«Today’s Lyrics Are Pathetically Bad» Rick Beato
He know better than me. He is a musician and i am not. I dont listen contemporary lyrics anyway, they are not all bad for sure, but what is good enough is few waves in an ocean of bad to worst...
I will never dare to claim it because i am old, not a musician anyway, i listen classical old music and world music and Jazz...
And old very old lyrics from Franco-Flemish school to Léo Ferré and to the genius Bob Dylan Dylan...
Just write what you think about Beato informed opinion...
I like him because he spoke bluntly and is enthusiast musician ...
@stuartk , Yeah, and other reasons the ATL area colleges and promoters support (jazz) musicians a lot. Kinda similar to when back in our day when a lot of music groups went to (toured) college campuses cause the had the already built facilities to hold such venues for students with a somewhat disposable income, and reasons to party! And the Culture of Jazz too, of course! |
It would seem implausible. Nobody has done a recent study on the subject, and I doubt it is a pressing matter for anyone at this point, so I would say that you just may be right! @ezwind
I have read that a number of great jazz clubs closed due to the pandemic. A couple were in NYC. Most jazz musicians, I assume, make their money performing live. Hence, I agree that if you do not support jazz by going to shows, the genre will continue to diminish. @devinplombier Sadly, I read the news. And while Canada has provided us with Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Cowboy Junkies, and the Guess Who..that is just not enough to entice me to buy a gun and form a militia of like-minded folks who want to make Canada pay for their aging fleet of musical geniuses. And as no one has yet to point out, if Canada becomes a state, we will have one heck of a wall to build! |
You read me wrong... I never say that there is not many young in jazz... I said that compared to 1960 the % is lower for many reason : many different niche genres born from pop and folk ... Access easy to this new genres through a phone... I also said that the future of jazz is there and growing... You miss this... Because with the internet in all countries jazz music is trending way more than in 1970 now... Jazz is no more only black as in 1930, no more American as in 1960 it is universal music phenomenon as classical...it is born in black america but reach all earth in a way no other genre music did save classical... One of my favorite music genre is Yoruba talking drums and Indian tabla, i love rythms but it will never go around the earth as jazz did ... Jazz is now eternal... It will not fade into oblivion... But young generation need education to it as with classical for the same reasons: sophisticated music evolution need to be learned... |
Besides the fact that holding forth on which culture belongs to whom is kind of a hazardous pastime nowadays, it is also misleading. Take the blues. It was Black folks who graced the world with it; that’s not really open for debate. Neither is the fact that, way back in the hallowed (in this thread at least) 60s and 70s, numerous bands made up of white, skinny, vocational-school dropout British kids with bad teeth appropriated it and "adapted" it into something deemed acceptable by white suburban teenagers and their parents, and became filthy rich doing it. Is it to say that, just because it was dragged away from its roots, the blues is no longer black music like it was back in the 50s? Has its being appropriated, plundered and exploited by white folks and white record companies somehow whitewashed it into a global musical genre? Sorry I don’t follow
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If you're into the blues you gotta' love Blues Hammer... |
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I beg to differ. I’ve actually seen a Yoruba ceremony in Salvador Da Bahia, Brazil chanted/sung in Yoruba. Not only has Yoruba made its way to Brasil but even as far away as the US. In Brazil the Yoruba religion is called Candomblé, in their native Portuguese. And even in the US the practice of Voodoo or ’Vodou/Voudoun’ was practiced by Haitian immigrants in New Orleans, LA. Not to be confused with the silly ’TV’ Voodoo stuff. The music played in Brazilian Yoruba ceremonies is the basis for what we know of today as ’Samba’. IMHO of course.
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Classical music is no more a white european phenomena. In japan and in China there is classical composers and musicians... Classical music is an earth global phenomena... Dont miss-read my intention in the above post... Music has roots but sometimes the trees send his seeds into another forest... It is the same process with Jazz... is it clear?
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There is african culture in africa and in south America for sure.. This dont contradict my point at all ...
Yoruba talking drums is not as jazz and classical a musical language that can be universal as jazz and classical are on all earth... This is not detrimental to yoruba talking drum music nor to raga music... When i talk about Jazz becoming universal i talk about the way IMPROVISATION language became universal in a jazz like manner... As Classical music became universal integrating all others musical language in his WRITING syntax...
By the way if you like yoruba talking drum as me i recommend to you the best book ever on theoretical acoustics by a nigerian genius which had hard time with the English academia and published his doctorate thesis at the Sorbonne... I bought it and thanks to him i understood theoretic acoustics because no other book explain it as he did and it was confirmed this year by 2 important independant studies Dr, essien is a youruba talking drums master and the yoruba drums is at the core of his acoustics understanding : One of the most important book i ever read but he is unknown because people take time to go out of a past 2000 years Pythagorean paradigm : https://www.amazon.ca/Sound-Sources-Origin-Auditory-Sensations/dp/1913289540
Listen to this 8 minutes video about Dr. Essien a true genius who come from Africa which is his original sin ( racism exist ) . Reading his 500 pages book i knew right away he was a genius because no one was able to explain acoustics of hearing to me till i study him... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-6vW8kVCO4&t=1s
Here are one of the 2 articles related to deep discoveries in musical perception acoustics confirming Dr. Essien right : https://phys.org/news/2024-02-pythagoras-wrong-universal-musical-harmonies.html Academia did not seem to has recognized Dr. Essien discoveries way before these 2 independent experiments demonstrating that his thesis is right... Racism exist. And Conclusion : 2,000 years of an error made by Pythagoras lead acoustics theory astray... The correction of this Greek teaching came from Nigeria. Not london, Paris or New-York... Acoustics hearing ground theory understanding is very important for philosophy and science. fundamental.
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This second important experimental study done independently of Dr. Essien prove Dr. Essien right about hearing acoustics fundamental theory : Bodily maps of musical sensations across culturesI apologize to go astray from my original thread post matter but what i suggest reading is very important news,.... https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2308859121
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Now i will link together what i said about jazz universality and classical music universality and the discovery of Dr. Essien.
All music is universal, in any genre from any countries by definition of this second article experiment above and by Dr. Essien great discovery...
Then why i spoke only about jazz universality and classical music universality ? Is it not contradictory ? No Jazz is the only language becoming universal by virtue of his improvising syntax set of rules integrating all instruments and music styles slowly but surely ... Classical European music is becoming universal by virtue of his WRITING syntax rule integrating all others world music language ...
All music of the world is universal in the sense of owning the potentials to be understood by all humans... Because music is a recognizing timbre/rytmic /tonal event based on mechanical invariant (Essien) affecting the human body in a similar way universally .. It is not Pythagorean mathematics harmonies abstraction and computations that makes music universal , it is the ability by the human heart-brain-body to be affected by it in the same way all around earth ... The sound sources vibrating communicate qualities and information about what vibrate and his state...This is the mechanical invariant of Dr. Essien... When a man speak to another man there is information communicating to one another about their psychological and physical states... i will stop here ... Read the book... |
@onhwy61: Ghost World, a favorite movie of mine! Another great scene is the one in which the young girl asks Steve Buscemi’s character if the R. Crumb album is good. "Naw, that one’s not so great." Director Terry Zwigoff and Crumb are of course close friends (Zwigoff made the Crumb documentary). This may be a minority opinion, but as I watched Blues Hammer performing, Ten Years After came to mind.
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As a previously frequent poster on the Jazz For Aficionados thread would often point out, (paraphrase, “just because there is improvisation doesn’t mean it is Jazz”. Jazz and Classical music sales, as a percentage of total music sales of all genres, have seldom broken the 2% mark for quite a few decades. This does not mean that there haven’t been up-ticks in sales and general interest as is the case currently, but still in the 1.5-2% range. Data also shows that when asked, about 10-20% of respondents say that they listen to “Jazz”. Why the asterisk? Much of the music that many listeners listen to is not Jazz in the traditional sense. It is R&B, Rock, Funk, whatever, WITH ELEMENTS OF JAZZ. Particularly in the improvisation (when it is there) which is often heavily informed harmonically by Jazz. @tyray , I very much appreciate your enthusiasm and optimism for Jazz and its future. I share your optimism inasmuch as I believe that there will always be a small minority (2% +/-) that will buy Jazz. However and sadly, I doubt this number will ever be substantially higher than this and certainly not as it was decades ago when Jazz was the Pop music of the day. I do think that there is somewhat more interest in Jazz among young (25-45) listeners today. SOMEWHAT more, but still a very small percentage of the total number of young listeners. Your own posts prove my point, I think. What you posted as examples of “Jazz” that young people listen to and even play, I wouldn’t call Jazz at all, but more as I described above… Funk/R&B with elements of Jazz. Here is the lineup for the 2016 NOLA Jazz Fest, aerial view of which you posted as further proof. Might explain the huge crowd, but Jazz?! I did see Wayne Shorter and Preservation Hall Jazz Band among the others listed, but still….. https://www.al.com/entertainment/2016/01/jazz_fest_2016_stevie_wonder_p.html |
I'm confused. There are plenty of other genres that incorporate improvisation. I don't know what you mean by "improvising syntax set of rules integrating all instruments". Are you referring to simultaneous improvisation and drawing a line between it and the more common approach wherein individual players play solos in turn?
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@bdp24 Blues Hammer is Blues Hammer and you just have to accept it as such. I guess you can say they're sincere. There's a story about Sonny Boy Williams when he used the Yardbirds as his backing band while touring England. I don't have the exact quote, but he said something along the lines of "these boys want badly to play the blues -- and they do". Despite what Sonny Boy said I love the Yardbirds doing "I'm A Man". It may not really be blues, but it is inspired. How can you not like Jeff Beck and his Fender Esquire? |
For sure all music styles all over the world wrote their own syntax rules integrating if not potentially all instruments as for jazz a few even many (India-Persia). It is well known to anybody who like world music as i am ... But there is only one style which goes all around earth as an influences doing it at this scale and for such different cultures... No other genres did it as jazz did...I like Fado for example but it stayed in Portuguese world mainly and his syntax let no trace in Japan as Jazz did..
For sure all world music is based on improvisation... I like chinese music and japan traditional music, none of it let his syntax rules and chord scales imprint all around the world... Black traditional jazz begun to do it, it extended to all America, it reach Europe then it encompassed the world.. Is it pure jazz as in the golden age of jazz ? No.. Is it jazz at 100% like in the golden age now in all countries by those musicians calling themselves jazzmen? No.. But it does not invalidate my point that jazz became if not the only at least the main universal matrix of influence for all improvised music around the world so much that the classical folk music of many countries begun to kept jazz as an inspiration for his own growing transforming essence ... As Hollywood film making influenced all the world cinema... Is it a good thing ? For the Hollywood influence on other countries cinema i dont think it was only a good influence, it is a mix... For jazz it is almost all good influence... There is something new and universal in improvised jazz language at his core... As there is something universal exportable from this WRITTEN classical syntax european music ...So deep and original sophisticated are Indian and Persian music they were not exportable as Jazz or classical were... Yoruba talking drums language inspired the greatest acoustician i read but it is not universally exportable as a useful integrating syntax even if music is a universal understood language, not as exportable and integrating form as jazz improvisation rules and classical written language were...Because in all cultures the perceived meanings depend more of a specific instrument depth core timbre/tone meanings as physical instrument . Being Yoruba drums or tabla or all Veena variations or all various lutes family or flutes variation in Turkisch sufi music etc..
Frogman here being a musician can certainly better than me speak about it...
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You seem to be saying there exists a sort of Jazz "blueprint" that has been absorbed/integrated into many other genres, worldwide. You also seem to acknowledge that these other genres have, in turn, influenced Jazz. What, so far as I can tell -- and I admit I’m not doing a very good job of understanding your meaning-- you haven’t spelled out in musical terms, is what it is at the core of Jazz that comprises its universal aspect. Particular rhythms? Particular scales? Use of altered dominant 7th chords? "Vertical improvisation" in which a soloist "outlines" each chord change, as opposed to "horizontal" improvisation that tends to focus on developing longer themes or in the case of modal compositions, can employ a single scale over an entire progression? Something else? Perhaps this is what you are hoping our resident Jazz expert @frogman will define? Sorry if I’m being especially dense, here. Just trying to gain a clearer picture. ;o)
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I cannot describe what is at the core of jazz which is such that all musicians in the world in many different culture had begun to adopt it and used it to improve even their own innate musical language or their traditional instruments...
Observe that this is a fact not my opinion or my invention. there is jazz influences in Russia, as in japan or South America or in mid-eastern countries. Everywhere almost... There is jazz using oud for example in a mix which is some mideastern music instrument used in a jazz way...
But i can gave my explanation...
In jazz i felt a specific musical flowing time and timing sense a freedom which is related to the way musicians feel what a good improvisation is and must be and if it is successful one...
In other musical culture the importance of the specific instruments timbre and chords traditionally used act as a restraint because the final goal is more linked to specific traditional chosen instruments playing than to the improvisation with many non specifically chosen instruments as such as in jazz ( hammond or tuba or etc)...
The rules in traditional musics are more constraining than in jazz concerning the chosen instruments in use and concerning the rules over the improvisation session itself.
For example in India the veena is revered as a gift from Saraswati, his improvisations are heavily codified and the way to play the sound go with rigid rules.Same for the tabla. As it is for the Yoruba talking drums...
The way to play instruments are not so heavily codified in jazz... It is why jazz expressions styles had changed so much from so many different names,( bop , hard bop etc of style in 70 years golden age.
Jazz spirit is more free more easy to adopt even in the confine of other music traditions.
It is why i claimed that Jazz improvisation is universally influential in a way no other world music ever be save european classical written music tradition. this is less my claims than well known observable facts.
Also these two western music styles goes together, jazz and classical, with the same chords language and with some common background. ( negro spirituals, folk music & hymns of the pilgrims for example ) and had more influence all around earth together than any other musical traditional cultures on earth.
( japan music, Indian music and African music, Chinese music , Turkisch music has not that much in common as jazz and classical has)
I am not a musician and yes i need frogman here to correct me or to validate in a more professionnal way what i try to convey ...
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@onhwy61: Your Sonny Boy Williamson (no offense intended, but it’s not Williams) quote is missing a few words which are important in making his point. His statement was "The English boys want to play the Blues so bad, and that’s just how they do it." Pretty funny. By the way, as retold in the the Last Waltz film, in 1965 Williamson met and jammed with The Hawks (who of course became The Band in ’68), and he and they discussed going on a U.S.A. tour with them serving as his band. Williamson died later that year, and The Hawks went on the road with Dylan instead. Hawks drummer Levon Helm had already met Sonny Boy, while still in high school. Helm and Sonny Boy both lived in Helena Arkansas, and Sonny would regularly appear on the local music station’s lunchtime radio show. Helm says he would buy himself a coupla donuts and a Coca Cola, eating his lunch on the floor in a corner of the radio station while watching and listening to Williamson and his band.
I loved The Yardbirds (they quickly became my favorite of the mid-60’s British bands with the release of their debut album), from whom I first heard songs like "I’m A Man" and "Train Kept A-Rollin" ( a cover of the scorching hot 1956 Rockabilly version by The Johnny Burnette Trio. Jeff Beck was a huge fan of the Burnette Band’s guitarist Paul Burlinson). The 1951 original was a Blues by Tiny Bradshaw. As I said in one Audiogon thread (maybe this one), in the South (like Elvis, Burnette lived in Memphis) musicians integrate their music.
@onhwy61: You were mocking Blues Hammer, right? That’s certainly what the Ghost World movie is doing. Speaking of which, for those wanting to hear Blues music butchered, check out Canned Heat’s performance at Woodstock. About as bad as I’ve heard the music performed. Even worse than Blues Traveler.
My peers and I had our musical lives seriously impacted with the hearing of the debut by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Playing drums and bass in the band at that time were veterans of Howlin’ Wolf’s band. Now THAT’S a Blues band! Mike Bloomfield on lead guitar, of course. That’s where Dylan heard his playing, and hired him for recordings.
In 1969 The Charles Ford Blues band (whose members included guitarist Robben Ford and his two brothers on drums and harmonica. The band’s name was a tribute to their father) relocated from Ukiah California to my hometown of San Jose. As you can imagine, that sent shock waves through the local music community. Every guitarist I new went to as many of their shows at possible, to see the Blues played by the then 18 year old Robben Ford, already a superb guitarist. The bassist in my senior year high school band played bass with them for a while, until Robben left for Los Angeles. Near the corner of Sunnyvale-Saratoga Road and Stevens Creek Blvd---the heart of the San Jose suburb Cupertino, there was a rental house where a bunch of local musicians lived. It was referred to as The Blues House.
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Speaking of Mike Bloomfield (one of my first guitar heros in my early teens), below is a link to a fascinating story that he wrote himself (with illustrations by R. Crumb!) about his experiences with Big Joe Williams in Chicago. It's a great read. https://sundayblues.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Me-and-Big-Joe-Article.pdf |
@bdp24 thanks for the correction on the name |
Another young jazz lion...Robert Glasper - So Beautiful (Live At Capitol Studios) (Official Video) |
Bob Dylan's Philosophy of Modern Song
https://afternature.substack.com/p/bob-dylans-philosophy-of-modern-song |
