered from the consequences of a bad trip - like depression and psychosis - he simply would have stopped creating. But evidently, he didn't." James W.
Hi, J,
These are your beliefs. They reflect, for me, a naive concept of artistic creation that has been promulgated by myth and delusion . . . not reality. Many great artists from all genres have suffered from substance abuse but none of them created their great works while compromised from drugs or alcohol. When the drunkard Poe wrote his best poetry, he was not drunk. Van Gogh used absinthe and digitalis for pain but his creations were not the result of a drunken stupor. There are numerous recordings of Charlie Parker playing high that never represented his best work as the musicians who worked with him attested. And, to say that artists lose their artistic "impulse" because they are compromised through addiction is not true . . . what they do lose is their true creativity and uniqueness that have been destroyed through substance abuse. Anything that alters the brain from its full power and resources is detrimental. Drug and alcohol addiction needs to be seen for what it is . . . a destruction of the human soul.
Marinero
P.S. My diatribe about drugs/alcohol has been clearly stated. I'm going back to "What is Jazz." M
Here's a great film on topic with Bird's view on drugs.
https://youtu.be/hrHsAiXHgSw
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Originally Posted by grahambop
??????? C'mon G, you're wearing your nasty pants again.
Marinero
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???
Originally Posted by Marinero
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Originally Posted by Marinero
'none of them created their great works while compromised from drugs or alcohol.'
What about the Beatles? Or Berlioz? Also, many people drink alcohol without becoming addicted to it. Same with LSD. And I reckon most of society is addicted to caffeine, does that mean most people are in some way compromised?
'There are numerous recordings of Charlie Parker playing high that never represented his best work as the musicians who worked with him attested.'
I would like to see some evidence for this, considering he was often on some kind of drug. I do remember reading that his playing suffered when he drank too much alcohol when he had no access to heroin.
You cannot lump together all mind-altering substances as categorically bad. Many have their pitfalls, but the pitfalls are not the same. They differ from drug to drug.
Lastly, I again feel the need to point out that music has to be judged on how it sounds. You cannot make an a priori judgement simply because an artist uses drugs - it's a ludicrous way of judging art.
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Their playing was of the highest quality, right up to their early deaths.
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Originally Posted by Litterick
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Originally Posted by James W
You obviously did not watch the video I linked . . . ergo . . your above response. Watch the video. That's my answer which is the same as Bird's in the video. And, when you say "music has to be judged on how it sounds . . . " there's a gap as wide as the Mariana Trench among listeners as evidenced by the music paraded as Jazz by some of contributors on this forum. However, your premise concerning drugs and performance is your opinion and no serious musician would buy that tripe that has ever been down that road. It's romantic nonsense of the highest order by someone who's never been there as a performer. That's reality . . . not conjecture.
Marinero
P.S. I'm finished with the alcohol/drug nonsense of this discussion. Your beliefs reflect who you are as a person . . . as do mine. I'm returning to "What is Jazz." M
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Originally Posted by Litterick
We're usually on the same page but that just wasn't true IMO as evidenced by Bird at the end of his life when drugs/alcohol consumed everything. Did you watch the video I linked earlier?
Marinero
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Originally Posted by Marinero
You obviously did not read my last post on this thread, nor indeed my previous ones - ergo your above response. I watched the Bird video and it contradicted nothing I've written. Your response just reveals you either haven't read my posts or have trouble comprehending them.
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Originally Posted by Marinero
Hello, M.
My point was really about early deaths caused by horse. Just imagine if Emily Remler were still with us. How different might jazz guitar have been; what might we have learned?
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Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
Please excuse my popping in here, I've never been big on classifications and I'm not a real jazz guy. ...and I'm not just trying to screw with you Jimmy, ...by the way, you were a great receiver for the Jags
The above quote got my attention. I'm going to assume everyone agrees on what the "golden age" was. "jazz elements established", can I call those conventions, is that fair ? Can those conventions ever change over time and still remain jazz, or do we need a different classification of music if/when that happens ? .... within reason, I accept the tune you posted was rap.
-best,
Mike
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Hi, thx. Well I think jazz after the golden age has answered that question because there were several breaks with the conventions such as abandoning changes or using weird changes. Also using different instruments and different grooves. I think the modern players have assimilated all that but at the end of the day it still has to have some convention with the harmonic melodies and some of the other characteristics. A simple example is if a band is playing modally and it's a funk beat.. then what is jazz about it when they're just playing funk? Why not just call it what it is. Imo those are the main things that differentiate jazz however there are more characteristics like I was trying to explain with Bitches Brew. If you really want to get deep into the analysis. 2 musicians that I think embody modern and traditional playing are the pianists at open studio - Peter Martin and Adam Maness. They will do mod stuff and use weird language and no changes or weird changes and different grooves - but it's always mixed in with their traditional playing. Jazz can't become this other thing where it's only no changes and some other groove otherwise it wouldn't be jazz because that's the definition - that phenomenon of creation and elevation with the harmonically fluid melodic improv.
Last edited by Jimmy Smith; 06-30-2022 at 01:47 AM.
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It has been a long time now, and not many remember how it was in the old days; not really. Not even those who were there to see and hear as it happened, who were pressed in the crowds beneath the dim rosy lights of the bar in the smoke-veiled room, and who shared, night after night, the mysterious spell created by the talk, the laughter, grease paint, powder, perfume, sweat, alcohol and food—all blended and simmering, like a stew on the restaurant range, and brought to a sustained moment of elusive meaning by the timbres and accents of musical instruments locked in passionate recitative. It has been too long now, some seventeen years.
For Ralph Ellison, writing in the January 1959 issue of Esquire, the golden age was long gone, and partially forgotten: "So their subsequent fame has blurred the sharp, ugly lines of their rebellion even in the memories of those who found them most strange and distasteful." The forms of jazz we might see as cut from the one cloth were very different when they were new.
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Originally Posted by Litterick
I remember as a young college freshman in 1968 reading Ellison's "Invisible Man" and the impact it had on me at the time. He opened my young mind to the idea that there were individuals outside the mainstream of society who experienced life far different than the "Average Man" and in addition to his life as a Black person juxtaposed to society, there was a greater underlying metaphor of the artist's plight and the intellectual isolation of living in a codified society much as Joyce, Camus, Sartre, and Mann wrote about in their writing. Your opening quote from Ellison is beautifully written as a snapshot from times past when music and Art, in general, were sacred acts of communion that occurred outside the mainstream of society and away from the suffocating halls of academia and Carnegie Hall. And, it was here that Jazz harvested its greatest fruits and developed a cult of original artists who brought their vision of Art to life.
Marinero
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Hi M,
Yes, Bop was created at Minton's by musicians playing after hours, freed from the constraints of their paying gigs. We need places like that.
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Originally Posted by Litterick
Frankly, all this concentration on taxonomy puzzles me. Why not experience and enjoy the thing in itself?
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'I am going to a jazz gig. I will have a jazz experience. I know jazz. If my experience is not jazz, I will demand a refund.'
If you go to a Sunday blues jam in the pub, you can expect electric guitar blues as it is played by middle-aged white men. But jazz is meant to be something unpredictable. Those fedora-and-waistcoat bands often provide a near-jazz experience that will not disappoint casual diners but most jazz musicians are playing as much for themselves as for the audience.
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There are only two kinds of music, good music and bad music (and there is a lot of subjectivity involved in deciding where a particular piece of music belongs in that binary choice). Jazz is a classification of music that has a great deal of subjectivity involved (what any of you think is jazz, I might not and vice-versa). Jazz venues and festivals offer a lot of music these days that do not fit my classification system of jazz (but clearly it fit's someone else's classification system).
When asked to define obscenity, Supreme Court Justice Brennan once opined that he could not define it, but he knew it when he saw it. I feel the same way about jazz. I cannot define it, but I know it when I hear it.
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I choose to dwell in a big tent world of sound. Style category names such as "jazz" while useful up to a point always fall short. Listen and respond.
The truth lies in the details of the music.
jazz artists??? does it really matter?
Albert Alyler group
John Coltrane - Rashid Ali Duo
Edmar Castaneda (joropo rhythm)
Lucia Pulido (Hector Martignon arrangement cumbia rhythm)
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For me there is not enough value to debate this topic too much. I either like it or I don't.
The label/genre name itself is not a great predicting factor with me. I like lots of music that is often labeled "jazz", but at the same time lots of it does not resonate with me at all. I never listen to "jazz radio" or "jazz playlists".
Could say similar things about other genres.
Peace
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Originally Posted by bako
#1 Cacophony
#2 Interstellar Noise
#3 Very interesting concept . . . great bone player and group. When I lived in Mexico, I traveled to the Sierra Madres for some recreation and
we stopped at a cafe that was in a cave in the mountain with outdoor tables. There was a very old man that was playing a miniature harp
which he called "solito" meaning "little sun" or perhaps, "alone." I don't know if it was the genre of the instrument or what the old man named it. But, it had a very haunting sound and his music seemed like it was from another time and place. He played and sang beautifully. I, also, loved the harpist in this video and his passionate playing. Five stars
#4. I like the music . . . Five stars, but it's not Jazz
Marinero
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Originally Posted by burchyk
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Originally Posted by Marinero
Grant Green, What is This Thing
Yesterday, 01:59 PM in Ear Training, Transcribing & Reading