Music Lane

not real jazz?

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In Reply to: RE: ""??????? posted by 3384 on July 30, 2012 at 11:50:56

I listen to far more instrumental jazz than I do vocal jazz but I'm curious about your comment. I'm not trying to be confrontational but I'd like to get a clearer idea of what you mean by "real jazz?"

Let me offer up a (not comprehensive) list of living European musicians I generally like and perhaps you can tell me where you'd draw the "real" line:
Irene Schweizer, Tony Oxley, Evan Parker, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Gianluigi Trovesi, Louis Sclavis, Han Bennink, John Butcher, AMM, the guys in Atomic, Phil Wachsmann, Matts Gustafsson, Peter Brotzmann, Pierre Favre, Frank Gratkowski, Misha Mengelberg, Barry Guy,...

I think the line between jazz and modern classical is becoming increasingly blurry but I see that as non-issue. If the music contains an improvisational component and the artist wants to call it jazz I'm fine with that. Like Jay Buridan I probably would come down on the side of more interesting, at least nominally, jazz coming out of Europe in the interval from 1985 to 2005 than from the USA, especially if you count the ex-pat Americans among the Europeans.

I do find that there are a number of young, attractive female, more-or-less jazz singers (perhaps we could say marketed as jazz singers) that I find very lightweight. This doesn't, however, necessarily make them unenjoyable at least in small doses or as background music. I'd be more likely to add an asterisk to the jazz descriptor to those singers than to any of the ones listed above.

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