Double Bass Why isn't Jazz that popular? (DB forum thread)

[gerry grable]

Thanks for the lessons, but I think most of the people on this site are already aware of the history and genesis of jazz music. The question is why is it so unpopular? No pun intended
The answer is complicated, much more than a "dumbing down," a term I dislike because it always makes the person using it, regardless of who they are, sound like a supercilious elitist. Who am I, and I myself have been guilty in the past, to look down with condescension on people who don't share my love for jazz? I personally love classical music, but I dislike opera. I appreciate the talent and artistry involved, but I just can't take the voices. So, to opera lovers, I guess I've been dumbed down. The reality is that jazz and opera are both esoteric art forms that have relativly small fan bases and it isn't an intellectual faux pas to prefer one over the other. Does the same line of logic apply to rock, rap and country?

 

[MR PC]

Thanks for the lessons, but I think most of the people on this site are already aware of the history and genesis of jazz music.

Disagree.

 

[Bruce Lindfield]

Thanks for the lessons, but I think most of the people on this site are already aware of the history and genesis of jazz music.

If you are talking about Double Bass players, then that's probably true, but if you venture over to the BG side, then at times it seems the average age can be as low as 14!

Anybody under 40 is going to be very sketchy on what Jazz even is, beyond the soundtrack to a few commercials. If you were born after the 1970s, then Jazz was long gone as a "popular" form of music.

If you were born in the 90s, you are very unlikely to have even heard the term and may think it just refers to a type of car made by Honda!

"The Great American Songbook" is now something that aging rock stars turn to when their career is way beyond flagging and they are looking to revive their fortunes for an "older" market.

Somebody growing up today, downloads music on a song by song basis, with no idea of their provenance or origin!

 

[boynamedsuse]

Why isn't Jazz that popular? The general public (you know, the ones who would make it popular), won't get to chime in here at TB (let alone the DB forum), so your best bet is to look outward.

Jazz was fine as popular music up to the 60s I guess. (It's before my time.) According to Standing in the Shadows of Motown, most or all of the Funk Brothers did after hours gigs at the local jazz clubs and the clubs were well attended. Rock had been a big deal for 10 years or so at that time and jazz still seemed healthy, so I suspect that neither plummeting intellect of the general public or exploding popularity of rock music was to blame.

Still, about that time some jazz morphed into a series of tenuously connected, atonal, free form, noodling solos. Soon afterward, people stopped listening to jazz.

Hmm. What is the answer???

 

[Bruce Lindfield]

It's not that simplistic - there are many factors that came into play in the 1960s :

- increased use of amplification, leading to louder concerts, more people and more money for promoters

- Jazz doesn't work so well amplified and in large arenas

- increase in youth culture, more spending power to kids, who wanted their "own" music

- globalisation of culture - the Beatles and other bands from UK going all round the world

- rock and roll seen as "sexier", music became more about this and lyrics were more about "relationships"

- increasing influence of radio and TV leading to a homogenising effect on popular culture - or lowest common denominator

- faster moving trends - spreading more quickly due to TV/Radio and globalisation - here today gone tomorrow, 15 minutes of fame etc. etc.


I could think of more - given time!

 

[Bruce Lindfield]

I think the other thing is that many big names in Jazz never really went over to Free Blowing or changed their styles that much - Horace Silver and Art Blakey continued to form many small groups thoughout the 60s, 70s and beyond, playing the same kind of Jazz they always had. Sonny Rollins continued to plough his own furrow and still plays today!

No it wasn't the players moving away from the audience - it was the audience moving on - due to the factors I mentioned in my last post (and many others no doubt).

 

[Mokebass]

Jazz today is played for musicians, IMO, rather than for the public at large.

Until musicians become the majority, jazz will just have to stay calm and forget making it to the top-trending yahoo list.

Everyone is a musician. Its just lucky jazz musos are the minority.

 

[Bruce Lindfield]

So..why are you posting on the Double Bass board then...

 

[stringtapper]

Everyone is a musician. Its just lucky jazz musos are the minority.

Do you know the standard "There Will Never Be Another You"? We can only hope.


@Bruce: I think that's a good summary of how Rock 'n' Roll took over in the popular culture.

 

[gerry grable]

So..why are you posting on the Double Bass board then...

Bruce,
Don't let that kind of crap bother you. It comes from what I call "the shower culture." Everybody sounds good in the shower. Guitar and drum sales soar out of sight. With the advent of CDs, everybody is a recording artist. In the old days having a vinyl record was an real achievement. It was expensive and time consuming. It took a person like Orrin Keepnews to have faith in a player and the guts to invest some real money. CDs are cheap and like plastic bootles are cluttering up the landscape. Trial balloons. If they hit great; if they don't... next?
So reality shows proliferate on television, to the great pleasure of the producers who save billions on their overhead. Why pay a star when you can get an amatuer to do it and still charge the same for the ads? Besides they're fun! It's the "I can do it as good as him" mentality.
I agree with most of your "it isn't simple" post above. You fleshed out many of the things I had in mind with my, even earlier, "it isn't simple" post. To do justice to the subject would take one of those long National Geographic treatises. And I don't have the time or patience to attempt it. Do you?
Another thought before I shut up: Fun!
Pop, rock and rap music are fun. It's show biz, stupid Large concerts in stadiums with fire works and other effects are fun. It's visual and loud and even choreographed with rhythmic arm waving and candle gimics, not to mention the bountiful bouncing boobs. Fun!
When did you ever have fun at a classical recital or a jazz club (Jazz festivals are another thing)? For example, if you could have polled the attendees of the Monk/Coltrane concert at Carnegie Hall in 1957, I seriously doubt that anyone would have given "it was fun" as an answer. Exciting, brilliant, way out, enlightening, historic, but not fun.

 

[MR PC]

Sun Ra.

 

[fishdreams]

Sun Ra.

+1
Eddie Harris. Louis Armstrong. Erroll Garner....Jazz musicians and the music always were and have been fun, to this day, IME. -

But the current audience is not, maybe. On the Vision festival a few years ago I witnessed a set by an impromptu big band with a Latin theme, that, frankly, was both badly rehearsed, and populated by musicians who had no sense of how to play a clave. They wouldn't have lasted 5 seconds in front of a crowd of Nuyoricans.

Nonetheless, one of the more prominent decade-long patrons loudly deemed it "fan-tas-tic' adding that it was 'a bit of nice low-brow entertainment'.

I think this is a good example of the condescending attitude prominent in the jazz world, and I believe far more people would be fan if jazz wouldn't have been hijacked by this better-than-thou, 'everybody-is-a-critic'-crowd, that never ceases to compare jazz to other musics, always deemed inferior, hereby implying the imagined sense of cultural superiority of said crowd. With a vibe like that, no wonder there are few fans left. ....

 

[Roy Vogt]

There's a glimmer of hope in players like Esperanza Spalding. She's a bonafide bassist, writer/arranger and Jazz vocalist. Her concert with the Radio Music Society Band was to a packed house here in Nashville and after her Grammy win (besting Justin Bieber) her label is definitely putting a big push behind her with a CD/DVD set.
I think "popular" and "unpopular" are relative terms. I can recall looking through the Country section at Tower Records in NYC and with much bemusement realizing that it was 1/8 the size of their Jazz section.
If you look at the Harry Connick/Esperanza/Diana Krall side of things (and even Michael Buble') if you can package Jazz in Young and Attractive it sells. Hats of to Esperanza for ignoring that and keeping it Real.

 

[scrimjer]

Jazz music just like rock music has changed. ex: Buddy Holly and GWAR, both play some type of rock and roll, in 50 years music things change.

 

[fishdreams]

There's a glimmer of hope in players like Esperanza Spalding.

Heartwarming Indeed - and on the other side the spectrum I would like add groups such as Garage a Trois and Rudder - jazz played by jazz musicians in front of crowds who couldn't care less what it is called.

 

[gerry grable]

+1
Eddie Harris. Louis Armstrong. Erroll Garner....Jazz musicians and the music always were and have been fun, to this day,

Okay guys. There were exceptions. And don't forget Dizzy, and even Monk would go into his dance routine from time to time, but unfortunately they are all gone and have been for years.

 

[Raymeous]

In short, because jazz tends to be more "musician music", and lets face it, there is a ton of it which is little more than "1-2-3 everybody solo." It's similar in nature to some of the prog-metal stuff that I enjoy. For most people it's a little too weird with off tempo time signatures and "random" key changes. Also you have to take a look at the evolution of jazz as well. Old school be bopp and swing are not as prevalent and people aren't going to go "clubbin' " to the current smooth jazz variety.

As insulting as I find club music to be as a musician, it does have that steady beat that people can groove, gyrate, and grind to. Also with today's attention spans being on par with a gnats lifespan, 10 minutes of soloing will turn off most people including other musicians. Most musicians can appreciate the difficulty of a passage or the uniqueness of a phrase or a tonal shift, but the average Joe wouldn't even notice it.

I'm not trying to bring you down here, and I do enjoy Jazz both old and new, but after an hour or two of it I need a change, same as listening to metal, or country or whatever. Hip hop and modern R&B is good until I've heard the drum loop not change for 8 measures. Click. Next.

 

[Will Kelly]

There's a glimmer of hope in players like Esperanza Spalding. She's a bonafide bassist, writer/arranger and Jazz vocalist. Her concert with the Radio Music Society Band was to a packed house here in Nashville and after her Grammy win (besting Justin Bieber) her label is definitely putting a big push behind her with a CD/DVD set.
I think "popular" and "unpopular" are relative terms. I can recall looking through the Country section at Tower Records in NYC and with much bemusement realizing that it was 1/8 the size of their Jazz section.
If you look at the Harry Connick/Esperanza/Diana Krall side of things (and even Michael Buble') if you can package Jazz in Young and Attractive it sells. Hats of to Esperanza for ignoring that and keeping it Real.

If Esperanza Spaulding was an ugly, fat, white man, no one would no about him/her. Well, no one outside of the community of jazz musicians. Sad, but true. Such is the world we live in today. She is wickedly talented, bur very easy on the eyes which makes her easier to market.

As an aside...

I have always thought jazz was an improvisors art form. That's why I love it.

I have always thought of classical music as a composers art form, and "pop" music as a commercial art form. There is plenty of pop music I love. Being a bassist, it is hard to resist the power of the simple groove in some commercial music.

From an emotional standpoint, improvised music is what touches me, and good music is good music regardless of style, IMO. People opinions of what is good will vary depending on their environment, culture, education and understanding of music, life, etc.

I find jazz very powerful, almost spiritual. Others won't. Not my problem.

 

[Jhengsman]

If Esperanza Spaulding was an ugly, fat, white man, no one would no about him/her. Well, no one outside of the community of jazz musicians. Sad, but true. Such is the world we live in today. She is wickedly talented, bur very easy on the eyes which makes her easier to market.

As a "popular" art form one of the worst things that happened was that one of its most popular artist got away with turning his back on his audience

 

[Mokebass]

Sorry.....forgot this was a DB room.

Anyway check out John Entwhistle (RIP) for complete mastery of 4 strings.