The AU Cypher

Booo...they doing to hiphop what academia did to jazz.
I don't want to hear liberal arts scholars with $60k student loans telling me about hiphop, no more than I want to hear some old white college professor preaching to me about jazz music. Hiphop and jazz came from and belongs in the streets.
 
Pumpthrust said:
Booo...they doing to hiphop what academia did to jazz.
I don't want to hear liberal arts scholars with $60k student loans telling me about hiphop, no more than I want to hear some old white college professor preaching to me about jazz music. Hiphop and jazz came from and belongs in the streets.
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What did the academe do to jazz? Scholars discuss all types of cultural stuff. I'm sure you can find more books and articles on rock and classical music than hip hop or jazz any day.
Unless its 1950 and I didn't know it, I don't there are too many jazz musicians that come from the streets.
 
mwandishi said:
What did the academe do to jazz? Scholars discuss all types of cultural stuff. I'm sure you can find more books and articles on rock and classical music than hip hop or jazz any day.
Unless its 1950 and I didn't know it, I don't there are too many jazz musicians that come from the streets.
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You don't think that is a problem?
Jazz pedagogy happened as jazz music became increasingly "fusiony" around the '70's as a means to preserve its history and values and later to provide a cushion for aging jazzers that did not want to "sellout" in order to eat. Eventually, academia became the platform many young jazz musicians used to find gigs and make their way into the increasingly insular jazz scene.
If you learned to play jazz in the last 30 or so years, you probably did so playing in a school ensemble, eventually making your way to college (Berkeley, Julliard). All of this began as an attempt to study the music and later preserve its values.
 
Pumpthrust said:
You don't think that is a problem?
Jazz pedagogy happened as jazz music became increasingly "fusiony" around the '70's as a means to preserve its history and values and later to provide a cushion for aging jazzers that did not want to "sellout" in order to eat. Eventually, academia became the platform many young jazz musicians used to find gigs and make their way into the increasingly insular jazz scene.
If you learned to play jazz in the last 30 or so years, you probably did so playing in a school ensemble, eventually making your way to college (Berkeley, Julliard). All of this began as an attempt to study the music and later preserve its values.
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Okay let me make a couple points.

One, jazz stop being a popular art form at least 50 years ago. Young black kids are not running to express themselves musically through jazz. The people that listen and play jazz (not smooth jazz) are not part of the masses. That's not a critique just a reality. I know about cats like Charles Mingus, Lee Morgan, Art Blakney, and others because of my pops and the city I'm from, not because it was the popular thing.

Two, I think you're conflating to different types of things associated with the academy: discussions of the topic, and the teaching of the genre as a musical form. I don't go to Berkeley because I want to write a paper on jazz, I go there to study with some of the best musical teachers in the US. Lets see: Roy Hargove, Cyrus Chestnut, Branford Marselis, etc, I don't any of these cats suffered because of there experiences there.

It is important to preserve in a formal institutional manner all musical forms. People of color usually are less successful in documenting and preserving there cultural history than non-colored people.

Finally, getting old as musician (who is not a multimillionaire) and taking a job as a music teacher, at any level, is not selling out, its called life. Grinding it out on tour if u ain't on a certain pay scale while trying to raise a family just don't work.

p.s. Nice jazz forum link.
 
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mwandishi said:
Okay let me make a couple points.

One, jazz stop being a popular art form at least 50 years ago. Young black kids are not running to express themselves musically through jazz. The people that listen and play jazz (not smooth jazz) are not part of the masses. That's not a critique just a reality. I know about cats like Charles Mingus, Lee Morgan, Art Blakney, and others because of my pops and the city I'm from, not because it was the popular thing.

Two, I think you're conflating to different types of things associated with the academy: discussions of the topic, and the teaching of the genre as a musical form. I don't go to Berkeley because I want to write a paper on jazz, I go there to study with some of the best musical teachers in the US. Lets see: Roy Hargove, Cyrus Chestnut, Branford Marselis, etc, I don't any of these cats suffered because of there experiences there.

It is important to preserve in a formal institutional manner all musical forms. People of color usually are less successful in documenting and preserving there cultural history than non-colored people.

Finally, getting old as musician (who is not a multimillionaire) and taking a job as a music teacher, at any level, is not selling out, its called life. Grinding it out on tour if u ain't on a certain pay scale while trying to raise a family just don't work.
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You kinda missed my point
1. I agree with your first point, how could I not, its obvious that jazz is not a popular artform.

2. I never implied that people go to those schools to do anything other than learn jazz or other forms of music. The problem is its presented as the ONLY way to learn jazz music to progress at a professional level. Where I live, almost all of the top players are affiliated with a university program, and in most cases, its the only way to even get at them. My point is that the jazz has become in some ways a symbol of wealth. When I attended jazz camp a couple weeks ago (at a major university), many of the attendees came from very prestigious private school programs or from wealthy school districts that could afford to foster a jazz or classical music program. One should not have to take out a $60k loan to study jazz music.

3. I never implied that teaching is selling out. I said that those great musicians latched on to the academic system as a means of not selling out.
 
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Pumpthrust said:
You kinda missed my point
1. I agree with your first point, how could I not, its obvious that jazz is not a popular artform.

2. I never implied that people go to those schools to do anything other than learn jazz or other forms of music. The problem is its presented as the ONLY way to learn jazz music to progress at a professional level. Where I live, almost all of the top players are affiliated with a university program, and in most cases, its the only way to even get at them.

3. I never implied that teaching is selling out. I said that those great musicians latched on to the academic system as a means of not selling out.
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Okay. I can dig it.

I guess its where u at on certain levels. The people I mentioned had their musical foundation b4 they went to the university. They just used it to take their music to the next level.

I dig where u coming from, but what is selling out smooth jazz?
 
I don't think any of it is selling out, but I can see why some staunch bebop head would rather turn his nose up at playing smooth jazz and fusion. On the jazzguitar.be website, those old heads hate anything "smooth jazz" related or fusion.
 
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