Jazz for all ages, tastes

[Williams225]

I expect you all to shred this to pieces, but still wanted to hear your thoughts if the so called 'public renaissance of Jazz' spilled over to the real stuff.

Mark
------
Jazz for all ages, tastes

Stuart Derdeyn
The Province


June 24, 2004


Many credit the current public renaissance of jazz with the crossover platinum breakthrough of Diana Krall.

But since Norah Jones filled a shopping cart with Grammy Awards and documentary filmmaker Ken Burns turned his lens on the history of the American art form, interest in the music has blossomed big time.

Suddenly, the faces in the audience are younger and so are the players. College kids are gobbling up Jamie Cullum's Twentysomething in the same way their grandparents went after Chet Baker Sings.

What gives?

"Just like anything, it's cyclical and you get some quality stuff in bunches," says Barry Taylor, music director at Vancouver's Clear FM. "I'd like to think that we're entering one of those periods right now that a young audience connects with.

"As far as the mainstream part of it goes, a lot of it really does have to do with the residual of the Norah Jones phenomenon, which raised so much awareness of the genre on the whole."

Then there's the influence of jazzy club music. Clear FM's Vancouver Chills show, playing tracks by artists such as Paris Blue Note recording artists St. Germain, fits right in with what's being called "nu jazz." Acts categorized in this sub-genre are steady sellers for labels such as NinjaTune, Cafe del Mar and FFFFR.

"We've found it critical to deal with new stuff like jazztronica, chill and all that in the past few years," says Ken Pickering, artistic director of Vancouver's jazz festival.

"Elements of our demographic got younger and they've responded very favourably to new groups we have coming in from dynamic scenes such as Norway.

"It's important to put that music out there and into the public eye and my pick of this year is the band Wibutee, which features some amazing young Norwegian players doing something really interesting and genuinely new."

While only a few artists reach the sales heights of Jones, Krall and Cullum, the industry forecast for jazz sales is favourable enough that major labels are scouting out underground buzz groups such as the Bad Plus and marketing them in the way they would rock bands.

And why not? The trio performs extended jams of Pixies, Nirvana and Black Sabbath songs.

Jazz indeed.

sderdeyn@png.canwest.com

[Gentle Giant]

I always believed that teen-idol types like Bobby Sherman, Andy Gibb, and Rick Springfield served a purpose by bringing young people into the music-listening and purchasing fold, and when they get older and wiser they'll eventually move on to better stuff. That may be what's going on in jazz, too.

[Peterdubya]

Something's gotta happen, because it's hurtin' right now.

[Sergio Zamora]

I don't expect this will help sales of music that I'm more interested in (though I'm a little curious about the Bad Plus), but more power to them.

[mjb]

I think Wibutee is a fine band, if you like that sort of thing - and I do. In the Jaga Jazzist vein.

[Pete C]

I was curious about Bad Plus, then I heard them and my curiosity was satisfied.

[Williams225]

[T~AndrewB~Bone]

Ihave absolutely nothing against Diana Krall and Norah and whomever else you mentioned, but I highly doubt they have anything to do with the sudden change in young people's views on jazz music. I am 17 and i love jazz and i am planning on sticking with it till the day I die. The reason that it's becoming "more popular" is because people like myself and my friends play jazz religiously in their car even when their rock/rap/country/whatever loving friends are in their. It starts building different tastebuds in their musical mouths. I credit my music teachers for putting me in jazz band when i was younger. I picked up the trombone in 4th grade(which it's now changed to 5th graders for the beginning of band in my area) and i would have quit band altogether, but because of joining the jazz band in 5th grade, everything changed dramatically. I no longer wanted to be a policeman/firefighter/samurai ninga...i wanted to be a professional musician. We need to get young kids in band playing more jazz music and LISTENING to jazz music in schools. Sorry, i just needed to go off on a tangent...

[Gary Sisco]

I don't know why there needs to be a jazz that appeals to "all ages and tastes." No other form of music does -- and neither their writers nor their fans think they need to.

[VIBEr]

Originally Posted by Rainman

I don't know why there needs to be a jazz that appeals to "all ages and tastes." No other form of music does -- and neither their writers nor their fans think they need to.

That sums up how I feel. I think the fallacy is that there exists this notion that jazz could be America's popular music once again, which it was at one time but hasn't been for fifty years. It ain't going to come back as pop music, and the only reason to try to have "jazz for all tastes" is for the purpose of record sales.

I think that pop music is basically dance music, which contemporary jazz was in the twenties, thirties, and forties, but ceased to be dance music after Bird. Which is fine - things change. But I just don't see jazz ever becoming dance music again any more than I see European classical music becoming dance music again (if one subscribes to the theory that jazz is American classical music).

[Noj]

Jazz is for all ages, but taste is another thing entirely.

[Gary Sisco]

Pop music isn't even music for all ages and tastes. Never was.

By the way, soul jazz has since the 60s been a very popular form of jazz. Just not with most white people or the clubs they're likely to frequent. It's not true that jazz ceased being a popular music with bebop.

Not that I care if it's a popular music or not. I don't. It is what it is (which is many things) and people who dig it, dig it. People who don't, don't. Most Americans, of all ages, don't. They've had nearly a century to decide and they have. Their loss.

[lazarus]

Originally Posted by mjb

I think Wibutee is a fine band, if you like that sort of thing - and I do. In the Jaga Jazzist vein.

I have their cd "Eight Domestic Challenges" from 2001. It´s the best "techno-jazz" cd I have heard so far. Great grooves and Håkon Kornstad is a very fine sax- and fluteplayer.
I´m very curious to hear their new one!

[Williams225]

[QUOTE=VIBEr] the only reason to try to have "jazz for all tastes" is for the purpose of record sales.
QUOTE]

Yes, and your point is? Add concert attendance, jazz musicians making a decent living, a thriving art form in new shapes and forms, etc. All a good thing.

May be there is a fear among some that if Jazz evolves to suit many tastes, it will be diluted. I have been reading the history of Jazz and this kind of debate seems to be as old as Jazz itself.

[Gary Sisco]

But jazz already has evolved to suit many tastes, and still is. Most of the people making these arguments seem to think that jazz can be evolved in a certain direction (normally the one they think it ought to go) in order to meet public approval on a mass level. It can't. It won't. It never has. But it has evolved to meet as many tastes (and more) than most of us can name. Normally, too, the arguments are used by people who don't listen to much of the new music that comes out all the time. There are more new releases every year than anyone could hear or buy or have time to listen to. There's never been a time when there were more -- ever. Whether huge numbers of people dig it or not doesn't change that at all.

Confusing the health and vitality of a music with sales numbers -- especially the suspect numbers used today, which are all Soundscan and therefore exclude almost every independent record store, where most jazz is sold, never mind mail order -- is a mistake, as they aren't the same things.

I buy a lot of records. I mean, a lot. But not more than two or three a year are included in the Soundscan numbers, because I don't buy many records from places that use Soundscan. I don't have any reason to, since they don't sell much of anything I'd want to listen to. I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

My last record buying splurge, in New York, I bought about six pounds of CDs. Not one went through a scanner, and so, not one of the sales counted in the sales numbers used by the music industry.

[Jazz-in-Aust]

I don't particularly like the music of Norah Jones or Diana Krall. That's just because i need something with a little more depth. But I love them for what they're doing for jazz. I feel that we shouldn't view these people as jazz musicians, but channels towards the jazz world. If people are introducd to it through these people, perhaps they will begin to explore other big names and legends from the past.

I feel that jazz is evolving into something else that will interest the public. The new use of technology in the jazz has become popular. In Perth, I went to a gig where a band called K was playing. I had heard a bit of K before, but i thought this was to advanced for the general public. I go to the gig, the club is absolutely packed. People are screaming and cheering, and everyone was getting into it. And the music itself wasn't played to suit the people, it was just they're music and the public love them for it.

This is just one direction that jazz is going that will grab the publics attention. Who knows where else it is going to go