Jazz, Hip Hop Etc.

[Ralph Dumain]

Thanks for your excellent analysis, Scott.

At 11:42 PM 8/6/97 -0500, Scott Johnson wrote:
>After be-bop things get more difficult to analyze, particularly in
>the sixties when "out" music was consciously associated with social
>protest (as hip-hop has today). Much of that stuff is just garbage, pure
>and simple. Many of the "out" players were not particularly skilled (at
>least early in their careers; Pharoah Sanders would tell you that
>himself, I'll bet, and one thinks today of Charles Gayle), but maybe
>brought to the instrument a personal style which expanded the
>possibilities of their instrument and served as an inspiration to
>others. A phenomenon like Gato Barbieri exposes the sham of much of that
>"out" music, though.

A lot of people think the avant-garde was BS.  The Coltrane-loving
musicologists in DC don't have any truck with the avant-garde, which they
find to be below the standards of professional musicianship.  A lot of folks
still think Ornette Coleman is BS.  What do you think about Albert Ayler?
Seems like a mess, but get the drift of "The Truth is Marching In".  How
about Shepp?  (As a musician, not as an asshole.)  Haven't listened in
years, but I was once a fanatical devotee of "The Magic of Ju-JU."  You do
have an open-minded attitude at least.  The judgment of musical quality and
innovation is quite a subtle matter, as there are a lot of parameters
involved, many of them going beyond measurable performance competence.

Once every few months I'll sit around with a musician friend and try to
analyze why fusion just doesn't cut it as compared to the musical genius
that flourished between, roughly, 1945-1965.  I'm actually much more
open-minded than he is about it, but I lack the formal tools to analyze this
stuff properly.  There was some good stuff in the early '70s, but I quickly
grew tired of it because I felt like I was being pounded into submission and
could not enjoy the emotional nuances and adventures that a Coltrane or
Dolphy or Sun Ra could take me on.

>Articulating these reactions is what criticism is all about.

Pre-cisely!

>But there is no question that much of
>the praise of musicians like Gale comes from the idea that, considering
>the source, this MUST be "authentic" music -- and that percieved
>authenticity overrules one's good sense. I believe the same happens with
>Hip-Hop. To my mind, its contribution to music is small. But it can have
>a positive effect on more serious music. Steve Coleman, Gary Thomas, and
>the M-Base people have pulled off some recordings which demonstrate that
>(and some that don't).

Tell me what to listen to, then.

>Musically, all the posturing in hip-hop is nought. I don't care what
>you say over your stereotyped rhythm, it's still so trapped in its genre
>as to be musically uninteresting. The real value of this stuff will be
>revealed in what future musicians have gotten from it. And some artists
>(heh heh) will emerge as having been creative within the genre. But time
>is usually required to separate the wheat from the chaff definitively.
>Basically, ears have to get tired of what is cliched in Hip-Hop before
>they search out something more. Since the rapping is so intrinsic to the
>form, it will of course matter how good it is, too. And here, there is
>no need to priviledge "revolutionary" content as more artistic, unless
>one wants to fall into the old mistake of "revolutionary art" like
>orthodox Marxist theorists in the thirties.

What he said!