In a recent Death is Just Around the Corner episode, Michael talked about the death of Wayne Shorter and goes on a tangent about how white people essentially ruined the word jazz. How they appropriated it and made it become associated with a certain type of person. A type of person quite contrary to those originally making the music and the intended audience.
white people ruin everything by literally just existing
That's why Chief Adjuah rejects the label jazz, refuses to label his music as such, and instead prefers terms like "stretch music." The term is ruined. In his own words, "Oftentimes when we come into environments like this to play creative improvised music, someone uses the word ‘jazz,’ and then everyone in the room becomes a fuckin’ Fulbright scholar. And that’s cool, but that has nothing to do with where this music’s power rests.”
The problem with jazz is that it has academicized and the pop music industry and capitalism in general are in a race to the bottom to make the cheapest product for maximum profit. That makes a really bad situation for jazz music, the only people who "really" experience it are rich white (the colloquial version, dont have to be white) people, black people who are in church music scenes or black people who are legacy jazz musicians.
The whining and fighting over the stupid word is missing the forest for the trees, which is "Why did the music become so academicized, so liberal and so white?" It's not because white people called the music Jazz, honestly early Jazz history is kind of dark. No one really knows for sure where the word came from because no one was documenting it like we do everything now.
I think the other issue is that Jazz is a very precarious world and being openly anti-capitalist can put you in a situation where you're no longer play in the institution or the establishments that leech off the community and music.
fuck all the big festivals
shout out to the smaller, local festivals that actually stay grounded in the black american music tradition
I went to a jazz festival in Idyllwild California. I wanted cool jazz. There was no cool jazz. Hell, I would have "settled" for bebop.
There wasn't even a saxophone, for fuck's sake (I play sax). :jazz-passion: :jazz-ecstacy:
Pretty sure the headliner was some second runner-up from one of the bad seasons of American Idol. Not even a single quartet!
Now that I think about it further, there wasn't even anyone playing a single jazz 12 bar standard! No fake books, no improv, very little swing syncopation, nothing!
Frenchman Street in the middle of August is a great time to see the best "real" local NOLA jazz. It's so inhospitably hot and humid that almost no one visits at that time, and as a result, the scene is concentrated with avid local players and attendees.
