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cheese louise, i've never been thrown out of jazz fandom before.
i dont know whether to take this seriously or just laugh.
i am laughing now, so i guess i made the choice.
imaybe you didnt understand the previous post, flat5--i spin charlie parker records happily and often--like i spin bud powell recordings, fats navarro recordings, sonny stitt recordings, thelonious monk recordings----like i spin mingus, george russell, dolphy, coltrane, coleman, braxton, the art ensemble of chicago, on and on---like i spin recording so bach and beethoven--like i spin recordings of lots of other kinds of music---i am often fascinated by the music and the recording of the music and learn from them.
but
(1) bird et al were simply better at being bird et al than i will ever be
(2) i see no point in linking affection for elements of the tradition directly to what you play--it is a choice that individual players make for themselves. you dont get to say which is and is not legit, flat5 because your choices are your choices and that's as far as they go.
(3) it seems absurd to me to pretend that the implications of bop are the same in 2006 as they were in 1946. that would mean that playing bop in 2006 (live, you know) is not the same act as playing it would have been in 1944-1947. in 1944-47, bop was seen as an aggressive nearly atonal music that offended as many as it pleased--it still had the ability to do both. now it doesnt. there is nothing to be done about that--it is simply a function of repetition.
gertrude stein said once that there is a sharp divide crossed very quickly between non acceptance of new forms and acceptance of new forms: acceptance emphasizes what is "beautiful" and in so doing strips away the ability of the work accepted to irritate, to provoke, to challenge what is around it as it is around it.
that has happened to bop: it has become a perfectly acceptable form of music and with that shift everything has changed about performing it.
it is foolish to pretend otherwise.
it simply is.
jesus, this is like talking to a bluegrass player.
personal aside: my brother is a bluegrass musician--and a very good one--i do nto particularly enjoy bluegrass, but i understand why he does, i think--banjo is an unforgiving instrument and so it makes sense that a banjo player would be inclined to transcriptions and to see music as the reproduction of transcriptions--and that is fine--what irks me about him--and about alot of other straighter players--is that while i make an effort to understand something about what they are doing and why they do it, there is nothing like reciprocity: no effort to understand other ways of doing things, no effort to think about sound, about organization as problems (rather than as given a priori) and to enter into unfamiliar territory with ears and mind open to check out what other players who do not find strict adherence to tradition to be compelling and see what they are doing. it is as if these folk internalize the most absurd claims that defenders of tradition for its own sake make about tradition--that they are positioned within a space of legitimacy that exempts them from having to move musically or intellectually.
this is certianly not a question of chops
it is not a question of who is and is not a serious musician.
it is more a question of how an imagined position within a tradition comes to limit what you do, what you take in and how you take it in.
on cyncial days, i think it is intellectual laziness.
on other days, i wonder about the sociological situation endured by music in the states.
either way, it comes to the same thing.
music can be an assault on the senses.
for me, music should be an assault. it is not pretty, it is not about entertaining people----it is not about providing members of a restaurants demographic with lively sonic wallpaper that they can fade into and out of as they eat brunch. it is not about scales, not about changes--it is about making time-scultpures. it is about that strange line between order and disorder, how order comes to take shape and how it breaks up.
but that is just my position and i do not expect it to hold for other people. you, flat5, apparently think that your position should hold for other players.
i dont see the basis for that.
there is no basis for that.
well, apart from your personal dispositions, which are all fine insofar as that is all they are.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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