R3 Sunday "Hitting the High Notes" : Modern Jazz and Heroin

[Ian Thumwood]

" I would suggest that the harmonic language of players like Mike Brecker or Pat Metheny are far more sophisticated than what went on in the late 50's..."

Yes, but at the risk of being "vulger-jazzist", who gives a fuck if it doesn't connect emotionally and artistically? Are Bechet's records to be discarded or sneered at from high because he's not quite up there " harmonically" with the 2017 wonderkind, the 2016 being passé already, in the death of history school. Do people really listen to Parker and think, if only he'd been a bit more well, "sophisticated". This way lies madness and defeats the entire object of what " art", any art, in any form, is about.
Time I departed from this monastery and its "canting priests".

BN.

Bluesnik


Which is essentially what I had been saying in my earlier posts. The problem for me with a lot of the jazz that has emerged since the 2000's is that there is now a generation of players for whom be-bop is irrelevant. I don't necessarily buy in to the idea that the emotional and artistic element within the music has vanished with the passage of time but I think that there is now a significant proportion of "jazz" being hyped at the moment that owes little to be-bop. Pick up a magazine like "Jazzwise" and see just how much "straight ahead" jazz is being played now. I am sure that I had mentioned before that at a workshop about 5-6 years ago a European jazz musician who now records for ECM declaring that Bop was dead and went on to cite a Heavy Metal group as a bigger influence - and this is coming from a musician who is getting positive attention and , if recollection serves me correct, has even been lauded on this board by Alyn. Needless to say, I am not a fan in the least.

In a nutshell, I concur with SA's comment about jazz needing to move on and evolve. However, my point is that I am not convinced by the direction taken by many younger players. Somewhere along the line, I feel that jazz has taken a wrong turn. Whereas contemporary jazz used to be something that was a challenge and offered the possibility of danger, so much in 2017 just makes me shrug my shoulders. You are incorrect to dismiss Brecker and Metheny who were just random examples of harmonically sophisticated players. I think the issues facing jazz at the moment are fundamental. It is not a simple question of younger players being technically brilliant yet soulless. I don't accept that position . There were plenty of players in this position in the 1950s such as Oscar Peterson who I find pretty uninvolving most of the time although better as a solo artist. What I think is happening in this century is a disconnect with the "jazz tradition" and the notion of individual expression favoured by musicians of Moore's generation who felt liberated by Charlie Parker no longer really chimes with musicians who probably have come up through listening to EDM for example. If you like, musicians being technically equipped is a given these days and I think they are probably better able to articulate themselves through composition as well. Picking up R Cartes, argument it is shame that players like Eager and Moore have fallen by the wayside just as an earlier generation of players such as Frankie Trumbuaer have vanished from the perception of the contemporary jazz audience. I am not saying that this is right. What audiences and musicians alike now seem to be looking for seem to be differing values from the generation of the 1940's. There is no "shock of the new" anymore.