'WHO KILLED JAZZ?' | The Ben Makinen Interview
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
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Andy is a drummer, producer and educator. He has toured the world with rock legend Robert Plant and played on classic prog albums by Frost and IQ.
As a drum clinician he has played with Terry Bozzio, Kenny Aronoff, Thomas Lang, Marco Minneman and Mike Portnoy.
He also teaches drums privately and at Kidderminster College
Jazz is not dead. it's taking an extended nap
Grassroots jazz in the UK is very strong. Local pub jams I go to are usually very well attended.
to @robertdimartino i bet if they put more ladies up on stage playing instruments more ladies will show upnto listen
That's good.
"Learn to understand and respect the music, and play it!"- That's what Jazz is about! Love your work Andy. Just Dig Jazz!
Great down-to-earth discussion. Academic analyses of jazz have a place, but it can suck the soul right out of the music to the point that we forget what it’s all about: ‘just shut up and play the music!’
Yes: there is a separation of music and spirit in school (is that the democratic part of jazz: like sparation of church and state?!)
But "just shut up and play the music" carries the implication that the music has the soul inheritently embedded in it...
what are the challenges university students face in playing music that sounds like it comes from the heart and has a social story is the fact that they generally have not lived lives out in the "real world" with its ups and downs and struggles for survival... broken hearts and lost jobs etc etc. Obviously they have had sorrows and joys... but they aren't connecting with the "commoners" because they have had more cloistered lives with large safety nets... This brings up class and the idea put forth by guitarist Charlie Hunter in my documentary JazzTown: that only wealthy people can afford to play jazz (goto universities) and they are making music that only appeals to their parents and peers... iow: other wealthy (privileged people?).
@@BmakinFilm
Very good food for thought, Ben, especially regarding ‘cloistered lives’ and class privilege. These are as much sociological questions as musicological. Could it be that the lack of connection between young jazz students and public has led some to find more meaning in theory, analysis and even podcasting about it all? My ‘shut up and play’ comment was more a flippant reflection of what some of us laypeople feel when we go out looking for new music and find more discussion of said music than music per se. Very much enjoyed your take on all this. Thanks for taking time to reply.
@@ambientideas1 yes, yes! You've got it quite right! (and i did understand and appreciate your shut up and play - SUAP - comment: btw i actually think jazz bands, particularly in nightclubs, need to talk less on stage between tunes and just SUAP! that's one of my peet peeves (and ive been guilty of it when ive led bands: doing too much entertaining over the mic!) and I believe if more musicians spent more time playing on the bandstand and being prompt showing up to the gig and with their set breaks etc. then they would have a better case to make when asking for a raise...
and to your point about sociology and musicology I believe you've cracked open another canna worms but sociology is pretty deep. And I should be clear that I am not at all against studying music in the Academy. Or a university. I crack on it pretty hard for the negative consequences of it, but there are plenty of great things that happen, or that can happen when a student continues their study of music on the University level. I really should've been more clear about that and I'll probably post about that again. But one of the things along those lines I see happening is there is pushback from a few of the fiercely more independent students who make it through those programs and then end up rebelling against the shackles of the jazz indoctrination: they end up being quite highly skilled and capable if they are able to make the mental shift, to finding their own voice and developing a contemporary music that's more true to their life experiences and motivations - @VeronicaSwift has done just this having gone througj the U of Miami (where i went as well) music program, recording albums that place her as one of the very top modern singers of (old school) jazz, yet who is now breaking free w a ferocity and calling her music #TransGenre.
Fantastic conversation. The dialectic ability and synthesis is profound and much needed these days. As a young person it is inpiring to see these discussions unfold with such rigorous and empathetic individuals. Love it, Andy and Ben!
Thank you Marlen
I am currently working on Flowers. I am looking for pop songs with good melodies that the younger gen can relate to. Miley Cyrus does not have a bad voice but the video is horrendous!
Ayo Awosika is a back up singer for Miley Cyrus (and w Rihanna on the Wakanda Foerever soundtrack: Lift me up) and Ayo appears in both of my films JazzTown and Who Killed Jazz. I also like Taylor Swift songs!@@PeterWetherill
Great conversation !
Thanks.
Just watched the trailer for the Jazz Town film Ben made , it looks great . Some great photography with some great edits of music . Also incredible interviews . I will watch it soon .
Thanks much @mikebassy let me know what you think, and please leave a comment/review on the platform you watch it on. I have self-distributed JazzTown and am dependent upon word of mouth such as yours to spead the message! 🙏
Thank you, Andy and Ben, for this marvelous, free wheeling exploration. Someone at Berkley should make watching this a compulsory course requirement, lol.
I'll now be looking up Ben and his films.
Please do...they are among the best dealing with the reality of jazz
Such an entertaining and insightful conversation, thanks Andy!
Thanks for another stimulating discussion on your channel. Andy, I agree with your central point that jazz closed its doors to innovation because of the 'Jazz Academy'. I would go further and say that the music industry has also squeezed the innovation out of jazz, and I'm sorry to say that the emergence of jazz-rock-fusion was largely responsible for that, though of course some excellent fusion albums were made.
The commercial shift to a rock/funk/soul based jazz in the late 60s and early 70s made it more audience-friendly in an attempt to reach bigger audiences and achieve massive increases in record sales. Jazz borrowed the marketing tropes of rock and other pop musics. Fusion bands wore 'groovy gear', adopted the on-stage theatrics of rock musicians - all that hectic widdly-widdly guitar playing of McLaughlin. There was not much difference between the histrionics of ELP and the soloistic showboating of Cobham, Corea, Clarke, Ponty, et al. Even fusion album covers began to resemble rock album covers. And some jazz musicians (notably Tony Williams and Herbie Hancock) even went topless on their album covers - a silly attempt to interest hoped-for female consumers!
Anyway, jazz has never recovered from that massive (some would say crass) commercialisation. Pressures from the music industry have subsequently turned jazz and its musicians into just another commercial product, rather than an area of musical exploration and innovation. Cobbling together various current popular styles and infusing them with a dash of jazz swing and hipster cool does not do anything to reinvigorate jazz. It's just another example of dumbed-down jazz product craving a huge audience.
The genuine jazz innovators took a different course in the 60s and 70s and explored free jazz and then beyond that moved into free improvisation - uncommercial routes outside the mainstream music industry and academy. Some musicians even set up their own small record labels and controlled the manufacture and distribution of their recordings. Now that's what I call innovation.
I don't agree that the fusion players were merely showboating and trying to be comercial. Mclaughlin studied classical Indian music and Coltrane, both of which contain a lot of notes and fast playing, but I wouldn't describe them as histrionic nor played for the purpose of showboating/commercialization.
I don't see how mixing jazz with rock for the first time in the 70's was not innovating. Fusion is an important, honest and serious musical form, IMO. The energies of jazz and rock were destined to come together to form something profound and new. Maybe you just don't get fusion.
I would have paid to see and you both talking. This is not only an incredible discussion but also a very important. If this gets out into the world it’s sure to start a firestorm. I believe Ben shared a part of American history many contemporaries have been fighting to bury.
Yes...we will do another one very soon.
Thank you very much Robert. I put my neck out there a bit because I am a passionate seeker of truth... And I am deeply bothered when I see intelligent people in positions of power try to bury it. I wrote the following in reply to someone else but will copy it here as it sounds you are interested:
From the time African slaves were first brought to serve the English colonists in 1619 until the abolition of slavery in 1863, Native American tribes protected and assimilated escaped slaves. In the American south these were, among others, the Seminoles, Chocktaws, Chickasaws and the most powerful tribe found between Florida and Texas, the Chitimacha who had a large presence in Louisiana . For over 250 years these escaped African slaves were living with Native Americans - eating, singing, dancing and mating - blending cultures and bloodlines such that by 1880 (around the time ragtime began mating with the blues... to give birth to what would finally be labeled "jazz" in Chicago in 1915) one fith of the enslaved population of New Orleans was mixed race: that means one out of five slaves ("Blacks") was a blend of African-diaspora and Native American which can include Mexican Indians as well... (Native
Indian culture had much in common with African culture, specifically in music: the importance of the drum, story telling through song, chant and dance with moans and scoops and improvisation often ascribed to the blues that informed jazz... ) This is the population out of which Buddy Bolden, for example, came.
Trumpeter Buddy Bolden is considered one of great early influencers in the rise of jazz, as is pianist Jelly Roll Morton (Jelly had a long list of the ragmen who influenced him...) although Jelly was Creole (Women btw are rarely listed : i begin to correct for that in my
next film by crediting Smith, Armstrong and Hunter as mentioned below.)
Creoles are people born of French ("White") and Spanish (what color are Spaniards?) blood mixed with peoples from the African-diasphora... Many Creoles were wealthy slave owners themselves having come to New Orleans from Haiti (Saint Domingue) via Cuba. They were francophiles: they spoke french, were literate, had "politcal power and social prestige" (David Ake, "Blue Horizon") studied classical music (on violin, piano, woodwinds etc) they were members of symphonies, they were business owners and, while in Haiti (all French colonies), under the code noir were granted status as French subjects if and when freed. (The code noir was instituted by King Louis XIV in 1685 and actually increasesd the number of freed slaves in the french colonies... code
noir also kicked out all jews from french colonies as well - another story but what an irony: a French King passing edicts to protect black slaves while punishing white jews...all to protect the sugar trade...) The Creole's were a different race and class of people (literate, mixed race francophile slave owners from Haiti, with Cuban influences) then the enslaved pooulation in America- they fought hard to maintain their (former) social status as very disticnt from the plantation slaves (field slaves "blacks") and they self-identified as distinctly "not black" ... Most Creoles considered themselves more French then brown or black.
We have this wonderful American roots music (jazz,) coming to fruition through the influence of "Blacks" (many of whom we now know are of mixed race w Native Americans...) and of Creoles (French, Spanish, African)... along with the many other cultural influences present in the port city of New Orleans and surrounding territories.
It is simply irresponsible and hugely disrespectful to erase and exclude the contributions and influence of minority and underrepresented voices from other cultures around the world that were present in America during the development of jazz by grouping all of these people together and calling them "black", or by calling these many cultures "black culture". This has been done by knowledgable and influential historians (some black like Eileen Southern) and continues today with the charming utterances of (black) master musician Wynton Marsalis. To do so is a form of what I called "blackwashing" in this interview with Andy. I would like to hear Wynton address this as well as his failure to include some of the women who helped shape jazz music like Mamie Smith, Lil Hardin Armstrong and Alberta Hunter (all big influences on Louis Armstrong), and his lack of programming women at his Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC).
My next film (We Are Here: Women In Jazz) will examine the role of women in jazz past and present through the voices and music of both men and women.
Great video andy. and thanks Ben for joining. It was absolutely hysterical. CRACKING!
It was a pleasure Doron! I hope Andy will have me on again - I feel we've just begun!
Brilliant. What a fabulous duo. Spotify lists have expanded exponentially!
Much thanks!
Oh i luv it 🙌 amazing conversation
Andy, thanks for sharing one of the best musical conversations I've seen on this platform in ages... and there are plenty to be had! I love your straightforward antiauthoritarianism as evidenced in the story about the blog that irritated Peter Erskine. One of I'm sure many new regular viewers here; keep it up!
thanks Ian
I too find it hilarious that Erskine would get ruffled enough to call Andy out on something he said about Jazz! But in a great way: I love that Pete is passionate enough to take time out to respond: ots a way of saying I care!
Really enjoyable and illuminating conversation, Ben and Andy, thank you! Cheers, Ian
🙏
@@BmakinFilm Hi Ben, the distinction you made between masculine/feminine energy and male/female articulated something I've noticed in people's music tastes as well, but I hadn't been able to articulate it as succinctly. The history of Creole and African-American musicians (and I think you said indigenous Indians) was new to me and I'd like to know more. Could you recommend a source? At one point (in regard to what is and isn't considered jazz, I think) you said, "So what!" Whether you intended this or not, it immediately made me think of Miles Davis' 'So What' and that made me laugh: brilliant! I'm also looking forward to watching watching JazzTown. Cheers, Ian
Fascinating conversation, gents - ta very muchly...
☝️😎
Such a great interview. So much knowledge. Thanks.
Traditional Jazz may be dead and decomposing but Snarky Puppy is its new baby.
thanks for the tip jash - i will jave a listen to these
Funny you mention Emmet Cohen - he actually declined to sit for an interview in my new documentary on women in jazz. there are men in my movie: men work with women so they naturally have something to say about them, unless they are fearful of backlash that could hurt their career: an unfortunate side effect of cancel culture when a jazz musician is to worried about backlash to speak his truth...
Great conversation.
Fascinating interview! Thank you!!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Great conversation!!! The idea of masculine vs feminine energy in jazz music is interesting. In thinking about masculine energy, I think Mclaughlin's guitar voice during the Mahavishnu period was the epitomy of masculine energy, however when thinking deeper, I think it combines the masculine with the feminine which is why it was so mind blowing. I think the greatest music must combine both to enter deep into the spiritual realm because the spiritual resides deeper than those concepts.
Yes! good ears Morpho - it is how we yield both sides of the force that make us balanced and true!
Thank you Andy and Ben 🍻✨
Gatekeeping seems necessary to a degree. I mean, if anything can be Jazz, then Hank Williams can too, right? But also, defining Jazz too rigidly goes against the freedom of the art form. It’s a very interesting and slightly perplexing conversation. Which, ultimately, makes it “fun”, as Andy stated.
Great point - we are all gatekeepers on some level: but, gatekeepers should all be held accountable or at least capable and willing to discuss their opinions.
And you raise another excelle t point worth exploring: at what point does jazz's influence become distilled , to the point where it is not jazz anymore...? (the Grateful Dead is really just a jazz band with electric guitars... right?! Maybe not a very swingin jazz band🤣🤣🤣 but certainly jazz in practice)Jazz influenced all modern music, and its greatest players mixed genres.
Funny you mention Hank Williams. Did you know Louis Armstrong played a duet w Johnny Cash on live tv?! Armstrong came out on stage w a HUGE cowboy hat. Did the two play jazz; country? Is it possible for a jazz musician to ever not play jazz?! especially if jazz is a spirit, how can it be turned off ... of course it cannot!
So we back to definations, who makes them, and who cares?! Imagine trying to file the record w Armstrong and Cash: what bin do you place it in? perhaps a copy in each...
@@BmakinFilm Thank you for the tip about the Armstrong/Cash duet. I was able to watch it here on RUclips, enjoyed it immensely! If I had to put a label on it, I’d have to call it Blues. There are, however, some blurring of lines just having those two icons performing together (something very wholesome in it as well). Also, your Grateful Dead reference is spot-on because by definition a Jam Band is a Rock band which plays long, improvisational passages. So basically it’s a Rock band doing what Jazz does best? So what makes them Rock and not Jazz? 😂 I mean, I would call them Rock myself, but again we get that blurring of lines which very often provides the world with some incredible music. Anyway, I’m a recent subscriber of yours so I do appreciate that you commented on my post here. Thanks Ben 🍻✨
great observations jeshurun - the blurring of the lines - therein lies the beauty... i have played music professionally for over 40 years and the greatest musicians I have played with don't care what it's called, they just want to play music w and have fun with people that do the same.
Funny you mention the Blues - that really is what so many musics have in common and the Blues (loosely defined...) is a major component of both jazz and country music.
Thank you for subscribing! I hope to keep you entertained and informed - thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I said it the last time and I'll say it again: institutionalizing jazz education killed it the way it does ALL THINGS. That's why jazz since 1965 has been no more culturally relevant than horse racing or prize fighting, two other holdouts from the beginning of the previous century that remain on life-support as IMPORTANT artifacts of American life. It's OUR "classical" music in more ways than one, but especially since it's become a niche interest. Like pinochle. Or butter fudge chocolate ice cream...with broccoli.
Thank you for doing this man. This is great
Glad you enjoyed it!
🎉
fantastic conversation. Gotta have him on again!
I like jazz and have a physical collection but I find it difficult to discover what albums are new and considered to be of artistic merit. On the other hand, I have no problem finding out what's new in, say, black metal, which is one of the sub genres of metal that I am adding to my music collection
When I searched “best jazz albums released between 2003-2005”, I saw MANY noteworthy names that I think that many modern jazz listeners would consider to be greats of the early 2000s: Hiromi, Brad Mehldau, Vijay Iyer, Avishai Cohen, Joshua Redman, Chris Potter, Wayne Krantz, Snarky Puppy, and many more. I, as usual , do not even sort of buy the “I googled the best jazz musicians from 20 years ago and there were none” angle. Were these musicians considered? Why specifically are they lesser than Monk? Why specifically did they contribute less than Monk? Each and every one of the musicians that I named above has greatly advanced the genre in totally different directions, spawning totally divergent sub genres! There would be no Louis Cole or JD beck without Wayne Krantz inspiring Keith Carlock and Nate Wood! There would be no Tigran Hamasyan without Vijay Iyer’s instruction! And so on and so on. I think that the whole platform that the rest of the argument is predicated on doesn’t even sort of hold water. The core of the argument is “I don’t think that anyone is as original as monk” but then this is again not substantiated with analysis, comparison, or anything of the sort. You can’t proceed to step two of “WHY jazz music is no longer original” without first verifying that jazz music is, in fact, no longer original! The only thing resembling step one is the google search that supposedly didn’t turn up any Monk level names!!
I NEED NAMES AND ANALYSIS, can you PLEASE make a video that actually addresses individuals, uses some kind of musical analysis (as opposed to a general sociological/philosophical explanation). I really want to understand where you are coming from but I just cannot get past the hurdle of “trust me bro, it is all not as original as monk”.
This is only one of MaAaaaaany points that I take issue with but I am cutting myself off here 😂, very thought provoking video as always. I hate it and love it and appreciate the conversations that it is starting. Will definitely watch any videos about it in the future!
Lets take the first two players on the list, whom I like very much and I am a big fan of Hiromi (which is why I don't want to call out specifics) and look at the lineage of Jazz piano.
JELLY ROLL MORTON A brilliant summation of all the folk forms that constitute jazz brought together on piano and arranged for jazz group. A pioneer of rercorded jazz piano.
ART TATUM integration of post impressionist harmony combined with stride piano and classical type vituosity in group and solo context
BUD POWELL creates a new harmonic and phrasing vocabulary, placing more emphasis on right hand soloing with a completely radical approach to swing and feel
McCOY TYNER Integration of quartal harmony and modality into piano jazz, A fundamental change in the dynamic range of jazz piano
CECIL TAYLOR Reduction of improvisation to blocks of energy, treating the piano as a percussion with the use of clusters to intimate notes outside the tempered scale
JOE ZAWINUL Integration of synthesisers into jazz improvisation and utilisation of multi track recording techniques. Development of the 'always solo but we never solo' concept. Artistically viable of Jazz with funk and rock forms and European folk forms
THEN...who????
Brad Meldhau is brilliant interpreter of age old jazz approaches. There is no innovation beyond the development of his own voice within the confines of approaches in jazz from decades ago. I watched two videos to get specific examples. One was a solo piano version of a Beatles tune, the other sounded like Keith Jarrett circa 1974 with a time no changes/tonal centre approach to improvisation. i cannot hear the progression and individuality you state is there, but state without any specific examples (which you say I am doing)
Hiromi I think is a little more innovative in that she has integrated an Oscar Peterson approach into jazz fusion which brings in older piano styles like ragtime and stride into that context but does she represent the same innovative jump in approach I have described above. No,
You are welcome to counter these claims by examples where these musicians have created approaches as cataclysmic as the players described above.
My argument is that Jazz closed it's doors to innovation in the 80s and became the music of the academy. My solution is to allow musicians who want to make improvised swinging music to escape the cul de sac of bebop vocabulary encoded into jazz education.
@@AndyEdwardsDrummer Hi Andy! Thanks for feeding the troll (me). I assumed that given I am limited to the length of a youtube comment and that you have 5 or 6 hour-long videos on the subject that I am not the one responsible for analysis….. But I’ll try to do my best in this response! I’ve never made a video before but if this response becomes too muddled, I may give it a try.
There are a few obvious difficulties that I wanted to acknowledge before going into specifics. Conceptualizing jazz as a line or taking ‘lineage’ too literally is overly reductionist. As you are well aware, many musicians made similar (and radically different) contributions during the same periods of time. Jazz is often depicted more as a branching tree; I just wanted to keep this in mind before getting into individuals! Additionally, reducing an artist’s contribution to a single bullet point (such as Tyner is important because he used quartal voicings or a prominent feature of Monk’s style is his regular use of whole tone runs) is similarly overly simplistic. But given the short-message format of this youtube comment section conversation, I will abide by these constraints.
Now to pick up where you left off in your ‘notable pianist’ lineage…. After (and during) Zawinul’s most prominent years, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock both cemented themselves as two of the leading jazz fusion keyboardists, both with styles very different from each other and Zawinul. I’ll focus on Chick. The style of the Elektrik Band diverged significantly from the earlier fusion of Weather Report and The Tony Williams Lifetime. Subdivisions (primarily straight 16th notes, as opposed to loosely swung) became notably more well-defined and metronomic, arrangements were meticulously planned out and noticeably ‘tighter’, South American rhythm became much more prominent, FM synthesis and effects (as opposed to the much sparser use of subtractive synthesis of the past) became the dominant timbre (in addition to radically different drum and bass tones), and Chick’s non-functional harmony and unique voicings (more on the specifics of this in my video response) developed on the vocabulary of the past. Even superficial listening comparing the Elektrik Band’s self-titled first album to any of the other artists/bands mentioned will illuminate these differences.
Again, I could list many names from the early 2000s as the next branch of the jazz tree: Robert Glasper, Brad Mehldau, Vijay Iyer, Taylor Eigsti, Aaron Parks, Hiromi, and on and on. I will focus primarily on Robert Glasper. Many take the position that Glasper’s fusion of hip-hop and mainstream jazz is unoriginal and unnotable, given Herbie Hancock and Branford Marsalis experimented with the same flavor of fusion decades prior. But is Glasper’s take on jazz-hop really the same as that of his predecessors? Glasper’s rhythmic style is loose and free yet still precisely rhythmically defined. It lies more in-the-cracks between beats, inspired largely by the beats of J Dilla (see Robert Glasper Trio - LIVE at The Village Vanguard - Double Black 1:41:40 for example). His sense of smooth, sustained repetition is notably different from the plucky repetition of earlier artists (see Marsalis’ Buckshot LeFonque - Breakfast @ Denny's for example). His early 2000’s ensemble choice, primarily acoustic trio or quartet, is notably different from the electronic takes of the past. Glasper’s melodic and harmonic language is so different from the language of the past that Marsalis has gone so far as to assert that Glasper can’t/doesn’t play jazz! Overly generally, Glasper leaves behind many of the ii-V licks and chromatic enclosures of the past, instead opting for the movement of melodic shapes and chords using constant structure, leaning much more heavily into development through repetition of phrases than quickly moving from one melodic phrase to the next. He also introduced improvisational freedom to hip-hop that was not explored by the previous generation (see @ Harvard univ. w/Robert Glasper & Charles Haynes for example), allowing disparate styles to seamlessly, spontaneously morph into each other in real-time.
Both Glasper and Corea went on to explore vastly different avenues for improvisation and composition as their careers continued. Again, I am barely scratching the surface of their contributions to the legacy of jazz! Their influence has shaped the aesthetic and vocabulary of consequent musicians. For example, there would be no JD and Domi without both Robert Glasper and Chick Corea (and several more intermediaries) and there would be no Robert Glasper without Chick Corea.
You also mentioned a slowing in the rate of development in jazz compared to earlier generations, specifically citing the developments between the new orleans jazz of the 1920s to the bebop of the 40s with the big band era sandwiched in between compared to the developments of the 2000s to today. What if we instead looked at the interval between 1940 and 1960, with bebop, post-bop, and cool jazz? These styles largely used the language of the early 40s, reducing and refining, simplifying, and shifting the attention more from maximalism towards minimalism. Ensemble configuration largely stayed the same, comping styles were well established and standardized, swinging rhythmic style was ubiquitous, and so on and so on. Do you view this period as a dead, ideologically void period of jazz music? Or was it an important aesthetic shift that mirrored general cultural attitudes of the time, engendering the freer approaches of the 60s? Is the emergence of new techniques the sole requirement for music to meaningfully progress? Regardless of less easily tangible aesthetic shifts (in that it is a lot easier to say “McCoy Tyner played lots of 4ths in his left hand” or “Monk used lots of whole tone runs”), looking at even the extremely surface-level overviews of Chick and Robert and their general cultural reception and influence, there have been MANY new techniques/approaches introduced to the jazz mainstream that are still being developed today. Again, these two musicians only represent 2 periods of time, periods in which many more musicians were pioneering totally different approaches. To provide a direct answer for whether “jazz closed its doors to innovation in the 80s”, I think that the answer is clearly “NO”. It is not difficult to track and document these differences over time, it is just time-consuming as one can’t just pick up a book on the subject as they simply have not been written yet. Scholarship on the subject is light from the 90s onwards as there is often a musicological gap of around 40-50 years before things become truly codified in writing.
Responding to your comment that your “solution is to allow musicians who want to make improvised swinging music to escape the cul de sac of bebop vocabulary encoded into jazz education”...
Has jazz really solely become the ‘music of the academy’ and has the academy ground the progression of jazz to a halt? Bringing jazz into universities has allowed for the preservation of the tradition, making its insights available to generations decades detached from its inception. How would the younger generations encounter or interact with jazz otherwise?? You mention that you can predict virtuoso drumming, gospel licks, and crossovers from videos that you were shown by friends and students. Is the origin of this style even remotely academic??? I went to two of the schools that arguably disseminate this style of playing most, Berklee and the New England Conservatory. My jazz teachers FROWN on and discourage this style of playing! This style of playing is not because of but in spite of university-level instruction! I think that the foundation of your argument becomes VERY confusing to me for this reason! Are you arguing that developments in jazz have become too intellectual or technical and therefore generally imperceptible as opposed to more culturally relevant or easily accessible? Things are far too ambiguously worded and allow for dramatic shifting of goalposts of this discussion, so I need much more information to continue further!
@@jmcd9771 2003
In what language is jazz?
In what language? is jazz
@@narosgmbh5916 bro wut
@@jmcd9771 2003 Iyer Ladd is goldstandard
Great discussion. My random thoughts based on my experience playing bass & guitar in assorted bands in assorted genres in NYC/Long Island area since the late seventies:
I've observed that many jazz fans/musicians (not all, but many) use their taste in music as a means to differentiate themselves from the "common" rock/pop music fan/musician. This elitist attitude leads to gatekeeping and their defensive attitude when their taste is threatened. The Jazz Education Industrial Complex perpetuates and reinforces it.
Growing up in the seventies, the three bands that made me want to play music were the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers Band and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, all three bands being very improvisational and leading me down the rabbit hole that is jazz for which my life and music are all the better for it. Like Andy, I am mostly self taught though I eventually took some lessons and went to a jazz camp. Maybe because I came from this proto-jamband background, I never felt too precious about mixing things up but I often got resistance from other players. When I played a jazz gig, the audience would be maybe a dozen people (on a good night), made up almost entirely of people who knew someone in the band. We wound end up being either background music or being critiqued by fellow players ("How many guitarists does it take to screw in a light bulb? One Hundred. One to screw in the bulb and 99 to say how they would have done it better." ). When I played in a Dead cover band, we would play twenty minute extended collective improvisations to a packed bar who would actually be listening. I'm sure that there are many a self righteous jazz fan who will look down on the jam band scene but maybe if they weren't so concerned with convincing themselves that they are special because they listen to "A Love Supreme", then their precious jazz could actually survive as more than a museum piece.
Very interesting stuff. I look forward to checking out your other videos and blog.
Wonderful insights Roy... Often among the young (and the elders who have not matured) brandishing one's taste in music to prove superiority comes from a sport mentality (tribal identity): "my team is the best and you guys suck!"
It is helpful for these musicians amd fans to witness their heroes joining ranks with members of oppoosite camps (like when Louis Armstrong played a duet w Johnny Cash on his tv show) to model humility and oneness with the arts: its all music, just different flavors, you either like it you don't.
@@BmakinFilm Yes, Louis Armstrong also recorded w/ Jimmie Rodgers in the 20's.
To me it feels like jazz has become: music to eat steaks by, music to play in the background to make you feel sophisticated, what they play in nice hotel lobby bars, what they play at classy fundraisers, OR music for musicians to impress other musicians.
"There's no lust in jazz" - Frank Zappa
Yes, I'm a musician, and yes I love jazz.
He was wrong then, about many things.
Now he would be correct. No sex, physicality, pulse, groove, funk, clave, blues, all that put the Body onto Mind.
And Soul is completely absent.
Eric - we explore your observations in my film Who Killed Jazz - one of the depressing side effects of the restaurants, bars and hotel lobbies that keep jazz caged as background "sounds" is that otherwise talented musicians are losing their enthusiasm, the joy and spirit of music making. The musicians are often told not to mingle w guests on their set breaks, to sit in back by the bathrooms out of the way...
... much of that applies to rock music as well (except that rock is never used to make people feel sophisticated 😂)
Well, the drummer Steve Reid once said that "Jazz music used to be something that people danced and fucked to, then it got weird."
A great conversation. And better at 1.5 times speed.
nahhh normal speed is where its at! absorb the syllables
i was a bit rambling Val - i am trying to get my brain going 3x faster in the hopes i can speak 1.5xs faster with 6xs more clarity😅
Most interesting discussion. Like very many things in life, like history, generalisations are generalisations but the complete story is complex, especially when it is free from ideology and feelings and biased interpretation.
Quite right. Learning to put emotions aside when seeking truth crucial to be open to learning... Ae
must ask ourselves, "Why do I cling so firmly
to something that I never actually witnessed...?"
Accepting that the world is round after a lifetime of experts assuring you it is flat takes some mental flexibility ...
At ~46m10s: "GRADING"
Beware of any musical "entity" "grading" on conformance to past.
I agree Andy that Modern fusion music of all genres is the access road for new listeners. Traditional styles are not going to go extinct any faster by fusing modern genres into it, new people need to discover traditional style but they won’t appreciate it unless there was a fusion with a more familiar and modern style. This is true for all genres. I don’t think modern fusions are a threat to traditional styles but just the opposite. Whether or not fusion is real jazz is a separate and more academic issue.
I agree completely with you on this Hartlor. Yes, it may cause confusion at the Jazz Festivals and on the record stores, but jazz music fans never stop listening to music because a new form emerges that they don't like, and it always brings new fans into the fold. Another point many are forgetting is that the musicians love playing it! How about that?! The musicians love it and they can make some money to pay the bills!
@@BmakinFilm exactly, as a gatekeeping curmudgeon I also know that you need an audience and a scene etc. whether or not I would call it Jazz or not is of zero importance. Songs, gigs and records that people like and will pay for is the unwavering reality.
There is value in preserving the art that came before, but Armstrong, Monk, Bird and Davis already did that by making records. We'll never forget what any era of jazz, post 1917, is "supposed" to sound like. The ethos of jazz is far more worth preserving than the aethetic qualities of any particular era of the music.
Excellent! Thank you Andy. I saw the Moscow Chamber Orchestra sleigh me...literally sleigh me last year. The best concert I've ever seen. It was all new to me AND hundreds of years old. No hip hop beats. Yes,,,,Yes but it was "Miles" tearing down walls and it made sense. Those people Ben mentioned are phenomenal Thanks....that I can readily live with.
But I go to some jazz festivals and some of the stuff they might try and shove down your throat is hard to take...it's not rock...it's not jazz ..what is it. Maybe it's who were referring to? But your talking educationally...so huh
Thanks Terry - jazz has become so broadly defined to encompass 130 years of music... I used to be terribly disappointed (and angry) to see the kind of bands headling "jazz" festivals. But I've grown not to expect tradional sounding jazz at these festivals anymore: they are mostly capitalizing on the commercial appeal of the word; if they do manage to slip in a traditionally swingin' band then perhaps new folks will discover the music and thus broaden their tastes. Now I just chuckle: here in Indonesia at the Java Jazz Fest the headlining act is the Chicago tribute band with original Chicago drummer Danny Seraphine.
I actually interviewed Chicago's current bassist, Eric Baines, for my upcoming doc on Women In Jazz...
@@BmakinFilm I guess I'm talking about up and coming groups. Some are great like the ladies/groups you mention and then some are what -I don't know, and yet they get acclaimed critical write ups. Uninteresting melodies, very little "swing" (however defined) and maybe an etc.
btw thanks for the tip on the moscow orch: i had never listend to them and now have concerto for piano no.17 in G major (the happiest of all keys!)
Same as with visual art.
Music schools.
Codifying is what academia does.. Autopsies.
Arts grow by artists discovering, mentoring and apprenticeship.
Competition in the real world breeds creativity.
Protected isolation breeds entitlement.
Jazz fans are pushing back against this title even though it refers to something that they do not understand because they haven't seen the video.If you look closely at the actual title it is in quotes. But they haven't seen the video so what you get is a predjudiced ignorant assumption about something they cannot have any knowledge of. This is always the intellectual approach of those who believe from their position of entitlement that they hold the moral high ground, and anyone deems to question the dogmatic orthodoxy of the current jazz world is heretical. I have inadvertantly pushed a button they don't like being pushed. Rest assured I will keep pushing it.
@@AndyEdwardsDrummer That none understand feel or. Play the blues is the problem. There is no Modern music without the blues.
@@donaldfrazell9540 The academic jazz gatekeepres are trying to take the blues out of the jazz curriculum at the moment. I love jazz and I have listened and played it all my life. But I am not part of that world. I'm part of the prog world and beleive it or not there is more freedom there. And before that I made my living playing the blues. Don't worry, I will do my best to kick their ass as I'm not invested in the modern jazz world. They are so they find even the mention that jazz is now predictable, conservative and lacking any real internal innovation a threat to their investment.
Most of the great jazz after 1990 was from Cuba. No pretensions, part of life there from dance to concert. Because of our embargo you can hear it but not in Cali. I prefer Afrobest to academia though still more pop. Wife is Caribbean so Soca for her though first date was Miles Birth of the Cool, she loooooves him and understands me now. Though she saw my mural in Leimert Park and already wanted to meet me. Not enough jazz here as Billy Higgins World Stage and Barbara Morrisons place get mostly locals only. SF better at great player though Playboy Fest has my favorite Brit Dave Holland playing. Herbie here but never know what he is gonna play.
Great video Andy! Really enjoyed this interview 👌
Yeh, Jazz is far from dead. Big London Jazz scene currently, plus bands like Jagga Jazzist, Supersilent, GoGo Penguin, Mammal Hands, Snarky Puppy, Eivind Aarset, Arve Hendrikson, all the ECM stuff, so much music. Far more than there used to be actually.
Snarky Puppy is musical cancer
@@michaeltoole8010 That's your opinion, I'll choose to disagree. Each to their own taste.
It’s literally music designed for the “le epic music theory” crowd that has made modern jazz and alternative music so anonymous and regressive, guys like Michael League, Jacob Collier, Adam Neely, Rick Beato, etc. are pedantic passion vacuums who have reduced Zoomer musicians, once a very promising generation, to pod people who feed on obscure analysis and minutia instead of their own ears, intuition, and curiosity
Mammal Hands is really good, check out Portico Quartet if you haven’t, still some of the most beautiful shit I’ve ever heard
@@michaeltoole8010 Yes I have all Portico Quartet except the vocal album, not to my tastes.
I completely disagree with your assessment of those musicians but you have your opinion, I have mine. It's all subjective. As I said, each to their own.
I love Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple but I can't stand Black Sabbath, that's me, it doesn't make it wrong.
Personally, I love Snarky Puppy and that's all that matters. The critical mumbo jumbo, I don't care about, I like what I like.
I love Neil Ardley, most people haven't heard of him, doesn't matter.
I think young jazz guys should be interpreting the pop music of their generation. Are jazz music schools teaching this? And not elevator music interpretation which smooth jazz does. Take a melody like Miley Cyrus song Flowers and reharmonize and jam out. In the 90s I found steady employment on cruise ships. It was required to play a dixi set. I was shocked because everything was charted out! I learned Dixi from real dixi players. No charts! Basin Street all improvised. I new the tailgait trombone style but the young guys did not! I was in my 30s. The point is that now bop and post bop are becoming the same.
Rekaha Ohal doesnthis in my documentary film JazzTown - sings and plays a charming version of Britney Spears "Oops , I Did It Again" and she related the grumbling her sidemen make when she does such covers because they feel (such simplicity) is beneath them. Coltrane did fairly well with My Favorite Things!
Yo! I too was drummin on cruise ships in the 90s. I was on the MS Fascination (Carnival) out of Puerto Rico, circa '97-'98. Which ship were you on?
@@BmakinFilm In 97 I was on Celebrity Galaxy and Horizon in the Caribbean and Alaska. We probably were in port together. I remember your ship. 98 I worked for Renaissance R1's maiden voyage from France to the eastern Mediterranean. I was promoted to MD. In 99 I was the MD on the R2 in the Iberian peninsula and North Africa, and in 2000 R3 was My dream cruise in the paradise of the Tahitian islands.
Word Ben
dig
I'm just gonna say it. One's ego is what drives one to get better and better. Then the identity thing happens and one becomes attached, not only to this identity, but to his/her ego and skill that he/she has (deservedly) has acquired. Now, I believe that the most important thing in life is the person you become. This is true no matter what profession or position in life you decide to pursue. Given that, the amount of ego you inflate or deflate is up to you and what winds up being important in your life has a lot to do with that decision. I think that honestly and sincerity winds up being the defining path one chooses at this point.
It's not for me to say, but why has it been said that Miles "would rather sound bad in a bad band than play music that he used to play before?" (paraphrased) Was it because of his ego or was it because he wanted to create better music and got tired of the old stuff? And what does it say about me. I am struggling (happily I might add) to play music by Charlie Parker and Lee Morgan (currently). Would Miles feel sorry for me if he was alive? And do I care?
I am not sure ones drive to get better is part of "ego" as in "look at me" but rather just becoming the best you can be.
Good points and questions Timothy. I'll add that drive to get better can be, for many younger people, to please their parents, teachers, and peers. It then becomes a feedback loop in which you get a dopamine hit everytime they hear you getting better. You do it for them instead of yourself and this is one way gifted youth loose themselves... then perhaps struggle to discover who they really are.
Miles said what you paraphrased becuase he found no respectable truth in copying what you already accomplished. The only noble option for an artist is to continue to explore.
It doesn't matter what anybody says about your journey (although the professional feedback from a trusted teacher never hurts). I teach my students to become their own trusted teachers: record yourself playing and then listen back. Do you enjoy what you hear? If you do, you may be on the right path. The key is to develop your ears to recognize quality sound and tone while concurrently developing your soul intuition to make sure what you are pursuing (for ex trying to sound like Lee Morgan, one of my favs btw,) is what is truly fullfilling for you.
Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny.
I was looking for this one!
Smells like obnoxiously loud covers of pop songs with reharmonIzed chords that sound like garbage
@@robertdimartino5794 Really or are you being facetious? It was a Zappa stage quip that got included on a live album. Oddly enough, not Zappa's album "Make a Jazz Noise Here."
I'm listening and find this interesting food for thought but have some internal questions about why the African Americans have led in the innovative development of the music ... from slavery to Hiphop
Thanks Alphonso. An excellent question but one that needs to be more clearly defined to delve into.
What is the definition of African American?
Many of the musicians contributing to the genesis of jazz were people of French, Spanish and African descent called Creoles. They were quite distinct culturally from many other great contributors to jazz who are called African Americans or Blacks. By the late 1800s many of these blacks had mixed ancestral lines with the Native American indians with whom they shared cultural similarities. Women were innovating right alongside the men as well.
I explore this in my next doc film:
ruclips.net/video/AG7SbUNLHPs/видео.html
What is the defination of innovation? Perhaps start with some specific exameples. I wonder if by innovation you mean soloing, or composing?
Many innovations in jazz came from mixed race peoples of America from the 1800s up through the present. Innovations (great soloists/composers) in jazz have been coming from around the world for decades now.
It is a great topic to explore!
I’m sorry it was self defence…..
Regarding your remarks about patronizing female musicians: Melanie Faye and Yvette Young (just to provide two of my favorite examples) are not great female guitarists--they are great guitarists by any measure. They don't need the categories slanted in their favor to rise to the top.
You two need to get together with Ken Burns for a wee chat.
I would love to ask Ken Burns how and why he allowed Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch to so severely censor the musicians appearing in Jazz... so many were left out by contrivance as to be sinister.
@@BmakinFilm thanks for that. I felt very much the same.The real pity is that, for many, Burns reputation as a documentarian will make this take on jazz history a definitive one.I'm encouraged that your film will provide the broader & more encompassing context.
I don’t understand why modal in 1959 is not as dense harmonically as bebop ? That’s not the case , on Kind of Blue they play every kind of substitution on D minor or G7 . They play a multitude of blues licks and the pianist is playing all kinds of chords . It’s more complex .
But not as complex as BeBop changes and phrasing. And most of the time Miles' approach is actually quite simple harmonically. But modality is fundamentally different to chord scale approach. The point is you have freedom. You don't have to add any of those outside notes, theoretically a beginner can play modally once they understand that approach. A beginner cannot play bebop
Mate you don’t know what your talking about at all and I will do a proper response video to this asap .But apart from that I really enjoy your channel and don’t want to argue or be nasty . God bless you
Hi Andy, really interesting conversation. I think an interesting area you could explore is the death of the working class participation in Jazz, this would probably be controversial because it seems the powers that be have put identity politics above class politics, you did touch on this but something more indepth on this topic could open up a can of worms. Great and interesting channel u have.
I agree. We are no longer talking about poor people period. I'm up for opening that can and letting the worms out
@Andy Edwards yeah looking forward to that if u do it, keep up the great channel.
For that to happen there needs to be far more early music lessons..Few great musicians begin in their teens and those that do have already chosen their likes and dislikes. My daughter taught middle school after-school before covid, but earlier should be available without splintered market niches. A variety to simply understand their instrument and attain latter fluency without academic preferences. Play where they come from and then choosing as teenager while being well rounded. My "daughter" is from Memphis and NeoSoul, the last outbreak of good music in 1998 with Bones Thugs and Harmony, Hill and Badu, Nate Dogg showing possible routes and M-base tutored by Steve Coleman, Cassandra Willson Geri Allen and others to a younger generation.
My daughter also sang in both Euro and Gospel choirs and always jazz musicians from USC Thoenton. Patrice Rushen her mentor but all those jazz/pop teachers left with Covid. Ndugu died, Alphonso Johnson left too.
Unlike painti g where it has been proven best to have a life before pai ting, the requirements of music are Very early access for Everyone, and let them choose what works for them.
College should be one and done for the best.Degrees should not be Requirements as in visual Art CVs and degrees are required reservations.
And so art far more nonsensical to humanity and selfish expression sold as meaningful to castrate art of power.
Perfect Frank! A most excellent idea: guitarist Charlie Hunter speaks directly to that in my feature-length documentary JazzTown. he makes the point that it is really only the wealthy who can afford to learn to play jazz in the universities now and then to somehow be able to afford not getting any work when they leave the universities. They are playing very technical music w little connection to the "working class"... A very interesting topic indeed!
On the other hand there is the young native american trumpeter Delbert Anderson, who i interviewed for my upcoming doc on women in jazz. He is succesfully writng grants to take his (straight ahead) jazz group around the world exposing people to Native America melodies and influences: the social component (voices of the oppressed, voices from the ancients) appealing to music fans across many class barriers...
@@BmakinFilm yes really enjoyed your discussion with Andy, the lack of working class participation is like the elephant in the room when it comes to Jazz, there are so many vested interests not willing to talk or act. I work in schools teaching music and the school budgets are really squeezed especially inner city schools, but because humanity craves a creative outlet no matter what part of the social ladder you are on, these kids come up with new forms of music to get around their lack of access, the latest genres are 'grime' and 'drill' which Andy is probably aware of as these styles come from the UK. So my observation is two fold, firstly real creativity comes from oppression (in this case economic and class) hence why jazz as a creative art form has not evolved or flourished from the privileged position of the music academies. And since the working class kids who want to make music realise they will not be afforded the opportunity either educationally or with working opportunities(if by some miracle they are able to study at a music academy) they have turned their back on jazz. If someone collected some data it would be painful reading.
Why use curlers tho?
Stop talking about Jazz. :D - Academia stops Jazz at the door. You can't get into a Jazz program as a harp player, a modular synth patcher, or a freestyle rapper. The establishment confuses the acoustic aesthetic and antique harmonic structures as the soul of the art form, but Jazz lives in the philosophy of any musician creating in the moment. I'm telling you that the future of jazz left through the side door and they're out here innovating with homemade electronics, boutique guitar pedals, and iPhone apps. ;)
I’m a big proponent and practitioner of doing it wrong.
I make jazz alive with my compositions , where my influences can be Brahms, Stone Temple pilots or Celia Cruz....if one is ABLE to listen....
Jazz is improvised creations of a theme, more like Indian than composed Euro.
The leader picks the appropriate members who each has their say in the conversations the leader chooses. It is Not a dialog with viewer/listeners as academics babble on about. The group builds the work. We overhear but must work to comprehend like a writer or painter who has the style that like Miles said IS the message
@DonaldFrazell Your statement is not always true: sometimes jazz has been strict composition with all parts written out, the band members adding "only" their feeling.
This is the case for example in a recording session by Lil Hardin Armstrong where she arranged and wrote out every part , including the solos, for each tune. And that is a similar approach to many of the great jazz vocalist sessions done by Nancy Wilson and Frank Sinatra: the entire band is reading charts in support of an arrangement behind the vocalist. The singer may be the only one improvising variations of phrasing and delivery... perhaps there is an occasional solo from one instrumentalists: often times though these were written out too, or least played from memory. I have a story from tenor sax man Harold Land about playing the same solo everynight in vegas behind Sinatra and the other greats "cause 12 bars aint enough time to make up somethin great and those folks in the audience payed 100 bucks per ticket - so i'm goin to give em something great guaranteed."
@@BmakinFilm Exactly. Sinatra is Not jazz.
Jazz influenced as those Whiteman, hilarious name, Dorseys and others are Popular music..Goodman, also funny, the only real whitish jazz band. No blues, no Soul, no jazz. Also a white term.
Blues, Jazz and Gospel are body, mind and soul, and all united or Fail.
@@BmakinFilm Women in jazz are nearly all pia ists or vocalists. My "sis" classically based jazz, though recently nailed it leaving Euro behind to react in dialog, no longer thinking as I trained my youth basketball who all went to college and some pro.
She has had both Geri Allen and Patrice Rushen play with her.
And her mother in law who was Billie Holidays last pianist.
We both hold Betty Carter as the greatest musically but love Sassy and others
@@BmakinFilm
ruclips.net/video/qmofa5jtCMY/видео.html
I liked your talk.
When the last words of the oraters are said , the band plays triblets/triplets.
The music always has the last word.
funny story about a blues band leader (a great English guitarist David Booker from Manchester actually!) yelling at me for playing triplets on the drums behind his solo: "Stop soloing over my solo!"
He fired me that night. We were on tour. We went back to hotel, got drunk, passed out together, and in the morning he rehired me!
I we grew to love and respect each other, but it want easy. He fired me a total of three times. Ends up he likes the recordings he and i made as a duo more than anything else he did!
@@BmakinFilm I wanted to send you a link for your "women in the music"file but youtube didnt allowed it. It is a youtube video "Emily Remler interviewed 1986".
Since Astrud Gilberto died these days, also a youtube video with Gilberto and Remler as a reminder of Astrid and Emily.
Don't forget jazz is first music and foremost music and not history
@@narosgmbh5916 Thanks! I will watch the vids you recmd: I love both of those musicians: Emily really impressed us when her records came out - we were high school students at the time.
I agree with you about the love of music - just playing - being the most important thing.
i'm going to make a video that talks about my early life learning from great jazz mentors, people who played with Charlie Parker an Sonny Rollins an Max Roach and Pharaoh Sanders and Russ on Roland Kirk. These people never spoke to me once about the history of the music we just played music and talked about the music that was in front of us at the time. I had a couple of decades working as a professional musician before ever getting very deep into the history of this music with anyone who played it. The history that we knew typically came from the lighter notes of the records we bought and any other additional research we did. But my main point is that the great musicians who mentored me spoke more about spirit, and dedication to the craft and to the techniques needed to play the music. There was never any concern with history or certainly never any concern with racial issues as a means of creating division. if you could play the music, if you showed a passion for the music, you were in regardless of gender or color or age.
Back to Jazz. That’ll do, before I get turned into a metal head
The butler did it!
I watched the documentary and I think Ben needs to read Karl Marx. When feudalism was replaced by capitalism, an economy that produced "use values" was replaced by an economy that produced "exchange values"..aka commodities. In capitalism, value is measured by prices, and not anything else. You can be an artist who labors a lifetime on some craft or art, but if your product doesn't fetch a price in the marketplace, it is without value. Jazz has been on a slippery slope in the marketplace ever since bop replaced swing, and has only lasted this long because (briefly) the powers that be got behind jazz as "the only American art form" during the Cold War (see similar story with abstract expressionism). IMO, until jazz reconnects with danceable rhythms, it will continue to slide into the status of a favorite pastime for hobbyist musicians and a money-maker for vinyl-collecting antiquarians.
Mark's Marx Misses the Mark
The clubs pay the musicians the same whether its jazz, or blues or rock. The "danceable rhythm" is not as important as the amount of booze being sold. I played a jazz club which featured jazz 7 nights a week for about 25 years. The club had a strict No Dancing, 2 Drink Minium rule. You literally got kicked out of the club for dancing, and much of the jazz being played had danceable rhythms (extended latin jazz/calypso tunes i.e. horace silver, and these be boppers would lay down a ballad that made lovers want to dance as well... the problem came when the jazz audience grew older and began to drink less and when the state enacted very strict drunk driving laws that scared many people away from driving into the city...So they switched to 6 nigts a week of blues and funk with jazz on Wednesday night. The owner died, his daughters took over and dancing was allowed. The bar started selling a lot more booze to the younger audiences that didnt care about drunk driving but they paid these "dance bands" the same as they did the jazzers.
Same pay across the street at the funk club: i played drums in both clubs (and all over) as i was fluent in many styles... A drummer friend who is 15 years older than me recalls that playing in the blues and rock bands in the 70s through mid 80s a musician could afford to buy a house (as ling as they didnt snort their paybup their noses) cause they were workin 6 nights a week. But now that same rock n roll pays exactly the same (litterally frozen 50 yr old wages) and you work 1 night a week at any given club.
The problem is closer to Greed than to Marx.
Thank you for watching Who Killed Jazz! I hope you enjoyed it Mark, and thanks for your comments. Please watch my feature length doc JazzTown (some of the same cast: more playing and seeking answer to what is jazz?)
www.justwatch.com/id/movie/jazztown
@@BmakinFilm Thanks so much for your reply, Ben. I really enjoyed the documentary and I'll definitely check out JazzTown. I'll admit, I'm a bit of an old fogey, so you gain credibility with me when you mention calypso, Horace Silver and the ballads. Naturally I'll defer to your direct experience on what's going on, but I will say, I never seem to have problems turning friends on to jazz when I curate a nice hard-bop + ballads experience for them, especially when I can play vocal and instrumental versions side by side, and especially when i feature plenty of mid-tempo swinging. By contrast, whenever I seem to walk up on a jazz event nowadays, there seems to be an aversion to blues, mid-tempo swinging and ballads. I dunno. Maybe you're right, it's not the audience, it's the bar-owners. Thanks again for reading my post.
All forms of music are dying young people are generally uninterested in music.all the creative arts are either dead or dying we are in the mitts of cultural and civilizatonal decline
Democracy? Yes and no... The best Jazz conglomerations had equal input even if you had a "leader." For example, all of the guys who played with Bill Evans said he would call the songs but everyone was trusted to do their own thing. They were never dictated to play what Evans wanted. He encouraged them to have their own voices. Others not so much. So, like in all things there are variations.
Andy, have you ever explored African music beyond the obvious names?
Interesting question for Andy. In regard to myself, I am only familiar with Fela Kuti/Afrobeat and some ZamRock (W.I.T.C.H) - who I guess would be obvious names.
Sadly little was recorded before the 60s and much was learned by musicians from the America's going Home then. It has been passed on the oldway while youngsters went afrobeat. So many unthanked a onerous. Their instrumentation was different and had to be translated into European so Westerners were better for records and performance being amplified better.
@@donaldfrazell9540 Not quite!
There were 78s recorded in Africa as early as the 1920s and 1930s. By the 1950s, there was an established major recording industry in Africa - many thousands of records being issued in countries like the Congo and South Africa.
There's long been a rock brigade interest in Fela Kuti - but he was not as important a figure as some might think. Yes, his music sounds like a rock fan's IDEA of what African music should sound like... Add in Ginger Baker and the black t-shirt brigade make glib references to Afrobeat.
Check out Le Grand Kalle, Dr Nico, Franco, Tabu Ley - all these artists just from the Congo. All were recorded in the 50s, but by the 1960s their music really blossomed into something magical. Also check the music of Guinea - fantastic guitar players like Sekou Diabate.
Jimi tried to track down Dr Nico in the 60s, the story goes he had to check out Nico's beautifully pretty clean playing.
Bob James started the homogenization of jazz in the early 70's.
I loved Bob James - i played the H album every morning while getting ready to walk to school in 8th grade. Taxi theme song great! Again, another example of commercial or fusion or safe jazz that can draw a person deeper into the jazz...
Nobody killed jazz. Jazz was only popular for a very brief blip of time, in the 40s big band music throughout the 50s and 60s and early 70s. Jazz is marginalized but no less powerful or resourceful as it was then. This endless carping of grumpy old men, calling for the death of jazz. It’s just the same old shit and actually contributes to jazz being less popular. Jazz does not have the melodies or composers that once did but everything comes and goes and shifts.
Uh, 60 years from Roaring 20s Jazz Age to 70s Fusion and 80 neoclassical. 90s and 00s may have been the best but only by collectors. That wasn't musicians fault but lack of primary school education caught up with fewer competent youngsters, both dumbed down pop and over trained academics.
What happened to the moustache?
What word around 30:40? Burntified?
"Berklee-fication"
What can that mean?
@@JohnEpto-ng6ml Some claim that institutionalized jazz education codifies it into a Academic set of rules. 30:30 "Berklee-fied"
women jazzers never loose the sense for the essential. That's my experience.
My upcoming documentary We Are Here Women in Jazz goes into this (masculine/feminine energy in jazz)
ruclips.net/video/AG7SbUNLHPs/видео.html
Let's face it: the modern jazz practitioner is essentially comparable now to the Latin Scholar (or some other near-extinct field of specialization).
Music is the greatest of the social arts, and "jazz music" has never been more socially irrelevant than it is now.
i think might be the case. I love jazz and I am holding on to the idea it can be saved but perhaps the stuff i am pointing is proof that it is a dead parrot
@@AndyEdwardsDrummer I thought I brought up proof on your show that it is most certainly not dead - depending on how you define it. If one were to insist that jazz music stopped evolving in 1959, then yes, certainly any modern
day practitioners of jazz made from 1900 to 1959 would be practicing the art of classical performance (or terribly unsatisfactory attempts at copying music from the past...).
However, as I noted in our wee cracking chat, I do believe there are inovators of jazz today (becuase i am employing a broader, living and growing, definition of jazz: people lime Melanie Charles and Veronica Swift with her #TransGenre approach (what i see as a socially relevant "fusion" music.)
when I saw Melanie Charles perform live at the blue note in New York City a few months ago not only did she blow my mind and excite me tremendously with your music the whole room was on the edge of their seats and they were visibly and powerfully moved by the social relevance of Melanie 's message in her lyrics and the music that she and her band mates we're creating. everyone on stage was clearly grounded in the classic traditions of jazz and yet what they performed was vibrant and fresh and socially relevant.
@@AndyEdwardsDrummer I do hope that you're right as i love jazz too.
And, there will always be a corner for it, i'm sure, but i just don't know what it's prospects are in terms of regaining any of its pop music status.
Does anyone know what the last jazz track to chart was? I certainly don't.
@@BmakinFilm
Die ich rief, die Geister
Werd ich nicht mehr los
J.W.v.Goethe
Btw:if you haven't had Genevieve Artadi on your radar yet, take an afternoon to listen through her previous (jazz)work outside of Knower. Similar Domitille Degalle outside of Domi &.
Two more examples for the women's front
The jazz universities ?
(Your question could be taken as saying: no one is really teaching real jazz in universities. But assuming that is not what you meant , here are a few):There are more than a few in the US: Berklee College of Music, University of Miami, North Texas State, The New School (in Manhattan NY), Juliard Jazz Studies (led by W Marsalis), The Brubek Institute (at University of the Pacific's Conservatory of Music @edgardoPlasencia
A: good music
B: good try
Blackwashed? And this brought in Connection with Native Americans? Oh this oh so frail Souls of Whiteys.
Sounds as disturbing as the Trope of the „Emancipation of European Jazz“ (Nobody who does something out of Free Will has the need to emancipate himself).
Winton Marsalis playing with Eric Clapton as a Blues Musician might have bothered Stanley Crouch as much as Winton Marsalis playing a Congo Square themed with African Musicians, but it has taken the „Sting“ out of the Marsalis Jacobinism.
As White and Blue Eyed Guy I have no Problem to say clearly „African Americans“ from all Americas have founded Jazz. And whenever I hear the Term „Caucasian“ I really Cringe. Yes Herbie Mann and Phil Woods made Records with Armenians but the big Majority of Georgians playing Jazz where rather African Americans then Caucasians.
So to claim that Caucasians had a big Impact in the Foundation is bogus, as is the use of the Word „Caucasian“.
Ben has done a ton of research in this area and is an award winning jazz documentary film maker. When he raises these points I listen. Creoles was a term that covered a variety of musicians who at the time, outside of our inentity politics lens, did not consider themselves as black. This included Vernel Fournier
George Baquet
Paul Barbarin
Louis Barbarin
Danny Barker
Emile Barnes
Paul Barnes
Sidney Bechet
Barney Bigard
Louis Cottrell, Sr.
Louis Cottrell, Jr.
Joe Darensbourg
Louis Nelson Delisle
Cie Frazier
Illinois Jacquet
Freddie Keppard
Lawrence Marrero
Jelly Roll Morton (Ferdinand J. LaMothe)
Albert Nicholas
Kid Ory
Manuel Perez
Jimmy Palao
Alcide Pavageau
Alphonse Picou
De De Pierce
Armand J. Piron
John Robichaux
Omer Simeon
Lorenzo Tio
Eddie Bo
Are you saying these musicians were all Black? Are you saying Bechet, Ory, Keppard and Morton did not have a hand in creating jazz? Why did King Oliver have a 'creole jazz band'? This discussion is far more nuanced.
@@AndyEdwardsDrummer According to the Use of „Black“ in the Times of „Jim Crow“ the „One Drop Rule“ was applied on the big majority of „Gens de Couleur“ aka „Creoles“. There were some Creoles who were passing as fully „white“, the most of them living in the Territory of the „Louisiana Purchase“ were relegated to the „Coloured“ Status. Whether they considered themselves to be white or note had nothing to do with their Status under Segregation Laws, coz the Laws were made by „Whiteys“ and not by „Colored or Black People“. So many Creoles who never saw themselves as „coloured“ as the „Blacks“ were put under the same strict Rules as the Blacks by the Laws.
I did not consider Stanley Crouch‘s View on Jazz as Right, but I can tell, that I have every good Reason not to take White Boy Revisionism for serious who uses the Term „Caucasian“ the way your Filmmaker uses it. There is a long History of „Whiteys“ to claim that this or that was not invented by „Blacks“ since some People claim that Bix Beiderbecke was Louis Armstrong‘s Equal (He was not!)
I know white Jazz Writers who claim that the Circle around Lennie Tristano Invented „Free Jazz“ due to the Fact that they recorded to short Peaces of Music with an atonal Character. Funnily the same kind of People never mention „Child over a disordered Brain“ by Earl Hines. Excuse spelling Errors, coz I am not an English Speaker.
@@erikheddergott5514 well said Erik
From the time African slaves were first brought to serve the English colonists in 1619 until the abolition of slavery in 1863, Native American tribes protected and assimilated escaped slaves. In the American south these were, among others, the Seminoles, Chocktaws, Chickasaws and the most powerful tribe found between Florida and Texas, the Chitimacha who had a large presence in Louisiana . For over 250 years these escaped African slaves were living with Native Americans - eating, singing, dancing and mating - blending cultures and bloodlines such that by 1880 (around the time ragtime began mating with the blues... to give birth to what would finally be labeled "jazz" in Chicago in 1915) one fith of the enslaved population of New Orleans was mixed race: that means one out of five slaves ("Blacks") was a blend of African-diaspora and Native American which can include Mexican Indians as well... (Native
Indian culture had much in common with African culture, specifically in music: the importance of the drum, story telling through song, chant and dance with moans and scoops and improvisation often ascribed to the blues that informed jazz... ) This is the population out of which Buddy Bolden, for example, came.
Trumpeter Buddy Bolden is considered one of great early influencers in the rise of jazz, as is pianist Jelly Roll Morton (Jelly had a long list of the ragmen who influenced him...) although Jelly was Creole (Women btw are rarely listed : i begin to correct for that in my
next film by crediting Smith, Armstrong and Hunter as mentioned below.)
Creoles are people born of French ("White") and Spanish (what color are Spaniards?) blood mixed with peoples from the African-diasphora... Many Creoles were wealthy slave owners themselves having come to New Orleans from Haiti (Saint Domingue) via Cuba. They were francophiles: they spoke french, were literate, had "politcal power and social prestige" (David Ake, "Blue Horizon") studied classical music (on violin, piano, woodwinds etc) they were members of symphonies, they were business owners and, while in Haiti (all French colonies), under the code noir were granted status as French subjects if and when freed. (The code noir was instituted by King Louis XIV in 1685 and actually increasesd the number of freed slaves in the french colonies... code
noir also kicked out all jews from french colonies as well - another story but what an irony: a French King passing edicts to protect black slaves while punishing white jews...all to protect the sugar trade...) The Creole's were a different race and class of people (literate, mixed race francophile slave owners from Haiti, with Cuban influences) then the enslaved pooulation in America- they fought hard to maintain their (former) social status as very disticnt from the plantation slaves (field slaves "blacks") and they self-identified as distinctly "not black" ... Most Creoles considered themselves more French then brown or black.
We have this wonderful American roots music (jazz,) coming to fruition through the influence of "Blacks" (many of whom we now know are of mixed race w Native Americans...) and of Creoles (French, Spanish, African)... along with the many other cultural influences present in the port city of New Orleans and surrounding territories.
It is simply irresponsible and hugely disrespectful to erase and exclude the contributions and influence of minority and underrepresented voices from other cultures around the world that were present in America during the development of jazz by grouping all of these people together and calling them "black", or by calling these many cultures "black culture". This has been done by knowledgable and influential historians (some black like Eileen Southern) and continues today with the charming utterances of (black) master musician Wynton Marsalis. To do so is a form of what I called "blackwashing" in this interview with Andy. I would like to hear Wynton address this as well as his failure to include some of the women who helped shape jazz music like Mamie Smith, Lil Hardin Armstrong and Alberta Hunter (all big influences on Louis Armstrong), and his lack of programming women at his Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC).
My next film (We Are Here: Women In Jazz) will examine the role of women in jazz past and present through the voices and music of both men and women. @andyedwards @erikheddergot
Incorrect. Cherokee were considered "civilized" because they farmed land And had AA slaves. Many stayed in the South with their slaves and others agreed to the offer in the West for land and keeping their culture. This turned I into the trail of tears as no supplies were prepared for the tribes in winter as they meandered West no knowing where they were going.
This has come out and verified as those native Nations have apologized. They later took sides with the Confederacy.
The beboppers?
The Teenybeboppers.
Well... bebop itself was astonishing music, an incredible achievement. However what came after bebop is a different story, some would say it was the beginning of the end.
In my book, jazz functioned on every kind of level before 1950.
Thereafter, the newer jazz ceased to have a meaningful social purpose, very little was music that people wanted to dance to, very little was genuinely entertaining or amusing, etc etc. Maybe the real spirit of jazz lived on in Rhythm and Blues, then into Soul and Funk? Black music to be blunt.
@@legrandmaitre7112 I think if you make anything more " intellectual " you will lose a large part of the people(audience).
Who is this guy? Ive never heard of him. Why am I watching this? No one outside of the jazz universities cares about any of this.
But the universities are millions!
When Wynton Marsalis left Juilliard to play with
Art Blakey at the Red Rooster in Boston, it was insinuated by him leaving that jazz could not be taught in that setting.
Buddy Rich did not have black people in his orchestra. Maybe only University kids would put up with his b*******.
Yes, I can pick apart Buddy Rich big band.
Funny thing is that Wynton Marsalis is now the Director of Jazz Studies at Juliard!
I would not consider hip-hop Jazz, just as some Miles Davis albums are not Jazz. Much of what people call Jazz fusion is not really Jazz, some of it is. You can't just make Jazz cover anything that anyone calls Jazz. Once you lose all of the basic elements of Jazz such as syncopation, improvisation and the basic musical language of Jazz you don't have Jazz. There were still the basic elements coming out of New Orleans Jazz to bebop- to hard bop, to post-bop, etc. There is simply no continuity with hip-hop to Jazz in my opinion. There is no organic movement as you had in these other transitions in Jazz. Apples and oranges. You must have at least some variation of the basic elements of what constitutes the Jazz music. Once it sounds nothing like Jazz, it ceases to be Jazz. Just my opinion. Great video.
It is dead then, because once it could change
@@AndyEdwardsDrummer I think it does still organically change and retains the essentials. Simon Phillips recent outings like the Protocol projects for example. Lots of improvisation yet new phrasing and creative structure. Also there are artists still finding new ways to do “standards” just like the beboppers did. So I don’t think Jazz will ever die, kind of like rock music. However I do think that as time goes on it becomes harder to create new things in a particular genre, hence the creation of hip-hop.
Stanley Crouch was a failed free jazz drummer
The Crouch that stole Jazz
At least he did admit that in his own words.
Sure jazz isn’t black.
But it’s most well known contributors are.
Yep....
True, but.....
There are no white Charlie Parkers
There are no white Duke Ellingtons
There are no white Coleman Hawkins
This could be quite a list....
Without whom etc!
@@legrandmaitre7112 there's no black Billy Evans.... Cole Porter, Jobim.. just saying...
Till the 70s the greats were very largely black- since then, not so much- for me jazz has evolved to become a world lingua franca for improvising musicians. Black people may have the honour of largely launching it but it's not their possession any more- just like 'classical' music in reference to white westerners...
@@applegrovebard like I said jazz isn’t black.
And by the 70s there was hip hop and r&b taking center stage.
Again, neither black..
but just happen to be dominated by black artists.
Jazz has to leave empty sterile academia and return to the streets and to the pubs.
And people have to go out of their houses to the pubs
Alcohol is good for you. The more you drink the better the music sounds🍺🍺🍺 👍
Regarding your identity politics comment, unfortunately Duke Ellington came to prominence playing the Cotton Club ..
which was racially segregated.
We reap what we sow.
Please elaborate( I want to understand): I'm not sure to whom comment is made nor what your point is about Ellington.
@@BmakinFilm it’s easier for white people to dismiss the significance of race sometimes.
We don’t have to ignore someone’s race to acknowledge their greatness.
Duke composed music about black history and being black in America.
@@SmartDave60 Duke Ellington also wrote music and performed for the white audience's at the Cotton Club that he was hired to entertain - Duke wrote music for the experiences of Black Tan and White audiencesa and indeed for audiences of all colors! Jazz has its global appeal becuase the stories are universal. No one has to be of a particular color to enjoy, laugh, dance and cry to music of pain, joy, sorrow, suffering, healing and survivng and celebrating freedom and life...
@@BmakinFilm of course anyone can play or appreciate jazz.
It just annoyed me when Andy said he didn’t see a black person, he just saw Duke. Well it would have been grand if most people during Duke’s time (or even now) were that way.
Ugh. Two tiresome dudes splitting hairs in a way that starts to feel like a conversation with someone who insists “ALL lives matter”
I don't dig music that makes me think too much.
Its helpful to stop thinking jist before you hit the play button.
How dare you disrespect African American Musical heritage, by saying that it's blackwashed are you kidding me! Native American influence on Jazz was very subtle. Just like all the other influences..
This is one of the reasons why I have a very difficult time dealing with the fact that other people have come into black American culture. Pa
rticularly musical heritage Because they always try to change the fundamental history of it.
Jazz's African-American Roots
Did Native Americans have a major influence on jazz, or is jazz actually blackwashed, ... what a stupid statement!!!!!!
Jazz primarily originated and developed within the African-American communities in the United States, particularly in New Orleans, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While it's true that Native American, European, and other musical traditions influenced early jazz, the genre's core roots are in African musical traditions, African-American culture, and the unique social and historical context of the time.
African-Americans played a central role in shaping jazz, with figures like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Jelly Roll Morton making significant contributions. While there may have been some cross-cultural influences, the foundations of jazz are firmly rooted in African-American experiences and musical innovations.
It's essential to acknowledge the diverse cultural influences that contributed to jazz, but attributing jazz primarily to Native American influence would not accurately represent its historical development. Jazz is a complex and multifaceted genre that emerged from a rich blend of musical traditions, but its origins and driving force lie in the African-American community.
Jelly Roll Morton would not have considered himself Afro American, he was creole. Nobody was saying that Native Americans influence was primary. We were saying it was ignored. Black, White, Creole, Jews. Italians, Native Amercian all contributed to the creation of Jazz.
It is wrong to judge this history through the modern lens of identity politics. Which wants to negate the other contributions of other races except for Black contributions. This is treating people based up their race and is the same worldview that saw to negate Black people's contribution to American art and music when Jazz was first developed.
Your negation of other races contributions is disrespectful and shows a clear acceptance of the current dogma that is slowly pulling our culture back to a racially seperatist view of history which I find incredibly racist
@@AndyEdwardsDrummerno its not racist, it sounds racist? So! what you said was astoundingly offensive trying appropriate African American culture and identity, by trying to make it part of someone else's culture.
That is offensive. First of all my grandmother being a creole woman, their identity and how they identify themselves is an individual thing.
. Many of them identify themselves as part of the African-American strata others identify themselves as different it all depends. That's neither here nor there the fact of the matter is jelly roll Morton didn't come into jazz until later. But I digress!. You're not going to come on here and say that jazz is black washed. When actually it is whitewash, I can go to a jazz festival, or even a blues Festival and not see black people on stage and or in the audience. Most of black American music is Whitewash!
You not going to sit up here and try to literally push my community's cultural musical Heritage out of the African-American community to represent another group of people. it was created at the Congo Square during slavery..
Based on their style of Rhythm. musical Harmony, musical melody musical technique and black American Style improvisation..
You can like African-American music all you want. .. lots of white people do, but what you're not going to do is try to take away African American Heritage and try to claim it as your own. No I'm going to fight you on that one.....!
Music was everything to us, it was deeply rooted in our spirituality, it was resourceful it represented our pain and agony. how dare you say that I'm racist when I'm responding to your racist comment and statement! Knock it off! My ancestors are turning in their graves right now.
@@bobbyschannel349 I'm British and not a Jazz musician, so how am I claiming Jazz as mine. It belongs to no race. They were not playing Jazz in Congo Square, they were playing a reconstituted distant memory of African Music. Jazz is not played on African percussion, but orignated in marching bands, on instruments from the classical tradition and with an instrumental virtuosity that originated in the Creole Orchestras that emerged after the Civil War in New Orleans. It emerges out of The Blues, Ragtime, minstrelsy. African music plays a certain part in it's development. The Afro American experience is the heart that drives this music (as well as the blues) but it is the heritage of all Americans. Even Wynton Marsalis acknowledges this in a recent interview where he describes it as American music and lists the masters and originators as being both white and Black. Afro Americans should be proud of this music, and most of the best of all 20th Century Music but what you are doing is trying to make Jazz 'Black' music, ergo making Classical Music 'White'' music. It's seperatist and diminishes the true power of Jazz and the experience Afro Americans went through when it was being created. and threatening to fight someone on this shows that your opinions are already fixed. You believe I'm taking away from Black people but in reality I'm not going to play identity poltics. It's a dumb ideology.
I am out at 20 minutes in.
It got old fast. Bla bla…. Race this and that… bla bla… blacks have nothing to do with Jazz.
Indians were what? Living in Harlem?
This is the most awful thing I have seen on this channel.
I think “Jazz” has become a term with no meaning.
It is normal to qualify things in our collective experience.
Such as… to make up a name for what was happening in a specific time and place….
Manhattan in the 1940’s and 50’s . Maybe we can refer to it as Bebop.
I don’t know.
I could not finish watching this.
Ben did not Blacks had nothing to do with creating Jazz, he said the term was too broad to cover the races involved. If you do watch till the end our coclusion is pretty close to what your saying.
This is a bit more detailed as to what I was only hinting at in the video. Thanks for leaving a comment and engaging in the conversation.
From the time African slaves were first brought to serve the English colonists in 1619 until the abolition of slavery in 1863, Native American tribes protected and assimilated escaped slaves. In the American south these were, among others, the Seminoles, Chocktaws, Chickasaws and the most powerful tribe found between Florida and Texas, the Chitimacha who had a large presence in Louisiana . For over 250 years these escaped African slaves were living with Native Americans - eating, singing, dancing and mating - blending cultures and bloodlines such that by 1880 (around the time ragtime began mating with the blues... to give birth to what would finally be labeled "jazz" in Chicago in 1915) one fith of the enslaved population of New Orleans was mixed race: that means one out of five slaves ("Blacks") was a blend of African-diaspora and Native American which can include Mexican Indians as well... (Native
Indian culture had much in common with African culture, specifically in music: the importance of the drum, story telling through song, chant and dance with moans and scoops and improvisation often ascribed to the blues that informed jazz... ) This is the population out of which Buddy Bolden, for example, came.
Trumpeter Buddy Bolden is considered one of great early influencers in the rise of jazz, as is pianist Jelly Roll Morton (Jelly had a long list of the ragmen who influenced him...) although Jelly was Creole (Women btw are rarely listed : i begin to correct for that in my
next film by crediting Smith, Armstrong and Hunter as mentioned below.)
Creoles are people born of French ("White") and Spanish (what color are Spaniards?) blood mixed with peoples from the African-diasphora... Many Creoles were wealthy slave owners themselves having come to New Orleans from Haiti (Saint Domingue) via Cuba. They were francophiles: they spoke french, were literate, had "politcal power and social prestige" (David Ake, "Blue Horizon") studied classical music (on violin, piano, woodwinds etc) they were members of symphonies, they were business owners and, while in Haiti (all French colonies), under the code noir were granted status as French subjects if and when freed. (The code noir was instituted by King Louis XIV in 1685 and actually increasesd the number of freed slaves in the french colonies... code
noir also kicked out all jews from french colonies as well - another story but what an irony: a French King passing edicts to protect black slaves while punishing white jews...all to protect the sugar trade...) The Creole's were a different race and class of people (literate, mixed race francophile slave owners from Haiti, with Cuban influences) then the enslaved pooulation in America- they fought hard to maintain their (former) social status as very disticnt from the plantation slaves (field slaves "blacks") and they self-identified as distinctly "not black" ... Most Creoles considered themselves more French then brown or black.
We have this wonderful American roots music (jazz,) coming to fruition through the influence of "Blacks" (many of whom we now know are of mixed race w Native Americans...) and of Creoles (French, Spanish, African)... along with the many other cultural influences present in the port city of New Orleans and surrounding territories.
It is simply irresponsible and hugely disrespectful to erase and exclude the contributions and influence of minority and underrepresented voices from other cultures around the world that were present in America during the development of jazz by grouping all of these people together and calling them "black", or by calling these many cultures "black culture". This has been done by knowledgable and influential historians (some black like Eileen Southern) and continues today with the charming utterances of (black) master musician Wynton Marsalis. To do so is a form of what I called "blackwashing" in this interview with Andy. I would like to hear Wynton address this as well as his failure to include some of the women who helped shape jazz music like Mamie Smith, Lil Hardin Armstrong and Alberta Hunter (all big influences on Louis Armstrong), and his lack of programming women at his Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC).
My next film (We Are Here: Women In Jazz) will examine the role of women in jazz past and present through the voices and music of both men and women.
@@BmakinFilm thank you for the reply and explanation. I have a couple of questions.
Do you play a musical instrument, and have you any compositions I could find on the internet? I am very interested.
@@BmakinFilm I have found a a small clip of you playing.
Is honestly very good. But maybe not created by you, perhaps just a Whitewashing of Max Roach.
@@johannhauffman323 That is funny! good sense of humor you have. My influences are more krupa, jo jones, art blakey (who i met and spoke with a couple times), joe morello and elvin jones whom i also met. Interstingly enouf Johann I was first mentored by and then hired by Max Roach's pianist Billy Wallace. I played with Billy Wallace for a few years every weekend. Wallace is profiled in my first movie JazzTown. He plays piano on Max Roach album Jazz In 3/4 Time.
Jazz is alive and well. What's on life support is your misinformed and sensationalized headlines.
Don't lie to make money. Get a job instead. Or work for Fox. They appreciate what you do.
You do not have to protect the honour of Jazz. It owes you nothing and you owe it nothing. If it is alive and well state your reasons why you think it is the case. And perhaps watch the video to find out what that title refers to. Or perhaps your absolute moral position means you don't have to? Sounds like a recipe for misinformation and sensationalisation to me.
It's post Modern academic contemporary, built on post mortem diagnosis. Not lived.
Jazz IS Modern music. It seeks Universals, not contemporary parochial. It Must return to the primitive as Modern art did. The Blues is the foundation and where truth is tested. It breaks through accumulated irrelevant decorations. It Must swing. Not like a Dorsey. Pulse, be horni. Sexuality is fundamental. Academia is sterile, it gives birth to nothing but apologia's to its patrons. The enemy.
The headline says everything I needed to know.
@@MJ1 I guess the covers of all the books is enough to consider them read?