Jazz in the 21st century: Playing outside the box (opens in new tab)

Jazz musicians are proud to be part of a tradition, just like folk or classical musicians. They see themselves as part of something enduring, something that transcends record sales.

When I hear a young musician play Caravan or In A Sentimental Mood, I don't hear a re-hashing of an old Ellington tune. I hear a conversation that's been going since the 1930s. I hear a new chapter being written in a long story. I hear a torch being passed.

Maybe your son will never connect with jazz. That's fine, jazz isn't for everyone. Somewhere out there, a 12 year old is listening to Bird or Trane or Christian Scott and saving up to buy their first horn. That's all that matters to us - that someone hears our music and is inspired to carry the torch.

* http://www.apassion4jazz.net/etymology.html

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_(word)#Etymology

> But, if I went to a music venue today, and the band was playing Jazz, I'd be bored out of my mind.

Jazz has many flavours that have long walked hand-in-hand with social dancing. Maybe spend a bit more time exploring its depth? Here's a modern rendition of a timeless classic:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhxSrF0HYnY

Here's a jazzed-up version of "All About That Bass," also easily danced to:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLnZ1NQm2uk

Another classic, "Blue Skies," with some social dancing:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xziwtk1i3A

And one more, showcasing some rather skilled Lindy Hop dancers, a fancy aerial at 1:20, and a modern take on Ellington's "Diga Diga Doo":

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9xxeWRxSbA

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3aJ_9IAIjQ (Ellington)

Here's a remake of "When I Get Low, I Get High":

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acb-js00c40

> But, does Jazz even make any sense in the modern world?

Yes. Try some different jazz venues and find a style that speaks to you.

This isn't new. There's the oft-maligned Latin Jazz---one reason a lot of synthetic music that happened in Cuba, Brazil, and other such plays was more similar inputs---similar outputs development in parallel. Once you get recorded music + radio, and tourism in Cuba, there's more actual cross-pollination, but there's plenty of stuff before that.

As far as the method goes, obviously improvisation is a big part, but the big picture is Jazz is a social and live music. If Classical is a play, Jazz is a conversation at a Cafe. Sure people listen to recordings, but also classic trane records and others are a lot more sliced and diced than one might think. There's big band too, but what goes on at most schools is a bit suspect without the collectively authored head arrangements. Musically, we have the tradition of a preset harmony and, to a lesser extent form, is the "seed" for everything else, African rhythm, European harmony, and a bunch of unconscious idioms that would be hard to right down without lots of luck and pondering. [There's my cop-out. :)]

As a younger student, I and many others gravitated towards funk, because it's clear (though nobody said so explicitly) that that is the foundation for everything that's popular today (more than rock I'll jeer now that top 40 ate everything :P). The narrative of funk, if you will, is soul musicians' session players striking out of do their own more instrumental/dance focused thing. And those session musicians all had jazz backgrounds. So there's the historical connection, and musically it's largely a similar method, though more emphasis on premeditated groove and rhythm section in general.

There's nothing inherently creative about artistic technique. At best it gives you a way to express creativity. At worst it's a dead thing you keep repeating over and over because you can't think of anything interesting to say.

Theories of art are a really good way to kill creativity. Music theory can become a huge set of if...thens... and unfortunately even talented people don't always get past that.

The skills you need to be a brilliantly competent session musician or a successful teacher are only distantly related to the skills you need to be an interesting and original music creator.

I'm one of those musicians who plays jazz. I'm a double bassist and a so called "day jobber," meaning that music is not my primary income source. Am I an expert technician? Sure. A decade of classical lessons, thousands of hours of practice, and 30+ years on the bandstand will do that to you.

Why jazz? Well, for one thing, contemporary popular music doesn't even involve my instrument. I'm obsolete. ;-) And I love the double bass -- the sound, technique, history, contemporary leaders, and even just the sheer absurdity of it. For another, I've developed my jazz chops to the point where my best chance of making further musical progress is to continue with jazz. I don't know where I'd even begin to come up with new ideas in the contemporary pop styles, or how I would turn it into a performance art.

There are a couple more things. While there's certainly a market for contemporary pop music, it's utterly saturated with talent. And pop music has always been youth and appearance oriented. As to how credible a 52 year old guy would be in that scene, I'll leave to the imagination. And the target demographic has been conditioned to expect entertainment to be free. For a non-superstar, the popular scene -- even going back as far as rock & roll, is depressing.

So a few of us who have no prospects in popular music, but enjoy performing with some semblance of dignity, will be drawn to other musical genres. In your locale it may be jazz, but more broadly it's also classical, baroque, fiddle music, accompanying dance clubs, etc. Living near Chicago, there's a lot of blues. Players who are still interested in the electric guitar & bass find outlets in the various forms of heavy metal and rock music, playing small venues that support original music.

Money? Surprisingly, yes. For almost a couple decades, I've had a pretty consistent schedule, of roughly one gig per week. Most of the work is paid, with very little overhead. There's no heavy equipment to set up, and commercial gigs such as weddings and corporate events are un-rehearsed. I've never had to go on tour. At the same time, rock bands find it almost prohibitive to break into paid work, because the established players tend to corner the market on the good commercial work.

Another surprise is that an audience will crawl out of the woodwork when good music is being performed. Not a huge audience, and not necessarily a drinking audience, which severely limits the economics. But people will come. Some are musically omnivorous, or even like newer styles, but show up because we still know how to entertain, and we can perform without driving you to deafness.

So I'll never claim to understand the economics of the music business, but it seems to me that there are little niches where people can enjoy performing with dignity while opting out of the mainstream popular music scene.

My kids, both teenagers, have shown no interest in either jazz or popular music, as musicians. They both prefer classical.

jazz is a loaded term. i like ahmad jamal's term for what people usually mean when they talk about jazz, "american classical music". when i think of jazz i'm thinking about a certain kind of attitude toward music where the performer is putting life into the music the way you might think of an actor putting life into a script. makes a lot of sense in the modern world, i think, where selling recordings makes less and less sense but live performances are still relevant.

Because that's the kind of music they like to play and know best. If they went to music school, jazz and classical are the dominant music styles that are taught. Also, you can make a pretty good living as a studio musician. It's much less risky than trying to sell your own albums as a solo artist.

> Interestingly, they're all playing Jazz - which to me is so puzzling. It's akin to being a master visual artist and being absorbed in re-creating Pollack or Rothko or Kadinsky.

No, it's like a painter creating their own works with Pollack, Rothko, and Kadinsky as key influences.

You think they should do the musical equivalent of a master painter taking a job at an graphic design firm? Plenty of them do, actually, you got to pay the bills somehow. That's what being a studio musician is.

> Jazz had a moment, and it was a beautiful moment. It can be admired and relished as such, and the music can help transport one to that moment in time. But, does Jazz even make any sense in the modern world?

As the article mentions, Jazz is changing with the times, as it always has. The music that Coltrane and Miles played in the '50s and '60s was quite different from what the New Orleans bands of the early 20th century were playing. It's funny you should mention Miles because he lived and played through several eras of jazz (and was the pioneer of several of them). He also expressed an ambivalence towards his earlier work.

> " "So What" or Kind of Blue, they were done in that era, the right hour, the right day, and it happened. It's over [...] What I used to play with Bill Evans, all those different modes, and substitute chords, we had the energy then and we liked it. But I have no feel for it anymore, it's more like warmed-over turkey."

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million. So instead of trying to explain it more, here's a jazz track released last year. Tell me if it sounds boring or old-fashioned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv3SzjFIa-s

> But, if I went to a music venue today, and the band was playing Jazz, I'd be bored out of my mind.

If I went to a music venue today and they were playing hip hop I would be similarly bored. Turns out different people have different tastes.

As for why you'd go and listen to someone cover a song from Kind of Blue: jazz is mainly improvisational. That means even if they play "So What", it won't be note-for-note the same as the version on that historic record. Hearing the ideas that the musicians create in the moment by listening and responding to their bandmates is the reason I love jazz.