Jazz for aficionados

@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.

Start the new thread...

I prefer discussing in a thread publicly not by mail...

 I think already that the first shaman were women...

I read Gimbutas... Among others...

 The best thinker i know about the consciousness history and evolution is Jean Gebser...

His works  is astounding and influential but in an undergrounded way because of amplitude over all fields :

" the ever present Origin"...

A masterpiece...

@audio-b-dog

FWIW, I agree with @mahgister re: a new thread. 

@stuartk ​​@audio-b-dog ,  re Coleman Hawkins “Body and Soul” and Coltrane “My Favorite Things” and “virtuosity”. 

Virtuosity is not an easy thing to define,  in this case are we talking about technical virtuosity, or conceptual virtuosity, specifically virtuosity of harmonic understanding? While it is generally acknowledged that Hawkins influenced Coltrane, to compare Hawkins to Coltrane is an interesting, but ultimately pointless comparison if the goal is to establish some sort of superiority one way or another.

Jazz, all art, is evolutionary.  The grasp of harmony by most players of Hawkins’ era was, compared to that in Coltrane’s time, pretty rudimentary.  Bebop (post Swing) took matters to another level as concerns sophistication in the use of harmony.  The following two past posts are from a conversation here on this very subject:  

———

frogman

7,529 posts

07-31-2017 at 05:46pm 

Coleman Hawkins ("Bean"); fantastic player. His 1939 solo on "Body And Soul" is considered pivotal in jazz and one which took improvisation in an entirely new direction away from the comfortable linear style of the swing era to a more modern angular style that just about every modern player would be influenced by.  Btw, the album title "Beanbags" is a combination of Hawkins’ moniker "Bean" with that of co-leader Milt Jackson’s "Bags".

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zUFg6HvljDE

frogman

7,529 posts

05-20-2013 at 10:10am 

The importance of Coleman Hawkins cannot be overstated. His solo on his classic recording of "Body And Soul" is one of those solos (Coltrane’s solo on "Giant Steps" is another) that young jazz saxophone players study. It literally changed the landscape of the music. The traditionalists criticized that solo (andBean’s improvising, in general) as having a lot of "wrong notes". He was one of the first players that reached beyond the very "inside" colors of the harmonies. The truth is that most players at the time simply could not navigate the harmonic complexity of a tune like "Body And Soul" and would not make all the changes; instead, they "generalized" the harmonic changes as opposed to clearly outlining each and every harmony as Hawkins did. Houston Person on "Moonlight In Vermont" is an example of this "generalization" and not making all the changes. One thing is being able to play over a blues with a nice comfortable, predictable, and sparse harmonic progression; another is being able to navigate a tune with up to four harmonic changes per measure (one per beat) and still make musical sense. Hawkins was one of the first that could do that.

———

While Hawkin’s solo was groundbreaking, his command of harmony was still not on the level of Coltrane’s.  Hawkins is considered by some to be the first Bebop player.  Coltrane’s grasp of harmony exemplifies where the evolution of Jazz was at after having gone from Bebop to Hard Bop and then beyond.  So, from a conceptual standpoint Coltrane was on another level entirely. If “virtuosity” is to be defined by extreme instrumental/technical proficiency, while Hawkins was certainly a great instrumentalist, again, Coltrane was on another level entirely.  Not only are his note choices in an improvisation very sophisticated in that he could play “outside” the harmony in a logical/musical way in a more sophisticated way than did Hawkins, he tested the boundaries of what was technically possible on the saxophone to a much higher degree than Hawkins did.   We’re not talking only about the ability to play fast, but the ability to coax a wider palette of tonal colors; not only harmonic color, but in the timbre/tone of his sound.  Hawkins stayed pretty much inside the harmonic parameters of the chord changes of a tune.  Coltrane extended the parameters of the traditional use of harmony.  This is in no way a criticism of Hawkins, but simply the reality of where these considerations were at in the evolution of the art.  Two+ decades separate the two solos; an eternity in the evolutionary process of Jazz at the time.  Hawkins was a pivotal figure in Jazz, as was Coltrane.

I have trouble with the notion of judging “soul” or level of soulfulness of any art without considering the unique and personal sensibilities of each of us as listeners (in this case) and without considering the context of the era of the creation of the art.  I’m not prepared to deem one more “soulful” than the other,  Remember, when Coltrane first came on the scene and players of Hawkins’s generation heard his tone and style of playing more than a few felt it was just noise.  They, and Jazz in general had to catch up.

@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.