[Harp-L] musical elitism (was timbre etc...)

[Jonathan Ross <jross38@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Pierre writes:

"Listen to jazz for a few years and you will probably get a whole new  
perspective on music and you may find that most blues start sounding  
boring, same with most rock and pop. This is not snobbery, once you  
get used to jazz, other music just starts to sounds too simple, too  
basic. Like rap to a blues listener. Well not quite, but same sort of  
thing. Not to say that there aren't any masterpieces in rock, blues  
or pop but the masterpieces are few and far between and they are  
getting harder and harder to come up with."


Wow.  I havent seen such a perfect example of the centuries old  
snobbery against folk and pop musics in favor of art musics because  
of their supposed superior complexity for a while.  What's worse,  
this is merely your own tastes and then assuming that this is the  
case for anyone else.  It isn't.  I listen to as much jazz as most  
anyone else--a lot of it rather esoteric at that.  But I also listen  
to a lot of pop, funk, rock, folk, and everything else.  I don't find  
them "lesser" or less interesting in any way shape or form.  Mostly  
because they aren't.  If it were harmonic complexity alone (or even  
rhythmic complexity, in many ways) by your argument much of the more  
recent "classical" music I listen to should make it so that anything  
else seems worthless and infantile.

All of this is based on a false assumption about complexity (as if  
complexity is worthy of admiration in and of itself--I seem to recall  
someone named Occam thought differently).  The theoretically  
"simpler" forms are in fact often deceptively complicated.  For  
instance, one thing most jazz doesn't do well is establish a strong  
beat (there are exceptions, but for the most part even the hard  
groove of Hammond jazz isn't as hard as most any blues artists you  
care to name).  That's not less sophisticated, it's a different  
ethic.  Moreover, keeping a hard beat can be much harder than keeping  
a light, moving beat (as in most jazz).  Try it for a few hours and  
see which is easier.  There's a reason that the Shona culture in  
Zimbabwe prefers precision to speed in mbira playing--when ceremonies  
go for days you need someone who can keep the beat rock-steady that  
entire time.  I'm not sure how many jazz bassists or drummers could  
do that frankly--and that's including people whose music I love.

Pierre again:

"Jazz players are jaw dropping but in a different way. They are jaw  
dropping in what they can do on the spot, not just how they sound.  
Listen to the top jazz artist for a few years and you will be forever  
changed."


No, you were forever changed--your experiences are not going to be  
the same as everyone else's and vice versa.

I would suggest listening to someone like James Cotton or Junior  
Wells' live stuff.  It's not just sound or tone there, but energy,  
inventiveness and playing off and with the crowd--and all in the  
service of a driving rhythm and powerful beat.  And don't forget that  
most of the older recordings by Walter, Williamson et al were semi- 
improvised live takes.  Again, they were creating on the spot in ways  
beyond "sound"--in ways which can only be called musical.

There have been a lot of great jazz sax players, but most aren't  
great funk musicians--and most couldn't be unless they stopped  
playing jazz and in a jazz style, which few can.  The old canard that  
"a great jazz musician is a great blues musician" is just a lie.   
Indeed, it's just another side of the same snobbery that was once  
used against jazz itself, and which has been used for several hundred  
years against all forms of folk and pop musics compared to the "high  
art" of Western formal music or recently jazz (the music those  
peasants make and like just isn't as worthwhile as our more refined  
music, you know).

You bring up Wynton Marsalis in another post.  Marsalis is a great  
trumpeter, but when he tries classical music the fact that he is not  
really a classical musician becomes very clear.  It's just not in him  
the way it's in someone who has made that genre their career and  
identity.  That's no different than the difference between a blues  
and a jazz musician.  And it should be indicative that there isn't  
some "worthiness" barrier like the sound barrier which once crossed  
is quantitatively higher than what was before.

Take Toots as another example.  Toots is a truly first-rate jazz  
musician (both on harmonica and guitar).  But he's not a top-notch  
blues musician.  Put him up there with a pure blues band and ask him  
to play just blues and he might do a passable job, but compared to a  
Paul DeLay or Kim Wilson, well, it will be obvious whose the blues  
musician and who isn't.  And that's not a diss against Toots--there's  
no reason he should be a great blues musician anymore than a great  
blues player should be a great jazz musician just by default.

Blues, country, folk, etc... are no less worthwhile, interesting or  
in the end complex than jazz or other forms of music.  Every genre  
has its own standards, language and culture.  That doesn't mean you  
have to like them all equally, just that if one genre fits more with  
what you like doesn't mean that it's better, just more to your  
liking.  Moreover, if someone wants to play music in that genre and  
be taken seriously and in the end be successful within the genre,  
they'd better know and respect the traditions of that genre--which  
are usually about the same level of import and difficulty no matter  
the genre (to take the fiddle-violin example of a recent thread, I've  
heard Yitzak Perlman (sp) play folk styles alongside fiddlers from  
folk traditions--suffice it to say one of the best classical  
violinists was not the best player in those occasions, mostly because  
he didn't have the genre-specific knowledge and techniques; this is  
not an isolated incident with one performer, and it should serve as a  
warning against assumptions about the levels of technique needed for  
success in the various folk and pop traditions being inherently less  
than those in the high art traditions).




 ()()    JR "Bulldogge" Ross
()  ()   & Snuffy, too:)
`----'