Here in Italy, Gil Melle is a not particular relevant musician. I don't recall a lot of radio listenings in my youthness. I discovered his Fifties' music for BN and Prestige relatively late and I have to say that I also know a little of his artistic path towards experimental music, movie music with intriguing electronic envolvements including jazz elements and even Third Stream music. Unfortunately Spotify, at least in the Italian version or perhaps is the same everywhere... deals that part of career just marginally. This album available on YouTube is really amazing.
Read many of his words in the Village Voice way back, but never heard his music because I never encountered it anywhere but in his words; 'such is the music business.' Based on his words of praise for the music of others, I suspect I'd like it.
While I like and listen to lots of "jazz," my true criteria for any 'style' of music, "jazz" or not is 'do I enjoy/'get something out of' listening to it?'
Light snow and cold , coffee and a donut , listening to The Steamer; Stan with Lou Levy, Stan Levey and Leroy Vinnegar
For about a second, I thought that this clip was the one where 'all are running toward a hole to jump in.'
I think these are two completely unrelated ideas -- "Do I like this?" is one thing; and "What style of music is this?" is another thing. The former question is really only relevant to one's self. The criteria that allow someone to answer it are wholly personal and individual. It's a question about what I like. It's not a question of "what is it?" The other question, the one about "What kind of thing some cultural output is" -- is this music jazz? And what is jazz anyway? -- is an ethnographic question about what the music and what its practice embody about the culture that gave rise to it. It's an historical question about where how that culture has developed, where it came from, where it is now. It's also a lot of other things too -- it's marketing; it's taxonomy; etc. But it's not a question about one's own self or about one's personal tastes. To me, two separate matters. Why is defining and holding on to what a thing is important? Because without a broader cultural notion of what a particular thing is, and its practices are, the thing and its practices can't be handed down to new learners and a new generation. And also, particularly with a marginally commercial cultural practice and discipline, like jazz, and especially if that thing is ethnographically the expression of a marginalized group within a dominant culture, as also is the case with jazz, without definition of its form, tradition and practices, the unique cultural expression becomes swamped by the dominant culture in ways that threaten to, if not totally erase it, at least subsume, co-opt, and appropriate its unique form, set of practices, and the renown of its originators. That's the problem, or one of the problems when people make the claim for every European or European American musical form and creator as being jazz -- whether it's just a claim that the music of Tim Buckley is jazz (or as a friend of mine once clamed that Traffic was one of the greatest jazz bands in history and he was sure Miles Davis would agree), or it's placing of an album of ambient orchestral music atop a list of the best jazz albums, or packing a jazz festival line up with rock musicians. It's part of a cultural process that marginalizes and subsumes the culture from which the style arose, and, in the end, the ability to even have an apprenticeship in the tradition and pass the tradition on. All music isn't the same. That's not a qualitative judgement. And it need not have any bearing on what any one of us likes. It's just an acknowledgement that different music has different forms with different practices and different traditions. And you can see it in how music is learned. Just because a musician apprentices in the European classical tradition doesn't mean they will have the knowledge of the practices necessary to play jazz, or rock, or raga, for example. Because while all of this is music, and all music shares fundamental similarities, all music isn't the same, doesn't come from the same culture, doesn't have the same practices. And you know what? For all the people on this thread who say they're not interested in the questionsof "what is jazz" or have no definition of it, I don't believe they're wholly self aware. Because we come here to this thread, "Jazz and Conversation," and, yes, sometimes we talk about music other than jazz, but it's not "Music and Conversation." The whole forum is "Music and Conversation." There's no need, if we want music and conversation, to have a "Jazz and Conversation" thread. We come to this one and mostly talk about a specific style of music in a tradition that we have a generally shared common understanding of because of the unique, distinctive, qualities of jazz that make it something other than rock or soul or classical, and those qualities appeal to us. So, even if the definition of jazz that people are holding in their minds is reflexive, learned and internalized from the culture around them, people coming here DO have a notion of what jazz. And they do care enough about jazz as something distinctively different from rock, or funk, or opera, or filmi geet or whatever to gather around it. That idea of what jazz is was put into their heads because some people do think about what jazz is -- whether that's musicians or scholars or critics or marketers or magazine publisher or documentary film makers -- and some musicians are apprenticing in a jazz tradition and these people have created a cultural idea of what jazz is for these other, more passive definers, to have received.
At first, I thought the tune "Aretha" might be for Miss Franklin, but she was only 15 when this was recorded in 1956. Then again, Aretha was a bit famous in Detroit by age 15 for singing in her father's church, and had even made her first recordings. Though the LP of those recordings was not released until 1965, the 78RPMs were issued in 1956
Brazilian composer and co-founder of the Bossa Nova Jazz movement, Antonio Carlos Jobim, passed away 27 years ago today. His lush and beautiful music lives on. Terra Brasilis was arranged by Claus Ogerman and produced by Aloysio Oliveira, one of the Godfather's of Bossa Nova and Brazilian music. With this much star power behind the concept, you get a real winner here. This is an essential Jobim album.
“It bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not. It’s a feeling.” - Bill Evans. “Jazz is not a what, it is a how.” - Bill Evans.
Chervokas, I'll have to come back later to respond at greater length due to time constraints, but all I was really getting at was that 'just because something fits into a 'genre'/'school of musical practices' doesn't necessarily mean that it's of interest to me,' no more, and no less. I wasn't in any way intending to make "sweeping generalizations" about any kind of music, musicians or the practices behind it, mostly noting that 'what's of most interest to me is the intersection of what I enjoy and what is' (a pretty big pool of things, I must say), not that what I enjoy is necessarily a 'stable' thing. 'Wow! I've never heard anything like that before, and I LIKE it!' As to "Music & Conversation" and "Jazz & Conversation," I've seen Lonson comment several times that all music is welcome for discussion, even though jazz is the primary focus, so that's something that I try to keep in mind when commenting.