Jazz

John Halle john.halle at yale.edu
Sat Jan 20 09:03:46 PST 2001



>
> Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 22:21:54 -0000
> From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Jazz
>
> I thought that my characterization of you as musically sophisticated would
> do as an "apology," but if you insist on a regular one, OK, I was wrong. I
> am sorry. I apologize. Put your foot on my chest. Does that feel better? You
> know more about music than I do. But I am not an ignoramus either. --jks
>
>

OK, I'm sorry for jumping down your throat, but I want to make clear that I hope I have not done so based on my having authority to do so. I don't believe in pulling rank, whether it's a musician making judgements about music or an economist holding forth on what's great about the new economy.

The whole point of my postings have been to undermine the role of authority (or at least, authorities) in valorizing a particular art form, namely jazz. Like you, I do not object, in principle, to making distinctions in and applying standards of artistic quality-in that sense I'm also an elitist, if not a "proud" one. But that is an entirely different matter from accepting the overwhelming consensus that X or Y is great. In fact, applying standards of artistic quality (or intellectual honesty) often means challenging authority.

An indication of this authority is the point I made earlier, that it would be almost impossible to find anyone from anywhere on the political, cultural and artistic spectrum to take issue with claim that jazz is america's classical music. Now this is not, on the face of it, logically or practically speaking unreasonable. It could be the case that the greatness of the jazz canon is so overwhelming in comparison to other domestic musical idioms of the 20th century (or in comparison to non-canonized jazz forms from the century) that all of these will recede into insignificance when the period is viewed historically-as one would expect of a "classical music." Thus, the universal consensus among "the intelligentsia" simply reflects what is in fact an appropriate characterization of the reality of the monumental artistic significance of jazz.

What I'm suggesting is that what has become the standard view might not be so obvious. My point in making the Madonna-Parker comparison is to demonstrate that one of the pillars of the Burns canon is by no means above reproach if one applies certain fairly uncontroversial analytic categories which apply, fairly unproblematically to "high" musical art-forms of a 10 century period and from a cross section of the world's cultures. Obviously, I can't go into specifics here, many of which would and should be controversial. The bottom line, however, is that it can be reasonably argued that when one really looks critically at much of the jazz canon rather than being a kind of flower blooming in the rubbish heap of an historically oppressed culture it reflects the inevitable pathologies, arrested development, and reliance on obvious, unsophisticated, limited and frequently trivial musical techniques and strategies which one would predict.

It is entirely understandable why the right wing would want to accept an american triumphalist view of jazz since it minimizes the damage which the dominant culture has inflicted and continues to inflict on a vanquished one. The mystery is why leftists have been so quick to jump on the bandwagon-and indeed there is a bandwagon, carrying everyone from Commentary to Z magazine- why the defense and promotion of jazz should regarded as a central priority for reactionaries and progressives.

John



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