I don't know about that. After all, Coltrane was very clearly influenced, throughout his career, by Johnny Hodges...and it was a direct influence, i.e. that was the music he grew up listening to and which got him into playing the horn. Maybe the connection between somebody like Peter Brotzmann (or let's say Anthony Braxton) and 20s jazz is harder to discern, but there's Coltrane in the middle, bridging the gap.
I don't think it takes any squinting at all. In fact I think those later jazz forms might be historically incomprehensible without knowledge of the earlier developments. They were all made by people who came up in the earlier traditions, fully steeped in their practice and building on that experience, shared language, shared repertoire, instrumentation, etc. I also don't thinking a Haydn symphony and a Mahler symphony exist in completely separate genres of music. Free jazz and "trad jazz" for want of a better word, like a Haydn symphony and a Mahler symphony are each part of shared traditions and languages with lots of tendrils, developments, alterations, variations, but more that's shared than that's separate. They're not entirely different species.
For what it's worth, I watched the final episode of the film last night for the first time in a long time, and I felt two things very strongly: 1) The segments on Taylor and the Art Ensemble of Chicago are indeed condescending and sour--it's a matter of the sum of the parts Burns put together--even the narrator's tone in his last remark about the AEC is weirdly snide and rueful (and ignores the fact that the AACM had a very powerful impact on the music scene in Chicago, that doesn't just cater to white university students there or in France, and that it continues to exist). 2) Much of the rest of it, however, is lovely, despite what's left out and the more than slightly embarrassing messianic feel of the segment on Marsalis himself. The treatment of Coltrane is forthright and respectful. The sequence on Louis Armstrong's final days made me weep once again--very moving and right on target. The Ellington segments were less emotional, but also moving. Even the final sequence on young contemporary jazz musicians was more wide-ranging and open than I remembered it. L.
This is most interesting. On the other side of the coin, Richard Davis, who I know personally, has performed and recorded with the Ellington Orchestra, Earl Hines, Ben Webster, and other swing era musicians, with Sarah Vaughan (as a member of her working band for several years), with many bop artists from the 1950s through today, with the avant garde (Eric Dolphy, Sun Ra, Andrew Hill, Anthony Braxton, etc.), and with many other artists which are not that easy to pigeonhole. He has also recorded on Latin jazz albums. To him, it is all jazz. He would not say that only his work with Earl Hines was jazz, and that everything else was another genre. I think that an interesting issue is how one defines jazz. I think it came to mean to many people a really big tent, with many styles and variations inside of it. Attempts to limit the size of the tent, and to push some music or musicians outside of the tent, seem to meet with resistance and thoughts that the person seeking to do the limiting is too doctrinaire, judgmental, negative. Who gets to decide what the tent's size and characteristics should be? Who was appointed Grand Poobah of this topic, able to wield authority over others? Who appointed the Grand Poobah? Looking at the rock area, everything from the Hollies to Metallica, Fats Domino to Alice in Chains, is called rock. No one seems to get too excited about kicking someone out of the rock music genre. But in jazz, these conflicts over the definition of the musical genre seem to abound, and have since at least the 1940s. I wonder why. I honestly don't know.
Well, but they do, at least since the early '70s there have been critics and fans who have argue that rock and roll -- of the late 50s through, say, the Beatles -- is one genre and rock -- a kind of catch-all for the stuff that came after -- is another. I don't buy it myself. As I've said before, it seems obviously part of one shared tradition, rep, musical language and landscape, just with a bunch of subgenres and hybridizations, etc. But not a wholly different kind of music altogether.
Henry Red Allen spanned generations too. Very versatile. As for who owns the word, I don't know why it's a thing with jazz but not rock.
Thanks for this. Sounds just about right. Still a fascinating thread, but the piling-on and exaggeration (e.g., calling Wynton Marsalis "a menace," painting the admittedly aggro Stanley Crouch as an overwhelmingly malign force) is mildly bumming me out. The biggest problem I continue to have with this discussion is the implicit notion that the Jazz documentary and the Albert Murray / Crouch / Marsalis narrative have been incredibly influential and determinative, and that this coterie's viewpoint has been widely and uncritically accepted by credulous jazz fans, and that it sent millions of newcomers down some dark path. In fact, almost everything you hear about the series these days parallels the ambivalent-to-negative critiques being offered in this thread.
Well, I do think to a degree -- both by being anointed by the media as the go-to voice for jazz and by virtue of control of one of the nations few well funded, high profile, mainstream-connected artist institutions devoted to jazz and the jazz repertoire -- the Murray/Crouch/Marsalis axis and it's version of jazz history and aesthetic has been extremely influential on depictions of jazz in the broader culture for 30 years. I think that's undeniable. How much "damage," if any, has been done by that, may be exaggerated. And counter interpretations have held strong despite not having the same kind of vocal figureheads or bully pulpits. I mean fusion remains popular. Electric Miles is probably better regarded today than ever before. Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler's etc. reputations seem perfectly secure.
This reminds me of another contradiction in that episode: - Dexter Gordon was hailed as a hero for finding a large following in Europe after not being able to find steady work in the US. - The AEC were sneered at for finding a large following in Europe after not being able to find steady work in the US.
Pretty much the same feeling I had rewatching it and the prior episode. I also found myself a little more sensitive to the continual racial references in that last episode -- this that or the other jazz no longer was popular with black audiences, was a repeated refrain -- than I was 15 years ago.
What if there was suddenly a group of three people within bluegrass music who were regularly quoted in the mass media, including leading newspapers and on TV. These three bluegrass people made regular statements that only some of the bluegrass musicians of today and in the past were playing "real bluegrass" and the rest were not. These three people adopted a confrontational tone about their opinions about "real bluegrass", made negative remarks about certain older bluegrass musicians, and omitted mention of leading bluegrass artists of the past and present from any of their statements or writings about bluegrass. Then those three people were given control over a large, well funded Bluegrass Institute in New York City, with a large new building and a large annual budget--while nearly all other bluegrass musicians were struggling to make ends meet playing their music around the country to small audiences. I think one would expect that the other bluegrass musicians, and the long time lovers of bluegrass music, would be taken somewhat aback by this development, and might express out loud how they disagreed with these three people. Why would that seem unusual? So substitute jazz for bluegrass everywhere in that paragraph, and Marsalis/Crouch/Murray for three people everywhere in that paragraph. That is what happened. One can agree with some aspects of what Marsalis/Crouch/Murray have said or done, but it does not seem surprising to me that they would be controversial or met with vocal and written comment.
What is really odd is that I have often read that the jazz group which regularly attracted larger black audiences in the 1970s was the Miles Davis electric group.
the only redeeming quality of the series is that billy crystal is *not* in it. i can't get through 30 seconds of burns' baseball doc. for that reason alone.
Um, there are actually divisions like that within the bluegrass community. Some purist fans don't take someone like Allison Krauss seriously, because she covers Beatles and Bad Company songs. Maybe the world would be a better place if these arguments didn't exist in every genre of music, but they do.
As I've noted above, the addition of electric instruments, plus other factors, makes something like Live/Evil an entirely different genre than the music that Bix Beiderbecke or Coleman Hawkins played. I don't think it's the end of the world if they're both called "jazz," but I don't see them as part of the same genre, either.
Yep, if I'm recalling correctly, the On the Corner box got a five-star rave review in MOJO magazine, of all places. Radiohead have cited Bitches Brew and Silent Way as an influence on their later work, if I'm not mistaken. While I understand exactly why the opponents of Crouch and Marsalis disagree with them, it's not as if Crouch and Marsalis, even with the bully pulpit Burns afforded them, have succeeded in squelching opposing viewpoints.
I understand that there's such a case to be made. I don't agree with it. And I don't think the presence of electric instruments provides a clear dividing line. Jimmy Smith played an electric instrument. So did Charlie Christian, Jim Hall, George Benson. But I understand the argument particularly on the grounds of rhythmic differences and other formal aspects of the music.
Good point, but I don't hear Charlie Christian's electric sound as the same radical break from what I consider to be "jazz" as I do the electric guitar on Dark Magus. As I said above, by Live/Evil, swing has been replaced by a repetitive funk groove, so, yeah, that's a huge change as well.
Like chervokas said, I see the argument that can be made that by the time we get to that funk bass version of the band something fundamental had changed, but I also don't find it entirely convincing. It seems to me a useful exaggeration that makes it easier to make an important point about what changed in Davis' music, but the very fact that we need exaggeration to make that point suggests that the transition is not as abrupt as the argument invites us to believe. To my own ear, the transition from the later work of the second quintet, though In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, and the live ensembles of 69-70 (let along all the recordings from 70-75) is actually a pretty smooth and incremental one, although toward a music that is clearly a mutation of a radical kind. But a radical destination doesn't necessarily suggest a rupture. Same thing for the shift that took place in the '30s or the one in the early '40s, etc. and etc. In any case these differences in emphasis aren't important because one is true and the other false. They're useful as different ways of looking at the same material. Each way of looking lets us see things the other ways don't. I value that, so I don't like to pledge allegiance to just one way of seeing any work of art. L.
The very same argument can be applied to the most of Cecil Taylor's music: "rhythmic differences and other formal aspects of the music". Does Cecil's music swing? Is it formally rooted in blues? But then: why not to cut off the jazz line at the height of modal jazz and third-stream movement, which would exclude the second Miles quintet and his collaborations with Gil Evans. No blues/chord progressions - definitely not jazz. Chamber-like arrangements of cool jazz, say of Dave Brubeck or Gerry Mulligan, do not fit the original jazz style either. How about Woody Herman commissioning writing "Ebony Concerto" to Igor Stravinsky? Can the First Herd be called jazz?
As I said above, it's worth doing that, as we say, "for the sake of argument," in order to make a point, to bring something to our attention that we might not otherwise be able to see quite so clearly. Or we might do it for the sake of practice: "in this band or for this show or in my teaching or my own playing or my own record collection or my iPod playlist, I or we do things or include things like this, and not like that." But to do it because we think those sorts of boundaries or cut off points actually exist and have some sort of intrinsic authority or claim on us (on everyone) is to make a basic mistake about the way art works. L.
I confess that it fascinates me to hear that this writer, who wears so much foundation and make up when he seen on camera (worn in an attempt to cover up the irregular coloration on his face), is a raging homophobe. It's kind of funny actually.
