Playing the saxophone How do you justify jazz?

[JayeNM]

As to why I don’t play it…. Well I just don’t really like it, it sounds corny and pretty straight to me - especially when played by white guys from the time. My controversial opinion is that trad jazz really stemmed from an appropriation by white people and they kinda didn’t get what made jazz good. I’d rather go further back into the blues and spirituals for inspiration. I’m sure someone more well versed in the genre will correct me of course!

Quick observation, perhaps digressive....so I apologize in advance...

White people, many of them college educated, many with masters in music...are overwhelmingly the ones playing and promoting "serious" instrumental jazz today...Bebop, post-bop, neo-whatever you wanna call it, etc. today....a music which was developed and evolved and 'popularized' (to whatever degree it was) significantly by black people with little formal/institutional education...and in a relatively disenfranchised socioeconomic situation....(Monk made the cover of Time magazine...yet still lived with his family in an old tenement apartment even after the publication....)

Likewise straight ahead "serious" jazz today is a genre having a pretty small fan base.... of overwhelmingly white listeners/champions....as african-american artists and composers have created and developed other genres which are embraced more by their own, these days.....

Is that any less odd, or somewhat questionable, etc.... than white guys playing trad jazz ?

(So I think it s fair to call trad jazz a bit hokey, musically speaking. Because yeah, I would agree. But I am not sure going into "what makes it odder is it is mostly played today by..." really is a germane yardstick....)

Trad, like Great American Songbook...or even like Smooth Jazz...is performed and oftentimes a successful repertoire for bands because more casual listeners can connect to it, in a nutshell (IMHO).

 

[JayeNM]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzodB0Sp6ZI


Dig the John Cage solo!

Missy Raines on bass!

Don't underestimate just how well educated even hillbillies can be.

Nice.......... but honestly I wanted to hear the tune about the rise of fascism in the Weimar Republic.

More apropos to 2026, TTYT.....no justification needed.

 

[Dr G]

Quick observation, perhaps digressive....so I apologize in advance...

White people, many of them college educated, many with masters in music...are overwhelmingly the ones playing and promoting "serious" instrumental jazz today...Bebop, post-bop, neo-whatever you wanna call it, etc. today....a music which was developed and evolved and 'popularized' (to whatever degree it was) significantly by black people with little formal/institutional education...and in a relatively disenfranchised socioeconomic situation....(Monk made the cover of Time magazine...yet still lived with his family in an old tenement apartment even after the publication....)

Likewise straight ahead "serious" jazz today is a genre having a pretty small fan base.... of overwhelmingly white listeners/champions....as african-american artists and composers have created and developed other genres which are embraced more by their own, these days.....

Is that any less odd, or somewhat questionable, etc.... than white guys playing trad jazz ?

When does the conversation dip its toe into addressing the music played by black musicians with a degree in jazz? Poor white musicians? Economics crosses race boundaries, ya know. What makes music "authentic?"

 

[Targa]

But then it was posited that there also exists a role in the artist/creator that the banal/normal/regular things often overlooked, may also have value as something to be considered...sometimes out of its usual context...or sometimes within its usual context.
So, artst as switching mechanism - do not necessarily 'create' a painting, sculpture, etc from scratch....but rather take the banal out of its usual context, present it in a new context...could it actually be viewed as an aesthetic object, or even polemically ?
Thus imbuing it with a new 'value' beyond the typical mundane.

Saxophone as lampshade.

 

[mrblackbat]

Quick observation, perhaps digressive....so I apologize in advance...

White people, many of them college educated, many with masters in music...are overwhelmingly the ones playing and promoting "serious" instrumental jazz today...Bebop, post-bop, neo-whatever you wanna call it, etc. today....a music which was developed and evolved and 'popularized' (to whatever degree it was) significantly by black people with little formal/institutional education...and in a relatively disenfranchised socioeconomic situation....(Monk made the cover of Time magazine...yet still lived with his family in an old tenement apartment even after the publication....)

Likewise straight ahead "serious" jazz today is a genre having a pretty small fan base.... of overwhelmingly white listeners/champions....as african-american artists and composers have created and developed other genres which are embraced more by their own, these days.....

Is that any less odd, or somewhat questionable, etc.... than white guys playing trad jazz ?

(So I think it s fair to call trad jazz a bit hokey, musically speaking. Because yeah, I would agree. But I am not sure going into "what makes it odder is it is mostly played today by..." really is a germane yardstick....)

Trad, like Great American Songbook...or even like Smooth Jazz...is performed and oftentimes a successful repertoire for bands because more casual listeners can connect to it, in a nutshell (IMHO).

I’m not sure what your point is…..

 

[mrblackbat]

When does the conversation dip its toe into addressing the music played by black musicians with a degree in jazz? Poor white musicians? Economics crosses race boundaries, ya know. What makes music "authentic?"

I mean how many of the great jazz players from the hard bop times also had music degrees? David attended Juilliard, Coltrane studied extensively under the GI bill and so on.

Likewise to try and say mainstream jazz is mostly played by and appreciated by white folk.. the appreciation side is hard to get any meaningful data. But played by… well top current players like Redman, Garrett, Bartley, Marsalis, McBride and so on…

 

[turf3]

Well, I realize I stepped into a British controversy that doesn't really exist in the same way in the US.

To me there are (kind of) three things here.

1) Black jazz music of the teens and twenties, pre-swing.
2) White jazz music of the teens and twenties, pre-swing.
3) Revival music from the 40s and 50s, largely played by old white guys in straw boaters and red vests.

Now there was an ENORMOUS amount of cross-pollination between (1) and (2), so it's not really fair to distinguish "white jazz" vs. "black jazz" - but there were certain stylistic tendencies that the black guys followed and ditto for the white guys. They played together and learned from each other as often as they could, because good musicians have always recognized good musicians no matter of race. Furthermore, there were plenty of white guys who made it their mission to play like Armstong and plenty of black guys who made it their mission to play like Beiderbecke.

#3 is what caused and causes controversy, because that revival movement was an almost completely white movement, although they played repertoire that was associated with the full spectrum of twenties jazz.

In the US, for many years, all three of these have been called "Dixieland Jazz".

In the UK, it's my understanding that #3 was called "Trad Jazz" when the revival began, and #1 and 2 are/were/have been called other things. "New Orleans Style" perhaps? but N.O style is one thing and California style is another and Texas style is another and Chicago style is another and the guys from Northern Louisiana didn't play like the guys from N.O, either, and all these folks were playing pretty much at the same time (though most jazz scholarship identifies the general New Orleans area as where people probably started putting together the elements that became jazz - but it dispersed from there REALLY FAST.

Now in the US, a number of thoughtful people have recognized that "Dixieland Jazz" has a negative racial connotation. The very word "Dixieland" calls up the song "Dixie" and the uses to which it's been put. Very many of the African-American elders of this music made it clear in interviews and writing that they did not care for the term "Dixieland Music" because of the implications of "Dixieland where the cotton grows and the "People" happily sing all day as they work in the fields..." And then some of the songs from that period of say 1880-1925 have lyrics that just should not be sung ever again.

So for many Americans, "New Orleans Style" is too restrictive. "DIxieland" makes some of us put ourselves in the shoes of those elders of the music who really didn't like the term, and makes us a bit uncomfortable. I suppose one could say "Early Jazz" but that to me means Buddy Bolden and Freddie Keppard and such; if you call it "Pre-Swing" it's kind of clunky. So many Americans playing that style of music - let's say 1917 to the advent of swing - are calling it "Trad Jazz", for want of a better term. When we call it that, we're including Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton and Henry Red Allen and Louis Armstrong and Johnny Dodds and King Oliver and so on, AS WELL as Bix and Tram and Adrian Rollini and Jimmy McPartland. To us, it's not so much the straw boater and red vest brigade music.

So I think we may again have two peoples divided by their common language here, a bit.

 

[Pete Effamy]

So basically craft is important to you, that's fair. And I agree, there does need to be something of the artist's hand in the piece.

Yeah, this is me I think. I’m the opposite of “how hard can it be” , if you like.

 

[Pete Effamy]

You are not an installation artist, however, nor a sculptor or painter or choreographer. To my knowledge you have no degree in art history (?) So when you become a spectator of any of those, you have lost your tether to your specialty.

Whitewashed wall, and the other examples I gave. The bloody boxes. I probably paid to go into the Guggenheim (paid or free?) and that should not have been part of it. No skill attached. No insight. Crap. I haven’t mentioned any others.

 

[wakyct]

So the basis of your judgment on those things becomes more subjective - IOW, you do not really have as much a foundation in the context of those creative pursuits as you do music. You MAY like CERTAIN forms of art - figurative sculpture, Impressionist painting, etc..you may even be a 'regular' gallery-goer with a list of favorite artists....
....but occasionally when confronted with something less familiar or more reliant upon interpretation, our default falls more to "I find this pleasing" or "this is unpleasing" based on the way it initially makes us feel. Or in your instance "this piece was done with absolutely no professional pride nor discernment". Which is fine. you can feel that way.
But it isn't the endgame in determining whether a piece has value or not. In other words, it may NOT have been conceived or excecuted with no professional pride nor discernment.

There is a major problem with this line of reasoning though, which is that objects don't have value. It should be obvious that any value an object has is put on it by the observer. In my opinion attempting to get around this by appealing to authority doesn't work either, but of course that has been the subject of thousands of years of debate so I won't try to settle that matter. 😛

 

[turf3]

In my opinion, a lot of what one might call "hard abstract" in art (the installations of empty boxes, etc) is motivated by the sense that anything can be "art" if you put it in a particular framework and declare "this is art!".

Well, OK, I think we got that message some 80 or 100 years ago.

But the problem is that much of the art made in service to that philosophy isn't - well - very pleasing, or interesting, or informative, to the viewer. Of course, there are "sound creations" that the creator has declared "this is music!" and the result is much the same - not really ever pleasing, or interesting, or informative, to the listener.

The act of placing a creation into the art framework, and declaring "This is Art!" does, in fact, make it art. However, it doesn't make it GOOD art.

Honestly, much of what I see at various modern art museums looks like the artist is trying very very very hard, trying too hard in fact, to be unique and transgressive and make the point that "anything can be art if you declare it to be so!" - which is fine, but honestly at this point in history it feels like the "Terrible Twos" - the point's been made, we all understand it, let's move on to quality.

 

[Targa]

View: https://youtu.be/4nG9C-KMGac

The Rebel (1961 film) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Pete Effamy]

View: https://youtu.be/4nG9C-KMGac

The Rebel (1961 film) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

“You’re all raving mad!” 🤣

 

[Grumps]

All this white and black talk reminds me of the point wholly missed by Ken Burns in his own justification/documentary of Jazz. Jazz did more to bring the races together in America than any sort of governmental program could ever hope for. Naturally. Organically. Through song. Through music. If only folks could remember such things on a path to colorblindness; rather than be put against each other by droning of megaphones.

 

[Pete Thomas]

Now in the US, a number of thoughtful people have recognized that "Dixieland Jazz" has a negative racial connotation. The very word "Dixieland" calls up the song "Dixie" and the uses to which it's been put. Very many of the African-American elders of this music made it clear in interviews and writing that they did not care for the term "Dixieland Music" because of the implications of "Dixieland where the cotton grows and the "People" happily sing all day as they work in the fields..." And then some of the songs from that period of say 1880-1925 have lyrics that just should not be sung ever again.

So for many Americans, "New Orleans Style" is too restrictive. "DIxieland" makes some of us put ourselves in the shoes of those elders of the music who really didn't like the term, and makes us a bit uncomfortable.

My good friend Roger Lewis of Fats Domino and Dirty Dozen fame has discussed the term Dixieland with me and is indeed now offensive for all the reasons you say. He suggested to me the term New Orleans Swing. That of course would not cover all of what was called Trad Jazz because much of that was Chicago rather than New Orleans style which had quite a difference in that more emphasis on solo improvising rather than group improvising.

 

[turf3]

My good friend Roger Lewis of Fats Domino and Dirty Dozen fame has discussed the term Dixieland with me and is indeed now offensive for all the reasons you say. He suggested to me the term New Orleans Swing. That of course would not cover all of what was called Trad Jazz because much of that was Chicago rather than New Orleans style which had quite a difference in that more emphasis on solo improvising rather than group improvising.

There's not a real good term for the stuff between ~ 1917 and the advent of the swing style. (Of course many people kept playing that style all through the swing period, the bebop period, etc.)

"Traditional Jazz" is what I'd like to call it, but most people think that refers to the music from bebop to Giant Steps.

"Trad" - at least on this side of the pond - seems to work as well as anything.

Like I said "New Orleans" implies, well, New Orleans and as noted, musicians from all over were playing this music, and playing it with their own approaches. It wasn't just N.O. and Chicago. It was California, Texas, New York, DC, and probably several other loci of development. Once the music got heard around the country, people went after it. But since "heard" would generally have meant one band that happened to play in town, or two or three records, they had a lot of room in Spokane to interpret and develop and extrapolate.

"Pre-Swing" might be OK, but since so few people understand the difference between swing and pre-swing, you're always going to be explaining it.

"Early Jazz" as I noted above, denotes to ME that super early stuff maybe from 1890 till the 1917-1918 explosion of interest. Kind of like "Early Music" in classical music circles, with sackbuts and crumhorns and trombae marina and theorboes and such.

 

[mizmar]

to the viewer.

to the listener.

Fantastic that everyone in the world has just the impression you say they do.
That simplifies "art" tremendously

 

[Pete Effamy]

The act of placing a creation into the art framework, and declaring "This is Art!" does, in fact, make it art.

Yes I struggle with this, because who says so ?

I have Monty Python in my head with John Cleese saying “no it isn’t “.

 

[mizmar]

who says so ?

Some time back a posted this little snippet by David Bruce which, I think, illustrated and informed my, personal, answer to that.

Post in thread 'Blues and jazz similarities …Is Jazz more like improvising?' Playing the saxophone - Blues and jazz similarities …Is Jazz more like improvising?

Also, this video brings out similar ideas.

View: https://youtu.be/I0hMNrxYjPQ

 

[Pete Effamy]

There's not a real good term for the stuff between ~ 1917 and the advent of the swing style. (Of course many people kept playing that style all through the swing period, the bebop period, etc.)

"Traditional Jazz" is what I'd like to call it, but most people think that refers to the music from bebop to Giant Steps.

"Trad" - at least on this side of the pond - seems to work as well as anything.

Like I said "New Orleans" implies, well, New Orleans and as noted, musicians from all over were playing this music, and playing it with their own approaches. It wasn't just N.O. and Chicago. It was California, Texas, New York, DC, and probably several other loci of development. Once the music got heard around the country, people went after it. But since "heard" would generally have meant one band that happened to play in town, or two or three records, they had a lot of room in Spokane to interpret and develop and extrapolate.

"Pre-Swing" might be OK, but since so few people understand the difference between swing and pre-swing, you're always going to be explaining it.

"Early Jazz" as I noted above, denotes to ME that super early stuff maybe from 1890 till the 1917-1918 explosion of interest. Kind of like "Early Music" in classical music circles, with sackbuts and crumhorns and trombae marina and theorboes and such.

Personally I have no problem whatsoever taking on a few labels from the country of origin.

Interesting that you agree that Revivalist Trad was a decent moniker for that British jazz movement - though somewhat later than you had it in the US.

There’s a thread running through that sort of don’t count in the Revivalist group as they were there early on and were merely carrying on.

In the UK, Sid Phillips (drummer Simon Phillips’ dad) made his first record in 1928, and died in 1973 still active.

What we refer to over here as Revivalist Trad was the likes of Kenny Ball, Chris Barber and Acker Bilk. Probably in the main because it reached the Hit Parade in 1961 with Ball’s version of the song “Samantha” from High Society. It reached #13, though Midnight in Moscow reached #2.

The same year as Take 5 ?

Anyway. As @Pete Thomas said about the term Dixieland becoming a bit distasteful makes perfect sense when you think about it for a few seconds.

In Jazz History classes at Leeds they pegged the “start” of jazz (apart from the constituents of the recipe - J P Sousa hasn’t been mentioned yet) to be 1917 and The Original Dixieland Jazz Band or ODJB.

I think this is mainly because of the release of their recording of Livery Stable Blues in 1917 and seems to be referred to as the first jazz record release.

N’Orleans - Armstrong says he was influenced by Buddy Bolden, the spread to Chicago, NYC and then further.

As @turf3 says, input from everywhere. Because Revivalist was more within living memory, it’s probably oft forgotten that the British jazz scene was quite a thing of its own at least back to the ‘30’s. Not to Mention The Hot Club with Django and Grappelli, and no doubt stuff in Italy and other places that I have no knowledge of.