>I don't know... I sort of take exception to the use of the
>term "jizz"... I know it's a fairly common etymology to get
>behind these days, but in the early days the music was known
>as "Jass."

Definitely, but the use of jizz makes the meaning behind it more relevant contemporarily. If you say jass, and say jass meant fucking, you almost have to remind folk of the implication at every mention. Jizz drives home the point of the naming to modern ears. You hear jizz and you know what the connotation is.

>And the funny thing is that the earliest appearances of the
>word "jazz" were usually used in a sports context as opposed
>to a musical one. But even as the music became widely known as
>"Jazz," some of the leading musicians in the field actually
>rejected the term. Bechet himself maintained until his death
>that his music was actually ragtime. Here's a quote from his
>autobio, published in 1950:
>
>"Jazz, that's a name the white people have given to the music.
>When I tell you ragtime, you can feel it, there's a spirit
>right in the word. It comes out of the Negro spirituals, out
>of Omar's way of singing, out of his rhythm. But Jazz--Jazz
>could mean any 'damn thing" high times, screwing, ballroom. It
>used to be spelled -Jass-, which -was- screwing. But when you
>say ragtime, you're saying the music."

Yeah but that's also an attempt to hold it into the NO lineage, which I don't blame him for, but doesn't capture the whole picture of what it had become by then. I've said it before and I'll say it again, in the period in between the influence of Kansas City Stomp which is clearly not ragtime is what helped carry the music forward.

(I'll just note here that forward for me is always going to mean on to new musical achievements not audience achievements, so when we're talking about the death of it we'll be talking about different things below)

>I'm not 100% sure of what you mean here, but something tells
>me I'm not going to agree with it lol

Jazz bands playing the songbook. Songbook composers writing different. White big bands playing in the vein of jazz. Etc... the ebb and flow of that.

>I don't think Duke was trying to "kill" anything... Duke was a
>big fan of Paul Whiteman and viewed him as an influence. And
>most jazz musicians had to be fluent in classical in the early
>days.

I meant kill in the hip-hop ebonics shit not adversarial. It was because of his appreciation of the music that he was able to kill it.

>Did the after-hours jamming keep jazz alive, or did it serve
>to begin the slide towards jazz's death (in the popular
>consciousness, anyway)?

Referring back to my parenthetical above we are of two minds on this. For me the death of jazz is independent of the public opinion of it, but more the result of its inability to push music making in new directions. I should echo your comments here that a lot of people didn't like the term jazz. There's a miles quotes post I put up with him going to town on the label and wanting to just be called contemporary music (i think, maybe modern, something other than jazz). But one important thing I think the term does is unite a trajectory over nearly a century of music making. And for the greater majority of that period there was constant innovation happening in form. The death of that to me is when there are no new forms arising which is why I cite the 80's. Of course it was way out of favor by then but even in the 70's there was still plenty of form pushing happening.

>People were still dancing to the big bands... they didn't seem
>tired of that at all.

Yeah but money wasn't what it used to be.

>And then when Louis Jordan began to introduce a smaller,
>though heavier form of the big band sound, folks loved dancing
>to that also.

Indeed. Also worth noting was the west coast cool response to the be bop was strong. Be bop wasn't necessarily the dominant. But it was the one pushing and that's my angle.

>But the bebop guys were less interested in playing for the
>dance floor... and that was one of the things that led to jazz
>losing its relevance in the "pop" sphere.

And its also how you get to some of the most beautiful and intricate jazz composition. Try to imagine if Mingus was playing to pop audiences. I don't even want to.

>>>but duke ellington doesn't sound much like
>>>weather report, and miles and cannonball aderly.
>>
>>Uhhhhhhh yeah they do. I know what you're trying to mean,
>but
>>really they do. Whole other post though.
>
>He's right... they don't. But yes, whole other post!

I'll just refer to the comments about Duke I made elsewhere above which were indicative of what I meant here.

>>>what's more, what i think of as jazz laid some of the
>>>foundations for funk.
>>>(again, the music snobs pointed out that "so what" and
>"cold
>>>sweat" were similar
>>>grooves... which blew my mind for some reason).
>>
>>LOL!!! I'll leave that alone.

Just to start out I love that you bring the cuban origins to the discussion, and always have, but you *can* overstate them.

>Maceo has testified that the riff of "Cold Sweat" was inspired
>by "So What," and when you listen to it, you can actually hear
>it.
>
>(I tried to find a video of him describing it but I can't
>locate it...)

Don't doubt you but wish you'd found it.

>"Cold Sweat" is a fragmented (or what I would call
>"Cuban-influenced") reduction of "So What"... James Brown's
>style as a whole was definitely influenced by Afro-Cuban
>music, but every time I've said that in the Lesson, I've been
>shouted down on some "you hate Black Americans so much, you
>don't want us to have ANYTHING!" shit.

But I've always supported you. Remember that.

(Hey I'm not checking the links right now. I know you're on point with that, I just want to be able to finish this reply)

>I mean, "So What" itself is rooted in Cuban rhythm, with its
>tense pauses. I've mentioned before that the song was clearly
>inspired by a rhumba composition by Ahmad Jamal:

I think one of the things your argument lacks is the internal dynamics of cuban music. What's the difference between rhumba and son? Is the influence from rhumba or son? My cuban composition mentor (in cuba) basically has the same debate we're having here and says it's all son, going so far as to say it's all inversions and rearrangemnts of the one clave motif. So What can be counted off as 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, with triplets in the first three count. But that 1, 2, has a dancers pace. I'm trying to think of the words to express what I'm trying to say about those.

There's a general free nature of rhythm in cuban music which begins from the drum flowing into the dancers. When we talk about the sacred rhythms especially. LOL!! The irony of this is not going to be lost on me. The drummer brings forth the orishas but once the orisha mounts, it is the dancer that gives the drummer their time. And so when I say dancers pace it flows fluidly from the movement not from the rhythm per se.

It's repeated into the head for So What a la jazz, similarly ballroom dancing repeats these and calls them moves that have to be hit with the precision of timing, but what they stem from is a far more loose interpretation of spirit.

Pre-embargo cuba was a hotbed for music, *BUT* in a very segregated way. So that audiences might only see the showroom forms with precise tight timing and never the sacred origins. Even the jazz musicians though I think there are some accounts of that with dizzy. So what you get is this reloosification but within it some refinements of something that was loose to begin with and then refined.

Bah I'm getting ahead of your comments....

>http://youtu.be/ZmvwCTMO1Lg
>
>http://youtu.be/q9eUqMbxWBs
>
>Maceo basically played it in a more fragmented fashion,
>utilizing the "honking sax" style that had come to
>characterize R&B.
>
>Did I mention that the "honking sax" itself has its roots in
>Cuban-influenced music? You know that Dizzy Gillespie's early
>bebop experiments were fueled by his relationship with Cuban
>musicians like Mario Bauza and Chano Pozo and his idea to play
>jazz with the repetitive rhythmic tumbao of Cuba, which each
>instrument functioning as a drum:
>
>http://youtu.be/IMipw5NWSZk
>http://youtu.be/s2Tt6W-TxXs
>
>and there is where you start to find the roots of what we
>today call "Funk."

So yeah that last paragraph is directly tied to all of this ^^^ and most of this vvvv

>I've pointed out before that a lot of James Brown's approach
>to rhythm was informed by Cuban rhythm. I know I've
>illustrated before how James Brown's earliest moves towards
>"Funk" were directly derived from New Orleans-style
>"mambo-blues" as popularized by, say, Professor Longhair:
>
>http://youtu.be/0UWBO4r11AY
>
>or Eddie Bo:
>
>http://youtu.be/q-LdVVfIdgc
>
>and then from there, we can check out how that sound
>influenced Ray Charles:
>
>http://youtu.be/xPP8w0wMRgQ
>
>and Duke Jenkins:
>
>http://youtu.be/108NtlpJkY8
>
>and then James Brown takes a stab at the sound:
>
>http://youtu.be/B1wOK9yGUYM
>
>and the rest... is history.
>
>But as Maceo has said, he and many of the other members were
>frustrated jazz heads, so they tried to bring bebop's
>complexity to the music. Which is why the signature sound of
>Funk involves extended chords like 9ths and 7ths and 11ths.
>But the funk musician plays in a more fragmented, reductive
>voicing... driving rhythm over complex harmony.

There was plenty of frustration because it wasn't connecting with the people directly and what they did definitely had that effect, but as you imply was only possible because of where they were bringing it from.

>For example: http://youtu.be/gF1d227_4ac (long video, but very
>interesting if you watch it all)
>
>Or:
>http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/leroy-burgess--boogie-on-burgess
>(start at 52:07)
>
>So funk was (among other things) really a kind of broken down,
>more danceable form of jazz.
>
>(Damn, did I ramble past the point?)

Off track but on point. I'd only tack on though that funk too fell to placating the audiences following the cool jazz motif. And it is probably thanks to hip-hop that that whole line was able to find another medium. Unfortunately hip-hop too fell to placating audiences following the cool jazz motif.

There's a bit of necessity to it, for sustaining power even if that power doesn't last indefinitely but where there isn't the balance thats when the lineages are threatened. When there's a champagne soul without a funk, a cool jazz without a hard bop, a swinging jazz without a be-bop...that's how you get to the type of stagnancy we lament about today (though I don't think that's all valid).


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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." © Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."