Wynton Marsalis on Rap etc (edited)

http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?c...76&source=srch

KENNETH WHYTE | November 15, 2007 |

Q: Where's the audience for jazz?

A: The audience is limited because we don't have the proper education to sustain an audience. It's very difficult to have a huge audience when the audience is mainly dedicated to people who are amateurs, or who can't play at all.

Q: But in the beginning jazz didn't have an educated audience.

A: Yes, it did. There was an intelligent listening audience. In the United States the intelligent audience started to decline in the '60s. Up until that time there was a concentrated music education program. So a lot of early jazz musicians, even though their grandparents were slaves, their parents were not slaves, and the early . . . Don Redmond, all those early guys who formed the music, they were very educated, man. Don Redmond went to Oberlin.

A: Early jazz is polyphonic music. Rap is not. The principal component of early jazz is the improvisation and interaction of drums and melody. Rap, the drum is a machine, it doesn't interact with anything. The other thing about early jazz is Jelly Roll Morton. This one man sat down at the piano with Alan Lomax in the '40s and he played John Philip Souza's marches, ragtime pieces, arias from operas, songs in all kinds of keys. Who in rap can do that?

Q: I don't know. Is there anyone?

A: No...That's not possible...Because there's not enough of the form to create that. It is what it is, it has a lifespan.
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A: I'm always encouraged. I see that for 350 years, people were enslaved in the United States, and then they weren't slaves. So I believe in change, and I believe in ascendance. Of course, if you give younger people trash from the time they're 11 or 12 you can exploit them.

I'll play with any kind of musician. I will not record certain types of material because I don't want that on my legacy, okay? That's my personal thing. But as a person I'm not sitting in judgment of them. If I'm talking to 50 Cent or any of these guys, they're people, you know? "You're getting famous being a minstrel and doing all this talking about how you shot black people, you can make some money off of that, that's okay." With my music I will play with anybody, but with all that "b******" and "n*****s" and all of that . . . Now, I know what it's like to really be called a n***** for real, by black and white people. I'm not interested in presenting that to the world as my expression. And I have to make the point to the younger people in rap, we was black in the '60s, man. We were black in 1974. We wasn't waiting for y'all to tell us what it was to be black. You're a guy from the Something Housing Project with limited education and now you're going to tell me what it means to be a black person in America? Man, you must really think you're in a video.

You know, that's an age-old thing in culture...So this particular version of it is, I'm from the streets, I'm hard, I'm bad, I'm authentic, but the deep thing about it and the point I'm trying to make is that you messed over black people. Who are you calling a b****? Who you been shooting at?

I work with 200 people, man, you know? I never called anybody a b****. Where is this place where people just go in public, they call people b******?

Please, let me preface this with: I've been around the jazz lifestyle for my entire life. I have a degree in Jazz Studies. My husband is a professional jazz pianist.

I am aware that there are close to 27 jazz fans, nationwide.

It's not popular because it is hard to listen to and understand. It's the equivalent of picking up a Russian novel, like Anna Karenina. And understanding it.

For the average listener/reader, it's too much. It will wear you out.

Jazz is a learning process, still there is jazz out there that I cannot even wrap my head around.

Wynton has been on the scene for 30 some years now and is generally thought of as kind of a jazz elitist. He is not nearly the most highly regarded of jazz giants. Please don't think that I am talking about the 'jazz' that Kenny G plays. That's not jazz. I'm talking about giants like Coltrane, Bird, Monk, Mingus, Cannonball, Clifford Brown, and many more.

I don't appreciate, or like Rap either, but where I disagree with Wynton is, I don't think it is a passing fancy. It's just that the listening audience is getting more ignorant, and not demanding content in music any longer.
Soon, it won't meet the definition of music: organized sound. What we are experiencing is the 'dumbing down' of the listening audience.

Death to the drum machine!

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Originally Posted by rosethecopycat

Death to the drum machine!

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LOL, as someone who spent years learning how to play the organ - 2 full keyboards (61 keys each), 26 pedal board, and a shorter third keyboard - I feel the same way about electronic keyboards!

Jazz is an acquired taste. It takes time to learn what you are listening to, and to appreciate it.

rose, there is a link there to the whole interview...he does refer to drum machines and there are a few more details there.

If you want to read the whole article (too long for here), that will give a more complete picture of what Wynton is saying.

You'll also see that he had to have some surgery on his mouth several years back...and he is a lot more understanding of students that have a hard time. I think he might have mellowed on the 'elitist' thing.

You and he agree on something....that today's audience is not educated as it was in the past....hence the "27 jazz fans, nationwide." ;)

I happen to like Jazz music even though Im not all that musically trained(I really aprriciate ALL music actually). I do have to say one thing though. I agree that rap is a sign of the decline in the overall intelegence level of the average person but not all digital music is that low brow. True electronic music fans (not idiotic party heads) apriciate subtleties in music, as a lot of what moves people on an emotional level is that fine detail. A good track will move you and inspire you and will be more than just repetive noises with a lot of bass behind it. True fans of electronic music DEMAND depth, otherwise it is just a whole wad of boom boom boom *cymbal* (repeat)

A drum machine is a tool to make music, and you can sound really stupid at it or really good at it just like any instrument.

Sorry to hijack but I had to add my 2 cents as not only a person who enjoys music on a spiritual level but as someone who is very in to music production. I may not be able to sing on key or play an instrument but Im fairly good at producing tracks and I can set up just about any sound system :)

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Originally Posted by DJFyrewolf36

Im fairly good at producing tracks and I can set up just about any sound system :)

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I can't do any of that! :eek: :p

I did read the entire article Catty, thanks.

I'll tell you how 'inside' the jazz language is:
The writers on The Simpsons are jazz insiders. I can tell by their subtle references. :p

AH! A secret code from the jazz world...has Homeland Security investigated this angle? :p (Now that the sax-playing president is out of office... :D )

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rosethecopycat

I can't do any of that! :eek: :p

I did read the entire article Catty, thanks.

I'll tell you how 'inside' the jazz language is:
The writers on The Simpsons are jazz insiders. I can tell by their subtle references. :p

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My mom said the same about the Simpsons, its part of why she enjoys the show so much lol

Drum Machines have no soul.

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Originally Posted by RICHARD

Drum Machines have no soul.

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But button pushers DO have souls ;)

I blame video games mostly lol

Jazz is soul, and it is not an aquired taste. There are a few that cannot hear what is being said, and there are those that hear and KNOW.