- Oct 18, 2012
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I feel the same way about modern rock and pop music. Very little creativity. Mostly copycat artists.
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Modern Jazz is No Fun
- Thread starter eJake
- Start date
I'm overwhelmed by the abundance and creativity of bands and artists I discover on Bandcamp every week. And if you want retro, there is really good retro these days (bands that exactly sound like a 60's soul band). Radio is not the place to hear interesting new music anymore. It has been replaced by other sources (BC, Deezer, Spotify, Primaphonic for classical). I hear A LOT of interesting jazz that moves into new directions and fuses modern influences (pop/techno or other types jazz) and folk music. I wouldn't call it avant garde, it's a jazz approach to a different kind of music.
It's totally unclear to me whether you want music to go forward or not, eJake. Your personal taste seems to be quite conservative even for someone who liked jazz in the 60's. If your only reference to modern jazz is Robert Glasper you're missing out on a lot. There are so many modern jazz trio's and jazz bands that don't sound academic, try new things, don't copy stuff, and would be approved by Bill Evans or Miles Davis if they would still be alive. Maybe you're only basing your opinion on what you see live in your neighbourhood, but there's a lot going on. Poland, Switzerland, Portugal have vivid jazz scenes.
And if you don't want to get it in your lawn, then leave it. No one is forcing you to listen to new jazz.
It's totally unclear to me whether you want music to go forward or not, eJake. Your personal taste seems to be quite conservative even for someone who liked jazz in the 60's. If your only reference to modern jazz is Robert Glasper you're missing out on a lot. There are so many modern jazz trio's and jazz bands that don't sound academic, try new things, don't copy stuff, and would be approved by Bill Evans or Miles Davis if they would still be alive. Maybe you're only basing your opinion on what you see live in your neighbourhood, but there's a lot going on. Poland, Switzerland, Portugal have vivid jazz scenes.
And if you don't want to get it in your lawn, then leave it. No one is forcing you to listen to new jazz.
I grew up in the punk rock era in the UK everything was possible the only limit was your imagination, today I think people don’t communicate well with others, hence music has stood still, people don’t take risks it’s just the same old over and over, I blame computers and cell phones.
I like jazz but mostly only with lyrics Hoggy Carmichael, Louis Jordan etc
I like jazz but mostly only with lyrics Hoggy Carmichael, Louis Jordan etc
With all due respect, to me it seems that you should broaden your horizon. There is so much interesting stuff going down in Jazz at the moment. Take London. Take Nerija (their latest album named Blume is downright awesome, especially the lady on guitar kills it), Nubya Garcia, Joe Armon-Jones. Go to Tokyo, Ronin Arkestra. Abro in Israel. BadBadNotGood easily filled a 1500 people venue in the town where I live and friggin rocked it. Same applies to Snarky Puppy (over-arranged IMO but still worth listening to). Matthew Halsall, Anouar Brahem (with Django Bates, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette). All extremely soulful music. No Real Book classic evolving from there, that much is true, but I don’t think that’s a real criterion. My favorite jazz albums, Trane’s A Love Supreme and Miles’ In A Silent Way didn’t either, so who cares.
Smooth_bass88
vaxx!
- Oct 31, 2006
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- have been on nationally released albums, charting on the Billboard 200
"If it ain't fun it ain't worth doing"
Seriously though, yes there may be certain gigs that aren't so much fun (playing to group of tobacco users for example) but the vast majority of gigs are fun. At the very least enjoyable.
I think the problem is largely a matter of context. Music is perceived and understood differently if you evolve along with it, instead of studying it retrospectively in bits and pieces out of order .
My back ground: I am not really a natural jazz musician. I was taught only classical in school and I did not even complete my associates. I self taught reading chord notation and have done a lot of big band and jazz trio work, primarily reading out of the Real Book 5th Ed. I doubt I have done anything the OP would be impressed with, but it paid the bills and I actually loved playing many of the old tunes. Playing 40s era swing for European audiences and WWII vets in the 90s in particular was often a transcendental experience. It must have been something to fall in love to Moonlight Serenade during the war years.
My perspective on the problem related allegorically: I came of age in the late 70s, early 80s and remember being really excited by the way music was evolving. It seemed like a bunch of disparate styles crashing together and creating an incredible synergy out of the ashes. New styles splashed out and went in new directions and some of it would be considered fairly extreme and unusual by the masses. I was able to follow some of the new styles because I was there for the evolution and had the proper context to understand them. Looking back, it's sometimes difficult to understand how I came to like a certain tune because the context has been lost.
In particular I was into some dance music and funk styles that you would not hear very often on the radio. A few years back, Mark Ronson had a huge hit, "Uptown Funk". To me it sounded like a soulless B side of some of the styles I loved back in the day, but
. I suspect if I heard a good cover band play Uptown Funk with some soul, I would probably have liked it a lot more. Unfortunately this style of Funk, like Jazz is no longer a living, evolving style in most areas.
Evolution presents a couple of problems. If music doesn't evolve, it gets stale and boring over an extended time. I believe musical evolution is somewhat limited in that a style is confined by certain defining elements. At some point a style must evolve beyond it's defining limits, and if that happens it often becomes something else. Sometimes the evolution is quite fast and extreme, so the new music is really something different and largely unrelated to what preceded it. If the evolution does not occur, the style is likely to go into great decline or essentially die off, but years later you might wind up with tunes like Zoot Suit Riot or Uptown Funk.
Seems like a pretty insurmountable problem to produce fresh, creative jazz with a lot of soul, because the style has already run it's course and the magic of the evolution has been used up for both the musician and the audience. For the most part, only the nostalgia remains and the first generation who really loved, appreciated, and understood jazz are moving on very quickly.
IMHO jazz is taught at music schools largely because of it's complexity and sophistication. But there is a difference between learning jazz theory and being born to, and immersed in the type life experience necessary to produce an authentic jazz master. This gets back to the problem with missing context. You can't just start anew in the middle of the evolution without loosing something that is vital to the process. Music as complex as jazz has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is buried in the past.
My back ground: I am not really a natural jazz musician. I was taught only classical in school and I did not even complete my associates. I self taught reading chord notation and have done a lot of big band and jazz trio work, primarily reading out of the Real Book 5th Ed. I doubt I have done anything the OP would be impressed with, but it paid the bills and I actually loved playing many of the old tunes. Playing 40s era swing for European audiences and WWII vets in the 90s in particular was often a transcendental experience. It must have been something to fall in love to Moonlight Serenade during the war years.
My perspective on the problem related allegorically: I came of age in the late 70s, early 80s and remember being really excited by the way music was evolving. It seemed like a bunch of disparate styles crashing together and creating an incredible synergy out of the ashes. New styles splashed out and went in new directions and some of it would be considered fairly extreme and unusual by the masses. I was able to follow some of the new styles because I was there for the evolution and had the proper context to understand them. Looking back, it's sometimes difficult to understand how I came to like a certain tune because the context has been lost.
In particular I was into some dance music and funk styles that you would not hear very often on the radio. A few years back, Mark Ronson had a huge hit, "Uptown Funk". To me it sounded like a soulless B side of some of the styles I loved back in the day, but
. I suspect if I heard a good cover band play Uptown Funk with some soul, I would probably have liked it a lot more. Unfortunately this style of Funk, like Jazz is no longer a living, evolving style in most areas. Evolution presents a couple of problems. If music doesn't evolve, it gets stale and boring over an extended time. I believe musical evolution is somewhat limited in that a style is confined by certain defining elements. At some point a style must evolve beyond it's defining limits, and if that happens it often becomes something else. Sometimes the evolution is quite fast and extreme, so the new music is really something different and largely unrelated to what preceded it. If the evolution does not occur, the style is likely to go into great decline or essentially die off, but years later you might wind up with tunes like Zoot Suit Riot or Uptown Funk.
Seems like a pretty insurmountable problem to produce fresh, creative jazz with a lot of soul, because the style has already run it's course and the magic of the evolution has been used up for both the musician and the audience. For the most part, only the nostalgia remains and the first generation who really loved, appreciated, and understood jazz are moving on very quickly.
IMHO jazz is taught at music schools largely because of it's complexity and sophistication. But there is a difference between learning jazz theory and being born to, and immersed in the type life experience necessary to produce an authentic jazz master. This gets back to the problem with missing context. You can't just start anew in the middle of the evolution without loosing something that is vital to the process. Music as complex as jazz has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is buried in the past.
How many jazz standards did you hear in the 40s and 50s?
The answer is none, it was new music
Duh
London jazz scene is off the chain, same with melbourne and others. on bandcamp i've discovered a lot of euro jazz that's excellent. you just have to find it.
usa
butcher brown
christian scott
takuya kuroda
jose james
london
jo armon jones
nubya garcia
yussel kamaal
kamaal williams
vels trio
canada
badbadnotgood
iceland
ADHD
euro
erik truffaz
ibrahim malouf
usa
butcher brown
christian scott
takuya kuroda
jose james
london
jo armon jones
nubya garcia
yussel kamaal
kamaal williams
vels trio
canada
badbadnotgood
iceland
ADHD
euro
erik truffaz
ibrahim malouf
Yaay, another Grumpy Old Man
While I agree that innovation in pretty much every musical form has stalled to an extent, there are a few issues with your post.
One is that we are looking back on the past with rose-colored glasses. Back in the day, there were tons of young horn players who imitated giants like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. A lot of innovators had very limited audiences, or were openly dumped on by the jazz establishment (e.g. Dolphy, Coleman).
Another is that standards have been a part of jazz for decades. Implicitly complaining about jazz musicians playing standards as "stagnant" is a little weird.
I'd also add that complaining "no one does anything new, and avant garde sucks!" is also a bit weird.
As to people doing new stuff, in no particular order...
- Esperanza Spalding
- Vijay Iyer
- Brad Mehldau
- Joshua Redmon
- Lalah Hathaway
- Matt Garrison
- Linda Oh
- Larry Grenadier
Plus some old hands still doing good stuff
- Keith Jarrett
- Jack DeJohnette
- Dave Holland
- Gary Peacock
- Bill Frisell
- Pat Metheny
- Pat Martino
- Charles Lloyd
I might add, I don't consider myself as being a super-expert on contemporary jazz. That's just a few names off the top of my head.
I do not doubt that there is music out there that is good. I just don't hear a lot of it. Again, just my opinion, but Im not in a huge hurry to go check it out.
I do not claim to be super well versed in Jazz. I was referring to modern jazz as real book tunes and the like. Classifications are hard to get right....
Nice post in general. This sentence sums up my position well thanks.
This really hits home as I prepare to apply for grad school, graphic design not music, with the idea of teaching. You really hit the nail on the head.
I will also say this, I play in a “modern jazz” quintet—bass, drums, keys, trumpet, and guitar—and while a lot of our jazz-wise stuff is rooted in the Real Book, we break out of it and play Hendrix, Floyd, the Police and so much more while always adding our own unique flavor. We add a lot of funk to everything and a lot of good ol’ rock and or roll, but we try to keep it lively. We joke “If Miles could only here this...” but in reality, the weirder the better. Hell, we do “Equinox” as a surf rock tune. Screw the purists.
I think we have a miscommunication somewhere. I think that SP and Glasper are in similar categories. The reply was insinuating that SP applied to my OP but IMO I addressed people who have expanded the realm of jazz ala Glasper whom I really dig too.
I'd clarify this point by saying that Cherry Poppin Daddies (Zoot Suit Riot) and the other bands of the swing revival scene in the late 90s were an absolute flash in the pan. Everyone was obsessed with that sound in 1998, and everyone had all but forgotten about it before 2000. By comparison Uptown Funk was released five years ago, is still remarkably popular and its two key artists, Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars both have had a string of hits since then with no signs of slowing down. I can appreciate that you didn't dig Uptown Funk, but it's a very different thing in terms of longevity than Zoot Suit Riot.
Same here. I recently stumbled onto Jukka Eskola from Finland who does this wonderfully Scandinavian take on Latin jazz that I really enjoy. His tune 1974 is fantastic.
One might as well ask why should a good meal taste good?
Yeah, I guess I'm with you there. I remember the jazz group at my school being a clique supreme. I might have been on the inside of it for a minute, I guess.
