So over here, Vandermark is being applauded for his free jazz, while he is actually playing pieces off of SPIRITS REJOICE (by Albert Ayler) note for note. If there ever was such a thing as free jazz, Vandermark doesn't do it.
Yeah, right- it ain't "new" so it's no good. Didn't we have a recent discussion based around this little obsession? Sometimes some nerd who runs a sine-wave for an hour gets more kudos than someone who can actually play, just because it's the new thing. The quality is what matters to me, the voice, and if it comes with newness- great. But sometimes someone just playing from their heart is rare enough to look "new". Let me tell you, Albert Ayler's power was not in how new his music was. ----Ryan Novak __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free http://sbc.yahoo.com
Yeah, right- it ain't "new" so it's no good.
Please, find someone who can teach you to read and interpret texts. Your letter before this was based on a misunderstood notion, and now you completely misunderstand my reaction on the Ayler/ Vandermark. In order not to go too far off-topic, I reply to you off-list BTW. If something is not new, it can still be good, ofcourse, you are completely right. But, by its nature (of non-newness), it can NEVER be 'avantgarde'. Because that means you're setting new standards, good or bad. By comparing 'Witches and Devils' by Vandermark, to Spirits Rejoice by Ayler, makes it perfectly, and even painfully clear to these ears, that Vandermark is no good. It has nothing to do with originality: Vandermark is a bad copyist IMHO. Didn't
we have a recent discussion based around this little obsession? Sometimes some nerd who runs a sine-wave for an hour gets more kudos than someone who can actually play, just because it's the new thing. I am very sorry for you, nowhere in my letter I have said stuff that could be linked with above notion. I feel free to criticize an overrated saxofonist whenever I hear one, that's the only thing I did. The quality is what matters to me, the voice, and if it comes with newness- great. But sometimes someone just playing from their heart is rare enough to look "new".
Let me tell you, Albert Ayler's power was not in how new his music was. I have not discussed Ayler's power, I have only argued Vandermarks own voice.
If you want to know more about my views on A. Ayler, please read my liner notes in some of Albert Ayler's ESP Disk cd's. If you want to know where I stand, especially BELLS. You can find it somewhere on the net, on the Ayler page which has the word 'Supanet' in its title. Just type my and ayler's name in your search machine. Record company butchered my text on SPIRITS REJOICE, so bad, that there's nothing there anymore. Regards, Remco Takken
on 7/5/02 2:30 PM, Remco Takken at r.takken@planet.nl wrote:
If something is not new, it can still be good, ofcourse, you are completely right. But, by its nature (of non-newness), it can NEVER be 'avantgarde'. Because that means you're setting new standards, good or bad.
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. skip h
skip wrote to zorn-list: s> Then someone kindly explain to me why a lot of 40-yr-old musical s> tactics (as set down by Ornette, Cecil, Ayler et al) are still s> being referred to as avant-garde? This is a question that goes round and round in experimental film circles, nobody's quite happy with either "avant-garde film" or "underground film" for much the same reasons; the solution I've liked best is to treat it as a label for a certain practice, within a certain (not necessarily open-ended) time period. That is, regardless of the semantic content of the words, it's the name of a (historicized) genre -- like cubism, or socialist realism -- rather than a description of a thing in comparison to something else. " Progressive Rock, which wasn't to begin with. -- Jim Flannery newgrange@sfo.com There's no need for us to return to San Francisco at all. -- Michael Moorcock np: Monos, _Places_ nr: Graham Greene, _Journey Without Maps_
--- 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
on 7/6/02 9:43 AM, Ryan Novak at ryan_novak@yahoo.com wrote:
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
It reminds me of calling Nirvana "alternative". Someone made the remark, "When you're selling 5,000,00 records, the only thing you're an alternative to is poverty." skip h
Skip (et. al): Not just a "double standard" but a code word as well, sort of like "urban music", "radical feminist" or "chosen people". If Ayler, CT and others are continuously labelled "avant garde" the labeller can use this as a way to warn people that what's being played isn't "normal jazz" like Lester Young or Dicky Wells played for instance.[remember these are their definations, not mine]. For example, Toronto (and Canada's) largest newspaper employs the type of critic who sees (hears?) the music as nothing but good time, party sounds, characterized by technical facility. Whenever he has to review -- or more likely preview -- an improvised music happening, his report slips in the words "avnat garde" along with "screaming", "dischordant", "screeching", "difficult" etc. so that the mainstream "jazz" fans know that this is a performance or CD to avoid. Ken Waxman --- 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.
===== Ken Waxman mingusaum@yahoo.ca www.jazzword.com - Jazz/improv news, CD reviews and photos ______________________________________________________________________ Post your ad for free now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
on 7/6/02 11:35 AM, Ken Waxman at mingusaum@yahoo.ca wrote:
Skip (et. al):
Not just a "double standard" but a code word as well, sort of like "urban music", "radical feminist" or "chosen people".
If Ayler, CT and others are continuously labelled "avant garde" the labeller can use this as a way to warn people that what's being played isn't "normal jazz" like Lester Young or Dicky Wells played for instance.[remember these are their definations, not mine].
For example, Toronto (and Canada's) largest newspaper employs the type of critic who sees (hears?) the music as nothing but good time, party sounds, characterized by technical facility.
Whenever he has to review -- or more likely preview -- an improvised music happening, his report slips in the words "avnat garde" along with "screaming", "dischordant", "screeching", "difficult" etc. so that the mainstream "jazz" fans know that this is a performance or CD to avoid.
What you've got there isn't criticism or journalism -- it's irresponsibility, and unfortunately common to those jazz crits who can't see past the 1960's hard bop realm. Personally, I think of Joey Baron as the emblem of the avant-garde of the 1990s. His playing style is its own paradigm, but he's so congenial that he doesn't automatically rate critical "avant garde" status. But there seems to be an unspoken consnsus among mainstream critics that "avant garde" must mean difficult. I am also of the opinion that much of what people think is radical really isn't. I never saw Cecil Taylor as a radical departure from anything. That he showed up when he did doing what he does, it seemed to me to be the most logical progression from Hoarce Silver, Errol Garner, and Monk. Sure, it might be more dissonant, but dissonance happens in the progression of just about any music. You want atonal? There's less reference to tonal center in the average squealing feedback guitar solo than in those early Cecil performances, something jazz crits don't generally mention. But Cecil is "difficult", whatever the f^&k that means. Same goes for Sun Ra. But again, "difficult". To me, what Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins managed was way more radical -- to take the overall contour of jazz soling and transform it from the Louis Armstrong vibe and develop it in a direction that mandated a new growth on every front of jazz playing. That's way more severe than dispensing with harmony or symmetrical rhythm. That's forcing the hand of everybody who improvises to develop a voice wherein that improvisor's own imagination has to be as strong as his influences. Still the toughest battle in the war. skip h
On Fri, 05 Jul 2002 22:48:36 -0700 skip Heller wrote:
on 7/5/02 2:30 PM, Remco Takken at r.takken@planet.nl wrote:
If something is not new, it can still be good, ofcourse, you are completely right. But, by its nature (of non-newness), it can NEVER be 'avantgarde'. Because that means you're setting new standards, good or bad.
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.
I think it is because for some people (with romantic bendings) playing for sparse audiences equates on the edge (avant, experimental, etc). And I think that these people cannot imagine themselves not listening to music that pushes the limit steadily, hence the tendency to qualify what they listen to as avant, even though its label of freshness has long passed the limit :-). My feeling is that music that still cannot create any momentum after so many decades is just an acquired taste, and there is nothing wrong with that (30% of what I listen to falls in that category). But why keep on calling it avant, is a mystery to me (as if music had to be avant for being worth listening to). A huge majority of the music that we call avant these days is just repeating patterns and approaches developped many decades ago. Many of these artists may still have trouble to pay the bills, but it does not make their music automatically avant. Patrice.
participants (6)
-
Jim Flannery -
Ken Waxman -
Patrice L. Roussel -
Remco Takken -
Ryan Novak -
skip Heller