[Dixielandjazz] Jabbo Smith--who's scatting?/evolution in the arts

[Charles Suhor]

Marek, I think some of our differences are semantic. I'll go with "influences" rather than "links" but in my mental mapping, in this context that's a distinction without a difference. Some of the  other points of disagreement are thorny at best, possibly unresolvable even once we boiled them down, had we but world enough and time to do so. But email is an exhausting medium for such stuff. I can imagine pleasant debates in a pub or coffee house, ending with a better sense of each other's perspectives and souls. 

Peace,

Charlie


On Jan 17, 2015, at 9:18 AM, Marek Boym wrote:

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> > I object to seeking "stylistic evolutionary link(s)" to this or that musician (or author, or painter, for that matter).
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> I can't agree with a blanket rejection of stylistic links among practitioners of the arts. The artists themselves commonly acknowledge that others were influences in developing their styles and then taking the art in different, personal directions.
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> Influnce is one thing.  Sure, Louis influenced most subsequent (qand even contemporary and older) trumpet players, and Bix influence countless white and many black hornmen.  But "links?"  They were all artists, some more individual than others.  None was a "link."
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> Yes, I doubt the wole "evolution" concept of art, but I wouldn't call an artist (or artiste) a "link."  
> I've heard that Dizzy once said to Louis, "No you, no me."
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> I have read that Miles Davis said: "No Louis, no me."  So?  So Gillespie was invluenced by Armstrong, not by some "links!"  
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> I realize that some folks dislike the word "evolution," but the term doesn't necessarily imply that the subsequent form is superior to, or even more complex than, its antecedents.
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> That's what the term implies, after all.  It does not imply degeneration.
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> "Smooth jazz" is an example IMO of a sub-genre that lacks the vitality and invention of the modern jazz it sprang from. If Eric Satie is one of the originators of ambient music, the woo woo stuff I hear today is a devolution. I've been trying to latch on to current free jazz on youtube
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> I don't hear that "free jazz," or not so free (what does that mean, anyway?) have any connection whatsoever with jazz.
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> , but it doesn't seem to be more expressive than good bop, swing, or early jazz.
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> Revivalist jazz of the banjo-and-tuba variety grew from early jazz, but if it has ever touched on the creativity of the music it references, I haven't heard it.
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> I wonder.  How about Turk Murphy, for example?  And while the revivalist jazz grew out of early jazz, it became a separate style.  I do not quite see why Bob Schultz, for example, is less creative than, say, Thomas Jefferson.  Of course, there were revivalist musicians such as Bob Wilber or Kenny Davern, but I've tried to stay with the "banjo-and tuba" variety.
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> Not all of those examples will hold up, but in the larger picture the history of the arts is reasonably seen as evolutionary, even when new forms spring up in dialectic protest of their predecessors.
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> Lord Tennyson said "a poem is a poem is a poem."  The same reasoning can - and should - be applied to music and other art forms.
> Cheers,
> Marek 
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> > I object to seeking "stylistic evolutionary link(s)" to this or that musician (or author, or painter, for that matter).
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