Fwd: Re: Re: Blue Note: Flushing jazz down the toilet

From: Erik Gaderlund (erikg@macconnect.com)
Date: Thu May 11 2000 - 09:30:24 MET DST

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    >
    >
    >> Hmm, what about all the guys who dropped out of Berklee once they got
    >> a good gig, sorry no names come to my mind.
    >
    >Jan Hammer, Pat Metheny, Chick Corea--almost anyone famous you can think of
    >that went to Berklee dropped out when they got a good gig!! That still
    >doesn't stop the school from mentioning them--everybody wins...

    Thanks for the help

    > >But, don't you think
    >> that having an artform studied in school, is a definite sign of its
    >> maturity? It may not help the 'cause', but, it does show people are
    >> listening.
    >> erik g
    >
    >it cuts both ways. the study shows the "respectability" of the art, but the
    >acceptance from the mainstream diminishes the perception of being
    >"revolutionary."
    >
    >personally, i think that there is still much that can be done with jazz if
    >people will look at the spirit of jazz as opposed to the *conventions.* a
    >resistance toward bending or at least *examining* the "rules" is what leads
    >to the death of an art form.

    Just as Bop-, broke Cool-, broke Hot-Jazz, but, I think many of those
    who would be incredible musicians have moved on to other things--like
    why 'Classical' music seems so dead, but, Goreki, Corigliano, and
    others do have something more to say.

    > > as for Blue Note, they do have Charlie Hunter, and recently signed
    >> MM&W who put out a 'straight-ahead' album "tonic", no mindless
    >> meandering. And, the Europen arm is the one that releases Erik
    >> Truffaz, those who are trying to look forward,
    >
    >don't forget saint-germain--a good direction for them, i think (hopefully
    >this can redeem the bad ending of the Us3 experiment).

    Us3 was good in concert they had some great musicans, the album
    struck me as rather tepid.

    > >but, you've got to
    >> realize once jazz lost its audience to R&B and Soul, it became the
    >> domain of the White Middle class, who now sustain, the Hip-hoper, or
    >> at least their children do.
    >
    >i don't know about that last statement. as a record store employee &
    >blackman, i can say that there are plenty of non-white people that buy jazz
    >& hiphop. as far as the big names (in both genres), sure they wouldn't be
    >as big without popularity w/white buyers, but in jazz (which is *less* about
    >entertainment than hiphop) i don't think that there's the same type of
    >pandering toward a particularly white audience--i.e., people that like
    >jazz-flavored pop come in many colors. i guess i'm feeling that the people
    >you're talking about matter more because of their class
    >(middle/upper-middle) than their race--which i think is more varied than
    >you're accounting for.

    I was mostly regurgitating some article I wrote, and, how the
    audience does change the music, using an aforementioned example,
    'Classical' was the 'Pop' music of Europe, so once the audience
    changed the music did with it--granted that is a bit of a
    simplication. An amusing counter example is a white friend of mine
    who got really irritated when his black girlfriend always changed the
    radio station in his car to a light 'jazz' station from the PBS
    _jazz_ station (WBEZ in Chicago) he always listened to.

    erik g



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