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my claim was that it is not a form of music the main purpose of which is to be listened to
it is a form of music the main point of which is to be joined in with
its a practice (a thing to join in with) - not a commodity (a thing to buy and use)
(if you want to say 'its whatever you think it is' - it might be better not to bother)
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04-09-2016 11:15 AM
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I dunno. I see jazz as more kind of contained than that. I'm reminded of what Mingus said about Minton's. Not just anyone could play there. The same I'm sure would have been true of the jam sessions of the 1930's and so on, so it's not just a bop thing.
Originally Posted by Groyniad
But there are some very interesting elements to your description. The fact that the jazz musician's art is completely unrecognised in copyright law, for example. It's not a commodity at all in that sense.
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Some interesting stuff here. It's a little disturbing to see people who think that improvisation is somehow new, or that it is alien to classical music. Bach would improvise fugues. His "casual" approach to composition included writing a full cantata a week, every week for a couple of years. Mozart and Beethoven were both firstly, and primarily, famous as improvisers.
Figured bass asks was a system in which the continuo player was supposed to improvise against the notated bass line and figures (think of a more sophisticated lead sheet). Mozart has extremely simple left hand lines, and figures, in his concertos. He wrote these for his own use, and would improvise the left hand accompaniments as he played his concertos. Moreover, any concerto soloist was expected to improvise on the cadenzas to the concerto.
At this time, most music that was written and published was for the benefit of accomplished amateurs. All of that changed in the 19th century with the advent of the concert hall performance, and as a result of that move, improvisation started to fall out of the music, and there became a growing distinction between performers and composers.
For some discussion of the great composers abilities as improvisers, look here
https://ericbarnhill.wordpress.com/f...improvisation/
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To me, jazz has four essential elements:
1) Swing. It might be laid-back, it might rush the beat with some funk, it might be in three, four, six, or nine, but it's got swing, makes you want to move.
2) Improvisation. Someone in the band is taking flight, hopefully more than one at a time, and sometimes all surrender to the moment. It's about taking risks, dancing as close to the cliff without going over, in real time -- no second takes, no do-overs. A sub-element of this is listening -- in jazz, you can hear the guys playing off each others' riffs, modifying and taking the song elsewhere based on a whim one might have. Or, a solo player like Pass will let loose with a run out of nowhere that really takes us somewhere ... namely into the next change.
3) Extensions and alterations to the harmony that take the listener somewhere outside the purview of standard diatonic harmony, opening up possibilities for those improvising to set up tensions and releases which are not in the mainstream lexicon.
4) Dynamics. Soft, loud, fast, slow, tender, brutal, it can all happen in the same song.
Great points in a really good post, JR. Originally Posted by JonR
[...]The author Christopher Small (in Music of the Common Tongue) described how the music of the "African diaspora" - i.e. the music created by slaves and their descendants - introduced (or re-introduced) to western society a whole different way of experiencing music: a living, democratic, truly participatory one. Everyone involved, with no elitist cult of the "genius" composer with a hotline to God. No Beethovens or Mozarts in Africa.
In Africa, everyone partakes in music to some degree - if not actually playing an instrument, then singing, clapping and dancing.
The slaves found some echoes of African music in the folk musics imported from Europe, and naturally adapted what they heard around them. But always for the purposes of creating an event, an social experience that joined people together.
(The way I like to see it is that the slaves ended up liberating their masters, from the stultifying effects of elitist European culture.)
The way jazz differs from most other vernacular music is in the degree and status of improvisation. All vernacular music (folk, blues, rock etc) involves some degree of improvisation - even classical music can, in tiny amounts - but in jazz it's central: it's the whole point of the performance.
That's usually what separates those who don't get jazz: they don't get the idea of improvisation. They want tunes they can recognise, or sing along to, or dance to, or all three. They want to be entertained but, to them, improvisation is just the musicians messing around meaninglessly in the middle for their own interest. ("What's up, have they forgotten how it goes?"
)
[...]
Jazz is the one form of western music which has elevated improvisation to a high art, made it its raison d'etre. When a jazz musician composes a tune, he/she creates it primarily as a vehicle for improvisation. That's not the case with composition in any other genre.
And what that means, in turn, is that live performance is where jazz comes alive. It's a little meaningless when recorded - a jazz recording simply preserves one performance, one possible take of the tune.
[...]
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I think there is Jazz the genre and the spirit jazz.
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Pete Townshend said something along the lines of, "I can play my hits, but I can't recreate the moment when you were losing your virginity and "You'd Better You'd Bet" came on the radio. Originally Posted by wolflen
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I propose we banish categorizing by genre and go back to labeling music by what dance steps it's suited for.
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You mean like The Grand Wazoo by Frank Zappa?Let me try and throw a wrench in this whole thing. Where do whole pieces containing no improvisation written and played by "jazz" musicians, purposely written and intended as a jazz piece fall? If there is no improve, is it "jazz"?
Last edited by Hugo Gainly; 02-27-2020 at 10:38 AM.
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I’ve been drawn lately towards the idea that what makes jazz jazz is really its social organisation and community.
Come to think of it, that’s what keeps me in it, actually more than the music itself (I love all kinds of music.)
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But you could say that about trainspotting or cake-baking groups. But you wouldn't say their sociability is what makes a train a train or a cake a cake. Originally Posted by christianm77
I'm not being flippant, it's a serious comment. The fact that a love of jazz holds them together surely isn't what makes jazz jazz?
Anyway, jazz is like God. People believe in it but no one knows what it is :-)
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Jazz is the stuff that stained Monica Lewinski's dress. Presidential jazz.
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Interesting that there are several threads on the 'what is jazz' theme on this forum; one, particularly raw and bloody. I also love and have played - can't say 'play' really now - flamenco and similar arguments rage there - fakemenko, neuvo flamenco etc. There are broad attempts at definition but not universally accepted. As a mature student I did a 'Popular Music Studies' degree so I could change stream in my lecturing so-called career and almost the first thing that was said was 'we don't know how to define 'Pop Music' but we know what we mean'. In fact, The Mahavishnu orchestra, Can, Bing and Coltrane were all considered Pop.
I think there are two questions here: One, can you define a genre which is effectively organic, and if you can why are you doing it? Two, this thread refers to 'jazz' with the implication that it is not merely the characteristics of the music itself which is the subject of the question.
Is there a system of values that more closely relates to jazz than other musics? Probably; pretty well outlined above with aspects of rhythm, importance of impro etc. I offer the music I create as having aspects of jazz only. I firmly believe that for most people what we like is what we experienced in that first rush of mania in our young lives. For me, that was early The Beatles; out-there jazz (late Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp etc), Blues (Son House etc), the Underground as we called it in Britain; Zappa and Beefheart in the US; The UK Canterbury scene etc. I've been able to love other music since then, but the basic principles of that early music pertain through all of what I like. So, I could probably point to the aspects of jazz I like within it, but I couldn't define it.
I don't think one can ever fully define a genre. One could probably define something with limited range, such as Gamelan (What!? Unleash the Gamelan Hell!!) or Baroque but not something organic and growing/changing. We do so because we are human and we want to live in communities. Some are happy to be the water carriers but others want to be the headmen, with THE BIG TOTEMIC THING. The former are those who simply ask questions seeking elucidation, move slowly ahead, and those who help. The latter are the individuals who tell you that you're not a real 'jazzer' unless you can cut it 'on the bandstand' with no books, do a fantastic job and not let down the balloon of ego that separates them from 'the rest'. It's always been like that, from when money was to be made. Mingus' comment about Minton's? That. "If you have to ask..."? That. I saw George Coleman attempt to roast Critch, Martin Drew and Dave Green once. Didn't work, but why? It's animal 'spraying'. The cutting contest. Well, for most of them, 'The Good Lord' (sic) has had the final director's cut.
We all like to achieve, and contrary to what we wish was the case, we like our Scout/Guide Badges - cutting wood, doing knots, playing Coltrane changes etc. I thought I loved jazz, and I do, certain things. But I decided by trying to learn it, in addition to the musical benefits of knowing 'what's going on' and being able to express my music more effectively, what I really wanted to achieve was recognition of having something of value. i.e. being given a jazz badge, and to have that association by playing with 'better and better' musicians. I can't say I don't really care about that any more, but it is less and less important the more secure I am in what I do.
At the margins, the logic will always be different, but telling a beginner they have to learn a tune in all 13 keys to be jazz, is meaningless. It might be meaningful on 'Strictly Come Dancing' where monumental money is the real key. But that's not jazz. That's the amphitheatre.
I am practising my stuff in order to better express my musical self and have stopped caring about what people think. I can't sound like someone else because it's the most important thing to sound like ME. So I don't try. Some want to though. In Britain, I can think of Alan Skidmore or Pete King. Brilliant and exciting keepers of someone else's flame.
The older I get, the more I see us as frail-ly bobbing about on the uncaring sea of life and agglomerating like corks or plastic ducks of similarity. The keepers of the dharma at 'the top' (ie local gig bookers, teachers of teachers, Carnegie Hall impresarios, those who feel in charge of duck alignment) are the same. They pontificate and lecture, but they just want a bit of respect too.
That's jazz.
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I honestly think people's hang ups about jazz and improvisation come from classical music rejecting what to every other tradition of music is perfectly normal practice. Jazz turns up at roughly the same time (gen or two after) and everyone loses their shit. Originally Posted by Duffy Pratt
Concert artists boggle at the ability of musicians able to make music without using a score! Wow!
(Of course they don't understand what jazz actually is - listen to the average classical musician trying to 'swing' - or what's improvised and what isn't.)
The deeply ass-backward way we teach jazz and popular perceptions of it are a result of this accident of history. We think Improvisation is uniquely important to jazz. Of course, it isn't. No more so than Bach's era, or Indian classical ragas, or flamenco, or ... well just read Derek Bailey, right?
Jazz, as Peter Bernstein has put it is a decorative art. But then.. so is ... baroque. Look it's in the friggin' name.
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From what I hear, Pete King is a great example of a player who works out a solo and keeps it the same pretty much, with tweaks. Originally Posted by Hugo Gainly
A lot of jazzers are conditioned by their education to think this is a bad thing. In actual fact it's how a lot of the greats did it.
Anyway, in direct response to your post. Some people get really offended at being told they don't play jazz. I wonder what that's all about. ('Look I went to music college for 4 years to learn about this irrelevant thing no-one likes, I demand to have some pseudo-intellectual credibility!') Why does it matter?
'you music doesn't swing and you don't know any tunes. ' - mouldy bop fig
'well, your music is a stale and irrelevant echo of a once genuinely subversive new musical force .' - filthy modernist
Both are correct haha.
One thing I miss in the UK is people who have both skill sets. In NYC, people play loads of grandpa tunes, but they also play elaborate and alienating music from the year 2256, too. Sometimes, (and I really like this) they do it on the grandpa snooze tunes. It's the perfect combination!
In the UK, you are either playing in a different time signature every bar, or you literally want to be Zoot Sims.
For me, it's always about seeking a tradition to ground myself in. Not because I think it's important to play bop the way it was in 1953 (sorry Barry) but because it gives you somewhere to stand. It could be anything. I love all kinds of music, and I can get deep into things.
I could already play jazz OK, and I don't have a chance with Indian slide guitar or something, so I thought, let's go down this path.
And I think it's good. It trains the ear. But we live in an eclectic exciting world of music possibilities - and it is largely thanks to the people of your generation that this has happened - so to shut yourself off from that seems odd. Having a tradition, I think, can actually help you be more eclectic...
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Jazz is Music's R & D department.
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Jazz is what you say you play so people don't bother you with the nth instalment of Sir Eric & Ye Magicke Marshall Stacke.
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lol mentioning an interest in jazz tends to terminate all further conversation with ‘normal’ humans, that’s why I usually keep it a secret.
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I have no idea.
I don't understand, for example, why a Grateful Dead jam in an odd meter over some interesting chord changes isn't jazz.
It's improvised and arranged on the fly. Even the musicians don't know exactly what is going to happen -- like great jazz.
The chord changes are more complicated than some that Miles used (eg So What, Time After Time) and the rhythms are more complicated than a lot of swing based jazz, to give an example.
Too much treble in Garcia's tone? Drums stay too close to the beat?
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Yes, exactly. For people who have gotten to know me, all I can really do is poke fun at myself to express I understand it’s not normal, especially in my area. Originally Posted by grahambop
For people I don’t know, I tell them, but direct the conversation back to their favorite music, which they prefer anyway. Luckily, I’m knowledgable enough of other types of music to have something to say, but if I don’t I just pretend to be interested.
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garcia and grisman-so what Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
cheers
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Is interesting the Dead and jazz relationship... back in late 60's or early 70's I was at a show at Filmore in SF. Miles fusion bands was opening... or at least played first with the Dead following...I think there were earlier bands, I didn't get there until after 9 or 10.... Anyway was a cool show. Chick was on Rhodes.
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I can understand why some people might think of the Dead as some free form jazz when they do their all out jams, but the Dead solidified themselves when they perfected their vocals. Their vocals weren't jazz.
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I think jazz is best summed up by the music store employee who once tried to plug me into a Marshall stack while I was checking out a Gibson Tal Farlow model:
Him: "I really like your style man. It's like blues, but it has all these other chords too. And the melody is there, in the chords, like it could be a song just like that, and not even have a singer, y'know. It's like..."
Me: "jazz?"
Him: "No, that's like Kenny G and shit."
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The interesting thing about jazz is that every member of a combo can be isolated and still be identifiable as distinctly jazz.
Bass, drums, comping, solo, vocals all individually without hearing the other parts would have the properties that can be unmistakably identified as jazz.
So may be it's easier to ask what makes drumming jazz, bass lines jazz, comping jazz etc.
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I think it's largely vocabulary. But, there have been some seismic shifts in jazz vocabulary at times. Of course, there have always been a few older players saying "that new s*** isn't jazz". Originally Posted by Tal_175
When Robert Glasper's laptop computer player (not a joke) led the Blue Note audience in a Time After Time (Cyndi, not the standard) singalong, was that jazz? I'd say, in the context of the entire show, yes. A 20 second clip of it, maybe not. "What is jazz?" is a hard question.
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