My car got broken into. The next morning, I found all my CD's had been taken out of the glove box and left on the front seat. None had been taken. They were excellent Jazz albums, the only things of value in the car. The thief did not steal them.
Similar thing happened to me. Someone broke into our News Van at work. Stole all of the reporter’s Dave Matthews CDs and left all of my Nine Inch Nails.
I'm 67 yrs old. My (much older) brothers were all musicians, and I was introduced to jazz as a toddler. It's still my favorite genre of music. I LOVE JAZZ!
Jazz evolved, it is not blameworthy to evolve, it's healthy. It still can be pop-formulaic (Jill Scott, Melody Gardot, Robert Glasper, Norah Jones....and they are the best of the more stylized performers, I don't disdain them at all, they just aren't committed to the more profound evolution of jazz ), it can be retro, it can be staid.... but it can be, and at it's best is, infinitely more exploratory , even avant garde. Jazz has lots of life impulses in it's DNA... it will continue and renew because it's vital and it moves outward beyond boundaries, it always has. Explorers always create their own potentials, fertility comes from breaking fresh ground.
@@9UaYXxB I get the feeling that Jazz spanned that divide from when acoustic went to electric, it was on both sides. Of course the horns had been around for much longer, two features I somewhat ascribe(not the right word) not exclusively, but considerably to Jazz. Horn's, I find are underrated in their power. You get a line of them blowin' all together it's gonna step you back a bit. (Big Man on Mulburry street ~ Joel) For me, that's Jazz too, I sometimes struggle with a clear boundary, Kenny G? Bella Fleck absolutely, and with a banjo no less. Andreas Vollenweider does absolutely astounding things with a harp, again, for me, that's Jazz also. But I don't know if others would consider it so.
Jazz was also "punk" or underground at some point, in the sense that it rebelled against conventional music of the previous generation. I enjoyed this video, but it doesn't answer the question "why do people hate jazz?" - it demonstrates why people love innovative music that can't be defined within a genre, or why we reject music that becomes too widely accepted. Jazz, rock, country, folk, hip-hop, metal (even commercial pop) have all gone through similar evolutions of being experimental, indulgent, stripped down to basics, etc...
I love Jazz; my husband says I listen to elevator music. I say no, I've been gifted this music that I have never experienced, and I love Jazz, allowing me to enjoy and be in the moment and be at peace. I'm glad I found jazz music. I love it. Thank God! I can listen to it all day, 24/7. When I listen to Jazz, I enjoy it; I welcome all the sounds that come together and then go their own way and come back in a wave of musical instruments, and Jazz just relaxes me and gives me a sense of peace.
I was born in the early 50's, my parents had singers on the record player like Sinatra, Tony Bennet, Nat King Cole, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis, etc. These were great singers with jazzy style orchestras, with beautiful horns and classy piano. Jazz music wasn't the emphasis, the singer was, but the accompanying music was mood setting was gorgeous. I'm mainly a rock and roll guy, but I will ALWAYS love jazz and blues. I also love Big Band, country, Gospel, and Latin music. The older I get, the more I appreciate the gift that music brings to the world.
They didn’t grow up with mom and dad playing Lady Day, Wes Montgomery, Benny Goodman and on and on. I play drums but anything I have produced has a a groove because of listening to jazz as a kid. Same with my guitar playing. Thank God for Jazz .
I've been a Industrial/Metal guitarist for almost 20 years and I have nothing but respect for Jazz players because everytime I've seen a good band performing, each musician was an absolute fucking monster at his instrument. I mean, the genre itself simply doesn't speak to me in any level, but GOD DAMN those guys can play...
Rock guitarist: Plays simple part, makes it look like life-ending struggle. Jazz guitarist: Plays most difficult part imaginable, makes it look like they didn't notice they were doing it.
At 66, and not a musician, every song I hear again from my youth is strongly attached to "memories" (a place, a person, an event, etc..) and instantly that song became a precious belonging, and it was tucked away in my brain for all time. Each time I hear it, I'm taken back to relive the memories. At the time I first heard it, that song subconsciously became mine; a cherished memory not to be changed or messed with. And hence, one of the reasons jazz never appealed to me, is for exactly the very reason most folks on this forum liked it; the improvising. For me that meant the jazz song is never played the same twice. Each time the jazz group plays it, it changes. It's like trying to attach a memory to smoke that gets blown away with each breeze, and the song is never played the same as you first heard it. Some like that, but nothing upsets me more. Two summers ago, I went to a concert to listen to Steve Miller only to discover he changed my favorite song because he got bored with playing it the same way, over and over. In my mind, he had no right to do that. When he placed that song in vinyl, it became mine - just as it was. And my memories were attached to every note and lyric and it was lovingly placed in my brain's scrapbook. When that artist changes it, I feel violated. It's like he took a treasured musical photo, and cut out some of the figures and background that meant so much to me. I don't share this to say my feelings are right, for they are not right or wrong, just different. I share this simply for the sake of understanding... why a few of us (who process the world differently) can't get into jazz. Perhaps if I had been a musician, I might have understood the desire for improvising. But knowing my personality, I doubt it.
I totally feel ya brother. I went to a Malmsteen concert and was annoyed at the changed. Joe Satriani on the other hand plays EVERY damn note on the album. It was an amazing concert!!
I understand the pleasure of hearing a reproduction live of a treasured commercial release, AND I understand the novelty of a new approach. Jazz more often tends to favor the latter for the musicians’ and their audience’s sake, emphasizing that the latter know to expect it. It enables the potential for the excitement of the new in the way a faithful reproduction, however expertly delivered, cannot.
@@bradtarr3283 Well said sir- couldn't agree more. I love jazz- and to me why would I want to hear the same thing I heard on the album- I have the album- I can listen to it all I want. If I'm seeing the band live this is their chance to share something special with me- they feed off the audiences' vibes- and then they never recreate that performance again- I love that. It's literally like they're giving you a piece of their art that they'll never recreate or give anyone else- just you and the few hundred ppl there that night - sometimes a few dozen.
That's an interesting perspective, Chuck. The flip side is when I hear someone live, I really want to hear what new things they're up to, where their creativity has led them since the version they left on the final mix of their release. Also, sometimes when I'm listening to my music files I'll set up a play list of three or four versions of the same tune, just because I appreciate the different interpretations by different artists. Just as when hearing a new arrangement by one artist, my thoughts are that the world is a better place because we have each version, as long as each is well done and brings something new. In fact, when a new artist covers a well-known number it bores me if they're just trying to duplicate the original recording. I mean, it's an interesting party trick, but always think, "Yeah, well that's been done. What do YOU have to contrbute?"
I don't like it either when I pay to see an artist and they change songs from the records. I paid to see them because I liked the songs the way they were recorded.
There are a lot of different reasons behind the marginal status of jazz in popular culture. I'll try to touch on the big ones: - Rock and roll happened and eclipsed it. Jazz is seen as "old fashioned" by some. This isn't particularly an issue for me, but speaking for myself it probably is true that I personally had to be "seduced" into jazz by discovering jazz-rock first. - Bebop happened and took jazz in the direction of art music. I personally love this. Many others don't. It doesn't mean you have to smarter than others to appreciate the music. But it is more likely with art music that musicians, as well as just people whose minds are abstraction-oriented, are going to be the ones who appreciate it most. - It got institutionalized at universities, which is both a blessing (knowledge) and curse (codification/overstandardization). More knowledge is always good, but "college jazz" can potentially have cookie-cutter aspects to it. - Your average person is less likely to appreciate instrumental music in general because it involves an extra level of abstraction to engage, unfortunately. This is roughly true of classical music and some instrumental rock too. - It can be perceived as "too black" by some white people, at least implicitly. Especially late and post coltrane stuff that is all about Northern African identity and flirts with Islam and the middle east. Never bugged me. I can see why some culturally closed-minded white people would be uncomfortable or unable to appreciate that. - African-American culture itself largely moved on to things like rnb, funk and hip-hop. It somewhat can live on in them or inform them at times, but they are ultimately just their own beast unto themselves, so to speak. - Some people just don't know what jazz is. They think it's anything that involves something unfamiliar or exotic to their ear. This both leads people to dismiss jazz, and it leads some musicians to claim that they are incorporating jazz when they haven't really listen to or studied it as a genre as such and don't know any better. - Some people's only concept of jazz comes from smooth jazz, and they find it too polite and inoffensive. Thus you get the standard trope about "elevator music". Or they think it's just soft wallpaper dinner music. They don't know of things like harder driving post-bop, fusion and free jazz. That's the zone where you're more likely to win over rock fans to jazz. - Some people find Gershwin musicals and such to be boring, corny or overly maudlin and saccharine. I kind of do myself at times. Not every song in "The American Songbook" is something I particularly want to listen to or play. - Some jazz musicians themselves are overly conservative sonically and musically, and are actually not very original or creative. Acoustic-only, same dull clean guitar tone, same timbres, same songs, same licks, endless 2-5-1 cycles. - In a sense, jazz got Euro-fied by the 60's. There's a big French connection in particular. Jazz somewhat of moved to Europe (and latin America) when rock supplanted its popularity in North America.
I always thought jazz was a general category and bebop and rock, funk, swing, latin jazz were all kind of subcategories... Was I wrong this whole time?
Euro fied..? 😂 did Bach get euro fied? Maybe they’ve just been stupifying the west strategically and it has nothing to do with Europeans. Look at how many hits in music and mechanical engineering and everything else out of Germany 🇩🇪 and Italy 🇮🇹 where my “euro-fied” genetics came from in Europe before they migrated west
I can suggest of a number of reasons, they are of course just personal opinions: 1) Jazz has evolved considerably since it originated, so what you’re hearing now lies at the far end of a long line of progress from (say) the 1920s on. I’d suggest early jazz is a lot more accessible to new listeners than more recent output. It was listening to The Soprano Summit in the 70s playing material from the 20s and 30s which got me into it. At this time, some of Jaco Pastorius’ and Henning Pederson’s playing sounded to me like random notes. Likewise Return to Forever. They don’t now but I suspect would to a similarly naive listener. I guess the dissonance in jazz can be problematic to some as well. 2) Someone has commented under one of the RUclips Alan Holdsworth clips to the effect that the underlying harmonic framework can be quite hidden so the pieces don’t seem to be going anywhere. It’s easy to ridicule as people playing scales in various directions, very fast, over weird chords in no particular order which don’t resolve (with obligatory polite applause at the end). Compare to something like sonata principle which has a strong sense of momentum and progression. 3) A problem I have with jazz (and I do actually like the genre) is a lot of it is texturally boring. One can hear technically brilliant guitar playing for example, but it often sounds like someone playing a box of rubber bands and the sound stays the same throughout an entire performance. Many jazz guitarists, even my heroes, seem guilty of this. Something as apparently limited as a classical string quartet or a solo classical guitar performance usually has a far greater range of texture and dynamics IMHO. Rockier players such as Jan Akkerman and Jeff Beck seem to extract far more variations in sound and dynamics from their instruments than most jazz players. 4) It can seem very cliquish and full of smart arses displaying their sophisticated knowledge of harmony, scale theory and so on. Even as a jazz listener this can be very off-putting. You need to know the stuff certainly if you’re playing it, but only as a means to an end.
Nice observation, especially 3rd point. Jazz guitar playing and sound 'rules' (i think in 'classic', older jazz, not fusion) are actually really rigid. No (or just slight) vibrato, no bending :(, no too much effects (except irritating 80's fusion effects:)) big NO-NO to all great things you can do in rock, blues, or even pop context...Some guys tried to break that 'rules', for sure, but... All in all - guitar as solo instrument in jazz sounds so poor (sonically, dinamically) sometimes, comparing it with sax, or trumpet... You are forced to play a bunch of notes, to be 'interesting' to the listener (but effect is sometimes exactly the opposite:)), and... i have a feel that you can't say too much with a few good notes (with nice dynamics, bends, long slides, etc) like in other genres... It is source of frustration for me too... :)
I remember when rock was becoming pretentious and punk came along to simplify things again. Most jazz types probably thought that rock was far too simple before punk. Nowadays rock players(what's left of them) favor lots of effects, some to the point of having them under midi control from a laptop or PC off stage changing effects constantly like St. Vincent. Electronica is even more extreme in that sense. Well it gives you an idea of where people's heads are at these days. If you don't have a huge Vegas treatment with dancers and costume changes plus lots of video people tend to be lost as they're checking out their phones.
Expanding on number 3, an interesting analogy I've heard is that bends, using a wah pedal or "whammy bar," sliding on a fretless instrument, etc, give the instrument a more voice like "vocal" quality that catches your attention and adds another layer of expression. The idea is that people relate to vocal sounds in a deep way. I love a lot of instrumental music but I definitely think this is true for me to a degree. Even when a voice is put through "unnatural" sounding effects like pitch shifting or "chopped up" and sampled something about it grabs my attention in a unique way. I think our minds are wired to listen for and listen to voices, and to remember phrases (lyrics.) A lot of jazz has no vocals either, so if things that sound like or are voices help draw attention and make music more relatable, you can see where that could be detrimental to the music's popularity.
I've never stopped loving Jazz. I actually hosted a Jazz Radio show in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. It was an amazing little station in a town of 8,000 people.
I wish I haven’t watched this cause I don’t get anything at all, this thing for someone else can be cocktail music n then I am thinking more along the lines of all out rock n roll, maybe am anxious, but also maybe thought jazz was something you sprayed on the backseat to clean the filth off ,:-0
Sure I always used to call it that, but I can’t go back now, not since Steve Coleman called it the Louis Armstrong-Charlie Parker continuum n recalled how older musicians just called it the music. Remember Louis Armstrong? Big tall inspiring guy? How did it go from that to this????? 🙁
I loved Allan holdsworth. When I first heard him, I was in shock. I’ve never been so shaken by a player in my life. He was reaching for something new. He found it. God bless him. May his music live forever
@@erickborling1302 no, this was 40 years ago. I still love Allan’s playing, always will. I don’t play like him, but it’s the spirit I teach for, anyway - the brilliance, the creativity. I don’t always succeed, but it’s the chase that keeps me going.
Jazz was able to win over the masses at one point because it was so interconnected with the American songbook and showtunes. These were songs people knew and, in a lot of cases, were playing around the family piano after dinner. The American songbook and pianos in the living living room faded with TV in the 50s. So, basically everyone carrying the torch of this forgotten Era was born in the 50s. Sting, who you reference in this capacity, even penned the song "born in the 50s". Those born after the 50s were raised on TV and rock and roll.
The 'american songbook' is more linked with gospel and folk songs, tho. What helped jazz become popular was it's newness as an art form, when it reared in the 20s. It felt more 'hip' and 'current' than other musical styles of that era, and lended itself to nights on the town, especially in big cities.
Hey Rick, I just want to pipe up here and say that your jazz videos are the reason I found you and continue to follow you. Very few people on RUclips who can break down the musical building blocks (rhythm changes, blues) of jazz and explain it in a straightforward, digestible way. Also, your analysis of the styles of players like Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass is incredible, really felt like going back to university for me. I drifted away from jazz for many years (playing in rock bands etc.) but got back into the music during COVID quarantine. I've now rediscovered just how much I love this music-- which as many have pointed out, is the only musical art form indigenous to the US-- wholly born and developed in the US. True, jazz is not for everyone-- but neither is great literature, world-class food, quantum mechanics etc. But all those things are still among the great achievements of humankind-- including jazz. Keep up the great work!
From the great pianist Bill Evans last interview (1980 Molde, Norway) Q."Why do you think the jazz audience is so young?" Evans: "I think they're discriminating young people, or they wouldn't be here. Otherwise, they would go with the masses. They want a deeper experience. Some people just want to be hit over the head, and if they're hit hard enough, maybe they feel something. But some people really want to get into something, and maybe discover more richness. I think it will always be the same.They're not going to be a great percentage of the people. The great % don't want a challenge. They want something to be done to them. They don't want to participate. But there will always be about 15%, maybe 15% who desire something more, and they'll search it out. That's where art is."
Except in the U.S. the percentages for jazz and classical are probably closer to 3%. Sales are probably closer to 1% for each. A lot of jazz and classical listeners don't buy much music anymore either.
I agree but this quote pretty much sums up the elitist mindset of the genre (its all about the real ones, the real art is in the 15%, the real "few") I love jazz and Bill Evans btw, the "You must believe in spring" is one of my favorite albums ever
Jazz was dance music in the paßt, it was the popular music. Then came Rock and Roll and so forth. Every decade or so there is new popular music. With the beginning of the big consumer markets (after WW2), Jazz became less mainstream and more specialized (or call it 'impro'). Dance music is what people buy. They don't want to make a diploma on music, they want to be sucked in, have a good time and then do something else. Jazz was rebelious (in terms of youth rebellion) until maybe the 40s, then came rock and roll and then punk or even disco and techno. The youth wants to created and discover something of their own, not something their parents already listened to. For (most of) todays youth rock and roll, punk, grunge is old stuff. Why listen to Jazz?
My theory: as you mention in your "Why Pop is boring now" video, the melody notes have to either latch onto the chords to sound melodic, or they have to create tension through dissonance. The more complex the chord is, the more notes from the chord become considered melodic rather than dissonant. And the difference between "melodic" notes and "dissonant" notes becomes smaller. Jazz usually features a high number of complex chords with at least four and sometimes five or six different tones in them. The end result is that if you aren't used to hearing entire tunes constructed like this is that it becomes difficult to detect "a tune", and this is exacerbated by the fast virtuoso playing and modulation through different keys which makes it even more difficult for the ear to latch onto. To make a visual analogy... imagine ten dots in a straight line, which represents an easily followed but predictable and dull musical expression. Begin to move the position of the dots so they trace a curve or other shape and it's more interesting but can still be followed along. Move the dots too far, however, and you end up with a pattern that is indistinguishable from if the dots were just randomly thrown down. Jazz sits at the threshhold of that point, where the melody starts to become unrecognisable from random notes for many people.
I'm from Uruguay. I'm an independent rock musician currently focusing on creating a strategy to build a type of career. Wanted to tell you that your channel is probably the best content out there for musicians in many levels. You not only speak very wisely about music and knowledge of how its made, but you also aim straight at several topics that are key discussions in today's society, in regards to what it is that a musician should be aware of. Also your encouragement stance and general attitude is so positive you end up creating a type of....wait....I jazz'ed out there. Well, thanks for all you are doing and keep on!
Why is jazz not part of the pop scene anymore? Herbie Hancock: “Because it's not the music that matters anymore. People don't care about the music itself anymore, but about who makes the music. The public is more interested in celebrities and how a certain artist is famous than music. It changed the way the audience relates to music. They no longer have a transcendental connection to music and its quality. Just want the glamour. Jazz doesn't want to be part of it. Do you know why? It's not about humility, or arrogance or a posture, ‘we don't want to be famous, we're underground .’ None of that. Jazz is about the human soul, not about the appearance. Jazz has values, teaches to live the moment, work together, and especially to respect the next. Jazz makes people feel good about themselves.” ~ Herbie Hancock, Prose Magazine
I don't think it comes down to that. Perhaps the biggest reason is that people find the jazz sound too amorphous. Fusion jazz, jazz rock and acid jazz have a much greater popular appeal, precisely because they unite styles that take away this amorphous characteristic, even though the sound has become simpler, but more direct and more coherent. For example, I really like songs that sound more melancholy, epic, "dark", ethereal, morbid, etc. How am I going to find this in jazz? impossible.. So, music genres like downtempo, ambient music, art-rock, synth pop, ethereal wave, darwave and especially triphop (like the sound Massive attack makes, which has a lot of jazz influence), will touch me a lot more.
I do feel that the likes of Bowie and Lou Reed should have done more with Jazz, just think of Black Star or Lou's The Bells. They could have brought something to a rock/Jazz fusion but instead stuck by the guitar and just produced a lot of dull albums because of it.
Interesting P.O.V. Even moreso coming from someone who composed "Rock It!". What I gather is that he just plays what he feels, wether jazz, pop or something in between, without thinking on the commercial potential or the notoriety it might bring him. But I do think there are some jazz artists that are/were the exception to the "celebrity" thing: Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Quincy Jones or Kenny G, for instance. Not that liking the "rockstar treatment" is inherently wrong. I myself enjoy all kinds of genres and of course rock/pop/metal have their "superstars" and that doesn't stop me from liking them either.
I love jazz!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Especially live. Love to hear the musicianship, expression, improvisation, virtuousity, complexity. It's the best most advanced music. I'm in Vancouver BC Canada
Jazz has never been radio music. You need to sit down and spend an hour (or two or three) with it to even begin to get comfortable with it. And that's not what a lot of people are looking for.
Jazz is beautiful to me. It moves my soul. I just heard a tune called Ill rememver Clifford. What a wonderfull time. I played in a blues band. And was always amazed at jazz players. More complex to me.
Big band jazz was the pop music of the early 20th century. Then jazz evolved. The music was no longer about a great hook but became a vehicle for more and more advanced soloing. It became all about theory and technique instead of strong hooks. The same thing happened to classical. The most important part of a song is the hook. I do not care what genre you play, (there is virtuosos in every genre) if you get away from focusing on the hook you will not appeal to the general public. The more advanced it is the smaller the group it will appeal to.
arpeggiomeister in most basic terms, it all comes down to having something that people will remember, something that will come back into their head, that they will find themselves whistling on their way to or from work. I’m thinking that is the difference between good music and great music. Good music sounds good when you listen to it, but you soon forget how it sounded. When you hear Great music, it’s sounds great when you listen to it and you remember how it sounded enough to be able to recreate it in your head, hum it, whistle it, etc.
That's a pretty big generalization, and isn't very well informed. Even when the music got more complicated, the really great players still played with a convincing "truth" that anyone who will give it a chance could understand without formal musical training. Just because some jazz includes complex elements doesn't mean that's what the music is about. The complexity just comes from finding new ways to express some truth within themselves. If you watch an interview of any great jazz musician they will rarely talk about harmony or rhythms or any technical aspects of music, it's nearly always about influences, expression, communication, or personal history/stories. Because that's what it's really about. Sure, there are some jazz musicians who will compose for the sake of complexity, or play in a way that's solely meant to show off, but again, they aren't really upholding the spirit of the music when they do that, and that kind of attitude seems to be a lot more common in a lot of technical metal and math rock. Good music is good music, and anyone who is willing to listen can appreciate it.
@@msmith53 who the hell is talking about "developing creativity"???? Were talking about people listing to jazz. Some jazz i hate, other jazz i like. If it gets to discordant it just gives me a headache. Who the hell wants to listen to something that is going to give them a headache? Edit: for clarity, i hope!
It has taken me over 40 years to finally get jazz. Now at age 58 I can't get enough of it and I feel like my Dad and Grand pa watching them sitting around on the deck smoking a cigar and having a scotch while listening to jazz back in 1972.
Stevie Wonder is playing his first gig in Tokyo and the place is absolutely packed to the rafters. In a bid to break the ice with his new audience, He asks if anyone would like him to play a request. A little old Japanese man jumps out of his seat in the first row and shouts at the top of his voice "Play a Jazz chord!Play a jazz chord!" Amazed that this guy knows about the jazz influences in Stevie's varied career, the blind impresario starts to play an E minor scale and then goes into a difficult jazz melody for about 10 minutes. When he finishes the whole place goes wild. The little old man jumps up again and shouts "No, no, play a Jazz chord, play a Jazz chord." A bit irritated by this, Stevie, being the professional that he is, dives straight into a jazz improvisation with his band around the B flat minor chord and really tears the place apart. The crowd goes wild with this impromptu show of his technical expertise.The little old man jumps up again. "No, no. Play a Jazz chord, play a jazz chord!" Well now truly irritated that this little guy doesn't seem toappreciate his playing ability. Stevie says to him from the stage "OK, mister, you get up here and do it!" The little old man climbs up onto the stage, takes hold of the mike and starts to sing... "A jazz chord to say I ruv you...".
I would not normally feel urged quite so much to comment. But I am writing from Berlin, Germany - the previous Mecca for techno music - in April 2018. And I can report to you Rick, or anybody, that jazz has hugely overtaken this city. Some few of the hippest, coolest bars in town are jazz bars, filled not with 50+ year olds like ourselves, but rather 18-25 year olds. The Berlin XJAZZ festival is about to explode again in May. Jazz is hugely alive here, and it's young kids 30 years younger than me, it could not be more alive than it is here.
OriginalMindTrick The young people who can still easily get good mdma and who are going to raves are the same types of people hanging at jazz bars these days. Listen to something like bitches brew on psychs. Guarantee you’ll find it a wayyy more intense experience than than mdma at a rave 😉
Way late to the party but... It occurs to me that this is an art appreciation issue and not specific to Jazz. Of the many homes and apartments I've visited I often notice a total lack of art on peoples walls. And if asked what visual artists or painters they like cannot name one, or recognize a Degas or Dali. The same is true of music. For the most of the public it is a problem of attention span. What's new today and yesterday is forgotten. So it's a problem of art appreciation generally. Needs to be taught, and not as an elective. Adn I gotta say the vast amount of Jazz I listen to is all from the greats in the 50's and early 60's. ( Well except for World Saxophone Quartet and Sun Ra which I have been fortunate to see live :) Thanks for your channel Rick! Stay well.
Like art, there are so many facets to jazz. Like he mentions, there is the big band swing sound of the 30's to early 50's, the 50's be-bop, 60's avant garde style, 70's jazz fusion, etc. It is like saying "I like Rock'N'Roll", but the difference between 50's RNR music and 70's RNR music is a completely different kettle of fish, and you'll find adherents to each, and never the twain shall meet. I have friends who love the stuff of Al Di Meola, but have no appreciation for Wes Montgomery, much like people who love Black Sabbath, but couldn't listen to Eddie Cochrane. I don't know if it's "Short Attention Span Theater" or just a general lack of historical musical history.
I'm with you there, Most people don't understand art, or life, until it hits them in the face, or in another sensitive region. In a capitalist world art is valued for its prestige and its price-tag, but not as much for its ability to elevate you or to bore deep and painfully into your soul. Jazz requires cerebral engagement as much as it requires emotional exploration. In my own experience I find that the more I experience in life, the more that certain music enthralls me. Earlier tonight I was brought to tears by Camille Saint Saens' "Carnival Of The Animals - The Swan" played by Yo-Yo Ma and Katherine Stott. Simple. Beautiful
I hear you Alan many people these days do not know where they actually live (i kid you not) never mind Art and Culture in their homes.Look at what they eat,how they dress, everything.Values / important things/culture arent learnt or even bothered with mostly these days just trivial nonsense about social media "celebrities" mottos like "we are all the same" when we are clearly not.poor quality sportswear. with and a big price tag and regular excessive consumption of product..
To put everything in context I’m an American who has lived in London since 1981. Your observations are as always spot on. I have seen many of the Jazz and Jazzrock fusion greats met a few of them and often knew reasonably well some of the musicians in their bands. Complexity to extreme, not my opinion, is some of the issue but I think the real problem is the complete lack of a recognisable melody and the lack of singing in much of modern Jazz. When I saw John McLaughlin, Hammer, RTF and Al Demola in the 70’s audiences were very good, today these giants are lucky to sell 1-200 tickets. Sadly many modern Jazz concerts often resemble a contest for who can play the most notes in the shortest amount of time. There is no light and shade to most people it’s simply noise. Jeff Beck, Yes, Steve Hackett and up until recently Rush sold out big halls or arena and the performances were complex, tight to perfection and really fantastic. The guys in the big names band all describe without being prompted said that they were allowed and even encouraged to do their own thing and were given the opportunity to shine throughout the concerts. I spoke to Al De Meola and his daughter in detail after a gig in a church hall, his neighbourhood was close to my dads and I think he enjoyed talking to someone from back home. This was 10+ years ago and he said most of his live gigs were in Europe now. Bill Bruford is an amazing jazz drummer and incredible nice, but his Jazz tours were poorly attended, even the ones with Moraz or Tim Burton, even though there was plenty of light, shade and no duelling egos. Jason Rebello would be the same, so sad. I think Pino Paladino and Jeremy stacey got it right, they both do rock with big but very nice artists who treated them very well, then do jazz gigs in tiny clubs for £50 a night. I have seen Vinne colaiuta with Sting, Jeff Beck and John McLaughlin and he’s one of my ten favourite drummers of all time, but he always keeps a grove. Sorry I go for so long that I could bore for England, but I really love music!
"lack of singing" I think this point is huge and deep. There is superficially the fact that people enjoy songs (as opposed to instrumental pieces), but I think whats sometimes lost in Jazz is the concept of a song, really. Take something like "Take the A-Train", fabulous song, and it works well even if no one is singing because it still has the feel of a song. A lot of Jazz musicians kind of abstract the concept away to a degree that it is lost (maybe its still recognizable for the hardcore Jazz enthusiasts, but even musically trained ears are quickly lost). If Jazz was in a healthy state, we would also see some new songs and "standards" emerge. Btw. when Jazz gets popular attention again, its often via songs. Think of Norah Jones, Gregory Porter, etc.
I saw a Chinese opera in Taipei. Audience went crazy when clearly famous 'songs' were well performed. To me it was all tuneless and annoying. I had no cultural references to draw on, language or the scale systems for example, to make an intelligent response. Taught me a lot about how music can rarely live without a history.
@Jason He means the audience loved the music because they were steeped in the history of it, while he was not. By extension, I take him to mean that to love jazz you have to understand, or studied the history, or have come up in that time to have experienced the culture, and evolving history of the culture first hand.
I was 17 yrs old when I started listing to jazz. My friends always got upset and said stop playing that boring old man crap. I still listen to it today at 52. I just really got tired of listening to rock in my youth but jazz excited me. I became sort of an outcast and still to this day, I’m still listening to it being an outcast
@Rob: I love your strength against the pressures of conformity, but I also have to say that I despise jazz. Its unstructured non-melodic boring randomness makes it at best background music for me, and most of the time I'd rather hear silence than music I'm not interested in.
@@echt114 I think your description of jazz is too limited. The jazz that you said you hate is the sub genre called be bop.. but their are so many other types like Swing, fusion, smooth jazz and many others. Saying you dont like all jazz based on hating bebop would be like saying you hate rock n roll because you heard thrash metal and didnt like it.
@@ComicPower Well I've certainly heard "smooth jazz" and have always been bored with it, so I'm not sure what else I should do. If I hear something I like, I don't have to force myself to listen. The closest thing I've ever liked are probably a few Steely Dan songs.
You can come to jazz organically thru some R&B and work your way thru that jazz-light fusion stuff. It tills the soil of your inner landscape where you plant the seeds of jazz, and keep along the path by staying curious about it, and really, curious about music in general because jazz has it’s roots in just about all American music. But you sorta have to have the intention first. After a while, you’re there, your ears, mind and heart meet at up at once and you’re transformed. Jazz is the one thing which makes me proud to be an American. Much love to you, Sir. Love Love this channel. XX Namaste.
I dont necessarily hate Jazz as such but in my experience certainly here in Australia Jazz musicians tend to be extremely condescending and snobbish toward any other player outside of jazz...the term jazz nazi is often heard from pop musicians. So many jazz musicians are non inclusive and tend to brow beat other musicians. That being said if you listen to Quincy Jones in interviews he is soooo inclusive to all styles of music even though he started off in swing and jazz bands .
Mike Mathieson i get what you are saying, but i think one of the problems with some jazz musicians is they get stuck in time, maybe in the 70s 80s whenever they learn to play. not such a problem for pop musicians, cause older styles of pop still popular, but not many people like 70s or 80s jazz anymore. not sure about Australia but in Europe lots of young musicians have gone back to playing jazz from the 30s and 40s and some of them attact very appreciative audiences, young and older
As a Jazz AND Blues singer what I see is that people don't hate Jazz. There are some forms of it that are more cerebral to the point a non trained ear just hears dissonance. But classic jazz like Ella Fitzgerald, Monk, Miles etc... that music resonates across genres and ages. Smooth Jazz seems to appeal to soul and funk fans and then there are vocal giants like George Benson, Al Jarreau, Bobby McFerrin, Rachelle Ferrell who also have mass appeal. But it is easier for a vocalist to relate to an audience because EVERYONE has a voice and has tried to sing. For an instrumentalist- not so many have had lessons on an instrument or comprehend how many hours practice go into mastering one. So it is harder to relate when your audience doesn't speak your language so to speak. But part of the problem is also the musicians themselves in many cases. Not all- but enough jazz musicians are so " All about the music" they forget to read their audience or connect with them. I have seen many jazz players begin a song. Close their eyes and never open them again to see if the crowd is responding or not. Some will even barely smile when given applause. And when in some cases the audience is not responding( And leaving- often after paying a hefty cover) I've heard a few musicians say disparaging things like "they don't know enough to appreciate it". Looking down on your audience is the first sign of circling the edge of the whirlpool. Music IS a universal language. If your audience is not "Getting your message" then you have failed as a musician to deliver it in a manner they understand, or relate to emotionally. That goes for any genre. Our goal is to have people leaving our shows saying "Wow- I didn't know I liked Jazz!" And they do because we pay attention to them and their reactions. If all jazz musicians were as aware of their audience, the one things that not only pays them- but which prevents them from being a "Rehearsal" it would be a much more popular genre. Just because you might happen to be a virtuoso will never give you the right to be a pompous ass to people who are willing to shell out hard earned money to see you. Personally, until you can appreciate your audience and have a goal to move them with your music...you probably SHOULD stay home and rehearse. Being a musician is not just playing the notes- it's also being a performer and making a connection. I Also see Jazz Natzi's tell other musicians "That's NOT how______ wrote it!" ANd I Always wonder "When did Jazz the music of improvisation, turn into such a rigid thing" If you insist on doing covers... you would be prudent to make them different from the original- otherwise you have relegated yourself into being a historian always imitating the true genius of the musicians who created the original. Music is a chemistry between people on stage It's fluid, and symbiotic. If you are in a band and think it is all about you..chances are your audience is picking up on your disconnect. Just my two cents.
Jazz has been completely taken over by academia. It's over intellectualised to a point where all the new hip players since the 80s have had to be absolutely extreme virtuosos to be considered notable. The focus is on the theory and technique. Electronic music and rock music overtook jazz because those genres explored something that was unachievable with jazz instrumentation / sensibilities. Jazz in its heyday was that generation's 'pop music'. It may be more complex than most popular music but it's still pop music. Like any popular music, the next best thing comes along and kills it off. That's just how it is. There's also an overemphasis on the 'tradition' of jazz; ie learning all the standards which aren't relevant to anyone who isn't "in" the scene anymore. This idolisation of history makes it difficult for the genre to progress to towards anything new.
Pretzels722 I think you've hit on a good point about academia and jazz. I'd expand by saying that part of what made jazz appealing in it's time was that it was kind of subversive in a way. Before rock & roll, jazz was sexy and dangerous. The fact that it's now a field of study in colleges kind of ruins that. It's embraced by the older generation, the establishment, and therefore crusty.
David Paul could you imagine what would happen if every rock musician had to go to "rock music college" to study the history of rock music, learn led zeppelin and MC5 songs off by heart and have to write essays on the cultural significance of "rock standards"? It puts everything through a lens that glorifies the past! All the rockers coming out of rock college would inevitably become rock snobs and be playing flawlessly renditioned covers of stairway to heaven (in all 12 keys) for the rest of their lives :p . That's one surefire way to make a genre stale!
A definitely jaded view of jazz musicians and the "dangers of focusing on theory and technique". While I'll agree the majority of jazz musicians have more musical harmony and theory training than the average rock musician, you also won't find that same generally untrained rock musician writing songs with that much of any harmonic richness due to that fact. Yes, there are the exceptions. You can certainly "noodle around" on a guitar and write "Something" with all George Harrison's harmonic richness, and you might be the one in ten million that could pull it off, so good luck with that. But for the masses, you'll be much better equipped to do so with a sound backing in theory. You simply can't write a Pat Metheny quality song using rock power chords. So in fact, you're rock musicians ARE memorizing songs from history or they aren't working. You don't get gigs with original material unless you're doing something pretty special. There's 100 bands doing cover tunes for every band making a living on original material. But you're using a pretty dated music education perspective if you think all the jazz guitarists at Guitar Institute of Technology, for example, where a great guitarist like Frank Gambale has taught, that all of the students there had to study Coltrane or Miles or write essays like you're suggesting along the way towards their degree. I would totally agree if this were the 60s, or even the 70s somewhat, but we're a long way past that since Pat Metheny started teaching in the newly created guitar program at the University of Miami decades ago. The fact is and always will be, the more you know, the more you can leverage that in your writing and/or playing. Always has been, always will be, where the masses are involved. But you completely miss the mark with "jazz has been completely taken over by acedemia." A single look at arguably the greatest musician to come along in an entire generation, Jacob Collier, disproves that immediately. Just doesn't fit your model of dry academic boring writing and yet he leverages his knowledge of theory and harmony in every song, and that's how you get called by Quincy Jones when he just sees a RUclips video and then score two Grammys before you're 20. And as evidence, you can further note that the vast majority of people subscribing to all the great theory teachers on RUclips like Rick Beato, ARE coming there to improve their knowledge. If you're view was the correct or even dominant one, every one of these theory teachers wouldn't have 20-100K subscribers. So, like always, get it in school, or get it through self study but there's a clear line connecting jazz theory knowledge and great songs that goes WAY beyond and outside of jazz as a genre. The "band" with the greatest number of #1 Hits in all history of music on this planet is the house band for Motown Records; The Funk Brothers as they became to be known. They had more hits than the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys, ALL COMBINED. Why? Because they all were masters of theory and could apply it to anyone who came in to record there. So stop trying to sell that a jazz education leads to a life of boring uninspired music written like a computer. It doesn't fit the facts at all. You should actually get out and here some modern jazz if you think it's "stuck" in some time warp based upon some "idolization of history", because you've never listened to Pat Metheny, Chris Standring, Frank Gambale, Dirty Loops, Jacob Collier and dozens upon dozens of others who have, or are creating entirely new music that has nothing more in common with the "stale" "archaic" big band or traditional jazz you envision as the whole of the genre, nothing more in common with those than the underlying theories of harmony, rhythm, cycle of fifths, counterpoint and dozens of others ways to understand what music is composed of.
B Miller I am definitely not saying that studying music is somehow bad or makes the music stale; I am all about learning as much as possible always. All I'm saying is that when something formerly hip and subversive is embraced by the old establishment of academia, it changes public perception, which affects its popularity.
Thank you for mentioning Stanley Jordan. We attended the same high school in CA. He may not remember me, but even back in the day he was unforgettable, an unbelievable talent and artist. Not enough people knew about him nor followed him. Yes I love jazz.
I played with a band that opened up for him at a venue in N.J. We all knew who he was and I owned one of his albums in the 90's. We didn't have know what to expect. "Oh he's the guy that taps", thought it would be cool, whatever... right. We were all floored! Unbelievable what he can do with a guitar. Still one of my fondest musical memories.
saw him playing on the streets of manhattan selling discs or 45s out of the trunk of a car. some dude wearing a keyboards scarf approached him spoke for a bit and left with him. i always thought i was there when he became 'discovered' as my jaw dropped when i saw/heard him, with nobody but me and that scarf guy interested (and amazed) at what he was doing.
Jazz is such a wide variety of styles I started listening to John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, and all related artists starting in the early 70s. It's the finest music my ears ever heard. It's what made me take serious learning music. Anyone who shuts out listening to the great (fusion) Jazz greats you're missing out on a innovated time in music. Today I listen to all forms of music cause I don't want to miss something great. Thanks for the video Rick.
I put on Jazz because I like it but also because it resets my head when I’ve listened to rock too often. It’s less predictable than other forms and can be exciting because of that. You have to listen to jazz with an openness that other forms don’t always demand. Leave preconceptions behind. Not many rock listeners prepared to do that. Anything by John MsLaughlin is ok with me. Loved Joni Mitchell’s jazzy side.
You could also ask: Why do people hate Bach? If you use record sales and media popularity as the judging standard, there are lots of losers. Like Bill Evans said: his audience would always be small, but sensitive, informed, and curious. Does that sound like the mass of the populace in the USA?
honestly, i was pretty indifferent to Bach. Until i tried to play Bach myself on guitar. Before that, i understood his greatness on a "head" level, but i didn't have any kind of emotional response to it until i "lived in it". After getting a little proficient with some pieces, it genuinely makes my soul happy to play. I get the beauty now. same with jazz , i think you have to participate in it more in order to get something out of it. You have to live in it. Learn about the players and the history, try to play it if you are a musician. etc...
That's a bit elitist. Some people just aren't sufficiently interested in music. I'm sure these "sensitive, informed, and curious" individuals also have casual interests for which their knowledge and appreciation of may be rather shallow in the eyes of those more devoted. I think you should be more understanding of others have different interests than you. They're not fools for not sharing your passion. We all have our own passions, and those things are what we're likely to develop the deepest taste/appreciation for.
My dad played jazz piano in the 30s (before he got married). I grew up on this wonderful, melodic repertoire of dad playing in a Bill Evans style (pre Bill of course). The records I heard were Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Holiday, then later Stan Getz, Milt Jackson, Ray Brown. You’re right about the influence of groups - most of these players had groups that stuck together and made a sound we grew to appreciate and expect. I didn’t really get exposed to age-appropriate music (rock) until I went to college. I liked some of what I heard, but mostly when it was blues-based rock (Cream for example). I think jazz is not popular amongst young people anymore because jazz quality peaked in the 30s-60s. Young people in the 50s began listening to the much more simplistic rhythms and chords of the rock era, and their musical vocabulary has shrunk as a result. But also I think jazz itself lost its way in the frantic improvisational one-upsmanship that didn’t really carry a melody or beat that ‘ordinary’ people could relate to. I like your reference to Blues never going out of style. There is a visceral connection people have to some chords/rhythms that are compelling. Perhaps this relates to whether people can dance to or sing the music. When jazz and rock left this connection behind, it reminds me of what happened to classical music when it went 12-tonal. It lost the essence of its appeal and became more intellectual music than emotional resonance music.
The term JAZZ can mean different things to different people. One listener might enjoy Horace Silver performing a Song For My Father, and hate John Coltrane performing stuff from A Love Supreme. Jazz has gone through so many changes through the years it’s meaningless to generalize. If someone says they love or hate jazz, who knows what they are referring to - smooth jazz, avant-garde jazz?
I respectfully disagree that 'liking jazz' has to do with "understanding it" as with understanding a foreign language. I liked some jazz that sounds good to me before I knew anything about music. 'Kind of Blue' was one of the first CDs I bought (I was 13, I believe). I never got into any kind of music because I understood it. Actually somewhat the opposite. I got into music and started learning music because it moved me. I felt it. It was a mystery how these musicians made me feel that way and wanted to be able to understand and do that/ or express myself that way.
Hey I completely agree. I did a music degree and played as a classical violinist for 20 years in a professional orchestra, but I'm not sure I "understand" the music any better than when I was 6 or 15 years old. More listening to good performances can help with familiarity and then interpretation, but intellectual knowledge did not alter my emotional reaction to the music.
Fully agree. I don’t think intellectualising the music really helps. I’m still unable to remember licks or to fully understand the harmonic content, especially in more complex forms of jazz. But I hear spicy stuff and I like it. I think, more than understanding, what distinguishes between people is a will to appreciate and really listen to music. Some people don’t, they prefer to limit themselves to the surface level of things and so they follow whatever is repeated the most on the radio (repetition legitimizes hey?). And that’s fine! Other people are really looking for a listening experience. And they will look for that experience in various genres. Probably some genres will have more influence on them because of exposure, so they may become metalheads, or jazz nerds, or classical violinists, or EDM purists. But overall they will generally be open to other genres, out of pure interest. Jazz is not popular anymore because it is not popular anymore. That’s fine.
Daniel Bodin I spent years trying to understand what Coltrane was thinking when he wrote Giant Steps, staring at his charts, and notes etc.. it’s still beyond me, but it moves me deeply, and I can play it with abandon.
But you DO understand it intuitively, which is more important than understanding it theoretically. You don't need to know the definition and function of a noun, verb, adjective, subject or direct object to understand English. If you understand music intuitively, then it's easy to learn to understand it theoretically. The theory will make perfect sense to you because it is merely describing what you already know intuitively.
If it sounds good to you, then you understand it, at least on some level. The theory is just a way to talk about why it sounds good to you. You understand the music in the same way that Chinese people understand Chinese. They aren't necessarily able to talk about the language in terms of syntax, but they understand it. When musicians are accused of snobbishness because they use music theory, they are just approaching the music the same way as you are but describing it clearly in words.
You didn’t mention Jobim, the father of Bossa Nova and Brazilian Jazz. Cant overestimate his contribution to jazz. Hugely successful!!!!! Too many hits to mention. Covered by everyone. “Girl from Ipanema” didn’t go to Greenland.
Latin Jazz, and Bossa Nova, are like an outlier of the many jazz subgenres: they obviously are jazz, but their market potential is vast due to their groovy latin influences too, it almost seems like they aren't really jazz lol
I absolutely love Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain. I met him on my tenth birthday at the Lighthouse in Manhattan Beach, California. He was very personable, played a few notes of that birthday tune, then back to his set. One of the best Sunday afternoons of my life.
Hi Rick,I've never disliked jazz,I got into jazz via Apple Music,I had a really rough year last year & was pretty stressed out,& was looking for something to listen to chill me out , I typed in 50's Jazz & it came up with a great playlist,one of the artist it threw up was Kenny Burrell so I listened to his midnight blue album & that was my way into jazz, miles Davis a kind of blue, wes Montgomery, just blew me away,I started to look for guitar lessons, which is where you're channel comes in, really enjoying my new interest
I am 39 and never got into Jazz. What I had always thought of as jazz is a chaotic mess of sounds but since I started watching your videos recently I've taken a bigger interest in it.
As someone who has thought long and hard about why I don't like / sometimes hate jazz, I still don't think I've found the real defining answer but I have some clues. I've honestly tried many times to get into it but its never clicked. Please don't take this as an attack on jazz itself, I just want to give my perspective. I respect everyone's right to enjoy jazz! First off, I find it very hard to find memorable melodies, or at least what I consider to be memorable. A strong top line melody is important to me and I find a lot of jazz just kind of dances around the edges of what could be a strong concrete melody with obscure chords / progressions that sound "airy" and "aimless". The melodies I like need more "absolute" and "purposeful" direction. There's always some exceptions of course, for example Barney Kessel - Misty, I'm also big into Bossa Nova, but it's because I find the melodies are more purposeful (in general). Second. I can't stand how the instrumentation and timbre is so often the same. Jazz, to me, starts sounding like a parody of itself because SO many jazz musicians use the same sounds, brush sticks, upright bass, kind of bassy/middy guitar. On a timbre level, it almost sounds like 70% of jazz I hear is from the exact same band that lacks any creativity / desire to experiment with different types of sounds. Third, I feel like Jazz is more fun for the players than the audience. There's a sort of self-indulgence, which I understand is part of the craft, but with all the improvisation, combined with the airy directionless melodies, combined with the cliche "jazz band" sound, it sometimes drives me nuts. Of course, of course, there's always exceptions. This is just my general thoughts on the question of why I don't like jazz in general, which I've thought about for years and years, so thank you for bringing it up. I hope this might give you some insight.
i think you just haven’t listened to the right jazz. you also just may not like jazz, but i used to think that same way but now i pretty much only listen to jazz because ive found jazz that really speaks to me. If you care at all, I recommend the Count Basie album “Live at the Sands (before frank)” because that’s the album that got me to like jazz pretty much. pretty much each song has really great melodies and soloists.
The comment about the "timbre being the same" indicates a pretty narrow selection of jazz artists that you've exposed yourself to. There are artists with very strong melodic lines and varied instrumentation, you just have to find them. You might try some Pat Metheny Group, Chris Standring (called the future of jazz by Kirk Whalum), Fourplay or Lee Ritenour. I grew up musically around the time George Benson's Breezin' was a hit, and always read the artist credits and got to know who was playing on each song. It wasn't long until I was discovering my favorite artists, but I think it's more challenging to wade through all the music that is out today especially since the use of studio musicians has fallen so much that it's rare to see some works like what Steely Dan did with getting the best musicians possible into each recording. The music world has changed significantly since there was a Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys using the Wrecking Crew, or the Funk Brothers charting so many MoTown hits, or Booker T and the MGs doing the same for Stax. But the hidden secret of all those great studio "bands" was that they brought a deep practical knowledge of jazz harmony and theory to each session, which was inarguably what made so many songs into hits.
Why do people love jazz? ”Improvisation is brain food for the listener.” Paul Bley, jazz pianist, 1932-2016, R.I.P. But certainly you don't have to be an intellectual to appreciate jazz. It's simply a matter of being open to it.
Is hearing something n then u get it, like a different kind of swing rhythm, you can’t really explain it but u feel it n get it and that’s all there is or one wishes there was 2 say, I’ve had enough of commenting cause we all say what we don’t mean and actions speak louder than words! ,:-O
Paul Bley was an underrated genius. Not many know that he was really THE original pioneer of free jazz. Lots of people think of the birth of free jazz being the 1958 live recording of Ornette Coleman and friends at a club, that included Bley on piano. Actually, Bley led the house band at that club and invited Ornette, Don Cherry and the others. It was his gig. He had been exploring free jazz and brought those artists together. But Bley was much more than a free jazz artist. He was simply a beautiful pianist. I'm lucky and honored to say that I saw him live more than once. At one concert he played solo piano (breathtakingly beautiful). He had described how he would always start a concert playing very conscious of each key, playing the full breadth of the keyboard. In his travels he couldn't bring his own piano and was therefore always stuck playing strange, unknown instruments. He developed an ear for exploring and finding which few, individual keys on a given piano sounded really good, and he would then play the remainder of his concert centered around just those few keys that really spoke, that had a particularly good tone. The man could evoke gorgeous music. More trivia: during his electric endeavors, Bley was the first to record Jaco Pastorius. Pat Metheny is also on that early record - 1974, I think.
My daughter is 7 years old and loves Jazz! One of her teachers 2 years ago played Jazz and classical music in her classroom so now in the car we usually listen to Jazz and other music.
@dread true You're right about punk... unless you alow them to keep hiding the fact that alot of them were jazz musicians on the sly (ie The Dead Kennedys)
@@chroniclesofbap6170 The number of chords is not all the important for rock not that i keep count so i could be wrong. A song can sound full and complex with 3 when played right and the right band . And the Sex Pistols used dozen of cords in some song. Maybe 4 chords in Pretty Vacant but it's a good song.
Just recently stumbled into your channel, mucho arigato for the content! I'm 57 & a proud jazz geek. Was also on the air in radio for a good while. About 15 yrs ago I gave this answer to your question, to the GM of KUNV in Vegas: Jazz in its heyday - the so-called golden age of jazz - which I would mark off from the roaring 20s thru WW2 - was dance music. Then Monk, Bird, Diz, Mingus, Powell, et al, turned that on its head & morphed it into something you had to sit down, listen to & focus on, which drastically limited its appeal. That’s where it’s been ever since. The further we get down that road, the more & more listeners recede into the rear-view; new passengers become fewer and more scarce. Any new listeners are jumping on board without the context you spoke of, and that’s an impediment. A 20-something hearing Body & Soul for the first time may think it’s pretty tune, but don’t know that Coleman Hawkins in 1939 is the only reason it gets played in the here & now. In that regard jazz is a bit like classical: it has a repertoire that everybody plays, & it’s useful to know the repertoire to understand what’s going on & why. And not just the repertoire, but the evolution of improv & how it’s central to what’s happening. I had never considered the consistent band personnel point you mention. Initially I wrote it off. When I went to see Stan Getz in the 80s, I didn’t care that I’d never heard of the other 3 players. I needed to cross Stan off my bucket list (he was AMAZING). Now that I think about it, I don’t know why I was so dismissive. I can name all the players on most of my favorite jazz records, clearly I feel a connection with all of them. Love your channel, keep it coming! PS - putting Jazz in any of your titles is a guarantee I’ll check it out.
I use to hate Jazz because my first experience of it was largely boring 90's PBS music concerts. It was slow, dull, and sounded like something from a General Hospital's opening. And that was essentially my impression of Jazz until May of this year. After watching an anime ("Kids on the Slope") that featured a lot of Jazz from the 50-60's golden age, I fell deeply in love with it. It's energy, creativity, and depth won me over. And then from there, I looked up on RUclips the Jazz musicians featured, and the rest is history. How I had been wronged lol
John Gillin Sounds like he wasn’t very involved with the audience. Everyone I’ve gone to see has been very involved with the audience - whatever the genre. I saw 38 special back in 1990. They really had fun and interacted with us directly. The Jazzfests I’ve gon to - decades ago, they all engaged the audience and seemed to really enjoy what they were doing. 📻🙂
Valentina Tran Then you should never play in public, only in a garage somewhere. That may seem like an angry statement, but, no anger in it. One of the best concerts I’ve been to was 38 Special. There were 2 opening acts. One was some Metal group. It seemed they were so full of themselves that those who came specifically to see them weren’t happy at all. Some of them even walked out mid-concert. When 38 Special came on, from the beginning, they directly engaged US, the audience. They thoroughly enjoyed being there as much as we did. They even came out among us, talked to us individually. Was really cool. When the audience is not engaged, it seems like the group/band ( or individual) would rather be somewhere else. Why spend money to go see someone if THEY don’t want to be there❓
Here is my well received take on this subject posted on Quora a few years ago. Jazz is an acquired taste. Like other acquired tastes, jazz appreciation comes from the experience of listening and playing. A young ear only exposed to simple melodies and chords will cover his ears upon listening to the free jazz of John Coltrane the first time. I know that was my reaction. In the many years since my first exposure my appreciation for Coltrane has grown like my appreciation for really good Scotch. When I sipped on a little Scotch for the first time I couldn’t imagine how anyone could like it. In a old book on jazz improvising by Jerry Coker he cited a study that indicates that a music listener remains engaged in the experience when there is a balance between familiarity and surprise. If a listener is hearing familiar harmony or melodies there is a since of participation. Who doesn’t like a sing-a-long. However if the music is too familiar and repetitive listeners become bored. How many times could you listen to Chop Sticks, or Three Blind Mice before you become desperate for something more? Even silence is preferred. A three year old can groove with Mary Had a Little Lamb all day. As your ear becomes more sophisticated your tolerance for such boredom diminishes. Most popular music is popular because it is accessible to a large audience. Familiar chordal patterns and melodies, while not identical allow for anticipation and mental participation of listeners. A songs popularity often fades as it become too familiar with repetition and new songs become the focus. The ubiquitous availability of music since the advent of recording and numerous playback devices has allowed the public at large the listening experience needed to appreciate ever more complex music. Only 100 years ago music was not heard unless played live. You heard music in church or at some other gathering where musicians played. To stand the test of time music must offer surprises. There must be some unique hook or sequence that is unfamiliar to hold interest. People go to live performances to hear familiar music in an unfamiliar way. Good performers add something to the familiar tunes rather than just playing the same each time. Blues music remains popular with each new generation because the familiarity of the redundant form allows participation, while improvisation offers the needed surprise. Improvisation in the blues context demands familiar melodic motifs that most listeners can identify with as well. But the blues context can become stale if you play enough. OK on to answering the question. Musicians taste for jazz evolves through playing. Jazz happened because playing the same thing over and over gets boring. Playing in rock bands became work for me. There is something addictive to creative musicians in the flow. It is satisfying to be in a meditative state that allows your subconscious spontaneously express what comes. It is not performing, it is experiencing. When I listen to great jazz artists I experience the flow with them. I imagine what I might have played and get the thrill of surprise and often awe of what they played. Like chess, jazz has been humbling for me. I had to concede that I can never play blindfold chess, and I don’t have the well spring of ideas that great jazz players have. I am accomplished enough at both however, to fully appreciate and enjoy the ability of the greats. It comes at the price of often having to endure the more mundane amateurish music I tired of 30 years ago. There is an old saying. Well it is old for me because I made it up. “You don’t pay musicians to play music. You pay them to haul their equipment to where you want them to play.” Musicians play all the time but there must be a sense of newness that only improvised music of ever increasing complexity provides. I am still not all the way there however. I can only take Coltrane Free Jazz in small doses. And I don’t play that way. But then I don’t drink quarts of scotch either.
Nicely put. The taste must be trained, educated. To take a similar example, no one is born liking wine. One must learn to like wine. And only when one has done that can one learn to distinguish between good wine and bad wine. And only then does the whole universe of wine open up. I think people resent wine and whisky snobs -- and we know such people exist -- just as they resent jazz snobs. But the existence of such snobs doesn't mean that there isn't something real that needs experience in order to aprpeciate.
Jazz music is fantastic. It opens up a whole different world of sounds, and paves the path to new styles to be used in music. Steely Dan members, and hired studio musicians are proof of that.
"Jazz was essentially a people’s music, as rock is, and it was taken up by the intellectuals and built up to the point where they said, well, you can’t appreciate this because you haven’t got a college degree, have you?" - John Peel , Melody Maker, 1971.
Absolutely this! I really don't like Jazz. I have a good friend who is an extremely talented (and learned) Sax player. My joke to him is that he spent all this time leaning the musical theory, and all the practice hours, only to go on stage and play shite :D I love Rick's "what makes this song great?" series. He explains the musical theory behind all these songs, many of which I love without any musical knowledge. And isn't that the point? Music, to me, either sounds good or not, regardless of whether I understand it or not. Having said that, I wouldn't want all music to be reduced to the lowest common denominator. Jazz is important and I'm all for it ... I'm just not going to listen to it.
This happens to all art forms when they are superseded by another genre in mass appeal. Art became abstract as photography grew. Classical music became modern. The 'purists' are the ones left and the genre is explored for them, they don't want to be associated with whatever the new thing is.
I came here after watching Rick recommend visiting here, even if it's just to read some of the comments, and from what I have read so far I am not disappointed. I haven't watched this video yet, but am aware of some suggestions of and debate about the perceived snobbery of people who are into jazz, I also have much experience of jazz played live in small venues, both as patron and player. Some experiences were better than others. 35 or so years ago I once had an evening gig playing bass with a rock band, followed straight after by a guitar session at a jazz club until the early hours, with the drummer from the rock band playing keyboards; before going on we met up with the other players in the bar. A group of their regular clientele, who were unaware that we were shortly to become the live band for the next couple of hours, complained about the unsuitable apparel of some of us. The management of the club then asked the band to wait in the 'dressing room', which had been hastily created from a store room. Accusations of snobbery in Jazz are not without good cause. I'll finish off with a few lines from a song what I have wrote. I call this little ditty by the simple title of 'Jazz', it is a pleasingly short air with plenty of diatonic chords gratuitously inserted. If words could say, What music has, They'd be no need, To ever play Jazz, Simply no neeed, To ever play jazz. But still they play strange chords, Which can say much more than words' They say Verse of 'scat' singing jibberish, (try to throw in a few poorly pronounced offensive words here and there sometimes?) Simply no neeed, To ever play jjjjjjj, jjjjjj, jjjjj, j 'Jhjazz.!' There's nothing quite like ambiguous lyrics to get a room divided.
I feel like Mr. Beato is the Bernstein of our time. An amazing musician with a wealth of knowledge on a variety of music, a mind open to all kinds of music, and a drive to share that knowledge with us all. Thanks Rick! On a separate note, it is sad that America which birthed jazz has turned its back on it (though that is is also the fault of musicians that went so far out with so much hubris that they turned their back on the audience just as much).
What's more ironic is that black people don't listen to it because "jazz is too complex now" and they say the "white elites" overcomplicated the genre, when in fact it was black guys that made it more complex (Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis). As a matter of fact, jazz is black music through and through, it all comes down to the african rhythms that were the original base. And to retort your last statement: there are tons of jazz music that are digestible for mainstream audiences, it is a myth that "musicians turned their back on the audience". You never hear that critique against metal musicians, and in a way some of them go the niche ways of certain jazz subgenres. Jazz has all sorts of different styles, it's not like it went from swing to bebop and that's it.
People connect through stories. Once they become familiar with the narratives, the history and cultural context etc., they will start appreciating the music. Connecting through vocals is another portal into jazz.
So if you tell people about the history and cultural context of the national dish of the Papuans (IIRC), with which they greeted newcomers - freshly pulled, twitching tripe of a pig, they will begin to enjoy this dish?
@@mpingo91 I honestly don't think you need to necessarily know cultural context to connect with (any) musical genre, but I think, "connecting through vocals is another portal into jazz" is true; Instruments are another form of vocalizing and story telling. You don't have to enjoy it, but the way it makes you feel is the main thing, and it is communicating something. I think its super fascinating that people have different tastes in music (and different emotive responses to a single sound). For me, that's the beauty of music. Also; foreign tastes and sounds have the potential to grow on you over time. But not always! lol
I always had trouble listening to jazz records but i absolutely loved going to the jazz club and seeing it live. That really brought it into context for me. This was in my early 20s and my other young friends would also go and we would stay very late, even buying drinks for the musicians.
People in the 1920's and 30's usually knew a lot of the melodies of the tunes really well: Berlin, Gershwin, Porter etc were writing memorable Showtunes, movie themes, and pop radio hits. So the harmonies were also very familiar to the masses, and that made the music instantly relevant to their ears, so average listeners could tell were the melody ended and the interpretive flourishes and improv began.
And a number of those tunes everyone knew became Jazz standards... They were good songs, and jazz players enhanced them with, essentially, variations on a theme. So they were still strongly connected to music everyone knew.
I frickin’ LOVE jazz. I started getting into it a few years ago. Then I played Fallout 4, and that got me to dive into it. That’s kinda how I stuck with your channel. The stuff you teach helps me understand it more, hopefully to the point where I can make my own tunes.
Rick - I'm 47 so all the bands u mentioned I listened to as well. Your videos on joe pass, Wes, and the the elements of jazz , what Charlie and Bach had in common, rhythm changes solo ex, and developing a solo (on blue bossa) , bebop melody principles, the bebop scale are the kinds of videos that are super helpful. I've probably watched rise too many times to count. Please keep making those. Practical tips on seeing the neck and applying altered scales to tunes would be great. I love all the stuff u do as well, I did have a brief metal phase in high school but like u grew up with blues being associated to rock. I think u are so right that the earthy foundational blues element is lacking in rock. And totally agree that bands make the music no matter the genre. The best way to get into jazz is to listen to early swing (t bone) and then get into the bluesy jazz players like Kenny Burrell. It's very earth and it grooves and the tones are to die for.
If I was in a troubled state of mind and listened to Jazz then my mind would go into a demented state of mind. Sorry but Jazz does not soothe the mind with all those dissonant chords and notes. I mean I like Jazz as well but lets face it It has no linear theme and is all over the place and that's why most people hate Jazzzzzzzzzzz
@@spada60 Unfortunately, like most people, you paint the subject with one broad brush stroke. There are many types of Jazz, while your description seems to be about free form JAZZ, which MOST people dislike. lol
spada60 try listening to: Tell Me A Bedtime Story by Herbie Hancock, Diamonds and Pearls by Marcin Wasilewski Trio, or Christmas Time is Here (instrumental) by Vince Guaraldi Trio. Then Try and tell me that these put you in a demented state of mind.
Jazz is a wide genre, there’s many different kinds. I can’t play much of it, but love listening to most of it. Steely Dan was the bridge to get me to jazz. My favorite ensemble configuration is drums bass piano ( maybe guitar , maybe vibes) alto sax, tenor sax. Horace Silver, Larry Carlton, Chick Corea Errol Garner , many more.
Today was a lazy afternoon with too long of a nap. Listening to this podcast inspired me about my first love of playing jazz on guitar and got me up from my chair to write this. I had aspired to be a teenage rock guitar player, but there needed to be more musicians in my small town in Iowa. My dad came into my room and put an old music book of jazz songs from the 40s. He told me this was real music. At the time, I was not fond of jazz, except for loving to hear the crooners like Andy Williams and Dean Martin sing. So I tried to play jazz guitar with my Strat and Fender Quad Reverb. George Benson's Breezin' came out my high school senior year, and I learned to play Affirmation. Someone who heard me play turned me on to Joe Pass Virtuoso. I couldn't put a rock band together and try to sound like Larry Byrom on Steppenwolf Live (my all-time favorite Rock live album.) Playing jazz was fun, sounded nice, and my dad liked it. Often I've wondered why, with all the high schools with a seriously good jazz bands, those players seemed to lose interest after graduation. I don't get it. I still love Tuxedo Junction. I played bass in my high school band but beat out two older players for the Iowa State Jazz Ensemble guitar chair as a freshman, to my surprise and delight.
as soon as you say people "don't understand it" and they need to be educated about what it is before appreciating it, you kind of make the point about why they don't like it. Art (for most people) is mostly visceral ,not intellectual. When I see a painting or sculpture or listen to (most) music, I don't think about it first, I respond to how it makes me feel. Even Bach fugues can be appreciated this way. They become even MORE interesting when you learn about what is going on in a fugue and how it works. A lot of jazz skips the first part and just wants to engage you mentally.
dalerimkunas yep. Also, in these days, people don’t like to be told that 2 + 2 is not 5. I wonder where this will end up but it will certainly be not pretty.
dalerimkunas I would say that Beato’s main point still stands. It’s a language that either you understand or are learning, or don’t know. If you don’t understand the language it sounds like gibberish or what you call “mental.” The Bach fugue is easier for you to understand because it’s a language that is thoroughly European and embedded in every other sound you hear from country to rock to hymnals at church. Jazz is a newer music that includes African aspects of understanding rhythm and time and is not embedded in country and rock and in hymnals at church. So the analogy would be that you are saying that as a modern Italian person, Latin must be a better language because you can understand some of the words while Chinese must be way too intellectualized because you can’t understand it without studying it first.
@@KP-by4eu First of all, did you learn to appreciate English or was it so natural as you were born into it that you probably feel that English poetry is beautiful without any need for learning? But let me back up. I have a spent more than twenty years pursuing all knowledge of music and have a masters degree in jazz and almost had one in ethnomusicology as well before I decided that the academic market is not worth pursuing for me. All scientific and ethnographic studies point to music being like langauge and what you hear growing up is exactly what you think is profound universal music. There is nothing inherent in diatonic harmony that makes it in tune more so than other music. In fact, everything except the fifth is out of tune which is why if you play diatonic harmonic music for cultures in Africa or China, some may have no appreciation for it and it will sound like noise. Likewise some of the super natural sounding tunings that seem god given in some cultures will sound completely foriegn to our ears. Thank goodness for my graduate school ethnomusicology work for that knowledge. Science has shown that for instance if you grow up hearing highly syncopated music you will relate to it and expect it, yet if you dont it will be like a foriegn language and you will not get it. That is why growing up with so many African American friends who were musicians, they naturally gravitated to playing chords with extended 9ths and 13ths, quartal voicings, ain't anything to learn to appreciate about it if you grew up around it. In fact music that doesnt have it may sound lacking just as if you heard music that only includes octaves because those are the most natural consonant sounds on earth. And then you would end up with some dude from a culture that only has octaves arguing with you that triads are unnatural and you shouldn't have to "learn" to appreciate western harmony if it was worth a damn as real beauty. I mean damn, those westerners cant even get their thirds in tune, ... and that was historically the reaction for a lot of cultures in hearing western music.. bunch out of tune noise. They could only tune their fifths
@@KP-by4eu first of all you are not the end all be all representative of the history of colonial interaction with non western cultures. You are also not some fountainhead of knowledge. Western music sounded weird to none western cultures who first heard it and that was like 200 years at least before you were born so I dont get why you even make your self some example. Due to colonization by the time you were born, western influence was in most cultures. 2nd of all, I grew up playing Black music with African American musicians and the ones I knew and played with had an appreciation of jazz that my white friends who werent musicians didnt have. Not to generalize but culturally the jazz you are hating on is Black music and is a first language to the musicians I played it with. I dont understand your arrogance. Go read ethnographic studies. Jeez, You are hating on a whole culture.
@@KP-by4eu and its not about musicians "knowing" thirteenth chords. I'm saying musicians who grew up in that culture naturally gravitate to those jazz harmonies the same way that my suburban white musician friends gravitated toward metallica riffs. They don't "learn" it, there ears go there because they grew up around it as a language. And i didnt just mention 13 chords but quartal harmony, just the whole concept of using clusters and dissonance so you nit picking one chord is missing my point.
For my generation of black American kids, it was Grover Washington's Mr Magic. For others, it was the Crusaders, or David Sanborn or even Kenny G. "gateway music"
My husband is a musician, multi genre, but his favorite is jazz. I love Johnny Mathis, Bob Wills, and the like. Over the years he has gone with me to see my faves many times. We went and saw Sonny Rollins, John Scofield, Herbie Hancock and many others. We both like Jeff Beck and have seen him. I have to say that I was impressed with the jazz artists and their big name band members. They played so well in the moment together.
Some of my favorite music is jazz (Miles, Herbie, Breckers, McLaughlin, etc.) but I also think that the mainstream of jazz has a few key problems. 1) When swing became bebop people stopped dancing. 2) Jazz often runs the risk of sacrificing a memorable melody in favor of an "interesting" chord progression. (Bebop is especially guilty of this.) 3) Jazz traditionalists (like Wynton Marsalis) hate fusion and other attempts to expand the genre. Their traditionalism strands jazz largely in the bebop era (see above) and brings up another problem. 4) Bebop is sonically monochromatic. In the swing era you could write a thirteenth chord knowing there would be a horn for each note. The shift toward smaller combos in the Bebop era meant that the bass took the root, the horns took the upper extensions and the piano got what was left. It settled for mere harmony at the expense of texture. 5) Bebop marked a shift from jazz being music for audiences to music for musicians, i.e. it began to become an elitist form. The emphasis shifted from whether a song was beautiful to whether it was challenging to play. In sum, I blame bebop. I love Dixieland, swing, gypsy jazz, West Coast jazz, fusion, and acid jazz. I get along fairly well with hard bop, and George Benson is at least one example of Smooth Jazz that I can enjoy. Bebop, though? No thanks.
i enjoyed ur well considered response. interestingly in line with your take. GJ too is suffering the same obsession with speed and technique. Their hero Django could be pretty out there at times but didn't get carried away on any barge of elitism i think
How many forms of Jazz do you have to note? To me Jazz just has a certain sound because of the chords commonly used in Jazz. To me Jazz can easily sound too contrived or it will have flashy chords and lines just so the writer can state 'WOW' look how complex I can write. I could write a decent Jazz motif or song but I could never write anything comparable to a Beatles song.
bebop has a logic if you listen to it long enough it's the gift Bird gave to the world, and more messengers came to receive the message and expand on it there is a logic to it,and you just have to sit down, and listen to it carefully, a lot to love it, and it gives rewards. dont take my word for it. listen to Bud Powell. then listen to Pasquale Grasso. human life is an experience, problem is people spend to much time wanting to fight to be right, that they forget to experience the experience tags, labels,absurd systems of belief that only divide humanity are to be blamed for music is music, and speaks to whoever wants to go to it, whatever form it takes
Me and Frank Zappa didn't talk too much about music but we drank beer and enjoyed each others company. Everybody is playing Jazz they just don't know it. It's like air. Free and full of music.
"Jazz" is a very broad spectrum. People who like Dinner jazz may not appreciate Freeform Jazz etc Jazz is like all types of music: Some of it is outstanding, some of it is shite, and the rest is average. In my opinion. dismissing an entire genre of music is dumb... in a similar way to people who assume that because it's 'Classical Music' it must be good. Far too many snobs in music.. they are the probem... not the music.
I mostly agree. But I just cannot listen to or appreciate heavy metal "dismissing an entire genre of music is dumb". And just like how I loath contemporary paintings and 60's and 70's modern architecture, am I not allowed to loath heavy metal?
@@jacocharzukanamericanautho2422 Me prefer latin jazz, but some fusion is great (like Weather Report) and old Swing and Stomp is of course charming, especially when its European / Gypsy mix is high.
This is a great discussion. I think some of the "anti-jazz" people I have met only had a problem with bebop because it can seem emotionally ambiguous and structurally amorphous at times with the improvisation. I also know people who ONLY like bebop and consider Dixieland or "swing" jazz to be mindless pop. Heh, people always gotta divide up over things.
When I got over the musical snobbery of my youth I realized that not everyone is wired for the same level of musical complexity. I really dig *some* jazz, and my own "sweet spot" tends to be a driving, catchy tune with an energetic rhythm and a bit of a twist, but not too far out there to lose the tune and the groove. I also like solos that get right to the point and don't overstay their welcome (see: The Who: "Our Love Was", Echo and the Bunnymen: "My Kingdom", the Beatles: "Taxman", and The Kinks: "Till the End of the Day"). Jazz can often noodle along endlessly, which puts me off, but others may be into. Your mileage may vary, and that's great. Different strokes for different gals and blokes.
My 2Cs…. I’ve been thinking about this for a day now after watching the video and instead of debating the topic, I thought it might be useful to offer come tips for those who are curious about jazz and want to give it a first, second or third try. First: try listening to people singing the Great American Songbook. It’s called great for a reason. Listen to Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Sinatra and the Rat Pack. If that’s too far back for you, try Willie Nelson’s Stardust. Find out about Hoagy, Irving, Cole, Harold, Jerome, Richard (list is long!). By listening to exceptional performances of the original melodies you get an appreciation of how jazz musicians can interpret and transform them. Second: Jazz has many sub-genres. It developed and grew extraordinarily quickly and some styles are more dissonant, fast and harder to get into. So don’t start with Charlie Parker who was a legend. Start with the more melodic stuff. The first few CDs I bought decades ago were Portrait in Jazz- Bill Evans, Stan Getz and the Oscar Peterson Trio. Follow the development of the genre by starting with early Blue Note records. (A record label that doesn’t suck but just the opposite. If you want to try Miles, start with his Prestige records and also Kind of Blue. Don’t start with late albums like Bitches Brew. Don’t try Coltrane until you understand and love Miles and don’t let A Love Supreme be the first no matter how much U2 sang about him. (I made that mistake only to appreciate the album years later. Start with early Coltrane. Third: Watch some movies. Try Ascenseur pour l’Echafaud, (if you like Korean films, Jong Su uses a clip for the music is a fab scene in Burning). If you like a modern film try Whiplash. Hope this helps someone.
Dave Bellamy: watch Branford Marsalis play with The Grateful Dead and play his ass off. That's because all the Dead's musicians are so good. The Dead can't really be called a jazz group except in the sense of being wonderfully improvisational, and they LISTEN to each other!
Who cares why they hate jazz? It's all music; to each his own. I love and play it but I also love other types of music. This is a debate that will never end.
Jazz has redefined western style music as a whole, it's not a surprise knowing that any normal pop song you may pick up might have jazz inspired elements in them
Jazz and it's offshoots are niches and go up and down in popularity within those niches, it never dies or "goes bad"...it's too niche to ever be very high or low in popularity.
I'm going back to earlier videos since I'm relatively new to your channel. You have such a wealth of knowledge, Mr. Beato. I'm looking forward to learning a lot from you.
People enjoy a slight dissonance, but they cant take multiple steps from simplistic, to extended, to altered, or derivative of something already unfamiliar to the ear. Their ears need to make the journey one step at a time. It's like many other "acquired tastes". You dont start off eating the hottest spiciest food or drinking the hoppiest craft beer. You experience pleasure in the dissonance. It then becomes familiar, and you take another step in pursuit of that subtle dissonance. Eventually you're there, finding pleasure where you used to find confusion. People exposed to junk-food music don't appreciate complex flavors, and they have too few influences in their lives who will play guru to help them make the journey.
When people say they hate "jazz", I think they mean specifically bebop and improvisational. It goes way off course and unless you're learned about alternative music theories, it can be difficult to follow or appreciate. And depending on the musician or the song, it can just seem pretentious.
I find the harmonic emphasis tiring. I like music that is more about timbre and less about 7th chords and extensions of them. I don’t relate to the Tin Pan Alley songbook of Jazz standards either, on a cultural level. It just doesn’t speak to me.
You’d like the major 7th though if not used in a Tin Pan Alley standard song? Like if it’s one of few chords in pop song? Beautiful chord. Maybe I get what you mean, nothing is perfect and that’s why some musicians tried to get away from the standards while some just tried not to use these chords in a limiting, boring way, but es interesting how it can be seen cause can be a little boring and yes maybe even a bit tiring at times, and this is why hearing a one song or four chord rock song is refreshing. ,:-0
Yes, i's important to define what type. I hated be bop, Miles Davis ety, then grew to love funky (fusion) jazz, Depends on where you are in your lifer cycle and what's going on in the world. Today i catch a bit of jazz from time to time but it has to MOVE me, either my mind or my body,
@@stephj9378 yes it’s a huge tent. I hate jazz where the guitarist plays a deep hollowbody Gibson with two pickups where the selector might as well be stuck in the up position and if he ever moved it the pianist, bassist and drummer would all laugh.
@@stephj9378 I like early jazz that's more rhythm and blues based, and swing. Louie Jordan, Chick Webb, Benny Goodman , Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Louie Armstrong. I can listen to some Duke and Count, and Dave Brubeck. I also don't much care for the styles of Dizzy, Miles, Coltrane etc... the theorists. And then jumping ahead to modern music- Sting is about as jazzy as I get.
I’m here watching this three years later 💜. I don’t hate jazz, I just have never been able to connect to it. Otherwise, I have a very eclectic taste in music and don’t have difficulty connecting to other genres. Irony: I played alto saxophone for 16 years of my life. I did the jazz band thing in high school but it was just a check the box exercise.
Similar situation. I think I was able to connect to jazz a bit more though. I don't listen to it regularly or anything, but I definitely appreciate it and like some of it. Played trombone in high school marching and jazz band.
I always liken jazz to abstract art: most abstract artists can serviceably paint still life paintings or they may be perfectly acceptable at portraiture, but they have moved beyond landscape or street scene art into a realm that stretches their chops into new, experimental areas. Jazz musicians are so well accomplished on his or her instrument, that experimental music is a next, logical step. I often hear that "Jazz is a musician's music" which I don't ascribe to, as it is obvious that if you have a musician willing to play, there is some audience willing to listen.
I introduced myself to jazz at seventeen. It took a little effort because the only style of music I heard growing up was pop/rock from the radio. Most new genres require some brain training in my experience. Catching Joni Mitchell's Otis and Marlene on the radio at fifteen encouraged me to explore jazz. Some of the negative comments on here boggle my mind. You get into one complex jazz album and you're ready for huge enjoyment for a lifetime. Keep up the good work Rick!
Hi Rick. I like Jazz. I'm from Detroit and we are just ending our 38th Annual Labor Day Detroit Jazz Festival. Really enjoy your videos. I'm also watching Aimee Nolte's flicks too. I'm taking time each day for the next 12 months to better learn music theory, and to play the piano properly. Paul
I saw Stanley Jordan when he was a street minstrel on Washington Square in Manhattan I thought I heard a bassist, rhythm and lead guitarists playing Purple Haze and when I turned the corner it was just Stanley finger tapping playing all the parts. So while in Germany I bought his first album Magic Touch, I think that was his first.
I was at the Nashville NAMM show about two decades ago. I was sort of wandering aimlessly and I turned the corner at the edge of Martin Guitars' booth/area. Leaned casually up against a table, playing a Martin 12 string, was Stanley Jordan, working out "El Condor Pasa" by Simon & Garfunkel. I just sort of quietly watched for a few minutes; he paused for a moment which gave me the opening to say something brilliant like "Wow, that's really amazing. I love the way you play." He smiled warmly, thanked me, and went on picking at the song. Those are the fun encounters, to me; when you see someone just being themselves, doing what they do.
Wow, looking through the comments, no one even mentions the lack of vocals. The majority of of people just doesn't care about instrumental noodeling. And that's pretty universal for most genres. And that is probably because people connect more to the sound of a human voice than to a guitar or a piano.
I don't totally agree with this. Lots of electronic music doesn't have much vocals and it's pretty popular. I think people like catchy melodies and good rhythm mostly.
Then again, lots of dance music (Paul Van Dyk?) survives largely without vocals and does, say, heavy instrumental rock music like Joe Satriani, but those are often the exceptions not the norms.
I started listening to modern Jazz in the 70's, my brother played me a Wes Montgomery album and I was hooked. It was so much more interesting than the Harry James records my Dad would play when I was a kid. I hit the peak of jazz artist in my mid 20's, and it drew me in to even learning an instrument, the flute. I was so blown away the first time I heard Hubert Laws I was astonished at the improv he was doing on tunes I was already familiar with! Listening to jazz has been one of the greatest highlights of my life, and not a day goes by that I don't listen to something. Blues is the basic ingredient, but what you do to expand your knowledge of jazz is what makes the whole part interesting.
I love jazz and pretty much always have, playing alto sax in a jazz band (The Dorian Mode) when I was in my teens, back in the sixties. Modal jazz, Miles, Bill Evans, are among my lodestones. But I love Rock too!
They might rule the biz but I'm not sure that that's why the general public prefer them. The narrative aspect of songs is really important to people. Think of all those amazing Steely Dan songs. They're like self contained novels. Jazz was hugely popular in the 30s and 40s when it had songs. I mean hell I could listen to Cecil Taylor all day but I'm strange.
I absolutely love it when really good jazz players start jamming. Music magic starts happening. It's like a painter who focuses on the space in-between the objects they're painting. Hope that makes sense.
My car got broken into. The next morning, I found all my CD's had been taken out of the glove box and left on the front seat. None had been taken. They were excellent Jazz albums, the only things of value in the car. The thief did not steal them.
Now that's funny.
Similar thing happened to me. Someone broke into our News Van at work. Stole all of the reporter’s Dave Matthews CDs and left all of my Nine Inch Nails.
Sort of like having a manual transmission. Best theft deterrent ever.
I sympathize with him. He felt sorry for you.
Todd Nielson -haha. I rode a bicycle in college with no seat. Just the post. No one ever tried to ride off with that thing.
I'm 67 yrs old. My (much older) brothers were all musicians, and I was introduced to jazz as a toddler. It's still my favorite genre of music. I LOVE JAZZ!
Jazz was "pop" back in early days. Pop music is a moving target.
Jazz evolved, it is not blameworthy to evolve, it's healthy. It still can be pop-formulaic (Jill Scott, Melody Gardot, Robert Glasper, Norah Jones....and they are the best of the more stylized performers, I don't disdain them at all, they just aren't committed to the more profound evolution of jazz ), it can be retro, it can be staid.... but it can be, and at it's best is, infinitely more exploratory , even avant garde. Jazz has lots of life impulses in it's DNA... it will continue and renew because it's vital and it moves outward beyond boundaries, it always has. Explorers always create their own potentials, fertility comes from breaking fresh ground.
@@9UaYXxB I get the feeling that Jazz spanned that divide from when acoustic went to electric, it was on both sides. Of course the horns had been around for much longer, two features I somewhat ascribe(not the right word) not exclusively, but considerably to Jazz. Horn's, I find are underrated in their power. You get a line of them blowin' all together it's gonna step you back a bit. (Big Man on Mulburry street ~ Joel) For me, that's Jazz too, I sometimes struggle with a clear boundary, Kenny G? Bella Fleck absolutely, and with a banjo no less. Andreas Vollenweider does absolutely astounding things with a harp, again, for me, that's Jazz also. But I don't know if others would consider it so.
Jazz was also "punk" or underground at some point, in the sense that it rebelled against conventional music of the previous generation. I enjoyed this video, but it doesn't answer the question "why do people hate jazz?" - it demonstrates why people love innovative music that can't be defined within a genre, or why we reject music that becomes too widely accepted. Jazz, rock, country, folk, hip-hop, metal (even commercial pop) have all gone through similar evolutions of being experimental, indulgent, stripped down to basics, etc...
jazz was more easy to dance
@@9UaYXxB Just like all styles are evolving...
I love Jazz; my husband says I listen to elevator music. I say no, I've been gifted this music that I have never experienced, and I love Jazz, allowing me to enjoy and be in the moment and be at peace. I'm glad I found jazz music. I love it. Thank God! I can listen to it all day, 24/7. When I listen to Jazz, I enjoy it; I welcome all the sounds that come together and then go their own way and come back in a wave of musical instruments, and Jazz just relaxes me and gives me a sense of peace.
I was born in the early 50's, my parents had singers on the record player like Sinatra, Tony Bennet, Nat King Cole, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis, etc.
These were great singers with jazzy style orchestras, with beautiful horns and classy piano. Jazz music wasn't the emphasis, the singer was, but the accompanying music was mood setting was gorgeous.
I'm mainly a rock and roll guy, but I will ALWAYS love jazz and blues.
I also love Big Band, country, Gospel, and Latin music.
The older I get, the more I appreciate the gift that music brings to the world.
Check out Mel Tormé too, that dude was a beast
They didn’t grow up with mom and dad playing Lady Day, Wes Montgomery, Benny Goodman and on and on. I play drums but anything I have produced has a a groove because of listening to jazz as a kid. Same with my guitar playing. Thank God for Jazz .
I've been a Industrial/Metal guitarist for almost 20 years and I have nothing but respect for Jazz players because everytime I've seen a good band performing, each musician was an absolute fucking monster at his instrument. I mean, the genre itself simply doesn't speak to me in any level, but GOD DAMN those guys can play...
Absolutely correct. There are no gizmos used to disguise poor playing and lack of true ability.
Sure they can play, but the issue I have is that they can play great alone. Put them all together and it's a cacophony that can drive one to madness.
@@ihop4no14 Exactly, it can be too much improv and not enough composition at times...but sometimes it's just right.
@@ihop4no14 Classical musicians can ALSO play.
Rock guitarist: Plays simple part, makes it look like life-ending struggle.
Jazz guitarist: Plays most difficult part imaginable, makes it look like they didn't notice they were doing it.
At 66, and not a musician, every song I hear again from my youth is strongly attached to "memories" (a place, a person, an event, etc..) and instantly that song became a precious belonging, and it was tucked away in my brain for all time. Each time I hear it, I'm taken back to relive the memories. At the time I first heard it, that song subconsciously became mine; a cherished memory not to be changed or messed with.
And hence, one of the reasons jazz never appealed to me, is for exactly the very reason most folks on this forum liked it; the improvising. For me that meant the jazz song is never played the same twice. Each time the jazz group plays it, it changes. It's like trying to attach a memory to smoke that gets blown away with each breeze, and the song is never played the same as you first heard it. Some like that, but nothing upsets me more. Two summers ago, I went to a concert to listen to Steve Miller only to discover he changed my favorite song because he got bored with playing it the same way, over and over.
In my mind, he had no right to do that. When he placed that song in vinyl, it became mine - just as it was. And my memories were attached to every note and lyric and it was lovingly placed in my brain's scrapbook. When that artist changes it, I feel violated. It's like he took a treasured musical photo, and cut out some of the figures and background that meant so much to me.
I don't share this to say my feelings are right, for they are not right or wrong, just different. I share this simply for the sake of understanding... why a few of us (who process the world differently) can't get into jazz. Perhaps if I had been a musician, I might have understood the desire for improvising. But knowing my personality, I doubt it.
I totally feel ya brother.
I went to a Malmsteen concert and was annoyed at the changed.
Joe Satriani on the other hand plays
EVERY damn note on the album.
It was an amazing concert!!
I understand the pleasure of hearing a reproduction live of a treasured commercial release, AND I understand the novelty of a new approach. Jazz more often tends to favor the latter for the musicians’ and their audience’s sake, emphasizing that the latter know to expect it. It enables the potential for the excitement of the new in the way a faithful reproduction, however expertly delivered, cannot.
@@bradtarr3283 Well said sir- couldn't agree more. I love jazz- and to me why would I want to hear the same thing I heard on the album- I have the album- I can listen to it all I want. If I'm seeing the band live this is their chance to share something special with me- they feed off the audiences' vibes- and then they never recreate that performance again- I love that. It's literally like they're giving you a piece of their art that they'll never recreate or give anyone else- just you and the few hundred ppl there that night - sometimes a few dozen.
That's an interesting perspective, Chuck. The flip side is when I hear someone live, I really want to hear what new things they're up to, where their creativity has led them since the version they left on the final mix of their release.
Also, sometimes when I'm listening to my music files I'll set up a play list of three or four versions of the same tune, just because I appreciate the different interpretations by different artists. Just as when hearing a new arrangement by one artist, my thoughts are that the world is a better place because we have each version, as long as each is well done and brings something new. In fact, when a new artist covers a well-known number it bores me if they're just trying to duplicate the original recording. I mean, it's an interesting party trick, but always think, "Yeah, well that's been done. What do YOU have to contrbute?"
I don't like it either when I pay to see an artist and they change songs from the records. I paid to see them because I liked the songs the way they were recorded.
There are a lot of different reasons behind the marginal status of jazz in popular culture. I'll try to touch on the big ones:
- Rock and roll happened and eclipsed it. Jazz is seen as "old fashioned" by some. This isn't particularly an issue for me, but speaking for myself it probably is true that I personally had to be "seduced" into jazz by discovering jazz-rock first.
- Bebop happened and took jazz in the direction of art music. I personally love this. Many others don't. It doesn't mean you have to smarter than others to appreciate the music. But it is more likely with art music that musicians, as well as just people whose minds are abstraction-oriented, are going to be the ones who appreciate it most.
- It got institutionalized at universities, which is both a blessing (knowledge) and curse (codification/overstandardization). More knowledge is always good, but "college jazz" can potentially have cookie-cutter aspects to it.
- Your average person is less likely to appreciate instrumental music in general because it involves an extra level of abstraction to engage, unfortunately. This is roughly true of classical music and some instrumental rock too.
- It can be perceived as "too black" by some white people, at least implicitly. Especially late and post coltrane stuff that is all about Northern African identity and flirts with Islam and the middle east. Never bugged me. I can see why some culturally closed-minded white people would be uncomfortable or unable to appreciate that.
- African-American culture itself largely moved on to things like rnb, funk and hip-hop. It somewhat can live on in them or inform them at times, but they are ultimately just their own beast unto themselves, so to speak.
- Some people just don't know what jazz is. They think it's anything that involves something unfamiliar or exotic to their ear. This both leads people to dismiss jazz, and it leads some musicians to claim that they are incorporating jazz when they haven't really listen to or studied it as a genre as such and don't know any better.
- Some people's only concept of jazz comes from smooth jazz, and they find it too polite and inoffensive. Thus you get the standard trope about "elevator music". Or they think it's just soft wallpaper dinner music. They don't know of things like harder driving post-bop, fusion and free jazz. That's the zone where you're more likely to win over rock fans to jazz.
- Some people find Gershwin musicals and such to be boring, corny or overly maudlin and saccharine. I kind of do myself at times. Not every song in "The American Songbook" is something I particularly want to listen to or play.
- Some jazz musicians themselves are overly conservative sonically and musically, and are actually not very original or creative. Acoustic-only, same dull clean guitar tone, same timbres, same songs, same licks, endless 2-5-1 cycles.
- In a sense, jazz got Euro-fied by the 60's. There's a big French connection in particular. Jazz somewhat of moved to Europe (and latin America) when rock supplanted its popularity in North America.
I always thought jazz was a general category and bebop and rock, funk, swing, latin jazz were all kind of subcategories... Was I wrong this whole time?
Alex Strekal Yes!!!
Euro fied..? 😂 did Bach get euro fied? Maybe they’ve just been stupifying the west strategically and it has nothing to do with Europeans. Look at how many hits in music and mechanical engineering and everything else out of Germany 🇩🇪 and Italy 🇮🇹 where my “euro-fied” genetics came from in Europe before they migrated west
I can suggest of a number of reasons, they are of course just personal opinions:
1) Jazz has evolved considerably since it originated, so what you’re hearing now lies at the far end of a long line of progress from (say) the 1920s on. I’d suggest early jazz is a lot more accessible to new listeners than more recent output. It was listening to The Soprano Summit in the 70s playing material from the 20s and 30s which got me into it. At this time, some of Jaco Pastorius’ and Henning Pederson’s playing sounded to me like random notes. Likewise Return to Forever. They don’t now but I suspect would to a similarly naive listener. I guess the dissonance in jazz can be problematic to some as well.
2) Someone has commented under one of the RUclips Alan Holdsworth clips to the effect that the underlying harmonic framework can be quite hidden so the pieces don’t seem to be going anywhere. It’s easy to ridicule as people playing scales in various directions, very fast, over weird chords in no particular order which don’t resolve (with obligatory polite applause at the end). Compare to something like sonata principle which has a strong sense of momentum and progression.
3) A problem I have with jazz (and I do actually like the genre) is a lot of it is texturally boring. One can hear technically brilliant guitar playing for example, but it often sounds like someone playing a box of rubber bands and the sound stays the same throughout an entire performance. Many jazz guitarists, even my heroes, seem guilty of this. Something as apparently limited as a classical string quartet or a solo classical guitar performance usually has a far greater range of texture and dynamics IMHO. Rockier players such as Jan Akkerman and Jeff Beck seem to extract far more variations in sound and dynamics from their instruments than most jazz players.
4) It can seem very cliquish and full of smart arses displaying their sophisticated knowledge of harmony, scale theory and so on. Even as a jazz listener this can be very off-putting. You need to know the stuff certainly if you’re playing it, but only as a means to an end.
Can I just say I really like your 3rd point about it being texturally boring, that is all.
Nice observation, especially 3rd point. Jazz guitar playing and sound 'rules' (i think in 'classic', older jazz, not fusion) are actually really rigid. No (or just slight) vibrato, no bending :(, no too much effects (except irritating 80's fusion effects:)) big NO-NO to all great things you can do in rock, blues, or even pop context...Some guys tried to break that 'rules', for sure, but... All in all - guitar as solo instrument in jazz sounds so poor (sonically, dinamically) sometimes, comparing it with sax, or trumpet... You are forced to play a bunch of notes, to be 'interesting' to the listener (but effect is sometimes exactly the opposite:)), and... i have a feel that you can't say too much with a few good notes (with nice dynamics, bends, long slides, etc) like in other genres... It is source of frustration for me too... :)
I remember when rock was becoming pretentious and punk came along to simplify things again. Most jazz types probably thought that rock was far too simple before punk. Nowadays rock players(what's left of them) favor lots of effects, some to the point of having them under midi control from a laptop or PC off stage changing effects constantly like St. Vincent. Electronica is even more extreme in that sense. Well it gives you an idea of where people's heads are at these days. If you don't have a huge Vegas treatment with dancers and costume changes plus lots of video people tend to be lost as they're checking out their phones.
Expanding on number 3, an interesting analogy I've heard is that bends, using a wah pedal or "whammy bar," sliding on a fretless instrument, etc, give the instrument a more voice like "vocal" quality that catches your attention and adds another layer of expression. The idea is that people relate to vocal sounds in a deep way. I love a lot of instrumental music but I definitely think this is true for me to a degree. Even when a voice is put through "unnatural" sounding effects like pitch shifting or "chopped up" and sampled something about it grabs my attention in a unique way. I think our minds are wired to listen for and listen to voices, and to remember phrases (lyrics.) A lot of jazz has no vocals either, so if things that sound like or are voices help draw attention and make music more relatable, you can see where that could be detrimental to the music's popularity.
I've never stopped loving Jazz. I actually hosted a Jazz Radio show in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. It was an amazing little station in a town of 8,000 people.
Rhinelander, Music capital of the world, nuff said.
I wish I haven’t watched this cause I don’t get anything at all, this thing for someone else can be cocktail music n then I am thinking more along the lines of all out rock n roll, maybe am anxious, but also maybe thought jazz was something you sprayed on the backseat to clean the filth off ,:-0
Sure I always used to call it that, but I can’t go back now, not since Steve Coleman called it the Louis Armstrong-Charlie Parker continuum n recalled how older musicians just called it the music. Remember Louis Armstrong? Big tall inspiring guy? How did it go from that to this????? 🙁
I loved Allan holdsworth. When I first heard him, I was in shock. I’ve never been so shaken by a player in my life. He was reaching for something new. He found it. God bless him. May his music live forever
Did Rick mention his song "5-10" or something?
@@erickborling1302 no, this was 40 years ago. I still love Allan’s playing, always will. I don’t play like him, but it’s the spirit I teach for, anyway - the brilliance, the creativity. I don’t always succeed, but it’s the chase that keeps me going.
@@erickborling1302 that was funny, though. ‘’Hey! Hey! Is that what you call Jazz? I hate jazz!!!” lmfao
Every note that Holdsworth played was beautiful.
Jazz was able to win over the masses at one point because it was so interconnected with the American songbook and showtunes. These were songs people knew and, in a lot of cases, were playing around the family piano after dinner. The American songbook and pianos in the living living room faded with TV in the 50s. So, basically everyone carrying the torch of this forgotten Era was born in the 50s. Sting, who you reference in this capacity, even penned the song "born in the 50s". Those born after the 50s were raised on TV and rock and roll.
The 'american songbook' is more linked with gospel and folk songs, tho. What helped jazz become popular was it's newness as an art form, when it reared in the 20s. It felt more 'hip' and 'current' than other musical styles of that era, and lended itself to nights on the town, especially in big cities.
@@wylierichardson-tu6zsNo, the American Song Book was Tin Pan Alley, Broadway and show tunes. New York, baby!
So…TV killed jazz? Interesting.
@@bebopisthetruth was that equally true in the 1800s tho?
Hey Rick, I just want to pipe up here and say that your jazz videos are the reason I found you and continue to follow you. Very few people on RUclips who can break down the musical building blocks (rhythm changes, blues) of jazz and explain it in a straightforward, digestible way. Also, your analysis of the styles of players like Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass is incredible, really felt like going back to university for me. I drifted away from jazz for many years (playing in rock bands etc.) but got back into the music during COVID quarantine. I've now rediscovered just how much I love this music-- which as many have pointed out, is the only musical art form indigenous to the US-- wholly born and developed in the US. True, jazz is not for everyone-- but neither is great literature, world-class food, quantum mechanics etc. But all those things are still among the great achievements of humankind-- including jazz. Keep up the great work!
From the great pianist Bill Evans last interview (1980 Molde, Norway) Q."Why do you think the jazz audience is so young?" Evans: "I think they're discriminating young people, or they wouldn't be here. Otherwise, they would go with the masses. They want a deeper experience. Some people just want to be hit over the head, and if they're hit hard enough, maybe they feel something. But some people really want to get into something, and maybe discover more richness. I think it will always be the same.They're not going to be a great percentage of the people. The great % don't want a challenge. They want something to be done to them. They don't want to participate. But there will always be about 15%, maybe 15% who desire something more, and they'll search it out. That's where art is."
Great answer, and has loads of truth
Except in the U.S. the percentages for jazz and classical are probably closer to 3%. Sales are probably closer to 1% for each. A lot of jazz and classical listeners don't buy much music anymore either.
I agree but this quote pretty much sums up the elitist mindset of the genre (its all about the real ones, the real art is in the 15%, the real "few") I love jazz and Bill Evans btw, the "You must believe in spring" is one of my favorite albums ever
Jazz was dance music in the paßt, it was the popular music. Then came Rock and Roll and so forth. Every decade or so there is new popular music. With the beginning of the big consumer markets (after WW2), Jazz became less mainstream and more specialized (or call it 'impro'). Dance music is what people buy. They don't want to make a diploma on music, they want to be sucked in, have a good time and then do something else. Jazz was rebelious (in terms of youth rebellion) until maybe the 40s, then came rock and roll and then punk or even disco and techno. The youth wants to created and discover something of their own, not something their parents already listened to. For (most of) todays youth rock and roll, punk, grunge is old stuff. Why listen to Jazz?
@@hw2508 I'm not interested in "rebelliousness". All I care about is whether the music sounds good - and jazz sounds great to me.
My theory: as you mention in your "Why Pop is boring now" video, the melody notes have to either latch onto the chords to sound melodic, or they have to create tension through dissonance. The more complex the chord is, the more notes from the chord become considered melodic rather than dissonant. And the difference between "melodic" notes and "dissonant" notes becomes smaller. Jazz usually features a high number of complex chords with at least four and sometimes five or six different tones in them. The end result is that if you aren't used to hearing entire tunes constructed like this is that it becomes difficult to detect "a tune", and this is exacerbated by the fast virtuoso playing and modulation through different keys which makes it even more difficult for the ear to latch onto. To make a visual analogy... imagine ten dots in a straight line, which represents an easily followed but predictable and dull musical expression. Begin to move the position of the dots so they trace a curve or other shape and it's more interesting but can still be followed along. Move the dots too far, however, and you end up with a pattern that is indistinguishable from if the dots were just randomly thrown down. Jazz sits at the threshhold of that point, where the melody starts to become unrecognisable from random notes for many people.
"America hates music, but loves entertainment."
--- Frank Zappa
what a load of bull
Jerry Jazzbo well that’s inaccurate, it’s just that America hates Frank Zappa’s music, that doesn’t mean music in general
Should be titled "why do Americans...", or "Why do almost all my friends..."
A lot of popular "music" is simply nursery rhymes for the musically
Illiterate masses.
Possibly so, Frank. They are beginning to hate entertainment too.
I'm from Uruguay. I'm an independent rock musician currently focusing on creating a strategy to build a type of career. Wanted to tell you that your channel is probably the best content out there for musicians in many levels. You not only speak very wisely about music and knowledge of how its made, but you also aim straight at several topics that are key discussions in today's society, in regards to what it is that a musician should be aware of. Also your encouragement stance and general attitude is so positive you end up creating a type of....wait....I jazz'ed out there.
Well, thanks for all you are doing and keep on!
Why is jazz not part of the pop scene anymore?
Herbie Hancock: “Because it's not the music that matters anymore. People don't care about the music itself anymore, but about who makes the music. The public is more interested in celebrities and how a certain artist is famous than music. It changed the way the audience relates to music. They no longer have a transcendental connection to music and its quality. Just want the glamour. Jazz doesn't want to be part of it. Do you know why? It's not about humility, or arrogance or a posture, ‘we don't want to be famous, we're underground .’ None of that. Jazz is about the human soul, not about the appearance. Jazz has values, teaches to live the moment, work together, and especially to respect the next. Jazz makes people feel good about themselves.”
~ Herbie Hancock, Prose Magazine
Maybe you will find interesting how Pablo Picasso became the first painter to become a global celebrity, changed the image of the artist's persona.
I don't think it comes down to that. Perhaps the biggest reason is that people find the jazz sound too amorphous.
Fusion jazz, jazz rock and acid jazz have a much greater popular appeal, precisely because they unite styles that take away this amorphous characteristic, even though the sound has become simpler, but more direct and more coherent.
For example, I really like songs that sound more melancholy, epic, "dark", ethereal, morbid, etc.
How am I going to find this in jazz? impossible..
So, music genres like downtempo, ambient music, art-rock, synth pop, ethereal wave, darwave and especially triphop (like the sound Massive attack makes, which has a lot of jazz influence), will touch me a lot more.
I do feel that the likes of Bowie and Lou Reed should have done more with Jazz, just think of Black Star or Lou's The Bells.
They could have brought something to a rock/Jazz fusion but instead stuck by the guitar and just produced a lot of dull albums because of it.
Ah, yes. Blame the audience. Always a classy move.
Interesting P.O.V. Even moreso coming from someone who composed "Rock It!". What I gather is that he just plays what he feels, wether jazz, pop or something in between, without thinking on the commercial potential or the notoriety it might bring him. But I do think there are some jazz artists that are/were the exception to the "celebrity" thing: Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Quincy Jones or Kenny G, for instance. Not that liking the "rockstar treatment" is inherently wrong. I myself enjoy all kinds of genres and of course rock/pop/metal have their "superstars" and that doesn't stop me from liking them either.
I love jazz!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Especially live. Love to hear the musicianship, expression, improvisation, virtuousity, complexity. It's the best most advanced music.
I'm in Vancouver BC Canada
I love Jazz because it is just pure music.
@@To.Si.Ma.pure Freedom pure music
Jazz has never been radio music. You need to sit down and spend an hour (or two or three) with it to even begin to get comfortable with it. And that's not what a lot of people are looking for.
Jazz is beautiful to me. It moves my soul. I just heard a tune called Ill rememver Clifford. What a wonderfull time. I played in a blues band. And was always amazed at jazz players. More complex to me.
Big band jazz was the pop music of the early 20th century. Then jazz evolved. The music was no longer about a great hook but became a vehicle for more and more advanced soloing. It became all about theory and technique instead of strong hooks. The same thing happened to classical.
The most important part of a song is the hook. I do not care what genre you play, (there is virtuosos in every genre) if you get away from focusing on the hook you will not appeal to the general public. The more advanced it is the smaller the group it will appeal to.
arpeggiomeister in most basic terms, it all comes down to having something that people will remember, something that will come back into their head, that they will find themselves whistling on their way to or from work. I’m thinking that is the difference between good music and great music. Good music sounds good when you listen to it, but you soon forget how it sounded. When you hear Great music, it’s sounds great when you listen to it and you remember how it sounded enough to be able to recreate it in your head, hum it, whistle it, etc.
That's a pretty big generalization, and isn't very well informed. Even when the music got more complicated, the really great players still played with a convincing "truth" that anyone who will give it a chance could understand without formal musical training. Just because some jazz includes complex elements doesn't mean that's what the music is about. The complexity just comes from finding new ways to express some truth within themselves. If you watch an interview of any great jazz musician they will rarely talk about harmony or rhythms or any technical aspects of music, it's nearly always about influences, expression, communication, or personal history/stories. Because that's what it's really about. Sure, there are some jazz musicians who will compose for the sake of complexity, or play in a way that's solely meant to show off, but again, they aren't really upholding the spirit of the music when they do that, and that kind of attitude seems to be a lot more common in a lot of technical metal and math rock. Good music is good music, and anyone who is willing to listen can appreciate it.
@@zachwalgren1694 To be fair technical metal and math rock also have like 0.01% of the market and suffer many of the same fatal injuries as jazz.
arpeggiomeister ....Hooks are to sell music, not to develop creativity.
@@msmith53 who the hell is talking about "developing creativity"???? Were talking about people listing to jazz. Some jazz i hate, other jazz i like. If it gets to discordant it just gives me a headache. Who the hell wants to listen to something that is going to give them a headache?
Edit: for clarity, i hope!
Comment from my wife who saw the title of this video: "I don't think people hate jazz so much as they hate people who like jazz."
sadly spot on . . . in this political climate.
ROFL!!! so true!!!
@@MartinWeeksmw Then again, I like jazz and she married me.
I named my stray cat Jazz cause she's not very likeable hisses and scratches if you get too close!
So my wife hates me? Interesting, if true. ;)
It has taken me over 40 years to finally get jazz. Now at age 58 I can't get enough of it and I feel like my Dad and Grand pa watching them sitting around on the deck smoking a cigar and having a scotch while listening to jazz back in 1972.
Stevie Wonder is playing his first gig in Tokyo and the place is absolutely packed to the rafters. In a bid to break the ice with his new audience, He asks if anyone would like him to play a request.
A little old Japanese man jumps out of his seat in the first row and shouts at the top of his voice "Play a Jazz chord!Play a jazz chord!"
Amazed that this guy knows about the jazz influences in Stevie's varied career, the blind impresario starts to play an E minor scale and then goes into a difficult jazz melody for about 10 minutes.
When he finishes the whole place goes wild. The little old man jumps up again and shouts "No, no, play a Jazz chord, play a Jazz chord."
A bit irritated by this, Stevie, being the professional that he is, dives straight into a jazz improvisation with his band around the B flat minor chord and really tears the place apart.
The crowd goes wild with this impromptu show of his technical expertise.The little old man jumps up again. "No, no. Play a Jazz chord, play a jazz chord!"
Well now truly irritated that this little guy doesn't seem toappreciate his playing ability. Stevie says to him from the stage "OK, mister, you get up here and do it!"
The little old man climbs up onto the stage, takes hold of the mike and starts to sing...
"A jazz chord to say I ruv you...".
hahahaha!
I just have one question . . . . How long have you been sitting on that gem just hoping that Rick would do a video about jazz music? 😂😅😂😃
J. Dominguez pretty much since he started his channel. The relief is phenomenal 😂
Stevie Wonder has never played in Tokyo???
😕
I would not normally feel urged quite so much to comment. But I am writing from Berlin, Germany - the previous Mecca for techno music - in April 2018. And I can report to you Rick, or anybody, that jazz has hugely overtaken this city. Some few of the hippest, coolest bars in town are jazz bars, filled not with 50+ year olds like ourselves, but rather 18-25 year olds. The Berlin XJAZZ festival is about to explode again in May. Jazz is hugely alive here, and it's young kids 30 years younger than me, it could not be more alive than it is here.
Yeah!! Helmut Kagerer..Torsten Goods..they play there a lot I hear..
I agree Rick seems to be depressed because money is gone from where it was and its hard tofind elsewhere
I feel bad for the generation that missed out on good MDMA and raves and got boring jazz bars instead.
OriginalMindTrick The young people who can still easily get good mdma and who are going to raves are the same types of people hanging at jazz bars these days.
Listen to something like bitches brew on psychs. Guarantee you’ll find it a wayyy more intense experience than than mdma at a rave 😉
That's great news!!!
Way late to the party but... It occurs to me that this is an art appreciation issue and not specific to Jazz. Of the many homes and apartments I've visited I often notice a total lack of art on peoples walls. And if asked what visual artists or painters they like cannot name one, or recognize a Degas or Dali. The same is true of music. For the most of the public it is a problem of attention span. What's new today and yesterday is forgotten. So it's a problem of art appreciation generally. Needs to be taught, and not as an elective. Adn I gotta say the vast amount of Jazz I listen to is all from the greats in the 50's and early 60's. ( Well except for World Saxophone Quartet and Sun Ra which I have been fortunate to see live :) Thanks for your channel Rick! Stay well.
Like art, there are so many facets to jazz. Like he mentions, there is the big band swing sound of the 30's to early 50's, the 50's be-bop, 60's avant garde style, 70's jazz fusion, etc. It is like saying "I like Rock'N'Roll", but the difference between 50's RNR music and 70's RNR music is a completely different kettle of fish, and you'll find adherents to each, and never the twain shall meet. I have friends who love the stuff of Al Di Meola, but have no appreciation for Wes Montgomery, much like people who love Black Sabbath, but couldn't listen to Eddie Cochrane. I don't know if it's "Short Attention Span Theater" or just a general lack of historical musical history.
I'm with you there, Most people don't understand art, or life, until it hits them in the face, or in another sensitive region.
In a capitalist world art is valued for its prestige and its price-tag, but not as much for its ability to elevate you or to bore deep and painfully into your soul.
Jazz requires cerebral engagement as much as it requires emotional exploration.
In my own experience I find that the more I experience in life, the more that certain music enthralls me.
Earlier tonight I was brought to tears by Camille Saint Saens' "Carnival Of The Animals - The Swan" played by Yo-Yo Ma and Katherine Stott. Simple. Beautiful
@@simongriffiths5 "Art doesn't come to you. You need to go to it," someone once said. I have found that to be true.
I hear you Alan many people these days do not know where they actually live (i kid you not) never mind Art and Culture in their homes.Look at what they eat,how they dress, everything.Values / important things/culture arent learnt or even bothered with mostly these days just trivial nonsense about social media "celebrities" mottos like "we are all the same" when we are clearly not.poor quality sportswear. with and a big price tag and regular excessive consumption of product..
To put everything in context I’m an American who has lived in London since 1981. Your observations are as always spot on. I have seen many of the Jazz and Jazzrock fusion greats met a few of them and often knew reasonably well some of the musicians in their bands. Complexity to extreme, not my opinion, is some of the issue but I think the real problem is the complete lack of a recognisable melody and the lack of singing in much of modern Jazz.
When I saw John McLaughlin, Hammer, RTF and Al Demola in the 70’s audiences were very good, today these giants are lucky to sell 1-200 tickets. Sadly many modern Jazz concerts often resemble a contest for who can play the most notes in the shortest amount of time. There is no light and shade to most people it’s simply noise.
Jeff Beck, Yes, Steve Hackett and up until recently Rush sold out big halls or arena and the performances were complex, tight to perfection and really fantastic. The guys in the big names band all describe without being prompted said that they were allowed and even encouraged to do their own thing and were given the opportunity to shine throughout the concerts.
I spoke to Al De Meola and his daughter in detail after a gig in a church hall, his neighbourhood was close to my dads and I think he enjoyed talking to someone from back home. This was 10+ years ago and he said most of his live gigs were in Europe now.
Bill Bruford is an amazing jazz drummer and incredible nice, but his Jazz tours were poorly attended, even the ones with Moraz or Tim Burton, even though there was plenty of light, shade and no duelling egos. Jason Rebello would be the same, so sad.
I think Pino Paladino and Jeremy stacey got it right, they both do rock with big but very nice artists who treated them very well, then do jazz gigs in tiny clubs for £50 a night.
I have seen Vinne colaiuta with Sting, Jeff Beck and John McLaughlin and he’s one of my ten favourite drummers of all time, but he always keeps a grove. Sorry I go for so long that I could bore for England, but I really love music!
"lack of singing" I think this point is huge and deep. There is superficially the fact that people enjoy songs (as opposed to instrumental pieces), but I think whats sometimes lost in Jazz is the concept of a song, really. Take something like "Take the A-Train", fabulous song, and it works well even if no one is singing because it still has the feel of a song.
A lot of Jazz musicians kind of abstract the concept away to a degree that it is lost (maybe its still recognizable for the hardcore Jazz enthusiasts, but even musically trained ears are quickly lost). If Jazz was in a healthy state, we would also see some new songs and "standards" emerge.
Btw. when Jazz gets popular attention again, its often via songs. Think of Norah Jones, Gregory Porter, etc.
@@wirrbel It's not "lost" - they simply aren't doing a "song" - they're playing a piece. It's the listener's error to "want a song".
@@stickplayer2 I think you outlined perfectly what attitude has made Jazz loose its broad audience and why it has become niche.
I saw a Chinese opera in Taipei. Audience went crazy when clearly famous 'songs' were well performed. To me it was all tuneless and annoying. I had no cultural references to draw on, language or the scale systems for example, to make an intelligent response. Taught me a lot about how music can rarely live without a history.
So Chinese opera has no history? The audience love it and that should be enough. All music is great for those that love it.
@Jason He means the audience loved the music because they were steeped in the history of it, while he was not.
By extension, I take him to mean that to love jazz you have to understand, or studied the history, or have come up in that time to have experienced the culture, and evolving history of the culture first hand.
Jazz requires attention. And people are not used to paying attention to music anymore.
Stefan Becker they don’t even wait for the bass solo anymore to whip out their phones
Ding!
Oh, my! I can go with that opinion! 👍🏻
Sorry, drifted off... What were you saying?
:-/
@Thomas Headley All because Art Snobs are also Cheap Bastards...
:'(
I was 17 yrs old when I started listing to jazz. My friends always got upset and said stop playing that boring old man crap. I still listen to it today at 52. I just really got tired of listening to rock in my youth but jazz excited me. I became sort of an outcast and still to this day, I’m still listening to it being an outcast
Thats cool tho
Never dumb down your taste to fill in. Just find people that have similar taste.
@Rob: I love your strength against the pressures of conformity, but I also have to say that I despise jazz. Its unstructured non-melodic boring randomness makes it at best background music for me, and most of the time I'd rather hear silence than music I'm not interested in.
@@echt114 I think your description of jazz is too limited. The jazz that you said you hate is the sub genre called be bop.. but their are so many other types like Swing, fusion, smooth jazz and many others.
Saying you dont like all jazz based on hating bebop would be like saying you hate rock n roll because you heard thrash metal and didnt like it.
@@ComicPower Well I've certainly heard "smooth jazz" and have always been bored with it, so I'm not sure what else I should do. If I hear something I like, I don't have to force myself to listen. The closest thing I've ever liked are probably a few Steely Dan songs.
You can come to jazz organically thru some R&B and work your way thru that jazz-light fusion stuff. It tills the soil of your inner landscape where you plant the seeds of jazz, and keep along the path by staying curious about it, and really, curious about music in general because jazz has it’s roots in just about all American music. But you sorta have to have the intention first. After a while, you’re there, your ears, mind and heart meet at up at once and you’re transformed. Jazz is the one thing which makes me proud to be an American. Much love to you, Sir. Love Love this channel. XX Namaste.
I dont necessarily hate Jazz as such but in my experience certainly here in Australia Jazz musicians tend to be extremely condescending and snobbish toward any other player outside of jazz...the term jazz nazi is often heard from pop musicians.
So many jazz musicians are non inclusive and tend to brow beat other musicians.
That being said if you listen to Quincy Jones in interviews he is soooo inclusive to all styles of music even though he started off in swing and jazz bands .
Mike Mathieson
i get what you are saying, but i think one of the problems with some jazz musicians is they get stuck in time, maybe in the 70s 80s whenever they learn to play. not such a problem for pop musicians, cause older styles of pop still popular, but not many people like 70s or 80s jazz anymore.
not sure about Australia but in Europe lots of young musicians have gone back to playing jazz from the 30s and 40s and some of them attact very appreciative audiences, young and older
As a Jazz AND Blues singer what I see is that people don't hate Jazz. There are some forms of it that are more cerebral to the point a non trained ear just hears dissonance. But classic jazz like Ella Fitzgerald, Monk, Miles etc... that music resonates across genres and ages. Smooth Jazz seems to appeal to soul and funk fans and then there are vocal giants like George Benson, Al Jarreau, Bobby McFerrin, Rachelle Ferrell who also have mass appeal. But it is easier for a vocalist to relate to an audience because EVERYONE has a voice and has tried to sing. For an instrumentalist- not so many have had lessons on an instrument or comprehend how many hours practice go into mastering one. So it is harder to relate when your audience doesn't speak your language so to speak. But part of the problem is also the musicians themselves in many cases. Not all- but enough jazz musicians are so " All about the music" they forget to read their audience or connect with them. I have seen many jazz players begin a song. Close their eyes and never open them again to see if the crowd is responding or not. Some will even barely smile when given applause. And when in some cases the audience is not responding( And leaving- often after paying a hefty cover) I've heard a few musicians say disparaging things like "they don't know enough to appreciate it". Looking down on your audience is the first sign of circling the edge of the whirlpool. Music IS a universal language. If your audience is not "Getting your message" then you have failed as a musician to deliver it in a manner they understand, or relate to emotionally. That goes for any genre. Our goal is to have people leaving our shows saying "Wow- I didn't know I liked Jazz!" And they do because we pay attention to them and their reactions. If all jazz musicians were as aware of their audience, the one things that not only pays them- but which prevents them from being a "Rehearsal" it would be a much more popular genre. Just because you might happen to be a virtuoso will never give you the right to be a pompous ass to people who are willing to shell out hard earned money to see you. Personally, until you can appreciate your audience and have a goal to move them with your music...you probably SHOULD stay home and rehearse. Being a musician is not just playing the notes- it's also being a performer and making a connection. I Also see Jazz Natzi's tell other musicians "That's NOT how______ wrote it!" ANd I Always wonder "When did Jazz the music of improvisation, turn into such a rigid thing" If you insist on doing covers... you would be prudent to make them different from the original- otherwise you have relegated yourself into being a historian always imitating the true genius of the musicians who created the original. Music is a chemistry between people on stage It's fluid, and symbiotic. If you are in a band and think it is all about you..chances are your audience is picking up on your disconnect. Just my two cents.
Well written!
Jazz has been completely taken over by academia. It's over intellectualised to a point where all the new hip players since the 80s have had to be absolutely extreme virtuosos to be considered notable. The focus is on the theory and technique. Electronic music and rock music overtook jazz because those genres explored something that was unachievable with jazz instrumentation / sensibilities. Jazz in its heyday was that generation's 'pop music'. It may be more complex than most popular music but it's still pop music. Like any popular music, the next best thing comes along and kills it off. That's just how it is. There's also an overemphasis on the 'tradition' of jazz; ie learning all the standards which aren't relevant to anyone who isn't "in" the scene anymore. This idolisation of history makes it difficult for the genre to progress to towards anything new.
Not all Jazz is complex. Modern artists such as Melody Gardot, Slackwax and Beth Hart have simpler jazz songs.
Pretzels722 I think you've hit on a good point about academia and jazz. I'd expand by saying that part of what made jazz appealing in it's time was that it was kind of subversive in a way. Before rock & roll, jazz was sexy and dangerous. The fact that it's now a field of study in colleges kind of ruins that. It's embraced by the older generation, the establishment, and therefore crusty.
David Paul could you imagine what would happen if every rock musician had to go to "rock music college" to study the history of rock music, learn led zeppelin and MC5 songs off by heart and have to write essays on the cultural significance of "rock standards"? It puts everything through a lens that glorifies the past! All the rockers coming out of rock college would inevitably become rock snobs and be playing flawlessly renditioned covers of stairway to heaven (in all 12 keys) for the rest of their lives :p . That's one surefire way to make a genre stale!
A definitely jaded view of jazz musicians and the "dangers of focusing on theory and technique". While I'll agree the majority of jazz musicians have more musical harmony and theory training than the average rock musician, you also won't find that same generally untrained rock musician writing songs with that much of any harmonic richness due to that fact. Yes, there are the exceptions. You can certainly "noodle around" on a guitar and write "Something" with all George Harrison's harmonic richness, and you might be the one in ten million that could pull it off, so good luck with that. But for the masses, you'll be much better equipped to do so with a sound backing in theory. You simply can't write a Pat Metheny quality song using rock power chords.
So in fact, you're rock musicians ARE memorizing songs from history or they aren't working. You don't get gigs with original material unless you're doing something pretty special. There's 100 bands doing cover tunes for every band making a living on original material.
But you're using a pretty dated music education perspective if you think all the jazz guitarists at Guitar Institute of Technology, for example, where a great guitarist like Frank Gambale has taught, that all of the students there had to study Coltrane or Miles or write essays like you're suggesting along the way towards their degree. I would totally agree if this were the 60s, or even the 70s somewhat, but we're a long way past that since Pat Metheny started teaching in the newly created guitar program at the University of Miami decades ago.
The fact is and always will be, the more you know, the more you can leverage that in your writing and/or playing. Always has been, always will be, where the masses are involved.
But you completely miss the mark with "jazz has been completely taken over by acedemia." A single look at arguably the greatest musician to come along in an entire generation, Jacob Collier, disproves that immediately. Just doesn't fit your model of dry academic boring writing and yet he leverages his knowledge of theory and harmony in every song, and that's how you get called by Quincy Jones when he just sees a RUclips video and then score two Grammys before you're 20.
And as evidence, you can further note that the vast majority of people subscribing to all the great theory teachers on RUclips like Rick Beato, ARE coming there to improve their knowledge. If you're view was the correct or even dominant one, every one of these theory teachers wouldn't have 20-100K subscribers. So, like always, get it in school, or get it through self study but there's a clear line connecting jazz theory knowledge and great songs that goes WAY beyond and outside of jazz as a genre.
The "band" with the greatest number of #1 Hits in all history of music on this planet is the house band for Motown Records; The Funk Brothers as they became to be known. They had more hits than the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys, ALL COMBINED. Why? Because they all were masters of theory and could apply it to anyone who came in to record there. So stop trying to sell that a jazz education leads to a life of boring uninspired music written like a computer. It doesn't fit the facts at all.
You should actually get out and here some modern jazz if you think it's "stuck" in some time warp based upon some "idolization of history", because you've never listened to Pat Metheny, Chris Standring, Frank Gambale, Dirty Loops, Jacob Collier and dozens upon dozens of others who have, or are creating entirely new music that has nothing more in common with the "stale" "archaic" big band or traditional jazz you envision as the whole of the genre, nothing more in common with those than the underlying theories of harmony, rhythm, cycle of fifths, counterpoint and dozens of others ways to understand what music is composed of.
B Miller I am definitely not saying that studying music is somehow bad or makes the music stale; I am all about learning as much as possible always. All I'm saying is that when something formerly hip and subversive is embraced by the old establishment of academia, it changes public perception, which affects its popularity.
Thank you for mentioning Stanley Jordan. We attended the same high school in CA. He may not remember me, but even back in the day he was unforgettable, an unbelievable talent and artist. Not enough people knew about him nor followed him. Yes I love jazz.
I played with a band that opened up for him at a venue in N.J. We all knew who he was and I owned one of his albums in the 90's. We didn't have know what to expect. "Oh he's the guy that taps", thought it would be cool, whatever... right. We were all floored! Unbelievable what he can do with a guitar. Still one of my fondest musical memories.
Yep, I remember the young, local up'n'comer in those early days in Palo Alto and Los Altos seeing him play. He had (has) mind-blowing talent.
saw him playing on the streets of manhattan selling discs or 45s out of the trunk of a car. some dude wearing a keyboards scarf approached him spoke for a bit and left with him. i always thought i was there when he became 'discovered' as my jaw dropped when i saw/heard him, with nobody but me and that scarf guy interested (and amazed) at what he was doing.
Jazz is such a wide variety of styles I started listening to John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, and all related artists starting in the early 70s. It's the finest music my ears ever heard. It's what made me take serious learning music. Anyone who shuts out listening to the great (fusion) Jazz greats you're missing out on a innovated time in music. Today I listen to all forms of music cause I don't want to miss something great. Thanks for the video Rick.
I put on Jazz because I like it but also because it resets my head when I’ve listened to rock too often.
It’s less predictable than other forms and can be exciting because of that.
You have to listen to jazz with an openness that other forms don’t always demand. Leave preconceptions behind. Not many rock listeners prepared to do that.
Anything by John MsLaughlin is ok with me. Loved Joni Mitchell’s jazzy side.
You could also ask: Why do people hate Bach? If you use record sales and media popularity as the judging standard, there are lots of losers. Like Bill Evans said: his audience would always be small, but sensitive, informed, and curious. Does that sound like the mass of the populace in the USA?
James C Mils ㅑ
honestly, i was pretty indifferent to Bach. Until i tried to play Bach myself on guitar. Before that, i understood his greatness on a "head" level, but i didn't have any kind of emotional response to it until i "lived in it". After getting a little proficient with some pieces, it genuinely makes my soul happy to play. I get the beauty now. same with jazz , i think you have to participate in it more in order to get something out of it. You have to live in it. Learn about the players and the history, try to play it if you are a musician. etc...
That's a bit elitist. Some people just aren't sufficiently interested in music. I'm sure these "sensitive, informed, and curious" individuals also have casual interests for which their knowledge and appreciation of may be rather shallow in the eyes of those more devoted.
I think you should be more understanding of others have different interests than you. They're not fools for not sharing your passion. We all have our own passions, and those things are what we're likely to develop the deepest taste/appreciation for.
I did not say they are fools. They are just less sensitive, informed(about music), and curious than I am. You can call it elitist....fair enough.
No, people love Bach so everything else is bs.
My dad played jazz piano in the 30s (before he got married). I grew up on this wonderful, melodic repertoire of dad playing in a Bill Evans style (pre Bill of course). The records I heard were Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Holiday, then later Stan Getz, Milt Jackson, Ray Brown. You’re right about the influence of groups - most of these players had groups that stuck together and made a sound we grew to appreciate and expect.
I didn’t really get exposed to age-appropriate music (rock) until I went to college. I liked some of what I heard, but mostly when it was blues-based rock (Cream for example).
I think jazz is not popular amongst young people anymore because jazz quality peaked in the 30s-60s. Young people in the 50s began listening to the much more simplistic rhythms and chords of the rock era, and their musical vocabulary has shrunk as a result. But also I think jazz itself lost its way in the frantic improvisational one-upsmanship that didn’t really carry a melody or beat that ‘ordinary’ people could relate to.
I like your reference to Blues never going out of style. There is a visceral connection people have to some chords/rhythms that are compelling. Perhaps this relates to whether people can dance to or sing the music. When jazz and rock left this connection behind, it reminds me of what happened to classical music when it went 12-tonal. It lost the essence of its appeal and became more intellectual music than emotional resonance music.
The term JAZZ can mean different things to different people. One listener might enjoy Horace Silver performing a Song For My Father, and hate John Coltrane performing stuff from A Love Supreme. Jazz has gone through so many changes through the years it’s meaningless to generalize. If someone says they love or hate jazz, who knows what they are referring to - smooth jazz, avant-garde jazz?
I hate A Love Supreme
Kenny G?
I respectfully disagree that 'liking jazz' has to do with "understanding it" as with understanding a foreign language. I liked some jazz that sounds good to me before I knew anything about music. 'Kind of Blue' was one of the first CDs I bought (I was 13, I believe). I never got into any kind of music because I understood it. Actually somewhat the opposite. I got into music and started learning music because it moved me. I felt it. It was a mystery how these musicians made me feel that way and wanted to be able to understand and do that/ or express myself that way.
Hey I completely agree. I did a music degree and played as a classical violinist for 20 years in a professional orchestra, but I'm not sure I "understand" the music any better than when I was 6 or 15 years old. More listening to good performances can help with familiarity and then interpretation, but intellectual knowledge did not alter my emotional reaction to the music.
Fully agree. I don’t think intellectualising the music really helps. I’m still unable to remember licks or to fully understand the harmonic content, especially in more complex forms of jazz. But I hear spicy stuff and I like it.
I think, more than understanding, what distinguishes between people is a will to appreciate and really listen to music.
Some people don’t, they prefer to limit themselves to the surface level of things and so they follow whatever is repeated the most on the radio (repetition legitimizes hey?). And that’s fine!
Other people are really looking for a listening experience. And they will look for that experience in various genres. Probably some genres will have more influence on them because of exposure, so they may become metalheads, or jazz nerds, or classical violinists, or EDM purists. But overall they will generally be open to other genres, out of pure interest.
Jazz is not popular anymore because it is not popular anymore. That’s fine.
Daniel Bodin I spent years trying to understand what Coltrane was thinking when he wrote Giant Steps, staring at his charts, and notes etc.. it’s still beyond me, but it moves me deeply, and I can play it with abandon.
But you DO understand it intuitively, which is more important than understanding it theoretically. You don't need to know the definition and function of a noun, verb, adjective, subject or direct object to understand English. If you understand music intuitively, then it's easy to learn to understand it theoretically. The theory will make perfect sense to you because it is merely describing what you already know intuitively.
If it sounds good to you, then you understand it, at least on some level. The theory is just a way to talk about why it sounds good to you. You understand the music in the same way that Chinese people understand Chinese. They aren't necessarily able to talk about the language in terms of syntax, but they understand it. When musicians are accused of snobbishness because they use music theory, they are just approaching the music the same way as you are but describing it clearly in words.
You didn’t mention Jobim, the father of Bossa Nova and Brazilian Jazz. Cant overestimate his contribution to jazz. Hugely successful!!!!! Too many hits to mention. Covered by everyone. “Girl from Ipanema” didn’t go to Greenland.
that is not the a tonal crazy bebop crap we try to pass of for music. improvising and beautiful melodies are not just jazz,
Latin Jazz, and Bossa Nova, are like an outlier of the many jazz subgenres: they obviously are jazz, but their market potential is vast due to their groovy latin influences too, it almost seems like they aren't really jazz lol
I absolutely love Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain. I met him on my tenth birthday at the Lighthouse in Manhattan Beach, California. He was very personable, played a few notes of that birthday tune, then back to his set. One of the best Sunday afternoons of my life.
"Sketches of Spain" was my first jazz album. Hooked. Saw Miles play later on, in about 1988
Lucky!!!
The Lighthouse I went to is in Hermosa Beach. Is it called Manhattan Beach now?
Hi Rick,I've never disliked jazz,I got into jazz via Apple Music,I had a really rough year last year & was pretty stressed out,& was looking for something to listen to chill me out , I typed in 50's Jazz & it came up with a great playlist,one of the artist it threw up was Kenny Burrell so I listened to his midnight blue album & that was my way into jazz, miles Davis a kind of blue, wes Montgomery, just blew me away,I started to look for guitar lessons, which is where you're channel comes in, really enjoying my new interest
I am 39 and never got into Jazz. What I had always thought of as jazz is a chaotic mess of sounds but since I started watching your videos recently I've taken a bigger interest in it.
As someone who has thought long and hard about why I don't like / sometimes hate jazz, I still don't think I've found the real defining answer but I have some clues. I've honestly tried many times to get into it but its never clicked. Please don't take this as an attack on jazz itself, I just want to give my perspective. I respect everyone's right to enjoy jazz!
First off, I find it very hard to find memorable melodies, or at least what I consider to be memorable. A strong top line melody is important to me and I find a lot of jazz just kind of dances around the edges of what could be a strong concrete melody with obscure chords / progressions that sound "airy" and "aimless". The melodies I like need more "absolute" and "purposeful" direction. There's always some exceptions of course, for example Barney Kessel - Misty, I'm also big into Bossa Nova, but it's because I find the melodies are more purposeful (in general).
Second. I can't stand how the instrumentation and timbre is so often the same. Jazz, to me, starts sounding like a parody of itself because SO many jazz musicians use the same sounds, brush sticks, upright bass, kind of bassy/middy guitar. On a timbre level, it almost sounds like 70% of jazz I hear is from the exact same band that lacks any creativity / desire to experiment with different types of sounds.
Third, I feel like Jazz is more fun for the players than the audience. There's a sort of self-indulgence, which I understand is part of the craft, but with all the improvisation, combined with the airy directionless melodies, combined with the cliche "jazz band" sound, it sometimes drives me nuts. Of course, of course, there's always exceptions. This is just my general thoughts on the question of why I don't like jazz in general, which I've thought about for years and years, so thank you for bringing it up. I hope this might give you some insight.
Cameron Gray You mean the wet towel over the guitar amp tone?
i think you just haven’t listened to the right jazz. you also just may not like jazz, but i used to think that same way but now i pretty much only listen to jazz because ive found jazz that really speaks to me. If you care at all, I recommend the Count Basie album “Live at the Sands (before frank)” because that’s the album that got me to like jazz pretty much. pretty much each song has really great melodies and soloists.
The comment about the "timbre being the same" indicates a pretty narrow selection of jazz artists that you've exposed yourself to. There are artists with very strong melodic lines and varied instrumentation, you just have to find them. You might try some Pat Metheny Group, Chris Standring (called the future of jazz by Kirk Whalum), Fourplay or Lee Ritenour.
I grew up musically around the time George Benson's Breezin' was a hit, and always read the artist credits and got to know who was playing on each song. It wasn't long until I was discovering my favorite artists, but I think it's more challenging to wade through all the music that is out today especially since the use of studio musicians has fallen so much that it's rare to see some works like what Steely Dan did with getting the best musicians possible into each recording.
The music world has changed significantly since there was a Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys using the Wrecking Crew, or the Funk Brothers charting so many MoTown hits, or Booker T and the MGs doing the same for Stax. But the hidden secret of all those great studio "bands" was that they brought a deep practical knowledge of jazz harmony and theory to each session, which was inarguably what made so many songs into hits.
Why do people love jazz?
”Improvisation is brain food for the listener.”
Paul Bley, jazz pianist, 1932-2016, R.I.P.
But certainly you don't have to be an intellectual to appreciate jazz. It's simply a matter of being open to it.
Is hearing something n then u get it, like a different kind of swing rhythm, you can’t really explain it but u feel it n get it and that’s all there is or one wishes there was 2 say, I’ve had enough of commenting cause we all say what we don’t mean and actions speak louder than words! ,:-O
Paul Bley was an underrated genius. Not many know that he was really THE original pioneer of free jazz. Lots of people think of the birth of free jazz being the 1958 live recording of Ornette Coleman and friends at a club, that included Bley on piano. Actually, Bley led the house band at that club and invited Ornette, Don Cherry and the others. It was his gig. He had been exploring free jazz and brought those artists together.
But Bley was much more than a free jazz artist. He was simply a beautiful pianist. I'm lucky and honored to say that I saw him live more than once. At one concert he played solo piano (breathtakingly beautiful). He had described how he would always start a concert playing very conscious of each key, playing the full breadth of the keyboard. In his travels he couldn't bring his own piano and was therefore always stuck playing strange, unknown instruments. He developed an ear for exploring and finding which few, individual keys on a given piano sounded really good, and he would then play the remainder of his concert centered around just those few keys that really spoke, that had a particularly good tone. The man could evoke gorgeous music.
More trivia: during his electric endeavors, Bley was the first to record Jaco Pastorius. Pat Metheny is also on that early record - 1974, I think.
"Brain food" exactly what I thought the first time I heard Charles Mingus
If you are into it absolutely go for it, but, I just can't open myself to it. It's the ultimate waste of a goodusician.
@@winstonsmiths2449 Improvisation is the art of free play. Being pretentious is a human trait that has nothing to do with the essence of art.
My daughter is 7 years old and loves Jazz! One of her teachers 2 years ago played Jazz and classical music in her classroom so now in the car we usually listen to Jazz and other music.
Very interesting discussion. I was an aspiring jazz student in the 1970s. Worshipped early Chicago, Steely Dan, and then Sting.
None of which are jazz
@@kirdref9431 they All Are Considered Rock Musicians Incorporating Jazz Hooks. I've Always Considered Steely Dan to Be More Fusion Then Hard Rock.
Rock: 3 chords played in front of 10,000 people
Jazz: 10,000 chords played in fron of 3 people
Free Jazz: closing my eyes, seeing a movie.
@dread true Your knowledge of rock is lacking.
@dread true You're right about punk... unless you alow them to keep hiding the fact that alot of them were jazz musicians on the sly (ie The Dead Kennedys)
@@chroniclesofbap6170 The number of chords is not all the important for rock not that i keep count so i could be wrong. A song can sound full and complex with 3 when played right and the right band . And the Sex Pistols used dozen of cords in some song. Maybe 4 chords in Pretty Vacant but it's a good song.
@dread true Punk has chords now? :)
Just recently stumbled into your channel, mucho arigato for the content!
I'm 57 & a proud jazz geek. Was also on the air in radio for a good while. About 15 yrs ago I gave this answer to your question, to the GM of KUNV in Vegas:
Jazz in its heyday - the so-called golden age of jazz - which I would mark off from the roaring 20s thru WW2 - was dance music. Then Monk, Bird, Diz, Mingus, Powell, et al, turned that on its head & morphed it into something you had to sit down, listen to & focus on, which drastically limited its appeal. That’s where it’s been ever since.
The further we get down that road, the more & more listeners recede into the rear-view; new passengers become fewer and more scarce. Any new listeners are jumping on board without the context you spoke of, and that’s an impediment. A 20-something hearing Body & Soul for the first time may think it’s pretty tune, but don’t know that Coleman Hawkins in 1939 is the only reason it gets played in the here & now. In that regard jazz is a bit like classical: it has a repertoire that everybody plays, & it’s useful to know the repertoire to understand what’s going on & why. And not just the repertoire, but the evolution of improv & how it’s central to what’s happening.
I had never considered the consistent band personnel point you mention. Initially I wrote it off. When I went to see Stan Getz in the 80s, I didn’t care that I’d never heard of the other 3 players. I needed to cross Stan off my bucket list (he was AMAZING).
Now that I think about it, I don’t know why I was so dismissive. I can name all the players on most of my favorite jazz records, clearly I feel a connection with all of them.
Love your channel, keep it coming!
PS - putting Jazz in any of your titles is a guarantee I’ll check it out.
I use to hate Jazz because my first experience of it was largely boring 90's PBS music concerts. It was slow, dull, and sounded like something from a General Hospital's opening. And that was essentially my impression of Jazz until May of this year. After watching an anime ("Kids on the Slope") that featured a lot of Jazz from the 50-60's golden age, I fell deeply in love with it. It's energy, creativity, and depth won me over. And then from there, I looked up on RUclips the Jazz musicians featured, and the rest is history.
How I had been wronged lol
I love jazz but I've heard a lot of jazz musicians who play for themselves and not for the audience.
John Ciccantelli
I think this is what Jazz has become, from the 1990s - on.
📻😁
One person, I went to see stood to the side of the stage not facing the audience just playing his sax.
John Gillin
Sounds like he wasn’t very involved with the audience.
Everyone I’ve gone to see has been very involved with the audience - whatever the genre.
I saw 38 special back in 1990. They really had fun and interacted with us directly.
The Jazzfests I’ve gon to - decades ago, they all engaged the audience and seemed to really enjoy what they were doing.
📻🙂
Literally me
Valentina Tran
Then you should never play in public, only in a garage somewhere.
That may seem like an angry statement, but, no anger in it.
One of the best concerts I’ve been to was 38 Special. There were 2 opening acts. One was some Metal group. It seemed they were so full of themselves that those who came specifically to see them weren’t happy at all. Some of them even walked out mid-concert.
When 38 Special came on, from the beginning, they directly engaged US, the audience. They thoroughly enjoyed being there as much as we did.
They even came out among us, talked to us individually. Was really cool. When the audience is not engaged, it seems like the group/band ( or individual) would rather be somewhere else.
Why spend money to go see someone if THEY don’t want to be there❓
Here is my well received take on this subject posted on Quora a few years ago.
Jazz is an acquired taste.
Like other acquired tastes, jazz appreciation comes from the experience of listening and playing. A young ear only exposed to simple melodies and chords will cover his ears upon listening to the free jazz of John Coltrane the first time. I know that was my reaction. In the many years since my first exposure my appreciation for Coltrane has grown like my appreciation for really good Scotch. When I sipped on a little Scotch for the first time I couldn’t imagine how anyone could like it.
In a old book on jazz improvising by Jerry Coker he cited a study that indicates that a music listener remains engaged in the experience when there is a balance between familiarity and surprise. If a listener is hearing familiar harmony or melodies there is a since of participation. Who doesn’t like a sing-a-long. However if the music is too familiar and repetitive listeners become bored. How many times could you listen to Chop Sticks, or Three Blind Mice before you become desperate for something more? Even silence is preferred. A three year old can groove with Mary Had a Little Lamb all day. As your ear becomes more sophisticated your tolerance for such boredom diminishes.
Most popular music is popular because it is accessible to a large audience. Familiar chordal patterns and melodies, while not identical allow for anticipation and mental participation of listeners. A songs popularity often fades as it become too familiar with repetition and new songs become the focus. The ubiquitous availability of music since the advent of recording and numerous playback devices has allowed the public at large the listening experience needed to appreciate ever more complex music. Only 100 years ago music was not heard unless played live. You heard music in church or at some other gathering where musicians played.
To stand the test of time music must offer surprises. There must be some unique hook or sequence that is unfamiliar to hold interest. People go to live performances to hear familiar music in an unfamiliar way. Good performers add something to the familiar tunes rather than just playing the same each time. Blues music remains popular with each new generation because the familiarity of the redundant form allows participation, while improvisation offers the needed surprise. Improvisation in the blues context demands familiar melodic motifs that most listeners can identify with as well. But the blues context can become stale if you play enough.
OK on to answering the question. Musicians taste for jazz evolves through playing. Jazz happened because playing the same thing over and over gets boring. Playing in rock bands became work for me. There is something addictive to creative musicians in the flow. It is satisfying to be in a meditative state that allows your subconscious spontaneously express what comes. It is not performing, it is experiencing. When I listen to great jazz artists I experience the flow with them. I imagine what I might have played and get the thrill of surprise and often awe of what they played. Like chess, jazz has been humbling for me. I had to concede that I can never play blindfold chess, and I don’t have the well spring of ideas that great jazz players have. I am accomplished enough at both however, to fully appreciate and enjoy the ability of the greats. It comes at the price of often having to endure the more mundane amateurish music I tired of 30 years ago.
There is an old saying. Well it is old for me because I made it up. “You don’t pay musicians to play music. You pay them to haul their equipment to where you want them to play.” Musicians play all the time but there must be a sense of newness that only improvised music of ever increasing complexity provides. I am still not all the way there however. I can only take Coltrane Free Jazz in small doses. And I don’t play that way. But then I don’t drink quarts of scotch either.
👍👍😎
Nicely put. The taste must be trained, educated. To take a similar example, no one is born liking wine. One must learn to like wine. And only when one has done that can one learn to distinguish between good wine and bad wine. And only then does the whole universe of wine open up. I think people resent wine and whisky snobs -- and we know such people exist -- just as they resent jazz snobs. But the existence of such snobs doesn't mean that there isn't something real that needs experience in order to aprpeciate.
I have that book, and remember it well. Spot on!
Jazz music is fantastic. It opens up a whole different world of sounds, and paves the path to new styles to be used in music. Steely Dan members, and hired studio musicians are proof of that.
"Jazz was essentially a people’s music, as rock is, and it was taken up by the intellectuals and built up to the point where they said, well, you can’t appreciate this because you haven’t got a college degree, have you?" - John Peel , Melody Maker, 1971.
Love it. The late great John Peel hitting the nail on the head. I loved his radio show.
Absolutely this! I really don't like Jazz. I have a good friend who is an extremely talented (and learned) Sax player. My joke to him is that he spent all this time leaning the musical theory, and all the practice hours, only to go on stage and play shite :D I love Rick's "what makes this song great?" series. He explains the musical theory behind all these songs, many of which I love without any musical knowledge. And isn't that the point? Music, to me, either sounds good or not, regardless of whether I understand it or not. Having said that, I wouldn't want all music to be reduced to the lowest common denominator. Jazz is important and I'm all for it ... I'm just not going to listen to it.
and it was also taken up by elevators...
Nailed it. Intellectual snobbery -- that's what I detest about it. Pretentiousness.
This happens to all art forms when they are superseded by another genre in mass appeal. Art became abstract as photography grew. Classical music became modern. The 'purists' are the ones left and the genre is explored for them, they don't want to be associated with whatever the new thing is.
I came here after watching Rick recommend visiting here, even if it's just to read some of the comments, and from what I have read so far I am not disappointed. I haven't watched this video yet, but am aware of some suggestions of and debate about the perceived snobbery of people who are into jazz, I also have much experience of jazz played live in small venues, both as patron and player. Some experiences were better than others.
35 or so years ago I once had an evening gig playing bass with a rock band, followed straight after by a guitar session at a jazz club until the early hours, with the drummer from the rock band playing keyboards; before going on we met up with the other players in the bar. A group of their regular clientele, who were unaware that we were shortly to become the live band for the next couple of hours, complained about the unsuitable apparel of some of us. The management of the club then asked the band to wait in the 'dressing room', which had been hastily created from a store room. Accusations of snobbery in Jazz are not without good cause.
I'll finish off with a few lines from a song what I have wrote. I call this little ditty by the simple title of 'Jazz', it is a pleasingly short air with plenty of diatonic chords gratuitously inserted.
If words could say,
What music has,
They'd be no need,
To ever play Jazz,
Simply no neeed,
To ever play jazz.
But still they play strange chords,
Which can say much more than words'
They say
Verse of 'scat' singing jibberish, (try to throw in a few poorly pronounced offensive words here and there sometimes?)
Simply no neeed,
To ever play jjjjjjj, jjjjjj, jjjjj, j 'Jhjazz.!'
There's nothing quite like ambiguous lyrics to get a room divided.
I feel like Mr. Beato is the Bernstein of our time. An amazing musician with a wealth of knowledge on a variety of music, a mind open to all kinds of music, and a drive to share that knowledge with us all. Thanks Rick!
On a separate note, it is sad that America which birthed jazz has turned its back on it (though that is is also the fault of musicians that went so far out with so much hubris that they turned their back on the audience just as much).
What's more ironic is that black people don't listen to it because "jazz is too complex now" and they say the "white elites" overcomplicated the genre, when in fact it was black guys that made it more complex (Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis). As a matter of fact, jazz is black music through and through, it all comes down to the african rhythms that were the original base.
And to retort your last statement: there are tons of jazz music that are digestible for mainstream audiences, it is a myth that "musicians turned their back on the audience". You never hear that critique against metal musicians, and in a way some of them go the niche ways of certain jazz subgenres. Jazz has all sorts of different styles, it's not like it went from swing to bebop and that's it.
No, Rick Leonard Bernstein was the Rick Beato of their time!
People connect through stories. Once they become familiar with the narratives, the history and cultural context etc., they will start appreciating the music. Connecting through vocals is another portal into jazz.
So if you tell people about the history and cultural context of the national dish of the Papuans (IIRC), with which they greeted newcomers - freshly pulled, twitching tripe of a pig, they will begin to enjoy this dish?
@@mpingo91 I honestly don't think you need to necessarily know cultural context to connect with (any) musical genre, but I think, "connecting through vocals is another portal into jazz" is true; Instruments are another form of vocalizing and story telling. You don't have to enjoy it, but the way it makes you feel is the main thing, and it is communicating something. I think its super fascinating that people have different tastes in music (and different emotive responses to a single sound). For me, that's the beauty of music. Also; foreign tastes and sounds have the potential to grow on you over time. But not always! lol
Very true
I always had trouble listening to jazz records but i absolutely loved going to the jazz club and seeing it live. That really brought it into context for me. This was in my early 20s and my other young friends would also go and we would stay very late, even buying drinks for the musicians.
People in the 1920's and 30's usually knew a lot of the melodies of the tunes really well: Berlin, Gershwin, Porter etc were writing memorable Showtunes, movie themes, and pop radio hits. So the harmonies were also very familiar to the masses, and that made the music instantly relevant to their ears, so average listeners could tell were the melody ended and the interpretive flourishes and improv began.
And a number of those tunes everyone knew became Jazz standards... They were good songs, and jazz players enhanced them with, essentially, variations on a theme. So they were still strongly connected to music everyone knew.
I frickin’ LOVE jazz. I started getting into it a few years ago. Then I played Fallout 4, and that got me to dive into it. That’s kinda how I stuck with your channel. The stuff you teach helps me understand it more, hopefully to the point where I can make my own tunes.
I love jazz, always have, I think its exciting and can take me into a colorful frame of mind very quickly.
Rick - I'm 47 so all the bands u mentioned I listened to as well. Your videos on joe pass, Wes, and the the elements of jazz , what Charlie and Bach had in common, rhythm changes solo ex, and developing a solo (on blue bossa) , bebop melody principles, the bebop scale are the kinds of videos that are super helpful. I've probably watched rise too many times to count. Please keep making those. Practical tips on seeing the neck and applying altered scales to tunes would be great. I love all the stuff u do as well, I did have a brief metal phase in high school but like u grew up with blues being associated to rock. I think u are so right that the earthy foundational blues element is lacking in rock. And totally agree that bands make the music no matter the genre. The best way to get into jazz is to listen to early swing (t bone) and then get into the bluesy jazz players like Kenny Burrell. It's very earth and it grooves and the tones are to die for.
I for one have always loved Jazz. Jazz is complex and relaxes my mind when I'M in a troubled state of mind.
Jazz makes me feel like a little kid again
If I was in a troubled state of mind and listened to Jazz then my mind would go into a demented state of mind. Sorry but Jazz does not soothe the mind with all those dissonant chords and notes. I mean I like Jazz as well but lets face it It has no linear theme and is all over the place and that's why most people hate Jazzzzzzzzzzz
@@spada60 Unfortunately, like most people, you paint the subject with one broad brush stroke. There are many types of Jazz, while your description seems to be about free form JAZZ, which MOST people dislike. lol
Ted Mendsen isn’t that the kind of jazz that only other jazz musicians are into
spada60 try listening to: Tell Me A Bedtime Story by Herbie Hancock, Diamonds and Pearls by Marcin Wasilewski Trio, or Christmas Time is Here (instrumental) by Vince Guaraldi Trio. Then Try and tell me that these put you in a demented state of mind.
Jazz is a wide genre, there’s many different kinds.
I can’t play much of it, but love listening to most of it. Steely Dan was the bridge to get me to jazz. My favorite ensemble configuration is drums bass piano ( maybe guitar , maybe vibes) alto sax, tenor sax. Horace Silver, Larry Carlton, Chick Corea Errol Garner , many more.
Today was a lazy afternoon with too long of a nap. Listening to this podcast inspired me about my first love of playing jazz on guitar and got me up from my chair to write this.
I had aspired to be a teenage rock guitar player, but there needed to be more musicians in my small town in Iowa. My dad came into my room and put an old music book of jazz songs from the 40s. He told me this was real music. At the time, I was not fond of jazz, except for loving to hear the crooners like Andy Williams and Dean Martin sing. So I tried to play jazz guitar with my Strat and Fender Quad Reverb.
George Benson's Breezin' came out my high school senior year, and I learned to play Affirmation. Someone who heard me play turned me on to Joe Pass Virtuoso.
I couldn't put a rock band together and try to sound like Larry Byrom on Steppenwolf Live (my all-time favorite Rock live album.) Playing jazz was fun, sounded nice, and my dad liked it.
Often I've wondered why, with all the high schools with a seriously good jazz bands, those players seemed to lose interest after graduation. I don't get it. I still love Tuxedo Junction.
I played bass in my high school band but beat out two older players for the Iowa State Jazz Ensemble guitar chair as a freshman, to my surprise and delight.
as soon as you say people "don't understand it" and they need to be educated about what it is before appreciating it, you kind of make the point about why they don't like it. Art (for most people) is mostly visceral ,not intellectual. When I see a painting or sculpture or listen to (most) music, I don't think about it first, I respond to how it makes me feel. Even Bach fugues can be appreciated this way. They become even MORE interesting when you learn about what is going on in a fugue and how it works. A lot of jazz skips the first part and just wants to engage you mentally.
dalerimkunas yep. Also, in these days, people don’t like to be told that 2 + 2 is not 5. I wonder where this will end up but it will certainly be not pretty.
dalerimkunas I would say that Beato’s main point still stands. It’s a language that either you understand or are learning, or don’t know. If you don’t understand the language it sounds like gibberish or what you call “mental.” The Bach fugue is easier for you to understand because it’s a language that is thoroughly European and embedded in every other sound you hear from country to rock to hymnals at church. Jazz is a newer music that includes African aspects of understanding rhythm and time and is not embedded in country and rock and in hymnals at church. So the analogy would be that you are saying that as a modern Italian person, Latin must be a better language because you can understand some of the words while Chinese must be way too intellectualized because you can’t understand it without studying it first.
@@KP-by4eu First of all, did you learn to appreciate English or was it so natural as you were born into it that you probably feel that English poetry is beautiful without any need for learning? But let me back up. I have a spent more than twenty years pursuing all knowledge of music and have a masters degree in jazz and almost had one in ethnomusicology as well before I decided that the academic market is not worth pursuing for me. All scientific and ethnographic studies point to music being like langauge and what you hear growing up is exactly what you think is profound universal music. There is nothing inherent in diatonic harmony that makes it in tune more so than other music. In fact, everything except the fifth is out of tune which is why if you play diatonic harmonic music for cultures in Africa or China, some may have no appreciation for it and it will sound like noise. Likewise some of the super natural sounding tunings that seem god given in some cultures will sound completely foriegn to our ears. Thank goodness for my graduate school ethnomusicology work for that knowledge. Science has shown that for instance if you grow up hearing highly syncopated music you will relate to it and expect it, yet if you dont it will be like a foriegn language and you will not get it. That is why growing up with so many African American friends who were musicians, they naturally gravitated to playing chords with extended 9ths and 13ths, quartal voicings, ain't anything to learn to appreciate about it if you grew up around it. In fact music that doesnt have it may sound lacking just as if you heard music that only includes octaves because those are the most natural consonant sounds on earth. And then you would end up with some dude from a culture that only has octaves arguing with you that triads are unnatural and you shouldn't have to "learn" to appreciate western harmony if it was worth a damn as real beauty. I mean damn, those westerners cant even get their thirds in tune, ... and that was historically the reaction for a lot of cultures in hearing western music.. bunch out of tune noise. They could only tune their fifths
@@KP-by4eu first of all you are not the end all be all representative of the history of colonial interaction with non western cultures. You are also not some fountainhead of knowledge. Western music sounded weird to none western cultures who first heard it and that was like 200 years at least before you were born so I dont get why you even make your self some example. Due to colonization by the time you were born, western influence was in most cultures. 2nd of all, I grew up playing Black music with African American musicians and the ones I knew and played with had an appreciation of jazz that my white friends who werent musicians didnt have. Not to generalize but culturally the jazz you are hating on is Black music and is a first language to the musicians I played it with. I dont understand your arrogance. Go read ethnographic studies. Jeez, You are hating on a whole culture.
@@KP-by4eu and its not about musicians "knowing" thirteenth chords. I'm saying musicians who grew up in that culture naturally gravitate to those jazz harmonies the same way that my suburban white musician friends gravitated toward metallica riffs. They don't "learn" it, there ears go there because they grew up around it as a language. And i didnt just mention 13 chords but quartal harmony, just the whole concept of using clusters and dissonance so you nit picking one chord is missing my point.
I think George Benson got many people interested in Jazz, by playing jazzy pop that was accessible (enjoyable) to most people.
Give Me The Night, and his remake of On Broadway weere major crossovers
For my generation of black American kids, it was Grover Washington's Mr Magic. For others, it was the Crusaders, or David Sanborn or even Kenny G.
"gateway music"
"There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind." Louis Armstrong
Hope it's not jazz...😅😅😅
Lol!!!!! And that is what i mean about being pretentious...
'';there are two kinds of music, good music, and .. .. the other kind'' . The more diplomatic Duke
Neil armstrong
My husband is a musician, multi genre, but his favorite is jazz. I love Johnny Mathis, Bob Wills, and the like. Over the years he has gone with me to see my faves many times. We went and saw Sonny Rollins, John Scofield, Herbie Hancock and many others. We both like Jeff Beck and have seen him. I have to say that I was impressed with the jazz artists and their big name band members. They played so well in the moment together.
People still love Paul Desmond's "Take Five" with The Dave Brubeck Quartet..
Some of my favorite music is jazz (Miles, Herbie, Breckers, McLaughlin, etc.) but I also think that the mainstream of jazz has a few key problems.
1) When swing became bebop people stopped dancing.
2) Jazz often runs the risk of sacrificing a memorable melody in favor of an "interesting" chord progression. (Bebop is especially guilty of this.)
3) Jazz traditionalists (like Wynton Marsalis) hate fusion and other attempts to expand the genre. Their traditionalism strands jazz largely in the bebop era (see above) and brings up another problem.
4) Bebop is sonically monochromatic. In the swing era you could write a thirteenth chord knowing there would be a horn for each note. The shift toward smaller combos in the Bebop era meant that the bass took the root, the horns took the upper extensions and the piano got what was left. It settled for mere harmony at the expense of texture.
5) Bebop marked a shift from jazz being music for audiences to music for musicians, i.e. it began to become an elitist form. The emphasis shifted from whether a song was beautiful to whether it was challenging to play.
In sum, I blame bebop. I love Dixieland, swing, gypsy jazz, West Coast jazz, fusion, and acid jazz. I get along fairly well with hard bop, and George Benson is at least one example of Smooth Jazz that I can enjoy. Bebop, though? No thanks.
i enjoyed ur well considered response. interestingly in line with your take. GJ too is suffering the same obsession with speed and technique. Their hero Django could be pretty out there at times but didn't get carried away on any barge of elitism i think
How many forms of Jazz do you have to note? To me Jazz just has a certain sound because of the chords commonly used in Jazz. To me Jazz can easily sound too contrived or it will have flashy chords and lines just so the writer can state 'WOW' look how complex I can write. I could write a decent Jazz motif or song but I could never write anything comparable to a Beatles song.
@@MICKEYISLOWD lol I'm positive that you can't.
what's the difference between bebop and hard bop?
bebop has a logic if you listen to it long enough
it's the gift Bird gave to the world, and more messengers came to receive the message and expand on it
there is a logic to it,and you just have to sit down, and listen to it carefully, a lot to love it, and it gives rewards.
dont take my word for it.
listen to Bud Powell.
then listen to Pasquale Grasso.
human life is an experience, problem is people spend to much time wanting to fight to be right, that they forget to experience the experience
tags, labels,absurd systems of belief that only divide humanity are to be blamed for
music is music, and speaks to whoever wants to go to it, whatever form it takes
Me and Frank Zappa didn't talk too much about music but we drank beer and enjoyed each others company. Everybody is playing Jazz they just don't know it. It's like air. Free and full of music.
I love Jazz for the rhythm. And nothing else. It just fits with certain moods I cling for.
"Jazz" is a very broad spectrum. People who like Dinner jazz may not appreciate Freeform Jazz etc
Jazz is like all types of music: Some of it is outstanding, some of it is shite, and the rest is average. In my opinion. dismissing an entire genre of music is dumb... in a similar way to people who assume that because it's 'Classical Music' it must be good.
Far too many snobs in music.. they are the probem... not the music.
Why say, "It's other people. They're the problem."???
@@davidbeal8054 I didn't
I mostly agree. But I just cannot listen to or appreciate heavy metal "dismissing an entire genre of music is dumb". And just like how I loath contemporary paintings and 60's and 70's modern architecture, am I not allowed to loath heavy metal?
Jazz Fusion is definitely the best kinda Jazz and old School Jazz
@@jacocharzukanamericanautho2422 Me prefer latin jazz, but some fusion is great (like Weather Report) and old Swing and Stomp is of course charming, especially when its European / Gypsy mix is high.
This is a great discussion. I think some of the "anti-jazz" people I have met only had a problem with bebop because it can seem emotionally ambiguous and structurally amorphous at times with the improvisation. I also know people who ONLY like bebop and consider Dixieland or "swing" jazz to be mindless pop. Heh, people always gotta divide up over things.
When I got over the musical snobbery of my youth I realized that not everyone is wired for the same level of musical complexity. I really dig *some* jazz, and my own "sweet spot" tends to be a driving, catchy tune with an energetic rhythm and a bit of a twist, but not too far out there to lose the tune and the groove. I also like solos that get right to the point and don't overstay their welcome (see: The Who: "Our Love Was", Echo and the Bunnymen: "My Kingdom", the Beatles: "Taxman", and The Kinks: "Till the End of the Day"). Jazz can often noodle along endlessly, which puts me off, but others may be into. Your mileage may vary, and that's great. Different strokes for different gals and blokes.
My 2Cs…. I’ve been thinking about this for a day now after watching the video and instead of debating the topic, I thought it might be useful to offer come tips for those who are curious about jazz and want to give it a first, second or third try.
First: try listening to people singing the Great American Songbook. It’s called great for a reason. Listen to Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Sinatra and the Rat Pack. If that’s too far back for you, try Willie Nelson’s Stardust. Find out about Hoagy, Irving, Cole, Harold, Jerome, Richard (list is long!). By listening to exceptional performances of the original melodies you get an appreciation of how jazz musicians can interpret and transform them.
Second: Jazz has many sub-genres. It developed and grew extraordinarily quickly and some styles are more dissonant, fast and harder to get into. So don’t start with Charlie Parker who was a legend. Start with the more melodic stuff. The first few CDs I bought decades ago were Portrait in Jazz- Bill Evans, Stan Getz and the Oscar Peterson Trio. Follow the development of the genre by starting with early Blue Note records. (A record label that doesn’t suck but just the opposite. If you want to try Miles, start with his Prestige records and also Kind of Blue. Don’t start with late albums like Bitches Brew. Don’t try Coltrane until you understand and love Miles and don’t let A Love Supreme be the first no matter how much U2 sang about him. (I made that mistake only to appreciate the album years later. Start with early Coltrane.
Third: Watch some movies. Try Ascenseur pour l’Echafaud, (if you like Korean films, Jong Su uses a clip for the music is a fab scene in Burning). If you like a modern film try Whiplash.
Hope this helps someone.
16:20 I saw the Branford Marsalis Quartet in Cambridge 1987. My sax playing mate said come and see this. Was very enjoyable.
Dave Bellamy: watch Branford Marsalis play with The Grateful Dead and play his ass off. That's because all the Dead's musicians are so good. The Dead can't really be called a jazz group except in the sense of being wonderfully improvisational, and they LISTEN to each other!
Who cares why they hate jazz? It's all music; to each his own. I love and play it but I also love other types of music. This is a debate that will never end.
I like jazz.I got into it through listening to fusion and the great drummers.I think Steely Dan is the gateway drug.🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪😂😂😂😂
I agree SD is what got me into Jazz! The gateway drug 😆 is wee put
@@brianvaldez1746 love SD. "Your Gold Teeth" is a tune that is maybe my fav, that and "Aja".
the funny thing is that there IS jazz in rock, pop, and RB and people don't even know it.
Lol.. yeah, nobody knows that about Chicago or Steely Dan, or many others. 🤨
Jazz has redefined western style music as a whole, it's not a surprise knowing that any normal pop song you may pick up might have jazz inspired elements in them
@@PK-uj8mp I personally don't believe any one genre of music had "redefined" music.
"Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny." - Zappa
Zappa also said, and I'm paraphrasing, 'people say I play jazz. I don't. Have you ever heard a jazz song with great lyrics?"
Yes...McCann's "Compared to What."
Zappa was the Mark Twain of Rock n roll
>:(
Jazz and it's offshoots are niches and go up and down in popularity within those niches, it never dies or "goes bad"...it's too niche to ever be very high or low in popularity.
I'm going back to earlier videos since I'm relatively new to your channel. You have such a wealth of knowledge, Mr. Beato. I'm looking forward to learning a lot from you.
People enjoy a slight dissonance, but they cant take multiple steps from simplistic, to extended, to altered, or derivative of something already unfamiliar to the ear. Their ears need to make the journey one step at a time. It's like many other "acquired tastes". You dont start off eating the hottest spiciest food or drinking the hoppiest craft beer. You experience pleasure in the dissonance. It then becomes familiar, and you take another step in pursuit of that subtle dissonance. Eventually you're there, finding pleasure where you used to find confusion. People exposed to junk-food music don't appreciate complex flavors, and they have too few influences in their lives who will play guru to help them make the journey.
Those sweeping generalizations hang labels on millions of people who are smarter than you. (See how that works?)
When people say they hate "jazz", I think they mean specifically bebop and improvisational. It goes way off course and unless you're learned about alternative music theories, it can be difficult to follow or appreciate. And depending on the musician or the song, it can just seem pretentious.
I find the harmonic emphasis tiring. I like music that is more about timbre and less about 7th chords and extensions of them. I don’t relate to the Tin Pan Alley songbook of Jazz standards either, on a cultural level. It just doesn’t speak to me.
You’d like the major 7th though if not used in a Tin Pan Alley standard song? Like if it’s one of few chords in pop song? Beautiful chord. Maybe I get what you mean, nothing is perfect and that’s why some musicians tried to get away from the standards while some just tried not to use these chords in a limiting, boring way, but es interesting how it can be seen cause can be a little boring and yes maybe even a bit tiring at times, and this is why hearing a one song or four chord rock song is refreshing. ,:-0
Yes, i's important to define what type.
I hated be bop, Miles Davis ety, then grew to love funky (fusion) jazz,
Depends on where you are in your lifer cycle and what's going on in the world.
Today i catch a bit of jazz from time to time but it has to MOVE me, either my mind or my body,
@@stephj9378 yes it’s a huge tent. I hate jazz where the guitarist plays a deep hollowbody Gibson with two pickups where the selector might as well be stuck in the up position and if he ever moved it the pianist, bassist and drummer would all laugh.
@@stephj9378 I like early jazz that's more rhythm and blues based, and swing. Louie Jordan, Chick Webb, Benny Goodman , Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Louie Armstrong. I can listen to some Duke and Count, and Dave Brubeck. I also don't much care for the styles of Dizzy, Miles, Coltrane etc... the theorists. And then jumping ahead to modern music- Sting is about as jazzy as I get.
I’m here watching this three years later 💜. I don’t hate jazz, I just have never been able to connect to it. Otherwise, I have a very eclectic taste in music and don’t have difficulty connecting to other genres. Irony: I played alto saxophone for 16 years of my life. I did the jazz band thing in high school but it was just a check the box exercise.
Similar situation. I think I was able to connect to jazz a bit more though. I don't listen to it regularly or anything, but I definitely appreciate it and like some of it. Played trombone in high school marching and jazz band.
I always liken jazz to abstract art: most abstract artists can serviceably paint still life paintings or they may be perfectly acceptable at portraiture, but they have moved beyond landscape or street scene art into a realm that stretches their chops into new, experimental areas.
Jazz musicians are so well accomplished on his or her instrument, that experimental music is a next, logical step. I often hear that "Jazz is a musician's music" which I don't ascribe to, as it is obvious that if you have a musician willing to play, there is some audience willing to listen.
Well stated.
Yeah it’s the best
...melody and hooks ....this is what most people want ...
BINGO. Always have, always will.
True classic style jazz has pretty well defined melodies though
Billie Eilish, Bad Guy. Pure melody and hook.....
@@bing4126 sarcasm....
Lots of melody in jazz, but maybe it doesn't have the hooks of say pop or hip hop.
I introduced myself to jazz at seventeen. It took a little effort because the only style of music I heard growing up was pop/rock from the radio. Most new genres require some brain training in my experience. Catching Joni Mitchell's Otis and Marlene on the radio at fifteen encouraged me to explore jazz.
Some of the negative comments on here boggle my mind. You get into one complex jazz album and you're ready for huge enjoyment for a lifetime.
Keep up the good work Rick!
Hi Rick.
I like Jazz.
I'm from Detroit and we are just ending our 38th Annual Labor Day Detroit Jazz Festival.
Really enjoy your videos. I'm also watching Aimee Nolte's flicks too.
I'm taking time each day for the next 12 months to better learn music theory, and to play the piano properly.
Paul
I saw Stanley Jordan when he was a street minstrel on Washington Square in Manhattan I thought I heard a bassist, rhythm and lead guitarists playing Purple Haze and when I turned the corner it was just Stanley finger tapping playing all the parts. So while in Germany I bought his first album Magic Touch, I think that was his first.
Stanley is such a genius, it's mindboggling how people don't know him moreñ
I was at the Nashville NAMM show about two decades ago. I was sort of wandering aimlessly and I turned the corner at the edge of Martin Guitars' booth/area. Leaned casually up against a table, playing a Martin 12 string, was Stanley Jordan, working out "El Condor Pasa" by Simon & Garfunkel. I just sort of quietly watched for a few minutes; he paused for a moment which gave me the opening to say something brilliant like "Wow, that's really amazing. I love the way you play." He smiled warmly, thanked me, and went on picking at the song. Those are the fun encounters, to me; when you see someone just being themselves, doing what they do.
Wow, looking through the comments, no one even mentions the lack of vocals.
The majority of of people just doesn't care about instrumental noodeling. And that's pretty universal for most genres.
And that is probably because people connect more to the sound of a human voice than to a guitar or a piano.
Robert G. This may be true, but it was popular at one time. What changed?
I don't totally agree with this. Lots of electronic music doesn't have much vocals and it's pretty popular. I think people like catchy melodies and good rhythm mostly.
Billie Holiday, Nina Simone were jazz singers while Melody Gardot is a jazz singer and Beth hart dabbles in jazz songs.
Yeah, Boards of Canada is absolutely huge with no vocals. Just super creative and interesting, unlike most jazz today.
Then again, lots of dance music (Paul Van Dyk?) survives largely without vocals and does, say, heavy instrumental rock music like Joe Satriani, but those are often the exceptions not the norms.
I started listening to modern Jazz in the 70's, my brother played me a Wes Montgomery album and I was hooked. It was so much more interesting than the Harry James records my Dad would play when I was a kid. I hit the peak of jazz artist in my mid 20's, and it drew me in to even learning an instrument, the flute. I was so blown away the first time I heard Hubert Laws I was astonished at the improv he was doing on tunes I was already familiar with! Listening to jazz has been one of the greatest highlights of my life, and not a day goes by that I don't listen to something. Blues is the basic ingredient, but what you do to expand your knowledge of jazz is what makes the whole part interesting.
I’m watching this video BECAUSE it has “Jazz” in its title!
Same here!
same
The same.
Me also
me too
I love jazz and pretty much always have, playing alto sax in a jazz band (The Dorian Mode) when I was in my teens, back in the sixties. Modal jazz, Miles, Bill Evans, are among my lodestones. But I love Rock too!
The other issue is modern jazz tends to be instrumental. Non musicians relate to lyrics and someone out the front singing.
Arne Hanna, totes. Songs rule the music biz. Instrumentals can work, but that verse chorus payoff is important. It can't be all bridge😆
They might rule the biz but I'm not sure that that's why the general public prefer them. The narrative aspect of songs is really important to people. Think of all those amazing Steely Dan songs. They're like self contained novels. Jazz was hugely popular in the 30s and 40s when it had songs. I mean hell I could listen to Cecil Taylor all day but I'm strange.
Easy cure, listen to different musicians. Watch Snarky Puppy or Jacob Collier videos. You just need to find lyric artists...
You are likely unaware that Steely Dan specifically were wrapping jazz theory and harmony in a pop coated wrapper...
100% agree. Love the Snark and Booboo.
I absolutely love it when really good jazz players start jamming. Music magic starts happening. It's like a painter who focuses on the space in-between the objects they're painting. Hope that makes sense.