I'm a musician myself who used to play jazz. The problem with jazz is that is considered by the people who listen to it like "pure art" when it is just a style of music. Jazz (and classical) is elevated higher than other form of music and music teachers will expect a good musician to play jazz.
If jazz lovers would stop thinking at themselves as "higher educated" and jazz would go back to the people who want enjoy a good swinging song (Ella Fitzgerald, Satchmo, ...) maybe then, jazz would be loved again.
Wynton Marsalis says "When the music stopped being about dancing, people stopped listening." I never completely bought it, but I like the sentiment anyway :-)
There's an equilibrium process here. People don't like jazz because it violates their expectations. It violates their expectations because jazz musicians aren't pandering to the tastes of the listening public. Jazz musicians don't pander to the listening public because, since everyone knows that people don't like jazz, no one becomes a jazz musician because they want to become ridiculously rich or famous -- the people who are willing to change their musical style in order to become popular (as versus to satisfy some purely internal intellectual or aesthetic desire) all go to rock, hip-hop or pop.
The flip side of this is that people who listen to especially unpopular subgenres of jazz (particular -bop) seem to enjoy thinking of themselves as "higher educated" or having more sophisticated tastes than others, or just listening to music that isn't* like everything else and isn't driven by short term fads. And jazz musicians seem largely happy to facilitate this, and in turn get to indulge in a creative process that's solely centered around their own creative interests.
Bottom line, jazz won't "go back to the people", because the people don't want it, because the musicians don't want it ... except the ones that do. I think in recent years a whole lot of people have listened to Michael Buble, or Nouvelle Vague.
I don't know, the fusion with hip hop has brought out huge crowds of young people over the past couple years to jazz gigs here in NYC. Chris Dave has an unmistakable J Dilla influence in his music -- this show was packed:
You don't necessarily need to go back to swing like Wynton does to get people interested in the music again. We forget that jazz standards were pop tunes back in the day, so it's nice to hear young guys now playing Bjork arrangements or KRS-One tracks.
I'm a fan of jazz and I'm against any definition that doesn't put: Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Billie Holiday, Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Nina Simone, Fats Waller, Thelonius Monk, Charlie Christian, and countless others on pretty much the same plane of musical transcendence.
"swinging" and "thinking" aren't so different after all.
I'm a musician, and I completely relate to the author regarding not listening to lyrics, etc. The thing is, I strongly dislike jazz. I can recognize creativity and virtuosity in jazz musicians, but the songwriting and soloing actually seems lazy to me (the opposite of what jazz proponents would probably say).
The state of music commentary on this thread is low enough to be insulting and pretty much validates the article. I find it humorous that a website that draws people dedicated to abstract thought can have such a mediocre understanding of music and music history. Do yourself a favor, find a piece of music that you think you don't like. Sit down and listen to it 50 times without distraction so that you know all the changes, turns, asides, tensions, contractions, contradictions, and undulations. If you still don't like, fine.
But I say 9 times out of 10 with this approach you'll realize you know so little about music and there is much more to know and you'll be practically giddy to expand your knowledge.
The distance between Arnold Schoenberg and Lady Gaga is less than you think.
Sit down and listen to it 50 times without distraction so that you know all the changes, turns, asides, tensions, contractions, contradictions, and undulations.
In college I had a minor in electronic art. We'd sit through each other's performances and then comment on all the various artistic work that went into them.
The elephant in the room was that it was all BS. I couldn't count the number of times that someone told me "I appreciated the way you used X to emphasize Y". In truth, nothing had been farther from my mind; it just worked out that way.
So I think that a huge portion of what you're interpreting in the changes, turns, etc. are just happenstance. It's just that our minds are such incredible pattern-recognizing machines, and are so malleable, that it's trivially easy to spot some pattern and rationalize a whole lot of noise (in the information processing sense) into spurious meaning.
How else to explain someone deciding that Ursa Major looks like a bear?
Well, I find it insulting when somebody comes and tells people how they should enjoy their music.
I think your comment pretty much validates my image about the people who think they are better in listening to music than others. What has abstract thought to do with music history anyway? I am a software designer, and I truely appreciate useful abstractions that make creating good software a bit easier. But for music, I don't give a damn about the intentions of the composer or the history of the musical style of the composition, if I don't like it or the way how it is performed. Just like the users of my software don't care the slightest bit of how well-crafted the thing is, if it doesn't do what they want. I rather sit down to listen through the music I like 50 times to learn all its twists and turns than to waste my time on something I genuinely couldn't care less.
And how do I tell the music I like from the music I don't? The music I truely like gives me shivers, physically, the first time I hear it. That is the music that gives me joy when I listen to it. That is the experience I hope to get from music every now and then. And that really does not happen too often.
I play guitar as a hobby, and mostly suck at it. That's because I don't have the drive to really study hard and learn it properly. (And probably I don't have that much talent, either.) I would have all the time if I wanted, but I don't, because I want to enjoy playing music - not to have it as yet another burden to bear. So I go and learn new stuff only when I feel I need some new kick to maintain the interest in it.
And this is what I want to say: go and learn, but above all, find enjoyment. Life is short, and everything has its price - so don't waste your (free) time on anything you don't find personally rewarding. Studying music is waste of time - unless you happen to enjoy studying music! ;)
For most people, music is entertainment, just like literature, art, television, etc. It seems like you (and the author of this article) take it much more seriously than that. That's fine for you, but I think what many of us are expressing is that it's silly to claim that you're superior because of it. Musical skill is certainly to be admired, but condescension isn't.
Why in the world would someone spend 6-8 hours listening to a piece of music they dislike just so they can like it? If I already have thousands of pieces of music I enjoy listening to, why should I put any effort into liking even more music?
I don't buy the article's conclusion that people should listen to jazz because otherwise they are "missing a huge chunk of what life has to offer". Everyone is missing out on a huge chunk of what life has to offer! Time spent gaining appreciation for music is not spent doing something else. Who is anyone to tell anyone else what chunks of life they should be exploring?
I have an alternate theory for why Americans don't like jazz. They don't like jazz because they don't hear a lot of jazz. They do like lyrical forms of music because they are exposed to a lot of it in the course of their daily lives. Why is a purposefully acquired taste superior to one that didn't require effort?
The funny thing about music theory is that the best musicians/composers always seem to break the rules. I've had some serious classes when I was younger and had more time, because I was genuinely interested. A lot of definitions were vague and/or rather complicated and were invariably followed (at some point) by a statement along the lines of "except that Mozart didn't really do it that way".
Not that I'm trying to say that analyzing music is useless -- far from it, it's always good to analyze and recognize patterns -- but it does put things in their perspective.
The state of music commentary on this thread is low enough to be insulting and pretty much validates the article.
This seems rather contrary to the kinds of talk normally heard on HN.
It's quite typical for us to take ourselves as developers to task when we build an application that users fail to appreciate, or have difficulty in using.
How is it, then, that when listeners fail to appreciate the greatness in some piece of music, that it's the listener's fault? By analogy, shouldn't we look at this as a failure of the musician?
What you say is true. But how you say it reminds me of heroin junkies' syringe aesthetic. No insult intended; rather an observation of how people favor different paths to the common destination of a satisfying endorphin experience.
I grew up playing music (eight years piano, variously oboe, clarinet, and several years vocal).
I don't like jazz. I think that a lot of it is self-indulgent noodling.
I can appreciate the talent of some of the artists, but I can't get into it. I feel the same about country music and rap: there is artistry there, but I can't stand 90%+ of it and don't want to waste my time listening to it to find the really good stuff from the derivative, self-indulgent crap.
Yes, I pay attention to the lyrics (because of my time as a vocalist), but I also pay attention to the music.
I think most people don't like 'jazz' because it's an ill-defined "style" that ranges from reasonably well known swing and "standards" to obscure fusion or acid jazz. The more obscure you get, the more inside baseball the discussions become and the less accessible they are to people who might just "like" the sound of a particular song. (The same could be said about the more obscure corners of 'rock'.)
Agree with the self-indulgent part. It's sophisticated to like jazz so people try to like it. And then they do because one can grow to like anything.
From TFA, "... the American ears are getting lazier and lazier."
I'll agree with that, but I don't consider it a bad thing. Jazz seems to meander and is only impressive once paid close attention to. I want music to come and hit me; I don't want to have to work for payoff.
There's a difference between being able to appreciate the artistic value of something, and being able to enjoy it. I don't like jazz, and I mostly listen to music where I can't understand the lyrics, or where none exist. Sometimes people just don't enjoy certain genres of music. I'm sure part of it is cultural, but this article seems to portray the inability to enjoy jazz as some sort of cultural failing, and that's just ridiculous.
Pixote was thought-provoking, emotional, and well made. Despite that, I did not enjoy it. That does not mean I'm incapable of recognizing art, it just means that I don't enjoy the style of the piece in question.
Jazz as a genre is more complex than virtually any other genre of music. It employs more subtle and more complex harmonies which are usually not used anywhere else, neither are seen in music textbooks. Plus improvisation which essentially is composing on the fly - something not every musician is capable of keeping up and not every listener is capable of understanding. In other words (and this shouldn't be news) jazz is a language that you need to learn in order to enjoy it. That's the point of the article.
(Some parts of jazz though are pretty "accessible", such as Billie and Nina, but if you forget about the lyrics and the emotional side of their art and leave only the music, that for the most part wouldn't be a good example of jazz.)
I thought I was the only one who didn't pay attention to lyrics.
My friend and I kinda of resemble that dynamic. He loves some of the shittiest songs (imo) because of interesting lyrical content, where as I totally ignore them. If I like them it's because of how they were sung not because of me diving through looking for "meaning".
That's why after all these years Pinback is still one of my favorite bands. Their voices are just another instrument in a lot of their songs, since it sounds like Rob Crow kind of mumbles through them all, and they're usually sitting a layer or two down in the mix.
For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59cQWw9ctOA (not the greatest quality I know). It's the way he sings / shouts "Stop! It's too late! I'm feeling FRUS-trated!" that draws me in.
I also don't really listen to lyrics, largely because it is hard for me. I think I actually have some sort of perceptual incapacity -- I have to really try to understand them, whereas it seems other people hear them very easily. Even when I try, it's hard. I'm smart in other ways, but in this regard I am comparatively deficient. Anybody else on HN share this 'syndrome'?
For me, music has always been about structure, tone, melody -- I like the Eagles, for example, but when I started hearing the lyrics (it took me a while, and they're pretty easy), I was like, "Man, these guys are cheesy!" In some agreement with this article, I love jazz. Check out my friend Daniel Levin for how far out I like it: http://www.daniel-levin.com (annoying flash site but has samples of his music)
There have been a few studies over the years that indicate that many or even most people don't listen closely - or rather often, at all - to lyrics in pop songs.
Anecdata-wise, I've had many occasions where I'd surprised people with the lyrics to songs they've long known and enjoyed. They simply didn't know the words beyond the choruses - and sometimes, not even those very accurately.
(Not to claim any great listening ability for myself - I often have to look up the lyrics of songs because I've long been a fan of stuff like REM's older and less lyrically precise albums. :) )
Sting once complained about "Every Breath You Take" being used in weddings; an intelligent woman I know was quite startled to realize what "Roxanne" was about when she heard it in a very different form in Moulin Rouge. If you didn't understand the words, you couldn't tell from the sound of these songs, "He's obsessed and stalking her." or "She's a prostitute."; even though these songs are sung in fairly clear English, most of us don't pay close attention to the words.
I think TFA's author is wildly over-generalizing on how Americans listen to music.
I have to concentrate really hard to listen to lyrics, but I find it easy to hear things like musical quotes and samples (e.g. the first time I heard a piece by Steve Reich, I knew immediately that I had already heard it, because I listened to The Orb years before). I always get a kick out of those moments of musical recognition - probably if I could force myself to pay more attention to lyrics, I would see more depth there too.
"He loves some of the shittiest songs (imo) because of interesting lyrical content, where as I totally ignore them. If I like them it's because of how they were sung not because of me diving through looking for "meaning"."
Yes, this. One of the reasons I love metal is because a great metal vocalist like Dickinson or Dio just plain sounds awesome, no matter what he's going on about.
Just as an anecdote: Since my English got much more fluent in recent years, I pay much more attention to (English) lyrics now, than I did earlier. Though it's still easier not to pay attention to English lyrics than German ones. I don't know whether or how that has changed my perception of music. I like purely instrumental music, too.
My sister prefers music with voices in them to purely instrumental stuff, even if she can't understand them, e.g. Japanese rock.
http://kahvi.org/ is a nice place to get (mostly) instrumental-only electronic music from the creative commons.
It's not the problem of lyrics vs words in the first place. It's a problem of lack of musical education. Give a person a guitar or a piano and within a year she starts paying attention to the composition and performing skills. And her tastes may change dramatically too. So in a sense, I consider "listening to words" not as an alternative point of view, but rather a lack of musical training. Sure, words may simply be bad, but they alone usually cannot make song good or bad, while music composition and performing definitely have this power.
Also, please do not think of Americans that way. People in general tend to ignore music because they don't have a proper training. Same here in Russia. Same would even be in Japan. I would even rank Americans and Europeans higher, because they're naturally exposed to different quality music a lot more, than any other culture.
I agree with your first point, the author's claim that it is an instrumental vs. lyrics problem is not accurate. There are easy counter examples, such as the popularity of instrumental dance music, which often features very little in the way of lyrics and the vapid nature of most pop songs, as well as the ability of many listeners to appreciate music performed in a language other than their own.
The problem with a lot of jazz, what I would call "bad" jazz, is that it is formless noodling. It is in areas like jazz solos, jam rock bands, rock guitar solos, etc. that one hears the admirer comment on the difficultly level of the performance versus the coherent melodies and hooks of popular music, and even many popular classical works.
The popular jazz standards have melodic hooks that cause people to like and remember them. Beyond that surface, a vast majority of jazz musicians are more focused on the intricacies of group performance than composition. Sure more musical education, or better brains, would enable people to develop their memories to be able to recall and hum along with longer and more complex note sequences, but you still need to compose them- and repeat them. (Recall the Mark E Smith formula for pop music "Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.")
I've been playing gigs as a Irish Trad musician for 20 years. There are an astonishing number of Americans who can't clap on the beat. There are also lots of Americans who can clap somewhere near the beat, but then are still without awareness of how small variations in timing and emphasis can change the feel or swing of the beat.
There are a disturbingly large number of people who -- by their own account -- can't distinguish or process melodic information. I cringe when I think of the 100's of teenagers I've seen purposefully blowing away the high frequency sensitivity it takes to appreciate all the subtle timbres of acoustic instruments.
It's not all Americans. When I go to certain music festivals or even certain regions of the country, I'm surrounded by people who can perceive these things and who understand. I find that energizing. On the flip side, I am often saddened by my different awareness in other places. It's like living in a land of the maimed. It's like being the only sighted person on the planet, with no one to talk to about the beauty of the sunset, the spectacle of the night sky in the countryside, or my favourite paintings.
I'm not so sure it's all about education. I've always thought it had a lot to do with "listening talent", that thing which people refer to when they say "He's got a good ear."
Of course, this is just my own theory based on my own, personal (and therefore anecdotal) experience. For example, to enjoy a song, I first need to like its music. If the lyrics are in a language I understand, then I need to like them too, but I'm more forgiving in that aspect. I've always thought that this is because I have a rather decent ear. Even though my voice often lacks the capacity to reproduce the music correctly, I can distinguish sounds well enough that I can reproduce at least the main melody on a keyboard.
On the other hand, I've noticed that most people who have less-than-decent "ear" tend to focus more on lyrics than on music. My theory is that if you can't distinguish well enough one melody from another, your won't be able to enjoy songs based on their music -- it's sort of like expecting a blind person to admire a painting.
I think the weakest link in my theory is the fact that I'm basing it on my "anecdata": among all the people I know, those with "not-so-good ear" are more frequent than those with "decent ear". It would be interesting to see what other people's experiences when it comes to that.
Yes but I also think that in some cultures people sing more and informally. ot just education but also general attitudes towards singing.
For me growing up the only time I would sing would be in church - the essence of drudgery.
Working and traveling in Asia - I was exposed to people singing pubicaly a lot more. In Korea it seemed pretty common in parties or general gatherings for people just to sing. And NorReBangs (karaoke) as a common destination.
This was so foreign to me as an American. It was hard for me - fun but awkward.
Traveling in Mongolia, I stopped in gers and people would stand around and sing and ask me to sing.
This doesnt make people from these countries automatially better musicians - but I think in my particular upbringing it was really uncommon for people to casually sing. 'If you were not good at it you shouldnt do it' - was the fallacy that I internalized.
I remember my wife, when we were dating, and I were walking through a bohemian area of Seoul full of street musicians, etc and she spontaneously got up in a little outdoor ampitheatre and sang a song she liked. I thought this was great but was so outside my reference...
Japan - despite its proximity to Korea - is a pretty different culture in many ways but I felt the writer was also talking about a comfort or naturalness with music which was not the result of education but culture.
An interesting corollary is that jazz musicians tend to not have as striking an image when it comes to their marketing. Compare what you first visualize when you hear the names KISS or Flava Flav versus say Brad Mehldau or Keith Jarrett.
EDIT: This is probably due to jazz musicians taking themselves more seriously and wanting to be known more for their music than anything else. If a jazz artist enlisted Dir En Grey's stylist, it may invite insinuations that any success is due to marketing instead of artistic merit.
EDIT: To further clarify -- average person's image of:
Rock/Metal: shirtless guys with long hair and tattoos playing guitars
Pop: Pretty boys/girls in shiny costumes who can dance
Whew lots of words to sum up something that seems kind of obvious to me: People just aren't exposed to good jazz very often. We mostly hear really terrible soul defeating elevator jazz. People grow up understanding the language of rock, country, hip hop, etc so they will almost certainly hear some really good examples of music from these genres and naturally gravitate towards some or all of them. Jazz is an art form you really have to seek out these days. The better question is why did popular culture move away from jazz in favor of these other genres? I think it reflects the demand for shorter more concentrated messages in music. The 2-3 minute song is how most people consume music. If you sliced out some choice 2-3 minute segments of some great jazz albums I bet they could be palatable to a bigger audience even today. We see this in film & TV today with jazz and orchestral music. People like it but not in big doses.
I suspect many people in their 20s and 30s aren't aware of much of the jazz they've come in contact with as being jazz. When the expectation for jazz is "Kenny G.", you can come across quite a bit of it from older movies, TV shows, and pop music without recognizing as such.
The criticism of rap in the middle of the piece seems both misplaced and undereducated. Some of the most musically complex instrumental music I've heard in the past few years has come out of the hip-hop world. Take a song like T-Pain's "Chopped and Screwed" [1] and try to pick it out on the piano -- it's got enough 7's,9's and alt chords to make any jazz listener happy. Rap is probably the only pop genre where fans pay enough attention to the background to like a song/artist for the lyrics (Nas) or the beat (Kanye) or both (Jay-Z).
I'm not convinced. The melody sounds simple and repetitious, and the verses, mostly sung by tPain, are similar. The rest is just a fleshing out of these ideas, though, there is rythm and lyrics. I think you'll disagree with me, but I believe that's more because you disagree with me and the authors definitions of music than because I'm wrong.
Having said that, would you like to try to send me to some hip-hop I'll like. I've been looking, but when listening to music that has lyrics I have to listen to them, and I don't like these, or most rap for that matter. I've yet to find any particular artist I really like yet.
Jack White puts it well. On whether he does or does not particularly like hip-hop: "Not particularly. I find OutKast and Wu-Tang Clan interesting. But I consider music to be storytelling, melody and rhythm. A lot of hip-hop has broken music down. There are no instruments and no songwriting. So you're left with just storytelling and rhythm. And the storytelling can be so braggadocious, you're just left with rhythm. I don't find much emotion in that."
By this logic, English-language opera (yes, it exists) ought to be doing well in America. Check your local opera house schedule and see how many performances you can find that are not in Italian, German, or French.
There is some merit to this argument, that some music can't be appreciated as easily unless you attach it something people can easily relate to. Even classical music isn't immune to this, hence the existence of program music like Beethoven's 6th symphony and many other works from the Romantic era. Today, it's mostly film scores that fall into this category of instrumental music that is best understood within a certain context.
I think the difference today is that the context itself has changed. We've transitioned to an urban, fast-paced lifestyle and have lost touch with the beauty of nature from which many instrumental pieces draw inspiration. We've become more materialistic, hence the prevalence of "bling" in rap songs. The host on my local classical station once remarked that there are only two serious topics in music: God and sex. Though I'm not religious, I can tell that these days it's much less of the former and more of the latter.
That said, I wouldn't be so pessimistic right now. Think long-term: in 100 years, how many people will still be listening to Brahms, and how many will still be listening to Britney Spears?
Jazz not being in the limelight anymore is not really a fault of the music, the listeners, or the players. It's not an unhealthy turn of events either. I think it's as simple as a new generation has come up who wants to "have their say": they want to express their own take on life in their own way. Another generation will come along in 20 years and supplant them. It's a never ending cycle.
Jazz isn't anywhere near death judging by the number of internet radio stations offering it. Jazz musicians are still exploring musical boundaries. Admittedly there are fewer venues but you can still find them.
Another consideration is the influence Jazz had on the mainstream. Groups like the Dave Matthews Band embody the Jazz spirit very much.
What I'd like to hear more of is people from other cultures mixing Jazz into their own native music.
Jazz is, to me, about exploration.
NOTE: Edited the first sentence due to a blatant abuse of negatives.
"The self-surrender of classical music to a sterile, scholastic avant-garde after World War I doomed WFLN to the status of a fading museum of antiquities before that radio station was even born. The hankering of dance-band leaders to be seen as high artists after World War II sapped jazz of its vitality. Both genres have been steadily losing market share for decades because they deliberately turned their backs on the mass audiences they formerly commanded."
Personal note: I've been to jazz concerts where the musicians were in it to have fun, not to make a statement or prove their avant-garde-ness. This included a real exciting swing performance with dancers at an airshow. When played as such the music is invigorating like nothing else.
I like the article and there's a lot of truth to it, but I have two critiques.
First, the music that people like is heavily based on familiarity. People want one or two original elements in a song, but if the overall structure and composition of the song isn't following familiar patterns they will be unable to enjoy it. This is why artists like Frank Zappa are more appreciated by musicians than the general public. After repeated listenings, you find a lot of musical meat, which can then be broken down into more repetitive poppy elements. Jazz in general is much the same, but even further away from pop music today than Zappa was.
The other critique is about the assertion that "rap" music is just about lyrics. One of the foundations of hip-hop and something that sets it apart from other music throughout history, is that it is the first form of music to be built primarily from the manipulation of other recorded music. And it does so in a way that maximizes the impact of the music via looping and sampling. The degenerate form of hip-hop that is dominant today in the form of club music with banal hedonistic lyrics, autotuned vocals, and repetitive plain rhythmic styles is nothing more than familiarity breeding popularity. However the art form of hip-hop is alive and well and still progressing (hopefully sampling can see a proper fair-use legitimization in court soon).
I disagree with the assertion that this is due to the abstraction associated with instrumental music as opposed to vocal music. Most people relate to instrumental music quite well - it needs to have the right rhythm, the right hook. Lots of rock is instrumental, with fairly vapid lyrics - its still pretty popular. Blues - put someone in a room playing John Lee Hooker, and I'd be surprised if they don't start tapping their feet. "Boom, Boom" isn't too much of a lyric, but what a hook!
The problem is the accessibility of "modern" jazz - much of it tends to be divorced from its origin as dance/march music, and that is where the abstraction plays a role. I love Bill Frisell's work, for instance, because of the structural aspects of his music - but its not necessarily very appealing to most of my friends.
I didn't fully appreciate his take until this line: "Jazz to most people is like a color on a wall; unless you hung something on it, they don’t even notice it."
It's funny, because I like jazz and classical, along with most music, and even I view the two types as "colour on the wall" in many ways.
I agree with the article to an extent, but I don't agree that musical education will necessarily make people like instrumental music in general or jazz music specifically. The truth is most people don't really care about music and pop/radio music is sufficient and exciting enough for them. This is not a bad thing.
I don't like the assumption that there is necessarily some sort of proper 'way' of listening to music that can be or should be taught. People who like music will like music and seek it out, people who don't won't.
Jazz can be hilariously inaccessible. I think one of the problems is much of it is 'standard based' (ie. they're improvising around the chords and melodies of classic old songs like Autumn Leaves, All of Me) but they take HELLA liberties (i once heard a Dinah Washington rendition of All of Me and could swear she didn't know what the song actually was). Once you know the standards, and the majority of them really are gems in their own right, you start to realize what the jazzmen are really DOING, what patterns they're playing with. Then you can follow and appreciate long improvisatory solos better. But if you're just hearing some 60 year old song that you don't even KNOW, and they assume that you already know it SO WELL that they barely need to play the original melody, and they're ramping up the complexity 5x to challenge themselves, then it's tough going.
Something that's helped me a lot recently is typing standards into Spotify and just listening to different versions of the same song (not always jazz artists) for hours. I used to think 'why can't all standards be as enjoyable as Summertime?' but now they kinda are
Personally, I don't have the foggiest idea of how one would go about marketing jazz. I got my taste for jazz from my parents, who were fans of "hot jazz" (a.k.a. traditional or Dixieland jazz). They were never into any modern (postwar) jazz styles, and accepted big band/swing only reluctantly. Glenn Miller was "too commercial" for them :-)
One problem that I see with jazz evangelists is that they tend to push the more abstract/ academic masterpieces in detriment of the more digestible stuff. I can see some kid like I was getting into Satch and Bix and Django, and then going on to discover Mingus, Parker, Weather Report, and so on, like I did. But I'm not sure if you can throw "Blue Trane" cold at somebody without giving them any context, and expect them to like it because "it's good for them".
[+] [-] dan_sim|16 years ago|reply
If jazz lovers would stop thinking at themselves as "higher educated" and jazz would go back to the people who want enjoy a good swinging song (Ella Fitzgerald, Satchmo, ...) maybe then, jazz would be loved again.
[+] [-] sp332|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abeppu|16 years ago|reply
The flip side of this is that people who listen to especially unpopular subgenres of jazz (particular -bop) seem to enjoy thinking of themselves as "higher educated" or having more sophisticated tastes than others, or just listening to music that isn't* like everything else and isn't driven by short term fads. And jazz musicians seem largely happy to facilitate this, and in turn get to indulge in a creative process that's solely centered around their own creative interests.
Bottom line, jazz won't "go back to the people", because the people don't want it, because the musicians don't want it ... except the ones that do. I think in recent years a whole lot of people have listened to Michael Buble, or Nouvelle Vague.
[+] [-] mtalantikite|16 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6C6higMMMM
You don't necessarily need to go back to swing like Wynton does to get people interested in the music again. We forget that jazz standards were pop tunes back in the day, so it's nice to hear young guys now playing Bjork arrangements or KRS-One tracks.
[+] [-] swannodette|16 years ago|reply
"swinging" and "thinking" aren't so different after all.
[+] [-] crux_|16 years ago|reply
- The problem with jazz is the people who listen to it.
- Music isn't art, or at least it's wrong to appreciate it as such.
- Jazz ought to be revivalist, not innovative.
Suffice to say, I don't think I can agree...
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] baddox|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swannodette|16 years ago|reply
But I say 9 times out of 10 with this approach you'll realize you know so little about music and there is much more to know and you'll be practically giddy to expand your knowledge.
The distance between Arnold Schoenberg and Lady Gaga is less than you think.
[+] [-] CWuestefeld|16 years ago|reply
In college I had a minor in electronic art. We'd sit through each other's performances and then comment on all the various artistic work that went into them.
The elephant in the room was that it was all BS. I couldn't count the number of times that someone told me "I appreciated the way you used X to emphasize Y". In truth, nothing had been farther from my mind; it just worked out that way.
So I think that a huge portion of what you're interpreting in the changes, turns, etc. are just happenstance. It's just that our minds are such incredible pattern-recognizing machines, and are so malleable, that it's trivially easy to spot some pattern and rationalize a whole lot of noise (in the information processing sense) into spurious meaning.
How else to explain someone deciding that Ursa Major looks like a bear?
[+] [-] talvisota|16 years ago|reply
I think your comment pretty much validates my image about the people who think they are better in listening to music than others. What has abstract thought to do with music history anyway? I am a software designer, and I truely appreciate useful abstractions that make creating good software a bit easier. But for music, I don't give a damn about the intentions of the composer or the history of the musical style of the composition, if I don't like it or the way how it is performed. Just like the users of my software don't care the slightest bit of how well-crafted the thing is, if it doesn't do what they want. I rather sit down to listen through the music I like 50 times to learn all its twists and turns than to waste my time on something I genuinely couldn't care less.
And how do I tell the music I like from the music I don't? The music I truely like gives me shivers, physically, the first time I hear it. That is the music that gives me joy when I listen to it. That is the experience I hope to get from music every now and then. And that really does not happen too often.
I play guitar as a hobby, and mostly suck at it. That's because I don't have the drive to really study hard and learn it properly. (And probably I don't have that much talent, either.) I would have all the time if I wanted, but I don't, because I want to enjoy playing music - not to have it as yet another burden to bear. So I go and learn new stuff only when I feel I need some new kick to maintain the interest in it.
And this is what I want to say: go and learn, but above all, find enjoyment. Life is short, and everything has its price - so don't waste your (free) time on anything you don't find personally rewarding. Studying music is waste of time - unless you happen to enjoy studying music! ;)
[+] [-] araneae|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajscherer|16 years ago|reply
I don't buy the article's conclusion that people should listen to jazz because otherwise they are "missing a huge chunk of what life has to offer". Everyone is missing out on a huge chunk of what life has to offer! Time spent gaining appreciation for music is not spent doing something else. Who is anyone to tell anyone else what chunks of life they should be exploring?
I have an alternate theory for why Americans don't like jazz. They don't like jazz because they don't hear a lot of jazz. They do like lyrical forms of music because they are exposed to a lot of it in the course of their daily lives. Why is a purposefully acquired taste superior to one that didn't require effort?
[+] [-] CodeMage|16 years ago|reply
Not that I'm trying to say that analyzing music is useless -- far from it, it's always good to analyze and recognize patterns -- but it does put things in their perspective.
[+] [-] CWuestefeld|16 years ago|reply
This seems rather contrary to the kinds of talk normally heard on HN.
It's quite typical for us to take ourselves as developers to task when we build an application that users fail to appreciate, or have difficulty in using.
How is it, then, that when listeners fail to appreciate the greatness in some piece of music, that it's the listener's fault? By analogy, shouldn't we look at this as a failure of the musician?
[+] [-] nostrademons|16 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_hHc7TZjyY&feature=relat...
[+] [-] anigbrowl|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] halostatue|16 years ago|reply
I don't like jazz. I think that a lot of it is self-indulgent noodling.
I can appreciate the talent of some of the artists, but I can't get into it. I feel the same about country music and rap: there is artistry there, but I can't stand 90%+ of it and don't want to waste my time listening to it to find the really good stuff from the derivative, self-indulgent crap.
Yes, I pay attention to the lyrics (because of my time as a vocalist), but I also pay attention to the music.
I think most people don't like 'jazz' because it's an ill-defined "style" that ranges from reasonably well known swing and "standards" to obscure fusion or acid jazz. The more obscure you get, the more inside baseball the discussions become and the less accessible they are to people who might just "like" the sound of a particular song. (The same could be said about the more obscure corners of 'rock'.)
[+] [-] birdman|16 years ago|reply
From TFA, "... the American ears are getting lazier and lazier."
I'll agree with that, but I don't consider it a bad thing. Jazz seems to meander and is only impressive once paid close attention to. I want music to come and hit me; I don't want to have to work for payoff.
[+] [-] dlytle|16 years ago|reply
Pixote was thought-provoking, emotional, and well made. Despite that, I did not enjoy it. That does not mean I'm incapable of recognizing art, it just means that I don't enjoy the style of the piece in question.
[+] [-] mojuba|16 years ago|reply
(Some parts of jazz though are pretty "accessible", such as Billie and Nina, but if you forget about the lyrics and the emotional side of their art and leave only the music, that for the most part wouldn't be a good example of jazz.)
[+] [-] ecoffey|16 years ago|reply
My friend and I kinda of resemble that dynamic. He loves some of the shittiest songs (imo) because of interesting lyrical content, where as I totally ignore them. If I like them it's because of how they were sung not because of me diving through looking for "meaning".
That's why after all these years Pinback is still one of my favorite bands. Their voices are just another instrument in a lot of their songs, since it sounds like Rob Crow kind of mumbles through them all, and they're usually sitting a layer or two down in the mix.
For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59cQWw9ctOA (not the greatest quality I know). It's the way he sings / shouts "Stop! It's too late! I'm feeling FRUS-trated!" that draws me in.
[+] [-] davi|16 years ago|reply
For me, music has always been about structure, tone, melody -- I like the Eagles, for example, but when I started hearing the lyrics (it took me a while, and they're pretty easy), I was like, "Man, these guys are cheesy!" In some agreement with this article, I love jazz. Check out my friend Daniel Levin for how far out I like it: http://www.daniel-levin.com (annoying flash site but has samples of his music)
[+] [-] Semiapies|16 years ago|reply
Anecdata-wise, I've had many occasions where I'd surprised people with the lyrics to songs they've long known and enjoyed. They simply didn't know the words beyond the choruses - and sometimes, not even those very accurately.
(Not to claim any great listening ability for myself - I often have to look up the lyrics of songs because I've long been a fan of stuff like REM's older and less lyrically precise albums. :) )
Sting once complained about "Every Breath You Take" being used in weddings; an intelligent woman I know was quite startled to realize what "Roxanne" was about when she heard it in a very different form in Moulin Rouge. If you didn't understand the words, you couldn't tell from the sound of these songs, "He's obsessed and stalking her." or "She's a prostitute."; even though these songs are sung in fairly clear English, most of us don't pay close attention to the words.
I think TFA's author is wildly over-generalizing on how Americans listen to music.
[+] [-] abstractbill|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philwelch|16 years ago|reply
Yes, this. One of the reasons I love metal is because a great metal vocalist like Dickinson or Dio just plain sounds awesome, no matter what he's going on about.
[+] [-] eru|16 years ago|reply
My sister prefers music with voices in them to purely instrumental stuff, even if she can't understand them, e.g. Japanese rock.
http://kahvi.org/ is a nice place to get (mostly) instrumental-only electronic music from the creative commons.
[+] [-] snitko|16 years ago|reply
Also, please do not think of Americans that way. People in general tend to ignore music because they don't have a proper training. Same here in Russia. Same would even be in Japan. I would even rank Americans and Europeans higher, because they're naturally exposed to different quality music a lot more, than any other culture.
[+] [-] mattmcknight|16 years ago|reply
The problem with a lot of jazz, what I would call "bad" jazz, is that it is formless noodling. It is in areas like jazz solos, jam rock bands, rock guitar solos, etc. that one hears the admirer comment on the difficultly level of the performance versus the coherent melodies and hooks of popular music, and even many popular classical works.
The popular jazz standards have melodic hooks that cause people to like and remember them. Beyond that surface, a vast majority of jazz musicians are more focused on the intricacies of group performance than composition. Sure more musical education, or better brains, would enable people to develop their memories to be able to recall and hum along with longer and more complex note sequences, but you still need to compose them- and repeat them. (Recall the Mark E Smith formula for pop music "Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.")
[+] [-] stcredzero|16 years ago|reply
There are a disturbingly large number of people who -- by their own account -- can't distinguish or process melodic information. I cringe when I think of the 100's of teenagers I've seen purposefully blowing away the high frequency sensitivity it takes to appreciate all the subtle timbres of acoustic instruments.
It's not all Americans. When I go to certain music festivals or even certain regions of the country, I'm surrounded by people who can perceive these things and who understand. I find that energizing. On the flip side, I am often saddened by my different awareness in other places. It's like living in a land of the maimed. It's like being the only sighted person on the planet, with no one to talk to about the beauty of the sunset, the spectacle of the night sky in the countryside, or my favourite paintings.
[+] [-] CodeMage|16 years ago|reply
Of course, this is just my own theory based on my own, personal (and therefore anecdotal) experience. For example, to enjoy a song, I first need to like its music. If the lyrics are in a language I understand, then I need to like them too, but I'm more forgiving in that aspect. I've always thought that this is because I have a rather decent ear. Even though my voice often lacks the capacity to reproduce the music correctly, I can distinguish sounds well enough that I can reproduce at least the main melody on a keyboard.
On the other hand, I've noticed that most people who have less-than-decent "ear" tend to focus more on lyrics than on music. My theory is that if you can't distinguish well enough one melody from another, your won't be able to enjoy songs based on their music -- it's sort of like expecting a blind person to admire a painting.
I think the weakest link in my theory is the fact that I'm basing it on my "anecdata": among all the people I know, those with "not-so-good ear" are more frequent than those with "decent ear". It would be interesting to see what other people's experiences when it comes to that.
[+] [-] mbubb|16 years ago|reply
For me growing up the only time I would sing would be in church - the essence of drudgery.
Working and traveling in Asia - I was exposed to people singing pubicaly a lot more. In Korea it seemed pretty common in parties or general gatherings for people just to sing. And NorReBangs (karaoke) as a common destination.
This was so foreign to me as an American. It was hard for me - fun but awkward.
Traveling in Mongolia, I stopped in gers and people would stand around and sing and ask me to sing.
This doesnt make people from these countries automatially better musicians - but I think in my particular upbringing it was really uncommon for people to casually sing. 'If you were not good at it you shouldnt do it' - was the fallacy that I internalized.
I remember my wife, when we were dating, and I were walking through a bohemian area of Seoul full of street musicians, etc and she spontaneously got up in a little outdoor ampitheatre and sang a song she liked. I thought this was great but was so outside my reference...
Japan - despite its proximity to Korea - is a pretty different culture in many ways but I felt the writer was also talking about a comfort or naturalness with music which was not the result of education but culture.
[+] [-] keyist|16 years ago|reply
EDIT: This is probably due to jazz musicians taking themselves more seriously and wanting to be known more for their music than anything else. If a jazz artist enlisted Dir En Grey's stylist, it may invite insinuations that any success is due to marketing instead of artistic merit.
EDIT: To further clarify -- average person's image of:
Rock/Metal: shirtless guys with long hair and tattoos playing guitars
Pop: Pretty boys/girls in shiny costumes who can dance
Jazz: dude with curly hair holding a saxophone
[+] [-] jsz0|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Semiapies|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aston|16 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtP6arjZmzI
[+] [-] Radix|16 years ago|reply
Having said that, would you like to try to send me to some hip-hop I'll like. I've been looking, but when listening to music that has lyrics I have to listen to them, and I don't like these, or most rap for that matter. I've yet to find any particular artist I really like yet.
Jack White puts it well. On whether he does or does not particularly like hip-hop: "Not particularly. I find OutKast and Wu-Tang Clan interesting. But I consider music to be storytelling, melody and rhythm. A lot of hip-hop has broken music down. There are no instruments and no songwriting. So you're left with just storytelling and rhythm. And the storytelling can be so braggadocious, you're just left with rhythm. I don't find much emotion in that."
[+] [-] CoreDumpling|16 years ago|reply
There is some merit to this argument, that some music can't be appreciated as easily unless you attach it something people can easily relate to. Even classical music isn't immune to this, hence the existence of program music like Beethoven's 6th symphony and many other works from the Romantic era. Today, it's mostly film scores that fall into this category of instrumental music that is best understood within a certain context.
I think the difference today is that the context itself has changed. We've transitioned to an urban, fast-paced lifestyle and have lost touch with the beauty of nature from which many instrumental pieces draw inspiration. We've become more materialistic, hence the prevalence of "bling" in rap songs. The host on my local classical station once remarked that there are only two serious topics in music: God and sex. Though I'm not religious, I can tell that these days it's much less of the former and more of the latter.
That said, I wouldn't be so pessimistic right now. Think long-term: in 100 years, how many people will still be listening to Brahms, and how many will still be listening to Britney Spears?
[+] [-] bpyne|16 years ago|reply
Jazz isn't anywhere near death judging by the number of internet radio stations offering it. Jazz musicians are still exploring musical boundaries. Admittedly there are fewer venues but you can still find them.
Another consideration is the influence Jazz had on the mainstream. Groups like the Dave Matthews Band embody the Jazz spirit very much.
What I'd like to hear more of is people from other cultures mixing Jazz into their own native music.
Jazz is, to me, about exploration.
NOTE: Edited the first sentence due to a blatant abuse of negatives.
[+] [-] bryanh|16 years ago|reply
I am curious though; when was the last time everyone listened to an entire album while doing nothing else? (no driving, surfing, working, etc...)
[+] [-] bitwize|16 years ago|reply
http://catb.org/~esr/writings/arts.html
Personal note: I've been to jazz concerts where the musicians were in it to have fun, not to make a statement or prove their avant-garde-ness. This included a real exciting swing performance with dancers at an airshow. When played as such the music is invigorating like nothing else.
[+] [-] dasil003|16 years ago|reply
First, the music that people like is heavily based on familiarity. People want one or two original elements in a song, but if the overall structure and composition of the song isn't following familiar patterns they will be unable to enjoy it. This is why artists like Frank Zappa are more appreciated by musicians than the general public. After repeated listenings, you find a lot of musical meat, which can then be broken down into more repetitive poppy elements. Jazz in general is much the same, but even further away from pop music today than Zappa was.
The other critique is about the assertion that "rap" music is just about lyrics. One of the foundations of hip-hop and something that sets it apart from other music throughout history, is that it is the first form of music to be built primarily from the manipulation of other recorded music. And it does so in a way that maximizes the impact of the music via looping and sampling. The degenerate form of hip-hop that is dominant today in the form of club music with banal hedonistic lyrics, autotuned vocals, and repetitive plain rhythmic styles is nothing more than familiarity breeding popularity. However the art form of hip-hop is alive and well and still progressing (hopefully sampling can see a proper fair-use legitimization in court soon).
[+] [-] aarghh|16 years ago|reply
The problem is the accessibility of "modern" jazz - much of it tends to be divorced from its origin as dance/march music, and that is where the abstraction plays a role. I love Bill Frisell's work, for instance, because of the structural aspects of his music - but its not necessarily very appealing to most of my friends.
[+] [-] run4yourlives|16 years ago|reply
I didn't fully appreciate his take until this line: "Jazz to most people is like a color on a wall; unless you hung something on it, they don’t even notice it."
It's funny, because I like jazz and classical, along with most music, and even I view the two types as "colour on the wall" in many ways.
[+] [-] eru|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ichverstehe|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samd|16 years ago|reply
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/11/18/116-black-music-t...
[+] [-] ghfdrvtsyup|16 years ago|reply
I don't like the assumption that there is necessarily some sort of proper 'way' of listening to music that can be or should be taught. People who like music will like music and seek it out, people who don't won't.
[+] [-] Tycho|16 years ago|reply
Something that's helped me a lot recently is typing standards into Spotify and just listening to different versions of the same song (not always jazz artists) for hours. I used to think 'why can't all standards be as enjoyable as Summertime?' but now they kinda are
[+] [-] hernan7|16 years ago|reply
Personally, I don't have the foggiest idea of how one would go about marketing jazz. I got my taste for jazz from my parents, who were fans of "hot jazz" (a.k.a. traditional or Dixieland jazz). They were never into any modern (postwar) jazz styles, and accepted big band/swing only reluctantly. Glenn Miller was "too commercial" for them :-)
One problem that I see with jazz evangelists is that they tend to push the more abstract/ academic masterpieces in detriment of the more digestible stuff. I can see some kid like I was getting into Satch and Bix and Django, and then going on to discover Mingus, Parker, Weather Report, and so on, like I did. But I'm not sure if you can throw "Blue Trane" cold at somebody without giving them any context, and expect them to like it because "it's good for them".