>The culture surrounding jazz has always mystified me. Though it's a
>kind of "popular" music, there's an air of painfully high seriousness
>among
>afficionados. Jazz DJs assume a tone of almost funereal reverence
>when they identify what they've just played, and read the name of
>everyone associated with the recording except the janitor who swept
>the studio. It's like they're trying soooo hard to be taken seriously
>that you almost suspect them of a cultural anxiety about not being
>really serious.
Yeah, it's a legitimacy thing. Jazz-heads (meaning jazz aficionados, not [necessarily] jazz performers) want the music they love to be taken "seriously," so they adopt the same detached, lost-in-profundity gaze (they think) classical-music appreciators wear. Similar movements have happened in rock: Fusion was "invented" by jazz musicians like Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis, and all of a sudden rock musicians saw a way for their stupidities to be taken seriously--associate their music with jazz. Then there were the prog rockers, who thought they could achieve the legitimacy of classical music by grafting lyrics they stole from The Hobbit onto rock "orchestration."
But still, I think jazz, and pop and rock, should be taken seriously (but not with "painfully high seriousness"). Unless we all want to be like those contestants on American Bandstand. "It's got a good beat. I can dance to it. I give it a 95!"
Eric