What is Jazz

[RichardT]

@Awjoe - I agree! There are some improvisers who have great skill and musicianship but don’t seem to have the ability to create something original or beautiful.

[RichardT]

@Oneworld - I’m not saying freedom and discipline are mutually exclusive - I think true freedom as an improviser comes when the player has internalised the changes, the scales and the musical ideas.

As Charlie Parker said - ‘learn the changes, then forget them’

I think what he meant is exactly what I’m saying - discipline first, and then freedom.

I agree with you about the second part of Dave Brubeck’s quote!

[tea for two]

What is Jazz? Well any fool knows the answer to that - it’s Freedom. In a musical sense of course

I'm glad you are the fool that got it lol.

"I'm glad you are the fool that got it lol." Seems like I am in good company then!

Thus far you and I are the only fools on this thread that have said Jazz is about emancipation.

And remember, when 'Black' music first left the plantations and ghettoes, it was verboten, in fact before 1962 a black person couldn't even sit on any seat they chose on the bus! What kind of freedom was that?

Yes !
Freedom.

::

Freedom from Slavery.

Slavery can take many forms as we are aware.

::

Jazz is emancipation from slavery from struggles.

This is the whole reason I made this thread.

goodness knows the struggles a particular large section of audience went through in those times.

Nina Simone said after the Civil Rights movement ended, She lost her purpose to make music to sing even.

It is understandable we (us on SoS, various musicians audiences worldwide) are so far from that era we never experienced the struggles,
easy for us to see Jazz as just a music, creativity, technical ability.

When the essence of Jazz is emancipation.
Emancipation from slavery from struggles.

Hence I wrote on thread starter

Were I to make a Jazz album, I never have,
I would have to in my mind link it to struggles people are facing :
some persons on this forum, some person I see in town, some person in my life, some group of people struggling on earth, some struggles untold people on earth go through including us on this forum.

[GilesAnt]

Jazz is emancipation from slavery from struggles.
This is the whole reason I made this thread.

It is understandable we (us on SoS, various musicians audiences worldwide) are so far from that era we never experienced the struggles,
easy for us to see Jazz as just a music, creativity, technical ability.

When the essence of Jazz is emancipation.
Emancipation from slavery from struggles.

Well since this is a music composition/theory forum you can see why some of us might be talking about the musical elements of jazz.

In any case I'm not sure Jazz is emancipation/freedom etc. The jazz genre emerged quite some time after US emancipation in any case. The composers of the Classical era possibly thought they were discovering freedom as they broke away from the earlier Baroque styles. European folk music was a kind of freedom too - the freedom to make secular rather than sacred music.

But even if the essence of jazz is emancipation, that doesn't really help to answer the question of 'what is jazz', any more than saying 'just feel it'.

[RichardT]

I think the story of jazz is complicated and multi-faceted. For sure it was very important as a badge of identity for the civil rights movement, and a source of pleasure and release for struggling people, but it was many other things to many other people as well.

The soundtrack to the roaring twenties for example...

[Arpangel]

Jazz very much, used to be Jazz, the word suited perfectly, but it has no meaning today, musically, or socially, it’s an outdated word.

[OneWorld]

@Oneworld - I’m not saying freedom and discipline are mutually exclusive - I think true freedom as an improviser comes when the player has internalised the changes, the scales and the musical ideas.

As Charlie Parker said - ‘learn the changes, then forget them’

I think what he meant is exactly what I’m saying - discipline first, and then freedom.

I agree with you about the second part of Dave Brubeck’s quote!

Yes that is what I am saying, Surely one can best appreciate freedom if they have known the rigours and restrictions of discipline

[OneWorld]

Jazz is emancipation from slavery from struggles.
This is the whole reason I made this thread.

It is understandable we (us on SoS, various musicians audiences worldwide) are so far from that era we never experienced the struggles,
easy for us to see Jazz as just a music, creativity, technical ability.

When the essence of Jazz is emancipation.
Emancipation from slavery from struggles.

Well since this is a music composition/theory forum you can see why some of us might be talking about the musical elements of jazz.

In any case I'm not sure Jazz is emancipation/freedom etc. The jazz genre emerged quite some time after US emancipation in any case. The composers of the Classical era possibly thought they were discovering freedom as they broke away from the earlier Baroque styles. European folk music was a kind of freedom too - the freedom to make secular rather than sacred music.

But even if the essence of jazz is emancipation, that doesn't really help to answer the question of 'what is jazz', any more than saying 'just feel it'.

It is a music, composition, theory and songwriting forum, and surely songwriting is all embracing? There's more to jazz than theory?

[Arpangel]

In the quest for musical freedom, all that happens is that you end up creating new boundaries, and restrictions, freedom itself, becomes just another cage.
That’s why I left the Free-Improv scene, inverted snobbery abounded, it appeared there were no boundaries, until you did something "unacceptable" even then, the boundaries would be denied.
And freedom, is always at the expense of somebody else’s.

[OneWorld]

This is a jazzy topic, brings in a whole gumbo of opinions!

[Arpangel]

This is a jazzy topic, brings in a whole gumbo of opinions!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-z4d0VAXmw



And I can’t play properly at all, until I’ve got a Zawinul hat.

[RichardT]

This is a jazzy topic, brings in a whole gumbo of opinions!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-z4d0VAXmw



And I can’t play properly at all, until I’ve got a Zawinul hat.

Perhaps I should get one then….

[Arpangel]

Perhaps I should get one then….

You should, one of these, I’ve just ordered mine.
I can finally be "cool" phew, it was worrying me, a lot.



https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/114756 ... sel-kippah

[ManFromGlass]

Heroin addiction optional

[awjoe]

This caught my eye:

So you have to also think of ways to make your improvising sound different and interesting - it has to be creative as well as disciplined.

My personal perspective is that improvisation doesn’t have to sound interesting, but it should mean something to you when you do it.

I'm reporting my own take on things only, so grain of salt, etc. To my ears, there's a lot of jazz that's samey - it's pleasant enough to listen to, but it sounds like a lot of other jazz. (This is true of any genre - mainstream pop, hiphop, classical, bluegrass - the majority of work in any genre sounds a lot like all the other stuff in that genre.) Now, some listeners just like a genre, and if it's being played well, they're happy with it. But what makes my eyes moist is when an artist escapes the collective wisdom (genre standards) and says something beautiful and/or powerful and/or moving which is individual and different. YMMV

[OneWorld]

This is a jazzy topic, brings in a whole gumbo of opinions!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-z4d0VAXmw



And I can’t play properly at all, until I’ve got a Zawinul hat.

Yep!!! The answer that has so cleverly eluded us is laid before us is made known, if you want to get ahead, get a hat

[adrian_k]

This caught my eye:

So you have to also think of ways to make your improvising sound different and interesting - it has to be creative as well as disciplined.

My personal perspective is that improvisation doesn’t have to sound interesting, but it should mean something to you when you do it.

I'm reporting my own take on things only, so grain of salt, etc. To my ears, there's a lot of jazz that's samey - it's pleasant enough to listen to, but it sounds like a lot of other jazz. (This is true of any genre - mainstream pop, hiphop, classical, bluegrass - the majority of work in any genre sounds a lot like all the other stuff in that genre.) Now, some listeners just like a genre, and if it's being played well, they're happy with it. But what makes my eyes moist is when an artist escapes the collective wisdom (genre standards) and says something beautiful and/or powerful and/or moving which is individual and different. YMMV

Ah, I think we might be convergent

[GilesAnt]

the majority of work in any genre sounds a lot like all the other stuff in that genre

I can hear all the greats of the past turning in their graves but I know what you mean. There was a quote from, I think, Stravinsky who said something along the lines of 'Vivaldi didn't write 200 concertos, he wrote the same concerto 200 times'.

[merlyn]

Before Weather Report and the hat, Joe Zawinul played jazz piano, and here he is with Cannonball Adderly in 1963:

Cannonball Adderly -- Jive Samba

It's possible to tell a few things about jazz from that video. The set is quite elaborate, this implies Cannonball Adderly was a star in 1963. We can also note that Cannonball Adderly was good. It's a straight beat, not swing, but still jazz. It may be more correct to say jazz grooves, rather than jazz swings, as there are also latin beats in jazz. Latin beats became commonplace in jazz from the sixties, when Jobim started having an influence.

This beat is kind of a samba, with the doom de-doom de-doom ... bass drum pattern and a bossa clave. I don't know if a Brazilian would think this was a samba. It's jazz musicians' interpretation of a samba. It's different from swing in that the eighth notes are even.

A reference for the question "What is jazz?" is the 1959 Miles Davis album Kind Of Blue which is from before bossas and sambas had become common in jazz. There's a tune on that On Green Dolphin Street, which is swing throughout. It has an ABAC form, and now when this tune is performed it's usually done as

A -- bossa
B -- swing
A -- bossa
C -- swing

[Arpangel]

Heroin addiction optional

Let’s not go there, I tend to get told off if I do, it’s very common in a lot of Jazz guys, and girls.

[BWC]

My favorite definition (given earlier in this thread) is that jazz = musical freedom. If that's so, then trying to define it by common characteristics is totally missing the point, all fine and well for cataloging purposes, but not very inspirational. Subverting expectations is also great fun for a jazz player, so maybe that's a good reason for trying to define it, just to create the opportunity to disprove the definition.

[Arpangel]

My favorite definition (given earlier in this thread) is that jazz = musical freedom.

If that’s the case, then it’s a state of mind, not a case of genre definition.
When I make, or listen to music, I’m not thinking "I’m doing "this" now" I’m not thinking anything, I’m just "doing"

[GilesAnt]

My favorite definition (given earlier in this thread) is that jazz = musical freedom.

If jazz is simply musical freedom then how does this differ from any other genre of music. Why isn't modern folk, or classical etc just as free?

The great musicians of jazz didn't play totally free music in any case.

[Arpangel]

My favorite definition (given earlier in this thread) is that jazz = musical freedom.

If jazz is simply musical freedom then how does this differ from any other genre of music. Why isn't modern folk, or classical etc just as free?

The great musicians of jazz didn't play totally free music in any case.

And, as soon as you introduce rhythm into music, it’s not free.
That’s why as a starting point, I rarely use rhythm.
There are many pieces of music that I’ve listened to, very interesting, and then, thump thump thump thump, it’s tied down, the sound of the factory, the machine. It ends for me there, immediately.