From: smehta@kwela.nynexst.com (Sandeep Mehta)
Subject: blues in jazz, jazz in blues, and asinine politics
Reply-To: smehta@nynexst.com
Organization: Speech Technology, AI Lab, NYNEX S&T Inc, White Plains, NY
Date: 28 Sep 92 14:22:43



[I wasn't going to join the flamefest here but the net.traffic is
getting unbearable... :-(]

It isn't surprising that in this year of asinine politics, r.m.b is
suffering from repeated voting frenzies initiated by people who --
though rightfully exercising democratic rights -- still need to do
their homework. I do not target this @ old time (i.e., those who have
weathered > 5 reorganization CFV's :-)) r.m.b'ers whose musical
inclinations I know but there is a penchant among neophyte
listeners/fans of music -- jazz, blues, folk, new music, rock,
avante-classical whatever -- to rush out run one flag or the other up
the pole expecting people to salute.

I still do *not* understand why a fan of music very late in the 20th
century cannot listen to music with an open mind unless it has been
labeled, categorized, packaged and marketed. But then again it is
symbolic (and I use Roland Barthes' definition) of the times that a
listener wants, as with other media, to be spoon-fed and that too in
small well-defined morsels. There is in music today, esp. in America,
an implicit tendency to approach anything unknown with great
trepidation.

My objective here is not to get into an argument -- no matter how
civilized -- over nomenclature but to suggest to people to open their
ears and, hopefully, minds to the underlying intellectual and
emotional motivation of the creators of -- improvised or other --
music. The blues is not, as some might have you believe, about bar
lines and song structure or being down in the dumps. And you don't
have to be playing the "blues" to express the blues. If it was so
easy to separate the two as distinct forms of music there would not,
today, be the kind of crossing-over of influences or artists. James
Blood Ulmer can just as easily bring the house down on the south side
of Chicago as Buddy Guy. Jeff Beck did not invent Goodbye Porkpie
Hat. Lol Coxhill's Loverman is just as powerful as Lady Day's and
nobody categorizes them together.

It is interesting to note that those "blues fans" on the net strongly
proposing splitting r.m.b often limit their knowledge and listening
of the blues to a narrow spectrum of white rockers who have
discovered the blues or traditional blues musicians who, meanwhile,
scrape a living playing up to the (white) majority's self-depracating
model of how they should act and what kind of music they should play.
I do not criticize Eric Clapton, John Mayall, Mike Bloomfield or
Stevie Ray Vaughan for bringing suburban teenagers to the source of
musical inspiration that influenced them in their formative years.
However, the journey further into the music is one that each listener
has to undertake for themselves. A person does great disservice to
themselves and the music by closing ones ears and mind beforehand
simply based on information heavily biased by the dark influences of
commerce.

To Richard's original differentiation between jazz and blues, I can
only say that while Coltrane's rendition of My Favorite Things is not
"the blues" his style and sound are steeped in the blues even if you
don't hear it all the time. The same is true of Ornette Coleman. The
often melancholic rising wail of his alto is expressing, just as
strongly, the same bone-chilling element of the blues as Robert
Johnson. They grow up with the blues down there in Fort Worth, Texas.
Gary Giddins admitted to being very embarrassed when, during an
interview, he tried to impress Cecil Taylor by laying out his most
avante records and Cecil wanted to listen to James Brown or Billie
Holiday. Bird did not switch on the blues for Now's The Time or
Yardbird Suite and switch it off for Ko-Ko/Cherokee or Salt Peanuts.
Separating those two idioms at that level becomes, to me, a case of
hair-splitting.  It may be a matter of aesthetics or simply a matter
of emotional reaction -- in both cases it is subjective and hence
cannot be dissected in a laboratory.

While I concede that major jazz stylists do not *explicitly* express
the blues element in everything they play, the blues is such an
inherent part of their musical education -- no matter how they
acquired it -- that one cannot simply dissociate one body of their
work with another.  Just because Charles Mingus has *one* album
titled BLUES AND ROOTS it doesn't mean that one can naively assume
that his vast compositional skills were not preaching the blues. As
Mingus growled about Rahsaan, after his solo , during the '74
Carnegie Hall concert: "he's listened to his blues". Muhal Richard
Abrams does not have to dedicate a composition to Muddy Waters to
have a subtle element of the blues always pervading his playing
(beautifully demonstrated on the ROOTS OF BLUE (RPR, 1986) duet or
his latest large ensemble effort). Charlie Christian and T-Bone
Walker had the same music teacher. Doesn't that tell you something
about the intimacy between jazz and the blues???  To me, jazz is
simply a collection of musical idioms -- you could change the name or
even simply drop it and it wouldn't change a thing. I do not sort my
records and keep them on different shelves marked classical, jazz,
blues, rock and world-music!! And I certainly do not expect an
already focussed Usenet bboard to be split thus. If you have a hard
time with the "disconnected" jazz and blues traffic you need better
news-reading software.

If all this doesn't convince you, here -- off the top of my head :)
-- are about 150 big, small, young, old, black, white, male, female,
famous and yet-to-be-famous reasons why you cannot separate jazz from
the blues.

Ahmed Abdullah, Muhal Richard Abrams, George Adams, Geri Allen, Kenny
Barron, Count Basie, Tim Berne, Ed Blackwell, Hamiet Bluiett, Lester
Bowie, Bobby Bradford, Anthony Braxton, Clifford Brown, Marion Brown,
Kenny Burrell, Jaki Byard, John Carter, Ron Carter, Paul Chambers,
Don Cherry, Charlie Christian, Sonny Clark, Ornette Coleman, Steve
Coleman, John Coltrane, Lol Coxhill, Marilyn Crispell, Andrew
Cyrille, Olu Dara, Miles Davis, Richard Davis, Buddy DeFranco, Jack
De Johnette, Elton Dean, Paul Desmond, Eric Dolphy, Lou Donaldson,
Kenny Dorham, Kenny Drew, Gerd Dudek, Johnny Mbizo Dyani, Marty
Ehrlich, Duke Ellington, Booker Ervin, Bill Evans, Gil Evans, Malachi
Favors Maghostut, Bobby Few, Mongezi Feza, Ella Fitzgerald, Ricky
Ford, Bill Frisell, Charles Gayle, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, John
Gilmore, Paul Gonsalves, Dennis Gonzalez, Dexter Gordon, Milford
Graves, Grant Green, Al Grey, Charlie Haden, Al Haig, Jim Hall,
Herbie Hancock, Craig Handy, John Handy, Roland Hanna, Barry Harris,
Beaver Harris, Craig Harris, Billy Hart, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Haynes,
Jimmy Heath, Percy Heath, Mark Helias, Gerry Hemingway, Julius
Hemphill, Joe Henderson, John Hicks, Billy Higgins, Andrew Hill, Earl
Hines, Billie Holiday, Dave Holland, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby
Hutcherson, Hasaan Ibn Ali, Abdullah Ibrahim, David Izenson, Ronald
Shannon Jackson, Joseph Jarman, Keith Jarrett, Leroy Jenkins, J.J.
Johnson, Elvin Jones, Philly Joe Jones, Thad Jones, Wynton Kelly,
Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Jimmy Knepper, Steve Lacy, Oliver Lake, Byard
Lancaster, Yusef Lateef, George Lewis, Kirk Lightsey, Abbey Lincoln,
Booker Little, Joe Lovano, Frank Lowe, Wynton Marsalis, Hugh
Masekela, Steve McCall, Chris McGregor, Ken McIntyre, Maurice
McIntyre, Jackie McLean, Myra Melford, Misha Mengelberg, Charles
Mingus, Blue Mitchell, Roscoe Mitchell, Hank Mobley, Thelonious Monk,
Lee Morgan, Famoudou Don Moye, David Murray, Diedre Murray, Sonny
Murray, Fats Navarro, James Newton, Reggie Nicholson, Charlie Parker,
Pat Patrick, Oscar Peterson, Bud Powell, Dudu Pukwana, Don Pullen,
Sun Ra, Sam Rivers, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Rouse, Pharoah
Sanders, Sonny Sharrock, Jimmy Smith, Bob Stewart, Horace Tapscott,
Cecil Taylor, Henry Threadgill, Charles Tyler, McCoy Tyner, Mal
Waldron, Carlos Ward, Bobby Watson, Frank Wess, Randy Weston, Reggie
Workman, Frank Wright, Lester Young ...and yes even John Zorn!!!

If you have no clue who these people are and what their music sounds
like it is time for you to do your homework.

 "They teach you there's a boundary line to music.
  But, man, there's no boundary line to art."
        - Charlie Parker

/sandeep
--
smehta@nynexst.com
--
               "Why do you compose atonally? You've got talent!"
                 -- Strauss to Hindemith, Donaueschingen, 1921.
Newsgroups: rec.music.bluenote