«Today’s Lyrics Are Pathetically Bad» Rick Beato

Jazz is the only language becoming universal by virtue of his improvising syntax set of rules integrating all instruments and music styles slowly but surely ...

I’m confused. There are plenty of other genres that incorporate improvisation. I don’t know what you mean by "improvising syntax set of rules integrating all instruments". Are you referring to simultaneous improvisation and drawing a line between it and the more common approach wherein individual players play solos in turn?

For sure all music styles all over the world wrote their own syntax rules integrating if not potentially  all instruments as for jazz a few even many (India-Persia). It is well known to anybody who like world music as i am ...

But there is only one style which goes all around earth as an influences doing it at this scale and for such different cultures...

No other genres did it as jazz did...I like Fado for example but it stayed in Portuguese world mainly and his syntax let no trace in Japan as Jazz did..

“just because there is improvisation doesn’t mean it is Jazz”.

For sure all world music is based on improvisation...

I like chinese music and japan traditional music, none of it let his syntax rules and chord scales imprint all around the world...

Black traditional jazz begun to do it, it extended to all America, it reach Europe then it encompassed the world..

Is it pure jazz as in the golden age of jazz ? No..

Is it jazz at 100% like in the golden age now in all countries by those musicians calling themselves jazzmen?

No..

But it does not invalidate my point that jazz became if not the only at least the main universal matrix of influence for all improvised music around the world so much that the classical folk music of many countries begun to kept jazz as an inspiration for his own growing transforming essence ... As Hollywood film making influenced all the world cinema...

Is it a good thing ?

For the Hollywood influence on other countries cinema i dont think it was only a good influence, it is a mix...

For jazz it is almost all good influence...

There is something new and universal in improvised jazz language at his core...

As there is something universal exportable from this WRITTEN classical syntax european music ...So deep and original sophisticated are Indian and Persian music they were not exportable as Jazz or classical were...

Yoruba talking drums language inspired the greatest acoustician i read but it is not universally exportable as a useful integrating syntax even if music is a universal understood language, not as exportable and integrating form as jazz improvisation rules and classical written language were...Because in all cultures the perceived meanings depend more of a specific instrument depth core timbre/tone meanings as physical instrument . Being Yoruba drums or tabla or all Veena variations or all various lutes family or flutes variation in Turkisch sufi music etc..

Frogman here being a musician can certainly better than me speak about it...

@mahgister

You seem to be saying there exists a sort of Jazz "blueprint" that has been absorbed/integrated into many other genres, worldwide. You also seem to acknowledge that these other genres have, in turn, influenced Jazz.

What, so far as I can tell -- and I admit I’m not doing a very good job of understanding your meaning-- you haven’t spelled out in musical terms, is what it is at the core of Jazz that comprises its universal aspect.

Particular rhythms? Particular scales? Use of altered dominant 7th chords? "Vertical improvisation" in which a soloist "outlines" each chord change, as opposed to "horizontal" improvisation that tends to focus on developing longer themes or in the case of modal compositions, can employ a single scale over an entire progression? Something else?

Perhaps this is what you are hoping our resident Jazz expert @frogman will define?

Sorry if I’m being especially dense, here. Just trying to gain a clearer picture. ;o)

@mahgister

You seem to be saying there exists a sort of Jazz "blueprint" that has been absorbed/integrated into many other genres, worldwide. You also seem to acknowledge that these other genres have, in turn, influenced Jazz.

I am not a musician and yes i need frogman here to correct me or to validate in a more professionnal way what i try to convey ...

@onhwy61: Your Sonny Boy Williamson (no offense intended, but it’s not Williams) quote is missing a few words which are important in making his point. His statement was "The English boys want to play the Blues so bad, and that’s just how they do it." Pretty funny. By the way, as retold in the the Last Waltz film, in 1965 Williamson met and jammed with The Hawks (who of course became The Band in ’68), and he and they discussed going on a U.S.A. tour with them serving as his band. Williamson died later that year, and The Hawks went on the road with Dylan instead.

Hawks drummer Levon Helm had already met Sonny Boy, while still in high school. Helm and Sonny Boy both lived in Helena Arkansas, and Sonny would regularly appear on the local music station’s lunchtime radio show. Helm says he would buy himself a coupla donuts and a Coca Cola, eating his lunch on the floor in a corner of the radio station while watching and listening to Williamson and his band.

I loved The Yardbirds (they quickly became my favorite of the mid-60’s British bands with the release of their debut album), from whom I first heard songs like "I’m A Man" and "Train Kept A-Rollin" ( a cover of the scorching hot 1956 Rockabilly version by The Johnny Burnette Trio. Jeff Beck was a huge fan of the Burnette Band’s guitarist Paul Burlinson). The 1951 original was a Blues by Tiny Bradshaw. As I said in one Audiogon thread (maybe this one), in the South (like Elvis, Burnette lived in Memphis) musicians integrate their music.

@onhwy61: You were mocking Blues Hammer, right? That’s certainly what the Ghost World movie is doing.

Speaking of which, for those wanting to hear Blues music butchered, check out Canned Heat’s performance at Woodstock. About as bad as I’ve heard the music performed. Even worse than Blues Traveler.

My peers and I had our musical lives seriously impacted with the hearing of the debut by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Playing drums and bass in the band at that time were veterans of Howlin’ Wolf’s band. Now THAT’S a Blues band! Mike Bloomfield on lead guitar, of course. That’s where Dylan heard his playing, and hired him for recordings.

In 1969 The Charles Ford Blues band (whose members included guitarist Robben Ford and his two brothers on drums and harmonica. The band’s name was a tribute to their father) relocated from Ukiah California to my hometown of San Jose. As you can imagine, that sent shock waves through the local music community. Every guitarist I new went to as many of their shows at possible, to see the Blues played by the then 18 year old Robben Ford, already a superb guitarist. The bassist in my senior year high school band played bass with them for a while, until Robben left for Los Angeles. Near the corner of Sunnyvale-Saratoga Road and Stevens Creek Blvd---the heart of the San Jose suburb Cupertino, there was a rental house where a bunch of local musicians lived. It was referred to as The Blues House.

@bdp24 

Speaking of Mike Bloomfield (one of my first guitar heros in my early teens), below is a link to a fascinating story that he wrote himself (with illustrations by R. Crumb!) about his experiences with Big Joe Williams in Chicago. It's a great read.

https://sundayblues.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Me-and-Big-Joe-Article.pdf