Double Bass Did Academia Kill Jazz?

[JazznFunk]

". . . the music of NOW. . . . " Dead on.

Jazz lives, though it might be hard to recognize in the music of now. But there's a through line from Dixieland to big bands to the birth of the cool and on to rap and hip hop and deejay culture.

Example: just came across this Ty Alexander video and I love what she'd doing. Live improvisation, very much in the spirit of jazz, by means of live remixing, using techniques invented by Kraftwerk.

Wild, the cultural appropriation going the other way for a change: Black music incorporating the DNA of music created by a bunch of white Germans.

(Warning: NSFW lyrics are sometimes heard in the video.)

(Favorite comment under the video---' Damn apartment neighbors just knocked on my wall talking bout, " turn that shiiii uuup!!" '

If you mean that it's hard to find elements of Jazz in what is considered to be the most popular music around us at present, I'd agree. We're in an era of minimalism and very static harmonies, and peoples' attention spans for longer improvisations are very short outside of certain genres.

Jazz itself, however, is very recognizable and is flourishing, though it isn't the most 'popular' form of music overall. It is uniquely the music of 'now' in how it's practiced and in its disciplines and its very nature, and stands on its own as a distinct and unique art form in terms of contemporary composition and performance.

I meant that JAZZ specifically is alive and well and is being practiced by plenty of fantastic writers and improvisers every single day, and that since Jazz happens in the moment, people should strive to be playing Jazz that is written NOW, to tell current stories and create new songs and a contemporary 'canon' on which to improvise - for themselves and for others. People are making records. People are writing Jazz that means something to THEM.... telling their stories.... versus just playing 'standards' and having that be 'Jazz'. Jazz is alive and is evolving - it is NOW.

 

[Don Kasper]

Academia didn't "Kill " jazz..." but they could be charged with Attempted BandSlaughter.
Srsly - Weather Report, Electric Miles, Chick's RTF, HH's Headhunters, (and many other bold & innovative Jazz Musicians), were all heavily SHUNNED by The Jazz Academia (tm) for decades - similar to the Swing vs. Bebop Fratricide.
Change, like Karma, is a Beotch.
IMFO, of course.

 

[scrubhelmet]

What academia has done, however, is get people to spend a LOT of money to earn a degree in an art form which at its core demands originality and an individual voice, while usually discouraging the pursuit of originality as part of its 'curriculum.'

Can jazz can be learned and mastered outside of academia?

 

[bassmanbrent]

Can jazz can be learned and mastered outside of academia?

Possibly, but I think it'd be a rare person that could attain a high level of competency. Back in the day, musicians learned on stage, logging long hours on six night a week gigs. Since there's no circuit and no steady jazz gigs any more, pretty much the only path is music school.

 

[PB+J]

Possibly, but I think it'd be a rare person that could attain a high level of competency. Back in the day, musicians learned on stage, logging long hours on six night a week gigs. Since there's no circuit and no steady jazz gigs any more, pretty much the only path is music school.

This. The history of jazz is full of guys who got a solid formal grounding in High School, often from an overqualified teacher who could not get a symphony gig because of segregation, and then guys who were mentored by somebody who either had formal training or went deep in private study. But just gigging, playing gigging all the time, prying knowledge from older players, long nightly sets--nothing improves you like that.

 

[JazznFunk]

Can jazz can be learned and mastered outside of academia?

Echoing what has already been said above me here.... not really. I think that it has changed a lot even in the past 25-30 years since I started playing Jazz. Gig opportunities are fewer for people who are starting out now to learn in the trenches, and academia itself has changed in how it teaches/approaches the music. I also think people have romantic expectations of becoming YouTube/social media stars, and are overwhelmed with information and expectations about how good they 'should be' coming out of school. Lots of unrealistic takes all around in terms of how long it actually takes to progress. Jam sessions and gigs were how I really started getting my stuff together in the early 2000s, as well as private lessons even while in school. I also started composing when I was very early in my Jazz journey, was in the right place at the right time to study/write/perform with players from NYC who settled in my area, and we had a very fertile Jazz scene then. Composing, and being encouraged to find my own personal voice, allowed me to apply the concepts I was absorbing in classes and on the stage in a personal way as well.

 

[turf3]

Well, if we talk about the changes in jazz that contributed to its no longer being closely related to mainstream pop (and as I've noted many many times before, it was actually cultural changes in the late 40s through the mid 60s that moved the consumers of mainstream pop away from jazz, not the other way round) -

The usual suspects everyone complains about:

Bebop. Complex broken rhythms, dense harmonies. Tell me, again, about the extensive academic background of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell?

Avant Garde - non-musical elements, non-constant chord progressions or non-chordal playing, abandonment of regular beats. So tell me about the extensive academic background of Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler?

Rock and Roll - simplified beats, electric instruments, short tunes with limited improvisation. So tell me about the extensive academic background of Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Sam Phillips, Lennon and McCartney, Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix?

The idea of "academia killing jazz" becomes absolutely hysterical when you actually consider what it would mean if it were true! Yeah, all those DMAs and PhDs in Louis Jordan's and Gene Vincent's bands - that's what killed jazz!

 

[JazznFunk]

Well, if we talk about the changes in jazz that contributed to its no longer being closely related to mainstream pop (and as I've noted many many times before, it was actually cultural changes in the late 40s through the mid 60s that moved the consumers of mainstream pop away from jazz, not the other way round) -

The usual suspects everyone complains about:

Bebop. Complex broken rhythms, dense harmonies. Tell me, again, about the extensive academic background of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell?

Avant Garde - non-musical elements, non-constant chord progressions or non-chordal playing, abandonment of regular beats. So tell me about the extensive academic background of Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler?

Rock and Roll - simplified beats, electric instruments, short tunes with limited improvisation. So tell me about the extensive academic background of Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Sam Phillips, Lennon and McCartney, Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix?

The idea of "academia killing jazz" becomes absolutely hysterical when you actually consider what it would mean if it were true! Yeah, all those DMAs and PhDs in Louis Jordan's and Gene Vincent's bands - that's what killed jazz!

The funny thing is I see all of those things as positive forces - having pushed Jazz to grow as an art form after it had already begun to lose its 'popular' status. Innovating despite the consequences was very punk rock of Jazz and its practitioners in the 40s/50s/60s and beyond.

Bebop and the Avant Garde pushed the music in different directions which made the conservative 'traditionalists' scared. Jazz responded to rock n' roll with Fusion, and some great (albeit controversial) music was made as a result. Jazz is the music of NOW - and it has always responded. Those responses haven't always been popular, but even Jazz in its original form was considered 'profane' by many in the early 20th century. The unfortunate backlash within Jazz is what gave us neo-conservatism in the Jazz world, a-la Wynton Marsalis... thinking something had been 'lost' that needed 'saving' and 'preserving'. That's when the modern 'academic' study of Jazz really began, compartmentalizing it into 'good/bad/authentic/inauthentic.' Some of the conservative progenitors of the art form were its own worst enemy.

So the only thing that was 'killed' in terms of Jazz was its stature as 'pop' music, and that was because the general public is/was too lazy to digest it beyond just casual listening.

Different academic institutions differ in how they approach and teach jazz (and other forms of music), so anyone who says 'academia killed jazz!' without nuance, is suspect. Like all educational institutions, there are conservative and progressive ones.

 

[turf3]

The funny thing is I see all of those things as positive forces - having pushed Jazz to grow as an art form after it had already begun to lose its 'popular' status. Innovating despite the consequences was very punk rock of Jazz and its practitioners in the 40s/50s/60s and beyond.

Bebop and the Avant Garde pushed the music in different directions which made the conservative 'traditionalists' scared. Jazz responded to rock n' roll with Fusion, and some great (albeit controversial) music was made as a result. Jazz is the music of NOW - and it has always responded. Those responses haven't always been popular, but even Jazz in its original form was considered 'profane' by many in the early 20th century. The unfortunate backlash within Jazz is what gave us neo-conservatism in the Jazz world, a-la Wynton Marsalis... thinking something had been 'lost' that needed 'saving' and 'preserving'. That's when the modern 'academic' study of Jazz really began, compartmentalizing it into 'good/bad/authentic/inauthentic.' Some of the conservative progenitors of the art form were its own worst enemy.

So the only thing that was 'killed' in terms of Jazz was its stature as 'pop' music, and that was because the general public is/was too lazy to digest it beyond just casual listening.

Different academic institutions differ in how they approach and teach jazz (and other forms of music), so anyone who says 'academia killed jazz!' without nuance, is suspect. Like all educational institutions, there are conservative and progressive ones.

Basically I agree with you, except this bit:

"...So the only thing that was 'killed' in terms of Jazz was its stature as 'pop' music, and that was because the general public is/was too lazy to digest it beyond just casual listening...."

What took jazz out of pop music was NOT the fact that bleeding-edge jazz got less danceable and more challenging. What took jazz out of pop music is that 1946's teenagers, and 1952's teenagers, didn't want to go dancing to the same music (or nearly the same) as their older aunts and uncles did in 1938, or their parents in 1928. They wanted something different, and the "something different" was first the postwar crooners (Sinatra, Como, etc.) and then the early rock and roll. There is a not-ever-clearly-stated idea out there that in 1946 all the territory dance bands that played down at the armory every Thursday through Saturday night suddenly switch over from playing swing dance music a la Miller, Lombardo, Kaye, etc, to the most austere uptown bebop complete with 20 minute solos, blazing tempos, and needles hanging out of everyone's arm, and it JUST WASN'T SO. The fact that some 100 or so key musicians in New York City were developing and introducing radical new ways to play this music had basically NOTHING to do with the move away from big band swing in Omaha or Spokane or Louisville.

In fact, one could say that the move of the mainstream public away from jazz and jazzy musics for their main dancing and listening entertainment actually freed up those musicians who stayed in "jazz" to innovate in the ways they did during the period 1945-1970 or so. Absent the everpresent need to satisfy demanding dancers, the pay became terrible, yes, but the musicians who stuck it out could try out different stuff far more freely.

 

[WG Plum]

Can jazz can be learned and mastered outside of academia?

Location location location, but even in Seattle, which has some stellar middle and high school music/Jazz programs, a collegiate degree seems necessary. Wayne Horvitz and others are definitely keeping it alive outside of the school system, though.

 

[PB+J]

Basically I agree with you, except this bit:

"...So the only thing that was 'killed' in terms of Jazz was its stature as 'pop' music, and that was because the general public is/was too lazy to digest it beyond just casual listening...."

What took jazz out of pop music was NOT the fact that bleeding-edge jazz got less danceable and more challenging. What took jazz out of pop music is that 1946's teenagers, and 1952's teenagers, didn't want to go dancing to the same music (or nearly the same) as their older aunts and uncles did in 1938, or their parents in 1928. They wanted something different, and the "something different" was first the postwar crooners (Sinatra, Como, etc.) and then the early rock and roll. There is a not-ever-clearly-stated idea out there that in 1946 all the territory dance bands that played down at the armory every Thursday through Saturday night suddenly switch over from playing swing dance music a la Miller, Lombardo, Kaye, etc, to the most austere uptown bebop complete with 20 minute solos, blazing tempos, and needles hanging out of everyone's arm, and it JUST WASN'T SO. The fact that some 100 or so key musicians in New York City were developing and introducing radical new ways to play this music had basically NOTHING to do with the move away from big band swing in Omaha or Spokane or Louisville.

In fact, one could say that the move of the mainstream public away from jazz and jazzy musics for their main dancing and listening entertainment actually freed up those musicians who stayed in "jazz" to innovate in the ways they did during the period 1945-1970 or so. Absent the everpresent need to satisfy demanding dancers, the pay became terrible, yes, but the musicians who stuck it out could try out different stuff far more freely.

Agree with this--it's crazy to blame Bird and Ornette. In the 60s lots of people were chasing the jukebox success Lee Morgan had with "the Sidewinder." I mean listen to Shorter's "Adams Apple," or Herbie's "Watermelon Man" or any number of greasy Jimmy Smith grooves.

A friend insists that the real change comes from Afro-Cuban music, which introduced a lot of rhythmically complex two chord vamps and abandoned the swing feel. You can see this in James Brown, going from R+B triplets in the 50s to 16th note funk vamps. Static harmony, complex drumming and horns. He argues the Latin piece has always been present, but it boomed with the "mambo craze" in the 50s and then boogaloo in the 60s and then the generic Santana style latin beat, which you get in jazz early on with Jamal's "poinciana," which was a big hit, and Dizzy's "manteca." It comes with large scale immigration of Cubans and Puerto Ricans to US cities

 

[JazznFunk]

Agree with this--it's crazy to blame Bird and Ornette. In the 60s lots of people were chasing the jukebox success Lee Morgan had with "the Sidewinder." I mean listen to Shorter's "Adams Apple," or Herbie's "Watermelon Man" or any number of greasy Jimmy Smith grooves.

I advise people to read my post(s) again. I'm not 'blaming' Bird or Ornette for anything. On the contrary, I am PRAISING them. Popular culture is what left innovators like them behind, for multiple reasons, including how music was marketed. I'm also saying that some artists within 'Jazz' are often the music's own worst enemy.... not academia.

 

[PB+J]

I advise people to read my post(s) again. I'm not 'blaming' Bird or Ornette for anything. On the contrary, I am PRAISING them. Popular culture is what left innovators like them behind, for multiple reasons, including how music was marketed. I'm also saying that some artists within 'Jazz' are often the music's own worst enemy.... not academia.

I know! Was not accusing you. But it's really common to see Bird and Ornette and Trane blamed for making jazz unpopular. That's what I was referring to. Apologies if it seemed like I was blaming you.

 

[JazznFunk]

I know! Was not accusing you. But it's really common to see Bird and Ornette and Trane blamed for making jazz unpopular. That's what I was referring to. Apologies if it seemed like I was blaming you.

All good. I agree - they are popular targets, and those notions are wholly misguided. It's easy to get topics and responders crossed up on these multi-quote threads. I'd say we're doing alright overall! haha

 

[JazznFunk]

Basically I agree with you, except this bit:

"...So the only thing that was 'killed' in terms of Jazz was its stature as 'pop' music, and that was because the general public is/was too lazy to digest it beyond just casual listening...."

What took jazz out of pop music was NOT the fact that bleeding-edge jazz got less danceable and more challenging. What took jazz out of pop music is that 1946's teenagers, and 1952's teenagers, didn't want to go dancing to the same music (or nearly the same) as their older aunts and uncles did in 1938, or their parents in 1928. They wanted something different, and the "something different" was first the postwar crooners (Sinatra, Como, etc.) and then the early rock and roll. There is a not-ever-clearly-stated idea out there that in 1946 all the territory dance bands that played down at the armory every Thursday through Saturday night suddenly switch over from playing swing dance music a la Miller, Lombardo, Kaye, etc, to the most austere uptown bebop complete with 20 minute solos, blazing tempos, and needles hanging out of everyone's arm, and it JUST WASN'T SO. The fact that some 100 or so key musicians in New York City were developing and introducing radical new ways to play this music had basically NOTHING to do with the move away from big band swing in Omaha or Spokane or Louisville.

In fact, one could say that the move of the mainstream public away from jazz and jazzy musics for their main dancing and listening entertainment actually freed up those musicians who stayed in "jazz" to innovate in the ways they did during the period 1945-1970 or so. Absent the everpresent need to satisfy demanding dancers, the pay became terrible, yes, but the musicians who stuck it out could try out different stuff far more freely.

The interesting thing is that Bebop itself was the first shot fired in young peoples' response to their parents' 'stodgy' music. The big bands were already dying out due to the AFM's recording ban during the war, and also because the big bands were too expensive for the leaders to keep on the road... and players kept leaving for their own smaller groups where they had more freedom. I've never heard the notion that the big bands ever tried to adapt and suddenly start playing bebop to 'survive'. They were done already.

Sinatra, etc (the 'crooners') started to gain a foothold during the AFM recording ban, because they weren't part of the union. So it was a combo of industry forces AND pop culture that shifted what still fell under the realm of 'Jazz' for most, over to the 'adult contemporary' crooners with far less innovation and less instrumental exploration in recordings and performances, and with highly marketable young faces and voices. Of note is that Sinatra, etc often performed and popularized newer versions of the same American Songbook material that their parents were listening to - so how 'rebellious' was it all really?

I admire Sinatra as a stylist, and those were beautiful recordings.... but they were far simpler for the listener to digest than anything else going on in 'Jazz' at the time. So, I still stand by the premise that the general public (and the industry) consciously embraced simpler music in terms of popular consumption, whether out of availability, desire, or as a response to the music of their parents. And then came rock and roll....

 

[turf3]

To be sure there were a tiny number of teenagers who took up bebop (though it was a lot more about looking like a beatnik than about actually knowing anything about the music, and it was really more of a late 50s phenomenon outside NYC and San Francisco, taken up not by kids who were interested in jazz but by those who wanted to distinguish themselves from the great mass of rock and roll fans).

But the great middle, the ones who went to dances and spent money on records, abandoned swing and jazz and jazzy starting after the war, not because it had changed to bebop (as I've said, even in 1950 there might have been 500 musicians in all of the US playing that way, compared to tens of thousands playing swing for dancing) - they abandoned the mainstream of jazz and swing and jazzy starting right after the war because it was OLD FASHIONED to them.

It wasn't that jazz had become, or was becoming ,"too complicated". That "too complicated" stuff wasn't much in evidence on Saturday night in Fowler, Colo. in 1950. It was that it was the music of older people.

Now Sinatra and Como and Clooney and the like, they were originally stone jazzers, that's where they came from, and it never really left most of them. But the whole presentation was VERY different from Benny Goodman in front of 16 pieces hammering out the jitterbug numbers. To the average bobbysoxer of 1950 that was old stuff.

And yes, record band and record companies ' responses played a major role, too, one that's probably been underreported.

 

[JazznFunk]

(as I've said, even in 1950 there might have been 500 musicians in all of the US playing that way, compared to tens of thousands playing swing for dancing) - they abandoned the mainstream of jazz and swing and jazzy starting right after the war because it was OLD FASHIONED to them.

It wasn't that jazz had become, or was becoming ,"too complicated". That "too complicated" stuff wasn't much in evidence on Saturday night in Fowler, Colo. in 1950. It was that it was the music of older people.

Now Sinatra and Como and Clooney and the like, they were originally stone jazzers, that's where they came from, and it never really left most of them. But the whole presentation was VERY different from Benny Goodman in front of 16 pieces hammering out the jitterbug numbers. To the average bobbysoxer of 1950 that was old stuff.

And yes, record band and record companies ' responses played a major role, too, one that's probably been underreported.

So are we now just talking about the 1950s, and have we abandoned the immediate post-war 1940s as part of the discussiion? It seems like your assessment skipped to the 50s, which ignores the vital transition era previously mentioned.

 

[turf3]

So are we now just talking about the 1950s, and have we abandoned the immediate post-war 1940s as part of the discussiion? It seems like your assessment skipped to the 50s, which ignores the vital transition era previously mentioned.

Well, no, I was kind of intentionally skipping over that immediate post war period because so much was in flux then. Veterans coming back had not all settled down, so they were still out there on the singles market along wiht the 15-18 year olds. Also, in 1945-46 bebop was truly still an underground music of uptown New York City, but by 1950 it was largely the mainstream of "what's happening now" in jazz. (But still EXTREMELY niche compared to everything else.)

So that immediate postwar period is confused, but if we go 5 years forward to 1950, we see that bebop is well established at the cutting edge of jazz, but hardly anyone outside NYC is experiencing it in their regular lives unless they're a real jazz fan; teenagers are definitely well away from swing jazz and jazzy as their popular music, so the turn away from "jazz = popular music and popular music = jazz" is, I'd say, largely complete. (The idea that popular music was ever really filled up with jazz is not accurate, of course; just like in the 1920s Paul Whiteman way outsold Louis Armstrong, so Guy Lumbago Glenn Miller and their ilk outsold probably everyone except Benny Goodman - certainly outsold Hawkins, Basie, Ellington, etc. - and Goodman put out plenty of saccharine pop numbers too - but let's go with it as a convenient shorthand for now.)

My three main points through all this discussion have been:

1) If we define "Killed Jazz" as "it's no longer a music of the masses, it's an extremely small niche", then NO, academia did NOT "kill jazz", the massive turn away from "jazz" in popular music occurred long before "academica" took up jazz (other than a tiny number of fringe programs like Schillinger).

2) The reason for the massive turn away from "jazz" in popular music had nothing to do with the new, austere, more complex and sophisticated forms of bebop, or the difficult-to-understand avant-garde; the vast majority of people in the United States had next to no exposure to these ways of playing during the time of the massive turn away from "jazz" in popular music. Instead, it was the typical, time-honored turn of young people in the key taste-forming, dating, dancing years (let's say 14-20) away from "old people's" music toward something that felt relevant to them. That was stuff like, first, the crooners, singer-backed-by-anonymous-band-with strings, and then rock and roll.

3) finally, the musicians who turned leading-edge jazz in the directions of bop, cool, hardbop, avant garde (which means so many different things!), and fusion, were by and large NOT part of academia, by and large had learned their craft on the bandstand as professional dance band musicians.

The fact that today's academically-oriented jazz players aren't filling stadiums like Taylor Swift has very little to do with their educational process. There's plenty wrong, in my opinion, with the academic approach to learning how to play jazz; but it is a result, not a cause, of the reduction in market and cultural prominence of jazz since 1940ish.

 

[turf3]

Let's also not forget that jazz of 1925 was very different from jazz of 1938. Teenagers of 1938 regarded the jazz of 1925 as antique and corny, and teenagers of 1925, when 1938 rolled around, often didn't even identify swing AS jazz. There was a generation gap there, too, it's just that so much time has passed that those controversies are largely lost to us, given the controversies around bebop, avant-garde jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll in its several incarnations, and rap.

 

[Don Kasper]

Is it helpful in understanding "jazz history", (and jazz wellness), to consider that Swing was music that was Dance-oriented and BeBop was meant for Listening/Digging? I've always felt that this was an important factor in the shifting "popularity" (among the mass audience) of jazz.
Once it became music for Listening, it became ripe for entry into Academia (for better or worse, or both.)
IMFO, of course.