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Scullars
Regular Poster
Username: Scullars
Post Number: 35
Registered: 02-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 21, 2004 - 03:03 pm: | 
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Here is an interesting article by Mark Reynolds in pop Matters that I found surfing. It speaks on some of the issues discussed here.
http://www.popmatters.com/columns/reynolds/041020.shtml |
Thumper
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 302
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 21, 2004 - 08:03 pm: |
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Hello All,
Thanks for that very interesting article. Yes, we have been discussing this very thing for a long while now. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 1641
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 05:01 pm: |
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This article certainly mirrored the opinions expressed on this board. And let's face it. The hand-writing is on the wall. Hip-hop lit is here to stay! |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 740
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 23, 2004 - 10:25 am: |
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Cynique:
It will stay until the next big thing comes along. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 1660
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 23, 2004 - 12:14 pm: |
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But hip-hop lit has established its niche in the publishing industry, and has earned "genre" status. |
Njanene
Newbie Poster
Username: Njanene
Post Number: 14
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 23, 2004 - 10:31 pm: |
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As a Bookseller, I have to tell you that I find the interest in hip-hop fiction books slowing down. This may be a creature of the market as a whole (books sales have slowed), but I think that the market is becoming saturated. Eventually, there may be a few established authors that will make decent sales, such as Vickie Stringer, Shannon Holmes, Nikki Turner, and Teri Woods, however, the others will have minimal sales, at best. |
Njanene
Newbie Poster
Username: Njanene
Post Number: 16
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 23, 2004 - 10:46 pm: |
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If you want a clear example on the slowing sales of hip-hop, visit Amazon and search for some hip-hop fiction titles. You will notice that Amazon has stopped discounting them (not all, but most).
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Steve_s
Newbie Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 13
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 30, 2004 - 03:38 pm: |
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It's a good article and I think it's cool that Mark Reynolds uses a jazz analogy, but I think it's problematic to say that The Known World is jazz and street lit is smooth jazz because, first of all, if you turn it around and ask "What kind of literature is Coltrane's 'Giant Steps,' a novel, short story, a biography, etc.?" it doesn't really work. Okay, that's a bad example because there really is a biography called Giant Steps, Kareem Abdul Jabar's, but you catch my drift.
Also, I always get the feeling that when jazz or any music (but especially black music) is used in this way, that it's a kind of encoded expression for race in some sense. This is something that Walter Mosley mentions all too briefly in a little political monograph called Working on the Chain Gang, subtitled 'Shaking off the dead chains of history' (or something like that), which I think is a very good book that uses the black American experience as a "candle in the darkness," as i think he called it, for all Americans. But he does describe music as an often "thinly-veiled code" in our society, which, ironically, may drive a large segment of the music business, I don't know. So the author of this column may have seen the movie about the Navajo "code talkers" and fancies himself a "wind talker" (just kidding).
I don't read street lit, but I wouldn't call it smooth jazz because the obviously better analogy is hip-hop. And I don't know that I'd call The Known World "jazz" either, I think I might call it blues. That's because I read somewhere that the author figured it all out in his head over a period of about ten years and then spent a year transcribing or writing it. You could compare it to someone like Haruki Murakami who started A Wild Sheep Chase from nothing and then just improvised it. Once again, the whole analogy may be meaningless and I'm not a writer so I don't have much insight into that creative process. But let's say that The Known World is very syncopated or what I assume Cornel West means by jazz inflected.
For decades now, Invisible Man has been described as jazz for a number of reasons. But I think a better example might be to call Touré's The Portable Promised Land "smooth jazz" (just my opinion) and Ishmael Reed's "Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down" "jazz" (or specifically bebop). As a cultural cross-cutting wild card, I'll throw in an example of Jack Kerouac's "Bop Prosody" style.
Compare Toure's short story about the bebope saxophone player, Sugarlips Shinehot, to Reed's novel which is not about jazz, but they're both examples of orality and black vernacular associated with jazz, although Reed's book contains a wide variety of vernacular, jargon, pop cultural references, etc. For instance, have you ever heard this radio personality "Baxter Black (he's white), cowboy philosopher and small-animal veterinarian"? He might talk about Thanksgiving this way: "I was hungrier than a coyote at a leg 'o lamb convention," or something like that. Reed uses some of that cowboy vernacular too (which may ironically also be "black" in origin, I don't know).
I was reading Sonny Rollins' interview in the new book by Terry Gross of NPR (which also includes a Walter Mosley interview in which he explains that he couldn't have a bar mitzvah so the Jewish and black sides of his family got together and threw him a big party when he turned thirteen). But Rollins describes a period in his life when he was homeless as "carrying the stick." Never heard of that.
As far as bop writing, I haven't read anything as good as Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down (although, admittedly, there's a lot I haven't read). I can't post it, but here are some of my interpretations of the phraseology. Except for the first one (the meaning behind the name "Loop Garoo Kid," which is from Ishmael Reed himself), they're my interpretations, although I'm probably wrong on a lot of it:
The Loop Garoo Kid = a derivation of cowboy movie hero "Lash LaRue" (who always wore black) and "loup garou," French for werewolf.
"moved from town to town quoting Thomas Jefferson," "a funny blue hippo....drummed out of each tribe, publicly dressed down, his medals ripped off" = a court-martialled black Union soldier
86-D = eighty-sixed or outcast
non-academic painters = press photographers
show someone their notices = flattery
Diane aka Black Diane (Loop's old lady who's got his nose open) = Mary Magdalene
three drunken reporters, winos = apostles
jive fur trapper who's always handing Loop subpoenas = the Nazz
hire some bounty hunters to put a claim on one's lost territory = joking reference to 40 acres and a mule
loot-in = looting, in the spirit of a love-in or be-in
wore people under his coat although none of them would pull it for him = a controlling person unaware of others' resentment
The Flying Brush Beeve Monster (the Indians' helicopter) = an ill-iteration of "beautiful balloon" from the pop song by the Fifth Dimension
anything capable of 'groovy up up and' always strikes terror in their hearts = Bo Shmo and the neo-social realists are afraid of women
Royal Flush Gooseman = composite of two Robber Barons, "Royal Flush" = Rocke Feller, "goose is to geese as moose is to meese' = geeseman = George Eastman!
Theda Blackburn = J. Edgar Hoover
etc. . .
Here's the Touré to compare. It's easily understandable, for one thing:
>THE SAD, SWEET STORY OF SUGAR LIPS SHINEHOT, THE MAN WITH THE PORTABLE PROMISED LAND
>... Back durin them two months Sugar Lips was top dog, even Charlie Parker was scared ah him cuz any time Sugar Lips wrapped them thick, pillow-soft lips round a mouthpiece he swung hard nuf to make rain, thunder, and lightnin stop and pay attention. Womenfolk paid, too. They say one night ol' Satchmo threw a party and Lena Horne, Katherine Dunham, and Mahdaymoyzell Josephine Baker all went by Satchmo's hopin to have they lips caressed and massaged by some sugar lips. Quiet as it's kept, not a few men was there for that, too. As the night lost its pigment, word ah the widely shared thought got round and by time that night had turned high-yaller they had the biggest catfight you could imagine up in there ...
>Sugar Lips had always been pretty good wit a horn, though he never struck fear in nobody until he locked hisself up in his apartment on 166th and St. Nicholas for nine months, blowin til the paint cracked from the heat from his horn. That's when he knew he could smoke like West Hell. So he looked out his window, saw the sun was in bed snorin hard, throwed on his jacket and porkpie hat, rolled on over to Minton's where Bird and them was inventin bebop, and walked in the way you walk in when you know you bad.
>Minton's was a do-or-die sorta joint for jazz cats, where someone who blew the crowd away could become the king ah Harlem, but mos cats got blown away by dudes like Bird, Dizzy, and Monk, and if ya got blown away it was likely some patron would snatch ya off the stage, take ya out back, and whip ya head til it's flat like a dime. It was that sorta spot. But when Sugar Lips leapt up on the bandstand he started to blowin some horn blowin like no one else belonged in the blowin bizness. Drinks stop bein served, reefers stop bein sold, and a couple that had been in the batroom blendin pulled up they draws and ran out to hear that horn.
>Bird hisself happened to be under the bandstand sleepin at the time and woke up, grabbed his horn, and started a cuttin contest. He went at Sugar Lips hard as he could, notes spittin from is horn as fast and furious as Negroes runnin in a riot, but from the git-go Sugar Lips was scorchin through solo after solo, gettin that crown whoopin and hollerin, shoutin and stompin, and when he blew into his last solo he was swingin so hard a few women fainted, a few men cried, and anyone anywhere near the joint thought the Holy Rollers was havin service wit the Holy Ghost hisself as guest preacher. By the time he finished the sun had had a cup of coffee and Sugar Lips had even Bird admittin he'd outbirded Bird...
>... "Sugar Lips," Gabriel said, "May I introduce my boss, Reverend Scratch."
>"I thought his name was Doctor LeBub."
>"The Reverend has many names," Gabriel said. "But enough idle talk. For a small price Reverend Scratch will do what you wish -- he will remove the white man from the earth as you know it. Ad infinitum.
>"What's the price?" Sugar Lips said.
Kerouac's Bop Prosody style is spoken-wordy. It seems "black" though, not just content-wise. Nuts, but I like it:
THE BEGINNING OF BOP
1959
>Bop began with jazz but one afternoon somewhere on a sidewalk maybe 1939, 1940, Dizzy Gillespie or Charley Parker or Thelonious Monk was walking down past a men's clothing store on 42nd Street or South Main in L.A. and from the loudspeaker they suddenly heard a wild impossible mistake in jazz that could only have been heard inside their own imaginary head, and that is a new art. Bop. The name derives from an accident, America was named after an Italian explorer and not after an Indian king. Lionel Hampton had made a record called "Hey Baba Ree Bop," and everybody yelled it and it was when Lionel would jump in the audience and whale his saxophone at everybody with sweat, claps, jumping fools in the aisles, the drummer booming and belaboring on his stage as the whole theater rocked. Sung by Helen Humes it was a popular record and sold many copies in 1945, 1946. First everyone looked around then it happened -- bop happened -- the bird flew in -- minds went in -- on the streets thousands of new-type hep cats in red shirts and some goatees and strange queerlooking cowboys from the West with boots and belts, and the girls began to disappear from the street -- you no longer saw as in the Thirties the wrangler walking with his doll in the honkytonk, now he was alone, rebop, bop, came into being because the broads were leaving the guys and going off to be middleclass models. Dizzy or Charley or Thelonious was walking down the street, heard a noise, a sound, half Lester Young, half raw-rainy-fog that has that chest-shivering excitement of shack, track, empty lot, the sudden vast Tiger head on the woodfence rainy no-school Saturday morning dumpyards, "Hey!" and rushed off dancing.
>On the piano that night Thelonious introduced a wooden off-key note to everybody's warmup notes, Minton's Playhouse, evening starts, jam hours later, 10 p.m., colored bar and hotel next door, one or two white visitors some from Columbia some from Nowhere -- some from ships -- some from Army Navy Air Force Marines -- some from Europe -- The strange note makes the trumpeter of the band lift an eyebrow. Dizzy is surprised for the first time that day. He puts the trumpet to lips and blows a wet blur --
>"Hee ha ha!" laughs Charley Parker bending down to slap his ankle. He puts his alto to his mouth and says "Didn't I tell you?" -- with jazz of notes -- Talking eloquent like great poets of foreign languages singing in foreign countries with lyres, by seas, and no one understands because the language isn't alive in the land yet -- Bop is the language from America's inevitable Africa, going
is sounded like gong, Africa is the name of the flue and kick beat, off to one side -- the sudden squeak uninhibited that screams muffled at any moment from Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet -- do anything you want -- drawing the tune aside along another improvisation bridge with a reach-out tear of claws, why be subtle and false? |
Thumper
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 305
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, October 31, 2004 - 02:02 pm: |
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Hello All,
Steve_s: I hear what your saying but I have to disagree with you. Well, not that I disagree but my idea of jazz writing is from another perspective than yours. My thinking of writing written in a muscial idiom is different than yours. For me, it's all music, something that I can hear. When it comes to literature, I can hear the prose: the rhythym, melody of the words. True I can't hear it with my physical ear, but I can see it with my mind eye and hear it with my mind ear. For instance, one reason I love Faulkner so much is that I can hear the melodies he creates within his sentences and how those sentences flow into the movement that makes up his whole novel, pretty much like an symphony. With that I can say that it's written in the jazz idiom or a blues idiom. So jazz writing, to me, doesn't necessarily mean writing about jazz or jazz musicians, but the "music" of the words, and how the words being strung together makes a melody. I'm not saying that I would classify Faulkner as jazz writing, actually it more or less reminds me of a Puccini opera. I would classify Toni Morrison is more of a jazz writer, but not of the Miles Davis or Coltrane ilk. Morrison is more of the Pete Johnson jazz, melodic, with a heavy hand left that brings about a bold, strong, lyrical intelligent sound.
All that having been said, like the audible jazz, whether its good or not, whether one consider it bad or good, or not jazz at all; it's all up to the beholder. This is just my side of it. |
Steve_s
Newbie Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 15
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, November 01, 2004 - 04:32 pm: |
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Thank you man, call me Steve. I can tell that you're attuned to the music of words and I've copied what you've written to my computer. Vincent O. Carter's novel, Such Sweet Thunder, is the first novel I've read that made me say "Ah, this is what they mean by writing in a jazz idiom." There's one mention of Big Joe Turner but I think that's the only musical reference.
I haven't read Faulkner. I've been meaning to. I picked up a book by a Caribbean author, Martinecan, a professor at the City University of New York. His name is Edouard Glissant. I have the Ellison essays on Faulkner and I think there's another in Stanley Crouch's new book which I've only started. I don't really know where to start with Faulkner.
This is another area I was thinking about; the writing process:
JAMES McBRIDE
on
Writing Fiction
Writing fiction is like playing jazz. There are no foreseen rules, no maps, no music to read; the audience doesn't understand harmony, theory, chord changes. They only know what works for them because the ear doesn't lie. But underneath the freedom of jazz are dozens and dozens of rules, even prescribed social behaviors. Fiction is the same. It allows you to extrapolate from the facts, the melody, to create what is real and what is not, but as a writer you are not free. In fact, fiction is less "free" than nofiction, because nonfiction is rooted in facts you have chosen to write about. Fiction is the more restrictive. You are a spectator to history, in a sense. You are the soloist and the characters are the bandleaders, the Duke Ellingtons and Count Basies. They present the song, and you must play it as they determine. You can solo within the song and do what you may, but ultimately they, not you, determine what the song is and how it should be played. >>
I loved James McBride's memoir. So naturally I read his novel which was good too. And I heard a little of his CD. He's good, like a lot of us are who aren't Michael Brecker, Branford Marsalis, et al. We practice, go to school, study theory and harmony, transcribe solos and play with a lot of musicians, maybe work as a sideman for somebody. I think he went to Oberlin.
I can almost understand what sounds like a contradiction: first, no foreseen rules, and then dozens and dozens of rules. But I can not wrap my mind around fiction being less free than nonfiction.
In the Pop Matters article, Mark Reynolds talks about "smooth jazz" as opposed to "real jazz." If Grover Washington originated the style, which I think he did, then I would call smooth jazz a kind of jazz. But there is no "real jazz," there's free jazz, bebop, and many other styles of jazz, including smooth jazz.
Say I don't like pop art, I like "real art." What do I mean by real art? There's cubism, abstract expressionism, and prehistoric art. It doesn't really mean anything to me to say one likes "real" art.
I know James McBride is on to something, but maybe a non-writer can't really understand.
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Carey
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Carey
Post Number: 339
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, November 01, 2004 - 08:47 pm: |
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Hello Steve
I've been seeing you drop in every so often and I ALWAYS enjoy reading your posts. You are not trying to be "something" or flexing just for the ego thang, you're the real thang. Thanks again for keeping us on your mind. The house in my opinion has taken a turn in a direction that doesn't really sit well with me but hey, I am only this one little nobody that is not runing a thang so I just go with the flow and pray that things get better. I know I am not in the minority on this issue but hey, again it's just my opinion.
Anyway Steve thanbks again and believe me when I say you're the man. No matter what goes on around here there will always be individuals like you that keep me coming back.
Carey |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 1774
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, November 01, 2004 - 11:26 pm: |
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Steve, I'm not sure if you're knocking jazz elitism, but if you are, I agree with you. The idea that there is only one true jazz doesn't mesh with other forms of art which acknowledge the legitimacy of genre. Pulp fiction, or French impressionism are simply territories in the geography of their spheres, as should be the case in the different styles of jazz, be they "neo" or "retro." Quality does come in degrees but exemplifying the best of a kind should be worthy of recognition. I am, however, surprised that you would say that Jazz demands conformity. Isn't it improvisational and experimental and about variations on a theme? Would you say that Ornette Coleman is disciplined? Could his music be written down? |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 1775
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, November 01, 2004 - 11:33 pm: |
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Why are you such a gloomy gus, Carey? All you have to do is start a thread about a subject that interests you and others will provide their input.They may not agree with you but then that's what makes discussions interesting. It's also within your power to keep a subject on track and even bring a thread to a close. All you have to do is exercise this option. |
Carey
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Carey
Post Number: 340
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 02, 2004 - 04:06 am: |
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Why are you such a fakey gal, Cynique? All you have to do is be real. Listen at you stumbling all over yourself talking about Jazz in which it's obvious YOU know little about. It's also within your power to refrain from making statements like "I am also surprised to hear you say that Jazz demands conformity". Cynique, All you have to do is exercise this option and stop with the "isn't "jazz" improvisational and experimental and about variations on a theme". Please Cyn, don't be so fake, it makes us all look bad  . Psssssssst...................don't. |
Carey
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Carey
Post Number: 341
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 02, 2004 - 04:18 am: |
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I almost forgot, since you obviously know little about jazz, my post probably had you scratching your head. Your statement of "does jazz demand comformity" is akin to someone saying "I am surprised to hear that flying a jet plane takes any kind of skills" "Don't you just move the throttle to the left and then back to the right"?
While you're handing out suggestions why don't you exercise your obtion to |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 1777
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 02, 2004 - 09:08 am: |
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I don't need to fake it to make you look bad, Carey.Since you are a such jazz expert why me don't you respond to my comments instead of griping. Do you know what the word "conformity" means? Are you familiar with be-bop. What is it conforming to? Are you familiar with Theolonius Monk? What is he conforming to? Are you familiar with Ornette Coleman? What is he conforming to? Jazz came into existence by breaking the rules, not conforming to them. All jazz musicians ad lib, and that was why I was surprised by Steve's comment. I was hoping he would respond and enlighten me because he is so brilliant. |
Sisg
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Sisg
Post Number: 129
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 02, 2004 - 04:00 pm: |
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Hey,
Have any of you heard of a book called "Dead Bitch Army," by Andre Duva (i think). I just read some excerpts online and it is quite interesting. It's a horror/socio-political farce. Well, if you get a chance check it out, I enjoyed the excerpts so much, i'm ordering the book. |
Thumper
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 308
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 02, 2004 - 07:02 pm: |
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Hello All,
Steve: I love what McBride wrote! Yes, I am in agreement. But, I would say that that is more with creating art, knowing the rules and then breaking them; thereby pushing the limit of what is standard or acceptable. And not because what has been done or what an artist is trying to do is wrong, just that there's no reason (based on the rules) that it is wrong.
With that sentiment in mind, yes, this certainly applies to jazz music and writing. Speaking for me, this is why I love jazz, from its beginning to Be Bop. With most of the artist, you KNEW what song they were playing, after that recognition that he/she is playing "If I Were A Bell" for example, only then would the artist start to improvise. And since no artist improvisation sound the same as any other artist, hell, no true jazz musician or musician period will play a song the same way twice. Because his music is an expression of how he/she is feeling at that time coupled with technique and knowledge of the framework he/she is working in. But you know by the tone, phrasing, et al, who that artist is no matter what music he's playing. For instance, you can never mistaken Monk for Errol Garner, or Ahmad Jamal for Bud Powell.
The same is true for writers. Faulkner can not write like Fitzgerald. Morrison can never be mistaken for Welty. But each of these writers have pushed the limit, broken and stretched a rule or two in their writing; but they all KNEW the rules.
This thread, along with the other thread I started concerning Prose, I am answering with this one post. Which explains why I'm going on and on when I now see your point and agree with it.
As far as Faulkner is concern, if you choose to start reading Faulkner, start with As I Lay Dying. Let me know what you think of it if you read it. |
Steve_s
Newbie Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 17
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 03, 2004 - 09:14 pm: |
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Carey, thanks a million, I really appreciate your friendly words.
All:
I agree with Mark Reynolds that people who listen to Kenny G don't "graduate" to listening to John Coltrane. People always claim that, but I haven't found it to be the case. I would think the same thing applies to urban literature, even though I don't read it. It might someday cross over though, but what good will that do? In the current Black Issues there's a discussion of urban fiction in which Walter Mosley says that at least urban fiction fans are reading and that it might lead them to a Twain or a Mosley. I think that's optimistic but it's very possible that someone who reads an urban fiction book might then pick up a Mosley, however I don't know about a Twain. You've heard of highbrow and lowbrow art but have you ever heard the term "middlebrow" art? It used to be a put-down in the sixties, LeRoi Jones used it, but it has some precedent in the other arts, and that's something I've been reading about.
Reynolds is right about the qualitative differences between a Known World and a typical urban fiction book (aren't there different types though, like: pulp romance, crime fiction, etc.?), but I don't think that quality is the sole defining characteristic of art. I think the same applies to smooth jazz (or "instrumental R&B," if you want to call it that. Some of those musicians are good players who just choose to play that style of music, static though it may be). Thumper had me go check out Pete Johnson, so take Piet Mondrian's painting "Broadway Boogie Woogie" for example, Neo-Plasticism and all that.
http://www.moma.org/collection/depts/paint_sculpt/blowups/paint_sculpt_018.html
How do you use the criteria of some other art to judge this painting? Does it have "complexity" as Reynolds requires? No, it uses primary colors (and it obviously has a black influence since boogie woogie is a piano style and the word is probably derived from I think the Bantu: mbuki mvuki).
Cynique, Ornette Coleman was an immediate critical success when he opened at the Five Spot in 1959. Leonard Bernstein was there (Miles stood at the bar with his back turned to the stage) and LB and John Lewis of the MJQ whisked him off to the Berkshires or wherever. Did other jazz musicians stop playing the way they were playing, i.e. using complex harmony? No, not immediately, anyway. When abstract art was in vogue did artists stop learning how to DRAW? No, not all of them. That's why I think that although all of us, including Mark Reynolds, may have good taste, there are other forces at play that determine what is "real art." Take Reynolds' examples of real jazz: "modern masters like David Murray and Andrew Hill, not to mention the likes of Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk."
Everybody knows that Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk are jazz greats, but who is David Murray? He's a brilliant saxophonist who, the last time I heard him, played in a free style rather than on chord changes. But what's interesting is that he came to New York in the seventies with Stanley Crouch. After their falling out, I think he's now affiliated with Baraka. Nice to have your own personal poet or poets. But my point is that as jazz critics, Crouch and Baraka are the two biggest movers and shakers in jazz in the last forty years, and yet Baraka, who had a lot of influence in the jazz of the sixties, is often not mentioned any more (like the art critic I've been reading about. I think there are some serious parallels between the abstract art criticism of the '40s and '50s and the avant garde jazz movement of the '60s).
The book I read is "Clement Greenberg: A Life" by Florence Rubenfeld. (I first heard about this notorious modern art critic in the context of a symposium about jazz criticism called "Blues for Clement Greenberg," around the time Stanley Crouch was fired from the jazz magazine). Martha Bayles is a professor of literature at the Claremont Colleges where Crouch used to teach:
Stanley Crouch: I wrote one article for Jazz Times in which I was saying that there was a very small group of innovators in the forties and fifties, people like Charlie Parker, Mingus, Bud Powell, Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Clarke, Max Roach, Ray Brown, Oscar Pettiford. Now, what was everybody else supposed to do? Stop playing? One of the things I pointed out is that if you read jazz criticism, you would basically conclude that during the sixties, there were two major tenor sax players, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, with Wayne Shorter being number three and maybe Albert Ayler being four. Now, all of that saxophone that people like Joe Henderson, Charlie Rouse, Hank Mobley, Lockjaw Davis, and Paul Gonsalves were playing; these are great jazz individualists, and why should a young saxophonist only know that there were only about four guys, when there were a number of tenor players who didn't play like Coltrane or Sonny Rollins? They just fall off the map. Loren and I were talking earlier that if you don't know jazz, you wouldn't even know that Don Byas existed. You would hear there was Coleman Hawkins, then Lester Young came up with an alternative to Hawkins, then Dexter Gordon came along and then Charlie Parker. People like Don Byas just disappear in jazz, and they have something very rich to offer.
Martha Bayles: It's the mentality in the visual arts that can be traced right back to a guy named Clement Greenberg, and that school of criticism. These folks came out of a Marxist tradition. They were not Stalinists, they were Trotskyites who believed in cutting-edge arts that would push the world toward a socialist future. Don't ask me why they believed this, but they believed it. Greenberg's most famous book of essays is Art and Culture, in which he praises all of the modernist artists of the hour, including Pollock and the abstract expressionists -- anybody he can get his mitts on. They are always praised in the same terms. They are the avant-garde in the political sense, they are the leading cutting-edge not only of artistic change, but by implication of social and political change. This is the mentality that many of the critics work from. I don't think half of these people can tell you where they get their ideas from, but that is where they get them from. There is a vacuum at the heart of it, because they don't really think that the latest avant-garde jazz artist is going to cause a political revolution, but it is still this idea that there is a single cutting-edge, that history is moving forward, that we are marching into the future. It is all that way of thinking. I think somewhere in your column, Stanley, you talk about the idea of art always making progress. We need to question that idea. Is Mozart a mere precursor to Anton Webern? It doesn't pay to look at art that way. That is not how it works. <<<
It's an interesting book, although I get the feeling it might be more sympathetic than he deserves, based on his reputation. He could be pretty vicious and could make and break people in the arts. First he was a literary critic and then art critic at The Partisan Review in the '30s and '40s when Kafka was the rage. Greenberg and most of the New York intelligentsia at the "little magazines" were coming from a Marxist background, as she says. Greenberg was a really smart guy who was almost singlehandedly responsible for the success of American abstract expressionism, including artists like Jackson Pollock. He believed that abstract expressionism was the art that defined his era and all other art was less important. He had no background in art history, was often completely ignorant of the artist's color theories (like Mondrian's, in his review), but he was able to express something about the art he loved which created interest in the art world. I think that many of the ideas in the free jazz movement in the 1960s may have been influenced by his school of criticism. In the sixties, jazz was aligned with the freedom movement and cultural nationalsim. But the belief that jazz had moved beyond chordally-based improvisation is very similar to what Greenberg believed about figurative art. Plus, he beat people up!
In 1963 Blues People was published and at about the same time, the author, LeRoi Jones, became a very influential jazz critic at Downbeat Magazine. That year he also organized the October Revolution in Jazz (obviously after the Bolshevik October Revolution of 1917) which I think was a Greenwich Village festival with people like Archie Shepp and Bill Dixon. Blues People is a unique book which I'd describe as a sociology-musicology hybrid of black music. As a critic in the sixties, he was very influential in the success of the jazz avant garde. But by about 1969, except for Ornette and some others, the style had run its course.
Thumper, thanks for the recommendation. |
Cynique
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Username: Cynique
Post Number: 1784
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, November 04, 2004 - 12:07 am: |
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Gee, Steve, I'm overwhelmed! My only point was that I was sorta kinda playing around with the idea that an artist can be good at being mudane. Also, to me, jazz could be the original inspiration for the term "thinking outside the box." Incidentally, I have heard of Don Byas and I think the reason I remember his name is that I've heard his records. And for some reason, when I hear his name I also think of saxophonist Johnny Hodges who played with Duke Ellington. They may have been wailers but their ballads are what stick in my memory. Whatever. I am not a jazz aficionado, and as they say, I may not know art, but I know what I like. Traditional Jazz is really very cerebral and I am probably too willing to settle for the ear candy of someone like Paul Desmond. But, who could not like "Body and Soul" by Coleman Hawkins or "These Foolish Things" and "DB Blues" by Lester Young? Or anything by Charlie Parker? Not to mention all of the jazz pianists and guitarists who were musical geniuses. |
Steve_s
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, November 04, 2004 - 06:26 pm: |
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Cynique, sorry, that wasn't all addressed to you! I didn't know what you meant when you thought I said that all jazz demands conformity. I would never think that, I like a lot of different styles, just like literature. I've started As I Lay Dying. Before that I read Philip Roth's new book, The Plot Against America, and before that, The Master by Colm Toibin, a novel about Henry James.
Don Byas and Ben Webster spent the last years of their lives in the Netherlands, married Dutch women (at least Don Byas did, I'm not sure about Ben Webster). I saw their instruments in a museum there. I don't have any Don Byas recordings right now except the Charlie Parker ones where he's a sideman. He did a tribute to Cannonball which was excellent, don't know if it's been issued on CD. He was more of a bop player than Hodges. Johnny Hodges didn't play fast. Paul Gonsalves (the tenor player with Duke Ellington) is someone I never listened to a lot when I was younger but I appreciate more now.
Hey I just listened to Take 1 of Free Jazz, I noticed you had listened to it.
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Cynique
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Username: Cynique
Post Number: 1790
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, November 04, 2004 - 08:58 pm: |
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Steve, my reference to "conformity" stemmed from your comparing fiction to jazz and saying that beneath the surface, there were so many rules to be followed, and that ultimatly the musician had to adhere to the composer's concept. I guess we weren't really on the same page in this discussion. Because I always think of jazz as being spontaneous, allowing a lot of freedom of self expression and what I was picturing were jazz combos standing onstage wailing away, and I guess what you had in mind were big bands seated before music stands, swinging away. Actually, this conversation is kinda jazzy, isn't it? We seemed to be playing off of each other. We've yet to hit the same note, but that's all right. |
Steve_s
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, November 05, 2004 - 07:34 am: |
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Cynique, I was quoting James McBride. Those were his ideas, not mine. Like you, I'm skeptical about comparing fiction to jazz and especially the idea of big band leaders (or small combos, for that matter) directing the was a writer writes fiction. Thumper interpreted McBrides statement in terms of "breaking the rule." Now that I agree with. But I don't yet understand McBride's analogy, so I saved what Thumper said in order to think about it.
Here's what McBride said:
Writing fiction is like playing jazz. There are no foreseen rules, no maps, no music to read; the audience doesn't understand harmony, theory, chord changes. They only know what works for them because the ear doesn't lie. But underneath the freedom of jazz are dozens and dozens of rules, even prescribed social behaviors. Fiction is the same. It allows you to extrapolate from the facts, the melody, to create what is real and what is not, but as a writer you are not free. In fact, fiction is less "free" than nofiction, because nonfiction is rooted in facts you have chosen to write about. Fiction is the more restrictive. You are a spectator to history, in a sense. You are the soloist and the characters are the bandleaders, the Duke Ellingtons and Count Basies. They present the song, and you must play it as they determine. You can solo within the song and do what you may, but ultimately they, not you, determine what the song is and how it should be played.
If writing fiction is like playing jazz, then it should be logical that playing jazz is like writing fiction. If writing is divided into fiction and nonfiction with one being more free and the other less free, then suppose we divide jazz into "outside jazz" and "inside jazz," and turn everything around:
Writing fiction is like playing outside jazz. There are no foreseen rules and the readers don't understand linguistic, stylistic and rhetorical devices. They only know what works for them because the mind's eye doesn't lie. But underneath the freedom of literature are dozens and dozens of rules, even prescribed social behaviors. Outside jazz is the same. It allows you to extrapolate from the facts - the plot - to create what is real and what is not, but as a musician you are not free. In fact, outside jazz is less "free" than inside jazz, because inside jazz is rooted in facts you have chosen to blow about. Outside jazz is the more restrictive. You are a spectator to history, in a sense. You are the scribe and the songs are the writers, the James Baldwins (preach it) and Ralph Ellisons (swing it 'til ya drop). They present the plot, and you must write it as they determine. You can digress within the story and do what you may, but ultimately they, not you, determine what the story is and how it should be written.
That's what it sounds like to me, it makes no sense. |
Cynique
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Post Number: 1792
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, November 05, 2004 - 11:35 am: |
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Thank you for clearing things up. I would still be interested in hearing your comparison between big band swing music and small combo jazz; between Count Basie and Miles Davis. |
Steve_s
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, November 05, 2004 - 02:55 pm: |
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These are some CDs mostly from the 90s, some reissues, that I find myself playing over and over again. This is besides the classic Blue Note recordings like Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, et al. All of this stuff is modern straight ahead jazz:
Joe Henderson:
Double Rainbow: The Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim
Lush Life: The Music of Billy Strayhorn
Branford Marsalis:
Contemporary Jazz
Royal Garden Blues
Joshua Redman:
Passage of Time
Timeless Tales for Changing Times
Beyond
Wish
The Fire Within -- Don Braden
Songbook -- Kenny Garrett
John Scofield (with Joe Lovano):
Meant to Be
Time on My Hands
Joe Lovano:
Quartets: Live at the Village Vanguard
Far East Suite -- Duke Ellington
Cannonball Takes Charge -- Julian Cannonball Adderley
Pure Getz -- Stan Getz
Charles McPherson:
Come Play With Me
Manhattan Nocturne
Voyage -- Phil Woods
Stardust -- Ron Carter (with Benny Golson)
I'm not so much into big bands. How about you?
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Steve_s
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, November 05, 2004 - 03:01 pm: |
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Oh, it's all guys on these CDs (just like Moby Dick, except that even MD had two minor women characters). Renee Rosnes is a great jazz pianist, I have one of her CDs. Terri Lynn Carrington is on one of the new Wayne Shorter CDs I think. I like Dianne Reeves. |
Cynique
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Post Number: 1794
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, November 05, 2004 - 04:25 pm: |
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Well, I like the big bands like Count Basie and Duke Ellington and even Stan Kenton. And big band pioneers like Jimmy Lunceford and Earl "Fatha" Hines surely are worthy of note. That's what I keep snagging on in this discussion. Swing musicians played sheet music and were directed by a leader. And jazz musicians just seemed to wing it, just kinda being in rapport with each other within the framework of bridges and codas. And I am really not that familiar with the new straight-ahead breed of jazz artists. I'm stuck in the 50s and 60s with all the old favorites like Miles Davis and Clifford Brown, Lester Young and Charlie Parker, and Ahmad Jamal and Oscar Petersen and Errol Garner and Wes Montgomery, not to mention Dave Brubeck and Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker. So you see I'm not really a hard core jazz fanatic. |
Steve_s
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, November 05, 2004 - 05:01 pm: |
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I'm not either. I was a sideman with an organist who may have read Erskine Caldwell. I think it's cool that you like all those people. I do too. Earl Hines is one I haven't listened to much. You can listen to him and a lot of early jazz at this Web site (click on either bands or musicians):
http://www.redhotjazz.com/ |
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