Why don't jazzers record pop tunes any more?

[burning dog]

Ian

Aren't you pointing out a musical incompatibility rather than making a case against "music based on loops" in general?

[Ian Thumwood]

BD

I just get infuriated with music that oges nowhere or does nothing. This kind of stuff seems quite fashionable these days but it really is a case of Emperor's new clothes. I was staggered by this album as it is such a let down after McCaslin's previous offering. If he continues at this rate, he will probably end on an a label like ACT. Jazz shouldn't be boring and the BoC track is contrary, in my opinion, to everything to what jazz should be about.

Hopefully someone can explain what is so interesting about this record.

[Beef Oven!]

Agree with that. Categories are for the record rack. And rock music is an utterly bankrupt genre.

Note to self 'throw away Laibach CDs'

[Quarky]

One of the things I always liked about jass was the fact that its practitioners could wring new meaning out of pop tunes: extracting gold from dross, you might say. But I'm not aware of much activity on that front of late - though that probably has more to do with my own ignorance. Has St. Sonny recorded a version of "Wonderwall" or "Hit Me Baby One More Time", I wonder? I know contemporary pop tunes are a bit flat compared to old tin pan alley slash Broadway show tunes but that does not mean that nothing may be done with them to get some jass value from them.

A great thread, one of the best I have seen recently, and deserving of a lot more contributions.

It goes to an essential element of Jazz, the ability to take an elementary item and transform it to something artistic - or divine, in the words of the Strictly contestant Natalie. There were lots of examples over the Christmas period, and my favourite was Ella singing Jingle Bells, quite straight forwardly, but lifting me out of some dirgeful piped music in Sainsburies.

I guess Sonny is one of the few carrying on this tradition. Times have moved on with a vengeance. We have had Jazz Fusion, the latest example being Brad Meldau, but of course in the days of Weather Report, it actually made the running in the pop world.

Listening to a group on Radio 6 recently, the music was remarkably "free" - I didn't catch the name of the group, not its claimed genre. But this seems to me the situation we are now in with free and contemporary music, whether it's contemporary Jazz, Classical, or "pop". Because there aren't any rules, at least written ones, it's a little difficult to distinguish one genre from another. So if that is the situation at the cutting edge of music......
to be continued.........

[Ian Thumwood]

It is possible for rock or pop music to be good or even great. However, the odds for making a complete crock of cr*p with these genres must be manifestly ligher than in any other style of music.

Curious to see reference to experimental dance music or pop music as, from my limited listening, this is generally scraping the bottom of the barrel.

[Beef Oven!]

Hopefully someone can explain what is so interesting about this record.

Why? You've heard it, and you don't like it. listen to something else. An explanation isn't going to change the music.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The 'cul-de-sac' phrase is usually a sign (like ENC ) of lazyness as in "serialism is a dead end" ....

ALL Music (all Art) is in danger of becoming a cul-de-sac (isn't that a very rude phrase in French?) as brilliant new ideas become ossified by expensive imitations. Then people come along with new "brilliant new ideas" of their own and then it all starts off again. (With, of course, the usual accusations that these brillaint new ideas constitute "a real betrayal of what x, y, z is all about" - would a "false" betrayal would be better?)

A bit off-topic?

[burning dog]

I think the reason Jazz isn't so keen on later Pop songs is that many aren't structured "songs" and are already artist/arrangement specific and if jazzers want to perform non-chordal compositions they just make 'em up themselves as they have been doing since the modal jazz days .

I'd like to rescue this from my first post as it was amongst a lot of other tripe I wrote. That's the best I can come up with in answer to the question.

[teamsaint]

What an interesting thread this . Unfortunately,despite some thoughtful and well informed comments, i think the main things to take from it so far is that the Donny McCaslin record is worth investigating further, and that an open minded approach and using one's own judgement are particularly useful tools.

[Beef Oven!]

The 'cul-de-sac' phrase is usually a sign of lazyness

Indeed, I was being very lazy when I used it. Although I like jazz, I find much of it very 'same ol', same ol'.

What I was getting at, is that it's interesting when people change things around a bit, and I find the fusion on McCaslin's latest album to be one way out of that samey stuff.

What I didn't appreciate was that (according to some jazz fans) there is good music and bad music, overarched it seems, with a (sometimes mysterious) notion of 'what jazz is supposed to be about'. But I think Weather Report is the Dog's danglies, so what do I know?

[burning dog]

What I didn't appreciate was that (according to some jazz fans) there is good music and bad music

You haven't read much on the classical side of the forum either then! There's even a formula for "Grading" composers there somewhere, to the amusement of most other contributors.

[Beef Oven!]

You haven't read much on the classical side of the forum either then! There's even a formula for "Grading" composers there somewhere, to the amusement of most other contributors.

I was rather hoping this wouldn't get tribal.

[burning dog]

It isn't at all! As I hoped the comment "to the amusement of most other contributors" would make clear. It's a way of thinking (or a way of winding others up in the classical threads case I think ) that leads to this rather than an attachment to any musical genre.

[Quarky]

I think the reason Jazz isn't so keen on later Pop songs is that many aren't structured "songs" and are already artist/arrangement specific and if jazzers want to perform "non songs" they just make 'em up themselves as they have been doing since the modal era.

Jazz has had a great influence on Pop but it's played down by jazzers who want jazz to be an Art music rather than Popular, but I consider jazz to be both/All

.

OK burning dog. A lot of sense in there. I prefer a simplistic approach, largely because my musical knowledge isn't up to the finer divisions you make.

There must have been some suitable pop songs for Jazzing up since Miles first quartet recording of "On Green Dolphin Street", My favourite things /Trane of course - but I can't think of many. The answer is ok a lot of pop music is not suitable, but also because there is too much else going on for an aspiring artist to want to go into a throwback to an earlier era, rather like trad jazz.

By the way, did anyone hear Duke's version or parody of the Nutcracker on Breakfast this morning?

Much of the charm of Jazz, and the reason it originally conquered the world, was that the early Jazz artists were just exposed to the popular music of the day, and were able to transform it to something else. But we've been there done that. Bill Evans, Wayne Shorter and all the others wrote their own compositions. Didn't this process start with Bird and Bebop?

[burning dog]

OK burning dog. A lot of sense in there.

I think there may be a BIT of sense there. I reckon that's one reason but there must be others Jazz musicians may want to distance themselves from Pop music and to start doing Pop hits might sound too much like TOO crass an attempt to get a bigger audience, They may want to do their own versions of old Jazz Standards, perhaps radically different from older versions,to accentuate their difference from the old timers as much as to identify with them. I don't know the answers. Just some suggestions...

Lester Bowie covered Pop hits, old (Doo-Wop), and contemporary and they would be considered real "Poppy" numbers rather than anything "Arty"