Jazz for aficionados

Seems to me, the fact that poetry utilizes musical elements is what allows it to rise above mere words. 

You are right again...

Language lives in multidimensional time scales... (micro-seconds/ years/centuries).

A "word" life extent reveal an inside life (phonems motivated  meaningful sounds) the poetic/mimetic dimension and at the higher more conscious scale the syntactical/logical dimension an external life where the meaning evolution  is easier to trace (in an etymological dictionary).

At the origin of mankind there is not music on one side and speech on the other side, but one body set of gestures at two scale, the members dance and the throat response which are a direct answer to nature speaking  musical gesture. Music is not art at origin but a social survival tool in direct dialogue with Nature. 

Before any artist was born, the shaman and magician created sound to affect Nature voice and soul ...

Even today great artist has not forgot that...

@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.

I concur with Audio-b-dog post about the necessary polarity balance between heart and mind...

The last century has seen the decline of the West precisely because we had lost this balance key between polarities..

Polarities as heart and mind or yin and yang are not mere dualities or opposition, they interpenetrate into one another ...Coleridge and Owen Barfield wrote about this...

The human body is a third factor embodying the heart and mind  this is the key : embodiment...

Our culture with A.I. actually has lost any link between heart and mind because we are virtual ego flying over our own body in a virtual digitalized trance...

Our music industrialized is a merchandise...

We had forgotten our roots and the root of music too...( generally speaking for sure because musical geniuses exist today but not in the collective front part of the theater they are an unrecognized marginalised exploited minority)

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.

@audio-b-dog ​​@mahgister 

Thanks for your stimulating reflections!

@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.