It’s Never Too Late to Have Your Soul Crushed by Some Guy with a Huge Grant From General Motors (Wait, GM Went Bankrupt? It was Probably Cecil Taylor’s Fault)
I realize that most people inclined to give a damn saw Ken Burns’ Jazz in its entirety long ago … and that surely includes most living jazz fans, since the music seems to be growing new listeners with all the lightning speed of those stalactites I’m convinced are forming on the inside of Stanley Crouch’s cranium. As for me, I watched a couple of installments when it was first broadcast in 2001, before quitting in disgust.
Since then, I’ve seen bits and pieces of most of the episodes, yet I never allowed myself to see the final, infamous “Episode 10: A Masterpiece by Midnight” until this past weekend. Those of you to whom the phrase “tired of fighting the jazz wars” applies, I urge you to put on your copy of From The Plantation to the Penitentiary and bliss out. As for the rest, perhaps you can commiserate.
I wrote most of this yesterday, in a state of drooling apoplexy.
I finally did it.
Eight years or however long its been since that mutha uckin’ abomination known as Ken Burns’ Jazz first hit the airwaves, I finally watched the notorious “Episode 10: A Masturbation … I mean, A Masterpiece by Midnight,” wherein Burns and his jolly crew of self-serving revisionist idiots Branford, Crouch and Cuscuna, et al tell the bogus tale of how jazz was murdered in the ‘60s and ‘70s by craven fusioneers and face-painted avant-gardists, and how it was resurrected by … well, by implication, the self-serving revisionist idiots themselves, and by direct attribution, their faux folksy fabulist trumpet-playing sock puppet, Wynton Learson Marsalis.
For years, I put off watching this thing the way a Jewish film critic might put off seeing Triumph of the Will, knowing that I’d eventually have to hold my breath and watch it, if for no other reason than to fulfill the obligations of my profession.
The time finally came Sunday. The Mets’ season had ended, the Yankees (to my deepest chagrin) had kicked the crap outta the Twins in the first round of the playoffs, and the only thing on TV was football for as far as the eye could see. The voice in my head that’s always screaming out random lottery numbers yelled, “HEY, DIPSHIT, NOW’S A GOOD TIME TO WATCH CHAPTER 10 OF THAT BURNS THING. SEE YOU IN HELL! HA HA HA HA HA!”
Has the voice ever been wrong?.
So I fired-up the Netflix and started watching. I took in as much as I could in one sitting, turned it off, kicked my dog, yelled at the kids, went to bed, got up and watched the rest this morning. God help me, it’s gonna take me weeks to get over this.
So much rage, so little time, so I’ll just touch on a couple of particularly appalling elements.
Burns’ puppydog-like eagerness to anoint Wynton the successor to Armstrong as “The King of Jazz” would be be comical if it weren’t so insulting to the many great musicians who are either ignored or – in at least one egregious case – explicitly disparaged. The filmmaker spends a lot of time following Armstrong and Ellington around during their last years (because, after all, who else was making important music in the early ‘70s? According to Branford Marsalis, nobody except a few of his bop-playing mentors). At a certain point, a bored Burns marks time, evidently anxious for Pops and Duke to die in ’71 and ’74 so he can skip ahead (past the likes of Bill Evans, George Russell, Weather Report, Sam Rivers, Jack DeJohnette, Arthur Blythe, Keith Jarrett, and anyone European) to the night Art Blakey hired the teen-aged Wynton, an event Burns treats like the combined birth and resurrection of Christ.
Equally barf-inducing is Burns’ search for clues as to why jazz ceased being popular in the ‘60s and ‘70s (actually, it hadn’t been popular since the ‘40s, but that inconvenient truth runs counter to the Burnsalis agenda), a process that engages him for much of the first three-quarters of this one-hour-fifty-minute circle jerk. Guess who’s at fault? If you said the Beatles 
and/or “The Man,” you get partial credit. However, if you said The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Cecil Taylor, and their avant-hooligan friends, you can go to the mutha uckin’ head of the class and let Professor Shorthair Marsalis lay some o’ that tasty gumbo on y’all … ‘cuz ya’ll know that Prof likes his gumbo! Mmm-mmm-mmm!
The film’s none-too-subtle bashing of avant-garde and fusion musicians has the remarkable quality of making me want to gouge out my own eyes with one of those pointy spoons you use to eat grapefruit. Targeted for superficially respectful yet ultimately shabby treatment are the aforementioned Art Ensemble of Chicago and Cecil Taylor.
Both get hit for excessive artiness. Burns’ solemn narrator tells us that, apparently despite the fact that they’d taken to wearing African-inspired garb on stage, “… nothing the Art Ensemble of Chicago, or any other avant-garde black cooperative did, seemed able to win back the black audience .” 
Worse, the group “attracted its largest following among white college students … in France,” the final word spoken with just the proper hint of incredulous, Franco-phobic disgust. Ah, well played, Mr. Boo-urns!
As for Taylor, he comes in for the harshest words of any musician in the entire series, courtesy of the gadfly punk Branford Marsalis. (Someone please tell me: just how in hell did Branford ever get the reputation he enjoys as the “open-minded” Marsalis? Because he played with Sting 25 years ago? Puh-leeze. The guy’s always been willing to cash a paycheck. He’s every bit as arrogant and artistically bigoted as his next-youngest brother.) Branford is asked about a statement Cecil once made to the effect that he (Cecil) prepares for his concerts, so the audience should prepare, as well. Apparently it did not occur to Branford Marsalis-Super Genius that Taylor might have simply been suggesting that listeners open their minds and discard preconceptions as a way of engaging his – or any other innovative artist’s – work. No. The All-Knowing-and-Judging “open-minded” Marsalis has a different interpretation:
“That’s total self-indulgent bullshit as far as I’m concerned. I mean, you know, I love baseball. I mean, I’m not going to go and catch a hundred grounders before I go to a game. I mean, that’s what … we pay to see them do what they do and to appreciate them. I mean, why would the audience sit around and practice and prepare? I mean, they pay their money to hear what it is that we do and to appreciate what it is that we do.”
So Branny-cakes, you actually believe that Cecil was asking his audience to practice piano before listening to his music? Really? Or maybe brush-up on some quantum physics? Are you a moron? C’mon, you can tell me. I won’t breathe a word to anyone, I promise.
Someone’s full o’ shit here, and it ain’t Cecil Taylor. I’m betting it’s not the students who Branford so recently and famously derided, either.
Others played roles in bringing this turgid waste of celluloid to completion. Stanley Crouch bloviates, as he’s wont to do. Michael Cuscuna comes off as especially ridiculous. His contribution to Burns’ Wynton hagiography at film’s end – “Wynton was the, the first new acoustic jazz player with something to say,” as if such slightly older and self-evidently superb straight-ahead jazz musicians as Bobby Watson, Ricky Ford, Tom Harrell, and so on were nothing but place-holding hacks waiting for the emergence of The Chosen One – is one of the most absurd lines in a film that’s positively stuffed to the gills with ‘em. One hopes Cuscuna regrets the utterance.
To give credit where it’s due, Gary Giddins takes up the cause of the outcats with some success, although his repeated assertion that one has to “work” to get much of that music is misguided, IMO (better to view it as a suspending of expectation, which is an act of liberation, not manual labor). Joshua Redman also implies a predilection for openness. For the most part, however, “A Masterpiece by Midnight” is a small-minded attack on anyone to the musical left of the Marsalis brothers, as well as a coronation of Ellis’ second heir as Master of the Realm.
But it’s over, and those who think the Marsalis take is fine and dandy will have their way. What’s done is done, and the Burns film stands – teetering on a decaying foundation of self-congratulation and misrepresentation – as the definitive film history on the subject.
One thing I know, however. Hard core jazz folk are too smart and too passionate to let this dreck gunk-up the joint forever. Someday a gifted, jazz-loving director will make a quality filmed history of jazz (especially post-1950s jazz) – someone who, unlike Burns, actually knows something about the music and therefore won’t have to rely on a gathering of self-promoting opportunists to tell the story for him or her. The music deserves that much.
Maybe by that time, “A Masterpiece by Midnight” will be Jazzspeak for “crazy old lady in the corner talking to her cat in esperanto.”
You crack me up. I don’t always agree with you but I always enjoy reading you. Love the gumbo pic.
Re: that post-50s jazz film: Might “Icons Among Us” fit the bill, or part of the bill? I saw a shorter theatrical version of this 4-hour series last week. Looking forward to the whole thing, which (say the director and producer) will be available on DVD by Jazz Fest next year.
http://www.iconsamongus.com/
Have you seen Chris Felver’s film about Cecil Taylor?
Comment by Pamela Espeland — October 13, 2009 @ 9:20 pmWow, Chris! As one who has openly stated that I am “tired of fighting the jazz wars”, let me be the first to say that I love this piece. Even though I was recently called a “peacemaker” on the subject (a title which I relish, BTW), I can’t help but love a good volley off the starboard bow of the Burnsalis clan (great word). I may not share all of your vitriol, but I can appreciate your position and the clear statement thereof.
The clincher, for me is your line refuting having to “work” to get the music — “better to view it as a suspending of expectation, which is an act of liberation, not manual labor”. This is pure gold, and exemplifies the position we need to take if we are to counter all the doom-and-gloom Teachoutology (how’s that one???).
Comment by Jason Parker — October 13, 2009 @ 9:33 pmDear Mr. Kelsey,
How dare you criticize any of the cinematic and musical geniuses connected with this project? Perhaps, sir, when YOUR foundation brings in the untold millions that Mr. Marsalis’s efforts bring in to support Jazz, America’s Classical Music ™, then and only then will I be interested in your bitter ramblings.
For myself, I fall to my knees and thank Buddy Bolden’s ghost that America’s Classical Music ™ has been rescued from the face-painting avant-hippies and hip-hop-hep-cats who are trying to drive this music into the ground. Jazz, like fine wine and tax shelters, is meant to be enjoyed by the educated elite. If it were music for the masses, sir, don’t you think the masses would be listening to it?
I was sent to your execrable site by an article in the Wall Street Journal (“Bitter Blower Blasphemes Burns,” Oct. 13, 2009). I must say I regret the trip.
Yours disgustedly,
Sidney Slouch
Comment by Sidney Slouch — October 13, 2009 @ 10:35 pmYou are saying so much of what I thought when I saw this documentary! Thank you!
Comment by Susan Kay Asher — October 14, 2009 @ 12:45 amAah yes, the little nostalgia dink from New Hampshire collides with the Clarence Thomas of the Trumpet in the early days of the Bush wreckage and lo..it sucks.
I never saw more than a snippet or two as I loathe Teevee and don’t own one but talk about an exercise in wish fulfillment. The nostalgia gnome did kill it and took down the small niche of music biz that exploited it.
There’s a funny correlation with jazz sales and the Burns Shadow. While it churned, the denizens of the national middle brow went off and bought up all the cadavers they could find and figured that’s it.
To me the reaction against the so called avante garde has always been the purest racism imposed by the same lazy baby boomers who now are busily ensuring our economy will be toast until at least 2015.
Here’s what I mean. I was drawn to the idiom because I sensed it is a holdfast for the highest aspirations of the African American intellect. Until the potentials of this intellect are honestly recognized, us white folks still basically suck.
While I’ll allow that the nation has been conned into dysfunctional slack jawed buffoonery in the race to make walking profit centers of the citizenry with scorn for the intellect, we still respect it if someone makes a lot of money.
How come it is okay and even laudable for Stockhausen, Boulez and all manner of other white people to crank out the most arcane, abstruse sonic architecture imaginable and it is somehow held in the same regard as a NASA manned flight to Mars?
But if Cecil or anyone of ‘color’ goes and aspires to the same thing it gets savaged by lazy half wits?
Comment by Chris Rich — October 14, 2009 @ 5:15 amAccusing critics of avante garde music as being racist is the same as accusing a critic of Israel of being anti-semitic. Both accusations always skirt the real issues. In fact, I found your comments to be typical of white guilt. Guilt over what I have no idea. Racism imposed by the baby boomers my ass. It was the boomers, for better or worse, who helped to end racism in America by being socially active, unlike the members of generation X who’ve done nothing but bitch and moan about what the boomers have done or haven’t done, while doing absolutely nothing themselves except bitch and moan.
While I think that Wynton Marsalis, brother Branford, Stanley Crouch and the like, are not the true representatives of jazz, in fact, I can’t stand Wynton’s snobbery, neither are the avante garde musicians. I know enough of them to know that they are among the most self-indulgent players I’ve ever heard. Many of them can play, but more of them use the cacophony of their sounds to disguise the fact that while they seem to know their chords and scales well enough, they simply can’t play a song to save their lives. As Miles Davis once said, playing a ballad is the hardest thing to play. None of these guys can play one without revealing their glaring weaknesses of tone and technique, and most of all, feeling.
The other thing that has annoyed me about avante garde musicians is how often they complain about musicians who are making money. They are “sell-outs”. They claim to play for the art and not care about the money, but always bitch about those who do make money. You want to make money? Then play what most people want to hear. It’s that simple. If that idea offends your sensibilities, then just play your noise and shut the hell up.
Too many avante garde players have the attitude that what they are doing is head and shoulders above, intellectually, spiritually and emotionally above anything else that’s being done by other musicians. They are unhappy that so many people are not on their superior wavelengths. They are seriously self-delusional on this matter.
Stop blaming racism or some other “ism” as being the blame for avante garde musicians not being excepted by the “masses”. It’s not accepted by the masses because it has no appeal to anyone except pseudo-intellectuals who lie to themselves and think that these guys are the voices of God.
Comment by Chris Poor — October 14, 2009 @ 8:52 amWe have a conflation. Scribblers who actually write about the music are doing their level best. The racism is at the broader culture level with the idea that it’s okay for europoids to have abstruse sonic artifacts because that’s just their cutting edge genius.
But for some reason, an effort toward the same possibility housed in an African Diaspora aesthetic is wrong.
The masses aren’t too psyched about Boulez either but he gets a pass cause it’s important white folk stuff.
There is no requirement to make masses happy in this game, that’s called entertainment and there are plenty who will figure out some way to entertain, a wet t shirt contest will cover a lot of ground there without the bother of having music at all.
I have a sense a watershed change is underway. The entire popular music industry is on the skids, fern bars are closing, newspapers are firing music writers and going out of business. Radio belongs to Rush.
The future is probably a reunion with pre music biz realities. It will be about moving through communities and connecting to people directly without all the mediators and minders. CD’s, if they continue will be glorified biz cards.
Comment by Chris Rich — October 14, 2009 @ 10:10 am[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by AccuJazz.com, Jason Parker. Jason Parker said: I coined a new term today: Teachoutology: http://bit.ly/ACR4L #jazz […]
Pingback by Tweets that mention It’s Never Too Late to Have Your Soul Crushed by Some Guy with a Huge Grant From General Motors (Wait, GM Went Bankrupt? It was Probably Cecil Taylor’s Fault) « ChrisKelsey.com -- Topsy.com — October 14, 2009 @ 2:11 pmNice to read a literate back-and-forth. Such things cannot be found on Faceshnook, Twitter, etc. In any case, I have sporadically succumbed to the zeitgeist and tried to watch the Burns parade as it drifted by. I could never deal with more than a few minute’s worth as, from the very beginning it was clear that the guy has a tin ear. Tin, in this case, bespeaking a narrowness and lack of creativity that results in a grueling blandness. I force-fed myself the jazz series, as I’m a jazz musician and a part of me was happy to see clips of my various heroes on public display. Unfortunately, the goal of the talking heads heads was to enshrine (reify?) the canon. Enshrinement is easier than the challenge of bringing to your film the kind of vividness, color and joy that must have been felt by those who heard the Eldridge 78 “After You’ve Gone” in the late 30’s.
Comment by Steve Provizer — October 14, 2009 @ 3:24 pmThanks everyone for your input. Pamela, I’ll check that out. This is the first of heard of both the Cecil film and “Icons.” I’ll check ‘em both out, post-haste. Thanks for the heads up!
Like the term, Jason P., although I think Mr. Teachout gets a bad rap – a bit of “kill the messenger,” I think.
Remarkable job of stylistic mimicry, there, Jason C! LOL!
Chris R., you make good points.
Chris P., I think we’re coming from radically different places, but thanks for your contribution.
Thank YOU, Susan!
And Steve, I really love your final sentence; it says it all.
Comment by admin — October 14, 2009 @ 3:40 pmUs euromutts have strange philosophical afflictions and the most relevant one for the Burns problem is the Aquinas obsession with ‘quintessence’.
It causes people to do strange things like make excruciating cliche larded documentaries in some pathetic effort to catch this elusive quintessence thing in a silly butterfly net.
To me, all jazz has always been a look at the individual who makes some bit of it to see how their experience and enchantments shaped their part of it.
Trying to decide if Hank Mobley is more bitchin’ than Dexter Gordon is a shallow fools errand alongside getting to savor each on their terms. Of course Bobby Watson and all manner of others matter and are noteworthy. Wynty just tried to hijack the thing for his own personal enrichment and self aggrandizement.
Imagine a may morning day walk in some glowing nature sanctuary and a Pileated Woodpecker flies by…wow..striking. Your interest is the phenomena of the moment that brought you there in a coincidence with an unusual,large striking bird.
Do you sit around and try to decide if it is a better Pileated than another one you saw years ago or do you just count yourself lucky to have the encounter?
And so it goes with the living unfolding part of this music being faithful to its time and potential. The motive that brings me to that sanctuary is akin to the one that puts me in a gallery show here where Jim Hobbs, Jacob William and Luther Gray are running a trio. It is a striking wealthy sonic ecotone to savor in the moment.
And expecting it to entertain me is as ridiculous as expecting the woodpecker to. Cobain had that funny lyric..we are stupid and contagious..here we are now..entertain us. No wonder the shotgun beckoned.
Comment by Chris Rich — October 14, 2009 @ 4:21 pmI was in the Columbia lab when the Marsalis Monster was created, and when I first heard it utter jazz, I thought it might actually learn to speak with some fluency and, perhaps, invention. I was ever so wrong.
Your take on the Burns rewrite is ever so right, but where were the villagers when we needed them? I was ready, I lit my torch and swore off the gumbo, but the beast lives on and the music is non the richer for it.
Drooling apoplexy becomes you, Chris.
Comment by Chris Albertson — October 15, 2009 @ 8:57 amChris A., you were there?! Wow. Kinda like being in the room with Hindenberg when he struck the deal with Herr Schicklgruber! (Ok, maybe that’s goin’ too far … maybe.)
I’m a jambalaya man, myself.
Thanks, Chris(es)!
Comment by admin — October 15, 2009 @ 9:09 amMy post above notwithstanding, I disagree with Chris A. W.Marsalis deserves to be recognized as a player. As a trumpet player myself, when I hear him play “Cherokee,” I’m astonished. I advocate separating the art from the artist.
Comment by Steve P. — October 15, 2009 @ 11:58 amTo Mr.Chris Poor,..
Your saying we accuse people that are making money of being sell-outs,.then suggest if we want to make money,.we should just play what the people want to hear,..
So your asking people to play music that’s not natural to them to get paid,.your saying they should actually “sell-out”.
I don’t see why somebody shouldn’t be able to get something back for their work,.If your Really,really out,.sure,.you should expect that many people wont hear you,.but many musicians are dismissed under the category of avant garde who are not all that out,.and should be able to make more than nothing when some people are getting way to much.The balance is off,.just Like everything in this country.Either way,.to play music that is not natural to you is twisted,.and to play with the idea of getting paid as your reason for playing even more twisted.Musicians complain mostly not because there not rich,.like Wynton,.but because they cant get anything happening at all,..zero.Some musicians take their devotion to Living only by their music to the extreme,.and will even be willing to be homeless over what I’m talking about here.I respect that myself..
you also suggest that were tripping by placing ourselves
“above” everyone on all levels..
I don’t know anybody that’s out there saying that,.It’s more about people having a strong belief in what their doing.why would that bother anybody personally? If you don’t like that vibe,.You don’t have to listen to that person’s music or read anything they write.Change the channel as George Carlin used to say.You may have touched on something there,.but you would have to do a group psychological study to come up with personality flaws that some of us may have created in order to maintain a perspective where we don’t,..sell out..(Anybody
that’s spiritual should have their Ego intact.)
you then suggest the only people who “get it”,.are wanna be intellectuals,.tripping on people,.convinced that they represent the voice of God or,.something Spiritual…
This discredits many people who play music that is simply spiritual in nature.Playing music like that is not something that you choose to do,.or learn in school.In other words,.there are people playing music that actually has deeper meaning,.and there are people who hear it,.and it may have impact on them in a positive way.It’s based on feeling,.not an intellectual trip.Yes,.there are also,.people who play very intellectually,.and people who hear them on that same thing,.almost like musician-scientists,.or chemists,.but if a musician is reaching a Listener in some way,.I don’t see why anybody would have a beef with that..All musicians who mean what they say want to be heard and understood in relation to what is that there trying to do,.and who they are,..I would think anyway,..
Comment by matt Lavelle — October 15, 2009 @ 9:32 pmWynton as a trumpet player,..I saw a “cutting contest” at Lincoln center in the mid 90’s..It was Wynton,N.Payton,R.Hargrove,Wallace Roney,and Red Rodney.Then it was JALC vs Jon Faddis and the Carnegie hall Big band.
W asked the audience where Lester Bowie was and said he had his “knife out”,.musically.It was then on Cherokee that W made his move on everybody,.by what he did on the Bridge,.It was From the technical side,.impressive,.it was over the top trumpet wise,.some Raphael Mendez shit!.…NP and RH played crowd pleasing stuff on Just Friends…But believe it or not,.it was Red Rodney on “everytime we say goodbye”,..on Flugel,.that really “won”..
Jon Faddis and his band CRUSHED JALC,.By doing a full orchestration of Miles solo on “I didnt know what time it was”,.and then inviting W to battle their whole trumpet section on donna Lee.James Carter was with JALC and he “reversed” Paul Gonslaves solo from Peanut-butter Brigade,
and Wynton told the audience,..“on effects,..James Carter”..
Their was a tenor battle as well,..Joshua Redman “defeating” everybody.Noted that David Murray was there and playing as Out as he can.
My thing about W on trumpet is that he actually is more out than most people think,.Ive heard him take real chances.Maybe when everyone thinks your the best,.You can try whatever the hell you want and get away with it,.because If your the one doing it,.then it must be the shit.I heard W end a ballad out of tune on a quarter tone on purpose,.and play a Bb long tone over changes for a whole bridge and not resolve it,.(I know,.scary shit,.right?)..He has enough chops to play whatever he wants,.so It’s his musical choices that show you where he’s coming from.Check the long interview W did with the Bad Plus at “Do the Math”,.It’s all technical,.
Comment by matt Lavelle — October 15, 2009 @ 9:55 pmIt’s all technical, indeed. Well, perhaps not all, but I have never for a moment expressed doubts about Wynton as a trumpet player — he knows the instrument and has the technique down. It is the soul that I find lacking, and what is jazz when more or less played by the numbers? I don’t know, but it ain’t jazz as I fell in love with it over 60 years ago. Also missing from Wynton’s performances (with few exceptions) is esthetics — imho, he sometimes tries much too hard to make a personal statement.
Of course, we would not be having this discussion were it not for Wynton’s mostly artificial prominence. The truth is that there are and have been a number of trumpet players who leave him in the dust.
Comment by Chris Albertson — October 16, 2009 @ 8:04 amI was in the room when Paul von Hindenburg struck the deal with the man you stupidly call Herr Schicklgruber, and must point out two factual errors in your statement. First, the ailing 85-year-old president of Germany specifically requested that we record his name as Hindenburg, not Hindenberg as you so carelessly misspell it. Second, the newly appointed Chancellor was named Hitler, not Schicklgruber. His father, Alois, bore that surname until 1876, when he legally took his stepfather’s family name. Adolf, born 13 years later, was never known as Schicklgruber, except to Allied propagandists during World War II attempting to discredit the Führer by associating him with a moniker that struck Anglo-American ears as comical. The fact that you repeat this cheap smear tactic 64 years after Hitler’s death shows both your contempt for historical accuracy and your lack of imagination. But then, what should we expect from a musician so desperate to insult Wynton Marsalis that he equates the trumpeter with a mass murderer? I suggest that you start taking your meds again, Kelsey. Right away.
Comment by Alan Kurtz — October 16, 2009 @ 2:53 pmJawohl, Herr Oberst! (Damn, I have to start running spell check on my comments … )
Comment by Chris — October 16, 2009 @ 3:00 pmIs Blog Troll Kurtz ever positive about anything? Or is this attempted humor?
Comment by Chris Albertson — October 17, 2009 @ 12:34 amOff the subject of Wynton (and don’t start me on that) here’s an extract from a blog I published late last year at jazzcontinuum which shows that Cecil can be blamed for everything…
Could Cecil Taylor have saved the IAJE?
Ken Waxman’s website…recently posted a link to The Shape of Jazz to Come, my transcription of a panel discussion at the IAJE conference in 2000. Headed ‘The Problems with “Jazz” Education’, Waxman sees in the fact that such a discussion was needed ‘some hint as to why the IAJE ceased to exist… Too often a major part of jazz’s history… was ignored by the so called schools of jazz, which concentrated on more traditional and/or more conventional music.’
I would agree that this could have been a contributory factor in the collapse of IAJE, but ironically it could have been seen as a good thing if the members had risen up in revolt against the lack of a few seminars on the music of Cecil Taylor and caused the edifice to tumble. More prosaically, and sadly more in keeping with the ethos of the organisation, the truth, rumour has it, is buried in the financial ledgers.
Comment by Graham Collier — October 17, 2009 @ 3:54 amChris, I’m pretty sure Alan is just trying to keep me in line …
Comment by admin — October 17, 2009 @ 8:52 amI guess we’ll never know, but that’s a GREAT point, Graham. I attended a school with one of the better stage band programs in the Southwest U.S. in the early ‘80s. Basie was the instructors’ God, but even he couldn’t help you if you brought up names like Lester Bowie, Cecil Taylor, or Anthony Braxton. The seeds were planted …
Comment by admin — October 17, 2009 @ 8:56 am[…] Do you have your own opinion about Ken Burns’ movies about jazz history? Here is one by Chirs Kelsey: “Eight years or however long its been since that mutha uckin’ abomination known as Ken Burns’ Jazz first hit the airwaves, I finally watched the notorious “Episode 10: A Masturbation … I mean, A Masterpiece by Midnight,” wherein Burns and his jolly crew of self-serving revisionist idiots Branford, Crouch and Cuscuna, et al tell the bogus tale of how jazz was murdered in the ‘60s and ‘70s by craven fusioneers and face-painted avant-gardists, and how it was resurrected by … well, by implication, the self-serving revisionist idiots themselves, and by direct attribution, their faux folksy fabulist trumpet-playing sock puppet, Wynton Learson Marsalis.” Read his full shaking but mostly true article “It’s Never Too Late to Have Your Soul Crushed by Some Guy with a Huge Grant From General Mo.… […]
Pingback by Ken Burns and His Movies About Jazz History | Gaudeamus — October 20, 2009 @ 2:10 amThe preceding comment proves conclusively that Chris Kelsey is a global phenomenon. For those too lazy to check out Gaudeamus, it is the radio station of Kaunas University of Technology in Lithuania. “We select music very thoroughly for our radio,” they explain helpfully in English, “combining some unusual and rare classics with nowadays compositions having real sense of future. We are glad to tell that we have many fans in all over the world.” Who better, then, to receive the Gaudeamus Seal of Approval than Kelsey? After all, as a writer Chris provides unusual and rare insight into nowadays compositions having real sense of future. Thanks to Gaudeamus, this shaking but mostly true blogger will soon have many fans in all over the world. As Lithuanians so pithily say, “Norëçiau nusiplauti rankas!”
Comment by Alan Kurtz — October 20, 2009 @ 1:07 pmAny country that produces a band like the Ganelin Trio is tops in my book!
Comment by admin — October 20, 2009 @ 2:31 pmHello from Gaudeamus radio. The comments by jazz lovers are like jazz music in itself. It seems you begin to get it, but at the same moment it passes away. That’s because we like jazz. And the comments.
Comment by Paulius — October 20, 2009 @ 3:01 pmThanks, Paulius. Do you have a playlist? I was listening to your feed earlier, and I was hearing a lot of stuff I liked, but I couldn’t tell who they were. One track had an alto player who sounded a bit like Arthur Blythe (bright sound, fast vibrato). Any idea who it was?
Comment by admin — October 20, 2009 @ 3:37 pmChris, we do not anounce our playlist at the time. But we could look at database to check the tune if you remember the exact time. By the way, you may see every tune which is played at the exact moment in the right sidebar “Now On Air” section.
Comment by Paulius — October 21, 2009 @ 3:18 amIt is a cult of narcissism that surrounds the W phenomenon. A textbook personality disorder is at the root of it, a fact which mystifies most people. Narcissism sells big time in the New Jazz Order.
Comment by Luke Kaven — October 23, 2009 @ 9:50 pm“…faux folksy fabulist trumpet-playing sock puppet…”
Too true — and too funny!!!
A lot of people used to talk about Him like this back then, but I wonder where they all are now. Have they got on board — or just become bored?
So it’s good to find there’s still a small a pocket of resistance against His trademark self-righteous, self-obsessed, self-serving Unoriginal Disneyland Jass©®™ Band Neo-Orleans revisionist bullshit at last…
And if they have all got on board, then there’s even more need for a forum like this than there was then.
Well said, Chris!!!
Comment by John Morton — November 5, 2009 @ 1:03 pmI think a lot of people just got tired of leaning against the wind. I must confess to having the occasional crisis of confidence that’s led me to try to find good things to say about him at various times, but I’ve never been able to keep it up.
In the ‘90s, at least one editor at a major jazz publication gave me incredible resistance when I’d try to write anything negative about Marsalis and/or his buddies.
In any case, we finally have freedom of the press in the form of blogs and self-published books and self-produced CDs. I’m determined to make up for lost time!
Thanks, and welcome, John!
Comment by Chris — November 5, 2009 @ 1:15 pm