Busting myths in jazz history

[RichardB]

I happen to think celebrity consequent on the influence he exercised on New Age thinking turned his head somewhat in later life; his ideas became somewhat reductive and over-formulated in later writings and presentations.

Thanks for the pointers. Maybe I don't need to acquaint myself with his writings after all! I've listened to a couple of those videos. His voice is so hypnotic you soon forget what he's talking about! - but maybe that's not completely counter to his message. I suppose what you're saying is that being in touch with one's intuition is all very well but it's a starting point, from which one can contract into a kind of solipsistic pseudo-Buddhist reverie, or on the other hand expand towards empathy with one's fellow humans, which is as I understand it what Buddha was actually on about.

[Serial_Apologist]

I think by drugs he's referring to mostly heroin. And he comes across as open and honest about it - at the end admitting what musical-perceptual advantage might be gained from experience with drugs, saying that any such advantage remains after the experience is over (which chimes with what Richard B said above) and that similar effects can be achieved with meditation, which I agree with.

The very point I alluded to above.

Personally I never liked heroin, which I smoked from a pipe, since it would just make me fall asleep then vomit for hours after waking up. Stimulants on the other hand I greatly enjoyed owing to their enhancing effect on one's concentration and perception not to mention the incredible amounts of euphoria that could be involved. Cannabis depending on set and setting, but daily use i.e. addiction laid the ground for psychosis. Psychedelic could be nice albeit heavily muted for me owing to use of antipsychotics.

I gave up on The Weed when, after some 3 years' fairly heavy use, I began to experience mild paranoid symptoms and obsessions as to whether cannabis was helpful or actually over-controlling the benefits conferred. This was years before the prevalence today of Skunk, which is anywhere and everywhere. It scares me while cycling tbh to smell it coming from open car windows in passing traffic! I now go for "natural highs" - music, woodland walks, the "vibes" that seem to reside in certain places, even churches! There's a "discipline" - focusing fullest possible in on the "now" as in all details too precious to miss, treating all the senses to the environment as a sort of Gesamtkunstwerk, At a certain point biological needs may intervene and near-goal necessities dictate primacy of thinking processes over sensations, hastening the pace home for a much wished-for cup of tea or just a lie down; but it is surprising how often I maintain a slow leisurely pace, taking everything in, even as I walk back up the garden path, luxuriating in the sound and sensation of turning key in lock! I find I can then go without music or indeed external stimulus of any kind until basic appetites take over. I'm even given to thinking when re-setting or recalibrating my mindset in this way I might be adding my bit to eco-consciousness!

[RichardB]

Sometimes this room descends in to a kind 1970s Open University discussion group with more interest in things which are purely philosophical as opposed to real. I am much more inclined to listen to genuine analytical assessments than stuff which is subjective and will differ for each individual. This is especially the case where backed up with this like empirical data or good research. Sometimes this room is prone to too much beard scratching

I think you may be mistaking this forum for your own personal echo chamber.

[Ian Thumwood]

RB

Thanks for your ever helpful comment.

In all seriousness and setting differences aside, most of the posts on this thread are not on topic. Not quite sure how the conversation has mutated from discussing historical context of jazz recordings to Buddhism and the benefits of recreational drugs. Having read the initial article, thistorical context seemed to be the main thrust of the argument.

I think there tends to be an issue in this room that threads that are independent to the ongoing 'what are you listening to ' variety or what is featured on this week's radio programmes always seem to end up discussing the same philosophical issues. It is really repetitive. I end up counting how many posts in it will be before Joe mentions John Coltrane !

In ith3 boards original form in early 2000s off topic posts were modded. As I said on the other thread, I wonder how many people in here are genuine jazz fans. I love the confrontation and contrasting views and happy to spar with anyone. However I think the room.is becoming very predictable and homogenous. As I said, it is becoming like Open University in here. I think I have skipped about 50 % of the stuff you , Joe and sometimes SA write. It is just the same stuff being churned out week after week. The same musicians, the same academics quoted and the same agendas requoted.

Maybe the mods can set up.a jazz and philosophy thread to keep this kind of chat there ? Originally this room was great for discussing musicians and records with the consequence of helping me explore stuff I was unfamiliar with. Bluesnik, Elmo , Bruce and Jazzrook are the only ones regularly writing about jazz in here. I feel the threads are be becoming really repetitive . In the past a musician could be the subject of a lengthy thread themselves. That rarely happens now .

In my opinion I do not see this as an echo chamber but indicative that maybe this stuff belongs in a music philosophy room and not the Jass Bored. Is this something the Mods could implement?

[Ein Heldenleben]

Not sure drug taking should really be lauded in this chat room. Never done drugs and not really a bit consumer of alcohol but I think the Evans anecdote underscores the reality of drugs on performance and how this differs frim the user's perceptions. In the case of Bill Evans , I am really put off by his later stuff and always wondered how much was improvised and how much was premeditated. The later recordings are erratic but not in the way that makes someone like Bud Powell interesting.

It is a shame that the initial article had to pick up on drugs when there is so much more informed research about jazz which is 'good history writing and strips the narrative away from cliche into something that is more nuanced. Sometimes this room descends in to a kind 1970s Open University discussion group with more interest in things which are purely philosophical as opposed to real. I am much more inclined to listen to genuine analytical assessments than stuff which is subjective and will differ for each individual. This is especially the case where backed up with this like empirical data or good research. Sometimes this room is prone to too much beard scratching

I don’t think any one on this thread is endorsing drug use. Incidentally the Open University has some of the highest pre -publication vetting of any organisation I’ve dealt with. All their tv scripts were checked and signed off by two academics and all their internal course material used to be (and I suspect still is ) signed off by more or less the entire staff on that module. It’s exceptionally rigorous.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

There should be extensive drug testing before people are allowed to post here. The residual and long term effects of teenage drug use obviously colour critical judgements. In my case it was Dexedrine etc which I took to keep awake all night and all weekend but I now realise warped and solidified my musical tastes into 60s bebop. Too late now.

And to be provocative 🤫 there's the story of an ardent fan going up to Duke Ellington after a concert, I think sometime in the late 40s, and demanding to know who played third trumpet on some deeply obscure record. An exasperated Ellington replied, "Look, what you see here is just fifteen men trying to make a living!" It's not always great conscious art, it's also entertainment and hence paying the necessary way.

[Ian Thumwood]

There should be extensive drug testing before people are allowed to post here. The residual and long term effects of teenage drug use obviously colour critical judgements. In my case it was Dexedrine etc which I took to keep awake all night and all weekend but I now realise warped and solidified my musical tastes into 60s bebop. Too late now.

And to be provocative 🤫 there's the story of an ardent fan going up to Duke Ellington after a concert, I think sometime in the late 40s, and demanding to know who played third trumpet on some deeply obscure record. An exasperated Ellington replied, "Look, what you see here is just fifteen men trying to make a living!" It's not always great conscious art, it's also entertainment and hence paying the necessary way.

That made me smile !

I think one of the best writers in jazz was the late Gene Lees. He was conservative in his tastes but nailed the description of bop musicians in 'Meet me in Jim & Andy's. ' Having hung out with those musicians who shaped jazz in the 50s and 60s I think his writing is a much better example of how ' jazz worked ' than the article in the original post. The reality is far more exciting than the myths.

[Ian Thumwood]

I don’t think any one on this thread is endorsing drug use. Incidentally the Open University has some of the highest pre -publication vetting of any organisation I’ve dealt with. All their tv scripts were checked and signed off by two academics and all their internal course material used to be (and I suspect still is ) signed off by more or less the entire staff on that module. It’s exceptionally rigorous.

I was thinking along the lines of the OU pastiche from' Life on Mars ' I am sure the courses are rigorous but felt the tone of the thread was starting to merit a degree of ridicule itself.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I was thinking along the lines of the OU pastiche from' Life on Mars ' I am sure the courses are rigorous but felt the tone of the thread was starting to merit a degree of ridicule itself.

Ah I thought you were slipping into the lazy portmanteau use of Open University to mean boring , modishly left wing and of footling pointlessness. While those qualities are , from time to time , evident in the forum it doesn’t square with my professional experience of the OU - an organisation I hold in high regard. One sadly that our contemporary politicians would be completely incapable of creating.

[Serial_Apologist]

There should be extensive drug testing before people are allowed to post here. The residual and long term effects of teenage drug use obviously colour critical judgements. In my case it was Dexedrine etc which I took to keep awake all night and all weekend but I now realise warped and solidified my musical tastes into 60s bebop. Too late now.

And to be provocative 🤫 there's the story of an ardent fan going up to Duke Ellington after a concert, I think sometime in the late 40s, and demanding to know who played third trumpet on some deeply obscure record. An exasperated Ellington replied, "Look, what you see here is just fifteen men trying to make a living!" It's not always great conscious art, it's also entertainment and hence paying the necessary way.

[Joseph K]

I gave up on The Weed when, after some 3 years' fairly heavy use, I began to experience mild paranoid symptoms and obsessions as to whether cannabis was helpful or actually over-controlling the benefits conferred. This was years before the prevalence today of Skunk, which is anywhere and everywhere. It scares me while cycling tbh to smell it coming from open car windows in passing traffic! I now go for "natural highs" - music, woodland walks, the "vibes" that seem to reside in certain places, even churches! There's a "discipline" - focusing fullest possible in on the "now" as in all details too precious to miss, treating all the senses to the environment as a sort of Gesamtkunstwerk, At a certain point biological needs may intervene and near-goal necessities dictate primacy of thinking processes over sensations, hastening the pace home for a much wished-for cup of tea or just a lie down; but it is surprising how often I maintain a slow leisurely pace, taking everything in, even as I walk back up the garden path, luxuriating in the sound and sensation of turning key in lock! I find I can then go without music or indeed external stimulus of any kind until basic appetites take over. I'm even given to thinking when re-setting or recalibrating my mindset in this way I might be adding my bit to eco-consciousness!

Very eloquently put, regarding treating the objects of one's senses as a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk in the right sort of environment - and the rest of this post too. Very good. And savour your cup of tea - I can't have caffeine these days.

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks for the pointers. Maybe I don't need to acquaint myself with his writings after all! I've listened to a couple of those videos. His voice is so hypnotic you soon forget what he's talking about! - but maybe that's not completely counter to his message. I suppose what you're saying is that being in touch with one's intuition is all very well but it's a starting point, from which one can contract into a kind of solipsistic pseudo-Buddhist reverie, or on the other hand expand towards empathy with one's fellow humans, which is as I understand it what Buddha was actually on about.

Contrary to any notion of solipsism, meditative means can engender a feeling of connectedness or inseparability, empathy being the concomitant. It is really qualitatively no different from any experience in which sense of isolated self or separation dissolves. As such it might be considered politically or morally neutral although I prefer to think of meditational practices in terms of a safe prequel or precondition of empathy (as opposed to "this is what you're supposed to feel by following x doctrine"), given that (a) by starting out with attention focus on deep breathing or other stimuli in the sensory environment one is not subjecting oneself to risks of any kind; and (b) avoiding the trap of external control, which is so often used politically for purposes of manipulation. One of the more positive things about jazz in particular lies in its capacity for engendering a spontaneity-centred convivial sense of being at one - very important in Zen philosophy with its emphasis on trusting to inner processes. Jazz ideals accord primacy to musician and musician/audience feedback combined with appeal at all response levels. In an ideal performance context I cannot think of any other contemporary form of musical expression that at its best quite does this to an equivalent degree.

[Serial_Apologist]

One thing I would just like to add to the discussion about inclusiveness. I feel that to limit discussion about so rich a vein of cultural expression in any way is to diminish jazz by putting it into a box. Jazz is too open to the possibilities its progenitors have drawn for our benefit from processing experience into convivial possibilities beyond divisions of ethnicity, power and belief to allow for limitations on what anyone can say about it.

[RichardB]

Contrary to any notion of solipsism, meditative means can engender a feeling of connectedness or inseparability,

Yes, I wasn't talking about what meditation actually is, but about how a fashion for "mindfulness" can be diverted into disengagement from the rest of humanity.

Jazz ideals accord primacy to musician and musician/audience feedback combined with appeal at all response levels. In an ideal performance context I cannot think of any other contemporary form of musical expression that at its best quite does this to an equivalent degree.

Aren't you being a bit essentialist about "jazz" here? I don't think that what you describe is limited to one particular musical style/tradition, or, to put it another way, I think what you call "jazz ideals" - for example "a spontaneity-centred convivial sense of being at one" - could be better described as "musical ideals", which may or may not be realised in any given performance of jazz or any other music. Bill Evans' "just deal with it", as quoted by Bluesnik, seems diametrically at odds with them. Also, a sense of spontaneity in one's response to music as a listener doesn't necessarily arise as a simple consequence of whatever supposed spontaneity there might be in the musical performance itself, even assuming (which I don't!) that this can be accurately assessed while listening. And lastly, most of us have learned much of what we know and feel about jazz from recordings (rather than live performances), where the spontaneity is so to speak at one remove, and where an improvised performance is just as "fixed" as any highly determined composition. Surely what you're talking about has more to do with just being open to the musical moment, if that isn't too clumsy a way of saying it, whether that moment is being improvised in the same room as you, or improvised 60 years ago on another continent, or painstakingly composed and interpreted.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, I wasn't talking about what meditation actually is, but about how a fashion for "mindfulness" can be diverted into disengagement from the rest of humanity.

I can see what you mean when it comes to the current fashion for "mindfulness" as a way of merely coping with the situation which mindfulness is being co-opted as a substitute for engagement and change, but Zen training aims to impart a wider scope of values in tandem, and in any case disengaging from humanity would be in direct contradiction with engagement with what is to hand, as it were...

Aren't you being a bit essentialist about "jazz" here?

Yes, probably I am!

I don't think that what you describe is limited to one particular musical style/tradition, or, to put it another way, I think what you call "jazz ideals" - for example "a spontaneity-centred convivial sense of being at one" - could be better described as "musical ideals", which may or may not be realised in any given performance of jazz or any other music. Bill Evans' "just deal with it", as quoted by Bluesnik, seems diametrically at odds with them.

Well there is the question of unintended consequences, explanatory purposes for which Zen has a tradition of "parables" in which awful traumatic and even cruel things sometimes provide triggers. There is the whole business of not intending to intend and so on which has a bearing on this. Bill Evans's harsh injunction could have an unintended beneficial effect on the recipient, though speaking as one who is probably not the best exemplar of diplomacy there may be other kinder ways of conveying the message!

Also, a sense of spontaneity in one's response to music as a listener doesn't necessarily arise as a simple consequence of whatever supposed spontaneity there might be in the musical performance itself, even assuming (which I don't!) that this can be accurately assessed while listening. And lastly, most of us have learned much of what we know and feel about jazz from recordings (rather than live performances), where the spontaneity is so to speak at one remove, and where an improvised performance is just as "fixed" as any highly determined composition. Surely what you're talking about has more to do with just being open to the musical moment, if that isn't too clumsy a way of saying it, whether that moment is being improvised in the same room as you, or improvised 60 years ago on another continent, or painstakingly composed and interpreted.

Well I tend to trust in my intuitions when it comes to detecting degrees of unpremeditativeness, irrespective of whether given performances are in-studio or live in front of audiences. There's what one might describe as a sense of flow in the finest of them - what in another context Cage quotes Suzuki as describing as "unimpededness and interpenetration". This can come fortuitously at any point - again, Watts speaks of "beginner's luck", of the literal or metaphoric archer blindly hitting the bullseye with her first shot - and then being unable to repeat the action by careful deliberation because the processes of feedback have been gummed up through excessive self-consciousness. Jazz mastery, often attained slowly and with effort, seems to find its greatest fulfilment when commitment and "chemistry" coincide, and my own view is that in jazz idiom and propitiousness combine more than in any other musical "genre" or practice to make this possible, and everything, external pressures to inner capacities, is thrown into the mix. It can always be argued of course that the "detached" composer at his or her "score" is best placed for receptivity. Given that jazz is equally capable of calling on a broad range of musical means, the main difference consists in that it happens quicker than interpretation or rationalisation allow, and this accounts for its impact. I know how difficult reviewing gigs can be - have I missed some crucial juncture in my write-up? Reflection comes later: whether in tranquillity or not is another matter!