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Post by HD Music & Test on Jul 4, 2023 11:42:49 GMT
I came across this piece yesterday, while it is over twenty years old, I thought if this observation would stand up some 22 years later, so is it a pandering to Guardian readers or merely deleving deeper in to psyche of human conciseness where we were harking back to a much simpler stress free existance?
How did jazz become so smart that it almost died? How did it transform itself from the cathartic music of the oppressed into an inmate of the Ivory Tower Rest Home? How did such a lively, endlessly creative art form find itself labeled as stuffy, nostalgic, and For Aging Beatniks Only?<P>It would be extremely difficult for me to choose a single jazz recording that really pulled me in, probably because the most seminal performances of jazz music I've heard have been live. One highly attractive facet of this art form is that it functions so well in this context, as something completely transient. Even as a mere member of the audience at a live performance, you are participating in something unique and unrepeatable, purely of the moment.<P>That improvisation is at the heart of this music is obvious, but I feel that communication is just as important, and this often gets overlooked. Communication between the artists onstage is the gravity that reigns in the entropy of collective improvisation. Without communication, the music is awkward, perhaps even just noise. Communication between the artists and their audience is no less important. In instrumental music, something is being expressed to the listener through a complex arrangement of sounds. Taken alone, a single tone has very little, if any, meaning, but a skilled player will place certain tones in a sort of relationship with one another to tell a story or create a mood. Somehow, the artist is able to express subtle concepts such as sorrow, anger, or release - articulating our most complex ideas with the most ambiguous language on earth. In 'Snow Crash,' Neal Stephenson wrote about 'condensing fact from the vapor of nuance.' How is it possible that we can emote like this? Is it hardwired into our synapses from the get-go?<P>By no stretch of the imagination am I an evolutionary biologist, anatomist, or any other -ist with any sort of bearing on the finer points of music and genetics. However, jazz seems to me to be the closest artistic equivalent to the sorts of complex systems that exist in the natural world. Perhaps an argument could be made for the paintings of someone like Jackson Pollock, but I haven't the experience to make it. At any rate, I've recently become enamored of the concept of emergent behavior, specifically as it pertains to things like learning, creativity, and the like. Say what? To use an awkward metaphor: given Tyler Durden's all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world, how does that same crap produce beautiful and unique snowflakes'¦all by itself? In the (far better) words of a particularly bright physics professor of mine, 'How is it, do you suppose, that an aggregate of atoms can contemplate the fact that it is an aggregate of atoms?' This is good stuff, no? How did things like life and consciousness emerge from dead particles if not without the assistance of a divine hand? If not God, what? Troubling questions, no?<P>As a consequence of reading a book on the history of complexity science while listening to a live recording of Brad Mehldau's piano trio, it struck me that 'Hey, this is the music of nonlinear dynamics!' A brief examination of that pseudo-epiphany revealed the weakness of the connection, but it was a connection nonetheless, and the sciences of chaos and complexity claim to have synthesis at their core. So I felt I was at least thinking in the spirit of this ever-unfolding enterprise called learning.<P>So what is this thread? I see it as a forum for thoughts on the connections between things like individual sciences, or science and the arts, basically anything you find too intellectually cool to keep to yourself'¦but in the spirit of emergence, I leave it to you. |
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Post by MartinT on Jul 4, 2023 12:41:41 GMT
I agree that live jazz is a very different experience from listening to recordings, but even so I can name a good few albums that I love listening to.
Jazz is not really a single genre as there are many different kinds and some, for me, are virtually unlistenable, e.g. free jazz.
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Post by MartinT on Jul 4, 2023 12:43:00 GMT
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Post by ant on Jul 4, 2023 14:09:50 GMT
Try listening to worldservice project
My wife hates it
Makes it funnier to listen to
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Post by MartinT on Jul 4, 2023 14:59:13 GMT
That is NOT going on one of my playlists!
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Post by HD Music & Test on Jul 4, 2023 15:13:42 GMT
I remember a trip to sideshow bob's (PFM) many centuries ago and he put on this wailing noise that changed pitch and speed a couple of times, after twenty minutes I look at him and asked WTF it was he replied 'Oh they are just getting warmed up, it will get going in 15 minutes or so' while not wishing to be disrespectful I ask him who the artist was. he replied Ornette Coleman, while trying not to emulate the Scorpions album cover from Blackout, I calmly asked if he could play us some different styles of Jazz. Big mistake, for the next nearly three hours and what seemed like a bloody lifetime, we were 'treated' to Charlie Mingus and then Sun Ra, oh that day I lost the will to live on numerous occasions. I vividly remember being pulled over for speeding on the A23 on the way back, Great I though a perfect end to a mind numbing and soul-destroying day, even my usual trick of looking the constable in the face and asking 'Are you on the square brother?' this would normal result in 'I'm terribly sorry sir, have a nice day' on this occasion he was clearly not a Freemasonary fan. While he was about to write out the ticket why I was in a not so happy mood, I repiled' You would be to if you had been subjected to musical wanking finest exponents. He looked at me, closed his note book and exclaimed you have suffered enough and waved me on.
You couldn't make it up!
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Post by Slinger on Jul 4, 2023 15:39:08 GMT
Jazz seems to be the only "mainstream" musical genre that attracts musicians who not only revel in being so far up their own arses that having their tonsils removed would count as rectal surgery. Not only that, but they seem to have an overpowering desire to climb even farther inside of themselves. That is not to say that all Jazz is bad, of course it's not, but it has more than its fair share of pseuds. Even the "good" stuff can get weird though. My late father and I both loved watching Oscar Peterson's TV show, but part of the fun was guessing WTF he was actually playing, if it was his interpretation of a standard. That's another moan, why do some jazzers feel the need to take a beautiful melody and attempt to bury it so deeply inside a cacophony that nobody has a clue that its what they're playing ...or murdering. Yes, I'm old fashioned, I love a melody, and jazz brings out the same feeling in me as some modern "Classical" music, which I'll describe as the sound of a bloke with a tray of cutlery resting on a banjo falling down a cast-iron spiral staircase. Jazz seems to have the " Trad" people like Chris Barber, etc. at one end of the scale, and at the other end is a bunch of Vogons who have been presented with instruments, and very little explanation. But of course, it's not a fucking racket, it's not an unmusical mess, it's " clever". Give me effin' strength.  |
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Post by mikeyb on Jul 4, 2023 17:01:15 GMT
What annoys me is that every time there's a movie or tv episode where the star plays some music on their record player it's always bloody jazz!
Can't stand jazz it's like millions of ants crawling over you, just makes me wanna scream!
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Post by MartinT on Jul 4, 2023 17:09:53 GMT
I said further up that live jazz is different and can be very mentally captivating. On two occasions this happened to me, once at the Bass Clef in The Angel, London, a sadly long gone jazz club. The other was in an underground jazz club in Paris the name of which is long gone, too. On both occasions the music was stupendous. It was enough for me to know well the difference between the jazz I like and the wailing noise that Tony heard!
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Post by John on Jul 4, 2023 17:37:07 GMT
I can enjoy Jazz and in the mood I can even enjoy music that many others would find to difficult.
My interest came from exploring Jazz guitar and fusion based music and I know most people will hate what I listen too. I have seen most of the top jazz guitar players apart from Alan Holdsworth and a few others.
There is a lot of jazz I dislike and some Jazz I just simply love.
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Post by MartinT on Jul 4, 2023 18:53:54 GMT
I just tried some Ornette Coleman so that I can have a first-hand opinion. Goodness me, whatever kind of musical appreciation is required for his music, I lack the required plug-in.
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Post by John on Jul 4, 2023 19:44:48 GMT
His playing is too much outside for me/ Sun-Ra is also hard to listen too
I can enjoy people like Alice Coltrane and would not describe her music as easy listening
Although the jazz I really dislike is elevator Jazz or jazz that so smooth that it just boring
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 4, 2023 20:31:23 GMT
Genres are stupid and meaningless.
All of the above are the same kind of music?
Lobblocks!
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Post by rfan8312 on Jul 4, 2023 20:42:45 GMT
In my case most of what I listen to is Jazz influenced or jazz based but I simply cannot get along with traditional classic jazz.
For example Duke Ellington's 'Take The A-Train' and Miles Davis' 'It Never Entered My Mind'. I love the mood they set for the room but then would only see it as background music for conversation.
But then how about these? 'Foster Brothers' by Rudresh Mahanthappa and Steve Lehman and 'On Fire' by Tony Allen. Or 'Polished Jazz' by Jazzpospolita.
They sound quite similar to me as classic jazz in that they use a lot of those same instruments but the composition seems to be going in a direction and features a cool hook and memorable moments. These I can actively listen to and enjoy. Are these both considered Jazz? Or a form of jazz?
And how about this one? It's gorgeous is this jazz?
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Post by MartinT on Jul 5, 2023 14:53:26 GMT
Now for an evening of some Ornette Coleman decent music.
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Post by ajski2fly on Jul 5, 2023 15:35:21 GMT
For those wishing to meet the intellectual challenge of some REAL JAZZ then this is a worthwhile experience. It is generally considered a landmark piece! and now for the Jazz wanking.... "Izipho Zam is a wonderful recording, full of the depth of vision and heartfelt soul that has informed every recording of Sanders since..... The set begins with a gorgeous soul tune in "Prince of Peace," with Leon Thomas doing his trademark yodel, croon, and wail as Smith, McBee, and Hart back him and Sanders fills the gaps. Next is "Balance," the first blowing tune on the set, with the African drums, the modal horns, and Sanders' microtonal investigations of sonic polarity contrasted with Johnson's tuba, leaving the rhythm section to join him as Sharrock and Smith trade drone lines and Sanders turns it into a Latin dance from outer space about halfway through to the end -- it's astonishing. Finally, on the 28-minute title track, the band members -- all of them -- begin a slow tonal inquiry, a textured traipse into the abyss of dissonance and harmonic integration, with Thomas as the bridge through which all sounds must travel on their way to the ensemble. From here, percussion, bells, whistles, Sharrock's heavily chorded guitar -- all provide rhythm upon interval upon tonal figure until the horns enter at about 12 minutes. They move slowly at first and gather force until they blast it right open at 20 minutes and the last eight are all free blowing and an endurance ride for the listener because, with four minutes left, Sanders leads the band in a gorgeous lyric ride that brings together all disparate elements in his world and ours, making this track -- and album -- an exhilarating, indispensable out jazz experience. Thom Jurek/AMG" If you partake and want a copy it has been re-released by Pure Pleasure Records, and original copy is highly sought after and very expensive. www.purepleasurerecords.com/speakers_corner_store.html#!/Pharoah-Sanders-Izipho-Zam-My-Gifts/p/148106021  |
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Post by julesd68 on Jul 6, 2023 15:36:42 GMT
Miles Davis.
Seems to have God status with jazzers and audiophiles. Never understood it. Maybe I've been listening to the wrong Miles Davis ...
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Post by MartinT on Jul 6, 2023 16:07:28 GMT
Seems to have God status with jazzers and audiophiles. Never understood it. Maybe I've been listening to the wrong Miles Davis ... Kind of Blue is beautifully performed, fantastically well recorded easy jazz. Bitches Brew is more challenging but I do like it in small doses. |
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Post by Slinger on Jul 6, 2023 16:45:25 GMT
Seems to have God status with jazzers and audiophiles. Never understood it. Maybe I've been listening to the wrong Miles Davis ... Kind of Blue is beautifully performed, fantastically well recorded easy jazz. Bitches Brew is more challenging but I do like it in small doses. Definitely " Kind Of Blue", and you might try " Sketches of Spain" too, Jules. |
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Post by julesd68 on Jul 6, 2023 17:17:03 GMT
Have tried them both Paul some time back but just not my thing at all ...
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