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Zorn List Digest      Thursday, December 17 1998      Volume 02 : Number 558



In this issue:
-
       Re: One more thing about free jazz
       Re: Gayle
       Re: Bailey/Wire (was something about improv)
       Re: One more thing about free jazz
       Re: new question bible launcher
       Music/Arts Education
       RE: Bailey/Wire (was something about improv)
       Re: Gayle/Ware etc
       Re: new question bible launcher
       Re: Gayle/Ware etc
       what is Marty Ehrlich up to these days?
       Zorn and Lacy ex-equo
       Re: Free Jazz (semi-longish)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 09:55:33 -0500 (EST)
From: Brent Burton <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: One more thing about free jazz

On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, William York wrote:

> That's why I put popularity in quotes, because no one doing this is
> popular by most people's standards.  And I could see how you might take
> these comments as snobbery, because I certainly wasn't born into this
> stuff.  But from my point of view, working at a college radio station,
> Shipp/Parker/Ware get about as much attention as anybody else in improv
> combined

all i can say is that those guys prove it on the road.  i saw william
parker here in d.c. 3 times in the last 18 months and matthew shipp was
here twice.  they are willing to tour and it pays off.

b

- -

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 09:39:50 -0600 (CST)
From: "Joseph S. Zitt" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Gayle

On Thu, 17 Dec 1998, DR S WILKIE wrote:

> While the comparision with Ayler will be misunderstood/perceived as
> odious, I must say that Gayle's quartets in 1993 with William Parker
> represent a purple patch for me: I feel the same way about Ayler in
> 1964, tho' I haven't much time for the rest of his work ...

This may be a regional idiom thing: does "a purple patch" mean you liked
it, you didn't like it, or it sounded like Prince?

- - ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ===== [e-mail] ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Maryland? = <*> SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List <*> = ecto \||
|/ http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt ====== Comma: Voices of New Music \|


- -

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 10:01:28 -0600 (CST)
From: "Joseph S. Zitt" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Bailey/Wire (was something about improv)

On Thu, 17 Dec 1998, Dan Given wrote:

> Oddly, I think the stuff that gets played most in my house are albums I am
> less interested in, stuff that I can ignore and use as background.  I don't
> really have the time that I want to devote to close listening, so the
> things that get the most play are things I less need to focus on. Either
> things I've heard a lot (i.e. classic jazz like Nonk, Mingus, Ornette), or
> newer stuff that is good, but no surprises.  Masada is good for this, so is
> Ware, Parker, etc because I usually know where it is going, and can tune in
> and out as needed.

Yup, I find that too. In pulling together a list of favorite music (a
thread which is happening on the phiba-improv list (though, fortunately,
not as as much of a torrent as happened here a while back)), I find that
the stuff that I listen to most on CD doesn't correlate with what I think
is the best. I tend to listen to stuff that is easily familiar when I'm
not doing a serious listen, which means that I tend to get to pop stuff
easily while my "not listened to yet" rack has bunches of Cecil Taylor,
crunchy electroacoustics, sound poetry, and the like. I don't seem to have
time for much full-attention listening nowadays.

I find that different musics work well on CD as opposed to live. Comma's
next CD (if all goes as planned) will be ah hour-long piece that I
particularly envision as a recording. It's somewhat steady-state though
gradually evolving, and I don't know that an audience would want to sit
still for the whole thing; it also should retain its coherence for people
who wander in  and out of attention, as the home/work listener tends to.
Similarly, we do some work live that I don't think would work as well as a
CD for repeated listening, or would be a very different experience as a
recording.

On the other hand, I'm listening to the Braxton Willisau right now at
work, where it's making the transition for full-attention material to
familiarity -- though I do keep stopping to listen harder and steal ideas
:-)

- - ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ===== [e-mail] ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Maryland? = <*> SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List <*> = ecto \||
|/ http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt ====== Comma: Voices of New Music \|



- -

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 09:55:33 -0500 (EST)
From: Brent Burton <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: One more thing about free jazz

On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, William York wrote:

> That's why I put popularity in quotes, because no one doing this is
> popular by most people's standards.  And I could see how you might take
> these comments as snobbery, because I certainly wasn't born into this
> stuff.  But from my point of view, working at a college radio station,
> Shipp/Parker/Ware get about as much attention as anybody else in improv
> combined

all i can say is that those guys prove it on the road.  i saw william
parker here in d.c. 3 times in the last 18 months and matthew shipp was
here twice.  they are willing to tour and it pays off.

b

- -

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 10:49:53 -0800
From: "Dave Egan" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: new question bible launcher

I have the Tzadik release.  I bought it new in a regular retail store, so
I'd assume it saw a regular release at one time.  The disc timing is 49:35.
I don't know it's edited or whether it's new material, but I can say that it
contains some of the most vile evangelistic blather I've ever heard.  Maybe
the thing to do Michael, would be to do a tape trade so we could compare
versions.

One more tidbit about the Tzadik version: the catalog number - Tzadik TZ
7402, is now assigned to Ken Butler's _Voices Of Anxious Objects_ (a very
fine and fun album by the way).  Why did Zorn (or whoever is in charge of
such matters) assign a new CD the same catalog number as an old deleted one?
Is he trying to pretend this never existed?  If so, why?

- - Dave

- -----Original Message-----
From: Michael Howes <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail] <[e-mail]>
Date: Wednesday, December 16, 1998 11:58 PM
Subject: RE: new question bible launcher


>>I think the one on Tzadik just ended up being a rerelease
>>of the other one, though I don't know for sure.
>>The sample track on that site is on the Tzadik release.
>>However, the site mentions that the other release is over
>>an hour long, while the Tzadik one is about 50 minutes.
>
> I have the original (never knew the Tzadik release saw the light of day)
>and the original is 62 minutes. I think the Tzadik one is the "censored"
>version, where they removed a lot of the samples of the preachers for fear
>of getting sued. Which would honestly destroy the listening pleasure of
>this CD for me.
>
> mike
>[e-mail]



- -

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 10:42:29 -0500
From: Mark Saleski <[e-mail]>
Subject: Music/Arts Education

Chris Tonelli wrote:

>This relates back to the recent education issue, not only does the
>standard education (or resources to educate yourself) deprive students of
>a lot of valuable music but it does not encourage people to verbally
>express musical experiences.
>In the end if these "indie kids" really don't get anything out of
>it after a lengthy experimental period other than a feeling that somehow
>it is benefiting them by osmosis they'll tire of it and leave you with
>less people paying the cover.

it really is too bad that music/arts education is overlooked in the U.S.

i remember when i was in 8th grade we had this music class where we did things like
listen
to popular music ( an example at the time was Steve Wonder's "Living For The City")
and discuss
what the lyrics were getting at.

we also would listen to orchestral music and attempt to identifiy the
instuments...and discuss their
respective functions.

i thought it was pretty damn cool.

does _anything_ like this go on in schools anymore?

by the way, this was at a middle school right down the hill from Braxton's Wesleyan
in Middletown, CT.

- --
Mark Saleski - [e-mail]    "Everything you can imagine is real."  --
Picasso



- -

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 11:29:15 -0800
From: "Benito Vergara" <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: Bailey/Wire (was something about improv)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [e-mail]
> [mailto:[e-mail]]On Behalf Of Dan Given
> Sent: Thursday, December 17, 1998 5:25 AM

> I scanned over some of Bailey's comments in Wire while at a
> friend's house,
> and don't remember seeing the bit about listening to a record
> once.

Here ya go: (interview conducted by Ben Watson for _The Wire_, Issue 178,
December 1998)

[After listening to Nancarrow's "Study for Player Piano No. 42," with other
comments about the piece deleted, including how he doesn't understand "the
whole culture of listening to records"]:

"If you could only play a record once, imagine the intensity you'd have to
bring to the listening! In the same way that if I play something, I can only
play it once. There might be a great similarity between each time I play,
but I cannot repeat what I play. If you could only listen to it once, don't
you think it might concentrate the eardrums?"

Too much time on my hands,
Ben

http://www.bigfoot.com/~bvergara/
ICQ# 12832406


- -

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 09:48:43 -0500 (EST)
From: Brent Burton <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Gayle/Ware etc

On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, John Howard wrote:

> Another thing, one of the by-products of the new po-mo indie kids liking the
> music is that they are so reverent that they will accept most improv
> uncritically and at the same time not engage it on
> a...ummm..spiritual?...level. I have called it "broccoli syndrome", they
> know its good for them, so they endure it, never questioning whether (or
> what) it communicates to them.

gee, i wonder if you could make your generalizations any broader?  you
sound like an old curmudgeon.  "why kids these days don't listen to
improv correctly..."  what a load of crap!  god forbid that anyone
younger than 45 start listening to improv.  i think this would fall under
zorn's "jazz snob eat..." category.

b

- -

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 12:26:35 +0100
From: Yves Dewulf <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: new question bible launcher

> I have the original (never knew the Tzadik release saw the light of day)
> and the original is 62 minutes. I think the Tzadik one is the "censored"
> version, where they removed a lot of the samples of the preachers for fear
> of getting sued. Which would honestly destroy the listening pleasure of
> this CD for me.

  So why did Tzadik delete it, if it was already heavily censored ?

  YVes

  P.S. How many tracks are there on the original ?

   -


- -

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 15:58:56 -0800
From: "Christian Heslop" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Gayle/Ware etc

Ok now. A broad generalization would be a very bad thing. I'll try to be
charitable enough to read "some" when John says "they". Honestly, I have
seen this same phenomenon. I have seen it enough that I have become
frustrated to the point of not discussing music with people my age at these
kinds of performances. I've seen a kind of anti-criticism phenomenon going
on in people at or under my age. It doesn't seem to be driven by any kind
of idea other than maybe a tender sensitivity to examination.
    At the same time, I am a very passive listener. I make no movements or
other external indicators of being involved in the music. I can't even
speak when I listen. I stand there silently with hostility to any kind of
distraction and I resist discussion or reaction in the few tender moments
of silence that follow a piece. My feelings are best represented by this
line from T.S. Eliot's poem, "Portrait of a Lady"

        So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul
        Should be resurrected only among friends
        Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom
        That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room.

    I only mention my personal listening strategy because of what John said
about the static and seemingly vacuous approach of "po-mo indie kids" to
music appreciation. His description resembled my own approach to much to
not defend.
    But I have seen this approach to improv and noise music. I have known
people that put on performances in which they intended to duplicate that
kind of music, when they really didn't think of it as anything more than an
easy way to get onstage.
- ----------
> From: Brent Burton <[e-mail]>
> To: [e-mail]
> Subject: Re: Gayle/Ware etc
> Date: Thursday, December 17, 1998 6:48 AM
>
> On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, John Howard wrote:
>
> > Another thing, one of the by-products of the new po-mo indie kids
liking the
> > music is that they are so reverent that they will accept most improv
> > uncritically and at the same time not engage it on
> > a...ummm..spiritual?...level. I have called it "broccoli syndrome",
they
> > know its good for them, so they endure it, never questioning whether
(or
> > what) it communicates to them.
>
> gee, i wonder if you could make your generalizations any broader?  you
> sound like an old curmudgeon.  "why kids these days don't listen to
> improv correctly..."  what a load of crap!  god forbid that anyone
> younger than 45 start listening to improv.  i think this would fall under

> zorn's "jazz snob eat..." category.
>
> b
>
> -

- -

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 16:24:17 -0800
From: "Patrice L. Roussel" <[e-mail]>
Subject: what is Marty Ehrlich up to these days?

    I just realized that Marty Ehrlich has been quite "discographically"
silent these past few years. Anybody (from the city) knows what is he up to
these days?

    Thanks,

    Patrice.


- -

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 16:32:50 -0800
From: "Patrice L. Roussel" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Zorn and Lacy ex-equo

    About ten years ago, in an interview, John Zorn was making fun at
Steve Lacy and Anthony Braxton for putting out so many records.

    This month, John has reached 243 records with his name on. This
number happens to be the one that Steve Lacy has been stuck to for a
quite a while (his production having cooled down quite a bit in the past
two years).

    Patrice (who has time to waste with such anecdotal facts...).


- -

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 15:13:37 -0800
From: Tony Reif <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Free Jazz (semi-longish)

>Yes, the "language" (I'm going to extrapolate on this notion, so bear with me)
>used on that record, and many others, including all David S. Ware records
>and all
>Charles Gayle records, and many, many others, is a language that has
>existed for
>quite a long time, and so, while there may not be very many free jazz
>repertory
>bands, there in fact are a great number of bands playing music in a
>language that
>was developed many years ago.
>
>Language is perhaps an important distinction, though... Don DeLillo's
>"Underworld"
>is written in the same language as was "Middlemarch," and yet we don't fault
>DeLillo for having not invented a completely new language in which to to
>say the
>things he said in the book - and what he *said* was in fact new.
>
>Are written/spoken languages really that much different from those
>languages given
>voice in music?

Steve, you've got me thinking about this, and it seems to me that they're
both similar and different in some important ways. Certainly both language
and music are parts of the pre-existing social system and culture that
we're born into and that shape our identities. But everyone speaks a
language, not everyone plays music. And the semantic nets of language -
whether straightforward prose or anything other than "concrete" or "random"
poetry (if the latter exists...the equivalent perhaps of Cage's methods of
determining musical pitches by chance?) - are different from the structures
and means by which music affects us. Unless we're talking about program
music, film music etc., music doesn't have to represent anything; it's a
thing in itself and not an arbitrary system of sounds-as-signs (even most
onomatopoeic words are not close sonic representations of what they
signify...just see how much they vary from language to language). And of
course music and language are processed in different parts of the brain (is
anyone here a neurologist? what's the current understanding about how music
is perceived and made meaningful?) So to say that musics are languages is
to use a metaphor that may obscure some of the differences. I sometimes
think that music is an escape from language...

It's debatable whether American writers of the 1990s are using the same
language as British writers of the mid-19th century, but in any case they
haven't invented a new languge, whereas it is possible to invent/discover
new systems of music and music-making (say, serialism, or computer
musics...or free improv). BTW a society *can* very quickly evolve a new
language system under certain conditions. Creoles - hybrid languages with
their own, new grammar (as distinct from pidgin "languages" whose grammar I
think is pretty much the same in all cases, and very very simple) - are I
believe usually created by the young in a single generation, but it's a
communal process; a language can't exist if it's socially incomprehensible,
music-as-sound can...

But if what we're concerned about here is stylistic development versus the
possibility of more radical innovation, the questions I have are: what
constitutes innovation in music these days, and what is "being said" when
one adopts/adapts a well-established style as one's own.

Hmm. Even with the quotation marks it seems it's hard to avoid questions of
signification after all, I guess because under most circumstances we expect
music to communicate something, and most people respond to music they like
emotionally, investing it with personal meaning.

My own opinion about young players using "languages" or styles of previous
generations to make their own statements is that a) you have to do it
anyway to some extent just to get heard, and also as preparation for
creating something that's your own, but b) it's hard to do anything with
the impact it had when that style was on the cutting edge...and I think
there are several reasons for that.

I do think it's important for the health of the music that free jazz as
it's evolved over the last 40 years or so is still inspiring both to young
performers and new listeners. But let me ask the question to those of you
who weren't around in the 60s: does anything that's being done today that's
akin to the free jazz of those days compare to Trane, Ayler, Dolphy or
Ornette? And if not, why not? Is it that you can somehow feel those guys
breaking new ground, even through all the music that's been made since and
that you may have heard first? That their music has an authenticity that
younger players who model it can never claim, an authenticity that grew out
of those artists' response to their society, their times? And maybe (a
related point) that they were inwardly stronger and more determined
creators of the new and pillagers of the old?

Who was it said we're now living in the post-postmodern age? Just about
everthing imaginable has been fused or at least cut-and-pasted with
everything else...is there *anything* left to do that hasn't already been
done and probably done better? I'm sure there is, but it's from this
starting point that creative musicians today have to find their path, work
on their means of expression, say what they have to say in the "languages"
and "dialects" available, and say it with heart. And what then?

(These thoughts come to mind as I listen to Chris Speed's new Yeah No
record, which should be out in April.)

>
>But once a language is developed, it does not totally negate the
>possibililty of
>an artist making a completely new statement worth hearing.  If Ware or Gayle
>speaks the language of Coltrane, it doesn't mean he's not *saying*
>something new.
>If Berne speaks the language of Hemphill it doesn't mean he can't create
>something
>you needn't "read" or that Hemphill didn't "say."  If Fugazi sounds like
>Wire it
>doesn't mean there's nothing worth "reading" in their work.

The proof is in the particular instances and finally is pretty subjective
to each listener and player. But I do ask myself what it means to say
something in jazz when I hear the groundbreakers of 40 years ago still
strongly reflected in the music of many of today's best and brightest.
What's the difference between paying tribute (a positive thing), quoting,
and imitating (a negative thing)? between adopting and adapting? These can
be fine lines. If someone plays a Coltrane-like phrase, uses some of
Trane's or Ornette's melodic-harmonic-rhythmic strategies as models, what
if anything are they "saying" at that moment? And does that depend on
whether it pops up in the course of an improvisation rather than being part
of a composition or of some pre-determined design of a solo? What if a
musician's "way of speaking" is pretty much a composite of various classic
models or stylistic elements, as is typically the case with both good and
not so good jazz players? Apart from novel or felicitous solutions to the
challenge of creating right there on the spot something interestingly
organized and compelling, what is really being "said" in this reworking of
one's stock of ideas, this spontaneous construction (whether according to
some blueprint or not)? Words at least have denotations, but music can be
experienced so many different ways depending on the knowledge and awareness
of the listener. And are the feelings and intentions of the performer also
part of their statement? In more traditional (especially Afro-American?)
jazz contexts a player may be testifying and his audience may understand
his specific intentions very accurately. But most avant-jazz these days
seems to occupy another, less defined space, and although many listeners
and players may agree when the music felt good, and that a "dialogue" was
taking place, other metaphors sometimes seem more telling. (I was at an AMM
concert once that seemed more like a visitation than a conversation. At the
more quietly intense end of avant-jazz perceptions can become heightened
almost to the point of hallucination, a haunting or inner possession...)

Another similarity/difference: the vocabulary and syntax of verbal
languages can be used for many purposes, and patterns someone else has left
us can be built on and developed into new thoughts, into richer and more
complex (sometimes more elusive or ambiguous) expressions of experience and
meaning. But even though jazz, like much poetry or fiction for example,
thrives on references and a kind of intertextuality or dialogue with the
past, it seems that process is often more limited somehow in music than in
linguistic texts, exhausted sooner. I think that's the problem I have with
a lot of free jazz and improv too: even though they're supposed to be open
they've long since been circumsribed by their own methods, and saying
something fresh or surprising may require not only close listening and a
good internal editor but also an ability to play around with the unstated
rules and expectations of the situation. (It seems that all forms of jazz,
a complex social artform with a rather long apprenticeship, have their
staunchly defended traditions....)

Since even free jazz and post-modernism, the "revolutions" of the 60s and
80s, are now reduced to classic stylistic options, where should today's
jazz musicians look to break new ground, come up with music that strikes us
with the force of a personal vision? Spontaneous paraphrase of traditions
with engagement and a sense of adventure is always cool. But I appreciate
it more when artists take time out to focus on the musical ideas that
matter most to them, and continue to work with their best ideas to develop
their own musical structures, contexts, and the expressive terrain in which
they and their bandmates can speak. Obviously traditionalism/originality
and improvisation/composition are complementaries in jazz, but if music is
after all a kind of language, at its best a language spoken soul to soul,
where it falls on these coordinates may not be among the most important
issues. What matters most is that it take me deeper and deeper into itself
and my response to it till its unfolding radiates an irreducible,
untranslatable beauty and intensity...

(I didn't mean this to become a mini-essay but as usual it has. Sorry for
the length!)

>(Of course, popular tastes change with the times.  If a young composer wrote a
>genuinely beautiful new piece in the language of Mozart today, he/she'd
>surely be
>widely ridiculed, even if the piece was as fine as Mozart's six final
>symphonies... this gets into the music critic's demand for "the shock for the
>new.")

I think it's something else as well: a suspicion that no matter how genuine
your admiration for Mozart's style or how thorough your understanding of
the way his late symphonies work as narratives of internal conflict and
resolution, you can't really create something significant or authentic, no
matter how beautiful it is, by trying to work within a historical-cultural
context that's so far from your own, and whose forms are so identified with
their period. That somehow everything that could be said using its styles
was indeed said back then, so that your work is inevitably something of a
pastiche. This is also a typical judgment about attempts to complete
Mozart's Requiem (or other works by classical masters left unfinished or in
sketch form). But here the argument is that it's an impossible task to
second-guess what Mozart would have done, even taking into consideration
everything else we have of his, because what he would have done would have
been in some way different than what he'd done up till then, so therefore
the more the reconstruction seems typically Mozartian and accurately
represents the subtleties of his methods the more it may in fact be a
scholarly, well-meaning betrayal; on the other hand the less it seems
typically Mozartian, very simply the clumsier a fabrication it is; you
can't win either way!  All this does I guess have something to do with
western concepts of individual genius and historical evolution in the arts,
but even in much more traditional cultures I think it would be unusual to
create a piece of music strictly in the style of 200 years ago.

Tony Reif (Songlines Recordings)

- -

------------------------------

End of Zorn List Digest V2 #558
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