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Originally Posted by roachboy
i do not understand the utlity of standards.
i really do not enjoy "jam sessions" in whcih what happens is the repetition of older tunes.
it's not that i am hostile to the tunes---i like listening to them, sometimes actually enjoy when others cover them--but for the most part, i find it tedious--for example there is nothing more boring than listening to some berklee-type player strip all the rhythmic and motivic complexity out of a monk tune--why would you bother?--monk is better at being monk than you are, so what is the point of providing an audience with a demonstration of how not monk you are?.
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I agree with a great amount you've said, and it will certainly produce a lot more thinking on my part. However, I take a different approach to jams. To me, they are the last remaining breath of the once-powerful cutting contests. Cutting contests had the unique duplicity of producing a winner without producing a loser. You may have gotten your ass kicked, but it simply pushed you into more practice time rather than damaging your career. The jam sessions I used to play in were very similar; brutal, merciless, cut-throat, and absolutely marvelous. To be in the middle of one of those monsters felt like being in by-God combat. There is no question that I no longer have the ganas to play that way anymore, although that is clearly where I learned the bulk of my craft.
Modern jam sessions seem to have lost their brutality, and jazz desperately needs that bloodthirstyness in its young players.
My gut tells me that younger players are learning the technique of jazz without the fire, and they either A) drop back because other cats have way more technique than they'll ever have, or B) learn technical brilliance without soul. I am currently teaching a bass player who worships Jaco and can play almost every damn thing he ever recorded. However, I would NEVER hire this kid for a gig because he has no heart whatsoever in his playing and he honestly can't hear the heart in Jaco's playing; it's all simply technique to him.
Jazz needs a new generation of blues-infused gut-busters to knock the shit out of the Wynton Marsalis crowd, and the only way you grow such a crop is back in those old brutal jam sessions.