[Dixielandjazz] Why Americans Don't Like Jazz

[barbonestreet at earthlink.net]

Listmates: (long, but well worth it)

So we want provocative thoughts? Well, here's one by a Japanese music lover as he compares his and his American girlfriend's take on music and jazz.

Interesting. Some good points, but also some left out. Like "Jazz" was originally dance music. Get out your original wax 78's and see "Fox Trot" (Armstrong's Hot 7 Potasto Head Blues)  or "One Step" (Wolverine's Fidgety Feet) etc., etc., etc. right on the label. This wasn't "Dixieland" because at that time  "Dixieland" meant Southern, not a style of music. So when Brian Harvey says there are no tunes written for Dixieland he's pretty much spot on, they were written for "Dancing", and played by "Southern" bands.ODJB, NORK, etc. 

However, that's another subject. Read the below and find out why rap rules with the young. It is not the music, it is the message . . . the words. No wonder young audiences respond to the sexy vocalists, whether they can sing or not. I can vouch for that. Yep, a 70 year old sex symbol. :-) VBG.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone. 

Why Americans Don't Like Jazz

The current market share of Jazz in America is mere 3 percent. And, that includes all the great ones like John Coltrane and the terrible ones like Kenny G. There are many organizations and individuals like Winton Marsalis who are tirelessly trying to revive the genre, but it does not seem to be working. Why is this? Is there some sort of bad chemistry between the American culture and Jazz? As ironic as it may be, I happen to believe so.

The other day, I was having a conversation with my girlfriend about the new TV commercial by eBay where a chubby lady sings and dances to an appropriated version of "My Way" by Frank Sinatra. They entirely re-wrote the lyrics, and, instead of "my way", she sings, "eBay". I said to my girlfriend, "They did a really god job in adapting the original song." Then she had a sudden revelation: "Ah, that's why I like it so much!" She actually did not realize that it was based on Sinatra's song.

My girlfriend and I have always known how differently we listen to music. I tend to entirely ignore lyrics, while she tends to entirely ignore music. We are two opposite ends of the spectrum in this sense. I often would remark to people how I like a particular song, and my friends would look at me like I am crazy. After a careful listening of the same song again, I realize that the lyrics are shamefully tacky. The opposite happens often too where many of my friends love a particular song, and I can't understand what is good about it until I pay attention to the lyrics.

The eBay example is an extreme case where, stripped of the lyrics, she had nothing to recognize it by. Change the lyrics, it is an entirely different song to her. But it would be the other way around with me. I would be less likely to notice that the lyrics have been changed. With the eBay tune, I only noticed it because she sings aloud, "eBay". If it weren't for that, I probably wouldn't have noticed that the lyrics were rewritten.

My girlfriend and I represent convenient stereotypes of the Americans and the Japanese in terms of our musical orientations. I know why the Japanese love Jazz so much. Since we grew up listening to songs in various foreign languages (especially English), in essence, half of what we hear commonly is instrumental. When you don't understand what the singer is saying, he/she might as well be just another musical instrument. Most Japanese people have no idea what the songs are about when they are listening to Madonna, Michael Jackson, or Britney Spears. Our ears are trained to listen to instrumental music. This is in fact true with most other countries where they cannot escape the dominance of American popular music.

On the other hand, especially with the advent of music videos, the American ears are getting lazier and lazier. Not so long ago in Western history, most people knew how to play a musical instrument or two. Now the vast majority couldn't tell the difference between a saxophone and a trumpet. The American culture is so visually dominant that given a piece of music without anything visual associated with it, most people's eyes wander around nervously, just like the way a nervous speaker doesn't know what to do with his hands. In the USA, music cannot stand on its own. It must tag along with something visual. Otherwise, people would not know what to do with it.

And, it is not just the visual dominancy and the under-developed ears that are problems. The American audience does not know what to do with the concept of abstraction. They do not see or hear something for what it is; they have to symbolically interpret it. The value lies only in the interpretation, not in what it is. Even though aesthetically there are no significant differences between a painting of, say, Mark Rothko and one of Monet, the former is utterly unacceptable for many people while they consider the latter to be a master. The difference is that in Monet's paintings, you can still see things represented in them: rivers, trees, mountains, houses, and so forth. The viewers interpret these objects, and project the beauty of nature unto the paintings, which makes it easy to appreciate them. Given a painting by Mark Rothko, there is nothing they can mentally grasp on to. The minds that are incapable of grasping things beyond interpretations, do not know what to do when nothing is represented in what they see, i.e., when there is nothing to interpret. In Rothko's paintings, there is nothing more to them than what they are. If you cannot accept them as what they are, they completely elude you.

The same happens to instrumental music. If there are no lyrics, if there is nothing for the minds to interpret, projecting of any emotional values becomes rather difficult. On the other hand, as soon as the lyrics speak of love, sex, racism, evil corporations, loneliness, cops, etc., suddenly all sorts of emotions swell up. Jazz to most people is like a color on a wall; unless you hung something on it, they don't even notice it.

On top of all these problems, Jazz has its own problems. The form of Jazz no longer has anything compelling to offer. If you push the form too far, what you get is Cecil Taylor. Although I love his music, I'm not sure if I would call it Jazz. Other than the symbolic similarity of instruments and the fact that it is improvisational, his music has nothing in common with the stylistic structure of Jazz. (Also the fact that he is Black is another superficial resemblance.) To call something Jazz just because it uses the instruments commonly used in Jazz, and because it is improvised, would broaden the definition of the term so much to the point that it would lose its meaning. Jazz, in this sense, did not die. What died is not the musical spirit of Jazz, but the word "Jazz", and nothing else. The word "Jazz" should be dead, because we have already moved on. Those who insist on playing "Jazz" in the traditional stylistic sense of the word are equivalent to those who reenact Civil War as a recreation. There is nothing wrong with having a little fun, but don't expect to make any compelling artistic statement through it. Playing "Jazz" is not playing music; it's playing musicology. 

By Dyske Suematsu