Acid Jazz Never Really Existed, Was Re:Acid Jazz Dead?

From: Tom Giles (thomas.giles@st-annes.oxford.ac.uk)
Date: Mon May 13 2002 - 00:58:13 CEST

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    Dear list,

    I read with interest everbody's opinions on what Acid-Jazz is, or
    was. Some say it was an era; some say a marketing term, or a
    term of journalism; other say it refers to pieces of music with
    certain characteristics; others still say it refers to particular bands.
    I think that both all and none of you are correct. I don't mean to
    upset anyone, or provoke a flame-war, but the simple fact is this:
    we all want, if not need, to talk about music, and to do so we need
    general nouns. Acid Jazz is just a general noun that we need to
    use to make it possible to speak about music; however this does
    not imply that it has specific meaning, in the sense that every
    piece of music to which it applies must have certain characteristics
    (like being made in a certain era, or release on a certain label, etc.,
    etc.) For every person what pieces of music they count as acid-
    jazz will differ, but there is some common core we agree on (this
    must be true, otherwise saying of a piece of music that it is acid
    jazz would be meaningless). But this common core is impossible
    to describe in strict terms; being of a particular style is like a family
    resemblace amongst bits of music. Let me explain:

    If somebody asks me "what kind of music do you like?" and i reply
    "I like Herbert and Recloose and Blaze and ...." (lets say i list a
    large number of house artists) they will not understand me very
    clearly, unless they know who all these people are. But if i say I
    like house then they have at least some idea of what i like even if
    they do not know music about house music. Their idea may be
    rather inaccurate, depending on their knowledge, but it will do the
    job. Secondly it is simply not practical to give a list of artists,
    songs or lps, in every sentence where one generic, if inaccurate
    term, would do. General musical nouns are thus necessary for us
    to talk about music.
    Thirdly it enables some analysis of music and its history; however
    this must be essentially vague. We can compare for instance
    'house' and 'techno'; we might say techno is *generally* faster than
    house, but of course you will all be able to come up with thousands
    of examples to refute such a claim. The claim, however, is not
    necessarily refuted like this, but we get into murky analytical
    waters here. Nevertheless general musical nouns signify a kind of
    'family resemblance' between those songs or artists to which they
    apply. Clearly not every house tune is the same, and there is not
    one single property that each such tune shares; but each tune we
    call house, say, be it Armand van Heldan or the Micronauts, are as
    much related as an extended family.

    I am sure it is clear to everybody that we need general nouns to
    describe music for the above reasons, and countless more.
    Further, given the discussion in this thread, it should also be clear
    that from saying song X is acid-jazz, or such like, there is only a
    certain amount we say, hence all the confusion about whether acid-
    jazz is dead. What we can say is that acid-jazz is almost dead in
    the sense that as a general noun it is not used very much to
    describe music any more, the trendy buzzword 'nu-jazz' seems to
    have usurped it. This is not to claim that nu-jazz is very different
    from acid-jazz or though there are some elementary differences,
    like the fact that nobody would call any old Snowbody albums 'nu-
    jazz' say. Neither is this to claim that acid-jazz as a term might
    not come back to life. If we all start using it to apply to 'nu-jazz'
    and suchlike, acid-jazz will be reborn. (What I mean here is that if
    we use it to apply to music like that commonly associated with the
    term, but not often referred to as acid-jazz, then it will be reborn.
    We can't just go calling *anything* acid jazz!)

    In other respects acid-jazz is very much alive. The debates on this
    list testify to that. It has also become apparent from the
    discussion that much of what we debate on this list may be called
    acid-jazz since it shares so many similarities with "classic" acid-
    jazz (Incognito, Gilles Peterson in '89, or whatever you think i might
    mean). DJs still play loads of tunes that got played during the
    height of the usage of the term 'acid-jazz' (partly because loads of
    them were made in the sixties and seventies long before anybody
    called anything acid-jazz).

    Hopefully this explains my view, and hopefully it hasn't bored you
    all too much(!). Words like acid-jazz, disco, hard bop, or whatever,
    are essential to discussions of music. However they can also
    hamper them because people take them as literally being able to
    describe every feature of the particular pieces of music to which
    they apply. In this respect general musical nouns differ completely
    from many other general nouns like 'cow', 'gold', 'sulphuric acid' etc.
     If you pardon the pun, there is no litmus test for whether a piece of
    music is acid jazz, or any other kind of music for that matter.

    And we'll leave it on that note (if you'll excuse the further pun),
    Tom



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