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Zorn List Digest       Tuesday, January 22 2002       Volume 03 : Number 697



In this issue:
-
       Photos of Ornette, Was Re: Ornette
       [none]
       Re: free jazz (was spontaneous performance/composition)
       ...has anyone noticed yet...
       Re:  indian classical recs
       Re: free jazz (was spontaneous performance/composition)
       william parker - painter's spring
       Re: Zorn List Change
       Re: Re: free jazz (was spontaneous performance/composition)
       Re: who understands harmolodics?
       Re: ...has anyone noticed yet...
       Re: Zorn List change
       Re: Cecil Taylor Technical Question
       Re: who understands harmolodics? and jazz journalism

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

Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 12:24:57 +0100
From: "Remco Takken" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Photos of Ornette, Was Re: Ornette

That said, my favorite quote in there
> is from Monk: "Man, that
> cat is nuts!"

The photo accompanying this quote is so absolutely
perfect, it nearly warrants purchase of the boxset
alone.

Remco Takken looks at his living room wall, and writes:

I have the Impulse cover of a bearded Ornette with his young son Denardo
(ORNETTE AT TWELVE) framed on my living room wall. He's photogenic, to say
the least.
Regards, Remco Takken


- -

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

Date:
From:
Subject: [none]



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

Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 12:59:57 +0100
From: "Remco Takken" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: free jazz (was spontaneous performance/composition)

>Orrin Keepnews had a sign up in his studio that read "Important to who?",
>and I think that's always the best question.

Important to a large community of consensus to whom you don't apparently
belong in this case.

- ------
Woooo, peer group pressure....... keep quiet, Skip, otherwise you won't
belong with us, the popular guys in the jazz class....

Remco Takken, who doesn't exactly knows what jazz is.


- -

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

Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 03:41:38 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: ...has anyone noticed yet...

that my posts for the past few days are part of a "performance piece" i'm
doing...

it's called

performance piece for listserv.

the directives call to respond to emails with completely arbitrary and
generally wrong type answers / comments.

how am i doing?  rate me on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the best.

k8.

- -

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

Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 10:00:00 -0600
From: Herb Levy <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re:  indian classical recs

Buried amongst the ornette-list cross-postings I found this:

"Matthew W Wirzbicki  (S)" <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>try to look for albums which feature long performances if you want the music
>you're listening to to be a bit more culturally accurate.  Often more modern
>indian classical music often has a short introduction (alap) where the drums
>are absent.  So you'll hear drums very quickly and you may hear drum solos
>at the end.  As I understand this practice was only adopted as indian
>musicians began to travel and crowds began to chear for the
>drummers....traditionally the drummer is socially beneath the soloist
>(singer, sitar, sarod) and their musical relationship mirrors that custom.
>
>regardless of tradition I prefer the epic length pieces to the shorter
>versions....especially live.

While I'd generally agree with this, there's a fairly recent
collection called the Raga Guide (Nimbus 5536/9) which, over the
course of four CDs, presents 74 Hindustani ragas.

Obviously these are short versions of the works, but the collection
is incredibly informative, showing off the structural differences
between many of the most common ragas. The discs are packaged with a
200 page book that includes a general introduction, transcriptions,
scales, rhythmic patterns, etc as well as a series of full color
prints of 17th century Indian miniature paintings related to most of
the ragas.

I got it for about $40 a couple of years ago and it's been very useful.

Bests,

Herb
- --
Herb Levy
P O Box 9369  Forth Wort, Texas  76147  USA
817  377-2983
[e-mail]

- -

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

Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 08:45:31 -0800
From: Tosh <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: free jazz (was spontaneous performance/composition)

This is a great conversation!  What I am going to do is play all the
early Ornette CD's in a row.  I will sit there in front of the two
speakers and LISTEN.  With respect to this current conversation about
Ornette - what are your opinions on Zorn's SPY VS. SPY?  I know this
has been discussed in the past, but I am curious in knowing what are
the current thoughts with respect with the ongoing commentary on this
list.
- --
Tosh Berman
TamTam Books
http://www.tamtambooks.com

- -

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

Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 18:10:02 +0100
From: Rob Allaert <[e-mail]>
Subject: william parker - painter's spring

Did anyone hear Painter's Spring? What is it? Can you change it's
preferences or can you just listen to it?

    greetings,
      Rob @ risk
        np: matthew shipp - new orbit


- -

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

Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 17:16:15 +0000
From: "Kurt Gottschalk" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Zorn List Change

first off, yes, thanks, thanks 1K thanks to mike for maintaining the list.
i've quit all the others i used to be on (except the frith one, which
there's no reason to bother quitting) because of the annoyance factor.
thanks for being such an eximplary host, mike.

as for my thoughts, i'll borrow steve's:


ANYTHING that makes Mike's life easier is okay by me.

ANYTHING that makes it easier to search the Z-list archives for past
profundities is also very much okay.

BUT: my vote goes
towards a private-access, Z-list only archive. (And if anyone really doesn't
understand that, I'll be happy to explain my views privately...)

Go with Mailman, but keep our thoughts private, is my thought.


_________________________________________________________________
Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com


- -

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

Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 17:20:32 -0000
From: "David Felix" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Re: free jazz (was spontaneous performance/composition)

> Maybe Skip hasn't got a clue but as far as I've seen,
> nobody seems to, then. I've searched for explanations
> to the harmolodics theory repeatedly and even asked
> some Spanish jazz afficionados/musicians and what I
> obtained were just mind-wanderings full of "perhaps"
> and "maybes" that led to nowhere. I share those
> suspictions with Skip, although I like Ornette (not my
> idol, that's for sure). If Ornette's theories are so
> strong, why is it so difficult for so many to find a
> clear explanation to them, and specially for Coleman
> himself? Sometimes there's no need to explain oneself,
> but 40 years, that's far too much, isn't it?

Man, I could introduce you to some physicists and physics teachers and
students who can't explain AND/OR understand Einstein's theory of Relativity
but you can't take his credit for discovering/theorizing one of the most
importanmt concepts of modern physics, as outdated as it may be.

UFOing :)
FΘlix


- -

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

Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 12:24:29 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: who understands harmolodics?

One of my professors who's really into Ornette told me once that Harmolodics at its simplest is more or less just improvised counterpoint.  If you think about it, you have one line (probably a horn) and another line (probably a bass line) interacting to create harmonies that drive the piece.  I know that it is only about 1/10th of the whole sha-bang, but at least its a place to start.

Ryan McCormack
[e-mail]

- -

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

Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 12:30:45 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: ...has anyone noticed yet...

i like it.  being randomly idiotic for no reason appeals to me, if thats what you were going for.  In any case, I give an 8.5

Ryan

- -

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

Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 17:41:47 +0000
From: "Kurt Gottschalk" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Zorn List change

ok, i now understand that archives can't be private and searchable, so i
change my vote to public, as did the esteemed steve smith, my mentor and
guru on this singular, very narrow subject.

_________________________________________________________________
Join the worldÆs largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail.
http://www.hotmail.com


- -

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

Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 10:00:07 -0800
From: "Rev. Floyd Errors" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Cecil Taylor Technical Question

>>>But he's probably more
spontaneous (now that's pretty obvious) than, say,
Matt Shipp, who seems to be playing right from his
brain sometimes, in spite of from the
heart/soul/whatever-you-like.<<<

Last time I saw Taylor play a solo concert, I was 6 feet away from
him on the second row, view unimpeded when two front row women
scurried from the club, and I was blown away. He utilized a broad
range of techniques, but one of the most amazing things was a very
long passage of lightning speed right hand note assaults during
which I could hear him softly scatting every single note as he
played it. I guess while Shipp plays right from his brain, Taylor
plays left from his.



- -

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

Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 02:21:47 -0800
From: Skip Heller <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: who understands harmolodics? and jazz journalism

    [bounced because file too large - ed.]

> From: "Bill Ashline" <[e-mail]>
> Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 09:24:14 +0000
> To: [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail]
> Subject: Re: Re: who understands harmolodics? and jazz journalism
>
>> From: Skip Heller <[e-mail]>
>
>> The culture of rock is largely the same at this point.  The world of jazz
>> was penetrated by intellectuals who wanted to turn it into an
>> intellectually
>> documentable form.  Jazz writers, who are largely intellectuals, relate to
>> jazz as an intellectual endeavor.  Unfortunately, this has lead to a
>> dismissal of a lot of jazz, which can't really be reduced to
>> intellectualism.  And I say reduced because the only way to get something
>> to
>> fit into an "ism", you have to make it smaller.
>
> My question for you Skip is what is "intellectualism?"  And how is jazz an
> "intellectual" endeavor as opposed to some other kind.
>
The very definition of intellectualism doesn't need to be gone into here.
Let's just say it's the practice of putting intellectual quotient ahead of
all other content.  But maybe the term "lead by intellectualism" or
something equally specific would have served better.  I don't think, for
instance, Benny Goodman was an intellectual making intellectual music,
whereas Bill Evans certainly was.  And both played great jazz.
>>
>> I think the largest reason critics are unsatisfied with answers is that few
>> musicians speak English as well as they speak music.
>
> Some musicians don't speak English at all.
>
Whatever language in which the journalism occurs.  But you run into
relatively few critics who understand technical music enough that you can
say something to the effect of, "Well, when you get to the F#m7 in 'Here,
There and Everywhere, the expected modulation to the minor doesn't occur."
And it's hard to describe the feeling of what happens there in words, which
is probably why we needed some music to express that thought in the first
place.
>>
>> (Think about any form, regardless of style, as a kind of baseball diamond,
>> and then think about running the bases in a different order.  You would
>> need
>> motivation and a certain tactical reason to do stuff like that in order for
>> it to make sense with regards to the form of baseball.  Same goes for
>> music,
>> whether you're putting extra bars in a 12 bar blues, introducing upper
>> partials in a bluegrass context, or whatever.
>
> But music doesn't have one generic form, unlike baseball.  The answer to the
> question of what is music changes all the time.
>
But the question is coming from a place of that each music has established
behaviors -- rules and regulations -- that make it what it is.  If you've
got saxophone, piano, bass, and drums playing music that is entirely written
out, is it jazz? Probably not, because the first ground rule of jazz is
improvising.

>> From: James Hale <[e-mail]>
>
>> I don't think the jazz media is alone in this... the folk press and early
>> rock
>> press used to ask Bob Dylan 'what it all meant' and Rolling Stone's early
>> years
>> are filled with literature-grads-turned-critics trying to explain music
>> that
>> doesn't really require an explanation.
>
> God forbid we should have lit students becoming critics, but I'm curious,
> James, as to why music doesn't require or deserve any explanation.  And if
> not, why do we even bother having a mailing list devoted toward discussing
> and explaining music.
>
I don't think music should require an explanation, but, espec with regards
to marginal music, print is one of the only ways to inform people that this
stuff exists.  James pointed up to a rather objectinable start to formal
rock journalism, and unfortunately that thread lives.  If you don't believe
me, read Robert Hilburn.  His recent LA Times piece about how Marilyn
Manson's last disc stripped him of his former position as a "socially
signifigant rock voice" was HILARIOUS.

I can also tell you why I myself signed onto the list -- there's no radio
(in LA) that plays Zorn-firendly music all that much, so it's my way to run
up against a bunch of consumers with a sensibility I can relate to.


>
>
>> Critics generally fall into two categories
>> A) Guys who know a lot about music who decide to write
>> B) Guys who write who become interested in music
>
> So the distinction is which came first, the music or the writing?  This
> sounds a bit simplistic to me.

This observation comes from field research.  People who love music but who
maybe don't play can find a place in the world of music by documenting the
stuff for which they care.  Other guys start out writing about different
stuff and find they like doing music journalism.  From what I have noticed,
the former is the more common.

>> Jazz journalism has been too often plagued by the specter of
>> intellectualism, and, as a result, music that does not come with noticiable
>> intellectualism attatched gets the shirt shrift.
>
> How can music come of its own with "intellectualism" attached?  And what
> exactly is a "spectre" of "intellectualism?"
>
Read any early issue of ROLLING STONE, espec if the piece is on Dylan or
Lennon.  There's that ongoing vibe that pop/folk forms "must be considered
as high art".  Which is a questionable thing to say, to my mind.  Why is
there a need for some sort of pedigree? If a thing succeeds, it's doing its
job.  Stravinsky is great.  Earl Scruggs is great.  To put one on a high
plane and the other on a low plane is bogus.  But there was that movement in
journalism by the late sixties to "elevate" rock to some kind of
seriousness.  Never mind the fact that rock music didn't need that kind of
pretense attatched to it.

>> A great many players who
>> made jazz that gained popular acceptance -- Ahmad Jamal, Eddie Harris/Les
>> McCann, Cannonball Adderley -- faced polite dismissal at best in the jazz
>> press during their heyday because they weren't putting intellectualism at
>> the fore.
>
> How would they have put "intellectualism" (whatever that is) to the fore?  I
> like their work myself, but not because they put "intellectualism to the
> fore" (whatever that means).

In the cases of the musicians I mentioned above: Densified upper partials in
the chords, drummers who didn't play time as obviously etc.  Instead, they
tended to highlight more of an entertainment spirit and stuck closer to more
evident forms, as opposed to the conscious excercises of art.

>> But their music has endured and has continued to shape the
>> standards and practices of jazz.  But, looking back at old DOWNBEATS, more
>> critics were in a hurry to analyze Dolphy (one way or the other).  You
>> never
>> read a review from that time that says "The band grooved, the audience
>> sweat, and we all had a great time."
>
> Would it be interesting to say such a thing?  And to say such a thing again
> and again and again?  Would saying something else be the emergence of this
> so-called "spectre of intellectualism?"

If I read a review of a band that said that, I would likely go see that
band.  Interesting or not, it tells you something directly.  Putting a band
down for doing that instead of aspiring to something loftier would define
the spectre of intellectual criticism.
>
>> Instead, you read a great many reviews
>> of how someone like Baby Face Willette wasn't doing anytthing ambitious.
>> Even tho the guy made a ton of really fun records.
>
> What they should have said instead is that Baby Face was ambitiously making
> a lot of fun records but was otherwise unambitious about making other
> musical things.
>
If that kind of ambition doesn't figure into his equation, why should it
figure into the review?

>> A goodly portion of jazz does well within academia.  And you need that vein
>> of the music.
>
> Where in academia?  Most of my academic friends don't know jack about jazz.
> But they do know a lot about rock and metal.
>
I mean the academic community around the music itself.

>> But when along comes a music that does not deal with the
>> intellectual, the intellectuals put it down.
>
> How does music deal with the intellectual?  And which intellectuals "put
> down" such music?
>
Again, go back and read DOWNBEAT reviews of organ trio records circa 1967.
Those guys were cruel to cats like Big John Patton -- because he never got
far from the blues.   As to how music deals with the intellectual, it
introduces certain things -- lyrics, beats, forms, rhythms, textures,
harmonies etc -- that are not immediately tracable the way a more evident
tune makes these things tracable.  Functioning on an intentionally obscure
level will make people sit and think about what they heard, and, in some
cases, argue about what it means.  Think about all the volumes of analysis
written about Bob Dylan's lyrics or Cecil Taylor's solos.  There's
definitely a lot of great music that seeks to mystify the listener that way.


> So Skip.  How does one "cerebralize" music?

In the case of the type of press I mean, it was a combination of imposing
all kinds of hyperbolic gibberish, not to mention use of the sorts of
comparisons between rock stars and established cultural figures of the past,
i.e. equating Brian Wilson (who I love) to Mozart, the Beatles to Schubert
etc.  And, again, in Dylan's case, all kinds of comparisons to Joyce, Pound
etc.
>>
>> This is bogus.  Anybody with a brain knows that James Brown is as heavy as
>> Jimi Hendrix.  Hendrix certainly thought so.
>
> "Important to whom?"

A lot of people who do music.  James Brown still registers.

>> But James was largely ignored
>> by the jazz press, until Miles started talking about him.  Sly Stone, on
>> the
>> other hand, courted the rock press and was taken more seriously.
>>
>> Unfortunately, the trend largely continues, in both the jazz and the rock
>> press, because intellectualism is held up as this wonderful end.  Which I
>> don't believe is any truer than anything else is a wonderful end.
>
> What else is a "wonderful end?"  And what is "intellectualism" pray tell?
>
Getting all sweaty to a great band is a wonderful end, just as having
something to think over after the fact is a wonderful end.

>> But, unfortunately, the jazz press is so largely defined by guy who seem to
>> feel like they have to defend a certain aspect of jazz as THE TRUTH, and
>> they miss the point -- not only of music, but of life.
>
> Please, Skip, tell us the "point of life."

Finding all the wonderful ends you can while you're around to find 'em,
bring as many of the people you love with you,  and find as many people to
love as you can.  You're making the last one difficult.

>> Yes, you need
>> NEFERTITI.  And you damn sure need "Jungle Boogie", even if it's not
>> getting
>> the same respect.
>
> I don't "need" either.

Well, a great many of us need both kinds of things.  I need Mexican food and
pizza.  Two totally different styles of dinner, but I need both.

>> And I think "Jungle Boogie" is totally worthy of all the
>> respect.
>
> If not respect, then at least "boogie."  OK agreed.

Outright boogie-ing is the correct token of respect.

>> In the end, when the bulk of the critics are intellectuals, the bulk of the
>> good reviews will go out to music made by intellectuals, and Ramsey Lewis
>> be
>> damned.
>
> So the musicians that make music reviewed by "intellectuals" are themselves
> "intellectuals?"

No, the musicians who design and execute their music so that it will be
embraced by that part of the critical community are guilty of that.

I am reminded of David Lee Roth's one immortal quote at this juncture: "The
reason more critics like Elvis Costello than Van halen is because more
critics LOOK like Elvis Costello than Van Halen."


skip h






- -

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

End of Zorn List Digest V3 #697
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