[Dixielandjazz] Jazz & Poetry

[Charles Suhor]

In case you're not just kidding, Steve, I'll try to respond. ANY 
song-lyric is a poem set to music (or a poem written to fit a melody) 
but Jazz & Poetry involves hearing a separately written poem (or 
sometimes an on-the-spot verbally improvised "spoken word"piece) and 
jamming some appropriate jazz behind it, picking up on the mood and 
image of the poem.  That oversimplifies, because there are lots of ways 
of doing this, e.g., another is for the poet to recite short stanzas or 
a series of haiku, and inbetween, the player improvises something 
suggested by the stanza or haiku, etc. Most rap isn't in the J&P genre 
because as I understand it, the rap backup is usually either pre-fit to 
the rap or is improvised in such a slight way that there's no 
significant instrumental invention involved.

Charlie Suhor




On Mar 19, 2005, at 7:18 PM, Steve barbone wrote:

> Eureka!
>
> OKOM & Poetry?
>
> Say, isn't just about every song with lyrics that is OKOM, a mixture of
> "Jazz" & Poetry"?
>
> If so, then OKOM was the FIRST genre of jazz to include Poetry.
>
> And all those beat, bearded poets in Greenwich Village and San 
> Francisco
> were just copy cats of folks like Berlin, Ratzaf, Gershwin, et al.
>
> Or are we talking Artsy/Fartsy vs. Commercial/Functional? Like "Fog 
> Creeps
> In On Little Cat Feet" vs. "Into Your Tent I'll Creep."?
>
> Cheers,
> Steve Barbone
>
>
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