Stanley Crouch gone from JazzTimes is a shame, just because -- in the midst of saying quite a few things that I think were wrongeheaded -- he was one of the few guys in the field who could really move around in the pre-Bird conception of the music and hear things and be on target. Pretty much like everyone else who read that column, I felt like calling up Don Byron and saying"Okay, I'll hold him, you hit him". His dismissals of hip hop, the involvement of world music, and fusion didn't exactly put the guy at the top of my Christmas card list. But that he was one of the few guys with balls enough to say "the further jazz gets away from the blues and from swinging, the further it gets from the heart of itself" (paraphrasing) in the Zorn era. (I happen to think that the definition of swinging expands over time and is as subjective as any concept can be.) I don't agree with his racial opinons, because I think the issues that face Modern America have at least as much to do with class. And I certainly don't think elevating critics to the same type importance in the culture as the music is the ticket, seeing's as how they're two different mediums. If JazzTimes really took that much exception to what he wrote, they probably shouldn't have hired Stanley in the first place. Kinda hard not to know who you were getting there. -- skip h http://www.skipheller.com on 5/13/03 3:58 PM, Franz Fuchs at f.fuchs@gmx.net wrote:
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0320/king.php
Regards Franz Fuchs
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