Kind of Blue

@mahgister

I’m speaking purely in practical terms, not in terms of "pigeonholing " or otherwise restricting artists. Would you also reject the use of the Dewey Decimal System in libraries?

I already admitted that this is practical... Labels are inevitable...😁

I class my music by names of composers and very large denomination : classical and Jazz and Arabic , Persian And Indian and South America and chinese and others ...

I never proposed to trash Dewey... 😊

I only said that labels with too much sub-sub-sub labellings  too much details like the 60 possible  jazz  genre distinctions are less useful than names of musicians for me and in a way restricting passed some  threshold ... General classification of jazz by years and era are enough for me ...

Once this is said i can understand why some musician can hate labelling ...

No poet like to be put in a drawer...

I agree entirely with simonmoon’s and sturartk’s comments and I see no need to react defensively. simon’s description of Jazz as a genre is pretty darn good. Seems to me that there is a lot of value in being able to accurately describe what it is that defines a genre.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the classification of music by genre or sub genre, even when the lines get blurred and it has to be done in broad(er) terms. Classification does not, in any way, give any one genre ultimate “superiority” nor “inferiority” as an art form if there is respect for the idea that “there are are only two kinds of music, good and bad”. An idea that, interestingly enough, was promulgated by and is most commonly associated with a Jazz artist. Duke Ellington, one of the greatest.

I believe that sometimes there is confusion about what that idea actually means and was intended to mean. It does not suggest that music should not be classified (by genre), or that there is no value in doing so. Rather, it is about recognizing and respecting the simple fact that in any genre there can be good music, just as there can be bad. There is a tendency on the part of some to put an entire genre of music that is liked on a pedestal higher than that of music that is not liked (understood), as concerns artistic value and validity. Level of creativity and emotional impact are barometers that apply to all genres and keeping an open mind can only be a good thing.

@jjbeason14 If you are a fan of this recording The Atlantic ran an article on March 6th of this year about it written by James Kaplan.Beautifully written article I,m sure you’ll enjoy it, won’t let me post a link you’ll have to look it up.

I love talking about and describing music. 
I see the act of describing a “genre” (and the subsequent stringent segregation and put-everything-in-a-box attitude) as being useful only to a person for whom doing so helps them maximize their profits (corporate marketing execs, radio station programming execs, etc.).  
As I said before, outside of someone with such an occupation where the shoving of a square peg in a round hole helps them make more money, choosing that type of ideation and communication regarding music in lieu of thoughtful descriptions of music (you know, art made by individual human beings with individual feelings, thoughts and views) is not a positive thing for music.  
The genre-mongering itself is the bad thing.  
I think a person should use their words instead of mindlessly shoving the work of an individual human into an ill-fitting category of “(blank)-(blank)-(blank),” with all the hyphens and everything.

**** Jazz is not a "style" of music that has a certain sound. It is a way of thinking about music, using sophisticated musical vocabulary, spontaneous composition ability, amazing levels of musicianship, musical communication with musicians while playing, etc. 

Make no mistake, those early 70's Miles recordings and "Crossings", are most definitely jazz. The musicians are all using jazz techniques, the vocabulary of jazz, jazz improv, etc. **** - simonmoon

Pretty thoughtful,  I would say.