From: fwj@reg.triumf.ca (JONES,FRED_W.)
Newsgroups: rec.music.bluenote
Subject: Re: JAZZ IS DYING:HELP!!
Date: 14 Oct 1992 20:36 PDT
Organization: TRIUMF: Tri-University Meson Facility
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: reg.triumf.ca
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article <1992Oct14.020141.7622@iscsvax.uni.edu>, munnik7500@iscsvax.uni.edu writes...
>Fuck present day jazz and jazz artists.
 ...
>     My strong opinion is up on the wall here.  I believe that music that is
>being released today really does not progress the already harmonically and
>melodically stressed boundaries.  We are in a state of a reactionary time. 
>Musicians today (reference to specific examples as pop/jazz artists-Brecker,
>Kenny G, Dave Kos, Yellowjackets, etc. AND 'classically trained jazz' artists
>as The Marsalis Clan, John Faddis, T. Blanchard, Steve Colemann, Billy
>Hollyday, etc.) do not progress, they perfect.  It has taken hundreds of years
 ...

Well, this rather provocative "trial balloon" definitely got a few salvos
fired at it, as well as some thoughtful replies.  Several people ably
pointed out that jazz is certainly not dead and that there are some
musicians out there who are forward-looking, albeit unknown to some of
us, including me.  But what about the musicians we all _have_ heard of?
A disproportionate number seem to be concerned only with traditional
forms and instrumentation, as compared to the sixties and seventies
when there was a tremendous sense of expansiveness in music.  Those days
were an exciting period to listen to jazz, because there was so much 
exploration: a departure from traditional "song" material into longer 
forms, use of electronics and electric and other non-traditional instruments,
incorporation of elements from rock and classical music, to name a few
things that were being done -- not by mavericks but by established artists,
and available on the airwaves for all to hear.

Today, the jazz programming seems to be polarized: you either get 24-hour
Yellowjackets/Kenny G "Happy Jazz" interspersed with New Age, or material that 
seems to be mired firmly in the idiom of the 30's and 40's.  I hope those of
you in the larger cities have it better, but here in Vancouver the only full-
time jazz station, pulled in fuzzily from south of the border, suffers from
what I call the 4-B syndrome: a steady diet of Bebop, Ballads, BigBand and
Blues, giving you the impression that jazz has stayed about the same since the
1950's.  I like all these types of music, but if this is really all that 
listeners want to hear, and artists want to produce, them I am disappointed.

This morning, a d.j. announced he was going to play a cut from a new Gary
Burton c.d., and I got my hopes up, but they were dashed when I heard
"My Funny Valentine" in a completely traditional and predictable rendering.  
Great song, beautifully interpreted by so many others: why wear it out?
This is one example of the feeling of constraint that to me seems present
in the music today.  I hope I'm wrong, and that the real problem is just
that the really open-minded and forward-looking musicians are just not
getting exposure like they used to.

Frederick Jones
fwj@reg.triumf.ca