Jazz for aficionados

jzzmusician, Willis Jackson:. as you so eloquently said recently: DAMN!!

What a sound; from the gut! Thanks.

Beautiful, together with pretty or soulfull or marvellous and similar expressions is adjective we often use to indicate something that we like. In this sense, often what is considerd beautiful was at the same time considered as 'Good'.
Still, we all must agree that ideal of beauty was different at certain time or place.That notion pehaps can lead us to another problem, which is relativism, as somebody could argue that concept of beauty can not be separated from context of time, historical periods and cultures.
On this pages, when we spoke about the music, we saw two different views, first is a thought that there must be a single rule of 'Beauty' valid for all music who tends to be considered as jazz or 'Good' and second principal that starts with notion that 'beautiful' music is not immutable and that depends on many different influences, but than it may not be called jazz, regarding to some.
So,I am wondering are we trying to distinguish what exactly is jazz music, or what is Beautiful music?
Does that means that all jazz music is 'Good' music?
This is in fact  (pardon my simplification) philosophical question for thousands of years (definition of beautiful and good) but somehow it imposes self here again, because lots of times here there is not any explanation why is something considered as 'good' music and why it is not.
I have said something about my preferences, with few thouhts about 'tone and sound' , but it would be interesting to find out more about the subject from all participants here, if that would not be considered as boring or shallow?
So, gentlemen, the space is all yours, next time when somebody writes a critic thought, would be nice to say why somebody likes or dislikes something. Than perhaps, we could come to a point where we could express our thoughts about aesthetics and ethics and their connection in music and in general.

From a Jazz quotation site.

I think you guys fall in the Wayne Shorter Camp.

• Wayne Shorter - "Music should not have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that is required to sound like jazz." [P]

WTF!!!!

The truth of the matter:

• Jelly Roll Morton - "Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge."

What Morton means is, songs like "A closer walk with Thee", "Silent Night"  "Shoo Fly" and Broadway Show Tunes, CAN BE Jazz tunes.  It depends on how they are played.  And since Morton CREATED Jazz, who are we to argue. :)


Wayne's comment is ready made for 'fusion' and other Noise sources.  It's really silly when you think about it.  Esp since without SOUND, there is no music.   How can what music sounds like be irrelevant to the music genre.
I guess he was trying to be profound, or more probable, trying to justify his 'fusion' noise making.

Cheers 

Sonny Rollins

And here, ladies and gentlemen, we have, in the previous two posts, a perfect example of the "Mars and Venus" concept.

The irony is that Shorter and Morton are saying the exact same thing. The truth is that the "style" of jazz that Morton knew and played was a far cry from what Horace Silver, or Coltrane, or....would play decades later. So, Silver and Coltrane didn’t play "jazz"....I get it now. Unfortunately, as usual, some tend to see what they want to see in order to buttress a personal point of view. Generally speaking, points of view which can be summarized as 1. Inclusive, open minded, true to the spirit of boundless creativity in the music , or 2. Non-inclusive, closed minded, dogmatic, restrictive of that creative spirit. We can debate the relative merits of each viewpoint till we’re blue in the face; however, let’s take a look at some facts related to this thread:

Over the last several days there has been spirited and appreciative discussion and posting of jazz spanning a wide range of styles from the traditional to the non-traditional, including fusion Some has been liked by others (mostly) and some not so much.  Importantly, there has been respect and appreciation shown towards others’ preferences and opinions. It is obvious that many here like and value "fusion" or whatever some of these styles anyone of us chooses to call certain music. My question is simple:

What positive purpose is served by calling the music that some of us clearly appreciate "noise"? None, I think; and, probably, negative ones. We are all free to be passionate about our preferences and express it any way we want, but by going down that road the chances of productive dialogue about a pretty deep topic are pretty slim. I would respectfully point out that in overlooking your own musical bias and trying to be profound yourself, you are missing the profundity in Shorter’s comment (and Morton’s, for that matter).