Jazz club (parody) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TebUMhJAKSM
"What tune are you going to play for us?" "Tune? This is jazz, man!"
Jazz Is Freedom
31–40 of 65 posts
Re: Jazz Is Freedom
#32At every moment in history there were artists moving the boundaries of what was considered music. Every so often, a near past style was frozen and called a genre, you could call it a major version. Once the jazz as most people know it was part of a movement pushing those boundaries, but so was debussy, chopin, or almost any other composer. Now, this jazz has little freedom and has more in common with classical music,…
I've seen acceptance of all kinds of avant-garde music here but the one genre that repeatedly gets called out as perhaps not fitting the requirements for qualifying as music is rap. Couldn't help think of that with your description. It's too bad because even with endless repetition and copying it's a genre that continues to innovate every year, eg Playboi Carti who is among the most popular yet works in the realm of the a-g.
Re: Jazz Is Freedom
#33At every moment in history there were artists moving the boundaries of what was considered music. Every so often, a near past style was frozen and called a genre, you could call it a major version. Once the jazz as most people know it was part of a movement pushing those boundaries, but so was debussy, chopin, or almost any other composer. Now, this jazz has little freedom and has more in common with classical music,…
Classical musicians (Chopin, etc) were noted for their improvisational capabilities, and there were many famous jam sessions throughout their respective time periods. Unfortunately, the technology didn’t exist to capture those moments, so we can only imagine what may have transpired.
Re: Jazz Is Freedom
#34If anyone wants a hear of modern jazz, I'm liking Jazzwise's "The 20 Best Jazz Albums of 2022": https://www.jazzwise.com/features/article/the-20-best-jazz-a...
Great list! Thanks.
Re: Jazz Is Freedom
#35At every moment in history there were artists moving the boundaries of what was considered music. Every so often, a near past style was frozen and called a genre, you could call it a major version. Once the jazz as most people know it was part of a movement pushing those boundaries, but so was debussy, chopin, or almost any other composer. Now, this jazz has little freedom and has more in common with classical music,…
I've seen acceptance of all kinds of avant-garde music here but the one genre that repeatedly gets called out as perhaps not fitting the requirements for qualifying as music is rap. Couldn't help think of that with your description. It's too bad because even with endless repetition and copying it's a genre that continues to innovate every year, eg Playboi Carti who is among the most popular yet works in the realm of…
Yes and how people talk about hip hop in our era is how people talked about jazz in an earlier one. Mainstream audiences and white critics hated it for a long time, dismissed it as unserious or unmusical. A lot of that dynamic is paved over by its later prestige and unmistakable role as a cultural force. But a lot of the people who hate hip hop would have hated jazz too, if they had lived contemporaneous with its rise.
Re: Jazz Is Freedom
#36Monk was the Diogenes of music. Just listen to his solos on "It Don't Mean a Thing," one of his recordings mentioned in the article (I hadn't heard it before): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pU-5pEpfmE In this Ellington tune, the second half of the first phrase is a bunch of repeated b-flats. And you hear that same segment repeated three times before the tune is done. That's a lot of repeated b-flats. Like any jazz…
The liner notes on 'Bag's Groove' notes that Miles asked Monk to 'lay out' on one take, and Monk took some offense at that. But whether that was everybody or just Davis is unclear. Davis had his own ego issues with being the new wunderkind and all.
Re: Jazz Is Freedom
#37At every moment in history there were artists moving the boundaries of what was considered music. Every so often, a near past style was frozen and called a genre, you could call it a major version. Once the jazz as most people know it was part of a movement pushing those boundaries, but so was debussy, chopin, or almost any other composer. Now, this jazz has little freedom and has more in common with classical music,…
Classical musicians (Chopin, etc) were noted for their improvisational capabilities, and there were many famous jam sessions throughout their respective time periods. Unfortunately, the technology didn’t exist to capture those moments, so we can only imagine what may have transpired.
Chopin really played with time, and his enclosures and chromatic trills are heard later in musicians like Django Reinhardt. No doubt of influence in Jazz for my ear, as music is a continuum of evolution, even if some artists like Monk bring a new oblique perspective.
Re: Jazz Is Freedom
#38In one sense jazz is all about freedom - you can play "whatever you want!"- but in many other senses it's as incredibly traditional and formulaic.as classical. There is a canon of songs that is worshipped, and song structures and instrument combos are mostly frozen in amber, and there are lines you just cannot cross. Every genre gets like that after awhile I guess.
there's this concept of jazz "as a verb" vs "as a noun." musicians back in the day were limited by the technology of the day, so they played things like horns and upright basses. the thing that made their music "jazz" was the improvisation. the jazz was something they did, not an objective genre standard. if monk or miles or coltrane were alive today, their music would be way different. they'd probably take advantage…
Re: Jazz Is Freedom
#39I love jazz. I love Monk. What I don't care for is the jazz musicians and "purists" who, in essence, is like "if it's not jazz, IT'S CRAP" attitude. Especially when they compare jazz to rock. Listen to the "Wrecking Crew" backing musicians from the 60s complain about the rock music they "had" to play on and how simplistic it was...yet were frustrated by how popular it was. They would say how they could play circles a…
It may be fair also to say that musical intolerance comes in many flavours. Jazz elitism may be rife in certain circles, while in others, strident purism of other types dominates equally gallingly. For example, the rock "feel/vibe purists", for whom the peak of all possible things is David Gilmour holding a sustained note from the blues scale - anything more strenuous, or of different feel, is considered extravagant,…
You see the same odd and ironic relationship between some classical musicians and more popular musicians. I’ve known people who are real into techno who thought classical music lacked any creativity because it was all written down, and then I know exquisite classical musicians who think rock and electronic music is a bunch of garbage.
Re: Jazz Is Freedom
#40I highly recommend this Vox explainer on John Coltrane's "Giant Steps", for anyone interested in learning about the math behind one of Jazz' greatest innovations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62tIvfP9A2w
It’s still used to torture music students to this very day!