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

#621
Will Kelly said:
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.

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I'm also a sucker for a good bass groove - wherever you may find it!

But I thought this was a interesting point - so I was into rock/pop for many years, but as I got older I started to find it predictable and boring - the same few chord sequences and what is the point of going to a concert where the musicians are just trying to reproduce the sound of a classic album they recorded years ago? After a while, I felt it was better to listen to the CD and hear it how it was meant to sound if they weren't all drunk, too old, doing it for the zillionth time etc.

Whereas if I go to a Jazz gig - they are not trying to re-create something from the past - but are "in the moment" and responding to what's around them - not what they played years ago.

A Jazz pro and teacher I know named Julian - told the story about how he goes round to schools and talks about Jazz. Often the kids will say - "oh sir, can't we do something more modern" and proceed to play a rock guitar riff of indeterminate provenance.

Julian said to them - that music is old, around for over 40 years now and hasn't really changed. Here's a Jazz piece I wrote last week and will be playing with my quintet at a venue tonight, which will be completely new to the world and never played the same twice - that's modern!! :p
 
#622
theretheyare said:
...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. ....
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+1

Also; see the criticism Miles Davis endured when he went Electric. Albums like Bitches, Brew, On The Corner,... got slated by a lot of 'Jazz' critcs because it contained rock rhytms and electric instruments...
 
#624
djaxup said:
I guess i just don't like the sound of it.

That and many jazz buffs seem elitist.
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Lots of different styles and maybe it does take a bit of work on the listener's part? But I know from experience I could play Jazz CDs that anybody would enjoy, who says they don't like it - you can't just write off a whole genre! :rollno:

Anyway - Jazz inpired other genres and many bands pay homage to Jazz greats and classic Jazz albums.
 
#626
That's a beautiful tune with great playing and taste - but I can imagine some people saying - "I want something more raucous and raw" - well, I could easily find Jazz albums in my collection that are like that - totally mad and off-the-wall Free blowing or with heavy grooves and distorted guitar - Mahavishnu anybody? ;)

You can't just ignore/dismiss a whole genre and those who say they don't like Jazz - just haven't listened to enough of it yet! :eyebrow:
 
#628
Bruce Lindfield said:
You can't just ignore/dismiss a whole genre and those who say they don't like Jazz - just haven't listened to enough of it yet! :eyebrow:
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That is true... I even succeeded in making people listen to Free Jazz and having them reconsider the fact that it is not all wall-of-sound-full-out-screeching-and-blowing. (Alice Coltrane: A Journey In Satchinananda did the trick, and even the girl :cool:)
 
#630
Bruce Lindfield said:
You can't just ignore/dismiss a whole genre and those who say they don't like Jazz - just haven't listened to enough of it yet! :eyebrow:
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Sometimes it's hard for musicians to remember what the world was like before they developed their ear, their discrimination, their taste. To remember what it was like to listen to music with a naive, untrained ear and to just react.

Some folks just don't like jazz. Didn't like it from day one. There's a lot of them out there. What you typically hear from these folks is along the lines of "I can't tell what song they're playing" or "it all sounds the same to me." There's something they are looking for in music that jazz just isn't giving them. What are these things they might be looking for? A simple list:
  • Hummable, singable melodies
  • Toe-tapping or danceable rhythms
  • A sense of belonging; "this is our music"
  • A sense of hipness; "I'm cool liking this music"

Obviously, jazz hasn't delivered any of this stuff in a big, mass audience way for at least 50 years now. Should it deliver some of those goods? I would say, as always, "it depends". Do you want to be a big-selling, widely loved commercial music? Or, do you want to be all that *again*? Well, if that's your goal Mr. Jazz, then you should probably look into some of those audience demands. On the other hand, Mr. Jazz, do want to continue to be the sophisticated, kind-of-hard but deeply rewarding music that has the potential to thrill the right kind of player and the right kind of audience? Do you want to stick to your heritage and keep developing in all the ways the tradition suggests and enables? If that's the goal, then stick to your guns. Ignore the mass audience.

I would counsel Mr. Jazz, though, that it's not very bright to want to be two things at once: 1) a sophisticated but esoteric music; and, 2) a widely popular and thus commercially rewarding music. Pick one.
 
#631
I can play people music that has all those things - Kind of Blue was the ultimate in cool and just about every rock/pop chart has it in its top albums of all time.

I have put "So What" on the jukebox in a crowded pub of avowed Jazz haters and seen them tapping their toes and getting into it!

I have had people say to me that they hate Jazz and I have played them CDs with funky snappy tunes and they have said - wow, never heard that before, but it sounds very familiar! Jazz is the soundtrack to huge numbers of films and classic TV series - people love it - they just don't know it is Jazz!

The theme to Mission Impossible is classic modal Jazz and when we have had all the re-make movies, it has become the coolest tune in town! But nobody talks about it as Jazz!

There was a new series on TV over here that became very hip and trendy amongst the young - like a British Mad Men - but they chose Horace Silver's "Senor Blues" as the theme and it was all over TV and Radio for months - but nobody called it Jazz.
 
#632
All of that "true", Bruce, but obviously, from the point of view of jazz' popularity, none of it is relevant.

I think the sad fact is this: the historical moment when the music and the mass audience were all in sync and excited together has long, long, long since passed. Some of the factors are musical, some of the factors are cultural, some are demographic, some are economic. But if there are people out there who mourn this state of affairs and want to do anything they can to bring back the good old days -- they might as well be trying to bring back Neanderthal Man. Ain't going to happen, that time has passed.

It's not terrible. Jazz isn't dead, not by a long shot. It just ain't what it used to be.
 
#633
I recall Kind of Blue/So What came out 50+ years ago. Music hasn't been made like that for a long time. People listen to Jimi Hendrix too, but that doesn't mean rock is all that healthy any more either.

The variations on jazz that remain popular (e.g. Michael Bublé) are sneered at by a healthy percentage of this group, so it looks like those people are going to stay confused or remain in a state of denial.
 
#634
Damon Rondeau said:
Sometimes it's hard for musicians to remember what the world was like before they developed their ear, their discrimination, their taste. To remember what it was like to listen to music with a naive, untrained ear and to just react.

Some folks just don't like jazz. Didn't like it from day one. There's a lot of them out there. What you typically hear from these folks is along the lines of "I can't tell what song they're playing" or "it all sounds the same to me." There's something they are looking for in music that jazz just isn't giving them. What are these things they might be looking for? A simple list:
  • Hummable, singable melodies
  • Toe-tapping or danceable rhythms
  • A sense of belonging; "this is our music"
  • A sense of hipness; "I'm cool liking this music"

Obviously, jazz hasn't delivered any of this stuff in a big, mass audience way for at least 50 years now. Should it deliver some of those goods? I would say, as always, "it depends". Do you want to be a big-selling, widely loved commercial music? Or, do you want to be all that *again*? Well, if that's your goal Mr. Jazz, then you should probably look into some of those audience demands. On the other hand, Mr. Jazz, do want to continue to be the sophisticated, kind-of-hard but deeply rewarding music that has the potential to thrill the right kind of player and the right kind of audience? Do you want to stick to your heritage and keep developing in all the ways the tradition suggests and enables? If that's the goal, then stick to your guns. Ignore the mass audience.

I would counsel Mr. Jazz, though, that it's not very bright to want to be two things at once: 1) a sophisticated but esoteric music; and, 2) a widely popular and thus commercially rewarding music. Pick one.
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Jazz really hasn't been Pop Music since The Big Band Era. Bop, Post-bop, Modal, etc. (with the exception of a bit of Fusion breakout in the late 70s when Stanley Clarke and Al Dimeola were played on AOR/FM Rock Stations) have primarily been second in Market Share to Pop, Rock, Soul/R and B and Country. It's had greater and lesser groups of fans (50s and 60s College Kids digging Brubeck, Jam Band Devotees digging Medeski, Martin and Woods) but it really hasn't been the dominant Pop Music since the 1930s and 40s when Big Bands were Dance Bands with Pop Singers like Sinatra, Crosby, Page and Day (and some really good ones like Fitzgerald and Vaughn).
 
#635
Damon Rondeau said:
All of that "true", Bruce, but obviously, from the point of view of jazz' popularity, none of it is relevant.
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Well I was replying to another specific question when I said that - not the main question - it's all about the context!! ;)

I was responding to the idea that :
"Some folks just don't like jazz." - I contend that they just haven't heard the right stuff...yet!
 
#636
You know, I'm a middle-aged person of good education and wide experience. I love food -- thinking about it, cooking it and eating it. I'm an incorrigible and dedicated carnivore, but I don't like liver, kidneys, tripe, lungs or offals and guts of any kind. When I meet someone who says "oh, they're SO GOOD, you'll just love it if you only get hold of the right kind of guts!", my natural reaction is to be insulted. Why won't that tripe-lover respect my point of view that I've tried guts and won't eat any more guts? It would be one thing if I was some punk who just turned up my nose. But that's not the situation.

Jazz afficionados often come across like the tripe lover in my analogy. It's not simply and always the case that the person who does not enjoy jazz is merely ignorant, just has to hear "So What". The more that jazz afficionados come across with the "acquired taste", "you have to work at it", "it's an intelligent music" stuff, the more they undermine their general likability, or their popularity.
 
#637
Damon Rondeau said:
You know, I'm a middle-aged person of good education and wide experience. I love food -- thinking about it, cooking it and eating it. I'm an incorrigible and dedicated carnivore, but I don't like liver, kidneys, tripe, lungs or offals and guts of any kind. When I meet someone who says "oh, they're SO GOOD, you'll just love it if you only get hold of the right kind of guts!", my natural reaction is to be insulted. Why won't that tripe-lover respect my point of view that I've tried guts and won't eat any more guts? It would be one thing if I was some punk who just turned up my nose. But that's not the situation.

Jazz afficionados often come across like the tripe lover in my analogy. It's not simply and always the case that the person who does not enjoy jazz is merely ignorant, just has to hear "So What". The more that jazz afficionados come across with the "acquired taste", "you have to work at it", "it's an intelligent music" stuff, the more they undermine their general likability, or their popularity.
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I both agree and disagree with this.

On the one hand, I agree that jazz fans do themselves and their music a disservice by trying so hard to promote it as an acquired taste, or something that requires more effort than pop or rock or whatever. Jazz is an intellectually rewarding experience, to be sure, but it is also viscerally rewarding and can be loved on first listen. This is true of even the most "out" playing there is.

That said, I also believe people who profess to dislike entire genres of music tend to be closed-minded. Your offal analogy is a good one. A friend of mine always refused to eat liver, saying he'd tried it and it was disgusting. We were at a party and I noticed him devouring these bacon wrapped liver skewers, thinking they were beef. Once I told him it was liver, he suddenly didn't like them anymore. I've also seen the same thing happen with "lengua" tacos here in L.A., people love them until they know it's tongue. I've played newer jazz records for my "non-jazz" friends, and they've liked them until I told them who or what it was. It seems both jazz and offal carry a stigma that some just can't shake.
 
#638
I agree about the tending to close-minded bit. I still try the guts out every now and then, and I ate a ton of guts when on several occasions I was a dinner guest in a private home on the other side of the planet. (Still don't like guts, BTW.) I find it slightly chauvinistic, though, that afficionados always assume ignorance is the cause. Sometimes a dislike is a deliberate, thought-out position. Jazz lovers should consider that when they're defending their beloved jazz.

BTW, I would never, ever deny that many (even most) professed dislikes are of the kind your lengua-rejecting taco eaters represent. (I would absolutely love to try me one of those lengua tacos, though; I love Mexican and Tex-Mex food but we just don't see very much good stuff up here in Canuckistan.) They dislike an idea, right? They've demonstrated they don't dislike the actual thing. But if either the idea or the thing itself leads to unpopularity, what does it matter? The outcome is the same with respect to popularity.

And that's the thing, we're talking in this thread about why jazz isn't a popular music. I don't interpret this question as having solely to do with the worth of the music as such, or as art. Other things factor into the popularity equation; musical worth, as we musicians understand it, is just one part. So I don't buy the argument that, if they'd only hear the right kind of jazz, jazz would once again be popular (and I know I'm twisting your point somewhat, Bruce.) If that were true, then Beethoven would be right up there with Justin Bieber. And, you know, he's not. And neither is Duke anymore.

History happens. Things come and go for all kinds of reasons; things move on. Jeez, in a broad historical context, the whole notion of "popular" music is a pretty new one.
 
#640
You're probably right about Beethoven and Bieber -- it's not like one spends hours thinking out a post, with research departments and editors and all that. But, even with the welcome correction, the point still stands: Beethoven is truly classic. Whether his music was ever truly popular -- in the same commercial, mass audience sense as the 20th century is full of -- is another thing, but the point is there is something in Beethoven that endures. There is an element there that makes the music immortal. Can we say the same about jazz? Too big a category. Can we say the same thing about some jazz? I have no doubt of that. I also have no doubt that some of it is going -- some of it went -- straight into the dustbin. But, isn't surviving as a specimen of musical and artistic excellence better than being Bieber-popular or Elvis-popular?
 

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