Hey folks,
Great bunch of posts. I unfortunately have been missing the series, as I
don't have a TV (I'm a Luddite; I know), but I'll eventually get to it,
maybe our department chair here will spring for a DVD copy for "research"
purposes.
I do have the book, though, and even in that forum, there is a tendency to
allow Wynton to blether on ad nauseum. As for the book itself, there's
plenty of gorgeous photos, choice anecdotes, and good information, though
the section on "1960 to the present" is pitifully small -- mostly taken up
by Ellington's last years, and a little token blurb on the Art Ensemble of
Chicago -- and the book *ends* with Wynton and Branford, circa 1982 or so!
Other crucial figures of the past TWENTY YEARS -- like Joe Lovano, Steve
Coleman, Joshua Redman, Cassandra Wilson, Lewis Nash, Nicholas Payton et
al. are crammed into the index, with no bio, no information, and basically,
no respect. This is pretty shoddy, given that most people here on the list
would probably agree that fleshing out the careers of these artists would
only BEGIN to address some of the crucial music of the last
quarter-century, with everything from the whole slew of ECM records, to the
Knitting Factory stuff, to Digable Planets, Gilles Peterson, 4hero,
Reprazent etc. etc. etc. being very much part of the jazz world, a world of
which the Wynton mafia constitutes 1%!
Now don't get me wrong, again, I don't diss his abilities as a musician
(though the man takes very few real risks; I'd much rather listen to Miles
or Freddie Hubbard anyday), and the broader movement associated with his
advocacy of this music was probably what initially got me into this stuff
in the first place. But I would also say that, far from Wynton being some
kind of appropriate model for our understanding of African-American music
and culture, this man does dangerous, tremendously debilitating things to
the narrative of African-American contributions to the music of this
century. Jazz never did operate in a bubble, and we need to start seeing
stories about this music that draw links, say, between the dance-music
oriented ecclectism of Ellington and that of Reprazent (as someone
suggested), or Prince; recognizing that through musicians like Louis
Jordan, jazz has more than a few connections to Rn'B; seeing that jazz is
part of a much broader web of Afro-diasporic music that includes blues,
funk, hip hop, jungle, Afro-beat, yadda yadda. . .
For those who are watching the series, I'm curious to know how they handle
Count Basie. In many ways, he was just as important to American music as
Ellington, given that his riff-based music has important implications for
the emergence of rock n' roll, funk, in fact all riff-based musics of the
past half-century. Do they give that man his due?
I'm looking forward to checking out the series, despite whatever ranting
I've put down here. Keep up the good posts!
Dale
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