[Dixielandjazz] Musical Values

Fri Feb 12 00:49:16 PST 2010

It's my guess that every era has great music that will be remembered and an awful lot of music that (almost) everyone will have forgotten 10 years later.

That has been the situation for ages in all kinds of music, be it classical, jazz or pop.

Even the jazz musician with a great musical originality AND great commercial assets like Louis Armstrong did record things like (In his case minor quality) waltzes and things like Swiss Miss that really have not too much value. (There are also great waltzes!)

It won't be much different today.

One situation that changed however is that the commercial interests are even much higher today. In the 20's there were not so many records sold as compared to the enormous amount of money that is going on in the music industry today. 

What you see is that nowadays not the music itself sells, but the picture around it. So an artist is launched with creating publicity about every minor (and basically) uninteresting detail of that persons life, just to keep the commercial interests flowing. See what happened to Britney Spears or Lady Gaga. And I guess much more money is invested in the Video clips that are showed in MTV and that publicity than in the music recorded itself. These videos and the artifissially generated publicity really sell the sounds on the CD. But the audience is bored quickly, so the industry has to find other ways and has no problems to dump yesterdays hero, to build up the new rising star. Only the greatest artists stay interesting over longer times. Well, Louis Armstong certainly had that quality, still being capable of generating moving music even in his last years.

Another aspect is that now we live in a computer time. People want things fast, low barriers to cross. Not invest much time or energy. 

The concequences are there. The general public, and thus the music industry has not much appreciation anymore for someone who invested several years of his life in mastering a difficult musical instrument. Why should he? Out of a computer it is possible to create instant sounds that immediatly seem appealing.

Also look at the many popstar talent contests on TV. They want to create a new star in a few weeks.

And that solution is of course perfect for the industry, they only need a person who is handy with synths and a gorgious looking girl to launch a new carreer. Give her the lowest contract you can think of, pay of the synth technician an hope to get rich as soon as possible.

The girl actually even not has to be a great singer anymore, press the autotune button and there you go.

One aspect that is a problem for the industry is that it is so easy to copy music and distibute it for free on the internet that the general public even doesn't want to pay for the CDs anymore.

So this probably will lead to drastical changes in the industry in the short future.

Here will be possibilities for musical forms or styles not in the interest of the big business people. With internet and phenomens like youtube it is possible to create a new audience wordwide.

Kind regards,

Bert Brandsma

www.dixielandcrackerjacks.com

> From: larrys.bands at charter.net
> Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:56:28 -0600
> Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Musical Values (was The Who Lectures)
> CC: dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
> To: dixieorkest at hotmail.com
> 
> I guess I am a little different in that I did like the early rock and there were a few tunes by the Beatles that I liked. I guess over time the pop music industry just wore me out and it went another direction.
> 
> I think musicians tend to like instrumentals much more than vocals but that's not the trend over time with the general public. As I said before in other posts that music today (as in rap) doesn't even have all the basic elements of music but depends on words and rhythm to get the point across. Over time, music has gone from the complex to the simple or maybe more accurately has steadily lost elements such as complex chord patterns to no chord patterns. Even the vocals have become more basic from lofty themes to rutting in the street.
> 
> This all represents a dumbing down of music in the same way as language in this country is dumbing down to some pretty basic stuff. Stupid seems to sell better than elegance and lust has triumphed over romance. That doesn't mean that better things don't exist in pop culture but they are becoming more rare.
> 
> It's all about what sells. As long as people buy there will be someone there to sell it to them whatever it is. 
> 
> For me I like the music of former times and as I get older I retreat farther into what I consider better sounds. I don't think this is a total rejection of what's new but represents a refinement in my taste over time. I have moved one way and the pop music industry has moved another.
> Larry
> StL
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: Ken Mathieson 
> To: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List ; larrys.bands at charter.net 
> Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 3:02 PM
> Subject: Musical Values (was The Who Lectures)
> 
> 
> Right on Larry!
> 
> I empathise with your thoughts in your mail and I too came up in the late '50s and early 60s listening to the entire jazz spectrum from early Armstrong to Blue Note hard bop at the same time (I didn't have any paticular preferences; I just loved it all) and what got to me was passion, subtlety, harmonic richness, endless melodic invention, rhythmic intensity and above all hearing people who truly meant every note they played. So it was a bit of a shock when the Beatles came on the scene in the early 60s and almost overnight killed off the jazz market.
> 
> I never really understood on musical grounds why there was such a fuss about the Beatles, but after they were gone they were replaced in UK pop culture by bands and singers with even less to offer, so I too switched off pop music by 1970 as there were so little that I could get interested in. Likewise Elvis never really impressed me on musical grounds (I could understand the mass hysteria and market manipulation aspects, but musically I could find little to interest me) and this was confirmed when I heard a BBC radio programme which centred on the original black R&B records that Elvis "covered." They had all the elements missing from the Elvis covers that I looked for, especially an earthy drive and genuine blues singing.
> 
> Fortunately my employers came to the rescue and sent me to work in Brasil in 1970. At that time rock influences hadn't really invaded Brasilian sensibilities, and I found their music ticked all the boxes for me. When I got home to Scotland the priority of feeding a young family meant I had to play everything that came in, but I quickly came to loathe the rock and cabaret gigs for their gratuitous noise and lack of musical subtlety. There was also the sameness of sound produced by a band of guitars plus the occasional synth player that Larry found hard to take too. Then there was (in Dizzy Gillespie's memorable phrase) "the Tyranny of the Backbeat" dominating and verticalising the rhythm, and as a drummer, it bored me rigid. I no longer came home from a gig feeling that I had played a part in a genuinely creative musical event: everyone played what had been played on the records we were covering and the only satisfaction came from not goofing. Similarly, when I did lots of theatre and cabaret gigs, there was no scope for self-expression, so the only satisfaction was in playing the dots without goofing.
> 
> All of this brought me to the realisation that most pop music is a "musical product" rather than music for its own sake. You'd never confuse a beefburger with prime rib, but they start from the same place and use some of the same raw materials. Maybe we should describe pop music as "convenience music": it's designed for quick consumption and equally rapid discarding in order to make way for the industry's latest new sensation. It's basically marketing-driven, whereas most jazz is content-driven, with musical quality a very high priority. I also agree with Larry about the superfluity of vocals. To me music is language and good instrumental music speaks to me better than most vocal music. I make exception for the truly great singers (people like Ella, Sarah Vaughan, Bessie Smith, Bobby McFerrin, Jimmy Witherspoon, Louis Armstrong, Elis Regina, Mercedes Sosa etc), but the point is that they too tick all the boxes for me in terns of musicality, passion, energy, technical mastery, and above all sincerity, so I view them as great musicians rather than just singers.
> 
> OK Larry, I'll get off my soapbox now.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Ken Mathieson
> www.classicjazzorchestra.org.uk
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