Has jazz run its course?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Do black or working-class people still listen to, or create, jazz in any form? Is it still of much importance outside selected American and Western European urban centers? Its period of 'universality' in that sense seems to be anything but enduring, unless 'universal' is simply being used as synonymous with 'white, bourgeois European(-descended)' as it usually is these days—which I doubt is what you meant.

Yes
Yes
& Global not universal

significant jazz interest and activities in Asia; and performers reflect the cities and communities they live in

jazz has a claim to be the most global multi-ethnic art on the planet just not big

i feel rather uneasy about your post kea; what are you trying to say?

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

I think he's expressing a degree of scepticism that jazz has any real purchase on and in the current "working class"? Despite it being the "healing force of the universe" and other neo hippy drivel. All we need is one big melting pot with jazz as the stock cube...

Now playing...Johnny Burnette, "Dreamin'"

BN.

[hedgehog]

Ahem, kea is a she (last frontier & all that ).

[burning dog]

I think he's expressing a degree of scepticism that jazz has any real purchase on and in the current "working class"? Despite it being the "healing force of the universe" and other neo hippy drivel. All we need is one big melting pot with jazz as the stock cube...

Now playing...Johnny Burnette, "Dreamin'"

BN.

but what do people mean by "working class" these days ( I think fewer and fewer people own the means of production other than via pension funds), and what music DOES have a purchase? Going my those of my work colleagues who are studiously worker-ist it's still bloody Oasis, who were like cartoon plebs. When i worked in London, Reggae, Neo-soul and House/Dance etc. were the popular genres. In darkest Dorset there are more hip-hop fans than in Harlesden NW10 "I do be likin' that Gangstrr Rap"

Go figure! as our American cousins say

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Well, if you're saying we are now all a part of the "99%" or 90% depending on what Owen Jones and the Guardianista left are peddling this week, I don't buy it. Nor the avoiding the issue guff about a common precariat by "concerned" academics with a hundred times the tenure and security of a shelf filler.

As for "music", once it did have a significant role in people's lives (and esp. youth movements) as identity and depth. Now its wallpaper. Downloadable white bread. Neo liberalism like all capital-isms produces/reduces a population in its own image and requirements. Rap fits that too.

So where's the "agency" of social change? Castrated or kettled.

BN.

Apologies to kea above. They only let me up from the pits on weekends.

[Richard Barrett]

the "healing force of the universe" and other neo hippy drivel.

It certainly didn't heal Mr Ayler, hence the irony you may have missed.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Irony in the soul. Wastn't all that stuff from Maria?

BN.

[burning dog]

I have no idea what they say in the Guardian as I only stump up 30p for the i and still curse at it at, at one time I only shouted at TV!***

Wondered where Owen Jones had gone.

Of course 90 % are not working class but the old "Blue Collar" stereotype is not tenable either as there are hardly any Blue Collar jobs. I'd bet that most of the audience at mainstream jazz gigs are "lower middle class" ie. earn F...All money but are white collar workers. Or more likely USED to earn F All money when they were under 60


PS I've given up reading the New Statesman in the library, shouting in there was causing problems.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

I have no idea what they say in the Guardian as I only stump up 30p for the i and still curse at it at, at one time I only shouted at TV!***

Wondered where Owen Jones had gone.

Of course 90 % are not working class but the old "Blue Collar" stereotype is not tenable either as there are hardly any Blue Collar jobs. I'd bet that most of the audience at mainstream jazz gigs are "lower middle class" ie. earn F...All money but are white collar workers. Or more likely USED to earn F All money when they were under 60


PS I've given up reading the New Statesman in the library, shouting in there was causing problems.

I used wake up with clenched fingers after listening to R4s World Tonight! The fkg rage. I even went to my doctor as I thought I had ARFORIGHTUS! After switching off BBC news and Currents for good, I can again play the guitar like Wes.

I think Owen Jones is the new Polly Toynbee. Or new leader of the Scottish rump Labour Party. Or both.

BN.

[charles t]

Economics, jazztistically speaking:

How do you make a million dollars playing jazz????????????

First, you start out with two million...

[Tenor Freak]

Clearly not - jazz is what it is and will carry on doing so.

Then again - what's the point of Thursday?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

... it comes before Friday

[Pianorak]

Jazz with architecture (Kirsty Young's guest Roger Graef on DI discs today re Beethoven sonatas)

[Tom Audustus]

Finding I'm almost completely out of sympathy with pretty much everything that's happening in jazz now (apart from a few shining lights like the work of Keith Jarrett), I'm beginning to wonder whether jazz development has run its course and has become, well, pretty pointless.

I've been thinking this for some time, but this line of thought was really brought to a head by the Joe Lovano concert at the Barbican a few months back. I'm an admirer of Lovano, and even more so of Jack DeJohnette, that rare thing a truly musical drummer. But the concert was ruined for me by some really awful thrashing around by DeJohnette. The other musicians weren't up to much that night, and generally the experience was a total pain in the ear.

Anyway, here's my personal take on it. Jazz has gone through what for classical music was a five-century (give or take the odd century) journey, in less than 50 years. From, say, Freddie Keppard to early Coltrane before he forgot how to end solos, jazz went through a phenomenal development process. But, starting with the later Coltrane, I have to wonder where it's going; jazz rock/fusion was a wholly unnecessary diversion, "free jazz" likewise, and everything else seems just to be a reframing of what went before: if I had a quid for every Coltrane copyist I've had to endure, I'd be very well off indeed.

So where is jazz going, if anywhere? In this, I suppose it mirrors where classical is also (not) going, and visual art likewise, as witness the paeans of praise heaped on the sh1te of Tracey Emin's latest exhibition - about which (the horror! the horror!) I find I'm on the same side as ... the Daily Mail. Oh dear.

All very depressing; am I just the 21st century equivalent of a mouldy figge? That's rather a dismal prospect, but I find I'm increasingly drawn back to what for me was the real golden era of jazz, from, say, Bix Beiderbecke to Clifford Brown. Perhaps I should just try to get out more....

Oh dear. Jazz is dead again !!!

[Ian Thumwood]

Reasons to be cheerful:-

Piano ~ Keith Jarrett, Paul Bley, Bob Stenson, Vijay Iyer, Jason Moran, John Escreet, John Medeski, Herbie Hancock, Danilo Perez, Eri Yamamoto, Craig Taborn, etc


Bass ~ William Parker, Dave Holland, Jason Roebke, John Pattitucci, Tarus Mateen,

Drums ~ Eric Harland, Jack DeJohnette, Nasheet Waits, Frank Rosaly, Clarence Penn, Hamid Drake, Peter Erskine, Jaimeo Brown, etc

Trumpet / cornet ~ Ambrose Akinmusire, Dave Douglas, Roy Hargrove, Peter Evans, Tomasz Stanko, Josh Berman, etc

Tenor ~ Chris Potter, Joe Lovano, Branford Marsalis, Keefe Jackson, David Murray, Ken Vandermark, Ari Brown, J D Allen, David Sanchez,

Alto - Kenny Garrett, David Binney, Rob Brown, Matana Roberts, Miguel Zenon, Sonny Simmons, Tim Berne, etc

Trombone ~ Jeb Bishop, Ray Anderson, Alan Ferner, Robin Eubanks, etc, etc

It's amazing how anyone can suggest that jazz is dead!