What will history say...

[JazzJunkie]

What will history say about Jazz in the latter part of the 1900's -- specifically the '80s and '90's. Who were the notable players and why? What new (or old) directions did it take? How has it progressed (or digressed), both on the home front and globally?

I'm not sure if it's still too early to get a good sense of the overall picture for that time period, but thought we could give it gander; maybe bit by bit it will start to come together.

[Pete C]

"History," singular, will say nothing. There are a multitude of histories.

[JazzJunkie]

Yes, Pete, thanks for pointing out that it *is* a very complicated situation, and that's why it needs input/opinions from a variety of sources.

Maybe it's better to start with something more concrete, like Fusion. The 70's and early 80's, gave rise to groups/artists like Spyro Gyra, Jeff Lorber, Herbie Hancock and Deodato who brought Jazz Fusion to the masses. Hopefully someone can expound on this starting point.

[Captain Hate]

[edit]written before I saw post #3

Ken Burns: Wynton, Wynton, Wynton

Captain Hate's Notable Players: Braxton, Threadgill, Zorn, David Murray, Adams/Pullen, Cecil, Evan Parker, William Parker, Mengelberg & all the ICP, Brotz, Breuker, Ware, Sun Ra, AEC, George Lewis, Frisell, Holland, Weston (more will come to me I'm sure; try not to berate me for some obvious lapses)

New Directions: Incorporation of electronics and cross pollenation of U.S and European players

How Progressed: Home front: Running in place at best; it seems to me that not enough new blood is being pumped in but just when I get really concerned a fresh new face appears. Globally: I think it's on the increase but since I'm not there, that's an ill-informed opinion.

[Uli]

Thanks for the report from Ohio, Captain. For me, I have no clue, History is all over the place.

[Sand]

O Photo © Shelley Ann Carver, NYC, '99 (Click on photos for full~size images) ... What they say clues to Chicago Google results for Norwegian language sites: Mongezi Feza: 1 hit Wynton Marsalis: 73 hits Joe McPhee: 360 Maja Ratkje: 531 Mats Gustafsson (the one and only): 5410 hits Chicago: 28.100

[hglord]

History is already speaking loud and clear on this issue. The last twenty years of the twentieth ushered in the switch of blues, jazz, and the Great American Song Book from folk/pop music to classical music. When the music was first invented, the creation was accomplished by mostly non-formally trained but brilliant practitioners. Now, many colleges and universities have whole courses of study that concentrate on the details of twentieth century American music that clearly places it in the mainstream of "classic."

The current practitioners of this music are highly trained, extremely skillful musicians with whom many of the music's originators could not have held their own on the stand. But, of course, current performers could never have created the music themselves. That's why so many jazz lovers are Wynton bashers.

Today, you can buy the complete score to "Kind of Blue" with all the parts transcribed, including the original solos (ISBN 0-634-01169-3, Hall Leonard Corporation). High school kids can, and do, practice this and other classics on their lunch hours. The best of them sound damn good, too.

The best of twentieth century jazz, from The Hot Fives and Sevens and the Red Hot Peppers through Duke's last works are now classics. It started in the eighties and continues now.

If you want to know what's going to happen to jazz in the twenty-first century, just look at what happened to other genres of classical music. What happened to baroque music after Bach and Handel died? What happened to romantic music after Wagner and Mahler passed? Music will continue to develop, but it won't sound the same again.

[Pete C]

Originally Posted by hglord

But, of course, current performers could never have created the music themselves. That's why so many jazz lovers are Wynton bashers.

I don't understand the cause & effect implied by those 2 sentences.

[hglord]

Wynton is an example of a very highly trained, skillful current practitioner of twentieth century American classical music who is technically a better musician than, say Louis Armstrong (or lots of others of that era). Pops blew his lip away on several occasions during his career because he played above high C by pressing his horn hard against his lips. Wynton will never blow his lip away because he uses his lip muscles to hit high notes and never presses the horn against his lips. Wynton understands the details of harmony and music composition in ways that Louis couldn't imagine so Wynton's compositions always achieve the effects he intends them to.

Pops, on the other hand, was a screaming genius, a leader, in Duke's words, an "American Original." Wynton is a plodding follower. Pops tried things that no one had ever done before and made it all work in the most spectacular fashion that is literally thrilling to this day. Wynton recognizes the excitement and tried to match it, failing miserably every time. Pops took chances and made them pay off. The biggest chances Wynton takes are in his personal stock portfolio. He never blew or wrote an original note in his life and he probably never will.

Wynton is an example of what happens when music goes from original, exciting contemporary creation to classic. The music will definitely continue to be played, but it won't be the same, just as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven are still played, but the excitement has gone out their debuts.

Those people who love jazz for its excitement of creation, I include myself in that group, will have to listen to the recordings and remember the concerts we attended. If you want that excitement now, it's just like baroque music after Bach: it changed. The excitement is elsewhere.

Trust me, I'm at least as sad about this as you are, maybe more, but it's still true.

[Captain Hate]

Originally Posted by Uli

Thanks for the report from Ohio, Captain. For me, I have no clue, History is all over the place.

I think you do have a clue; specifically on what's going on in Chicago. There's nobody else whom I'd ask about who's hot and who's not.

[Uli]

Originally Posted by Captain Hate

I think you do have a clue; specifically on what's going on in Chicago. There's nobody else whom I'd ask about who's hot and who's not.

Nah, just maybe one or two scenes and some global glimpses of where The Excitement will come from for others.

[Sergio Zamora]

Originally Posted by Pete C

"History," singular, will say nothing. There are a multitude of histories.

It seems to me mainstream and popular media have a knack for, over time and unintentionally, standardizing, homogenizing, and linearizing even the most complex history. I suspect the 'well-known' processed history that will be eventually filtered out through the information machine will be in the ballpark of Kenny Burns. Maybe a tad more to the left, though not much more diverse.

[edit: I hate it when people state the obvious and make it sound like an original thought. That's what I did in my first sentence, however]

[Steve Reynolds]

why not compare Wynton to Mongezi Feza?

why bring up the irrelevent one

the one who has said nothing, says nothing and never will say anything of note


he certainly never screamed

like Armstrong, Feza was a "screaming genius"


too baqd he did most of screaming in the dark

it is up to true historians to record *all* screaming






Die Like A Dog, baby

[Captain Hate]

Originally Posted by Sergio Zamora

[edit: I hate it when people state the obvious and make it sound like an original thought. That's what I did in my first sentence, however]

I consider you a total original.

[sonic1]

I am not so sure what is considered "jazz" anymore. Not just by the audience but by the musicians themselves. Back in the 60s artists were complaining about the term jazz to umbrella all this music. And the fight over who should own the term makes me want to puke.

Excuse me:

owait98w65-07w24n6 [04tq4wuip8098430b598be6059n84b wr89 sz4r

There, let me wipe my mouth off...

OK, I would just assume contemplating what history will say about MUSIC of this time. Or condider how the music we like specifically will find itself in the future.

Jared

[SEJ]

As music progresses along avant-garde lines, the process of demusification (sorry, neologism) will continue. Having dispensed with elements of musical structure bit-by-bit, music will progress until the perfect art form is achieved in a music with no structure and hardly any variation at all. Thus, the end of history has already passed, as the notoriously "difficult" (well, for your unadvanced ears) Metal Machine Music has already been made. (It's taking you wankers a while to catch up, that's all. )

And so we can indeed start writing this history now, with the story of the 80s and 90s encompassing a process of gradual acceptance, which will continue until industrial noise is piped into elevators, and best-selling books recommend exposing your baby to Brotzmann's Machine Gun in the womb. (Conservative folks will argue that such classics are better for baby because they are more structured.) Jazzcorner denizens will snort in derision, as they will have since decided that physical pain is the new frontier in music. Thus a Darwinistic process will ensue as the au courant explore sometimes lethal musical experiences. Only the most hardy will survive, until the only one left at jazzcornertalk.com is someone calling himself Steve Reynolds III.

There it is. It's about as edifying as the heat death of the universe, but it's all based on science and observation.

[AntManBee]

Originally Posted by SEJ

Metal Machine Music

I just hate it when this album gets habitually bashed, particularly by people who just want to hum along to another "Walk on the Wild Side".

[JazzJunkie]

Originally Posted by hglord

Now, many colleges and universities have whole courses of study that concentrate on the details of twentieth century American music that clearly places it in the mainstream of "classic."

Yes, I think the introduction of formal Jazz training in both lower and higher education is important to untangling this time period. Certainly the 80's saw a return to hard bop. While Wynton may like to claim that resurrection as his own, I think it would be more appropriately credited to the educational system and artist-educators of the 60's and 70's. You don't learn hard bop overnight and by 1980 there were many young muscians, who had never heard of Wynton, who were rekindling that style through the widespread teaching/lecturing/mentoring of musicians like Joe Henderson and Art Blakey (to name but a few of many.)

[Steve Reynolds]

jj-

what is your point?

did the hard bop "revival" or the 80's really have any meaning?

was it all "historically significant" in a musical way?

yes - only as the stultifying effect that it jhad on the growth of the music we call jazz

[Scott Yanow]

I have to confess that I don't understand half of the posts on this thread! (chuckles)

Jazz of the past 20 years? There were several major developments. Fusion, which was creative during the first half of the 1970s, evolved into "contemporary" jazz and more recently into smooth which is essentially background music recorded in hopes of gaining radio airplay. It gained great popularity among those who like catchy melodies, mildly soulful solos that stick close to the themes and mildly funky danceable rhythms. Pop/jazz for the masses with an emphasis on the predictable.

The original Young Lions movement, started by Scott Hamilton and Warren Vache in the mid-1970s, showed that it was perfectly ok for young world class musicians to explore vintage styles. It showed that new styles and approaches do not "replace" older ones, just as bebop did not replace swing and free jazz did not make bebop invalid. Wynton and the Young Lions of the 1980s showed that it was ok to play hard bop and in the style of the Miles Davis mid-60s quintet. It was a novelty for awhile and major labels jumped on the bandwagon, signing up every good-looking young articulate technically skilled black musician who could play straightahead jazz. In the 1990s the Young Lions movement gradually dissipated as their record sales dropped and as the players matured and found their own voices. Some have in recent times been exploring and extending 1970s fusion in their own way while others have been trying their best to turn current pop music into jazz. Except for Wallace Roney, none of the Young Lion trumpeters sound like imitations of Miles anymore.

Avant-garde jazz (or whatever one wants to call it) continued to expand. Musicians from other countries infused their improvisations with references to their own folk music and heritage. Music from Europe, which had started to become more original in the 1970s, continued to evolve and expand the definition of jazz. Despite the music being ignored by the general public and the larger labels, artistically it is very healthy. It is remarkable how many avant-garde recordings are put out by tiny labels on a weekly basis.

One of the healthier musical developments has been that quite a few musicians are putting the Art Ensemble of Chicago's motto of "Ancient to the future" into practice. Adventurous musicians are no longer shy to utilize aspects of earlier jazz into their arrangements and improvisations.

Another aspect often overlooked is that Afro-Cuban jazz is truly flourishing, with such remarkable pianists as Chucho Valdes, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Hilton Ruiz, Danilo Perez and Michel Camilo among many others (not counting scores of percussionists) making polyrhythms seem effortless to play.

Unfortunately when the Retro Swing movement occured in the late 1980s/'90s, the jazz world preferred to treat that movement as a comic strip and did not learn from it. I've seen crowds of young people (all of whom paid a cover charge) dance to Lavay Smith's Red Hot Skillet Lickers playing "A Night In Tunisia." So the jazz world continued to shoot itself in the foot now and then during the past 20 years.

On the plus side, the rise of the CD and the reissue of about 80% of pre-1960 jazz has made jazz history available to listeners in a way that it wasn't prior to 1980.

Jazz did continue to evolve during 1980-2000 but without one style dominating. The music has shot into a dozen directions at once. It offers musicians an infinite number of possibilities (they don't have to follow Bird or Coltrane anymore to be considered progressive).

If one looks at the jazz scene on a whole, it is remarkable to realize that virtually every style and genre of jazz is still being played creatively. From trad musicians who play 1920s jazz creatively and ragtime pianists who write new rags to players who are studying and somehow mastering the music of Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton, jazz remains in a golden age artistically.

One can complain about Wynton's latest statements (as if they are truly relevant) or how graduates from music schools don't sound as mature or as original as 30-year olds, or how David Murray isn't on Entertainment Tonight. But on a whole, things look good in jazz right now.

That's how I see the post-1980 jazz world.

[JazzJunkie]

Thank you, Mr. Yanow, for your expert insights. (I was hoping to lure you in here! ) Very much appreciated! -- JJ

[Pete C]

Yes, except for the shot at Roney, I think Scott's assessment is "fair & balanced." I think most other assessments will be more partisan. Howard Mandel, though, is another critic who generally tends to see things without myopia, IMO.

[AntManBee]

Originally Posted by JazzJunkie

the '80s and '90's. Who were the notable players

You might want to check the "Innovators of contemporary jazz" thread for a few suggestions and a related topic.

[SEJ]

Originally Posted by Scott Yanow

The original Young Lions movement, started by Scott Hamilton and Warren Vache in the mid-1970s, showed that it was perfectly ok for young world class musicians to explore vintage styles. It showed that new styles and approaches do not "replace" older ones, just as bebop did not replace swing and free jazz did not make bebop invalid. Wynton and the Young Lions of the 1980s showed that it was ok to play hard bop and in the style of the Miles Davis mid-60s quintet. It was a novelty for awhile and major labels jumped on the bandwagon, signing up every good-looking young articulate technically skilled black musician who could play straightahead jazz. In the 1990s the Young Lions movement gradually dissipated as their record sales dropped and as the players matured and found their own voices. Some have in recent times been exploring and extending 1970s fusion in their own way while others have been trying their best to turn current pop music into jazz. Except for Wallace Roney, none of the Young Lion trumpeters sound like imitations of Miles anymore.

Regarding your main point, that new styles don't make old invalid, I'll accept that to a point. However, new styles of jazz expanded the vocabulary of jazz. There is a sense in which the Squirrel Nut Zippers are unsatisfying beyond merely the expectation that musicians be original. The same could go for Hamilton and Vache for that matter.

I have to admit that discussing the early eighties "Young Lions" in this context grates on me. The closer we look at these "Young Lions", the less I'm sure they would look like anything singular at all. Of course you already know this. Why is this marketing schtick carrying over into our appraisal of the time?

Look at the late seventies. Did Hamilton and Vache breath new life into a moribund music. No! While the seventies weren't the golden age of the sixites, there were always musicians making real jazz, and young players coming up. (Joe freakin' Lovano came up in this time.) When Hamilton and Vache started recording, there was lots of real jazz around. Cedar Walton and Eastern Rebellion, Hal Galper and his quintet. Art Pepper begain recording the best music of his life. Woody Shaw's major label contract followed on a steady career. Kenny Wheeler, Keith Jarrett, John Abercrombie, Enrico Rava and others were recording on ECM.

It gets even better in the eighties. The "Young Lions", conceived as hard bop resuscitators, didn't define jazz in the eighties. I don't know about you, but when I think about the recorded legacy of the eighties I think of Dave Holland's groups and Paul Motian's quintet and trio. This is when Henry Threadgill came up, as well as Arthur Blythe, and on major labels no less. I think of recordings like Wheeler's Double, Double You, or Johnson's Bass Desires. Or Frisell's Rambler. James Newton's Romance and Revolution. (Oops, he was a young lion. But that's not a hard bop album.) I could go on. Yet the first thing we can say about the period is that the "Young Lions" arrived? That most readers look at the above and will consider the many things left out supports my point.

Unfortunately when the Retro Swing movement occured in the late 1980s/'90s, the jazz world preferred to treat that movement as a comic strip and did not learn from it. I've seen crowds of young people (all of whom paid a cover charge) dance to Lavay Smith's Red Hot Skillet Lickers playing "A Night In Tunisia." So the jazz world continued to shoot itself in the foot now and then during the past 20 years.

The fact that jazz hasn't been a dance music for decades is a good thing. Just a part of its progression to the unique art form it is. If it's about money, two words: boat gig.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

This morning during my drive into work I was listening to Dexter Gordon's "Homecoming" on the CD player. I remember during that period the LP came out some of the articles in mainstream newspapers about his return to the States. I wasn't used to jazz being written about in publication like the Washington Post, the Philadelpjia Inquirer, etc. To me it signaled a jazz's return to American consciousness. I think the '80s and '90s will be remembered as a time when jazz broke out of the shadows of pop music and became recognized as a significant part of American culture.

And with the advent of new recording technologies and the Internet has there ever been any other time when so much jazz from so many different types of musicans has been so easily available? People my age or older (48+) have to remember how hard it was to hunt down some of the more esoteric recordings back in the '70s. As a jazz fan, the era couldn't have been better.

[hglord]

Everything that's been said points to the conclusion that jazz is now a form of classical music. That includes Scott's assertion that genuinely creative music in all the forms, traditional, swing, bop, hard bop, fusion, even free were being performed during the eighties and nineties -- and now. Jazz has become a seriously studied tradition where improvisation is a part of the classicness of that music. In order to play jazz, one has to improvise. One has to write new compositions. That's part of the tradition.

Playing Beethoven doesn't include improvisation, but it does include mastering the romantic tradition and people do that. Some even still compose in that tradition. Though he probably won't admit it, John Wililiams is a good example. Some people still compose baroque-style fugues. Does that mean that we're still in the baroque period?

I'm glad that everyone agrees.

[Nate Dorward]

I heard you twice the first time.

[hglord]

How'd that happen? Very strange.

OK. All fixed.

[sonic1]

It is not necessarily that jazz musicians are more "classicalized" more "studied" or that the artform is necessarily more comlplex than it ever was, although it probably is. The point is that people take the music more seriously. When the forfathers of jazz, poor black people, were playing their music there WERE some people who were wondering what sort of amazing new music this was. There were people who believed in the music as revolutionary. But unfortunately rascism prevented the music from getting its due credit and instead of becoming known as a new revolutionary music form, it became known as bar music. The only venues jazz has really ever consistently known, even today, were the bars, along with other entertainments. Some even argue that the name jazz refers to sex, as it was popular for people to use that term in reference to the act.

But the music has always been revolutionary. We forget that people using notes that were not even in the tempered scale was not done before jazz, and swing rhythms were totally a new amazing concept. The music broke a lot of rules, and the music has never stopped doing such, even to the point of losing its identity as "jazz" music.

That is why I respect the ENTIRE tradition of jazz from its known conception points to its current progenitors-whether or not anyone wants to call it jazz, or even relate it to jazz at all. One could argue that even all the popular music of today (rock, rap, country) owes itself to the art of jazz and the blues which probably had the same parents.

So I don't believe jazz has become this artform comparable to classical music. It always has deserved such respect. There are artists in the genre that have more of this creativeness than others. Which is why I yawn at the mention of the "young lions" whose names ride on the accomplishments of their forfathers. Yes, these are talented musicians, but I really fail to see where they have made technical advances in the music. Making an old music popular is hardly a technical or musical advancement. It is a commercial packaging that has worked well to bring more people to jazz. I am happy about that (as long as these new people can learn that there is more to jazz than the Ken Burns documentary will lead you to believe).

I concur with SEJ on this. The young lion's attention has eclipsed the emergance of some amazing musicians of every variety and innovative ability. The amount of print beyong specialist jazz magazines devoted to the young lions is sad. I can't tell you how many times I have had this conversation:

"Do you like jazz?"
"Oh, yeah..."
"Who are you listening to?"
"Branford and Wynton Marsalis...uh you know..."
"Anyone else you really like?"
"Well, I listen to lots of other stuff so I don't remember their names really...charlie bird?..." (of course not knowing that Charlie Parker aka bird is not the same as Charlie Byrd, I am not sure how this mistake is occuring...).

If you really want to know what has happened to jazz in the 80s, 90s and today you can read Coda or Cadence magazine...uh, if you can find them. Coda I will give the special recognition of being the only source on print of REAL JAZZ and real improvised music that was occuring during the 70s. I have read every issue from the 70s and very little print was devoted to fusion. But you can find out about musicians who have been considered unknown by most of the jazz press.

My vote is to read Coda from 1970's to present-you will find out a lot about non-lion jazz. You will find a lot of real jazz history. Again, if you can even find copies of Coda. Luckily I have a friend who found decades worth in a magazine bin in a used book store for something like 15cents each.

BTW, Scott Yanow I respect your opinion more than most, as I found you to be one of the first relatively popular jazz writers to waste ink on artists I really like. The fact that the All Music Guide devotes so much space to avant-garde music (your name being under many if not most of those entries) is really nice.

But while you may be right about the loung lions having finally found their own voices, and doing new things, the press concerning the "classicism" of jazz by the (then) immature musicians still smarts in the memory of people who have been devoted the whole time. Many people fell in line with that mentality denying respect to some very accomplished musicians and once again insuring that many genius black (and white) musicians die pennyless because they are not pleasing to the narrow scope of this new jazz audience who places Wynton as next to Davis as the next great man of jazz and eschewing all the many between the two. These people lack a complete jazz history. And I won't lend it to the fault of taste, as there are many jazz musicians I place into important places in jazz history who are not necessarily of my own taste. But unfortunately there are very few people who know that much about jazz.

Thus why this discussion is ALWAYS so thorny and full of emotion. Now I am beginning to believe I can't blame it all on Wynton, much as it is nice to have someone to scape-goat, and his personality certainly lends itself to such a use. I instead blame it on the divergent subgenres of jazz that meandered a little too far from one another to allow one contiguous audience to support it (overlooking there are those of us who have a broad taste for many types of jazz).

This is why the history will depend on who tells it. And hopefully the less powerful but just as talented subgenres (artists!) will not get steam-rolled by the likes of the young lions.

Jared

[hglord]

Absolutely, Jared. Total agreement.

Your concern that some artists in subgenres will get steamrolled: nothing to worry about. For a music as important as jazz, everyone will get his/her due. Darryl noticed that there are more CDs available of more performers than ever before. That's going to continue. In European classical music, minor composers' works are lovingly recorded and even decidedly obscure musicians' work is available. The same is true and will be even moreso in the future for American classical music.