It seems a bit weird to use the word "death" or "end" for music that's still being played by musicians and discovered by new listeners.
Che Guevara gets new followers regularly too.
Che Guevara written a lot of books lately?
John Coltrane and the End of Jazz
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Re: John Coltrane and the End of Jazz
#22> The fact that this 55-year-old recording is the year’s most significant jazz release tells you all you need to know about the health of jazz in 2018. Writer has a point. As much as I like jazz, it's ossified badly as a genre. Love to see some forward motion that isn't free jazz or other noise.
As a counter point, imagine if the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Tupac, Notorious BIG, etc. had an unreleased album and it was released this year. If that happened, I would guarantee that the same thing that happened with Coltrane's Album would have the same thing. Does that mean Rock, Hip-Hop, Rap is dead? I do think jazz as a genre has an issue, but it is a much different issue. Personally, I think Jazz is way to inbred,…
To the extent jazz is stodgy it's because commerical interest has dried up and it's attached itself to schools instead. But what was the alternative, you wonder? Do we want to only have Kenny G?
Re: John Coltrane and the End of Jazz
#23I think the most interesting aspects of this piece aren't about Coltrane, or even about jazz. It's an interesting essay on modernism and it's troubled relationship with it's audience.
Whilst it's beyond question that the emperor sometimes is without clothes, everyone seems to disagree on when precisely he disrobed.
Sometimes music is only "difficult" until something clicks with you. (But some music seems eternally out of reach to me and I have been known to cry "fraud!" every now and then...)
Re: John Coltrane and the End of Jazz
#24I don't really get the thesis. He ruined jazz? Or he took it as far as it could go? I think Ayler is probably more atonal and challenging than A Love Supreme, for instance. And jazz lives on in both more traditional forms and in the more popular "smooth jazz." Ultimately I can't play music so I can't really speak to the author's argument that I'm cowed by being impressed and don't know what I'm talking about. But I e…
I think it's the latter - Coltrane exhausted jazz. That's my reading, anyway.
But as I said, it isn't true. People kept right on experimenting with different forms. Coltrane was certainly an all-time great but I don't agree that he took experimentation to its limits and was playing noise nobody could possibly enjoy listening to, as the author seems to want me to believe.
Re: John Coltrane and the End of Jazz
#25I think the most interesting aspects of this piece aren't about Coltrane, or even about jazz. It's an interesting essay on modernism and it's troubled relationship with it's audience. Whilst it's beyond question that the emperor sometimes is without clothes, everyone seems to disagree on when precisely he disrobed. Sometimes music is only "difficult" until something clicks with you. (But some music seems eternally ou…
That's a more interesting question. In general I love avant-garde art but, like, after the first time someone did it I'm not sure what's increasing about a single-color canvas.
Re: John Coltrane and the End of Jazz
#26This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. - Jazz didn't begin to die on Kind of Blue. That was a popular, well selling jazz record. Rather than setting Jazz on a path to irrelevance, Kind of Blue reinvigorated the genre and inspired an abundance of accessible and innovative material in the years following its release. - Alice Coltrane is not the "Yoko Ono" of Jazz. She made a lot of good records. And Yoko Ono is…
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Re: John Coltrane and the End of Jazz
#27> For it is a sad fact of musical history that after Coltrane, there was nothing left to say on the saxophone. But Kenny G said it anyway.
I.e. nothing? Haha.
Re: John Coltrane and the End of Jazz
#28I think the most interesting aspects of this piece aren't about Coltrane, or even about jazz. It's an interesting essay on modernism and it's troubled relationship with it's audience. Whilst it's beyond question that the emperor sometimes is without clothes, everyone seems to disagree on when precisely he disrobed. Sometimes music is only "difficult" until something clicks with you. (But some music seems eternally ou…
Creating for yourself might have the interesting side-effect of not pleasing others.
(I understand, publishing something implies you seek an audience. A beacon for like-minded individuals, then.)
Re: John Coltrane and the End of Jazz
#29This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. - Jazz didn't begin to die on Kind of Blue. That was a popular, well selling jazz record. Rather than setting Jazz on a path to irrelevance, Kind of Blue reinvigorated the genre and inspired an abundance of accessible and innovative material in the years following its release. - Alice Coltrane is not the "Yoko Ono" of Jazz. She made a lot of good records. And Yoko Ono is…
Agreed. I did a double-take to see if Wynton Marsalis wrote the article.
Re: John Coltrane and the End of Jazz
#30It seems a bit weird to use the word "death" or "end" for music that's still being played by musicians and discovered by new listeners.
It's no longer very commercially popular -- there is no jazz radio station in the US that isn't smooth jazz and jazz albums represent like 1% of sales. In that sense you could call it "dead," but I'm not sure commercial success is the right metric for art music.
Did you mean no commercial stations? Because I can think of lots of listener-supported jazz stations that are mainstream, definitely not smooth. KCSM in my local area, for instance.