Getting a grip on the '90s

[mke]

We've had 13 to 3 years to assess the music created during the '90s, what do you think stands out from that decade?

[Reid]

I would say several things:

1. Up to the mid-90's, I think Wynton Marsalis's views still held a prominent position in jazz.
2. As the decade came to a close, his influence began to wane. There were less contentious arguments about "real" jazz versus "fake" jazz.
3. A greater openess to Avant-Garde, and a renewed interest in Fusion.
4. A great deal of experimentation and mixing of different music from different time periods and different cultures.

I think people will remember the 90's (and the period now) as a transitional phase. It's going to be seen as a time when jazz musicians experimented with different combinations of music. There was no clear direction in jazz, and I would say that the glut of information was a part of the reason for this lack of direction. (At some point in the future, I predict that experimention will slow down, and musicians will get a better handle on the information, and some clear developments will occur. Either that will happen or jazz will evolve into another style. )

[mke]

What does "jazz will evolve into another style" mean?

[Reid]

I just meant that the music will cease to be jazz and become something else. Maybe jazz, and other styles will come together to create a new type of music. Think of something like eai or Noise, or even when jazz first came about.

[Vince Kargatis]

Originally posted by Reid
4. A great deal of experimentation and mixing of different music from different time periods and different cultures.

Reid and I don't agree often about historical characterizations, but I can't argue with this, and think of this as the 90s' chief characteristic, particularly outside the mainstream.

The most prominent "single" musical phenomenon in the 90s that I can think of is the growth of the (non-dance) electronica genre(s) and its diffusion into all sorts of different genres: pop/rock/folk, jazz, improv, experimental, classical. I see that has having more wide-ranging and long-lasting influence than more commonly pointed-to "90s" phenomena, such as the mainstreaming of grunge in the early part of the decade.

[Gary Sisco]

It marked the end of a "dominant" form of jazz -- a good thing, to me.

This was helped along by a (still continuing, rapidly) diminishing involvement in the music by the major corporations, er, labels -- also a good thing, to me.

And a new and still growing fanbase in younger people (ie, post-70s youth to start up some new labels and post-80s youth to buy the records and go out to shows) who were not indoctrinated with the Official Jazz World's ancestor worship, or at least not en masse.

And the rise of the internet, to make these other things possible, inclucing being able to buy and hear a lot of the music that wouldn't have been otherwise possible for most of us outside the major metro areas.

[stonemonkts]

Originally posted by Gary Sisco
And the rise of the internet, to make these other things possible, inclucing being able to buy and hear a lot of the music that wouldn't have been otherwise possible for most of us outside the major metro areas.

Amen!

People in farflung places have instant access to the vast libraries, information databases, retailers, wholesalers, e-bayers, message boards, etc and so on. This development has enabled the dissemination of the music to a degree unthinkable prior to the web.

The fact that jazz sales haven't benefited by this phenomenon is vexing to me. I have learned about and purchased hundreds of releases I would not have known if not for the web. However I do believe there are more creative efforts made possible due to the outlet availaible to the labels, artists....I don't know...perhaps Kenny G sold a few thousand less of a particular release and several dozen less commercial artists had their material purchased in lieu of.....but wthdik....pure conjecture on my part. Point is I believe there are more artists in the field making a living (however meagre) that perhaps would not have prior to the net.

Certainly there are more today than in, say, 1985.

[Gary Sisco]

The answers not in the sales but in who counts them, how, and why. The only sales counted in sales stats are "Soundscan" sales, which rules out almost all of the real jazz fan's sources of records, which usually cannot afford to be a part of "Soundscan." And hence none of those sales are counted.

There is more jazz being recorded today than ever before, and I doubt very seriously that anyone's staying in business to lose money over the long term, so clearly someone's buying the records.

Although I agree with most of what has been posted, the difference between the 80s and 90s is still a bit fuzzy in my mind. The continual experimentation, exploration of new musical forms, and drawing from world music was already in place in the 80s, In fact, this represented a continuation of trends from the 60s that picked up steam in the 70s.

Perhaps the 80s could be characterized by a bit more cautious an approach that aimed at cleaning up the "excesses" of the previous decade, while the 90s brought back a more free and daring attitude. That said, the 80s were still loaded with free and daring music.

As for the "young lions," the 90s ended rather differently than they started. The early 90s brought on the peak of the Marsalis-inspired young and roaring virtuosi. That movement didn't maintain momentum as the decade progressed. It would be interesting to compare the number of recording contacts for major labels that these guys had in the early 90s with 2000.

[moneyp]

Originally posted by Reid
I just meant that the music will cease to be jazz and become something else. Maybe jazz, and other styles will come together to create a new type of music. Think of something like eai or Noise, or even when jazz first came about.

Some people considered Bop to be unrecognisable from swing, but they still called it jazz. What makes you think anything will change now?

[Reid]

mone,

Well, there are at least two possibilities:

1. A new form of jazz will come about;
2. A new form of music will come about that's so different from jazz that people will not recognize it as jazz.

[Nate Dorward]

The 1990s? It's a funny decade because on the one hand, it's when I discovered a lot of new, exciting musicians; but sometimes by the end of the decades sometimes my interest had receded & I was moving off elsewhere. In the late 1980s I was less involved in jazz, having temporarily dropped playing piano, & I was anyway mostly listening to older albums. In the early 1990s I got much more interested in contemporary jazz, largely via discovering really exciting figures like John Zorn (then just undergoing the shift from his Elektra/Nonesuch years to Tzadik & Avant), Joe Lovano (who'd just put out From the Soul), Derek Bailey, Barry Guy, Evan Parker. Much of the instigation came very indirectly, via my discovery of contemporary poetries that I didn't find boring--happening across Bailey for instance was purely via happenstance, because I got the 1st Cook/Morton book & the entry for Company quoted the British poet Peter Riley, whose work I'd been reading in A Various Art. At the Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry I had opportunities in the early 1990s to see Simon H Fell (w/ Ben Watson reading some poodle play texts), Derek Bailey, Evan Parker. By the end of the 1990s, up to now, some of these figures have receded a bit for me--got impatient eventually with Zorn's endless recycling of the Masada material, & Lovano's not nearly as inspiring a player as he was then (stuck on the tribute-album treadmill that virtually everyone at a major label ends up on). The UK free-improv stuff has stuck with me much more; Parker not perhaps quite so much, given that he's a less protean & perverse figure than Bailey, & that while Parker was arguably at an aesthetic highpoint of his career in the early to mid-1990s, more recently his recordings have come to seem a bit predictable, if impeccable.

I suppose this isn't quite answering the question. Most of the answers so far seem accurate enough. I suppose one needs to name some other crucial developments--one would be the industry's romance with vocalists. At one point this looked quite encouraging, with inventive musicians like Barber, Elling & Dominique Eade turning up--arguably Cassandra Wilson, though to be frank I don't have much taste for her. But it's looking like Diana Krall & Norah Jones are the keynotes of this trend.....

Anyway, the decade's all receding. I look at my shelves of Language Poetry & my runs of John Zorn's albums & wonder how often I'll be pulling them down in future.

[frankpop1]

i also digest the 90s as a real Renaissance for the avant garde while traditionalists seemed to suffer the insufferable, while i declare the reports of life after death for fusion are premature:

1. the euro/american free jazz scene union between the camps resulted in some excellent results as well whether it was taylor, duval, braxton, rashied ali, etc.

2. braxton kicked off the 90s w/his 4tet rising to new levels and especially his 'tristano' cd as well the parker project' highlights then gtm b4 petering off.

3. the cecil taylor school of music never looked back or rested. i was of course quite impressed with the 'qua' collection as well as the duval/mcphee et al output that realized a nice lil place between 12 tone classical form and improvisation.

4. i think the schlippenbach trios were quite noteworthy for this decade.

5. finally, i think the net introduced a lot of music outside the now totally discredited 'downbeat' journalism in america. when i 1st arrived at jazzboulevard it seemed hardly an american soul had listened to evan parker outside of walter. now...

[moneyp]

Originally posted by Reid
mone,

Well, there are at least two possibilities:
1. A new form of jazz will come about;
2. A new form of music will come about that's so different from jazz that people will not recognize it as jazz.

1. My question would be what makes it a "new form?" People can barely reconcile the elements of what jazz is now.

2. If it's so different from jazz that people don't recognise it, who's to say that it is jazz?

[Sergio Zamora]

It's not easy for me to assess the 90's because I don't have much to compare it with. I started listening to jazz in the mid-late 90's, and it didn't take me long to discover that peculiar and unique phenomenon known as 'jazz discussion'. I basically thought that what I was learning was pretty much the way it's always been. Only until recently have I been able to start looking at those years from an external perspective.

Some of my main observations have already been mentioned. Particularly important was the new means of communications technology (ie, internet) without which I would probably be listening to the complete current Warner Bros. or Verve jazz catalogues, and would never have discovered all the fascinating music that's out there. In relation to that point is the seeming slew of independent recordings by artists and labels who might not have recorded as often or as *well* as they do now. Part of that is again the internet - this time as a tool for distribution (online sales, samples, etc), but I imagine that technological developments in sound recording were also involved, making recording a cd a lot cheaper than it would have been in the past. The point is there is a lot of music out there, being made all over the place, and now more available than ever. It's gotten to the point that nobody has shed a tear over the fact that the majors have practically eliminated their jazz rosters.

As many have mentioned, there's been a wider acceptance of the avant garde. At least that's what it seems to me. I remember just a few years ago, it was a big deal to see Parker and Shipp on the cover of a glossy (I think Jazziz, which makes it doubly weird). Now, they mention Parker and Shipp all the time. Although I have no evidence to back this up, I'm convinced that a lot of this has to do with the fact that younger fans (of which I'll include myself, so it's relative) are starting to jump into avant garde/free improv/what-not without really delving into mainstream all that much. Also, I think there's been some realization that avant garde/free jazz/free improv/whatever is more than just skronkers. Why it took so long to realize this, I don't know, but when's the last time you heard somebody say something about 'free skronkers' or something like that?

And here's a speculation: by the end of the 90's, most of the early bop greats had already split. Sure, there are still a few around (may Max Roach be with us forever), but not many. Even many of the guys who made a name in the 60's were splitting. In addition, the jazz listening community, which had already been shrinking since the late 60's, shrunk even moreso as fusion lost its popularity. So, young and middle-aged musicians were faced with a shrinking public, few remaining old wise men to lead them along, and no single defined clear path for moving forward. So, they had tough choices ahead. It is precisely because they were faced with these tough economic, artistic, and personal choices and that each of them made different decisions that we now have the wide spectrum of jazz and improvised music today.

But as Dr. Waltissimo would say...

[Uli]

The 90'ies were the decade when I started to check out internet jazz chats. From this personal perspective I must say that the talk about music has changed much more than the music itself, imho. Yes, one can aknowledge the death of the American down beat journaslism and the advent of the popularity of more English sources like the penguins and such popular yuts magazines like the wire. This brought with it a decreased focus on the global nature of jazz and increased dwellings on the doings of members of some European tribes.

[Pete C]

Down with the conceptual tyranny of the decade.

[bluenoter]

Originally posted by Pete C
Down with the conceptual tyranny of the decade.

What an '00s remark.

Edit: I know what you mean, but in this case I think that the division is both convenient and valid enough. The date on which such and such an album was recorded, for example, is an objective fact.