Anthony Braxton - Jazz on 3

[Guest]

Was I captured by aliens and taken in their time machine back to the 1960's? It sounded like it.

Someone needs to remind Mr Braxton that:

It makes no difference
If it's sweet or hot
Just give that rhythm
Everything you've got
It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing

[Serial_Apologist]

Was I captured by aliens and taken in their time machine back to the 1960's? It sounded like it.

Someone needs to remind Mr Braxton that:

It makes no difference
If it's sweet or hot
Just give that rhythm
Everything you've got
It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing

And what year was that said?

[Serial_Apologist]

Saying it ain't jazz if it don't swing conveys a simplistic view of "swing", imv, one that at one time wouldn't have embraced anything beyond 4/4 metre as a basis from which to swing, rather in the same way some classical music listeners are uncomfortable if harmony doesn't resolve every three bars or so. That would have killed the "Tristan und Isolde" prelude stone dead within about two minutes, let alone the second, the most traditional-sounding, of Schoenberg's 5 Orchestral Pieces of 1909.

Music evolves, like civilisation. If it ain't evolving, it's because neither is civilisation, I reckon - what doesn't evolve soon regresses.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

this prog is also discussed here and you may wish to peruse the 'Jazz is Dead' Thread or mebbe not ...

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

The "jazz is dead thread" is...dead.

No flowers please but donations to the "Build Better Banjos Project" will be much appreciated. Help our young people learn the value of tradition.

BN.

I'd like to hear Braxton try to play his windy abstractions on a tenor banjo...whilst pouring beer into the piano...

[Serial_Apologist]

The "jazz is dead thread" is...dead.

No flowers please but donations to the "Build Better Banjos Project" will be much appreciated. Help our young people learn the value of tradition.

BN.

I'd like to hear Braxton try to play his windy abstractions on a tenor banjo...whilst pouring beer into the piano...

From a Punch 1964 cartoon:

One guy sat on top of an upright piano is playing the keyboard with sink plungers, tied to his legs. The other guy says, "It's no use, man - you still come out sounding trad".

[Tom Audustus]

Saying it ain't jazz if it don't swing conveys a simplistic view of "swing", imv, one that at one time wouldn't have embraced anything beyond 4/4 metre as a basis from which to swing, rather in the same way some classical music listeners are uncomfortable if harmony doesn't resolve every three bars or so. That would have killed the "Tristan und Isolde" prelude stone dead within about two minutes, let alone the second, the most traditional-sounding, of Schoenberg's 5 Orchestral Pieces of 1909.

Music evolves, like civilisation. If it ain't evolving, it's because neither is civilisation, I reckon - what doesn't evolve soon regresses.

I've always been very partial to a touch of Schoenberg, Webern or Stockhausen, Berio or Boulez particularly live performances, but this struck me as a very second rate 60s avant-garde music. But this was the sort of stuff I used to go along and listen to at those student lunchtime recitals at University and now makes me smile at the naivete of youth. This wasn't progress it was regression !

As for the 4/4 comments, well we all know its perfectly possible to swing in 5/4 !!!

[Tom Audustus]

this prog is also discussed here and you may wish to peruse the 'Jazz is Dead' Thread or mebbe not ...

Why is jazz said to be dead when one can attend pub mid-week jam sessions with good musicians, young and old wanting to get up and play and the bar is full of people tapping their feet and showing appreciation for well played improv over standards?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Why is jazz said to be dead when one can attend pub mid-week jam sessions with good musicians, young and old wanting to get up and play and the bar is full of people tapping their feet and showing appreciation for well played improv over standards?

dunno ... beats me innit

[Quarky]

I've always been very partial to a touch of Schoenberg, Webern or Stockhausen, Berio or Boulez particularly live performances, but this struck me as a very second rate 60s avant-garde music. But this was the sort of stuff I used to go along and listen to at those student lunchtime recitals at University and now makes me smile at the naivete of youth. This wasn't progress it was regression !

Well it's not Jazz as we know it Jim. But it would not be out of place in Hear and Now. Contemporary music - improv. A mistake to look for "identifying characteristics" of Jazz.

Whether it's regression or not I wouldn't know. The new commissions at the Proms always get rubbished - but someone must love them.

I didn't have any difficulty listening to it - which for contemporary music is quite a positive statement!

[Serial_Apologist]

Well it's not Jazz as we know it Jim. But it would not be out of place in Hear and Now. Contemporary music - improv. A mistake to look for "identifying characteristics" of Jazz.

Whether its regression or not I wouldn't know. The new commissions at the Proms always get rubbished - but someone must love them.

I didn't have any difficulty listening to it - which for contemporary music is quite a positive statement!

It doesn't take much effort to reap rewards. The pre-discussion between Braxton and his co-creators was hilarious at times. Our Ingrid held her own, as I would have expected, and one sensed a warm conviviality that is more prevalent at gigs of this sort of music than reputations often suggest.

[Ian Thumwood]

Well I listened to the interview and thought that they were all talking b****cks so then fast-forwarded to the music itself. Unfortunately I was busy working on a spreadsheet and the music was giving me a headache so I turned it off.

Braxton is a strange one. Everything I read about him suggests a really intelligent bloke on a quest to look at music in a new light yet the results aren't so much as difficult as being impossible to judge as to whether it is a brilliant performance or total nonsense. For me, I can't hear if Braxton is putting in the euqivalent of a Coltrane-esque "A love supreme" or whether the results are littered with mistakes and badly performed. I can't get my head around whether he is playing his music well or adequately. How do you judge an excellent performance by this musician?

The big problem with Braxton is that you can write him off quite easily as a charlatan and then you hear something like the clip Calum posted in duet with Ran Blake and you think the results aren't too bad. When it comes to his own music, it doesn't help that his groups include the like of the cool and uninteresting Ingrid Laubrook as well as the truly woeful guitarist Mary Holversen. The latter is a musician I would dearly love to appreciate but everly time I hear her I just can't understand what the fuss is about. If you want to hear what a guitar is capable of in this century then I suggest you listen to the music on the "jazz solo" series that features Bill Frisell. This is probably the most "outside" and inventive thing I've heard him perform (miles better than anything he has put out on CD under his own name for nearly 20 years ) and it is streets away from MH in being "innovative. There are loads of really talented women in jazz at this point in time yet she seems to get more plaudits than anyone else from "serious" critics. It baffles me why she has such a reputation other than the fact that she is photogenic.

I must admit that I am becoming a convert to the Chicargo Jazz scene from which Braxton emerged yet as great as some of the music produced by the likes of AEoC, Fred Anderson, Jeff Parker and Nicole Mitchell is, AB's doesn't seem to hang together. I'm afraid it leaves me totally cold and is just the kind of thing that puts people exploring more adventurous music. Having almost continually played the Nicole Mitchell CD to death over the past 6 weeks, I much prefer his approach to jazz in contrast to Braxton's pursuit of music that is stuck in a 1960's Classic time-wharp.