Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category
A new series was unveiled this week at A Blog Supreme. Jazz Now is a series of posts from some younger folks in the jazz community listing their Tops Lists of albums from the last 10 years. Each post has streaming music from each of the chosen albums.
Today, Lucas Gillan from the very-cool AccuJazz Radio offered his list which included Mehldau’s Largo — a hugely popular record in my college days — and a local Chicago favorite Herculaneum (who just released their third record). More lists to follow.
As a lover of Top 5 lists, really looking forward to digging on what I hope will be some previously unheard music.
A newish series of posts from Sasha Frere-Jones at the New Yorker called Dithering hit last week. The introductory post points to a Pitchfork article I hadn’t yet seen titled The Social History of the MP3 that’s a good read. And — how I got to the posts in the first place — Frere-Jones’ second post is an interview with Jonny Greenwood with some thoughts on digital media.
From the most recent guest post at NPR’s A Blog Supreme.
A Call To Arts
by Dave Douglas
It’s good to see arts and especially jazz philanthropy back in business, thinking about what to fund and how best to fund it and not so much about how to punishing artists who use government money to smear their bodies in chocolate or worrying about just how in particular they plan to use that crucifix. There’s a new director at the National Endowment for the Arts named Rocco Landesman who is more interested in putting on shows; The Doris Duke Foundation and Mary Flagler Cary are out with innovative initiatives; and the alphabets — MTC, CMA, AMC, NYFA, NYSCA — are all looking at ways of giving jazz and related music a place at the table. All I can say is, Thank You. Finally. At long last, we can sit down and have a decent fight over real pieces of the pie.
Helping artists and communities is more important than cracking down on profanity. I was reminded of this the other day when my drummer Nasheet Waits was sent to overweight/oversize baggage for the third time even though his cymbals are no bigger than most bags (smaller than many!) and weighs easily within the range of your average over-packed summer traveler. (I mean their bags.) The cymbals just look different. Nasheet displayed admirable poise, while I was about to explode with the kind of filth that would make Rahm Emanuel blush. It was probably just a better idea to get the cymbals on their way down through the baggage mill.
Arts are important to people’s lives. Vincent Chancey grew up in a foster home, and when his public school gave him a chance to play music he chose the weirdest looking instrument he could find. A French horn man was born, even though there’s nothing French about that horn, and even Congress wanted to change the name to Freedom Horn a few years back. But with just that smallest push, Vincent developed an idiosyncratic personal style on the horn that led to a career with Sun Ra, Lester Bowie and Diana Krall among many others. Now if we could just get him to put the thing down. Vincent’s son Bahij is headed to Yale in the fall, on a scholarship to study architecture.
In 1990 I wasn’t sure where I fit into a scene polarized by young lions, hardcore downtown avant-garde and a livelihood playing weddings, bar mitzvahs, jingles and brisses. That was the year I received an individual artist grant for composition from the National Endowment for the Arts (funding of individual artists was discontinued in 1996). It meant a lot, even if only that there was a societal value to the creative work that I really wanted to do. My musically inclined but somewhat conservative father was scandalized. (”My tax dollars are going to What?!?!”)
Are the arts controversy-free? Clearly my father didn’t think so. No, the arts aren’t all clean, but neither is life itself. Now there’s the Internet, keeping kids aware of all that’s going on around them in the world if you can get them to look away from the screen for more than a few seconds. If these initiatives have their way, when they do look away they will see arts in addition to schoolwork. It’s not safe looking at a computer screen all day, or perhaps being an artist, but there are other dangers out there, like swine flu, sexting, contaminated vegetables, Octomoms, municipal rackets marketing human kidneys, not to mention Town Hall meetings. A little controversial artwork is the least of our worries.
So many responses and comments regarding Terry Teachout’s “Can Jazz Be Saved?” post out there. Still more coming in daily.
Like this from Ramsey Lewis:
“…Diz was overheard telling Bird that “We better be careful ’cause it seems like less people are dancing than before.”
Even then, some jazz musicians desired to become artists and forsake entertainment. Some, however, found a way to do both without sacrificing their integrity, but alas, not enough of us.
The art of talking to and interacting with one’s audience does not cost an artist any loss of respect. On the contrary, it adds to the audience’s overall experience of the music.”
I’ve certainly felt this way before. But really only at the most polarizing of concerts — shows where the leader of the group refuses to acknowledge the audience in any way or say anything to them. I have to say that those few times I can think of, the music itself wasn’t very good to begin with, and being mindful of the audience I don’t think could have saved it.
I’m wondering how important it is for our readers — those who attend concerts regularly — for there to be a level of entertainment aside from listening to and watching the players play. Any thoughts?
Regardless, the conversation happening almost everywhere on the web is one to keep your eyes on.
A few rock-related links to pass on in case you’re interested…
New Radiohead Tune Leaked – “These Are My Twisted Words?“
Jonny from Dead Air Space: So here’s a new song, called ‘These Are My Twisted Words’.
We’ve been recording for a while, and this was one of the first we finished. We’re pretty proud of it.
There’s other stuff in various states of completion, but this is one we’ve been practicing, and which we’ll probably play at this summer’s concerts. Hope you like it.
It seems they actually leaked it. Perhaps a piece of the “great idea” Thom mentioned in a recent interview. Never a dull moment with those guys.
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New Jim O’Rourke Album – “The Visitor”
Stream a preview of a track at the new Drag City website. More details to follow, I’m sure.
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From boingboing.com – New Jersey police detained 68-year old American music star Bob Dylan recently, after a young officer failed to recognize him. A disheveled Dylan was wearing a hoodie, wandering around in the rain looking at a house for sale. The 24-year-old female officer was responding to a phone call from the occupants of a home that had a “For Sale” sign on it. The residents were called in with a report of an “eccentric-looking old man” in their yard .
Greatly saddened by the passing – but uplifted by the nonstop music at WKCR. Listen live here.
Always interested in new formats around here.
CMX was just announced and it looks pretty cool to me, though I haven’t seen any details on sound quality and the like. Here’s what “a label insider” told the Times Online:
“[CMX] will be a file that you click on, it opens and it would have a totally brand-new look, with a launch page and all the different options. When you click on it you’re not just going to get the ten tracks, you’re going to get the artwork, the video and mobile products.”
Here’s hoping that the major labels will start signing bands that can fill up the CMX with 10 good tracks. If not, we’re back at square-one with no one buying albums because there are only 2 tunes they want.
And another new format came to my attention via WFMU’s blog.
Much in the same way itunes dismantled the notion that paying $16 for a cd with 2 good songs on it was a good idea, songparts goes a step further and argues that even $.99 is too much to pay for that one part of a song you really like. Instead why not fork over $.06 for the “Best line in Steely Dan’s ‘Kid Charlemagne’ looped for your convenience” or the “Gluten, gleebun, glauten, globen” intro from Def Leppard.
The majors recently bought a 17% stake in Spotify, the much loved (but Europe only) music subscription service and one can only hope they can get on board with these guys too…. I give the site about a week to live.
Songparts seems like something that won’t catch on, but I’ve been surprised before. I know I wouldn’t want to buy just a piece of a tune. Even if it is the ripping solo from Kid Charlemagne. Wonder how much they’d charge for just the turnaround?
Patrick Jarenwattananon is updating us with his rundown of the Newport Festival at A Blog Supreme. Two interesting topics to read his thoughts on besides the music — Where Were The Young People At Your Last Concert?, and Can Jazz Be Saved? (Is That A Useful Question?).
In the Where were the Young People…, he writes:
I didn’t think I’d ever see Chicago free jazz at Newport. (More on that act in a later post.) But this band, one of Ken Vandermark’s most approachable, brought distorted, punk-ish backbeats as an anchor. Some younger folks didn’t appreciate it, but there were a lot of heads nodding. Including an old lady standing next to me.
Being that I’m in his hometown I have seen Vandermark play dozens of times with a few of his bands. The majority of those shows haven’t included more than 5 people over 40. I’ve often wondered why that was. Reading this just threw me for a loop. Patrick, come see Powerhouse Sound play in Chicago. You’ll be surprised how many young’n’s are there.
Thanks also for pointing me to the 15 Steps / Take 5 mashup…
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More tidbits on the Festival via Jim Macnie’s Lament For A Straight Line (thanks to Accujazz’s Twitter for keeping me updated with hundreds of worthy links to check out).
Very interesting interview with Australian trumpet genius Scott Tinkler. Get yourself past the rather puzzling intro – Scott has some intriguing musical concepts he’s applying in his music. And he shares many of them here.
Really great interview with Nate Wooley at Bagatellen. A candid and comprehensive view of the creative life of this brilliant trumpeter and improviser.
Also, in the comments, trumpeter Stephen Haynes points out that musician-composer-trumpeter Bill Dixon is can now be located on Facebook.
