So What?

Since "Captain Capitalism" Aaron Clarey seems determined to diss a lot of good hardworking musicians, and show his pretensions to culture, let's pipe up here.

Now, your humble blogger isn't really in much of a position to be a jazz critic, as about ten minutes at his house listening to him maim "All The Things you Are" on a clarinet or tenor or trumpet or piano or guitar or banjo or oud or any of the other things we have lying around will convince you. But I've been lucky enough to be backstage or in interview rooms with Nicholas
Payton, Elvin Jones, Kenny Burrell (even introducing him to my parents), Olu Dara, Mike Stern (my fiancee and I spent a memorable afternoon taking a tired-but-upbeat Stern to San Mateo, then -- not my idea -- a McDonald's), Mike Brecker, Stanley Clarke -- you get the picture. So I know somethin'. Unlike some.

And I honestly believe that if it weren't for a certain nostalgia thing, 1995-2005 would be regarded as jazz's finest decade, past even the classic 60's Blue Note years. You still had titans on the scene -- Wayne Shorter, McCoy Tyner, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, the Joneses, etc. And "mid-period" guys who'd done a lot to expand the compositional and arranging possibilities of jazz -- Metheny, Dave Holland, Carla Bley, Chick Corea, Arthur Blythe, Julius Hemphill, etc. Some long absent masters returned -- Andrew Hill, Charles Lloyd, Pat Martino. And you had a blend of older musicians who sat perfectly balanced between long-standing tradition and the new -- Dave Douglas, Tom Harrell, John Abercrombie, Joe Lovano -- while other guys genuinely expanded the range of jazz in ways you'd never have predicted -- Bill Frisell, Dave Douglas, Bela Fleck, Chris Speed. Add to that a group of phenomenally, frighteningly talented twenty- and thirtysomethings --maybe more than in any previous generation -- who had finally shaken the 1980's navel-gazing: Matthew Shipp, Brad Mehldau (!), Brian Blade (!!), Ben Monder, Bill Stewart(!), Bela Fleck, Chris Speed, Chris Potter, Mark Turner, Jason Moran -- the list goes on and on and on. The globalization of the music -- particularly to middle Eastern forms -- was completed too.

Now, I would think nobody on the planet has more authority to talk about what Armstrong or Ellington might've found musically satisfying, than Roy Haynes. And Haynes doesn't seem to have a problem working with rappers or hip-hop guys. Nor does Shorter -- probably our best composer since Strayhorn (and honestly: these morons are holding up Strayhorn's musical generation as moral paragons?) Hancock is arguably the new music's godfather. So I don't know a lot about hip-hop -- but I'm not stupid enough to argue against those guys. And you can either listen to them, or some snot-nosed ass who can't so much as play a scale on a harmonica, and is now trying to do for culture what he does for politics and economics. Take your pick. Guys like Clarey are why the music stultified through the 1980's and early 90's as a generation of players all tried to out-imitate Freddie Hubbard -- why wouldn't I just go buy the original? -- although at least sometimes their arguments found their way into the mouths of intelligent (if grossly mistaken) folk like Stanley Crouch or his pet trumpeter.

But if you're new to this stuff -- please don't just ignore these greats like they don't exist: that's a slur on hardworking people keeping the stuff alive. Ellington, Armstrong -- they're great, sure, but if you're starting out in this, there's a lot of blisteringly excellent young cats you can go see live now -- so start with their stuff and ignore fools like Clarey. You'll find there's two kinds of jazz fans: guys who listen hard, and passionately love the music, and know it -- and brainless poseurs who like the "cachet" of stuff which has some cultural stamp of approval, desperately fear and trash the new lest they reveal stupidity when they opine, and would rather be at home with Aerosmith or something at least loud, truth be told. Clarey uses jazz lyrics like "Mahan" uses common Latinisms in an attempt to fool you into thinking he's a classicist -- let him BS you, and you lose a lot of great art.

(Don't get me wrong - one can accuse a lot of modern lyricists of coarseness and vulgarity beyond what's common: but the same accusation was made of the classical jazz lyricists. And the culture may in fact be going to hell - but for evidence of that, look instead to grown men who go around spending real time playing video games (although that does give us the unintentionally hilarious rating "M for Mature.") Or worse yet, adults reading Harry Potter books in public - hey, buddy, what's next on your list, Goodnight Moon?)