Jazz listening: Is it about the music? Or is it about the sound?

That “encyclopedic knowledge” of rock, pop and country that you refer to: I take it you say you have that because you can actually name the vast majority of the songs. That’s because all those songs have lyrics that give away the name of the song. The fact that you “can listen to jazz recordings for hours on end...” - well if that’s true you must like it and it must be pleasing, for whatever reason(s). I have a large collection and I know that, blindfolded, I couldn’t name most of the songs. And my knowledge of jazz isn’t encyclopedic despite being an avid listener and collector for a very long time now. Keep listening and exploring. 

Music is less a taste than a set of learning experiments revealing all along our life a part of whom we are....

I enjoy all music created by a musician first for himself and his immediate family and more than for a market...Classical, jazz, Persian/iranian, Indian, and many others at a lesser degree...

Jazz is less a style of music for me than a "rolling" into one of the composer and the interpreter , like in  singing the oldest fruit coming from the tree of music....Like in Persian/Iranian or Indian music... This intimate relation in improvisation makes them all alike in spite of the differences between idioms...

Written music is the "strangest seeds" from the tree of music....

Reproduced music are the "strangest fruit" coming from it....

Music like language was never about sound but about meaning....

But the acoustical experience of sound in speech and music begins with the first cave where the walking ape meditating to become human create music on a more conscious level....

Music begins to be for him in this cave the art of being together with himself which is also the art of conscious dying or ecstasy.......

Music there wedded with silence....

I apologize for this "dreamed" history of music....

😁😊😊😊😊

@mahgister

I agree with most of your post, but...

**** Music like language was never about sound but about meaning.... ****

I think sound is much more important to music than it is to language.  (Unless, of course, one views sound as part of meaning.)  Humans have created some wonderful musical instruments that produce beautiful, intoxicating sounds.

When I listen to someone speak, I rarely focus on the sound of their voice.  I focus on meaning.  Unless their voice is:

strange enough to be distracting, or;

wonderful enough (as with a friend who is a professional voice man for audio books) to be mesmerizing.

I agree with most of your post, but...

**** Music like language was never about sound but about meaning.... ****

I think sound is much more important to music than it is to language. (Unless, of course, one views sound as part of meaning.) Humans have created some wonderful musical instruments that produce beautiful, intoxicating sounds.

When I listen to someone speak, I rarely focus on the sound of their voice. I focus on meaning. Unless their voice is:

strange enough to be distracting, or;

wonderful enough (as with a friend who is a professional voice man for audio books) to be mesmerizing.

Thanks for your observation that make me able to precise my thinking...


In music sound is " part of the meaning" like you wisely remark....Like in poetry where sound become integral part of the meaning....

Like in speech experience the sound of a voice is not a passive vehicule of the meaning but integral part of the meaning itself for our subconscious deeper perception...There is 2 operatorial regimes in language evolutively and historically and day to day interwinned completely: prosaic and poetical mode....We can and we must separe them for specialized purpose and specialized function, like science discourse or poetical discourse, but erasing one will kill the other, and separating them completely in everyday language is impossible anyway and not desirable at all...

Sound is no more only sound in a purely physically acoustical sense in music nor in language...

The tonal playing timbre of an instrument means and will never be just a physical sound....


It is like if all sound for a musician are the ghost or the possible reincarnation of a meaning which is also a creative gesture....

A violin is more a "personality" than a tool.....If not, it is a complete extension of the self of the musician and anyway cannot be considered to be a mere replaceable tool....It is revealing that a musical instrument for a musician  cannot be reduced to be like  a brush  for a painter or a chisel for a sculptor...This illustrate the intimate link  between sound and soul....And the deep meaning of hearing...

It is the reason why Ravi Shankar was shoked to the core when Jimie Hendrix broke his guitar in front of the crowd on the scene of the same festival ....His sitar was for him his second mother not less, killing her was unthinkable....




«History of music is history of consciousness»-Ernest ansermet

«For the tabla player his gesture reflect the entire rythmical cosmos »- An Indian master

« It is not a harp Groucho 🤓 it is Violeta»- Harpo Marx

At its core, language is an objective discipline. It enables concrete things to happen.  Do this!  Do that!  Do it this way! Sure, language can also can be subjective.  After all, what else are poetry and turns-of phrases? But that's not its basic function. Music, by contrast, is a subjective discipline. Its function is to awaken emotions, not to tell us how to mow a lawn. And ain't that nice!