--- skip Heller <velaires@earthlink.net> wrote:
Then someone kindly explain to me why a lot of 40-yr-old musical tactics (as set down by Ornette, Cecil, Ayler et al) are still being referred to as avant-garde? At this point, those guys are as fixed in the jazz firmament as Lester Young or Dicky Wells, but nobody calls those guys avant-garde. I sense a sort of double-standard.
Yeah, if some of us are claiming to not be thinking of newness as the supreme virtue, I don't buy it. But it's weird too because only what's old is new I guess. Ornette and Cecil will wear the new tag for the rest of their lives. Ayler will always wear it too, and he's dead. In that way (taken to the extreme), it hardly matters if Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, etc. is alive or dead, which stinks for them- they get plenty of respect, but it's mostly based on stuff done decades ago. There is a double-standard, you're so right. Avant-garde is just another genre name now and there are many working in it who are not the originators and are doing a great job. ----Ryan Novak __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free http://sbc.yahoo.com