stuartk, yes the yin-yang symbol, masculine and feminine in balance. But the Creator a man? Give me a break. The Creator was a woman from the beginning.. Up until maybe 10,000 years ago there were only female goddess symbols. Not male. For some reason (and I can think of many) men made goddesses and female power forbidden. That's Abraham's first commandment, there shall be no God before Yahweh, and he was talking about those Asherah statues in the backs of Hebrews' houses.. Anyway, we should probably take this off the forum if you want to discuss it more.
Esperanza Spalding is a perfect example of what empowered women can do. So is Alice Coltrane. And I think the great artists, including John Coltrane, are in touch with their inner feminine. Even though they might worship a male god. We were talking about different male jazz players being more feminine and others being more masculine. One of the great classical pianists Alfred Brendel just died, and he favored nuance over power. Put him in a class with Mitsuko Uchida, my favorite classical pianist. But I drift.
It would be interesting for people to name male musicians that they think are more in touch with their feminine side and those who are only into raw power. I think Louis Armstrong was both, and that's what made him a genius. John Coltrane wouldn't have married a powerful woman like Alice Coltrane if he didn't understand feminine power. Now I'm thinking about Miles Davis--maybe later Miles Davis, and I don't know. Earlier Kind of Blue Miles Davis definitely had the soft touch. Later Bitches Brew, throwing tantrums Miles Davis. I don't know, even though I own Bitches Brew and play it.
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alexatpos, I also had a socialist upbringing. As I studied archaeology for my book, I found out there were Marxist archaeologists as well as feminist archaeologists. One of the biggest questions I have, and I have no answer, is what society would look like, through what lens would we view the world, if women hadn't been suppressed for at least 5,000 years?
Let's look at art and music. When did women begin to participate in the arts? I know there are a few exceptions, but I mean on a somewhat broad scale. Can you think of any women composers prior to Clara Schumann in the mid 1800s? And Clara Schumann was a bright, bright star, married to a great composer and loved by other great composers like Brahms.
In jazz, when did women begin to participate,? And by participating I mean more than singing. Truthfully, we are just beginning to sense the power of female musicians today. When we talk about the greats in jazz, Coltrane, Davis, and all the others, no women come up. So the suppression of women has a lot to do with the arts. We can say the same about painting and writing. Since women read fiction much more than men, they became involved a bit earlier. Jane Austin lived in the early 1800s.
I have a lot of theories which include the masculine affects on physics, but they're not for here. But theories aside, just think about the history of the arts. It is so obvious that women and whatever they have to offer have been suppressed as far back as the Greeks and the Jews, both of whom formed our way of thinking and the lens through which we see the world. Which, by the way, has included war since the first patriarchies with the Sumerians and Aryans. Homer writes about war. The Torah talks about war. It's been all the rage since women were suppressed.
And just to throw in a bit of feminine energy, here's a taste of Geri Allen:
https://www.google.com/search?q=geri+allen+youtube&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS945US945&oq=geri+allen+youtube&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIKCAEQABiABBiiBDIHCAIQABjvBTIHCAMQABjvBTIHCAQQABjvBTIKCAUQABiABBiiBNIBCjE2MzU4ajBqMTWoAgiwAgHxBSZ6fNsVcTVt&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:eab80acb,vid:OfP7Z0NQKpE,st:0
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I've been listening to James Carter for hours. The more I listen the more I think he might be the best horn out there blowing today. And he blows a lot of different horns, including woodwinds. Makes so many different sounds in so many styles, it's amazing.
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stuartk, All of this is metaphor to me. Feminine Creator, Masculine Creator. It tells us about the society we live in. The suppression of women and the feminine is the world we live in. Take it away from the spiritual, it's just history. The point I want to make, and most people will disagree, is that humans didn't always live under patriarchy. That was a societal choice. And we all have a horse in the race, because we all live under patriarchy. It's about the suppression of women, about the suppression of races and religions. It's how history has led to the mess the world is in. My belief is that without a feminine perspective, our future does not look bright. I have to write a book about it because it's so hard for people to accept. If you want to know more about the history contact me in the texting part. I can't do it. For some reason my screen is screwed up. I can give you a historical perspective if you want. It's all very complicated, and men pretty much immediately dismiss the idea. Women usually say, "Of course."
To stay on the subject of jazz, here's another cut from James Carter. He's a master technician. He plays in so many styles, it's hard to find something that you could call his style.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNlsE9FGcDQ
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@stuartk
Thank you. I didn't begin to write a book on this topic. I researched my way into it and felt that it was an urgent issue that needed examining.
It does relate to jazz and other music. Art defines us as being human, and I couldn't imagine living in a world without music. And I feel that jazz hits the deepest spiritual parts of humanity which go back to our very beginnings.
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@stuartk, I think I shouldn't talk anymore about what I'm writing on this forum. Thanks for being interested, though.
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@tyray, thanks for the Brazilian tastes. I'll listen today. I've been listening to Maria Rita, do you know her? Also, I have a question. What part of Brazil does the samba come from?
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@tyray, thank you for the Brazilian Samba information. In the U.S., we've had many peoples influence the original blues-based jazz. Is that also true in Brazil? Was there any Portugese influence, perhaps from fado? I don't know what other groups settled in Brazil. It all makes me think of the Roma/Gypsy influence on Spanish music. When I was in Spain I went up into a cave to hear Flamenco. And also to a concert to hear El Amor Brujo by de Falla, one of my favorite "classical" pieces.
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@stuartk, I love that album! It's not printed on great vinyl so I've worn it out several times and have to keep looking for a mint copy. When I was taking classical guitar lessons, my teacher told me that was a great album so I went out and bought my first of many copies. Not that she was a jazz singer, but my teacher also told me what a great singer Donna Summer was, so I went out and bought the best of her. A very sexy lady!
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@stuartk, I have a number of Return to Forever albums I haven't played in years, except "Light as a Feather," of course. I'll have to put them on my turntable and give them another listen.
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@tyray, I have so many CDs of Brazilian music, many of female singers. I'll post from time to time.
Regarding my interest in musical influences, when I was young I taught in a school for kids with emotional problems. I knew my 8th grade history class would never be able to follow a history book, so I decided to have the kids go through the historical process with something they were interested in--rock n' roll. So we went through rock and all its various influences. One of the kids in the school was a savant, so if we were stuck he could tell us the very date on which a single came out and what was on the other side. That exercise made me interested in how music developed, where it came from and what its influences were. I thought maybe it would be easier in Brazil than the U.S., but it doesn't sound like it is.
I'm now listening to Angelique Kidjo's "Djin Djin." It's not jazz. I guess it's African popular music. But it's a great album.
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@tyray, stuartk, @acman3
Flora Purim's last name reminded me of the Jewish holiday Purim. I went onto chatgbt and asked what religion she is. She's a Sephardic Jew like me. Well, she has no religious affiliation, so she's really like me. But she was born into a Sephardic household. I wonder if that has anything to do with her spelling.
I lean a lot into the African "commercial" music like Angelique Kido and King Sunny Ade. I'm just pretty much a world music guy.
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@stuartk, @tyray
I have a boxed set of 4 records of a Return to Forever concert with Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Joe Farrell, and others that I will pull out tomorrow and play. I think I will appreciate it more than I have in the past.
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@acman3, we probably won't find a musician who has played both classical and jazz in this group. So, a discussion for another day.
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Sorry I strayed. Wife's gone. Blasting Rolling Stones "Let It Bleed." Back to my senses later.
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@mahgister,
One more confession. I've moved over to Marvin Gaye "What's Going On." It may not be jazz, but when I first heard it I had no idea what genre it fell into. I've listened to it a lot.
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@maghister,
I didn't have a lot of money growing up either. I would work odd jobs and use the money to buy records. All of the records I bought in high school were classical. I couldn't stand the bubble-gum music on the radio.
When I got to college friends introduced me to jazz and some of the better pop. I was very lucky to go to Berkeley in the mid-sixties. I saw Sunny Terry and Brownie McGhee several times, once at a party where I was sitting at their feet. Big Mama Thorton sang on the bar in a joint I went to. I went to San Francisco to hear Pharoah Sanders in person. I went to the Fillmore Auditorium to hear Mary Wells and Otis Redding. Plus other interesting rock groups like The Dead.
I met a girl and she introduced me to the Beatles. I would have danced with her to anything. I introduced her to Stravinsky. Music has been woven through my life since I can remember.
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@stuartk, thank you for that concert of Flora Purim. It is so very, very cool. For me, that is jazz at its best. I love to hear Flora Purim scatting, and those Brazilian rhythms are so very difficult. I saw her many, many years ago and have no memory of it. I think I'd heard her record "Angels" in which she sang. I wasn't prepared for the abstract scatting then. Now I love it, and I loved watching her do it. Thanks again.
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@tyray, @frogman, @stuartk
I used to love the flute. I had a wooden flute I played on the road while hitch-hiking half way across the world. (Got from Berkeley to Afghanistan.) I know I have many jazz flutists in my collection but haven't listened to them for many, many years. I'll pull some out and reevaluate. I know I have a few Hubert Laws albums.
Love songs pulled at the strings of my heart in middle school. In high school I used to wear a Beethoven sweatshirt. In college I liked to party, so whatever people partied to I liked. Now I like just about everything but rap. It was the misogynistic lyrics that drove me away. I do like a number of hip-hop artists, though. And jazz, of course.
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@tyray, @stuartk,
I found an album of Yusef Lateef playing flute. I like Yusef as a jazz musician, but I realized that when he began playing the flute I would be comparing him to one of the best flutists in the world in regards to technique. I go to the L.A. Phil every season and their first flutest undoubtedly has developed superb technique or else he wouldn't be there. (It used to be a she.)
I'll have to pull out your flute suggestions to compare. I do understand that very often jazz musicians do not have the perfect tone of classical musicians, but they have a swagger and understanding of earthy rhythms that classical musicians lack. I can especially hear this in opera singers who try to sing popular music. Their tone is fantastic but they can't deliver the emotion. I have a Billie Holiday album made when her voice was going, but there is a sorrow to her sound that can only be duplicated by living a hard life (and of course having her talent). I do have to applaud Yo-Yo Ma, though, he's game for anything. I have a record of him playing with some bluegrass musicians.
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@stuartk, @frogman, @tyray,
First, Lew Tabackin's flute sounded beautiful to my ear. Second, I think Andre Previn is in a very special class because he ended his career as a great conductor. I have just ordered a record of him conducting Debussy. He was also a bit of an enfant terrible, famously leaving his wife Dori (who wrote a song about him) for Mia Farrow. Although, a number of other jazz musicians are also classical musicians, Keith Jarrett, Benny Goodman, Wynton Marsalis, just to name a few.
Still I think there is a distinction. Classical musicians go through a rigorous review to be chosen for an orchestra, especially to be the lead musician. Every year they have to audition for their job, and I have seen much change over my years of watching the L.A. Phil. Jazz musicians pretty much just need to please an audience. How do I put it? They have jazz in their blood and they need enough technical precision to express that jazz.
I know jazz musicians like Coltrane were perfectionists and studied all the time, and that was one of the reasons he was one of the greatest jazz saxaphonists. And perhaps today jazz musicians need to be technically better because so many of them come from schools like Berklee where they had to audition to get in. But for just purity's sake, I think classical musicians are chosen on that basis.
Also the nature of jazz and classical musicians are very different. Jazz musicians come into their own when they find a voice. I can tell Coltrane anywhere, even if he's playing a piece I haven't heard before. Classical musicians must play Beethoven one day and Philip Glass the next. They have to adapt to whatever the conductor says they should sound like. As a classical musician, they aren't allowed to have their own voice. Although, I admit there can be a kind of swagger when they are totally into Bartok or Brahms.
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@stuartk, It probably sounds as if I am saying jazz musicians aren't as good as classical. I'm not at all saying that. I am saying that they are judged by a different standard. Probably the most important point I made is that jazz musicians are judged by their individuality, their "voice," and how much emotion or intellectual satisfaction they get across to the audience. I can think of a number of jazz musicians who weren't that great, but audiences liked them for a while. I have too many of their records in my collection and never listen to them. Their shelf life was short. John Klemmer is a good example. In other words, there is a great variety of musical tests that jazz musicians must go through to rise to the top. Obviously some meet the classical criterium. Although, a number of jazz musicians who play classical music are soloists, like Wynton Marsalis and Keith Jarrett. Soloists need to have more individuality than memebers of an orchestra, to whom I was referring.
Classical musicians have to meet extremely rigorous vetting. The daughter of a friend of mine had a classical music education in flute. She was excellent, but could not get in a classical orchestra, even though she was taken under the wing of the L.A. Phil's lead flutist. So, simply being educated in classical music does not make for a classical musician.
Anyway, I think I've hit the end of my rope on this topic. I am judging from the standpoint of an uneducated audience memeber. I stand by my logic, but admit it might be faulty. I think I need somebody who knows a lot more about the subject and that would probably be a musician who has played in a classical orchestra and a jazz group. Benny Goodman comes to mind, but he is dead.
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@maghister,
I agree with your distinction between jazz and classical. One appeals more to the head and the other to the heart and soul. Jazz is primal. I would like to make a few distinctions, however. I think Stravinsky, for example, was searching for the primal in his ballet "Rite of Spring." Its rhythms are primal. When it was first played in Paris in 1918, people booed, threw things, and walked out. I love it.
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@mahgister, here is a poem I wrote many years ago about Stravinsky's Rite of Spring:
Stravinsky
Such a leap
from an oompah
band to the dark primordial
marshland sprawling
beyond sight or imagination
in an absolutely secret
expanse finally brought
to light. He grabs it
by the neck, that
captured goblin, &
will not yield
to its wailing &
incessant
rhythmic kicking, until
it quiets & whispers
ageless secrets in
his ear / about fear
& sensuality
long forgotten.
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@maghister, I applaud you for writing about music. So few poems attempt to.
I'm going to try to dig a little deeper into your poem as well as your wonderful talk about music and time. Since you mentioned Leibniz who was a mathematician as well as a philosopher, I am going try to take a step further into your discussion of time and music.
In Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, he discusses time a lot, talking about the human experience of time. In my mind, however, human is an example of consciousness. We need the concept of consciousness so that we can talk about "experiencing" time, which I think you are talking about in regards to humans listening to music.
Just to review some basics. A person traveling fast enough will age more slowly relative to a person "standing still." A person closer to a gravitational source will age more slowly than a person farther away. This time differential had to be taken into account in order to make gps work. Since the satellite is farther from the earth's gravitational field, it's time ticks a tad quicker than cars on earth. If the differential is not taken into account, cars would be running into trees.
Einstein also talked about basic human conscious experience. A rollercoaster distorts our conscious experience of time, as do other intense experiences. Although this kind of distortion cannot be measured against a clock. It's more of a feeling of time.
Yet I think I can safely say that our human consciousness is intertwined with time. If a person is looking at a spaceship traveling close to the speed of light, time is moving more quickly for the viewer. And thus, the twin experiment in which one twin is on the spaceship and returns to earth younger than the twin who was "standing still."
Getting back to music, I think you are talking about certain music--music which does not move to the ticking of a metronome--interacting with the listener's experience of time. And perhaps this is why some of us like music that does not accentuate a regular beat.
I'm going to take a step here that I haven't heard others on this forum take--sex. I have never seen people grin so much and so deeply as jazz musicians on a stage. Often these grins seem to come from the bass player and drummer, the guys in charge of time. And when they get off a regular metronomic beat, they grin all the more. The only other place I have seen such an all-encompassing grin is having sex, which also distorts conscious time to a great degree.
Most of the things I can think of which are "fun," like rollercoasters (not at my age, though), sex, and music, (also some drugs), seem to have the effect of altering our consciousness of time. And I think maybe that is what you are getting at in your poem and your writings about Scriabin, music, and time.
As for the primal, we know that upper Paleolithic people (40,000 plus years ago) played music, because we have found musical instruments that old. From my studies, I believe that art and spiritual practices were one experience beyond distinction for the ancients. I also believe that womens were their shamans and leaders, but that's another story.
What was the essence of these primal people's "celebrations"? I think it was an ecstatic yowl that they existed as part of the universe. And now I will take a step that cannot be proven (although there is certainly evidence) and say that the universe itself is conscious.
If primal people celebrated their existence as part of the conscious universe, then they were ecstatically crying out from their souls about being part of the entire creation. I don't think they believed in a creator yet. In my opinion that was a bad turn and led to metronomic time.
Is this extrapolation close to what you were getting at?
BTW, I will be listening to Scriabin this week. I have a feeling that Horowitz is not on your list of people who play him well.
@frogman,
Would I being going too far astray if I were to say that the melodic aspect of jazz came from Euro-Americans? In most of the American art I am familiar with the artists want to establish an American voice. Would this not also be true of jazz?
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@mahgister, what I am hearing from you, while listening to Scriabin played by Richter, is about how a musician can translate the composer's passion, and a large aspect of that is in the understanding of timing, or perhaps the composer's magical heartbeat. I was talking about the listener getting so involved in the music that she loses a sense of time. I think that is what passionate moments are about.
@stuartk, I will post a poem below about jazz. It might help in the understanding of the poem to know how I work. I was taught, and I have taught others, to write in images. As one of the most influential American poets, William Carlos Williams, said: "There are no ideas but in things." So poems are not about ideas, they are more about dreams and the translation of images. That approach to poetry is difficult to accomplish but also freeing. Perhaps it might free you?
Max Beckman was a pre-Hitlerian German painter who sensed what was coming and captured the distortions of Germany to come under Hitler. In Germany, as in America, jazz was considered "decadent" music. It was played in speakeasys here and in clubs in Germany shunned by conservative society.
As @maghister said, rhythm is a very integral part of poems. And I worked carefully on the lines and the way the rhythm works.
MAX BECKMAN'S FACES
they were all caught
looking over
their shoulders stunned
by how easy young bodies
glide into jazz
&
the way cigarette
smoke
from a vamp
aging before our
eyes crawls
up the cheek
of an idle dandy
& disappears
in his hair
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An old recording with an old feel. Django Reinhardt with perhaps the greatest jazz violinist of all time Stephan Grapelli. They played in the 1920s and 1930s in the Paris Hot Club. I was lucky enough to see Stephan Grapelli live playing with David Grisman and his "Dawg Music."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTH_Nn_TtDI
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@stuartk
No I haven't heard that. I like it. I'll check it out on Qobuz. I'm still watching "Jazz" by Ken Burns. I'm getting so much more out of it than I did thirty years ago. Watching Wynton Marsalis talk about the genius of Louis Armstrong is amazing.
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@mahgister
I had a friend when I was in high school who introduced me to jazz. Art Tatum was the first jazz player I heard and then I picked up an Ahmed Jamal album. Ahmed played more for a jazz bar than Tatum. I just watched a piece on Tatum on the "Jazz" series and he was amazing. He blew people away with his skill. I also watched a lot of footage of Marsalis talking about Armstrong. He got on his trumpet and showed the things Armstrong invented.
@stuartk,
I have an album with Shankar and Menuhin. I think I must have seen them a long time ago either live or on TV. They're amazing together.
@tyray
Grappelli played with Django Reidnhardt whose band was famous in Paris. When he came to the states much later, he's played with a lot of people. I have a number of his albums. One with Itzhak Perlman. My favorite is with Teresa Brewer. They're like a cute couple together. I loved the Grappelli/Grisman concert I saw live. Grisman is supposedly a blue grass player, but I think he transcends that genre.
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@stuartk,
I forgot to mention, and you probably already know this, that Ken Burns also did a series on country music which I enjoyed. I believe that all music influences all other music. Musicians are people and listen to the world of music.
I pretty much listened to classical music until I went to college and then the "crowd" pulled me into other kinds of music. We were going to bars and the Fillmore and dancing, and you can't do that to classical music.
A woman at a party I went to last night mentioned Alban Berg, so I'm now listening to him because he's a classical composer I don't know much about.
You are right about Baby Boomers, but I think it's true of all groups. They stop learning about music after they settle into adulthood. I am constantly trying to find new things but it's difficult to adjust one's musical understanding.
My friend who goes to jazz concerts with me loves Billy Strings. I've tried him but wasn't drawn back. You seem to know a lot about bluegrass. A lot more than I do. I've just kind of picked a few cherries off the bush.
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@stuartk
Please PM me with suggestions. I have a triple album of Allison Krauss and some of her CDs, but really don't know anybody else. I like the jazz-influenced Bluegrass and love jazz violin when it swings. I used to listen to Joe Venuti and Jean-Luc Ponty but don't have any of their recordings. I think you'll enjoy Burns' Country Music series. In later episodes he talks about California (Bakersfield mostly) country music. I was in elementary school in the mid-fifties and we had to learn square dancing. There was a strong country influence here.
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@stuartk,
My computer is being fixed and I'm using my wife's. I can't find how to find PMs on here. I'm starting my writing day. If I have time and energy later, I'll poke around some more. But that's why I'm not answering.
I like that cut by Charles Lloyd. I'll Qobuz him and look through my collection. I might even have a recording or two.
Yes. I was lucky in many ways when I grew up. Once I received a college degree, I didn't really have to sweat finding a job. I ended up in complicated high-tech sales and was able to make a decent living. A couple of other little addendums: I saw Benny Goodman play at Disneyland but I was too young and ignorant to appreciate him. When I went to my father's AFLCIO union picnics I sat at Pete Seager's feet as he played. I went to Shelly's Manhole before I could appreciate it. And I grew up with jazz around the house. I remember Ella Fitzgerald sings Gershwin.
@tyray,
I think Django got a couple of fingers of his left hand shot off during WWII. Another thing that makes him amazing. If you watch Richie Havens in that Woodstock film he plays with one finger barring the fret board. I have no idea how he tuned the damn thing. Maybe @stuartk does.
Also, Ry Cooder uses a bottleneck, which I guess is like one finger. I have always loved Ry Cooder. He's one of the few musicians whose guitar I recognize without having been told it's him. Same with Stevie Wonder's harmonica. He makes a very distinctive sound. A sentence diversion: I have most of Stevie Wonders albums.
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@stuartk, mahgister, curiousjim, tyray
@stuartk Thank you for the list. I will dig into it.
@everybody else
This three minute recording of Coleman Hawkins playing Body and Soul, according to the Jazz series, is supposed to be the first time a jazz soloist has established a melody and then left it behind and created a remarkably beautiful improv. Previous jazz masters would always return to the melody.
https://www.google.com/search?q=coleman+hawkins+body+and+soul+1939+youtube&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS945US945&oq=coleman&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCAgAEEUYJxg7MggIABBFGCcYOzINCAEQLhjHARjRAxiABDIMCAIQLhgKGLEDGIAEMg0IAxAuGK8BGMcBGIAEMgcIBBAAGIAEMgcIBRAAGIAEMgcIBhAAGIAEMgcIBxAAGIAEMgcICBAAGIAEMgcICRAAGI8C0gEKMTI1MThqMGoxNagCCLACAfEFiv39GTJNXdM&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:5e28de6f,vid:zUFg6HvljDE,st:0
Coleman Hawkins must have influenced Coltrane on his improvisation on "Favorite Things," my favorite Coltrane piece. I do not understand the intricacies of music, but this sounds to me that it requires more virtuosity than "Love Supreme," but not as much soul. This is my favorite period in jazz:
https://www.google.com/search?q=john+coltrane+my+favorite+things+youtube&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS945US945&oq=&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCQgDECMYJxjqAjIJCAAQIxgnGOoCMgkIARAjGCcY6gIyCQgCECMYJxjqAjIJCAMQIxgnGOoCMgkIBBAjGCcY6gIyCQgFECMYJxjqAjIJCAYQIxgnGOoCMgkIBxAjGCcY6gLSAQk1MDQxajBqMTWoAgiwAgHxBU_dwMDkadxG&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:9cf76dde,vid:rqpriUFsMQQ,st:0
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@stuartK,
Yes, the distinction between soul and virtuosity. On the Jazz series, they talk about Billie Holiday's lack of a strong voice. Her range spanned just a little more than one octave, where other singers might span three octaves and have a more "pure" sounding voice. Holiday's had deep soul.
I have heard that also discussed with classical musicians. Horowitz was much loved by classical music lovers, but he was not supposed to have had the strongest technical abilities.
I heard Itzak Perlman interviewed and he said that the most difficult students to teach are those with the strongest technical ability. It is hard to teach them the emotional aspect of music.
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@mahgister
I think in all the arts, it's a question of having something to say and choosing an art in which to say it. Again, in the Jazz Series, musicians talk about other musicians telling a story with their music. I think in an art like poetry it is most difficult to say something because words get in the way. How does one get past words by using words?
Back to music and jazz. There are very talented musicians who really don't have much to say, or at least have less to say than the very deep musicians. One might pick up an instrument at a very young age and find that she has great ability, but later, when she has mastered the instrument, she really doesn't have much to say. Whereas Billy Holiday or Chet Baker or Coltrane (who had mastered his instrument) have much they want to say about being human.
We must remember that music is a very old human art. It most probably began with the beginning of humanity. I think some arts explicate, but music congregates. People love to be together "getting" the music as if they are one. It's a tremendously joyous thing to be among people who like yourself can understand this most abstract of art forms. I cannot imagine being human without there being music.
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@mahgister, @stuartk,
IMHO, art delights the mind and the soul to varying degrees. Critics and Historians can view historical periods through the lens of art. In the eighteenth century, I think writing and music were more geared toward delighting the mind. If we take a look at the great Haydn, he had a lot of wit in his music meant for the mind. Bach, who preceeded him, was much more soulful.
In music, writing, and the visual arts, the beginning of the nineteenth century is the beginning of the Romantic period. Beethoven writes music extremely soulfully and Romantic composers who followed were writing for the soul more than the head. The visual arts were no longer about Christianity or lords and ladies. We begin to see paintings of peasants and landscape art. That led into the Impressionists and post-Impressionists like Van Gogh who were extremely soulful.
In the 20th century artists begin breaking all the rules. Painters no longer have to paint representationally. Classical music turns from symphonies to tone poems and wild ballets by Stravinsky. Bartok studies folk music to find the soul for his music. Abstract expressionists found ways of expressing deep emotion without any recognizable forms. Jazz music begins and gets deeper and deeper into the soul.
I think artists in the mid-20th century became so deep that people wanted a relief. In the visual arts we find "Pop-Art" which is whmisical and appeals to the mind. Classical music is no longer appealing on a visceral body level. It's pretty much all for the mind. Poetry loses rhyme and meter which move sentiments. It is more aimed at the mind.
I think the best artists in any of the arts are the ones who find a perfect balance, and they are few and far between. Shakespeare is both heart and head. Beethoven is perfectly balanced. Louis Armstrong finds a way to bring blues (which by definition is for the soul) into a structured music. Art critics name Picasso and Matisse as the greatest of the 20th century artists, but I'm not sure.
I think some people prefer the head over the heart and others heart over head. As people understand art more, I think they see the genius in perfect balance--yin and yang.
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@mahgister, stuartk,
I think what is happening is societies around the world, including the U.S., is terrifying. People get in touch with their bodies for violence. I agree with @mahgister in regards to the use of his word embodiment. Girls and women have a much easier time with their bodies and sharing emotional responses. And that would take me back to what I'm writing about.
I feel like three or four of us have taken over this thread "Jazz Afficiandos," talking about a lot of things related to music without boundaries. I was wondering if anyone is interested in starting a new thread talking about music without genre lines, and other things related to music. For me, it is a primal topic.
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@mahgister
After a fair amount of study, I believe that art--all art, including cave paintings, music, bodily adornment, was indistinguishable from spiritual practice when Homo Sapiens evolved from previous Homo species (erectus, etc.) For the earliest people they were one. And if I could PM you, I'd give you a quick argument on why I believe the first shamans were women.
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@frogman,
Thanks for a deeper explanation of Coleman Hawkins and John Coltrane. When I heard Hawkins playing "Body and Soul" on the Jazz series, especially with Wynton Marsalis's introduction, it blew me away. I thought it was absolutely beautiful.It's the first time I was able to get into a jazz artist from his period. I grew up on Coltrane and Davis.
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