You see... an Oxford education really _is_ worth something :-)
Nice post Tom. You've pretty much summarized the conclusion I've
come to every previous time that we've had a debate about the term
"acid-jazz" on this list in the past 10 years, but rather more
eloquently than I've ever managed.
..Mark..
On Sunday, May 12, 2002, at 03:58 PM, Tom Giles wrote:
> 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
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 13 2002 - 02:19:55 CEST