The Independent Ear

Jazz Audience development conversation continues

Trumpeter Christian Scott: Impressive!

 

Our editorial last time listed a few things artists should do to tighten up their end of the audience development equation.  That editorial was written purely in the spirit of things we must ALL do to ensure a more robust jazz audience for the future; and in this case I’m speaking of the responsibilities of those who play the music, those who set the stage and present the music, those who record the music, those who educate future musicians — and in this case also most importantly, those jazz educators who teach "lay" people who attend jazz appreciation and jazz history courses sans any tangible desire to play the music — those who represent jazz artists, as well as those of us who consider ourselves fans or enthusiasts, who must subesequently go forth with greater zeal preaching the gospel of jazz to our family, friends, peers and colleagues.

 

But our editorial dealt specifically with musicians’ responsibilities in this equation; and at least one reader took issue, which resulted in a productive email exchange.  Subsequently I had the pleasure of seeing a young artist live a few days ago, someone who has been somewhat highly touted as a fast-rising talent but someone whose records haven’t truly "slayed" me, as one of my radio colleagues likes to say.  I’m speaking of trumpeter Christian Scott, and this wasn’t exactly my first sighting.  I’d seen — and been impressed by his promise — Christian since he was a green youngster, performing with his uncle saxophonist Donald Harrison onstage at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival several times years ago. 

 

Since then Christian has matriculated at Berklee, is rapidly maturing as a trumpet player, bandleader, and composer, as he plys and massages what he characterizes as a musical concept incorporating elements of indie rock, hip hop, and jazz all rolled up into Christian Scott music.  His Concord records have evidenced a young artist in deep evolution but I can’t say they’ve exactly reached out and grabbed me yet.  So it was with a mildly skeptical sense of anticipation; not that I expected the worst or to be bored or disappointed, but one never knows the translation of artistry from disc to stage.

 

Performing a program entirely consisting of originals — save for his personal jazz propers proving ground "Eye of the Hurricane" (and that’s precisely how he introduced the Herbie Hancock burner which they subsequently took at supersonic tempo: as a means of expressing the band’s jazz bonafides) —  Scott and his quintet (which includes guitar instead of a second horn) were full of youthful fire & vinegar, obviously in great enjoyment of each other’s playing, finely communicative & complimentary in their high energy mode.

 

Where Scott’s performance intersected with that audience development editorial on artist responsibility was in Christian’s staging and mannerisms.  In the introduction of his fellow musicians he wove brief, engaging, funny and at points clearly fabricated (which he kiddingly admitted) stories about each band member that had the audience hanging on every word and chuckling along.  With each of his pieces he gave an introductory explanation that further engaged the audience and in some small ways gave them a brief glimpse into his ways & means; in effect demystifying a program of original material that was knotty and complex and might have otherwise flummoxed the audience. 

 

What resulted was an enthusiastic response from an obviously juiced and energized Kennedy Center Jazz Club audience that flocked to his merch table post-set to scoop up his records, and encouraged an autograph line which he patiently and cheerfully accommodated.  On his merch table, even if audience members declined a CD purchase, Scott’s rep pressed business cards with Christian’s photo, web site, Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook links, mini-snapshots of his initial Concord releases, and a "New Album Coming Soon!" graphic in every palm.  And in light of another aspect of that artist-responsibility-for-audience development editorial is the fact that Christian Scott is also clearly… shall we say, a fashion forward young artist.

 

Here was a young artist displaying a healthy measure of the trumpet player’s usual ego and hubris in his playing, but once the horn was removed from his lips he was happy to thoroughly engage his audience.  Later, on the Kennedy Center shuttle bus to the Metro I spied an audience member enthusiastically telling someone from another show about seeing Christian Scott, displaying that business card of someone she obviously did not know prior to seeing him at the KC Club.  That’s what I’m talkin’ about!!!

 

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Ancient Future – the radio program 10/1/09

Ancient Future is broadcast on WPFW 89.3 FM, Pacifica Radio in Washington, DC at 50,000 watts…

 

Wynton Marsalis

Knozz-Moe-King

Live at the Village Vanguard

Columbia

 

Jose James

Spirits Up Above

The Dreamer

Brownwood

 

Bobby Hutcherson

The Kicker

The Kicker

Blue Note

 

Bobby Hutcherson

Hello to the Wind

Now!

Blue Note

 

Bobby Hutcherson

Ummhh

San Francisco

Blue Note

 

Joe Henderson

Power to the People

Power to the People

Milestone

 

Wadud Ahmad

Hard Core

No Additives or Preservatives

Sosa

 

Sabu Martinez/Sahib Shihab

Nus

Winds & Skins

Melloid

 

Miles Davis

TuTu

Complete Miles Davis at Montreux

Warner Bros.

 

Richard Bona

Night Whisper

Tiki

Decca

 

Jazz Warriors

Civilisation

Afropeans

Destin-E

 

Soundviews (weekly extended new release feature)

Nicole Mitchell Black Earth Strings

Renegades

Renegades

Delmark

 

Nicole Mitchell Black Earth Strings

By My Own Grace

Renegades

Delmark

 

Nicole Mitchell Black Earth Strings

What If

Renegades

Delmark

 

Nicole Mitchell Black Earth Strings

Waris Dirie

Renegades

Delmark

 

Nicole Mitchell Black Earth Strings

Waile

Renegades

Delmark

 

Nicole Mitchell Black Earth Strings

Aaya’s Rainbow

Renegades

Delmark

 

New Release Hour

Wayne Wallace Latin Jaz Quintet

Africa

Bien Bien

Patois

 

Anne Drummond

Aguelos Coisas Todas

Like Water

Oblique Sound

 

John Patitucci Trio

Mali

Remembrance

Concord

 

Bobby Floyd

Hip Cake Walk

Notes To and From My Friends

Chicken Coup

 

Chad Carter

Round Midnight

I Got Up!

Jazz Knights

 

Steve Davis

Django

Eloquence

Jazz Knights

 

Phil Woods

When the Sun Comes Up

American Songbook

Kind of Blue

 

Contact:

Willard Jenkins

Open Sky

5268-G Nicholson Lane

#281

Kensington, MD 20895

willard@openskyjazz.com

 

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Ancient Future – the radio program 9/24/09

                            CELEBRATING TRANE

 

opening theme: Randy Weston "Root of the Nile"

 

Thelonious Monk  

Sweet & Lovely 

Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane Live at Carnegie Hall 

Blue Note

 

George Russell (w/John Coltrane)

Manhattan

New York, NY

Impulse!

 

John Coltrane

Blues To Elvin

The Heavyweight Champion

Rhino Atlantic

 

John Coltrane

Central Park West

The Heavyweight Champion

Rhino Atlantic

 

Marc Courtney Johnson

All Because of You (based on Central Park West)

Dream of Sunny Days

 

John Coltrane

Harmonique

The Heavyweight Champion

Rhino Atlantic

 

Duke Ellington & John Coltrane

Take the Coltrane

Duke Ellington & John Coltrane

Impulse!

 

John Coltrane

It’s Easy to Remember

Ballads

Impulse!

 

Kurt Elling

It’s Easy to Remember

Dedicated to You

Concord

 

John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman

Lush Life

John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman

Impulse!

 

John Coltrane

Mr. Syms

The Heavyweight Champion

Impulse!

 

John Coltrane

Tunji

Coltrane

Impulse!

 

Kamau Dauood

Liberator of the Spirit (for John Coltrane)

Leimert Park

Mama

 

John Coltrane

Spiritual

The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings

Impulse!

 

Soundviews:

Stefon Harris and Blackout

Gone

Urbanus

Concord

 

Stefon Harris and Blackout

Christina

Urbanus

Concord

 

Stefon Harris and Blackout

Minor March

Urbanus

Concord

 

Stefon Harris and Blackout

They Won’t Go

Urbanus

Concord

 

New Release Hour:

Miroslav Vitous

Variations on Lonely Woman

Remembering Weather Report

ECM

 

Steve Coleman and Five Elements

Trad Mutations

Weaving Symbols

Label Bleu

 

Mike LeDonne

Manteca

Five Live

Savant

 

Closing theme: Jaco Pastorius/Weather Report "3 Views of a Secret"

 

Contact:

Willard Jenkins

Open Sky

5268-G Nicholson Lane

#281

Kensington, MD 20895

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Ain’t But a Few of Us: Black jazz writers tell their story #9

Our series of conversations with black music writers continues with a contribution from Robin D.G. Kelley, who is currently a Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.  The author of several books Robin’s forthcoming release Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (Free Press) is eagerly anticipated, set for October ’09 release.  Additionally he is also completing Speaking in Tongues: Jazz and Modern Africa (Harvard University Press, set for 2010 release).

 

Robin D.G. Kelley has contributed to numerous newspapers and periodicals on jazz and other subjects, including the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Code Magazine, the Utne Reader, Black Music Journal, and Boston Review.

 

Robin D.G. Kelley

 

Our conversation began with the customary opener: What motivated you to write about serious music in the first place?

 

I grew up with the music.  I was introduced to this music initially through my mother, who arranged for me to have trumpet lessons with Jimmy Owens when I was in the second grade (this was New York in 1969).  As I got older, my tastes branched out, but I never lost a connection with the music because of my older sister, who also loved the music.  But my love for this music was reborn after my mother married a jazz musician, who incidentally was white.  By that time I was playing piano by ear and some bass but never really studied with anyone.  Under his tutelege and thanks to my sister’s prodding, I got deeper into music then labeled avant-garde — Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, etc., in addition to Mingus, Monk, Miles, etc. 

 

When I got to college and decided that I wanted to become an historian, I considered writing about the music but was pulled more into politics and social movements.  I did write (bad) poems about and inspired by these artists, but not much more until the early 1990s.  I began playing more, reading more, and of course listening a great deal, but I also started writing about hip hop.  That gave me the confidence to write about a variety of black musical forms.  I never became a "critic" in the formal sense, but I began exploring broader social and historical questions pertaining to "jazz" in both my published essays and the classes I taught.

 

When you started on this writing quest were you aware of the dearth of African Americans writing about serious music?

 

When I began to read about this music — mainly for pleasure (whereas most readers choose fiction for their light reading, I had a jones for biographies of jazz musicians; most were terrible but that didn’t stop me from devouring them), I quickly learned that there were very few black writers in the field.  I was fortunate in that one of the first books I read that left a huge impact on me was A.B. Spellman‘s Four Lives in the Bebop Business.  It is a bona fide classic.  I also wore out Arthur Taylor‘s Notes and Tones, read everything Baraka [editor’s note: see Ron Washington’s piece referencing Baraka’s new book Digging elsewhere in The Independent Ear] ever wrote on the music, from Blues People to Black Music, and learned a great deal from Stanley Crouch, whose insights on this music are often unmatched. 

 

These were foundational texts that served as my model for writing, but quickly I discovered that they were the exception, not the rule.  I was blessed to become friends with the late Marc Crawford, one of the unsung black critics of this music; he really inspired me and is responsible for my decision to undertake a book on Thelonious Monk.  Things have changed a little but not much.  There are a few out here, but so many of the so-called jazz critics seem to operate as an exclusive club.  I don’t think it’s entirely racial; it’s partly generational, partly folks protecting their turf.  And it’s not everyone.  But as Monk would say, sometimes I feel a draft.

 

Why do you suppose it’s still such a glaring disparity — where you have a significant number of black musicians making serious music, but so few black media commentators?

 

Part of it has to do with the establishment; it’s hard to be a member of the club.  On the other hand, I don’t think there is a whole lot of interest on the part of young black writers/scholars.  I’ve taught courses on jazz and politics, the anthropology of jazz, and a seminar on Thelonious Monk, and the number of black students who take these courses or are interested is quite small.  In fact, my biggest frustration with some of the African American students is that they wanted to talk about hip hop and nothing else.  And those who are calling themselves music journalists and critics (and there are a lot who pass through my classes or my office) are committed to writing about hip hop and popular music, but not much more.  Our collective musical literacy is quite low.

 

Let me propose one other explanation, and this moves us into the next question.  For about three years, thanks to John Rockwell, then editor of the New York Times Arts and Leisure section, I contributed several pieces to the Times.  He generously invited me to write because I was pushing for more diverse voices on that page.  I never felt censored or pressured to do anything, and I always worked closely with an African American editor on the paper named Fletcher Roberts.  I understood how privileged I was, especially given how few of us were writing for the Times.  But then I proposed writing a piece about the history of jazz in Brooklyn and its renaissance in the community throgh various clubs, churches, and the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium, among other things. 

 

I had a ball with the piece and the main argument or discovery was that black folks in Brooklyn were taking jazz back through cultural institutions that are not necessarily on the downtown radar [editor’s note: again, see Ron Washington’s piece in The Independent Ear].  The piece was written and ready to go, but then John Rockwell was replaced by then 28-year old Jodi Cantor and she nixed it, said something like "who is going to believe black people are so into jazz" or it could have been "who cares?"  I don’t remember; all I know is that my writing for the Times ended then and there.

 

Do you think that disparity or dearth of African American writers contributes to how the music is covered?

 

The last part of the [Brooklyn jazz/NYT] story party answers this question: to put it more directly, in some cases, black writers want to look at questions of race, politics, power (not always!), and place this music within its broader context [editor’s note: Precisely the reason for The Independent Ear!].  I’ve found some resistance to this, mainly from those who think music is pure and that any discussion of politics, race, and power is an imposition.  What I do find interesting is how eager many musicians are to discuss these issues.

 

Since you’ve been writing about serious music, have you ever found yourself questioning why some musicians may be elevated over others and is it your sense that has anything to do with the lack of cultural diversity among the writers covering this music?

 

I’m not sure I can answer this question with much authority.  While I do write about serious music, I do so as an historian rather than a critic.  I don’t write reviews of shows or recordings, and the few times I have written on contemporary developments in the music (like my piece on DJs and jazz for the New York Times nearly 10 years ago!), I hardly pay attention to what critics are saying about the contemporary scene.  In other words, I don’t know who is being elevated over whom at the moment, except when I listen to the jazz station in Los Angeles (KJAZ) and I have to endure endless recordings by Jack Sheldon but virtually nothing by Thelonious Monk, let alone Cecil Taylor. 

 

I know in principle that lack of cultural diversity has a negative impact on any kind of writing or critical engagement.  The lack of intellectual diversity does, too.  What I mean is that not all writers are critics, and some times the issues are not about who is better than whom, but what is a particular artist trying to do and what does it teach us about the music and the world we inhabit.  This is exactly why I appreciate the work of Stanley Crouch and Baraka, not to mention Robert O’Meally, Farah Jasmine Griffin, John Szwed, Guthrie Ramsey, Krin Gabbard, George Lipsitz, George Lewis, Eddie Meadows, Kyra Gaunt, Tammy Kernodle, Salim Washington, Dwight Andrews, Eugene Holley, you, and many, many others who are trying to say something other than this is a great record, this is not.

 

What’s your sense of the indifference of so many African American-oriented publications towards serious music, despite the fact that so many African American artists continue to create serious music?

 

It is unfortunate, but has been going on for some time I think.  Having just finished Monk’s biography, I have scoured the black press for material — again, almost always ignored by other writers, scholars, biographers, etc. — and found what I think of as a forgotten legacy of black jazz writers.  We need to deal with Rhythm magazine, a black-owned but short-lived publication that my man Eugene Holley hipped me to.  Herbie Nichols wrote for them (and he wrote a regular column for the New York Age), as did John R. Gibson, among others. 

 

Few know about Nard Griffin’s little book To Be or Not to Bop? published in 1948 (Dizzy stole the title for his memoir from Griffin).  We haven’t paid attention to the brilliant critical writing of Frank London Brown, better known to us as a novelist but he was also a fine jazz writer and excellent singer himself.  I could go on.  There were also many black women writing about this music in the black press.  Most people never heard of Eunice Pye of the L.A. Sentinel, or Joy Tunstall of the Pittsburgh Courier, or Phyl Garland of Ebony.  But over time black publications withdrew from writing about this music and instead fell for the celebrity trap.  I think they thought they were losing their readership and, truth be told, they were competing with mainstream magazines and newspapers that had their own critics.

 

I give it to Joanne Cheatham, who [is trying] to get something out there with her publication *Pure Jazz [editor’s note: the Summer ’09 issue of the Brooklyn-based Pure Jazz is currently available; purejazzmagazine@aol.com].  But I don’t know how well she [is] supported.  I wrote a couple of pieces for it, but if we don’t support our publications and demand that others pay attention to this music, it just ain’t gonna happen.  I won’t go on, but I will say it is disgraceful how someone like Oprah just has no interest in serious music, to name one example.

 

How do you react to the contention that the way and tone of how serious music is covered has something to do with who is writing about it?

 

I began to answer that question [earlier].  I will say that I think it makes a difference, but I will not say that race is always determining.  Political worldview, experience, knowledge, cultural perspective — all these things matter.

 

In your experience writing about serious music what have been some of your most rewarding encounters?

 

Always meeting and getting to know musicians.  Through interviews and inquiries, I’ve made many friends with some amazing artists, and nearly everyone demonstrates a level of generosity and intelligence that hardly comes across in the mainstream reviews.  I can name many, but the relationship that has been most transformative for me has been getting to know  Randy Weston.  I’ve always loved his music since I was a teenager but meeting the man, benefiting from his insights, his deep commitment and love for all people, especially Africa and its immense history, his politics and deep knowledge — he’s like the father I wish I had.  He is a model musician and composer and a model human being who always has kind and thoughtful things to say.  And he’s down with the people!

 

What obstacles have you run up against — besides difficule editors and indifferent publications — in your efforts at covering serious music?

 

You named the biggest obstacles!  For me things are slightly different since I’m not really a critic and more of an historian.  I focus on rethinking and revising the history of serious music, thus sources continue to be a problem.  We need more archives and oral histories (and good work is being done now, by the way).  It is incredibly hard to write this history, especially those artists who have remained under the commercial radar.  I think about George Lewis’s magnificent book on the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and what a tremendous contribution he made.  Just look at the footnotes and you’ll see why it took so long and just how hard he had to work to reconstruct that story.  Brilliant book.  My book on Monk tries to do the same, especially when I try to give little capsule biographies of the folk who rarely make the history books — like Little Benny Harris and Denzil Best and Danny Quebec West and Vic Coulsen, or even the better known figures like Herbie Nichols.  I fought hard to tell their stories, and the reviewers will complain about the dizzying detail in my book.  But these stories have to be told, and reviewers, editors and readers don’t have the patience to engage the bigger, more truthful picture.  It’s easier to play into the cult of individual and write about what’s genius and jacked up about an artist, not the community that made the artist who she/he is.

*The editor has an interview with the brilliant South African vocalist Sibongile Khumalo in the Summer 2009 issue of Pure Jazz magazine.

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Jazz Styles: a definitive jazz text

 

Prentice Hall has released the 10th edition of Jazz Styles

 

Jazz Styles has long been one of the most concise, comprehensive and useful jazz text books.  Although the characterization here is of Jazz Styles as a textbook, it should certainly not be taken as some weighty, dry, academic tome to only be encountered by those to whom it has been assigned reading for some jazz course or other.  Jazz Styles is a very useful book for anyone wishing to explores the whys & wherefores of jazz, from both historical and stylistic perspectives.

 

True confession: I’ve employed the book very effectively for university jazz courses I’ve taught and referred it frequently to those I encounter who simply want to get a better grip on how jazz is made.  The author of Jazz Styles is Mark C. Gridley, a professor at Heidelberg College in Tiffin, OH who is also an accomplished flutist.  The 10th edition of Jazz Styles, which as with each subsequent edition since the first, has been suitably updated to reflect where jazz is at in 2009,  The book is accompanied by a comprehensive demo CD as well as the 6th edition of Mark’s companion book Concise Guide to Jazz, a particularly essential resource for teachers.

 

 

The 6th edition Concise Guide to Jazz

 

I’ve been fortunate to have known Cleveland’s own Mark Gridley for years so on the release of these new editions I reached out to him for his take on how Jazz Styles has endured through ten editions.

 

What have been your standard tweaks in subsequent editions through the years?

 

Certain processes have to be a part of each revision.  For instance, once we whet your appetite to hear a jazz giant we want to make sure you can actually get his best recordings.  The status of reissues is changing all the time, so Bill Anderson, my discographer of many years, verifies that all of the references to recordings are as current as possible; and there are over 500 footnotes to do this.

 

I am sad to say that many of the giants of jazz history are passing away, so part of my mission is to make sure the reader is aware of their passing by updating the book with accurate death dates.  Then I have the unhappy task of putting the paragraphs about them in the past tense.  I also spend a few months tweaking the phrasing of selected passages.

 

A pleasure for the researcher and jazz fan in me is always the process of adding names of new musicians who reflect the influence of the profiled figures, in order to put the new names in perspective and document the reach of the profiled figures.

 

Finally, I am also continually on the lookout for new or better photos of musicians.

 

What have been the major additions to the book, not just standard tweaks, over the years?

 

Little by little, over the past 9 editions, I’ve added more about the origination of the earliest jazz in New Orleans and the development of new styles elsewhere; these have included jazz-rock fusion, acid jazz, Klezmer jazz, Latin jazz, new age, and smooth jazz.  But most of all, adding recordings and listening guides have been the major additions with each successive edition.  For example, the first two editions didn’t come with recordings, so the serious student had to search for vinyl.  Remember, the first edition was published in 1978.  It did have listening guides, however, for selections on the Kind of Blue album by Miles Davis and a few classic Duke Ellington recordings, such as the 1940 "Cottontail" and "Take the ‘A’ Train."

 

The third edition in 1988 introduced an audiocassette that had 177 narrated demonstrations of instrument sounds and methods that musicians use to make jazz.  We called it the Jazz Styles Demonstration Cassette, and it eventually came out in CD format.  The fourth edition, which came out in 1991, added a 90-minute audiocassette of historic recordings along with minute-by-minute, solo-by-solo listening guides for most of its contents.  We called it the Jazz Classics Cassette. 

 

Successive editions have gone from cassette formats to CDs, from one CD of historic recordings to two CDs, to the new 10th edition which adds a third CD containing examples of styles ranging from hard bop to Latin jazz, jazz-rock fusion to Klezmer jazz, and ECM style to neoclassic jazz.  The 10th edition also includes 17 new listening guides, and we now have a DVD format for the Demonstration CD and another DVD that samples historic jazz films.  Who knows what technology may bring in the future?

 

Throughout the years I’ve been fortunate to have input from musicians, jazz historians, educators, and musicologists.  I’ve also been able to test my materials on students to make sure that what I’m trying to convey is as clear as possible.  I take all of their contributions into consideration each time I revise the book.  For example, analyzing the recordings to prepare 17 additional listening guides for the 10th edition required about a year of steady work with the aid of 11 consultants.  These helpers included musicians from my own bands, musicologists who specialized in the period or performer in question, and other jazz history instructors.  In some cases, I received assistance from the same musicians who played on the recordings that I was analyzing.  In a few very lucky cases I managed to obtain scores from the composers themselves.  After preliminary drafts were completed, I tested my new listening guides on non-musician students.  Then after crafting rewrites based on the reactions of the students, I submitted later drafts to eagle-eyed friends for two or three more rounds of copy edits and proof-readings.  Such proof-reading often led to more rewrites and further testing on students.

 

What is it about Jazz Styles that has made it such an enduring and valuable teaching tool?

 

Musicians, editors, instructors, and students have told me that the book is scholarly and user-friendly at the same time.  It seems to appeal to readers on every level from the complete novice to the jazz expert.  And although it’s marketed as a textbook, any individual who is interested in learning about jazz can use it without enrolling in a formal course.  When combined with the CDs, it can provide a self-paced introduction to jazz.

 

Teachers don’t want to be confined to teaching the material in one pre-determined way.  The omnibus format of the book is so flexible that a course can be designed around it in any number of different ways.  I’ve received a lot of feedback indicating that people who are knowledgeable about jazz agree with my choice of musical selections for the listening guides and CDs.  This means that regardless of whether you’re enrolled in a class or studying on your own, you have everything you need to get started without running around searching for classic recordings.

 

Many readers have said the writing "is so clear".  For example, in a course that requires Jazz Styles at Berklee College of Music one student told me that his instructor held the book up and told his class "I wish I was as organized as this guy is."  A number of readers have told me that they like how I put the giants in perspective by tallying the musical reasons they are important and documenting their influence by the "bloodlines."  Readers have said they like that I point out how each innovator has drawn from previous giants, and, as paraphrased here from Herbie Hancock’s Grammy acceptance speech, how "we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us."

 

Additionally, instead of focusing just on the soloists, my work is exceptional in directing listeners’ attention to the accompanying sounds in jazz, such as piano comping, bass lines, drumming figures and how they differ depending on whose hands they are in.  The goal of Jazz Styles is to develop a knowledgeable and appreciative listener.

 

For many this music we call jazz remains a bit of a mystery.  How have you gone about "demystifying" jazz through the various volumes of Jazz Styles?

 

Without insulting the reader’s intelligence, I start with the basics.  For example, I’ve got photographs of the various instruments and recorded examples of how each one sounds.  I take the time to explain how to count, keep track of measures, and follow the form of a tune.  Next, I provide an explanation and recorded examples for the roles of the different instruments in a group.  For those who want more technical information, it’s in the appendix of the book.

 

The listening guides throughout the book offer moment-by-moment accounts of what is happening in the music, how the players are responding to the form of the underlying composition and the unwritten rules of interactive performance.  My emphasis is always on listening to music.  One reviewer wrote that he was impressed that I urged readers initially to listen to the same piece five different times, each time paying attention to a different aspect.  I believe that the only way to become a skilled listener is to practice listening!

 

I strongly believe that the music is what’s important, which is why I don’t speculate about sociopolitical origins for the styles or gossip about the private lives of its creators.

 

What would be your recommendation for the most useful means of engaging this book to educate people who know nothing about jazz music?

 

First listen to the Demonstration CD’s 157 narrated examples of instrument sounds and the basic elements for making jazz.  Then coordinate that with studying Chapter 3: Appreciating Jazz Improvisation.  Listen to the historic recordings on the Jazz Classics CDs while following the book’s listening guides.  Listen to each one lots of times and give it a chance to "soak in."  Practice paying attention to the basic elements of jazz whenever you are listening to jazz recordings and live performances.  Don’t get discouraged if you don’t "get it" right away.  Fine music is an acquired taste, just like fine wine.  The more you listen, the more you understand, and the more you enjoy.

 

What do you foresee for an 11th edition of Jazz Styles?

 

Jazz is a continuously evolving art form.  Therefore, I am constantly on the lookout for new directions.  And occasionally a historic recording or document will come to light — like the Coltrane-Monk Carnegie Hall concert from 1957 that was "found" in 2005 — giving me something new from the past to share with my readers.  Jazz Styles will always be a work in progress.

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