You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Jazz Controversies - #9

Episode Date: January 10, 2019

In another Adam-less episode, Peter offers his opinion on a range of controversies plaguing the jazz world. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Adam, are you back yet? I don't see you. I see an empty chair. Where you at, buddy? I'm Peter Martin, and you're listening to The You'll Hear It Podcast Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. Adam is still on vacation. He's on an extended trip to Disney World. Must be nice.

Start the year out in a little sun in Florida with your family, but we're very happy for him a well-deserved break. So I'm holding it down this week. We have some fun the last few days over at the piano. We're back in the podcast. I'm here with our producer, Andrew, and we're having a good time. And today, we're going to start out with, start out. Well, we're already into 2019, but it feels like we're still at the beginning of the year.

And, you know, we love the controversies here at the You'll Hear a podcast. We do not shy away from controversies, whether Adams here or not. So I want to be clear on that one. So today, we're going to cover seven jazz controversies. And I'm going to actually just sort of tell you, you know, my feelings on each one of these. We actually just recorded this episode, but our quality control is so high here at the You'll Hear podcast that we are re-recording it because we didn't like the way the first one came out. I actually gave like a devil's advocate both viewpoints for each of these controversies. And it was just kind of silly because I know how I feel about each of these.

So we're going to get more to the point. We're coming at you with the truth. That's how we do it. So we got seven jazz controversies. And, you know, why are there so many controversies in jazz? Why is jazz so controversial? I don't know. Maybe it's not, but it feels like it is.

And I think it comes down to like one of those things where anything that people are passionate about, you know, both as listeners and lifestyle and players and everything, if you're passionate about something, it's going to be controversial. And there's things that are going to come up and people are going to want to argue about it. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. It means people care. It means people love this. I mean, you know, are there accounting controversies? Yeah, I guess there are too. People love that.

I don't know. Are there controversies about what kind of water I'm drinking this year? No, there are not because I'm enjoying sparkling water from Whole Foods. Thank you very much. Orange. I don't know why I gave them a plug, but I did. So anyway, let's get right into these. We got seven jazz controversies handpicked by yours truly.

Adam had nothing to do with this. Let's be clear on that. Number one, you got to know the history. Okay, this is one I've been hearing forever. And I think it's kind of controversial because it's so people take this to the extreme. It's just like if you don't know the entire history of jazz piano, you can't be a great jazz pianist. If you don't, if you can't, this is taking it to the extreme. Like if you're not an expert ragtime player, there's no way you can be a great modern jazz piano player because the music, the lineage of jazz piano started with ragtime.

And first of all, that's not even true. It started before ragtime, but even if that's a place of departure. So I don't believe in this. And the main reason is because I know a lot of really good players that are not incredible ragtime players. even play it at all. So a lot of times you can pick up a lot of the stuff that you need that came from the history from later players because they picked it up and then you can combine it in your own way. And yeah, of course, the more you know the better, but I also think it's great to focus. So now you should at least be able to hear and know something about ragtime,

be able to identify it at a minimum, I think, in order to be, I mean, the thing is, it's, this shouldn't be so controversial too, because if you're interested in jazz, you're going to be interested in rag time at some point. But do you need to be practicing it every time and to be an incredible stride player to be able to play modern jazz? No, of course not. And in fact, even if you can do all that, that doesn't make you a great player, even if you can play every different style. Sometimes a little bit specialization is better anyway. So you don't need to know the entire history. And that's as a listener to this music too. You just need to know what you like. That'll take you down some different rabbit holes of areas that you want to learn more about. But I never feel like you have to

do homework or have to be prepared from like a chronological standpoint to play or to listen to this music. So I don't know. That make me a little controversial. Now, having said that, I studied this music a lot. I mean, I studied most of these styles, but some more than others. And I think it's however far you want to take it. The more you learn, the more you learn, the more you earn. I don't know about that. but the more you learn in the right ways, the deeper you can kind of get into the music, but at a certain point, you got to trust what it is you have a passion for as well.

Okay, that's number one. Number two of our seven jazz controversies. Jazz is dead. Okay, this keeps coming up as a controversy. I think there's even like a band called Jazz Is Dead or something like that. And it comes up from different times from sort of naysayers that are like, there's no good players anymore, jazz died in 1959, all these different things.

And this is just, it's just wrong. It shouldn't even be a controversy. Every day around the world in many, many places, there's thousands of great jazz music performed live and performed on record, and audiences listening to it. They're edified and enjoy the music. And it brings joy to them and they have a passion for it, the players and the listeners.

So that's when jazz is a lot of, When any art form of live is when it's being produced and consumed, right? And that's happening all the time in jazz. I mean, I see it. I participate in it. And, you know, are the trends going down? Possibly at different times, although I think we're actually on an upswing with the music. But in any case, jazz is definitely not dead.

Jazz did not die when any great jazz player left us because there's always other players coming up. Now, do we have a responsibility to keep the quality high and keep it invigorated or else listeners will leave? Absolutely. It has to be promoted correctly. and marketing all these things, but jazz is not dead. I can guarantee you that. So controversy debunked, right? Two for two so far.

Number three, jazz musicians dress like nowadays. This is a little bit controversial because, you know, we always think about freedom of expression with the music and wear whatever you want and we're trying to go against the trend of like classical musicians where they have to wear a uniform and like we're improvising and we're free-spirited

and all these kind of good things. But look, there's, the level of dress and style has definitely gone down. I mean, if you go into, like, your top jazz clubs in New York and stuff, it's pretty shocking sometimes to see what people are wearing. Not even the casual nature. I get that. I mean, because our culture has become more casual, but just the inattention to style.

And, you know, I think about our dearly departed brother, Roy Hargrove, was such an influence musically and with a trumpet. it, but I'm reminded from watching these videos of him recently what a trial style style trendsetter he was as well. And he didn't do it just in that, yeah, when we all came up in the 90s, everyone was wearing oak tree suits and like, you know, with the skinny ties and the big, you know, all that kind of stuff. But I mean, it's not just about dressing up. I mean, he brought the hip-hop element and the jazz element, all these things together. But he was mainly just stylishly put together with his own style that fit him and his look and his size and his

trumpet and all that kind of stuff and fit his music. So it was very exciting for people to come see him play because you heard great playing, but you saw a style that he portrayed on stage that matched his sound. You know, it was organic and flowed within the way that he played. So I think a lot of great players have done this over the years in jazz, and it seems like we're kind of starting to lose that. So I would have to agree with this controversy. And I think it is a little controversial, but Katz got to step it up a little bit out here, all right? All right. So that's three down, nailed number three as well. Number four of our seven jazz controversies. Controversies. Jazz should not be called jazz. Now this one I'm really kind of split on because

jazz, it really was a word that was misapplied. Well, look, let me first just say, I'm not an expert on this at all and like the entomology of all this. And the little bit of things that I've heard, I know there's a lot of misinformation out there. Probably the biggest one was the PBS documentary by Ken Burns, which is really good. But I think, I don't know if it was he or people are on there, basically saying that jazz came from New Orleans, the word and from like Jasmine and stuff. That is definitely not true.

That's been proven over and over again. Jazz started as like some kind of sort of baseball reference and then was applied to those originally Dick Dixieland recorded. And then, you know, pretty quickly went more with like the Chicago scene of that music that was being recorded like in the 1910s and up into 1920. And then really my understanding is in the 20s, jazz, the word jazz was being applied to, you know, kind of anything that was like the new dance-style music, even a lot of stuff that we don't look back on is jazz. So there was a problem with the term from the beginning. And then there's the whole obscene side of it, which I'm not sure if that's true or not because a lot of the people studying and say that that actually was not where the word came. from. But the fact of the thing is we are where we are now, and I could just say that jazz,

for most people in the world, musicians and listeners and just people that don't even know the music has a very positive connotation. So even though it has this negative history, when I hear jazz, when most people hear jazz, they're thinking of, you know, House Davis or Lewis Armstrong or just a certain sound and aesthetic that's amazing and incredible and really describes, or at least, you know is a title of this art form this great art form that came out of the black american musical experience the african american musical experience with all these different influences but what we know of today as this creative improvised music with swing and funk and blues and all these different elements to it and there's always you know it's always you never want to be like

this is the only thing that's the genre of jazz but we kind of know what jazz is now so i would say that it should be called jazz because that's the word that we have now and it's very hard to switch to something else so this is definitely kind of So this one, I'm not going to say I nailed it on this one. And I'm walking lightly because there's a number of very thoughtful people that really think the jazz should be taken out of our vocabulary entitled. But it's a little bit like the horses out of the barn as well on this one. Okay, let's quickly move on before I get stuck in that controversy to number five. And that is our institutions good for jazz.

So I'm thinking of like Jazz and Lincoln Center, SF Jazz, Jazz, Jazz St. Louis. These are just kind of on the top of my head, but there's many great institutions of jazz around the world. The Danish radio orchestra is a great big band supported by the Danish government. I believe I actually played with them. They're incredible and it's dedicated institution for jazz. And I think that these institutions are fantastic for jazz. The controversy is, is like do they put the jazz too much in the museum or make them too much like classical music? And sometimes they do, but there's always a balance with like the clubs and the young players and all these things.

So the institutions are just one part of jazz. But they're great for jazz. I mean, there's so many compositions and events and commissions and work for musicians and great concerts for audiences that would have never happened without these institutions. So I think we don't want to institutionalize jazz, but the emergence of the strong jazz institutions over the last 10 to 20 years has been one of the great things to keep jazz alive, I believe. You still need the clubs.

You still need the people. You still need the streets, absolutely. but the institutions are part of it. All right. Number six of our jazz controversies. Now, this was just stupid. I don't even know why this is a controversy. Can you learn jazz?

Why is that controversial still? Yes, of course you can. That's been proven over and over again. But there's people still that believe like, no, you can't learn it. You just got to feel the music. It has to be fairy dust sprinkled on you by an elder statesman. You have to be born in poverty and learn the blues to be able to play jazz. that's just all BS.

So many great people have learned the music. Now, there's a number of players that are way too academic and have only learned at educational institutions and sound corny. Yes, of course, but that doesn't mean you can't learn jazz. Look at all the great players that came up in jazz, you know, conservatories and programs and stuff now. Amazing players.

You know, Sullivan Fortner, who's one of my favorite of the younger generation of pianists. I mean, one of the best jazz pianists, in the world, I believe right now. I actually taught him when he was like 13, 14 years old when he first started getting into jazz in New Orleans. And then he went through great high school institution, Noka, Creative Arts High School in New Orleans,

and then went to Oberlin and somewhere else for grad school. But always learned in the clubs and from recordings as well. So absolutely you can learn jazz. All right. Number seven, our final jazz controversy. Andrew, are you ready for this? You've seen the list, though. So these aren't surprises for you, are the?

Yeah. Are you feeling controversial? No, he's feeling good. He's not feeling controversial. He didn't have to say all this crap like I did, though. Okay. Number seven of our controversies. Is Jazz America's classical music? Okay, I kind of hate this one. I think I've said it before. And look, if you're going to answer that question, I guess you would say yes. I hate the premise to this statement. I hate that jazz, because it implies that jazz has to be legitimized by being elevated to the point. point of classical music of like saying, well, it's such a Eurocentric way of looking at things. It's like saying, well, classical music is the greatest art that's ever created in the world. That's false. I mean, classical music is amazing. European classical music and what it's become. And it's not even European.

I mean, it's a worldwide phenomenon of music, just like jazz has become. But it was born in Europe and during a certain time. It has a certain tradition and all that kind of stuff. And jazz is different. I mean, jazz, yeah, it has some classical elements, but it's got a lot of other elements too. But mainly jazz is its own thing. its own original American, African American music. So why does it have to be legitimized by saying it's America's classical music?

No, jazz music is jazz music. It's America's music. And even that's coronary to say it's America's music. But it doesn't need to be like, say, well, it's developed to the point where it says complex and has the scores and the pictures and the recordings and the history and lineage that classical music is. So now we can bequeath upon it the name classical music. No, it's its own thing. All right?

controversy ended myths debunked I did it seven for seven well number four was a little questionable all right let's do a quick recap of our jazz controversies

number one you gotta know the history number two jazz is dead number three jazz musicians dress like nowadays number four jazz should not be called jazz number five are institutions good for jazz number six can you learn jazz and number seven is jazz

America's classical music okay We hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, please leave us a rating and review. You can go to iTunes, Apple Podcasts. Actually, just go to wherever you're listening to this podcast and leave us a rating review. We would really appreciate that. We've had phenomenal growth with the podcast because of listeners and seven-star reviews.

Hint, hint, from you guys. So let's start the new year out right. Big shout out to YouTube. Check us out there. You can leave a comment there. We'd love to hear what you think of these jazz controversies. hopefully you agree with everything I said if you didn't please let me know that would be really cool to hear about that

maybe you know another jazz controversy you should talk about but until tomorrow