Take Care of Business

"Teaching jazz is like fattening frogs for snakes. I don't teach, but I tell kids at clinics what I'd do if I did teach at a university. I'd put them on a bus and paint the windows black, give them ugly uniforms and 400 pieces of music out of order that need all sorts of doubling (clarinet, oboe, flugelhorn). I'd drive them around campus for 30 hours in circles, going nowhere. Then I'd stop, everybody off, put on the plastic uniforms, set up on a dark stage with no sound system or sound man, tune up, call out a number, '14791'.... Scramble to put your music in order. Alright, now put it all away, hang up your uniform, get back on the bus and drive around in circles for another 30 hours.

"After a few days, I'd ask them: 'Now, who wants to make this their life?' You can save people a whole lot of trouble, because this is what the music business is. It's not about the music. The music is easy! It's all that other stuff. To play with young energy is simple, but to sustain a career in music takes a lot of dedication. You may major in Coltrane, but you gotta' play Britney Spears on tour for a living."

—Phil Woods (Down Beat, October 2004)

Very similar conclusions concerning whether or not teachers and programs in the collegiate setting are well enough equipped to teach our-up-and-coming jazz musicians have been drawn amongst us. Our general answer? Yes and no.. but really mostly no.

I studied and received my BM from a Midwestern university where I was lucky enough to be able to participate in the jazz program even though I was a classical performance major. Much to the annoyance of my classical music and theory teachers, I sat in one of the big bands playing sax and I loved it. Playing, listening, experiencing, and participating in jazz programs greatly influenced and improved the way I play and think about classical performance. And vice versa.

So that brings me in to jazz education in schools. Having experienced both sides of jazz and classical education (obviously more classical, but I feel as though I can make a valid point) it can be a bit easier for an educator to take a kid aspiring to be an orchestral musician, tell them to learn all their scales, learn X amount of excerpts, listen to these specific recordings, attend these concerts, and practice several hours a day. With some extra guidance from private mentors, the classical musician should have all the necessary skills to go out and win that job. So as a music educator who perhaps spent their undergraduate playing the oboe and then went off to teach high school band after graduation, this may be the first approach he or she takes when trying to push the interested jazz student in the right direction. This is a problem. I find it interesting, however, that the recipient of a BM Ed degree is certified to teach jazz, but a jazz studies major is hardly awarded teaching certification upon the completion of their studies. It is amazing to me that jazz teaching techniques are not generally presented (to my knowledge) within a music ed program. This is also a problem.

And now speaking as just a classical major.. it’s true that music education in college is largely based off a classical tradition, but this does not mean that this formula will result in my, or anyone else’s, musical success. Hearing remarks about how much easier it is to teach and become highly developed in classical music in comparison to jazz has been starting to get a little old. In both genres, the opportunity is offered by the school. Both require creativity, effort, and commitment, and these are things that are in fact difficult to teach. All teachers are actually required to do is to promote and facilitate Not to spoon feed the music into the student’s mouth with the promise of one day he or she will sit in a major symphony or become an influential and highly paid jazz musician.

As a class, we picked through the feisty Facebook discussion sparked by Matt Merewitz’s bold statement about how “so many kids (and their parents) are being sold a false dream” by schools offering degree programs in jazz. As all the other voices joined in, the general points touched on were basically about the overabundance of jazz schools in relation to available jobs and the issues of debt brought on upon overpriced institutions offering a sub par education. A common misconception touched upon in class is this idea that a college or conservatory with a big name in a big city will guarantee a big name job in comparison to that tiny state school in Iowa. In fact, colleges don’t owe us anything in that respect. They are not store in which we can purchase a job in exchange for their credentials as a music school. They provide an opportunity (at a cost!!) and it is our responsibility to either take advantage of the opportunity or to just be OK with the general formula offered by the degree’s curriculum. This of course applies to both jazz and classical students. I just don’t think that it is as black and white as Merewitz seems to believe. He does have a point, however, that colleges do take advantage. But one really cannot expect a college to turn a bunch of willing applicants away because the job market sucks. They are a business, after all. On the other side, these over abundant and over priced programs are only being created due to the demand of the students who desire to be a part of them.

But going to college and paying all that money isn’t a complete waste. Along with all that tuition and all those campus fees, networking comes along with it as well as the opportunity to connect with others who uphold the same goals and ideals. Because going to college does not equal work. We go to college to learn. What is this “further education” anyway??

And in a lot of ways, it is sometimes the student’s fault as well as the parent’s. We have all known that kid who has the best education and equipment because of how much money is available to them, but then flounders in the job market. Who is really selling who the false dream? Being a musician is hard. Being a musician with an aversion to teaching is even harder. Music majors should realize this, if they already don’t, because being a performer does not generally pay well. Teachers assume responsibility as well and should do a better job in the reinforcement of reality.

A career in music? You? Really?

If the ultimate goal of the musician is to have a stable job with a decent income, it might be best to just become a registered nurse..

Wynton Marsalis gets a lot of flack.

Marsalis has created an institution that seeks to educate and perpetuate the music that he knows and loves. He calls the music jazz and it is clearly defined in his own mind. His outreaching and educating is an admirable endeavor and, as with any subject that is taught, he has necessarily developed his own definition of what jazz is. His lineage of jazz history is what has become the norm in jazz education classrooms across the country and he represents this dogma as the face of JALC and what the general public knows as “jazz.” He has seemingly succeeded in educating a great deal of Americans about a uniquely American artform by stripping it down to a simple lineage with defined styles and standard works. And this is why he gets so much flack.

By creating this definition of jazz, Marsalis has alienated a huge group of modernistic, avant-garde, improvisational, post-modernistic, and even pop musicians who would describe their own music as falling into the category of “jazz.” In “The J-Word”, Iverson lists 5 large groups of musicians that all create very different music that are “not embraced in the Wynton Marsalis vision of jazz.” He also calls this a “partial” list, insinuating that there are even more, different styles or theories of music that might want to be included under the jazz umbrella. Basically all of the styles that Iverson cites have only been in practice since after Marsalis’ lineage ends with Miles Davis before his electric music and John Coltrane before his rubato music.

At that point in time, music began to take many more forms than it ever had before. With the advent of all these new forms, it becomes pretty difficult to draw clear lines of what came from where and what any of it should be called. For example, “fusion” may stake its roots in jazz, but it is not jazz, simply because it is fused with another style of music, by definition. What we knew as jazz before had progressed to the point of explosion and a myriad of styles were constantly springing up.

From there, it would only make sense to go back and harness some sort of lineage. This is why the history of jazz is currently being taught the way it is. As with anything that is taught, there must be parameters within which to teach it. A clear line can be traced from New Orleans Jazz to Bop before things get fuzzy. The progression and influence can be seen and is well documented. Whether or not what comes after this history is influenced by, has progressed from, or has any roots in jazz is a moot point in the terms of Marsalis’ canon.

I’m not saying that the History of Jazz just ends sometime in the 1960s, I’m just saying that it becomes very difficult to track what has grown out of jazz as we know it from the first half of the 20^th Century. Many musicians created some very complex and interesting music that is very artistic and enjoyable. However, Marsalis just doesn’t dig it nearly as much as the stuff he plays. This is why he plays and teaches what he does: because it’s what he likes and thinks is the best. It’s his opinion, and he’s entitled to it. He’s just a guy who happens to be immensely talented and well liked by the media and general public. As to a responsibility to recognize and support other types of music, I don’t see him as having one if he doesn’t see them as falling into his own category.

I think what we need to realize is that just because Wynton Marsalis and JALC say something is jazz or isn’t jazz, doesn’t mean it is good or bad. It’s just one institutions opinion and the general public seems to like it. If other styles of music want to stake their claim as the rightful heirs to jazz, they need to get out there and prove it to the audience and support their beliefs with conviction. So Wynton isn’t all that bad of a guy, he’s just doing what he likes to do.

Let's go in circles!!

Why is it so difficult?! I have a hard time seeing what all the fuss is about. Trying to categorize Jazz music into these rules of how you should do this or that or else you aren’t a real Jazz musician is ridiculous. With that being said, I will put forth that I think it is necessary to have learned the so-called “tradition”.  Actually, what I am trying to say is having an appreciation and respect for what came before. Just because your music or way of playing might not reflect the “tradition” doesn’t make you any less of a musician necessarily. The thing that I have discovered is that Jazz to me is totally about spontaneous interaction with others…usually in an improvised setting. When I hear Cecil Taylor playing the way he does, I really enjoy it and he isn’t playing anything that resembles the stereotypical “language of Jazz tradition”.  His music is spontaneous, unique, imaginative, and interactive. These qualities alone make it worth my while to sit down and have a listen…even if it isn’t my favorite kind of music; I still (for lack of a better term) “got much love for it”. 

Seriously though, I’ve been to a few classes and I think that this whole topic has been exhausted. Let’s face it; at the end of the day, they are all just opinions. Even if we talked about this topic for an entire semester…agh! There is no such thing as these specific requirements to be a musician. It’s all about what a certain group of people like and dislike.

Looking forward to some hopefully more objective topics?

Commercial = Bad?

We spend a lot of time in class talking about commercial or main stream players, such as Wynton Marsalis, and usually negative comments will ensue. I'm not saying that I think Wynton should be the future face of jazz music, but he may very well be in the general public's eye. It is important to remember, sometimes, that we are trying to make a career out of being a musician and we need support from other people.

In my eyes mainstream jazz isn't always the most creative music that I have heard. Examples of this would be Wynton albums full of standards, or maybe Chris Botti with some trumpet love effects in his performances. Granted they don't really sound like the underground musicians that most of us adore. However we are performers and I think that we have to keep our audience in mind. I know that some of you will really not like that statement but hear me out on this. Bands like The Bad Plus, and even Jason Moran are playing rock songs that relate to a wider audience. Does this mean that they are selling out like Wynton? I know that they have several other songs on their albums that are their own unique compositions, but they have to get the audiences attention. Getting a large audiences attention is great for any kind of musician.

This being said, music to the average person is meant to be a fun experience. People want to see and hear musicians loving what they do, but if they can't relate to it at all they aren't going to go out of their busy schedules to make it to your next gig. Big band music was originally produced for the general public to party, but it evolved into something more. Sometimes I think that we loose our roots of the original ways that people played jazz music. It is important that we remember that kind of spirit.

In class we have been coming back to the issue of how to critique musicians that play free or experimental music. This is one the most confusing tasks that a musician could take on. However we judge musicians on their ability to play in different styles including the classic roots of jazz. Experimental music is a very expressive type of music in its own unique way. Unfortunately the public will most likely NEVER get it. It it might be more work for the general public to understand and enjoy the music. If musicians choose to perform like this they have to understand that they aren't performing for money. They have now moved on to something more noble, and that is furthering their creativity.

Maybe as musicians we have to find a balance (If we want to make a living) between playing music that can appeal to a wide audience, and playing music that is what we deeply believe in. I do believe that if any of us got a deal to go mainstream and play like Wynton or even...Kenny G we would take that job. Those artists are the ones that are making large amounts of money. However as we gain fame maybe we will start to rock the boat a little bit and play some free jazz that we really enjoy playing. I guess what I'm trying to say is to at least think about our audience and try to lure them in to listen to us. Maybe Coltrane originally wanted to play spiritually but started blowing over changes. He definitely is a prime example of a musician that evolves but had to pay a price with his fan base. But Coltrane was playing music for reasons that we can relate to. We play music because we love it and if we could not make a career out of it we would still carry on the tradition.

Who killed Jazz? The Game is Afoot.

Miles Davis killed jazz.

I'll let that simmer for a minute and wait for the hot glares to cool before I continue. Ready to go on? Alright, let me clarify. One person can't really be blamed entirely for the declining in popularity of an entire art form. To be fair, there are a lot of contributing factors over the last few decades. The shift in culture due to the popularity of television, the birth of rock and roll, the sexual revolution, etc... But no stronger argument has been made for the declining popularity of jazz music than the shift away from dance music in the 1940s and 50s which is primarily attributed to Miles Davis and his development of Bop.

Before Miles Davis the primary medium of performance for jazz was as a dance band. Music was relatively simple and had clear meter to make it easy for Johnny and Sally to get there Lindy Hop on between malted milkshakes. Miles Davis brought to the table a new era of complexity and virtuosity to the art form. Modal harmonies, asymmetric meter, bebop, hard bop, all these things come from Miles Davis. Before Davis you had Happy Days are Here Again, and with him you had Bitches Brew. Miles Davis took jazz into a much deeper and darker corner than it had ever been before, and it's there that it seems to have found a home, cramped though it may be. With the shifting away from dance music in the 40s and 50s, Johnny and Sally had to find something to groove to, so the sexual revolution drove them to Rock and Roll and artists that could only be filmed from the waist up because of how "extreme" they were. Jazz had passed the title of Devil's Music onto rock and roll, a crown it would never regain, despite titles like Bitches Brew. Miles Davis had formed jazz into music for musicians. Jazz would soon be studied in conservatories all across the country and eventually the globe. Professors of music would start to apply music theory to jazz and teach technique. Jazz became institutionalized and commonplace. Despite many valiant attempts at rebirth and innovation of the art form, Johnny and Sally already had found music to which they could simulate sex on the dance floor and rebel against their parents. Lucy and Ricky may have slept in separate beds at the time, but dammit, Johnny and Sally needed to express their darkest desires at the school sock hop. Thus jazz went the way of all things...and died.

Or did it? Yes, jazz DID lose its appeal with the masses as a form of dance music, but it also gained a new audience of serious musicians. The audience may be smaller, but the loyalty is much stronger than that of Johnny and Sally, who will always turn to the newer and "edgier" music of the day simply because it is popular. Jazz is now played and loved by people AROUND THE WORLD. Everyday jazz reaches new emotional depths and pulls at the soul. Just simply because the common man doesn't appreciate it, doesn't mean its time has passed or that the art form is no longer valid. Most people are stupid, after all.

the concept and teaching of "good" aesthetic

Iverson brings up the point that Marsalis is a polarizing figure.  Within this, I don’t think that people necessarily like OR dislike Marsalis, or the idea of someone in his position, or ‘rationalizing’ jazz, or whatever else he might stand for.  People have the option of being polarized within themselves, liking AND disliking this figure at the same time.  I find this quote of Iverson’s from “The J-Word” to be profound:

“If I had the chance to study with Wynton Marsalis, I certainly would, and hope that most younger musicians would want to study with him too.  He is like jazz aspirin: take two once in a while to remind yourself of the basics. “

Marsalis (and all he stands for) has his place.  We should have a strong foundation -- but let’s not have it ground us.  We need to know the rules before we can break them.  There is nothing wrong with learning your standards, your turnarounds, your tradition, (although Marsalis is bigger than this conception), but it should not come at the cost of your expression, your aesthetic, which ultimately you will have to teach yourself.  The rules should only serve your expression and not bind it. 

I honestly think you can help teach someone aesthetic, or good aesthetic.  You can’t teach it in the way that you can’t be definitive, you will only shoot yourself in the foot if you call something totally terrible, and you can’t grade it, but you can show someone a better way of thinking about it, avenues and ways in which something is good or bad.  I can’t tell you definitively what is good or bad, but I can give you my liquid opinion, which is likely to change within a year.  Pop music, although it is slandered as ‘non-legit,’ did something right, that’s why people like it, the beat and the catchy melodies.  I don’t think these stereotypical top-40 songs are entirely in bad taste, but are often not very thoughtful.  People are not stupid, but sometimes don’t think.  In a vague way, I do believe there is such a thing as a good aesthetic, because we practice and get better.  There is a way to get better, you wouldn’t jam out to recordings of yourself as a 10-year old -- or maybe you would, I don’t know, Bill Frisell had his young daughter’s scrawl on the front of his CD cover, kid-art (totally honest art) can be oddly stirring -- but I sloppily digress.  So we do have this concept of….well, that was ok, but this is great!  Yes, we compare. 

There is such thing as shitty aesthetic, but I prefer to think of this as non-thinking aesthetic, when the artist is just running fast notes or mindlessly fabricating tracks.  Artists are not stupid but sometimes don’t think.  There is such a thing as shit.  Aesthetic is up to you, I can’t tell you what it is, but I think that if we stop trying to figure out what is good or bad we lose so much education.  That is where a good teacher comes in.  Someone who can help you think about the choices you are making with your music, both in logistics and emotional direction, bring to the consciousness what you might be doing subconsciously.  This comes after the first though (the rules approach), because I personally think you have to have enough direction and humility to be open to enlightenment and to take in this kind of education.  I think a good balance is for students to gradually do more and more on their own, search for new communities, “real-life” communities, teachers in their field, maybe spend some serious time in New York and feel the clubs, the talks, the personality being funneled through art successfully.

To sum up, I think jazz benefits from JALC and the ‘legitimatizing’ of the music.  But let’s take the good and not forget how much of the music was learned not in schools but from great teachers in the real world and from great concepts of thinking-aesthetic. 

post by UrbanDiction, not by Jazz Heresy

"The word jazz doesn't mean much."

Our class readings so far have all dealt, in one way or another, with setting the context for understanding the apparent split between concepts of “tradition” and “innovation” in jazz today. I call it a split, but Time Out New York calls it “the raging jazz wars”. How did jazz—famously, the sound of surprise—become a classical music? And how did “jazz”—the word—become something an “innovator” might want to explain away, as Esperanza Spaulding seemed to do when she told the audience at a PR event a couple of weeks ago that “the word jazz doesn’t mean much”.*

We decided in class to name the blog “Jazz Heresy” as something of a joke, but I’d like to take a moment here to talk about the word: not jazz, but “heresy”.  My dictionary defines “heresy” as a belief that is at odds with orthodox religious doctrine, or an opinion profoundly at odds with what is generally accepted. In this week’s readings, we observed Wynton Marsalis doing a rhetorical flip of the words “conservative” and “radical”: to Marsalis, a “radical” is someone who upholds the sanctity of the jazz tradition, while the “conservative” is someone who follows the trend of dismissing the importance of tradition. In this topsy-turvy conception, then, we can be heretical by opposing tradition, or upholding tradition; by embracing innovation in jazz, or by excoriating it. I’d like to suggest another way: let’s be heretics by making it plain that the word "jazz" means something, means different things to different people at different times and places. Let's engage with history, culture and musicians' stories to understand what these things are. Let's talk about who we are, what kind of music we want to make, what kinds of musicians we want to be, and why.

The class assignment is to publish a post that responds directly to something we’ve read, watched, listened to, or discussed in class. We’ve covered a lot of ground in the past three weeks, and to start off our discussions here – and to give anyone else out there an idea of who we’ve been reading and listening to – I’ll sign off with a list of the things we’ve been looking at.

 Looking forward to the discussion!

*Here I quote journalist and scholar Lara Pellegrinelli, who paraphrased Spaulding’s remarks in her preview of the bassist and vocalist’s upcoming performance in the September 30-October 6 edition of Time Out New York.
 


Assigned Readings

Steven F. Pond (2003), “Jamming the Reception: Ken Burns, Jazz, and the problem of “America’s Music””, Notes, 60(1), 11-45.

Robert G. O’Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards and Farah Jasmine Griffin, “Introductory Notes” in O’Meally et. al., Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies (Columbia University Press, 2004), 1-6.

Scott Deveaux, “Constructing the Jazz tradition” in O’Meally, Ed., The Jazz Cadence of American Culture (Columbia University Press, 1998) 483-512.

David Ake, “Jazz ‘Traning: John Coltrane in the Conservatory”, Jazz Cultures (University of California Press, 2002), 112-145.

David Ake, “Jazz Traditioning: Setting Standards at Century’s Close”, Jazz Cultures (University of California Press, 2002), 146-176.

Ethan Iverson, “Wynton Marsalis: Reader’s Guide” and “Interview with Wynton Marsalis: Part Two”, Do The Math, http://dothemath.typepad.com/.

Supplementary Readings

Hank Shteamer, “Jon Irabagon: A local saxist refuses to pick a side in the still-raging jazz wars,” Time Out New York, Issue 780 : Sep 9–15, 2010. http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/music/88746/jon-irabagon-interview#ixzz117PhsBaN

Jamie Katz, “Keeper of the Keys: Pianist Jason Moran laces his strikingly original music with the soulful sounds of jazz greats”, Smithsonian Magazine, October 2007. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsections/innovators/moran-yi.html

A discussion on publicist Matt Merewitz’ Facebook page on jazz education.

Viewing

Ken Burns: Jazz, Chapter 10: A Masterpiece by Midnight

Listening

Jon Irabagon. “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/8507010)
Mostly Other People do the Killing on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/mostlyotherpeopledothekilling)
John Coltrane: “Giant Steps”
John Coltrane: “Ascension”
Bill Frissell, “Have a Little Faith”
Wynton Marsalis, “Standard Time Vol. 2: Intimacy Calling”
The Bad Plus: “These Are the Vistas”
Mary Halvorsen, preview of “Saturn Sings” on NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129996649