"Why Americans Don’t Like Jazz"

I prefer classical to Jazz. You can take all the "your not sophisticated enough to get it" or "you have no music appreciation" rhetoric and it stick them up your asshole.

It's just music snobs being same elitist pricks that have ruined music for others.

There are some on this forum who would loathe the idea of listening to what I listen to and vice versa. It doesn't mean one person has better musical taste than the other.

We'd all like to think we have the best musical taste, but if it doesn't sound good to me than it doesn't matter what your justifications are for liking it.

Honestly I think some people claim to like a certain music style or genre only to garner more respect for their musical choices whether they like it or not.

This form of musical elitism has to go.

Just because I hate just about all the music in top 40 radio doesn't necessarily mean I have more sophisticated taste in music. It just means that it doesn't sound good to me. It doesn't mean it sucks.

While I appreciate the musicianship in Jazz, I can't really say I enjoy listening to it, because I don't.
 
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One thing that just makes me shake my head about a huge portion of Jazz.... the purists complain how "simplistic" "boring" and "predictable" popular music, so they instead have unusual chords, progressions, and play atonal scales in their solos to "push the envelope"...

... yet the framework they build this music on is so often locked into a very boring framework where it's "here comes the 2 minute piano solo... now a smattering of applause and then the 2 minute fretless bass solo... another pause and then the sax... and finally guitar... smattering of applause and then go back to the main melody that started the song."

THIS is what loses the casual listener. Many of casual listeners like the main melody, the funky interplay between instruments... but even in a live show, when it gets to the drum solo... that's when they go get a beer. To hear more than 2 solos in every fucking song... usually in the same fucking order.... is overkill.

It's definitely a "can't see the forest for all the instrumental solo trees". :helper:
 
Tig said:
There are only two kinds of music, stuff you like and stuff you don't like.
Unfortunately, many re-categorize/label this into "music that is good" and "music that sucks".
Click to expand...

I don't really believe that. Subjectivity always factors in, of course, but it has its limits.

You don't hear theses like that re: fiction, drama, film, painting, photography, sculpture, or ballet:

"He likes "Raging Bull", he likes "Hudson Hawk", nobody's right or wrong, it's just preference."

With music, it's more challenging for most people, other than to jump to lyrics or virtuosity. It's harder. It's more abstract, there's more historical and cultural context, and there's too much to understand w/r/t theory and instrumentation.

And, on top of that, music has a way of connecting emotionally in really emotional way.

So, debates about music are, for many people, very frustrating.
 
The movie/music comparison is also helpful, for me, in that making broad generalizations about genre is really dumb.
 
Jazz was invented in America and made popular in America. It was America's popular music and available on jukeboxes while it was relevant. Soul and rock music did a lot in the sixties to reduce jazz' popularity. It's more popular in Japan because they are a bunch of Johnny come lately's worshipping a ghost. Being taken seriously as a relevant jazz artist today is much like trying to become a serious impressionist painter today. The ship had sailed. The genius of jazz is best remembered in the recordings of its originators and icons.
Miles turning his back on his audience was evidence of the genre's importance in that long past era.



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rickenvox said:
Jazz was invented in America and made popular in America. It was America's popular music and available on jukeboxes while it was relevant. Soul and rock music did a lot in the sixties to reduce jazz' popularity. It's more popular in Japan because they are a bunch of Johnny come lately's worshipping a ghost. Being taken seriously as a relevant jazz artist today is much like trying to become a serious impressionist painter today. The ship had sailed. The genius of jazz is best remembered in the recordings of its originators and icons.
Miles turning his back on his audience was evidence of the genre's importance in that long past era.
Click to expand...

fusion is where its at :wink:
 
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