[Dixielandjazz] What the audience hears

[Charles Suhor]

Great stuff here, Don. I'd make some further comments that I think get 
at least some audiences off the "phony" hook.

First, as a researcher (whose job it is to be congenially cynical) I'd 
want to look at Dr. Gridley's methodology. It might be great, but it 
could be that, if he was for example playing Miles/Bird/Ornette/fusion, 
etc., the deck was stacked by reason of the particular selection of 
tracks, the phrasing of his questions, etc. Some of Leonard Feather's 
usually valuable and objective Blindfold Tests used  particularly, er, 
unflattering tracks of early jazz and elicited severe criticism from 
his subjects--just what Feather wanted.

Assuming that Gridley's study was squeaky clean, I see a broader 
question of non-musicians' responses to modern jazz. Right, most have 
no clue as to the bases of the styles and see them all as, in some 
cases, chaotic--but other laypersons see them as very moving or partly 
so. The point being that it's totally legitimate to have aesthetic 
responses that are positive and primitive (that is, gut responses not 
bolstered by an "understanding" of the music).  As a fan once said to 
me, "I never can tell whether they [the improvisers] know what they're 
doing or are just engaging in romantic flight." Yet, it makes no 
difference so long as his primitive response is positive.

As for positive primitive responses to really bad modern performances 
where, say, the player is unintentionally outside of meter and chords, 
that's no different  from such responses to really bad trad jazz 
performances. In both cases, the listener is in need of education, lest 
s/he go through life imbibing aesthetic poisons. (Ever play with a 
really bad group that the audience loved? Me, too. An embarrassment.)

As a semi-sophisticated listener, I often turn off the backdrop of 
knowledge in my mind on purpose in order to experience music totally 
viscerally. This is esp. true of artists and tunes I'm less familiar 
with. See how it grabs me. That puts me on a more or less level field 
with what I no longer condescendingly call "the average listener." It's 
fun, and pretty revealing.

To wrap it up, I think the same principles hold true for our responses 
to modern poetry, painting, classical music, etc. Some people don't 
"know" about those arts but their gut response is positive and 
authentic. Others hate it at first exposure but might later be given a 
better understanding of it (my exact experience of T.S. Eliot and of 
some modern classical music in college). Still others are the phonies 
we're talking about--man, you're SUPPOSED to dig Sun Ra, a bumbling 
amateur brass band, Philip Glass, and the latest artistic genius du 
jour. We can sometimes tell who's digging the stuff in earnest and 
who's not, but being a judge isn't very useful unless you have the time 
and inclination, or the charge (as a teacher) to help others to share 
your love of the art.

Charlie Suhor

> Don Mopsick wrote:
>  Suhor wrote: "I hope that no one believes that all avant garde 
> players are self-indulgent
> frauds and all their audiences are uncomprehending phonies."
>
> I also hope that no one here lumps ALL "avant" music and its fans into 
> this
> category. However, like you, Charlie, I have some experience playing 
> this
> music and a LOT of experience with how people react to a wide variety 
> of
> jazz styles in many different situations-concert dates, nightclubs,
> restaurants, parties, dances, festivals, and especially students in 
> school,
> clinic/workshop and jazz camp settings.
>
> Based on my experience, MOST of the advanced forms of jazz fly as far 
> over
> MOST peoples' heads as an SR-71 Blackbird flying over the Soviet 
> Union. In
> 2006 I attended a lecture at IAJE about what people really perceive in
> various jazz forms as revealed by survey research by Dr. Mark Gridley, 
> a
> noted jazz professor and historian. The survey revealed that MOST 
> people
> perceive the most wild, dissonant free jazz, the more highly organized
> advanced modal jazz ala Miles Davis/Wayne Shorter, and frantic 40s 
> bebop ala
> Parker/Gillespie as EXACTLY THE SAME, that is, as chaotic nonsense. 
> The talk
> did not mention hot pre-war jazz, which makes sense at IAJE because it
> appears very few of them are hip to it anyway.
>
> To me this is objective proof that non-musicians hear far less than 
> what
> musicians and composers actually put into their music. I have known 
> this for
> a long time. About 25 years ago, a jazz saxophonist friend of mine 
> with a
> very talented ear came over to my apartment to hear for the first time 
> the
> Bartok String Quartets. I had spent a semester discovering the 
> wonderful
> many-layered compositional techniques Bartok used in these quartets 
> and I
> wanted to share with him. His reaction was, "Is there any structure in 
> this
> other than chaos?" This was a guy with a rather advanced musical ear, 
> and he
> did not get it on first hearing. Then I realized it had taken me 
> months of
> listening, studying scores, reading books about it, and I was just 
> beginning
> to hear it.
>
> So where does this leave the average, casual listener? I would amend
> Charlie's characterization thusly: "Although the vast majority of avant
> garde players believe in what they are creating with a rabid religious
> fervor, there are a few consciously self-indulgent frauds who laugh 
> all the
> way to the bank. Further, MOST of their audiences, based on objective
> evidence, are not capable of hearing what the creators intended, 
> therefore
> one must conclude that quite a few are uncomprehending phonies and 
> poseurs."