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

[bassdude51]

The term Jazz is too broad for the question, "Why isn't Jazz more popular". Jazz can span from pop like music to strange and intellectual music/noise that pushes the boundaries of music theory.

When Louis Amstrong first introduced Jazz, it was pretty much popular music of the time with a little bit of improvised notes here and there that spiced or jazzed up the song a bit.

By the 50s and early 60s, some Jazz was pushing the limits of music theory to the point where common, average, everyday people were unable to comprehend, enjoy or appreciate what in the hell the muscians were doing. I mean really, listening to a sax, trumphet or bass solo that melodically makes no sense is not very enjoyable. Sure, it's intellectually fantastic but so is Rocket Science.

Once again, the term Jazz is too broad. And the thread's question is vague.

Similar questions could ask, Why isn't California Surf Music more popular. Or Blue Grass? Or roots Rock n Roll? Or Motown? Or real R & B?

Finally, for many of us aging baby boomers, we have to accept that we are getting old and culture is always changing. Each new generation has it's own new kinds of art form.

Music and art that was popular 20, 30, 40, 50 or more years ago isn't today.

Yeah, like the big band era. Croony singers like Sinatra or Crosby. It's not dead but it's not popular.

Maybe that's our consolement, most of the arts, no matter how old never die.

 

[bass12]

If you still don't marvel at Parker's genius, then go back to tunes with sophisticated lyrical stories - country music - or emotionally gripping, harmonically simple tunes, rock - because melody over changes ain't your thang, and, you're not that musical, sorry.

You had me up until this bit. There are lots of incredibly musical people for whom Parker just isn't that gripping. And because melodies over chord changes aren't ones "thing" that person automatically isn't very musical (or did you mean that someone who can't recognize Parker's genius isn't that musical - but either way)? No, not buying it. It took me a long time to be able to appreciate Charlie Parker and other bebop players/composers. Does that mean I wasn't musical when I was younger, or that it suddenly became possible for me to be musical once I'd started to appreciate Parker? Harmony was never an African thing back in the day (and still isn't in a lot of of the music produced in Africa. Are you suggesting that Africans have, traditionally, not been musical?

 

[hrodbert696]

I don't buy the "it's too sophisticated for dumb people" argument. If music makes itself too complicated for an ordinary person to feel it, then it has the audience it asked for.

I think one major factor is the overall fragmentation of the music scene. There's hardly a single genre of music in the world now that people can point to as popular with the culture in general. Even whatever counts as "pop" now doesn't sell like it used to; there are simply too many other genres in the market. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. And the same is true with jazz - like a lot of people have said already, there are practically as many subgenres of "jazz" as there are of "rock."

Besides which, what counts as "popular" music is nowhere near the same as it was 50 years ago. I've been struck by interviews with musicians from the 60s who would comment on how much more music is available out there now, period, compared to when they started out. I have a CD collection with hundreds of disks, and I don't know how many hours of music on my hard drive; my grandparents had maybe a couple dozen records, maximum.

But there are a couple of factors I would point to, that others already have done. One is guilt-by-association. The other is danceability. If you think back to when jazz was the reigning popular music, it was unambiguously DANCE music - swing, big band, all that. Its stars were Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, guys like that. In the 60s or so, the jazz community seemed to turn its back on young people who wanted to dance; you can't dance to Charlie Parker or much of Miles Davis. The new styles were doubtless more sophisticated and complex and showed greater virtuosity, but they left the audience behind.

Guilt-by-association applies to a lot of the softer jazz styles. If it sounds like music you could hear in a department store, you don't want to go out at night and party to it - not even a more sophisticated version of it. People associate music with the kinds of people that listen to it - its social setting - and the contexts they hear it in. They like music that is "their" music. My wife hates the Doors for reasons that have nothing to do with the Doors and everything to do with the kinds of people who liked the Doors when she was in high school. It may not be fair, but that's how it is. Not many people think of jazz as "their" music.

 

[bass12]

In both those sections you refer to jazz of the past. I would argue even most lay people can/would appreciate those jazz streams, even if they don't much like it.

Those artists, even bepop, do songs that are built on melody over chord changes. There is a thread one can follow.

I was listening to Charlie Parker's "Blues For Alice" last night (for pleasure - something I never would have done even two years ago) and it, for me, is one of those tunes. The solos are actually melodies that take you somewhere and don't simply sound self-indulgent. And the performance doesn't go on for ever... The best (worst) is listening to a band play a tune and, halfway through wondering, "what are they playing again?".

 

[Tom Lane]

You had me up until this bit. There are lots of incredibly musical people for whom Parker just isn't that gripping. And because melodies over chord changes aren't ones "thing" that person automatically isn't very musical (or did you mean that someone who can't recognize Parker's genius isn't that musical - but either way)? No, not buying it. It took me a long time to be able to appreciate Charlie Parker and other bebop players/composers. Does that mean I wasn't musical when I was younger, or that it suddenly became possible for me to be musical once I'd started to appreciate Parker? Harmony was never an African thing back in the day (and still isn't in a lot of of the music produced in Africa. Are you suggesting that Africans have, traditionally, not been musical?

That's a great point, thanks for making it. I guess the honest answer is that I'm not sure. In my opinion, and I'm open to being proven wrong, you did have the musicality and it just needed development. Perhaps if you were even more talented you wouldn't have needed that time to develop, but then most of us just aren't that brilliant - Herbie Hancock, Pat Methany, Ray Brown, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Holliday, but we're talented enough to get there over time. Some folks aren't talented enough to get there, ever, in my experience.
And certainly, many musicians have different strengths - rhythm, harmony, melody, lyrics, etc, but the pinnacle of jazz requires deep abilities on all of these levels. Most other musical styles don't.
Having said that, my experience, 44 years now, since I was 8 years old, tells me that for some folks music is a compulsion, myself included, and a smaller subset of those, are musically sophisticated enough to get bop.
So, sorry for the long post, but you've encouraged me.
I'm 52. The lightbulb went off for me when I was 8 and nagged my folks into getting me my first guitar. Already, I liked music that was deeper than was on the radio, I really dug the musical opera Jesus Christ Superstar, which I would credit with significantly contributing to the prog-rock style.
What I really wanted was a Hammond organ, but I was thrilled with the guitar never the less. I started out with music lessons on guitar like many, but quickly progressed into more and more sophisticated rock - Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan - and electic fusion blues. I even did my B.B.King imitation at one point in my teens, and then I added a lot more "blue notes".
Then I found Parker and Miles Davis. At first, I didn't get what they were doing, but I was intrigued, and curious, so I dug deeper. I played my guitar through the Omnibook and sung Parker's solos as best I could and that converted me. After that, I found cats like Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane, and purists avert your eyes, Dave Holland. So, for me, sophisticated treatment of harmony coupled with a rigid rhythm floated my boat. But I'm not so musical that I got there immediately. I had to work at it. But, I was intrigued enough by what I heard to dig deeper. Certainly there are other ways to go, but for a person who's all in their ears, that seems to be the way to go. Note that some classical music broke the path here, particularly Beethoven and later 20th Century composers.
I've played with a lot of bandmates who stopped at the harmonies of the Rolling Stones - not even the Beatles - or who solo like a wanna-be B.B. King, or who love Broadway musical numbers like "Polkadots and Moonbeams". And, I think they're limited. The B.B, Kinger's know only ONE scale REALLY REALLY well. The broadway folks play everything very consonantly. Blue notes have to be "prescribed". I don't think those folks have the musical talent or maybe it's their personality, to "get" the more complex harmony of Coltrane, Miles, Gordon, or even Holliday, but maybe I'm wrong. I do know that players I've played with who tend to less harmonically complicated music disappoint me with their musicality because they seem comparatively one dimensional. I have a clear preference for the folks who are striving to evolve a new harmonic sense, even if it doesn't work out most of the time, but at least it's new, and different, and true to them, rather than channeling some obvious "scale-sound". So, is it personality or musicality or a combination of both? You tell me.
So, to answer your last two questions, if you haven't learned to appreciate Parker, I doubt your musical talent. You may be wicked at sight reading or keep time like a clock, but I think you're missing some dimensions. Are native Africans unmusical? I have to say "yes" - they're brilliant at rhythm, but music has evolved to include both rhythm and harmony and traditional African music excludes harmony to concentrate on rhythm. A final disclaimer, I realize that most jazz is rhythmically limited, or static. For jazzers, the consistent pulse is key and in that sense, it is less sophisticated than many other musical styles with a more fluid and sophisticated rhythmic sensibility.
Very last point: It's true that jazz is hard to define, so let's settle on a broad definition - jazz is a musical style descended from Louis Armstrong with relatively static rhythm and sophisticated harmony that usually includes improvisational portions. This definition includes modal jazz with only a few chords because those chords are almost always chords with a lot of extensions. It excludes Yanni and Kenny G because their music is more akin to instrumental pop.
Okay, tell me where I'm wrong. I welcome it.
P.S., Dorsey doesn't count. It was called jazz and it was very popular in its day, but it was clearly dance music, not listening music. It was the pop of its day, but not much more sophisticated than folk or rock music. I'd be willing to bet that there's folk and or rock that's more harmonically complex than Dorsey or Glen Miller.

 

[gavinspoon]

That's a great point, thanks for making it. I guess the honest answer is that I'm not sure. In my opinion, and I'm open to being proven wrong, you did have the musicality and it just needed development. Perhaps if you were even more talented you wouldn't have needed that time to develop, but then most of us just aren't that brilliant - Herbie Hancock, Pat Methany, Ray Brown, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Holliday, but we're talented enough to get there over time. Some folks aren't talented enough to get there, ever, in my experience.
And certainly, many musicians have different strengths - rhythm, harmony, melody, lyrics, etc, but the pinnacle of jazz requires deep abilities on all of these levels. Most other musical styles don't.
Having said that, my experience, 44 years now, since I was 8 years old, tells me that for some folks music is a compulsion, myself included, and a smaller subset of those, are musically sophisticated enough to get bop.
So, sorry for the long post, but you've encouraged me.
I'm 52. The lightbulb went off for me when I was 8 and nagged my folks into getting me my first guitar. Already, I liked music that was deeper than was on the radio, I really dug the musical opera Jesus Christ Superstar, which I would credit with significantly contributing to the prog-rock style.
What I really wanted was a Hammond organ, but I was thrilled with the guitar never the less. I started out with music lessons on guitar like many, but quickly progressed into more and more sophisticated rock - Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan - and electic fusion blues. I even did my B.B.King imitation at one point in my teens, and then I added a lot more "blue notes".
Then I found Parker and Miles Davis. At first, I didn't get what they were doing, but I was intrigued, and curious, so I dug deeper. I played my guitar through the Omnibook and sung Parker's solos as best I could and that converted me. After that, I found cats like Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane, and purists avert your eyes, Dave Holland. So, for me, sophisticated treatment of harmony coupled with a rigid rhythm floated my boat. But I'm not so musical that I got there immediately. I had to work at it. But, I was intrigued enough by what I heard to dig deeper. Certainly there are other ways to go, but for a person who's all in their ears, that seems to be the way to go. Note that some classical music broke the path here, particularly Beethoven and later 20th Century composers.
I've played with a lot of bandmates who stopped at the harmonies of the Rolling Stones - not even the Beatles - or who solo like a wanna-be B.B. King, or who love Broadway musical numbers like "Polkadots and Moonbeams". And, I think they're limited. The B.B, Kinger's know only ONE scale REALLY REALLY well. The broadway folks play everything very consonantly. Blue notes have to be "prescribed". I don't think those folks have the musical talent or maybe it's their personality, to "get" the more complex harmony of Coltrane, Miles, Gordon, or even Holliday, but maybe I'm wrong. I do know that players I've played with who tend to less harmonically complicated music disappoint me with their musicality because they seem comparatively one dimensional. I have a clear preference for the folks who are striving to evolve a new harmonic sense, even if it doesn't work out most of the time, but at least it's new, and different, and true to them, rather than channeling some obvious "scale-sound". So, is it personality or musicality or a combination of both? You tell me.
So, to answer your last two questions, if you haven't learned to appreciate Parker, I doubt your musical talent. You may be wicked at sight reading or keep time like a clock, but I think you're missing some dimensions. Are native Africans unmusical? I have to say "yes" - they're brilliant at rhythm, but music has evolved to include both rhythm and harmony and traditional African music excludes harmony to concentrate on rhythm. A final disclaimer, I realize that most jazz is rhythmically limited, or static. For jazzers, the consistent pulse is key and in that sense, it is less sophisticated than many other musical styles with a more fluid and sophisticated rhythmic sensibility.
Very last point: It's true that jazz is hard to define, so let's settle on a broad definition - jazz is a musical style descended from Louis Armstrong with relatively static rhythm and sophisticated harmony that usually includes improvisational portions. This definition includes modal jazz with only a few chords because those chords are almost always chords with a lot of extensions. It excludes Yanni and Kenny G because their music is more akin to instrumental pop.
Okay, tell me where I'm wrong. I welcome it.
P.S., Dorsey doesn't count. It was called jazz and it was very popular in its day, but it was clearly dance music, not listening music. It was the pop of its day, but not much more sophisticated than folk or rock music. I'd be willing to bet that there's folk and or rock that's more harmonically complex than Dorsey or Glen Miller.

You have developed a musical taste for harmonically complex music, which is fine, but your view that those who do not share your taste are unmusical is way off.

You've confused the things you enjoy and value with the things that have intrinsic value.

For most people the emotional content and engagement of a piece of music trumps everything else. A deep understanding of harmony will greatly benefit a gifted composer in conveying that emotional content, but without the ability to engage emotionally with an audience your harmonic complexity is just playing by numbers.

Playing harmonically complex music without that emotional element is like the cargo cult. Everybody's going through the motions, and they appear to be doing all the right things, but it just doesn't deliver. I'd say that alot of people who say that they play Jazz are "cargo cult" Jazz musicians, and that's a big factor in why it's not more popular.

 

[Jack Clark]

I hear a couple of you saying that African music—or at least traditional African music—is not harmonic. But that notion certainly doesn't fit with African music that I've heard in documentary films. When I think of African music I think of multiple drums of different kinds, combining into complicated rhythm accents and a huge chorus of male and female voices singing in tight harmonies—so much harmony and so tight that sometimes I'm hard pressed to pick out which is the melody line. What I'm describing here, is this not traditional African music?

 

[Finneus]

The celebration of crap music is the greatest expression of commerce in art, it seems to me.

That is one of the best quotes I have seen in quite awhile...

When was the last time that a pop star was not at least a 9? It is more about looks & image than it is music these days. That is sad.

 

[Jhengsman]

That is one of the best quotes I have seen in quite awhile...

When was the last time that a pop star was not at least a 9? It is more about looks & image than it is music these days. That is sad.

Perhaps the biggest pop star of the last 5 years is perhaps the biggest woman on the curret pop charts and not a 9 in the minds of most.

 

[Clef_de_fa]

Okay, so this is an issue that near and dear to my heart and I've given it a lot of thought.
My two cents is that jazz is beyond the typically uneducated ear to appreciate. If you'll accept this premise, and I'm sure many won't, but the general tone of the conversation indicates otherwise. The cure to jazz's unpopularity is to educate the general listener. That can happen via edu-tainment or through cross-over artists like Esperaza Spaulding or Herbie Hancock, who draw listeners into putting more effort into their listening.
That said, a lot of jazz solos are not very good, so in that sense, it's reasonable that the general public is bored with jazz. I hear it all of the time in my jazz quartet. Rarely, the other players know the tune and create a melody worthy of composition. Most of the time, they strive for that goal with, at best, mixed results.
Part of the issue, in my opinion, is education, because most listeners can't appreciate a masterfully improvised melody over a set of changes. The flip side is that too many solos are played by folks who are not very good at creating instantaneous melodies. They might not play any "wrong notes", but that's not the same as a melody worthy of note.
I think most of the general listening public respond to the emotion of a tune, rather than its chords and melody. It requires a more educated ear to hear a melody played over a chord progression. Sadly, a lot of live jazz, nor recorded jazz, is not very good, but for those folks to get good, they, unless they're geniuses, have to practice on the audience for many years before they achieve a level worthy of admiration.
Both viewpoints have merit, in my opinion, a lot of jazz, just like a lot of other types of music, is not very good. When jazz is good - Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Billy Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald - it's truly art. When it's bad, it's derivative noise trying to intimidate the audience into believing that it's good and that the player knows something that the audience doesn't.
There is a lot of jazz out there that's not very good and crowds the pathways for our attention. But listen to Masters of the art, and you'll recognize greatness on par with Beethoven or Bach. As with any other musical genre, they're far between, but they are there, and they take effort for the casual listener to appreciate. And that's the point of the unpopularity for jazz. Those who are very musical in a certain way, learn to appreciate jazz, and for those in which music is just a pasttime or a reason to be attractive to girls, don't.
Jazz typically requires an educated ear and pop doesn't. Jazz is art and pop is entertainment. There's nothing wrong with either, but it's kind of sad that more of the general public cannot appreciate a brilliant jazz solo or a Rembrandt painting. Most of Charlie Parker's recorded solos were not just 16th note noise, they were a genius playing over chord changes at blistering speeds in a musical way. If you can't appreciate it, in my opinion, you need to listen more carefully and then you probably will. If you were my student, I'd suggest sitting down at a piano and playing through the Omnibook. If you still don't marvel at Parker's genius, then go back to tunes with sophisticated lyrical stories - country music - or emotionally gripping, harmonically simple tunes, rock - because melody over changes ain't your thang, and, you're not that musical, sorry.
To put it into perspective, B.B, King can play the blues brilliantly, can he play over changes? I've never heard him do it. Does his music touch people? Clearly so, a lot of people. Should it? Of course. Is it as sophisticated musically as Beethoven or bebop? Don't think so.

Jazz is entertainment like Pop is also entertainment. Music always been about entertainment never about art ... we ( from the present ) consider past music as art because everything was more complex.

Jazz, like what we call classical music, was the mainstream music at one point in the time line. But since the episode of Free Jazz and Serialism it was too much for everyone to grasp. Then some marketing team saw how they could use music to sell a look, cloths line, a personality etc ... To do that music had to be very simple and well Lyrics are now the big thing.

People connect to pop because of the lyric, in many jazz act you don,t have any lyric. Then there some kind of culture of mediocrity now, like you have to play stupid or else you are labelled as a elitis.

 

[Huy Nguyen]

OTOH, TCL's can also be interpreted as a nerd becoming indignant about others not being able to recognize what they love that the others can't - and blaming the listener.

Good music doesn't necessarily need changes or complex changes. I dont' think any of the Beatles tunes have alot of difficult changes. Elenor Rigby less musically sophisticated than On Green Dolphin Street? Not really. Sgt. Pepper vs. Kind of Blue? Houses of the Holy vs. Giant Steps? After a while the comparisons starts to get ridiculous.

Speaking of ridiculous, Led Zeppelin did pull off some amazing ****.

EDIT: BTW BB King "Live at the Regal" is pretty fantastic. It's not about his guitar playing that makes it great. It's the whole package. I dig John Lee Hooker too. I need to go back to listening to Blues again

One of my fav John Lee Hooker tunes:
It's said that he didn't play by a set number of bar lines. The parts of the song would come long when he felt like it and the band had to follow. Not a stretch to say he's playing free. Similar thing with Steve Ray Vaughan when he does that dirty shuffle thing. I still can't figure it out (at least I haven't tried recently).

 

[Damon Rondeau]

I've had my say on the jazz-popularity angle of this thread -- a long time ago and in lots of other threads as well. So I'm not going there other than to say I can't believe it's gone on this long and also to say I think the "jazz is hard and people are dumb" idea is a total red herring. People -- the populace, the populis -- get to decide what's popular. Artists don't have any say in the matter. At all.

But right now I'm stepping up for the lads, The Beatles. diddy, I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that, of the 200 or so tunes The Beatles recorded, you've learned and played maybe six at the most. I'm not saying that to call you down, I'm just speculating and I'm probably full of it. It's just that folks that are familiar with Beatles tunes know they have a lot more in common with American Songbook tunes than they do with any kind of totally blues-based music. Yeah, they covered Roll Over Beethoven and Twist and Shout. Simple three-chorders, yes. But the typical Beatles tune covers the full range of what's available in diatonic harmony and it's going to feature some chromatic "hooks" and voice-leadings and so on that make it, again, more like a Gershwin tune than a Little Richard tune. I've seen this demonstrated time and again at musical social events with friends and other players, after the gig stuff, campfires, kitchen parties and so on. Folks who can do any kind of simpler blues-based or fiddle-based tune straight out of the air, learned on the fly, are often stopped dead by the likes of And I Love Her, or Girl or about 5 dozen others we could name. The reason? They don't hear the circle of fifths movement, they don't hear the II chord at all, they don't anticipate the vi chord, they don't hear the chromatic descending part in the bridge, etc, etc.

"Houses of the Holy" is a Led Zep album. Pick on them for simple and leave my lads out of it!

 

[bass12]

I hear a couple of you saying that African music—or at least traditional African music—is not harmonic. But that notion certainly doesn't fit with African music that I've heard in documentary films. When I think of African music I think of multiple drums of different kinds, combining into complicated rhythm accents and a huge chorus of male and female voices singing in tight harmonies—so much harmony and so tight that sometimes I'm hard pressed to pick out which is the melody line. What I'm describing here, is this not traditional African music?

You're right - you will find choral singing in various forms of traditional African music (it used to be believed that such singing was strictly the result of western influence though I think that notion has been debunked. But in general (and I know we're talking about a huge continent with many different peoples and musical traditions) harmony has played a smaller role in African music than it has in western music. Man, you can't get away with anything off the cuff here (and that's not necessarily a bad thing)!

 

[bass12]

That's a great point, thanks for making it. I guess the honest answer is that I'm not sure. In my opinion, and I'm open to being proven wrong, you did have the musicality and it just needed development. Perhaps if you were even more talented you wouldn't have needed that time to develop, but then most of us just aren't that brilliant - Herbie Hancock, Pat Methany, Ray Brown, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Holliday, but we're talented enough to get there over time. Some folks aren't talented enough to get there, ever, in my experience.
And certainly, many musicians have different strengths - rhythm, harmony, melody, lyrics, etc, but the pinnacle of jazz requires deep abilities on all of these levels. Most other musical styles don't.
Having said that, my experience, 44 years now, since I was 8 years old, tells me that for some folks music is a compulsion, myself included, and a smaller subset of those, are musically sophisticated enough to get bop.
So, sorry for the long post, but you've encouraged me.
I'm 52. The lightbulb went off for me when I was 8 and nagged my folks into getting me my first guitar. Already, I liked music that was deeper than was on the radio, I really dug the musical opera Jesus Christ Superstar, which I would credit with significantly contributing to the prog-rock style.
What I really wanted was a Hammond organ, but I was thrilled with the guitar never the less. I started out with music lessons on guitar like many, but quickly progressed into more and more sophisticated rock - Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan - and electic fusion blues. I even did my B.B.King imitation at one point in my teens, and then I added a lot more "blue notes".
Then I found Parker and Miles Davis. At first, I didn't get what they were doing, but I was intrigued, and curious, so I dug deeper. I played my guitar through the Omnibook and sung Parker's solos as best I could and that converted me. After that, I found cats like Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane, and purists avert your eyes, Dave Holland. So, for me, sophisticated treatment of harmony coupled with a rigid rhythm floated my boat. But I'm not so musical that I got there immediately. I had to work at it. But, I was intrigued enough by what I heard to dig deeper. Certainly there are other ways to go, but for a person who's all in their ears, that seems to be the way to go. Note that some classical music broke the path here, particularly Beethoven and later 20th Century composers.
I've played with a lot of bandmates who stopped at the harmonies of the Rolling Stones - not even the Beatles - or who solo like a wanna-be B.B. King, or who love Broadway musical numbers like "Polkadots and Moonbeams". And, I think they're limited. The B.B, Kinger's know only ONE scale REALLY REALLY well. The broadway folks play everything very consonantly. Blue notes have to be "prescribed". I don't think those folks have the musical talent or maybe it's their personality, to "get" the more complex harmony of Coltrane, Miles, Gordon, or even Holliday, but maybe I'm wrong. I do know that players I've played with who tend to less harmonically complicated music disappoint me with their musicality because they seem comparatively one dimensional. I have a clear preference for the folks who are striving to evolve a new harmonic sense, even if it doesn't work out most of the time, but at least it's new, and different, and true to them, rather than channeling some obvious "scale-sound". So, is it personality or musicality or a combination of both? You tell me.
So, to answer your last two questions, if you haven't learned to appreciate Parker, I doubt your musical talent. You may be wicked at sight reading or keep time like a clock, but I think you're missing some dimensions. Are native Africans unmusical? I have to say "yes" - they're brilliant at rhythm, but music has evolved to include both rhythm and harmony and traditional African music excludes harmony to concentrate on rhythm. A final disclaimer, I realize that most jazz is rhythmically limited, or static. For jazzers, the consistent pulse is key and in that sense, it is less sophisticated than many other musical styles with a more fluid and sophisticated rhythmic sensibility.
Very last point: It's true that jazz is hard to define, so let's settle on a broad definition - jazz is a musical style descended from Louis Armstrong with relatively static rhythm and sophisticated harmony that usually includes improvisational portions. This definition includes modal jazz with only a few chords because those chords are almost always chords with a lot of extensions. It excludes Yanni and Kenny G because their music is more akin to instrumental pop.
Okay, tell me where I'm wrong. I welcome it.
P.S., Dorsey doesn't count. It was called jazz and it was very popular in its day, but it was clearly dance music, not listening music. It was the pop of its day, but not much more sophisticated than folk or rock music. I'd be willing to bet that there's folk and or rock that's more harmonically complex than Dorsey or Glen Miller.

You probably wouldn't like me very much as a bass player. I was always more attracted to the rhythmic aspect of the bassist role and don't tend to think in terms of harmony as much as some guys do. But I wouldn't consider myself any less musical than anyone else. You would, no doubt, disagree and that's fine. I guess I just don't evaluate musicality the same way you do. I, for example, wouldn't think in terms of classifying a batucada as "less" musical than a classical piece - just different.

 

[bass12]

Music always been about entertainment never about art ... we ( from the present ) consider past music as art because everything was more complex.

How do you figure? Always been about entertainment? Do you not believe that intent might have something to do with whether or not a thing is considered "art"?

Jazz, like what we call classical music, was the mainstream music at one point in the time line. But since the episode of Free Jazz and Serialism it was too much for everyone to grasp. Then some marketing team saw how they could use music to sell a look, cloths line, a personality etc ... To do that music had to be very simple and well Lyrics are now the big thing.

Have you listened to the lyrics of today's top 40 hits?

People connect to pop because of the lyric, in many jazz act you don,t have any lyric.

Many people perhaps, but there are lots of folks for whom lyrics can be (literally) meaningless. Artists such as Youssou N'Dour, Salif Keita, Khaled and numerous other artists who sang primarily (if not exclusively) in non-western languages saw considerable success in the west. How would you explain that?

 

[Huy Nguyen]

Sorry Damon, I was unclear about my previous post and didn't fully write out what I had attempted to do. I was trying to get at the fact that Beatles tunes are just as worthy of complexity as the general jazz standard. To say that things can't be complex when it's not jazz is silly. I brought up Led Zepp mainly because tho there were alot of blues based changes, alot of the their odd-meter playing is brilliant. I totally agree with what you're saying.

Reading back what I wrote, it sounds like I'm arguing on both sides of the debate. It's like I jumped a train track between sentences. Brain fart.

Anyways, to me, what draws listeners is playing with heart: the message that is communicated, not by the number of notes played or the fancy scales/changes/alterations used. I'll be the heretic and say that there are some pieces by Miles, Bird, Dizzy, Herbie, etc that just doesn't speak to me. Yes there's stuff that's crazy good but not all of it is golden. Jazz is not the end-all be all of music either.

 

[Damon Rondeau]

Absolutely, diddy man. Playing with heart.

It's not a jazz thing, but last night I was checking out some old Ry Cooder. I've been listening to Chicken Skin Music recently for the Hawaiian lap steel playing, but on there he covers "He'll Have To Go", which most folks know in the Jim Reeves' version ("...Put your sweet lips / a little closer / to the phone...".) Ry does it as a slow mariachi, very Tex-Mex to these Canadian ears. It's beautiful. Ry is a total master of covering tunes. Why? He sees what's beautiful in a tune and he gets it out his way, with his guitar and those voices. And over the years there are a bunch of other covers that are just as fine: "Hey Porter", "All Shook Up", "Get Rhythm", etc. I'm pretty sure Ry didn't do it out of some damn theory or to impress other people with his cleverness. It's totally about the music, no foolin'.

 

[Jack Clark]

Ry Cooder . . . Chicken Skin Music . . . "He'll Have To Go" . . .

After reading your serious assessment of the above, I checked it out on youtube. I tried, but I don't see/hear what you appreciate in that performance—which doesn't mean a thing in any absolute terms because music appreciation is subjective and there really is no accounting for taste. Personally, I'm just glad we don't all have the same taste.

Interesting discussion here, but we're not going to decide anything absolute, I don't think.

 

[David Kaczorowski]

Wow, 40 ****ing pages. Can somebody just tell me the answer please? I can't waste any more time reading this thread trying to figure out why much of my life has been wasted.

 

[Damon Rondeau]

After reading your serious assessment of the above, I checked it out on youtube. I tried, but I don't see/hear what you appreciate in that performance—which doesn't mean a thing in any absolute terms because music appreciation is subjective and there really is no accounting for taste. Personally, I'm just glad we don't all have the same taste.

Interesting discussion here, but we're not going to decide anything absolute, I don't think.

I offer no tune, no recording as an example of something that meets some absolute standard of good. That's a dumb-ass argument, especially in a discussion about the *popularity* of a kind of music. Let's leave the evaluation in absolute terms to the (shudder) preachers of aesthetics and art theories. They can consult their little home-made devices and calculate whether something's good or not. In the meantime, the world keeps running and people keep on liking what they like. Every now and then musicians actually turn out something that clicks with them. When they do click, you've got something that's popular. When they don't click, well -- I hope they're having a blessed day.