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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