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(HTM) Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
(HTM) Will West Coast Jazz Get Some Respect?
buildbot wrote 19 hours 0 min ago:
Does it not? It feels like itâs taken seriously nationally.
All the local high schools in the Seattle area had/have serious jazz
programs that sent students to The Essentially Ellington
competition/festival - the one the movie Chops is about.
Seattle probably has the most overall bands sent of any city in the
country. I guess we sent 4 this year -
(HTM) [1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/4-seattle-are...
adfm wrote 20 hours 50 min ago:
The etymology of the word âJazzâ originates on the west coast and
migrates east to meet up with the new music as musicians emigrate north
to Chicago and New York audiences. Jazz is truly improvisational and
very much American in origin.
(HTM) [1]: https://archive.org/details/howirishinvented0000cass
culi wrote 20 hours 27 min ago:
Jazz, Rock, Gospel, Blues, Funk, R&B, Disco, Hip Hop, and even House
all originated in Black America. Queer spaces in America also were
also crucial in the development of House, Disco, and even Hip Hop
adfm wrote 20 hours 18 min ago:
Punk, too!
tucnak wrote 3 hours 19 min ago:
Incorrect. Punk has roots in reggae that would make it Caribbean,
not American.
KolibriFly wrote 22 hours 4 min ago:
What's sad is how much of that judgment hardened into history
busterarm wrote 22 hours 22 min ago:
It's not just west coast jazz. Music journalists snub their nose at
anything that doesn't have the "right pedigree". If it doesn't fit
their narrative for what jazz should be, it might as well not exist.
That included decades of Japanese jazz musicians, conservatory-trained
session wizards without a hard-luck backstory like Michael Brecker,
etc.
As much as modern music sharing/streaming has its downsides, the best
thing it ever did was make everything discoverable and make the
opinions of gatekeeping assholes irrelevant.
You don't need respect. Respect doesn't even pay the bills. You just
need listeners and a way to sell to them.
ZebusJesus wrote 22 hours 23 min ago:
Agreed there has always been good jazz on the West coast, good article.
Seattle has had great jazz scene for a long time. [1] Ray Charles,
Quincy Jones, Kenny G all honed skills on the West coast.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.kuow.org/stories/jazz-has-a-storied-past-in-seattl...
jeffbee wrote 23 hours 26 min ago:
The article doesn't even gesture at the reason why West Coast is
disfavored by some: it's the white flavor. A lot of people feel that
the White clique of West Coast jazz capitalized on the popularity of
the genre without really contributing much to it. It was the safe,
commercial style at the time.
Note that this isn't my personal take. I love Art Pepper. I can
tolerate some Brubeck. But I admit there was plenty of slop in the
record stores, too.
AirMax98 wrote 16 hours 9 min ago:
Glad you pointed this out⦠kinda hilarious someone looks at these
musicians, their output, and their fans and thinks that âbeing from
the west coastâ is the primary factor here.
throw0101a wrote 18 hours 35 min ago:
> A lot of people feel that the White clique of West Coast jazz
capitalized on the popularity of the genre without really
contributing much to it.
Meanwhile:
> The nonet recorded 12 tracks for Capitol during three sessions over
nearly a year and a half. [Miles] Davis, Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan,
and Bill Barber were the only musicians who played on all three
sessions [â¦]
* [1] Mulligan also has multiple writing credits.
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_of_the_Cool#Recording
analog31 wrote 22 hours 3 min ago:
Gioia even touches on this in some of his writing. One factor that's
often forgotten is that Black musicians often couldn't fully
capitalize on their own music, or compete effectively, because of Jim
Crow. There was a lot of resentment as a result.
dfedbeef wrote 23 hours 4 min ago:
This happens pretty frequently in music.
dfedbeef wrote 23 hours 3 min ago:
It's not always just white people now, at least. Rich kids of all
races can take over a genre
atan2 wrote 1 day ago:
"The Latin Side of Vince Guaraldi" is my favorite jazz album cover.
iainmerrick wrote 1 day ago:
Glad to see Vince Guaraldi prominently mentioned here. Like the author,
I got into Guaraldi via the Peanuts music, then found I loved the rest
of his stuff as well.
I think Guaraldi is almost like a jazz version of Erik Satie, whoâs
been discussed here a few times. His music seems very simple, almost
simplistic, but his taste and feel are superb. Itâs just really good
and easy to listen to, which unfortunately means it gets dismissed as
âeasy listeningâ.
santoshalper wrote 1 day ago:
Using "easy listening" as a pejorative has always baffled me. Why
does music need to be difficult?
Nifty3929 wrote 19 hours 35 min ago:
If it's not painful it's not good. If you're enjoying it you're
doing it wrong.
chrisweekly wrote 21 hours 9 min ago:
IME it's basically synonymous with "muzak" and "smooth jazz", the
kind of bland and mediocre background atmosphere inflicted on mall
shoppers (often substituted with the same handful of mindless
holiday tunes this time of year).
analog31 wrote 21 hours 32 min ago:
I think that playing any kind of live music requires a bit of a
two-way accommodation between the needs of the audience and of the
musicians. I don't think it needs to be difficult per se, but there
needs to be something in it for the musicians.
This might sound self centered, which is a frequent stereotype
leveled against jazz musicians, but on the other hand, why bother?
There are other things we could be doing with our time. And I don't
think that playing "difficult" music is incompatible with
delivering a high quality performance, which is always my mission.
iainmerrick wrote 19 hours 47 min ago:
I think itâs worth distinguishing âdifficult to performâ
and âdifficult to listen toâ. Something like hard rock or
metal with lots of flashy solos can be technically impressive,
but itâs not difficult to âgetâ -- when done properly it
just gets you in the gut.
The accusation usually levelled at cutting-edge jazz (fairly or
unfairly) is that itâs so niche that it is difficult to get;
that itâs left behind any pretence at being popular music. Many
listeners would even go further and sneer âtheyâre just
playing notes at random!â or âyouâre just pretending to
like it!â
I do wonder whether good-sounding, easy-to-get music is purely a
matter of fashion (being just different enough to be interesting,
but conventional enough to be accessible), or if to some degree
thereâs another axis of skill/difficulty in great pop music, of
making it catchy and universal.
analog31 wrote 18 hours 13 min ago:
I think that since at least from the time jazz began to mature,
like maybe in the 1940s, there has been a back-and-forth
between crowd-pleasing and dance-able music, and more
exploratory and artistic music. The Stan Kenton Orchestra
traveled with two separate "books," one for dance gigs and
another for concerts. Ellington's material, of which there was
a lot, is quite imaginative.
To me that's OK. When jazz ceased to be responsible for forming
the backbone of popular music, it triggered a more experimental
period, including some ventures that were pretty far out, such
as free jazz and free improv. Jazz also experienced a shift in
focus -- not uncontroversially -- by becoming an object of
academic study.
I think we're in a period right now when bands are seeking more
audience friendly material. Now, the big-band I play in is in
some sense "enthusiast" music. We have a small but loyal
audience of people who happen to like this kind of stuff.
But in another of my bands, two of the players are actively
composing new material, and it's arguably listen-able by any
standards. Maybe we're in a third era, where we're free from
responsibility for making popular music, but also free from
responsibility for establishing the stature of jazz as a
"serious" art form, and can return to the business of pleasing
ourselves and our audiences.
aczerepinski wrote 23 hours 31 min ago:
Easy listening implies that thereâs not much of anything there.
Nothing surprising or unique about the song or the performance. No
insightful message and nothing worth reflecting on after.
I donât think the alternative is âdifficultâ for its own
sake. Rather, those who would use the term as a pejorative are
likely seeking new experiences and viewpoints in their music and
get bored by same old diatonic melodies over plain inoffensive
grooves. Novelty is a source of dopamine for some.
A lot of jazz music is difficult to the untrained ear, and I have
distinct memories of hearing albums that I now feel are too
conservative but in my youth thought they were too chaotic. I now
understand that it was never difficult from the performerâs
perspective - just high level musicians playing the music they
hear. I wish everyone could hear jazz just once through the ears of
a jazz musician.
mesrik wrote 1 day ago:
>Using "easy listening" as a pejorative has always baffled me. Why
does music need to be difficult?
Yes, I agree with you, it shouldn't and doesn't need to be.
But some things like music be it Jazz or something else isn't
always just matter of listening but way of self establishment, way
of life living or pursuing life, way how they seeing themselves and
communicate themselves to others. I'm not in to this or studying
this or anything else, but it's known behaviour model and you find
studies if you like to read about it more.
Right, some Jazz aficionados tend to be like hipsters. Who despise
and keep unorthodox anything but their likes would grok. A way of
self establishment and having reason to keep themselves different.
At least a bit better than others. I'm not claiming everybody are,
but I certainly have met few of those quick to classify someone
things they like.
I find my self like more West Coast Jazz bands and artists
performances older I get. And if I'm not completely wrong it might
be a more common trend their share has increased over the past ten
or so years playing in radio stations too at least where I live.
BewareTheYiga wrote 1 day ago:
When I think of west coast jazz, I think of Tom Scott and I was
surprised to not see him in this article.
jpster wrote 1 day ago:
The idea that Chet Baker and some of the others named are not
âserious jazzâ is too ludicrous to take.
KolibriFly wrote 22 hours 1 min ago:
Jazz has always been bigger than one aesthetic or one coast, no
matter how much some people want to police it
Libidinalecon wrote 23 hours 49 min ago:
Unknown nobodies like Dave Brubeck.
alonsonic wrote 1 day ago:
Baker has one of the best movie adaptations, has been documented and
reissued at nauseum and has worldwide acclaim and recognition. Sounds
like mostly an inner-circle type of perspective.
omosubi wrote 1 day ago:
I grew up playing a lot of jazz in the late 2000s and there was always
a strict canon - big band was seen as kind of cutesy and not worth
putting much effort into while the Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie,
Coltrane, Davis, Hancock, Shorter and a few others were the "real"
musicians. But the internet was in its infancy at the time and
YouTube/spotify started showing things that I had never heard of like a
bunch of Japanese jazz musicians, so I always wonder what musicians
coming up today see as "the canon". Is it still mostly the names I
mentioned or does it include a lot more?
On a separate note, I always saw Chet baker and Gerry mulligan as
"real" musicians but was taught early on that Brubeck was "staid" and
boring. After judging it myself I guess you could say his soloing was a
little underwhelming but he was incredibly creative in a way that a lot
of the "serious" musicians weren't. Jazz people can be such losers
sometimes
j7ake wrote 18 hours 21 min ago:
The meme of dude standing in corner while everybody else dances as he
utters an elitist thought to himself explains many jazz musicians,
especially the protagonist in whiplash
alexjplant wrote 16 hours 48 min ago:
"Whiplash" uses jazz music as a plot device - it has about as much
to do with it as "Hackers" does with computers. I've never even
played jazz (let alone at the level depicted in the film) and every
five or ten minutes of watching it I found myself exclaiming
incredulously at the seemingly ridiculous bullshit I was bearing
witness to. My instincts were correct; the internet is rife with
actual jazz musicians talking about this film's numerous creative
liberties taken in service of its plot derivative of a sports
flick.
Any opinion of actual jazz musicians formed on the basis of this
film can be safely disregarded ab initio. Music snobs exist, but
that movie is full of strawmen. A real shame as it was otherwise
very well-executed but stuff like the finger-bleeding scene ripped
straight from a Bryan Adams song does it no favors.
kryogen1c wrote 19 hours 11 min ago:
>Jazz people can be such losers sometimes
This has never occurred to me before, but I don't think ive ever met
a jazz lover I liked.
This surprises me. Ill think about this a bit, perhaps a cognitive
psychological rabbit hole is in order.
heresie-dabord wrote 18 hours 59 min ago:
> I don't think ive ever met a jazz lover I liked.
It can be a sub-type of zealot who self-installs opinions and
parades them like secret knowledge or a grand epiphany. I know a
guy whose entire jazz discourse is like this. It's remarkably
similar to astrological codswallop or political zealotry.
We can dig the music and make the world a better place without
being an ass about it.
ilamont wrote 20 hours 2 min ago:
> I grew up playing a lot of jazz in the late 2000s and there was
always a strict canon - big band was seen as kind of cutesy and not
worth putting much effort into
Rock used to be this way too. Itâs hard to believe now, but there
was a real wall between punk and metal in the mid 1980s.
In punk circles grudging respect was given to Motörhead and a few
thrash acts but everyone else was seen as hair-obsessed posers or
dinosaurs. Neither camp would admit to liking anything
âmainstream.â
20 years later Chris Cornell is covering Billie Jean ( [1] ) and all
kinds of unusual collaborations were kicking off. It was frankly
refreshing.
(HTM) [1]: https://youtu.be/R0uWF-37DAM?si=V3Pqtq-3GDHqxJBd
donkeybeer wrote 10 hours 59 min ago:
[1] [2] I think that is what the lyrics here are referring to.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdmQ84Sm-i4
(HTM) [2]: https://genius.com/Ripping-corpse-rift-of-hate-lyrics
KolibriFly wrote 22 hours 2 min ago:
For a music built on curiosity and openness, it's surprisingly good
at gatekeeping
supportengineer wrote 16 hours 41 min ago:
See also: HAM radio
analog31 wrote 21 hours 19 min ago:
As I mentioned in an adjacent post, I've been playing jazz for
nearly 50 years, and have not experienced gatekeeping, except on
rare occasion from mediocre players. I've played with pro's,
academics, and amateurs. The overwhelmingly predominant attitude is
simply love of music and an interest in a challenge.
Come to the Midwest.
analog31 wrote 22 hours 12 min ago:
I've been playing jazz as a bassist for nearly 50 years, including
with several big-band groups. Today my main band is a big-band,
though I also play with a number of smaller groups.
Finding repertoire is a perennial challenge. Adding new material
takes more effort than just a quick agreement on the bandstand and
flipping through the fake books. A lot of material is unpublished,
out of print, surreptitiously Xeroxed, etc. But there's a lot of
exciting material spanning an entire century.
And the west coast is well represented.
Of course big-band is unique in that it involves improv soloing but
is much more about the arrangements, especially the newer stuff. It's
like playing chamber music in that way, but of course people still
love chamber music. It's never hard to fill an empty seat in our
band.
seedlessmike wrote 22 hours 29 min ago:
The core repertoire hasn't really changed but the boundaries get
further and further out. It's like "classical" music. Pianists must
learn the 2 part inventions, they're an essential part of the
tradition.
Big band is hard to learn from. The large ensembles like Basie's and
Duke's have persisted in popularity, but classic "big band" are very
much of their time.
The bebop guys will always occupy the position in jazz that Bach
occupies in "classical". They're foundational musicians in a
continuous tradition and one learns a lot about the music by studying
them.
By "canon" do you mean respected musicians? Or do you mean that PLUS
players whose work is considered essential to learning how to play
the music? The answers will be different. Keith Jarrett is great and
esteemed but unless you want to sound like Keith Jarrett, he's not
essential to study.
jancsika wrote 1 day ago:
> his soloing was a little underwhelming
I mean, it is true that a lot of his solos get busier and bangier
until he's hammering out polyrhythms at the end. I just take it as
part of the ride when listening to Brubeck.
But I really don't want to listen to other jazz artists emulate that,
especially knowing how little chance there is that they'll have the
same creativity and sense of rhythm that Brubeck had. (Edit: based on
the experience of hearing the banging without the creativity/rhythm--
it's not fun.)
seedlessmike wrote 22 hours 42 min ago:
Brubeck suffered a serious spinal injury swimming in Hawaii which
resulted in chronic hand pain, depriving him of some dexterity. He
may have been a fluent and swinging improviser before that, I don't
know. It all worked out, his quartet had a unique style and Desmond
was such a great player and improviser.
omosubi wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah I mean his solos compared to his melodies/song structures or
even the other soloists on each song.
But also compared to other prominent pianists of the time like Bill
Evans, Herbie Hancock, etc
mfro wrote 1 day ago:
I think jazz taste has diversified a lot in the last decade and we
arenât seeing a canon outside of cliques. I know myself and other
younger folks listen to the artists you listed, I know several who
grew up playing in a marching band and enjoy big band, myself I
listen to nearly anything.
onraglanroad wrote 1 day ago:
Betteridge's law of headlines.
alephnerd wrote 7 days ago:
Do ya like jazz? [0]
[0] -
(HTM) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLthw2YWb4s
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