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Double Bass Why isn't Jazz that popular? (DB forum thread)
- Thread starter gai113
- Start date
Most people are barely exposed to any jazz whatsoever, so they won't have a chance to get familiar with it and appreciate it. If the radio stations who now play pop (or recycled 90's eurodance with less melodic content than before, which is what it actually is) played jazz instead I'm sure the people growing up would mostly listen to jazz. People are sheep who fly with the wind. I don't feel that I personally would fit that description, but most people do. In the US most people are Christians, while most people are Muslim in Egypt. Whatever people are exposed to, they will usually favor it.
I think this may be the simple crux of it. If "popular" means liked by "most people," then jazz likely will never be popular again because it's not written or performed by or for most people. It's like asking Why isn't quilting or slack-rope walking or badminton popular, i.e., popular with most people. The people who enjoy these things don't care that they are a small percentage of the population and they aren't trying to make most people like what they like.
Me, I don't care that a majority of young people like recordings that feature average shower singers enhanced by audio-editing programs. I'm glad that I don't have to stand in lines that are blocks long and pay $200 a ticket to hear some of the best jazz on the planet.
I said this very same thing a few weeks ago and I got
attacked on this forum. I said that it takes a bit of an IQ
to understand jazz.
Since when does it take a college degree to understand/listen to Louis Armstrong or Duke Ellington?
It's these kind of attitudes that put jazz further and further away from the average person. It doesn't take a refined palate to appreciate wine nor a discerning ear to any type of music, including jazz. It's gotta have soul and it's gotta swing: and that just goes for just about any style of music, not just jazz.
It's these kind of attitudes that put jazz further and further away from the average person. It doesn't take a refined palate to appreciate wine nor a discerning ear to any type of music, including jazz. It's gotta have soul and it's gotta swing: and that just goes for just about any style of music, not just jazz.
That's because you need to understand music to get jazz. Which is different from having a large IQ. The two do not always go hand in hand. There has been a little doubt that some posters understood that.
I suppose "thinking" and "IQ" do frequently go hand-in-hand, but not always. I know people with high IQs who enjoy music when they're taking a break from thinking. Some of them don't care for jazz, not because they aren't capable of understanding it if they were to think about it, but because they're simply not interested in spending their thinking time on music. They think about other stuff when they think; they turn to music for relief from thinking. They get up and dance to it—badly, but they dance.
That's all okay by me. I don't care that only a minority of people like my hobbies: jazz, chess, golf, schnapps making, etc.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...ligence-is-a-fallacy-study-finds-8425911.html
You guys are really trying too hard to put your favorite style of music on a pedestal. I think a lot of people can't deal with the truth: there's a lot in jazz that is downright boring, and that's what's driving people away. There's a lot of good **** too that gets lost in the mix.
You guys are really trying too hard to put your favorite style of music on a pedestal. I think a lot of people can't deal with the truth: there's a lot in jazz that is downright boring, and that's what's driving people away. There's a lot of good **** too that gets lost in the mix.
Last Saturday, I went to the "Love Supreme" Jazz festival, run by Jazz FM in Glynde Sussex, UK. http://www.lovesupremefestival.com/
There were over 8,000 people on Saturday with over 15,000 expected fo the whole weekend - bands on from Friday to Sunday.
I saw a load of people enjoying themselves in the sun - nobody had told them that Jazz wasn't popular!
A lot of them will also go to the London Jazz festival.
There were over 8,000 people on Saturday with over 15,000 expected fo the whole weekend - bands on from Friday to Sunday.
I saw a load of people enjoying themselves in the sun - nobody had told them that Jazz wasn't popular!
A lot of them will also go to the London Jazz festival.
Here's an anecdote: In the 50's an uncle of mine in Vietnam (who didn't listen to jazz or nor is he a musician or an afficionado or any sort) saw a flyer for a Louis Armstrong concert in Saigon, Vietnam (now Ho Chi Minh City). As you can imagine, there's not much of jazz tradition in Vietnam. He had no idea what it was about nor did he know what jazz was.
He went to the show, and fell in love with it all. Over the years, in living in communist VN, he stuck to his passion for it and got what he could find from the west: Kenny G (unfortunately), Miles, Louis, etc. etc.
When I finally met him again about 10 years ago he was excited to find that I was a jazz lover. About 4 years ago he came to visit, and before he left, my brothers and I sent him home with an iPod packed with 60 gb of jazz - almost my entire library at the time. He was in heaven. I included everything from Ellington to more modern stuff and he loved it all. There weren't many great shows at the time, but I managed to get him out to see a local big band. It made him extremely happy.
Of course, it wasn't until he visited me that he finally learned that the musicians were trying to communicate with eachother on stage, and how the structure of presenting a tune was done: head in, solos, trade 4/8s, head out. Completely ignorant of the details - much less more complicated matters like reharms and other treatments to the tunes, yet he enjoyed every bit of it .
Which reminds me I need to get him some new stuff.
He went to the show, and fell in love with it all. Over the years, in living in communist VN, he stuck to his passion for it and got what he could find from the west: Kenny G (unfortunately), Miles, Louis, etc. etc.
When I finally met him again about 10 years ago he was excited to find that I was a jazz lover. About 4 years ago he came to visit, and before he left, my brothers and I sent him home with an iPod packed with 60 gb of jazz - almost my entire library at the time. He was in heaven. I included everything from Ellington to more modern stuff and he loved it all. There weren't many great shows at the time, but I managed to get him out to see a local big band. It made him extremely happy.
Of course, it wasn't until he visited me that he finally learned that the musicians were trying to communicate with eachother on stage, and how the structure of presenting a tune was done: head in, solos, trade 4/8s, head out. Completely ignorant of the details - much less more complicated matters like reharms and other treatments to the tunes, yet he enjoyed every bit of it .
Which reminds me I need to get him some new stuff.
Adn like someone told me a few weeks ago: 'There is nothing more annoying than a band playing mediocre jazz... If a band is playing mediocre rock, you still have some sort of feeling, it can still lift you up in a way... Mediocre jazz is just 'meh''
Nonsense!
Mediocre rock can be very loud and very annoying. Mediocre jazz can still be quiet enough to ignore as some background fluff. Unless it's noisy mediocre jazz, like some tenor player wanking loudly with a drummer bashing around... But at least that tenor player won't be as loud as a bad rock guitarist with a huge powerful combo set to 11. 
I actually think Bisounourse had something there. It's a matter of the required skill threshold. You can perform enjoyable rock music with a little skill and experience. I don't feel the same is true for jazz (or classical for that matter).
Agree 100%. You cant go up there and noodle around and play jazz. It takes a lot of practice and hard work. In today's age of instant gratification, there are just fewer people willing to put in the effort as players and also as listeners.
Why don't more people like Jazz?
Because most people are not musicians. Let's face facts, jazz is a musicians genre for the most part. The average listener hears the vocals and the beat, but not the instrumentation as such.
Most of us (meaning musicians) can hear the subtleties of jazz and "get it" when it comes to different modal inversions or how that particular line played against that particular chord unique, but you have to have a general understanding of music to even notice it. I don't mean music theory so much as, at least be interested in it enough to "hear" whats happening.
Even some musicians like the "bam bam" drummers won't get jazz. Jazz was the rock n roll of an era at one point, but the style of jazz at that time was also a certain type of jazz.
While comtemporary or "smooth" jazz is commercial doing well, it is often considered "jazz light" by jazz snobs.
It is what it is
Because most people are not musicians. Let's face facts, jazz is a musicians genre for the most part. The average listener hears the vocals and the beat, but not the instrumentation as such.
Most of us (meaning musicians) can hear the subtleties of jazz and "get it" when it comes to different modal inversions or how that particular line played against that particular chord unique, but you have to have a general understanding of music to even notice it. I don't mean music theory so much as, at least be interested in it enough to "hear" whats happening.
Even some musicians like the "bam bam" drummers won't get jazz. Jazz was the rock n roll of an era at one point, but the style of jazz at that time was also a certain type of jazz.
While comtemporary or "smooth" jazz is commercial doing well, it is often considered "jazz light" by jazz snobs.
It is what it is
I think the comment on people listen to what their friend's do is fairly accurate. I went to an art's school. We have a ton of jazz musicians, myself included. However, these guys were pretty heavily into the contemporary hip-hop/jazz fusion scene, and so that would become fairly popular at the school, but jazz as a whole would not. Most people don't want to search for music. And those who do are largely predisposed to dislike jazz due to its stereotype's for pretentiousness. Some of that stereotype are jazz musicians faults, some are listeners (I'm often hired by very wealthy people who don't know the difference between The Girl From Ipanema and Have You Met Miss Jones,) and also other musicians/non-jazz musicians. I get teased and made fun of by non jazz musicians as some sort of over intellectual technical music freak, or some crap like that... Why would anyone choose to play bass in an attempt to impress people? Its not really a very effective route for that endeavor.
Well though you may have a point, that type of herd mentality may only apply mostly to the US. Europeans seem to appreciate art and culture more and from diverse sources. They have a bigger appetite for the arts. Here's it's mostly what sells and how to sell it.
