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Explain the attraction of Jazz please....

8ball said:
The less notes they play, the better it is.
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Fewer notes.

Unless you mean you like people who play notes that are each lesser in some way. Which notion I'm sure has appeared in some jazz performer's wibbling at some point. Probably English sandal-jazz.

</donna>
 
acid jazz isn't jazz, frankly. it's just a marketing label stuck on some weak-ass 90's funk/disco shit... it shouldn't really be mentioned on a jazz thread. :)

some jazz is great anyway... i'd agree live is probably best, as you really do appreciate the improvisation more when you can see it happening.

oh, and good jazz isn't 'chill out' music...
 
lets not forget the double-bass members of Jazz ensembles. 'dum-dum-dum-dum-de-dum (descending) dum-de-dum-de-dum-dum (ascending)" over and over for 25 minutes whilst everyone else wanks about.
Jazz drummers for me is either love/hate.
it's not always naff but rarley whack
bit of a meh genre IME
 
poului said:
Does anyone else find there to be a distinctly insecure streak of reverse snobbery regarding the criticisms levelled at jazz? What exactly is wrong with a passionate focus on technique and musicianship in your work?
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Nothing, but if, at the end of the day, technique and musicianship is all there is to it, then you're not necessarily left with anything worth actually listening to. If there's no "heart" to it, it's pointless, except in some dry academic sense.
 
jbob said:
I think my slight favouring on the most wretched front for acid jazz is based on its visceral exposure to me during the late 80s/early 90s; I was mercifully a bit too young to witness the full horror of the fusion vanguard and its ungodly practices. All those backwards cap wearing tossers smarming up the place were certainly proto-Nathan Barleys, and, it is my contention, bear much responsibility for the gentrification of much of London. Forget your property developers, Jamaroquai is more to blame for social inequality.
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I agree. Cunting stuff like JTQ and Corduroy as wlel. :mad:

What I despised most about it was the way it was telling you how 'funky' it was. Surely anything truly funky wouldn't have to tell you that it was funky...
 
I love a lot of early jazz, half of which is probably more swing anyway, up to stuff like Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus. After that it all gets a bit wibbly for me. Saying that, if you see a great jazz band live, at the height of their performance- bouncing ideas of each other, it can be quite incredible.
 
ViolentPanda said:
Nothing, but if, at the end of the day, technique and musicianship is all there is to it, then you're not necessarily left with anything worth actually listening to. If there's no "heart" to it, it's pointless, except in some dry academic sense.
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But that's not what most people complain about. They don't make light of there not being any "heart" to jazz musicians' technical prowess, they instead moan about them openly utilising their technique in the first place.
 
24505.jpg


So much music is kinda jazz, which is why it's a great genre, i.e. it involves improvisation. Is this a jazz album, sure thing. One of the most explosive records ever made :eek: , way back in '68.
 
poului said:
But that's not what most people complain about. They don't make light of there not being any "heart" to jazz musicians' technical prowess, they instead moan about them openly utilising their technique in the first place.
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Possibly because the majority of their formative exposure to jazz comprises having watched OGWT in the early 1970s and having been exposed to some chin-stroker having a wibble on his horn. :)

I was fortunate enough to have grown up being exposed not only to my parent's record collection, but that of my grandparents too, so by the time I watched Whistle Test, I already equated "jazz" with (sometimes) complex music with heart, rather than (sometimes) complex music per se.

BTW, it's also unfortunately true to say that there are a few jazz musicians out there who do mistake technical mastery with musicianship, and consequently queer the pitch for everyone else.
 
killer b said:
or louis armstrongs hot 5's & 7's recordings...
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Those deserve more than anything else I know (including Lomax's recordings) to be enlisted in the Library of Congress as "culturally significant"
 
poului said:
Those deserve more than anything else I know (including Lomax's recordings) to be enlisted in the Library of Congress as "culturally significant")
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there's an interesting question about how culturally significant Lomax's recordings were. The point being that he selected what he thought was significant
 
killer b said:
i found 'em on cassette for 10p from oxfam a couple of months ago. :cool:

they're amazing...
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Difficult to imagine what it must have been like to have heard that for the first time as a young teenager in the 20s.

And I say this all in spite Ken Burns' excruciatingly pompous coverage of them a few years back.
 
You should also listen to Django Reinhardt, if anything just to marvel at the man's abilities. IMO he's the greatest guitarist to ever walk the earth, even if people disagree with that statement they would almost certainly have to concede he's one of the best guitarists to ever walk the earth, if they don't then they should commit themselves to the nearest mental institution post haste :)

On top of that just look how effortlessly :cool: he looks.

Django%20Reinhardt.jpg
 
when jazz is good it's about true musical freedom, taking a riff and fucking with it - exploring how it all fits together and comes apart.


jazz rocks...
 
If you like Django you might also like Lonnie Johnson. He was a very influential guitarist and played alongside the likes of Louis Armstrong.

He was a complete musician, he was kind of a Blues Jazz cross, influential in both on the guitar.

You can listen to his songs here:

Recommendations:

Away Down in the Alley Blues

Playing With the Strings

To Do This You Got To Know How
 
Sorry but that's like saying any sort music is 'crap'. There's different styles of jazz and there's good jazz and bad jazz.
I personally don't like some of the modern jazz that seems to have tuneless meandering (musician's ego trip :D ) but there's lots of great jazz imo.
 
I'm amazed at the hostility towards Jazz that people are expressing on this thread. The technical side of Jazz leaves me cold. I am musically ignorant. I just know what I like. There is plenty of Jazz which is really bad, but at its best it is some of the most moving music out there. And it can express the whole spectrum of emotions from the poignancy of Billy Holiday on Strange Fruit to Ella Fitzgerald's sassiness singing Bewitched.

To see through the chin stroking, polo kneck wearing gaulloise smoking, stereotype of modern jazz. Try listening to Volume 1 of the best of Blue Notes. This is the compilation that got me into Jazz as a teenager. I'm not competent to explain how this period of Jazz - Hard Bop (?) Modal Jazz (?) -differs from the Bebop that proceeded it or the Free Jazz and fusion that followed. But I find it beautifully expressive. It may be technically complex, but the fact that it swings seems much more important to me. It has a groove which is an important quality in music in my humble opinion.

I also think that it is a bit crude to see Jamiroquai and the Brand New Heavies as the custodians of the heritage of Jazz. Jazz had a huge influence on Hip Hop. Artists like Gill Scott Heron and the Lost Poets had a lyrical style which had a profound influence on later rappers. Blue Notes have released a number of compilations of classic Break Beats from their archive. Combine this with syncopated rythmes and an emphasis on improvisation and the links are kind of clear.

There are similar links between Jazz and Jamaican music. Listen to compilations like Soul Jazz records' 100% Dynamite and it is hard to deny the influence American music including Jazz on some of Jamaica's finest musicians.
 
Gee, thanks for educating all us simpletons.

FWIW, it's part pisstake/hostility, largely inspired by sentiments delieverd by people such as yourself.

I know which bits of jazz I like and which bits enrage me, that's it. I can apply the same logic to rock/indie/electronica/hip-hop/reggae. I can listen to Keith Jarrett with pure unadulterated joy and at the same time despise Steely Dan. So what?
 
What is your fucking problem?

jbob said:
Gee, thanks for educating all us simpletons.
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I wasn't trying to educate you I was just expressing an opinion. You might find people do that occasionally on discussion forums....

jbob said:
FWIW, it's part pisstake/hostility, largely inspired by sentiments delieverd by people such as yourself.
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People such as who? Comments like this make it hard for me to avoid assuming that you are a smug prick.

jbob said:
I know which bits of jazz I like and which bits enrage me, that's it. I can apply the same logic to rock/indie/electronica/hip-hop/reggae. I can listen to Keith Jarrett with pure unadulterated joy and at the same time despise Steely Dan. So what?
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So what indeed?.. almost makes me wonder why you bothered typing it.
 
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