3 Jul
2010
3 Jul
'10
9:30 a.m.
david wrote:
I've heard good jazz performances. And as I mentioned above, I like some
jazz performers.
David,
I like your opinions (especially the last sentence of your mail!).
What you write is essentially that any musician must be sincere in his
approach to the music he performs and must not try to mimic others.
I'm curious to know where you studied the piano as in classical
education improvising is currently strictly forbidden (in contrast to
the practice 150 years ago). Did you followed lessons in jazz piano?
Yes, I do too.
I'm amazed you haven't
heard from Coleman Hawkins. He was on of the
giant saxophone-players and played with many bands from the 50ies and
later. The same goes for Erroll Garner, a pianist from the 50ies with
his own very distinctive style (you can look him up on Youtube).
About this, although I'm retired I still get paid
for performing,
moreover, I will not play if no financial reward (the amount is
irrelevant) is given as, simply stated, if people don't want to pay they
don't appreciate your music (exceptions are of course beneficial and
promotional performances).
Agreed.
Jazz musicians are only people and narrow-mindedness is as
common as in other groups. The "you're not a musician" is one of the
most stupid remarks I know to say to a listener of course!
Heard that most recently three years ago, from a man, BTW, who is a very
Joep L. Blom wrote:
> david wrote:
>> drew Roberts wrote:
>>> On Thursday 01 July 2010 17:51:18 Joep L. Blom wrote:
>>>> drew Roberts wrote:
>>>>> Someone else having some thoughts on jazz and copyright:
>>>>>
>>>>> Are Bad Copyright Laws Killing Jazz And Harming Jazz Musicians?
>>>>> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100615/0255059823.shtml
>>>>>
>>>>>> Joep
>>>>> all the best,
And here I thought jazz was dying because most of it
is boring and
ingrown, and the vast majority of players have become
indistinguishable from each other? ;-)
Note the winking smiley. I like traditional New Orleans jazz. I like
some jazz performers, but think that most could be replaced with no
one noticing.
David!
Don't tempt me. Either you have never heard a good jazz performance or
you simply don't like it (that's possible). But boring!! You know what is boring or, better
monotonous and
repetitive, the endless lookalike pulp which is called pop-music
that's presented as the main music and nothing else exist thanks to
the big companies and their slaves (i.e. the radio and television
companies).
Or (to me) the endless soundalike lookalike stuff that passes for way
too much jazz these days? Sorry, to my ears, the days of jazz performers
that actually sound like themselves seems to have passed. Too many
players now seem to be trying only to sound like someone else.
(BTW, I find that very disappointing in any musician or artist,
regardless of style of music or art. Be yourself, not someone else!)
Agreed. I wrote that
also in another mail.
Moreover, boring is a quality in the mind of the
person and has
nothing to do with the music (or literature, or dance to give other
fields).
I would say that "boring" is something that is perceived by the mind of
a person. It is, after all, just an opinion. I doubt that there's any
"objective" measure that defines "boring". > I have heard a lot of nonsense about jazz but not
that performers
> could be exchanges without notice.
I didn't mean your remark as nonsense, I
meant that I heard in general a
lot of nonsense about jazz.
Not nonsense, just my opinion.
Well, you had me fooled.
Pop-singers - in my opinion - are pressed into
"voice-casts" to sound as much alike as possible, I agree when you talk
about others (classical, Jazz even folk).
Yes, pop-singers OK, but that is a completely
different league.
Yes, singers are a special case compared to instrumentalists. No two
human voices are alike to the degree that instruments are. Again (particularly about pop singers), while I may
think well of a
singer who can successfully sound like someone else, I'm still
disappointed that they don't put the same effort into sounding like
themselves.
There's a Christian band I know of called Apologetx. They are skilled
enough to sound note-for-note like practically any other band in
existence, and specialize in redoing other band's secular songs with
Christian lyrics. They play skillfully, but someday I'd actually like
them to write and play their own music instead! I'd like to know what
their own sound is!
That depends. Some bands like to sound exactly as others. You
have in
America a competition for Glenn Miller Bands who try to sound like the
old Glenn Miller orchestra from the forties, using the original
arrangements. We sometimes also play these arrangements ('In the Mood'
is on of the most famous pieces) but your remark is right. They should
let you hear " the way they really play".
The beauty of jazz is that you can play the same
tunes every night but
each time it is completely different
Really? Hmm, haven't noticed that. (Well, I've heard a number of jazz
performances where NO ONE was playing the "tune", if there actually was
one.)
(And it has nothing to do with presence or absence of improvisation.
During my own piano studies, I studied improvisation, enjoy it and value
it highly. So you'd think I'd like the improvisational aspect of jazz, yes?
and playing the same tune with different
personnel makes a great
difference. Last Friday and Saturday I played with my Big band but we
had some difference in personnel. Although we played the same tunes
the sound was completely different.
If you say so.
The only problem with jazz is that it is no easy
music (just as
classical music, especially from the 20th century).
Some of which I do enjoy. You have to be prepared to follow the sometimes
very convoluted
harmonic and melodic ways that are played (listen e.g. to John
Coltrane and the great difference with Coleman Hawkins, or Errol
Garner and Art Tatum).
Those are past-days jazz greats, not their modern descendants. I like
Coltrane and Tatum, don't know the other two. I could go on but I stop.
I think that any kind of music that has wrapped itself up so much in its
own internals and demands that others change to accommodate it is just a
self-absorbed niche. That's OK if that's what one is interested in. But
if one is trying to make money from music, I think one is intentionally
limiting one's financial success, and really has no right to complain
that people aren't buying enough music to support one in the way one
would like to be accustomed to.
IOW, if you want money for your music, offer music that people with
money are willing to give you money for. Don't complain that they're
"ignorant" or "don't know better" or that the music they like and
PAY
FOR is "boring" (it isn't to them) or they're being held prisoner by
big-media music distributors.
I'm also not a fan of visual arts (painting, sculpture, etc) that
require you to read a multipage statement about the item to get any
communication from it. What my artist daughter calls "spot on the wall"
art, some of which is by famous artists, hangs on walls in world-famous
museums, and (in America, typically) is USUALLY supported by Arts Grants
or one sort or another. (Music of any sort doesn't suffer from that
problem, perhaps because sound has inherently more power and effect than
a brush stroke on canvas. Assuming one isn't deaf, of course.)
I like visual art, too, but find Andy Warhol's art boring. At Pompidou
Center in Paris one year, I saw a Japanese painter who "painted" by
slashing his bare feet with razor blades, then hanging in a bosen's
chair over the canvas spread on the floor and painting on the canvas
with with his own blood. Found that more a sign of mental illness than
art. (Must be something wrong with me, I'm sure, couldn't possibly be
anything wrong with the artists.)
I agree completely with that. What is called
"The main stream" is a
cunning system of greedy people selling air to people with way to much
money and no erudition or taste whatsoever.
The tragic reality with that is that many really talented painters are
in the same position as many musicians.
We buy more or less regularly paintings from talented artists in Europe
(mainly the Netherlands) not needing the "explanation" thought of by a
skilled "art-specialist" who tries to speak and write with sentences
using many neologisms with the intention to let you feel a stupid
ignoramus when you don't understand the art he wants to sell.
I hope I made your error in judgement clear.
I've been through it with jazz folk before - been insulted, called
names, etc. Been told by some jazz players that the ONLY REAL MUSIC IS
JAZZ (usually their particular idea of what JAZZ is, played the way they
do it), that if you're not playing jazz, YOU'RE NOT A MUSICIAN! skilled, well-trained, experienced and
deeply-disturbed (in the clinical
psychological sense) musician. Perhaps jazz is his way to deal with the
severe childhood abuse he suffered that left him so disturbed?
Although he has so much rage inside that I could picture him as a
first-generation punk rocker, before punk went commercial. ;-)
No "error" - just different opinion. I have all sorts of music in my
personal collection, including jazz, lest you think I'm an "it's gotta
be popular music" person. My parents have jazz records in their
collection dating back a good long ways, like early Louie Armstrong
recordings. Someday they'll probably end up in my collection.
(I will admit that I have ONE song each from Britney Spears and Madonna.
My only complaint about Michael Jackson's death is that he didn't take
them with him.)
What I wonder is how you think about classcial music where a performer
plays exactly the music that's written. If I understand you correctly
you think that not interesting (boring?) as the performer plays exactly
what the composer wrote. (I myself like it very much, visiting regularly
concerts, but will never perform in public although I play regularly for
myself, from Bach to Milhaud with much of the french impressionists in
between).
To come back to the original topic: that music is not copyrighted any more.
Joep