“If you don’t want jazz to change, you are putting a pillow over its face, and it’s going to die."
Truer words have never been said. Jazz wasn't meant to live in the shadows of Coltrane, Ellington, Monk, Bird, or even Miles Davis forever. Sure the history is important, and technique and the theoretical rigor will always be a necessary ingredient, but the moment Jazz stops innovating and expanding is the moment it dies.
Teaching Jazz is the way to go for most people who want to make a living from Jazz. I know several successful musicians who started as Jazz musicians but make a good living in rock and pop music. Getting to be known as the best of the best on your instrument via your Jazz chops can open doors in other genres to be invited to work with very successful, established artists. To make a living directly from Jazz you really want to go into education. If you have some hustle and you live in a medium to large sized city, no matter where you are there are likely enough kids interested in learning to play Jazz that you could develop a viable income as a private Jazz instructor on your instrument. From there you're taking part in building the scene of the future.
Indeed, likewise for classical music too. I'm pretty involved in my local music scene. Everybody I know who makes a decent middle class income from music, teaches. For one thing, there's reasonable demand. For another, it's a way for a performer fill your schedule with work during the hours when they pretty much can't be performing.
I clearly know nothing about music, but why does it even have to be called 'Jazz'? Given those market numbers cited, it seems like it would be a very bad brand to be associated with your music.
Having a son who's 12, and having recently had a bunch of pre-teens running around my house all going through the timeless ritual of identity crafting, I have gotten to listen to their music, watch their media, and hear their thoughts. When I talk with them about music, it doesn't surprise me that they view the music of my day (80s / 90s) with as much boredom as I had viewed big band music in my day. To them, rock and jazz are Baroque. Guitars and Drums? I might as well play them a harpsichord.
On the other hand, I know several highly skilled, expert musical technicians in their 20s and 30s. They have spent the majority of their lives training to master the practice and theory of music. They know so much about their instruments and their technique, it frankly astounds me. In comparison to dedicated musicians of my day, they seem like masters. Yet, for some reason, they spend their time playing Jazz derivatives and covers or as studio musicians. Interestingly, they're all playing Jazz - which to me is so puzzling. It's akin to being a master visual artist and being absorbed in re-creating Pollack or Rothko or Kadinsky.
Jazz had a moment, and it was a beautiful moment. It can be admired and relished as such, and the music can help transport one to that moment in time. But, does Jazz even make any sense in the modern world? I love listening to some of it - Coltrane and Davis, of course. But, if I went to a music venue today, and the band was playing Jazz, I'd be bored out of my mind.
These things have value. That value exists independently of popularity or financial success. Those expert young musicians play jazz because they love jazz. Everything else they do is a means to that end. As long as people continue to love jazz, then jazz will thrive.
Jazz musicians are proud to be part of a tradition, just like folk or classical musicians. They see themselves as part of something enduring, something that transcends record sales.
When I hear a young musician play Caravan or In A Sentimental Mood, I don't hear a re-hashing of an old Ellington tune. I hear a conversation that's been going since the 1930s. I hear a new chapter being written in a long story. I hear a torch being passed.
Maybe your son will never connect with jazz. That's fine, jazz isn't for everyone. Somewhere out there, a 12 year old is listening to Bird or Trane or Christian Scott and saving up to buy their first horn. That's all that matters to us - that someone hears our music and is inspired to carry the torch.
The reason why people learn to play jazz is because of how it compels you to improvise. Even though the standards are the same, every performance is different. It is technically very challenging to play something off the cuff that not only sounds good, but does not sound derivative, expresses your individuality within a collective rhythmic and harmonic and melodic setting, and is also commercially viable. No other modern music exercises this creative muscle so rigorously, and it's a skill that carries to other genres.
> But, if I went to a music venue today, and the band was playing Jazz, I'd be bored out of my mind.
Jazz has many flavours that have long walked hand-in-hand with social dancing. Maybe spend a bit more time exploring its depth? Here's a modern rendition of a timeless classic:
Many great answers here, but something that hasn't been mentioned yet is jazz as a method.
This isn't new. There's the oft-maligned Latin Jazz---one reason a lot of synthetic music that happened in Cuba, Brazil, and other such plays was more similar inputs---similar outputs development in parallel. Once you get recorded music + radio, and tourism in Cuba, there's more actual cross-pollination, but there's plenty of stuff before that.
As far as the method goes, obviously improvisation is a big part, but the big picture is Jazz is a social and live music. If Classical is a play, Jazz is a conversation at a Cafe. Sure people listen to recordings, but also classic trane records and others are a lot more sliced and diced than one might think. There's big band too, but what goes on at most schools is a bit suspect without the collectively authored head arrangements. Musically, we have the tradition of a preset harmony and, to a lesser extent form, is the "seed" for everything else, African rhythm, European harmony, and a bunch of unconscious idioms that would be hard to right down without lots of luck and pondering. [There's my cop-out. :)]
As a younger student, I and many others gravitated towards funk, because it's clear (though nobody said so explicitly) that that is the foundation for everything that's popular today (more than rock I'll jeer now that top 40 ate everything :P). The narrative of funk, if you will, is soul musicians' session players striking out of do their own more instrumental/dance focused thing. And those session musicians all had jazz backgrounds. So there's the historical connection, and musically it's largely a similar method, though more emphasis on premeditated groove and rhythm section in general.
There's nothing inherently creative about artistic technique. At best it gives you a way to express creativity. At worst it's a dead thing you keep repeating over and over because you can't think of anything interesting to say.
Theories of art are a really good way to kill creativity. Music theory can become a huge set of if...thens... and unfortunately even talented people don't always get past that.
The skills you need to be a brilliantly competent session musician or a successful teacher are only distantly related to the skills you need to be an interesting and original music creator.
Oddly enough, I view contemporary popular music with boredom too.
I'm one of those musicians who plays jazz. I'm a double bassist and a so called "day jobber," meaning that music is not my primary income source. Am I an expert technician? Sure. A decade of classical lessons, thousands of hours of practice, and 30+ years on the bandstand will do that to you.
Why jazz? Well, for one thing, contemporary popular music doesn't even involve my instrument. I'm obsolete. ;-) And I love the double bass -- the sound, technique, history, contemporary leaders, and even just the sheer absurdity of it. For another, I've developed my jazz chops to the point where my best chance of making further musical progress is to continue with jazz. I don't know where I'd even begin to come up with new ideas in the contemporary pop styles, or how I would turn it into a performance art.
There are a couple more things. While there's certainly a market for contemporary pop music, it's utterly saturated with talent. And pop music has always been youth and appearance oriented. As to how credible a 52 year old guy would be in that scene, I'll leave to the imagination. And the target demographic has been conditioned to expect entertainment to be free. For a non-superstar, the popular scene -- even going back as far as rock & roll, is depressing.
So a few of us who have no prospects in popular music, but enjoy performing with some semblance of dignity, will be drawn to other musical genres. In your locale it may be jazz, but more broadly it's also classical, baroque, fiddle music, accompanying dance clubs, etc. Living near Chicago, there's a lot of blues. Players who are still interested in the electric guitar & bass find outlets in the various forms of heavy metal and rock music, playing small venues that support original music.
Money? Surprisingly, yes. For almost a couple decades, I've had a pretty consistent schedule, of roughly one gig per week. Most of the work is paid, with very little overhead. There's no heavy equipment to set up, and commercial gigs such as weddings and corporate events are un-rehearsed. I've never had to go on tour. At the same time, rock bands find it almost prohibitive to break into paid work, because the established players tend to corner the market on the good commercial work.
Another surprise is that an audience will crawl out of the woodwork when good music is being performed. Not a huge audience, and not necessarily a drinking audience, which severely limits the economics. But people will come. Some are musically omnivorous, or even like newer styles, but show up because we still know how to entertain, and we can perform without driving you to deafness.
So I'll never claim to understand the economics of the music business, but it seems to me that there are little niches where people can enjoy performing with dignity while opting out of the mainstream popular music scene.
My kids, both teenagers, have shown no interest in either jazz or popular music, as musicians. They both prefer classical.
one of the identifying features of jazz is that the music isn't just the product, but its directly used as material by others.
jazz is a loaded term. i like ahmad jamal's term for what people usually mean when they talk about jazz, "american classical music". when i think of jazz i'm thinking about a certain kind of attitude toward music where the performer is putting life into the music the way you might think of an actor putting life into a script. makes a lot of sense in the modern world, i think, where selling recordings makes less and less sense but live performances are still relevant.
> Yet, for some reason, they spend their time playing Jazz derivatives and covers or as studio musicians.
Because that's the kind of music they like to play and know best. If they went to music school, jazz and classical are the dominant music styles that are taught. Also, you can make a pretty good living as a studio musician. It's much less risky than trying to sell your own albums as a solo artist.
> Interestingly, they're all playing Jazz - which to me is so puzzling. It's akin to being a master visual artist and being absorbed in re-creating Pollack or Rothko or Kadinsky.
No, it's like a painter creating their own works with Pollack, Rothko, and Kadinsky as key influences.
You think they should do the musical equivalent of a master painter taking a job at an graphic design firm? Plenty of them do, actually, you got to pay the bills somehow. That's what being a studio musician is.
> Jazz had a moment, and it was a beautiful moment. It can be admired and relished as such, and the music can help transport one to that moment in time. But, does Jazz even make any sense in the modern world?
As the article mentions, Jazz is changing with the times, as it always has. The music that Coltrane and Miles played in the '50s and '60s was quite different from what the New Orleans bands of the early 20th century were playing. It's funny you should mention Miles because he lived and played through several eras of jazz (and was the pioneer of several of them). He also expressed an ambivalence towards his earlier work.
> " "So What" or Kind of Blue, they were done in that era, the right hour, the right day, and it happened. It's over [...] What I used to play with Bill Evans, all those different modes, and substitute chords, we had the energy then and we liked it. But I have no feel for it anymore, it's more like warmed-over turkey."
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million. So instead of trying to explain it more, here's a jazz track released last year. Tell me if it sounds boring or old-fashioned.
> But, if I went to a music venue today, and the band was playing Jazz, I'd be bored out of my mind.
If I went to a music venue today and they were playing hip hop I would be similarly bored. Turns out different people have different tastes.
As for why you'd go and listen to someone cover a song from Kind of Blue: jazz is mainly improvisational. That means even if they play "So What", it won't be note-for-note the same as the version on that historic record. Hearing the ideas that the musicians create in the moment by listening and responding to their bandmates is the reason I love jazz.
Many developments in jazz of the 60s and 70s are just starting to become normalized and institutionalized in the 21st century. Check out the history of the AACM and Art Ensemble of Chicago for one important example:
leothekim|9 years ago
Truer words have never been said. Jazz wasn't meant to live in the shadows of Coltrane, Ellington, Monk, Bird, or even Miles Davis forever. Sure the history is important, and technique and the theoretical rigor will always be a necessary ingredient, but the moment Jazz stops innovating and expanding is the moment it dies.
shams93|9 years ago
analog31|9 years ago
ap22213|9 years ago
Having a son who's 12, and having recently had a bunch of pre-teens running around my house all going through the timeless ritual of identity crafting, I have gotten to listen to their music, watch their media, and hear their thoughts. When I talk with them about music, it doesn't surprise me that they view the music of my day (80s / 90s) with as much boredom as I had viewed big band music in my day. To them, rock and jazz are Baroque. Guitars and Drums? I might as well play them a harpsichord.
On the other hand, I know several highly skilled, expert musical technicians in their 20s and 30s. They have spent the majority of their lives training to master the practice and theory of music. They know so much about their instruments and their technique, it frankly astounds me. In comparison to dedicated musicians of my day, they seem like masters. Yet, for some reason, they spend their time playing Jazz derivatives and covers or as studio musicians. Interestingly, they're all playing Jazz - which to me is so puzzling. It's akin to being a master visual artist and being absorbed in re-creating Pollack or Rothko or Kadinsky.
Jazz had a moment, and it was a beautiful moment. It can be admired and relished as such, and the music can help transport one to that moment in time. But, does Jazz even make any sense in the modern world? I love listening to some of it - Coltrane and Davis, of course. But, if I went to a music venue today, and the band was playing Jazz, I'd be bored out of my mind.
jdietrich|9 years ago
Jazz musicians are proud to be part of a tradition, just like folk or classical musicians. They see themselves as part of something enduring, something that transcends record sales.
When I hear a young musician play Caravan or In A Sentimental Mood, I don't hear a re-hashing of an old Ellington tune. I hear a conversation that's been going since the 1930s. I hear a new chapter being written in a long story. I hear a torch being passed.
Maybe your son will never connect with jazz. That's fine, jazz isn't for everyone. Somewhere out there, a 12 year old is listening to Bird or Trane or Christian Scott and saving up to buy their first horn. That's all that matters to us - that someone hears our music and is inspired to carry the torch.
leothekim|9 years ago
thangalin|9 years ago
* http://www.apassion4jazz.net/etymology.html
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_(word)#Etymology
> But, if I went to a music venue today, and the band was playing Jazz, I'd be bored out of my mind.
Jazz has many flavours that have long walked hand-in-hand with social dancing. Maybe spend a bit more time exploring its depth? Here's a modern rendition of a timeless classic:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhxSrF0HYnY
Here's a jazzed-up version of "All About That Bass," also easily danced to:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLnZ1NQm2uk
Another classic, "Blue Skies," with some social dancing:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xziwtk1i3A
And one more, showcasing some rather skilled Lindy Hop dancers, a fancy aerial at 1:20, and a modern take on Ellington's "Diga Diga Doo":
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9xxeWRxSbA
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3aJ_9IAIjQ (Ellington)
Here's a remake of "When I Get Low, I Get High":
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acb-js00c40
> But, does Jazz even make any sense in the modern world?
Yes. Try some different jazz venues and find a style that speaks to you.
Ericson2314|9 years ago
This isn't new. There's the oft-maligned Latin Jazz---one reason a lot of synthetic music that happened in Cuba, Brazil, and other such plays was more similar inputs---similar outputs development in parallel. Once you get recorded music + radio, and tourism in Cuba, there's more actual cross-pollination, but there's plenty of stuff before that.
As far as the method goes, obviously improvisation is a big part, but the big picture is Jazz is a social and live music. If Classical is a play, Jazz is a conversation at a Cafe. Sure people listen to recordings, but also classic trane records and others are a lot more sliced and diced than one might think. There's big band too, but what goes on at most schools is a bit suspect without the collectively authored head arrangements. Musically, we have the tradition of a preset harmony and, to a lesser extent form, is the "seed" for everything else, African rhythm, European harmony, and a bunch of unconscious idioms that would be hard to right down without lots of luck and pondering. [There's my cop-out. :)]
As a younger student, I and many others gravitated towards funk, because it's clear (though nobody said so explicitly) that that is the foundation for everything that's popular today (more than rock I'll jeer now that top 40 ate everything :P). The narrative of funk, if you will, is soul musicians' session players striking out of do their own more instrumental/dance focused thing. And those session musicians all had jazz backgrounds. So there's the historical connection, and musically it's largely a similar method, though more emphasis on premeditated groove and rhythm section in general.
TheOtherHobbes|9 years ago
There's nothing inherently creative about artistic technique. At best it gives you a way to express creativity. At worst it's a dead thing you keep repeating over and over because you can't think of anything interesting to say.
Theories of art are a really good way to kill creativity. Music theory can become a huge set of if...thens... and unfortunately even talented people don't always get past that.
The skills you need to be a brilliantly competent session musician or a successful teacher are only distantly related to the skills you need to be an interesting and original music creator.
analog31|9 years ago
I'm one of those musicians who plays jazz. I'm a double bassist and a so called "day jobber," meaning that music is not my primary income source. Am I an expert technician? Sure. A decade of classical lessons, thousands of hours of practice, and 30+ years on the bandstand will do that to you.
Why jazz? Well, for one thing, contemporary popular music doesn't even involve my instrument. I'm obsolete. ;-) And I love the double bass -- the sound, technique, history, contemporary leaders, and even just the sheer absurdity of it. For another, I've developed my jazz chops to the point where my best chance of making further musical progress is to continue with jazz. I don't know where I'd even begin to come up with new ideas in the contemporary pop styles, or how I would turn it into a performance art.
There are a couple more things. While there's certainly a market for contemporary pop music, it's utterly saturated with talent. And pop music has always been youth and appearance oriented. As to how credible a 52 year old guy would be in that scene, I'll leave to the imagination. And the target demographic has been conditioned to expect entertainment to be free. For a non-superstar, the popular scene -- even going back as far as rock & roll, is depressing.
So a few of us who have no prospects in popular music, but enjoy performing with some semblance of dignity, will be drawn to other musical genres. In your locale it may be jazz, but more broadly it's also classical, baroque, fiddle music, accompanying dance clubs, etc. Living near Chicago, there's a lot of blues. Players who are still interested in the electric guitar & bass find outlets in the various forms of heavy metal and rock music, playing small venues that support original music.
Money? Surprisingly, yes. For almost a couple decades, I've had a pretty consistent schedule, of roughly one gig per week. Most of the work is paid, with very little overhead. There's no heavy equipment to set up, and commercial gigs such as weddings and corporate events are un-rehearsed. I've never had to go on tour. At the same time, rock bands find it almost prohibitive to break into paid work, because the established players tend to corner the market on the good commercial work.
Another surprise is that an audience will crawl out of the woodwork when good music is being performed. Not a huge audience, and not necessarily a drinking audience, which severely limits the economics. But people will come. Some are musically omnivorous, or even like newer styles, but show up because we still know how to entertain, and we can perform without driving you to deafness.
So I'll never claim to understand the economics of the music business, but it seems to me that there are little niches where people can enjoy performing with dignity while opting out of the mainstream popular music scene.
My kids, both teenagers, have shown no interest in either jazz or popular music, as musicians. They both prefer classical.
pasquinelli|9 years ago
jazz is a loaded term. i like ahmad jamal's term for what people usually mean when they talk about jazz, "american classical music". when i think of jazz i'm thinking about a certain kind of attitude toward music where the performer is putting life into the music the way you might think of an actor putting life into a script. makes a lot of sense in the modern world, i think, where selling recordings makes less and less sense but live performances are still relevant.
zhemao|9 years ago
Because that's the kind of music they like to play and know best. If they went to music school, jazz and classical are the dominant music styles that are taught. Also, you can make a pretty good living as a studio musician. It's much less risky than trying to sell your own albums as a solo artist.
> Interestingly, they're all playing Jazz - which to me is so puzzling. It's akin to being a master visual artist and being absorbed in re-creating Pollack or Rothko or Kadinsky.
No, it's like a painter creating their own works with Pollack, Rothko, and Kadinsky as key influences.
You think they should do the musical equivalent of a master painter taking a job at an graphic design firm? Plenty of them do, actually, you got to pay the bills somehow. That's what being a studio musician is.
> Jazz had a moment, and it was a beautiful moment. It can be admired and relished as such, and the music can help transport one to that moment in time. But, does Jazz even make any sense in the modern world?
As the article mentions, Jazz is changing with the times, as it always has. The music that Coltrane and Miles played in the '50s and '60s was quite different from what the New Orleans bands of the early 20th century were playing. It's funny you should mention Miles because he lived and played through several eras of jazz (and was the pioneer of several of them). He also expressed an ambivalence towards his earlier work.
> " "So What" or Kind of Blue, they were done in that era, the right hour, the right day, and it happened. It's over [...] What I used to play with Bill Evans, all those different modes, and substitute chords, we had the energy then and we liked it. But I have no feel for it anymore, it's more like warmed-over turkey."
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million. So instead of trying to explain it more, here's a jazz track released last year. Tell me if it sounds boring or old-fashioned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv3SzjFIa-s
> But, if I went to a music venue today, and the band was playing Jazz, I'd be bored out of my mind.
If I went to a music venue today and they were playing hip hop I would be similarly bored. Turns out different people have different tastes.
As for why you'd go and listen to someone cover a song from Kind of Blue: jazz is mainly improvisational. That means even if they play "So What", it won't be note-for-note the same as the version on that historic record. Hearing the ideas that the musicians create in the moment by listening and responding to their bandmates is the reason I love jazz.
erikschoster|9 years ago
http://www.npr.org/books/titles/138018824/a-power-stronger-t...
coldtea|9 years ago
leothekim|9 years ago