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Avante-guard or Free Jazz

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Pete Effamy said:
...they didn’t believe that the culmination of music by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven etc etc etc was Rap...
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Well, you could say the same about Elvis Presley, or Hank Williams, or James Brown. Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven were working in the field of European composed art music. Rappers, Elvis, Hank, Mr. Brown worked in the field of African-American improvised music and European folk music. They are the logical descendants of the jongleurs and griots and traveling bards of past times. Let's not let things get too confused here. I guarantee you that while Bach was working out a nine-part fugue for organ and choir, a few miles down the road was a couple of guys playing a bagpipe and drum for farm workers to dance to at the end of their work day; sailors were heaving on a windlass offshore using chanteys to keep time; and in Sub-Saharan Africa local corps of drummers were supplying the soundtrack for dancing both ceremonial and festive.
 
I find it interesting how people tend to stop acquiring new tastes at a certain point, and they just don't want to hear anything new. Not everyone, but a lot of people.

I know a number of trad players who just can't even stand the first whiff of Charlie Parker. Beboppers who can't stand fusion, and beboppers who can't stand New Orleans style. Rock players who insist that all jazz is "that weird incomprehensible stuff" even if you set them down and play a bunch of Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong for them. Classical guys who swear that any jazz player who bends a note is "playing out of tune". And as far as avant-garde stuff, especially the more freeish stuff? It's like everyone loves to hate that stuff.

Man, maybe you SHOULD try the raw oyster or the sashimi or the hot peppers.
 
turf3 said:
I find it interesting how people tend to stop acquiring new tastes at a certain point, and they just don't want to hear anything new. Not everyone, but a lot of people.

I know a number of trad players who just can't even stand the first whiff of Charlie Parker. Beboppers who can't stand fusion, and beboppers who can't stand New Orleans style. Rock players who insist that all jazz is "that weird incomprehensible stuff" even if you set them down and play a bunch of Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong for them. Classical guys who swear that any jazz player who bends a note is "playing out of tune". And as far as avant-garde stuff, especially the more freeish stuff? It's like everyone loves to hate that stuff.

Man, maybe you SHOULD try the raw oyster or the sashimi or the hot peppers.
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Have. As I’ve said before, my tastes are pretty broad and go as “far” as Takemitsu. It still ticks the boxes that I want to be ticked. The stuff mentioned previously doesn’t.

My boxes, my criteria. Not small mindedness, just personal taste. Do you like Takemitsu?
 
Colin the Bear said:
I think you get to an age where you don't want to work at things any more. Time for an easy life.
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For me that age was about 3. It may have been earlier but I can’t remember back that far.

I do make an attempt to listen (or re-listen) to music I had dismissed or ignored previously. And new music that I didn’t know about. Same with authors and visual artists. I like to learn, and stuff looks different at 75 than it did at 30. But I really like pretty :)
 
I'll share another track from the same album Pete did. This is the track that got me in to free jazz. I was 14 at a music camp in Wyoming where I grew up taking a class on jazz history. I remember the teacher on the last day of the class saying, "ok, now I'm going to play you something kind of strange. To be honest, I don't really like it, it makes me nervous, but you should listen to it."
He put it on and I was immediately captured by that heart-breaking cry. If you don't find this pretty, than I think it's probably just not for you. I can definitely sing this back and tap some of the rhythms...

View: https://youtu.be/DNbD1JIH344?si=pKyihnJBVy2BgiX6


A short aside about intonation snobbery. I remember classical musicians with perfect pitch in school acting like hearing anything not perfectly in tune to 440 was physically painful. Now living in Europe, low and behold, they tune to different frequencies at different times, 440, 442, and I know a lot of classical musicians that do baroque music as well sometimes tuning to 415. I now have friends with perfect pitch who work in all of these tunings and participate in free improvisation orchestras as well. Doesn't make their head explode to hear all those different pitches. It's simply.... different. Seems to me that snobbery I witnessed as a kid was nothing more than that, snobbery.
 
Thanks for trying. I like his alto sound a lot, but the tunes just leave me cold.

As for the Perfect Pitch snobbery - Perfect as what - tempered tuning?! :oops:
 
Pete Effamy said:
Thanks for trying. I like his alto sound a lot, but the tunes just leave me cold.

As for the Perfect Pitch snobbery - Perfect as what - tempered tuning?! :oops:
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It's hard for me to imagine that melody leaving you cold. But of course, to each his own.
The range of composition within "free jazz" is about as broad as jazz itself. What compositions are you into? Might give me some ideas of other music to try.
 
I think the problem with me lies with the expectation of either functional harmony or that born out of voice-leading for starters.

Works both ways of course - I can’t imagine why the melody doesn’t leave you cold :confused2:
 
john_dikeman said:
What compositions are you into?
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I like Baroque, some Classical, Late Romantic, Nationalism, Impressionism, 20C to maybe 1945, Gorecki, Ogerman, Takemitsu, much of jazz history, pop jazz, Easy Listening, Steely Dan/Fagen (a lot)…

Quite varied.

But I like them mainly for the relationship between melody and harmony I think
 
Ok.

1. Sounds a bit like a comedic spaghetti western.

2. I can’t get a feeling of ever arriving anywhere, it just feels like an uneasy journey to nowhere.

(This is the crux of my problem with all of it I think).

3. Right. So this I find has far more substance and reminds of Stravinsky L’histoire du Soldat.
 
john_dikeman said:
Here's a wonderful group by a great composer with a very rich harmonic sense.

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music that you love, upload original content and share it all with friends, family and the world on YouTube.
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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It’s very well played. It sounds like an extended intro though, and a cross between David Bedford and Heinrich Gruber.

I don’t think I’m good material for turning
 

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