Scared of Jazz
Timothy Sandefur on Oct 30th 2005
Kuznicki’s got a point about jazz. It’s been so over-intellectualized that much of the fun is taken out of it for most people. I don’t mean that we shouldn’t ask questions about art or seek a deeper understanding of music, including jazz. The problem isn’t ideas, the problem is intellectuals. They’ve screwed up a lot in this world, and jazz along with it. Just try reading John Szwed’s biography of Miles Davis. It’s a good enough biography on the whole, but Szwed can’t resist getting into the technicalities of Davis’ music in ways that are just so much babble to most people.
Anyway, I indeed got a note from a reader in response to my original post about autumnal music, saying “FYI, two corrections: ‘Fall’ was composed by the great Wayne Shorter, not Miles, as were most of the group’s repertoire from this period. Also, it’s not modal, as it has quite complex chord changes.” Well, I knew the former; not the latter. Indeed, much of the music from the Miles Smiles, Nefertiti, Sorcerer days was by Shorter, including my favorite Miles Davis tune of all (probably): “Footprints,” on Miles Smiles. And Shorter plays very well on these albums. But I’m not the biggest saxophone fan, for one thing, and for another, I was deeply unimpressed by the Shorter album everyone was raving about recently, Alegria. It had some nice moments, but they were often crippled by bizarre, unpleasant moments that were just musically meaningless to me—which probably makes me an uncultured boob. In fact, my favorite parts of Alegria were the piano parts.
Filed in The Bistro
What people call “jazz” encompasses a huge range of styles, and I think it would be inappropriate to expect anyone to appreciate or understand what falls within those boundaries. A coworker of mine recently saw John Scofield play a concert which was a tribute to Ray Charles. She enjoyed much of it, but she commented that during some parts she felt like she would need a background in music theory to appreciate what he was doing. To me, this is missing the point. The first time I heard Ornette Coleman’s “Free Jazz,” I was blown away. Not because I understood what he was doing, but because I had no idea what he was doing, or that music could even sound like that. That album took me to another world. But to other people, even many who are undoubtedly more musically cultured than I, it sounds like meaningless noise. So be it. Maybe in the end it’s not the intellectuals who are to blame for spoiling things, but the people who take their word as gospel.
The only jazz I really like is jazz that rocks. See Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale.