[Dixielandjazz] Why Americans don't like jazz: analysis of pop music.

[Stanley A. Klein]

On Fri, April 6, 2007 3:00 pm, Kent Murdick
<kmurdick at jaguar1.usouthal.edu> wrote:

> Message: 5
> Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2007 11:07:22 -0500
> From: Kent Murdick <kmurdick at jaguar1.usouthal.edu>
> Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Why Americans don't like jazz: analysis of
> 	pop	music.

>
> I'm going to generalize quite a bit here, but I think it will be useful
> in answering the question.  These are my own observations.
>
> Today's pop music (rock' n' roll based music)  started roughly around
> 1950 perhaps as a reaction to the complexity of Bebop jazz.  It evolved
> until around 1970, at which point everything that could be done with the
> genre had been done.  And then it went on for another 37 years with no
> end in sight.  This is a highly unusual run for such a simple form with
> little hope of evolving into art music.
>

I've heard and somewhat recall that it may have been more a reaction to
"elevator music" that became popular among businesses around that time. 
The "million and one strings" playing some slow pop standard with almost
no beat.

There were also trends in African American music on the radio, and white
artists began "covering" the black artists.  You also had payola, where
record companies were paying off disk jockies to play their stuff, and TV
dance programs pushing the music (some of whose hosts were rumored ot have
been involved in record sales).  It all took off from there.

There was also the economics of the big band, to which OKOM had evolved. 
For a period of time there was discussion among music commentators about
whether jazz is really music.  I recall my elementary school music teacher
(in the 1940's) opining that jazz was some form of sound but was not
really music.  I think that discussion instigated some racial politics
that led to Bebop, where there was an emphasis on musical seriousness.  It
spread to criticism of OKOM players and a split between OKOM and Bebop
players.

> I think the reason this has happened is that because the music is
> guitar based, music literacy has been lost and as the form has been
> passed on to the next generation, it is incapable of evolving.  Unlike
> the horn, the easiest way to first learn to play the guitar is to play
> by ear.  The guitar is peculiar that there are usually three places to
> play the same pitch and every time one shifts up a fret, the whole
> musical landscape changes - it's tantamount to changing the key of the
> horn every time you shift.  Reading on the guitar  is hard, so no one
> learns to read.  Learning to be free with the guitar in terms of playing
> what you hear is also very difficult, but it is very easy to play a
> pentatonic scale on the guitar - one can become fluent in rock
> improvisation in a few weeks or even days. The difference between
> playing rock and jazz is like the difference between a story teller and
> a novelist.  The story teller can be good, but he can't pass on his art,
> and he can never be as good as the novelist. In addition, mass marketing
> encourages the rock genre because most established institutions resist
> change.
>
> So there it is, pop music is like the proverbial broken record, doomed
> to repeat itself for the next millennium.  People who are used to simple
> music have trouble listening to more complex forms, so it's not that
> Americas hate jazz, they just don't understand it.


I think OKOM is just plain off the radar screen of the entertainment
industry.  It isn't that people don't like it.  They are used to being
sold their music, and nobody is selling OKOM to them.  However, it shows
up all the time in commercials and on NPR as fill-in music.


Stan Klein