Jazz is the opposite of nostalgia

[DSOP]

[deseipel]

its funny, I googled the word which I thought would be the opposite of nostalgia and I was right... it's postalgia. It's the yearning for a future that never was. And while I'm no musicologist or heavy jazz player, I think Pat's right: sometime after 1980, it became ok to sound like someone else as opposed to forge your own path. And with the Internet, it's going to get 100x worse. So is Jazz postaglia? I think that it sort of feels that way, yes. Especially when you consider the amount of musicians that study it in college and then realize there are almost no jazz gigs to speak of. I'm on a tangent, but beat with me; look at another trade: Electrician. They use the skills they learn in their jobs (granted, that job isn't so creative). So maybe jazz is a yearning for a future full of gigs where your skills are applied and enhanced. Jazz, in that regard, IS the opposite of nostalgia. Ironically, what you have most of the time (at least locally to me) is nothing BUT nostalgic jazz groups; playing stuff that's 50 years old. And that's great, it's good stuff. But it's not helping push the trade/art any further. I think jazz dropped the ball after Weather Report. There are some exceptions.

so is jazz the oppostie of nostalgia? It should be, but I think most of the time, it's exactly nostalgia instead.

[Henry II]

There's a master class with Dafnis Prieto on YouTube in which he basically says the same thing when explaining why he doesn't try to play traditional swing time anymore. It's been done. He's looking to move on. The audience seemed a bit aghast at that comment, as if he had insulted their religion. I'll see if I can find it.

[gretsch-o-rama]

I'd like to see that. yeah jazz nazi's can't stand them although I aspire to become very proficient in jazz. And even that sounds lame, like it's a style you're studying. It's just music...

[Henry II]

There's a master class with Dafnis Prieto on YouTube in which he basically says the same thing when explaining why he doesn't try to play traditional swing time anymore. It's been done. He's looking to move on. The audience seemed a bit aghast at that comment, as if he had insulted their religion. I'll see if I can find it.

Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZxiszVfFG8

I think Dafnis is very insightful in what he says about straight ahead jazz players of the past. Dafnis explains that they were representing the moment they were living in. They weren't thinking about starting a tradition. That was their moment. We have our moment.

[deseipel]

I think the question for some, may be... how and when do you know if you've studied and played enough 'traditional' jazz, to move on and try something new? There are guys that will say "oh well, you can say that you've honored the tradition enough, but that's just a bullshit line so you can justify doing whatever you want." I think in the end, there has to be a balance between the two. If you're going to do your own thing, it's obvious that it would have elements of traditional jazz.

[samnmax203]

I would venture to say that as long as you know the tradition and respect what it was/is then you're free to forge your own path. Kind of like you have to know the definition of something before your can build on it?

My $.01+$.01 anyway

[DSOP]

There is only so far that you can push harmony, melody and rhythm before you lose your audience. The move towards a "new" sound or approach takes time and gradual changes. With the immediacy of information in today's society, I'm surprised that things haven't progressed faster. Actually, perhaps that is the reason right there. Everyone has immediate access to what everyone else is doing, and is helplessly influenced by it all. Back when you weren't able to view videos of everyone under the sun, or numerous television shows, you were bound to come up with something new.

Metheny's point about things changing in the early 80s pretty much mirrors the emergence of the technologies that began spreading all of this information so quickly and completely.

Not only is it no big deal to sound like another instrumentalist or composer, it's probably inevitable due to the overt influences all around us.

[deseipel]

well said DSOP and thats what I was getting at, original artists are really hard to find.

[Riddim]

I think the point is to be who you are. We all have influences, but we aren't them. And we can't help but do things our own way.

If we chose to develop our take on things it becomes a matter not of dumbing down, but of inviting folks in to check out something wonderful. No matter hip and advanced we are (or think we are), we'll generally get more folks to check our offerings out by inviting them in, rather than telling them they're too stupid to get it.