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

[Jhopkins]

I know so little about playing the guitar that I feel ill prepared to 
respond.  But one true story does support this thesis. In High School Dabney 
(my son) and a few of his friends decided to form a rock band, write their 
own songs and make a CD. The only problem was, none of them knew how to play 
a musical instrument. So they each picked an instrument....guitar, bass, 
drums and vocals.  In six months they had taught themselves to play, written 
several songs (created them..... they never wrote anything down, they didn't 
know how), and did indeed make their CD. I was dumbfounded.......they had a 
pretty good, competitive, rock and roll garage band after six months. Their 
friends would show up every time they played and loved the band. If they had 
chosen jazz and had picked trumpet, clarinet, trombone, tuba, banjo, drums 
and piano they would have quickly given up, realizing that it would be 
impossible to do in a short amout of time (or any amount of time). This made 
it clear to me why so many kids gravitate towards the R&R garage band 
mentality....it was easy and they had a blast doing it.

Joe Hopkins

..----- Original Message ----- 
From: <rahberry at comcast.net>
To: "Eliot Berry" <catshelter7 at gmail.com>; <dberry at dberry.com>; 
<jazzclarinet at cox.net>; <loriliz22 at hotmail.com>; <rhoada at rpi.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 06, 2007 9:42 AM
Subject: FW: [Dixielandjazz] Why Americans don't like jazz: analysis of pop 
music.


> What do you musicians have to say about this?
>
>
> -------------- Forwarded Message: --------------
> From: Kent Murdick <kmurdick at jaguar1.usouthal.edu>
> To: rahberry at comcast.net
> Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
> Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Why Americans don't like jazz: analysis of pop 
> music.
> Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:19:47 +0000
>> 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 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.
>>
>>
>>
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>