Jazz for aficionados
Ok, so what IS jazz? Someone famous once said that if you have to ask you'll never know. Someone else said that he doesn't know, but knows it when he hears it. Cop outs; and too easy! What this thread, now approaching 2000 posts, proves is that it is unlikely that there will be agreement about the definition. So what? Is not what really matters wether it is good music or not? We can get so hung up on the definition that we miss the forest for the trees. To use an analogy: I think that one thing that most can agree on is that a premium aged sirloin steak is superior to even the best hamburger. But, not every steak is superior to a good burger; you can have a pretty crappy steak which makes a good burger a much better, and delicious, choice. Sometimes music lovers fall into a comfort zone based on genre and dismiss other genres to the extent that they are tolerant of inferior music making simply because it happens to be in their preferred genre; while, at the same time, dismissing great music making simply because it is in a genre deemed inferior. O-10 has made two posts recently that IMHO are particularly important to the evolution of this thread. In one was a comment about not yet exploring the '70's; the other was the Deodato clips. Not because I think those clips are particularly worthy, but because they introduce a genre that merits much more attention. Funk-jazz, electric-jazz, fusion-jazz; whatever one wants to call it. Again, what exactly IS jazz? To me, and hard to dispute, jazz is music in which key elements are improvisation, a high level of interaction between the players, and a high level of rhythmic and harmonic sophistication in that interaction. For me, classical music does not meet ALL those criteria, neither does rock; pop certainly doesn't. So ..... This meets all those criteria, and laid the ground work for Deodato and countless others. Herbie Hancock's Headhunters was an amazing band; funky grooves on a par with those laid down by James Brown's band at their best combined with instrumental virtuosity and very advanced improvisational sophistication. It may not be like his work with Miles and Shorter, but every bit as hip. Mike Clark kills on drums (not bad for a white dude in this kind of company), Benny Maupin is the antithesis of Michael Brecker, few notes but funky as hell; and Herbie, amazing. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mMcQfyuHVk8 |
Rok, this is my concept when I want to go to a "corroboree", or just hang with the boys in the bush; I wonder if Monk ever tried any of them steps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZpXPwmbQvc This is when I want to go into the 6th dimension. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE500PSe0BM Enjoy the music. |
