Maybe I'm being too picky, but would you schedule Bruce Springsteen at a Jazz festival? According to this article he and his band did a great job at the New Orleans Jazz Festival. They "added horns, backup singers and a fiddler". I like his music, this is not a complaint about him, but what about all the unemployed or underemployed jazz musicians - wouldn't they be more suitable? Or am I being too much of a purist?
I wondered about the "added horns". There are people around who think that if you toot on a horn, you must be a jazz musician. Is that what they were thinking?
If it can get his fans and all the others that are scheduled fan's to listen to Jazz I am all for it.
Having said that. It stopped really being mostly Jazz a long time ago. And a good many actual Jazz that they actually book really are not worth seeing.
I love New Orleans and was there 3 days this last month for the first time since Katrina as part of my Louis:The Early Years tour with my fiancee....but that Festival really is a joke musically with regards to Jazz.
Last edited by Blue Train; April-30th-2012 at 01:01 PM.
"There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind."
- Duke Ellington
“Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.”
- George Bernard Shaw
"As iron is eaten away by rust, so the envious are consumed by their own passion."
Yeah, I think most so called 'Jazz' Festivals (whenever they're not explicitly tied to 'Blues', which they often are) can be pretty arbitrary in their remit. I've learned not to get offended by it. Basically, if it means they can lure a few more people in and get 'em turned on to Jazz it's alright by me.
Q: 'How do you start free improvising?'
A: 'Well I usually start on D as a matter of fact'
"I wandered alone in the desert and cried "Oh Lord! Oh Lord! What hast thou done, lately?"
"Thought is not a saffron-robed monk pissing in the snow"
"Bitterness slowly crept into the marriage and by the time Lovborg was six years old his parents exchanged gunfire daily"
I didn't realize. I just saw the article, but I wasn't aware of the whole festival lineup. In addition to Springsteen, I would add names like The Beach Boys, Bonnie Raitt, Jimmy Buffett, Tom Petty as all good music, but what are they doing at a jazz festival? On the other hand, there is still some good jazz there that I'd like to hear, like Wycliffe Gordon, Poncho Sanchez, Terence Blanchard.
Look at that lineup. It'd be a stretch for me to consider any of the artists whose names I recognize "jazz". Herbie Hancock, from time to time. Perhaps Donald Harrison. Regina Carter, under a very broad definition. Ellis Marsalis fits. But Bonnie Raitt? Bon Iver? Jimmy Buffet? Tom Petty?
sheesh....intended in the most friendly & complementary way.
I'm uncertain which of these you remind me of more for finding and digging stuff up around here
sheesh....intended in the most friendly & complementary way.
I'm uncertain which of these you remind me of more for finding and digging stuff up around here
Although the guy on the right is the pretty one, alas I think I resemble the chap on the left more. It's those beady eyes, that air of aggrieved 'What the fuck you tellin' me now?!' expressed in his demeanour, that anyone who knows me in the real world will tell you constitutes an uncanny resemblance.
Last edited by baksheesh; April-30th-2012 at 02:54 PM.
Q: 'How do you start free improvising?'
A: 'Well I usually start on D as a matter of fact'
"I wandered alone in the desert and cried "Oh Lord! Oh Lord! What hast thou done, lately?"
"Thought is not a saffron-robed monk pissing in the snow"
"Bitterness slowly crept into the marriage and by the time Lovborg was six years old his parents exchanged gunfire daily"
I found that Bruce Springsteen could go a bit jazzy from time to time. He had the musicians to at least veer in this direction. See early tracks like "New York City Serenade" and "Kitty's Back," especially the smoking 17-minute version from the 1975 London concert.
I'm here in New Orleans, having attended the entire first weekend of the fest.
From just reading about the lineup of supposed "headliners" you have no idea of what it's about. I rarely see ANY of the headliners and I see and hear more good music here than anywhere else, every year. It would be hard not too.
There are 10 or 11 stages going at once. It has more New Orleans Jazz and southern jazz and jazz derived/related artists than you can ever imagine. Having big artists on the corporate stage helps enables them to book and pay thousands of other artists. And when the huge acts are on, it keeps things less frantic for those watching the 9 or 10 other stages. And for those who still don't approve of the name, there's a huge stage with world class "real jazz" all day long.
At any given time, on other stages there is probably an excellent African band, and excellent zydeco band, a cookin funk band, a killer latin jazz orchestra (eg Bill Summers) amazing JAZZ brass band, fantastic gospel, a blues tent with world class blues acts all day long, etc, etc, etc.
And just about every great New Orleans based musician living is playing. Sometimes guesting with several groups.
Go to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival web site to get an idea. I posted the schedule links below.
This festival has ALWAYS been about this broad diversity of NEW ORLEANS jazz genres and other southern roots genres related to it. This is no appropriation of the term "jazz" that is appealing to the smooth jazz crowd. One type of music you DON'T see is smooth jazz, btw.
The vibe is better than any festival I've been to, with double or triple the "real" non corporate music you can't see at big time festivals. Like the 40 piece Eunice Saturday afternoon jam Assn's fiddlers from 12 to 94 years old. And for you discerning fans of what's considered hip non-jazz music, there was Iron and Wine, the Carolina Chocolate Drops.
Lastly, all the good restaurants and caterers in NOLA compete to have their creations sold at the dozens of food booths, resulting in AMAZING food at reasonable prices.
It was more crowded yesterday than I've ever seen it, but for me (who likes Bruce) and 10's of thousands of others who didn't go NEAR that area, the fest has nothing to do with the big rock names that you've read about.
Lastly the audience is the most diverse, fun and friendly group you can imaging.
If you want to complain about how many supposed jazz fests have lost their soul to non-jazz, I hear you. But this fest is not Exhibit A by any means.
I defy anyone to look at the lineups on ALL the stages and tell me your mouth isn't watering. And this is just the FIRST weekend. Laissez le bon temps roulez!
Last edited by steve(thelil); May-1st-2012 at 06:34 AM.
To give an example of how New Orleans Jazz Fest has many options besides the Springsteens, Pettys and Beach Boys that get so much press, here's a list of what you could have seen on other stages WHILE the Beach Boys were on:
Bon Iver
Steel Pulse
Cubano Be, Cubano Bop: Poncho Sanchez & His Latin Band feat. Terence Blanchard
Buckwheat Zydeco
Jamil Shareef Jazz Band
The Texas Tornados feat. Flaco Jiménez, Augie Myers, and Shawn Sahm
Real Untouchables Brass Band
Reverend Jermaine Landrum & the Abundant Praise Revival Choir
Guitar Lightnin' Lee & the Thunder Band
what you could have seen on other stages WHILE Bruce Springsteen was on:
Janelle Monáe
AL GREEN!!!!
Nicholas Payton XXX with Vicente Archer and Jeff "Tain" Watts!!!!
Tab Benoit
Don Vappie & the Creole Jazz Serenaders
Sunpie & the Louisiana Sunspots' International Accordion Summit
Kirk Joseph's Tuba Tuba
Franklin Avenue Baptist Church Mass Choir
Washboard Rodeo
N'Fungola Sibo West African Dance & Drum Company
In other words at any time over the weekend - even when the non-jazz headliners were on - you could could also see a number of amazing, non-commercial jazz, jazz derived or jazz-related musical acts that as a group would themselves would constitute a very well programmed one stage one day jazz fest.
This may be a shock to some, but Brian Wilson based a lot of what the Beach Boys sound was on the Four Freshmen and the HI-LOs (you have to be old to remember those groups)
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Originally Posted by larrycohen
