Jazz... I don't get it

If I am truly honest I don't really get it.
Maybe people, like me, who are not very used to listen to jazz like more easily vocal jazz than, for example, just swing without singing or, I don't know, free jazz (free jazz gave me headache whenever I tried to listen to it... but eventually I liked Ornette Coleman ). I think Billie Holiday is well liked by a lot of people including me.
I like Bill Evans' Waltz for Debby.
Jelly Roll Morton is great (not that others aren't).
Sometimes I like this and sometimes I like that, but I never like anything (except Billie Holiday) for a long time enough or in the most sincere emotion to say I REALLY like this, I dig it.

Why don't most of people like jazz?
Do you need to know music theory to really enjoy it?
Are we just simpletons and enjoying this music is not at our hand?
I guess is nothing about that.
Like Mourinho would say... ¿por qué?

Andy, when I read you wrote some people say "jazz makes me nervous" I thought of what I wrote "free jazz gave me a headache"... it didn't really gave me a headache, it made me nervous. Early jazz is easy listening compared to later jazz, I think. I like that post you wrote about jazz having a more "defined" fanbase. That's what I meant.

I have a place at home where I leave the albums I really like and another place for the rest. The jazz "packet" is always moving from one place to the other.

Pinhedz, thank you for reposting that.
Were you trying to put a new label to modern era jazz so you could say "I like jazz" without a "but"?
You know, I just want to listen to jazz to say "I like jazz" (just kidding)

pinhedz wrote:Not that there isn't music recorded after the mid-70s that sounds like jazz-there's lots of that--but it only sounds like jazz because it's backward-looking. Some looks back to the '20s and 30s, some looks back to the '50s and '60s.

There is also lots of music--and some of it really good stuff--recorded after the early '70s that is called jazz and is not backward-looking, but for me it doesn't pass the "sounds-like-jazz" test.

I think that the "sounds-like-jazz" test is one of these perfectly subjective arguments LJ is (in)famous for.

Early Kansas City Jazz didn't pass the "sounds-like-jazz" test at all if you asked a band from New Orleans.

Bebop definitely didn't pass the "sounds-like-jazz" test in its day.

Mod Jazz, Free Jazz, Fusion didn't pass the "sounds-like-jazz" test and many contemporary musicians who claim to be
making jazz music don't pass it either.

At every fork in the road it's up to you whether you open up the concept of jazz for the new music or if you don't.
There have always been musicians who claimed to play jazz while many of the jazz purists just shook their heads.
Personally, I have massive problems with calling the pile of rubbish rolling down from Scandinavia over the last 20 years or so "jazz" but
quite possibly because a) I don't like that kind of music and think it couldn't hold a candle to what I'd consider to be jazz; b) it just doesn't pass the "sounds-like-jazz" test for me. In my book Gulda playing Bach might pass the test, Nils Landgren probably never will.

pinhedz wrote:

TinyMontgomery wrote:Personally, I have massive problems with calling the pile of rubbish rolling down from Scandinavia over the last 20 years or so "jazz" but quite possibly because a) I don't like that kind of music and think it couldn't hold a candle to what I'd consider to be jazz; b) it just doesn't pass the "sounds-like-jazz" test for me.

Isn't it mostly just dixieland imitation, or are they doing something else now?

I think it doesn't sound like Dixieland at all. It's some kind of ambient music or simplified rock idioms with a trumpet or a trombone player leading the pack. The two reasons they call it jazz seem to be a) the instrumentation (trumpet, trombone); b) the fact that no-one is singing.

Listen to Nils Landgren or Nils Petter Molvaer - you'll know what I mean. I think Jan Garbarek was one of the founders of this "nu jazz" movement.

Now I like this much




and this

hehehe I thought of that question when I sent my previous post in this thread. Now I have the answer... I don't know why I've been blessed with wisdom this evening...
If it is a sincere liking the answer is yes (there are likings that are like "it pleases me but I could be doing something better").
A different thing is to know what's going on. I liked Mulholland Drive a lot but I didn't really know what was going on in the movie. I liked it and I got it. "Getting it" is a more subtle knowledge than knowing what's going on, it's like meeting what you already met in some other life (I'm being pretentious on purpose... the ridiculous part is just a nature's gift).

I've just read there's a version with lyrics.

Won't you stop and take
A little time out with me
Just take five
Stop your busy day
And take the time out
To see if I'm alive

Though I'm going out of my way
Just so I can pass by each day
Not a single word do we say
It's a pantomime and not a play

Still, I know our eyes often meet
I feel tingles down to my feet
When you smile, that's much too discreet
Sends me on my way

Wouldn't it be better
Not to be so polite
You could offer a light
Start a little conversation now
It's alright, just take five
Just take five

Too good to be by Bob, right?


I found this

What's the frequency Kenneth?

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