more Jaco & Jazz

Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 14:04:48 GMT
Newsgroups: rec.music.bluenote
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Bongo - Jaco opens his debut with Donna Lee, makes a fresh take on this
standard, plays a Bebop type solo on the tune, get's Herbie Hancock to state
that Jaco is the most exciting new musician on the scene in years (and plays
a smoking rendition of his own standard "Speak Like A Child" with Jaco), and
plays primarily with people who are all identified as jazz musicians for the
rest of his career, primarily playing his own compositions or jazzstandards
(like most other jazz musicians), unless he is playing with Weather Report
many of whose tunes also becomes standards or have standard like forms,
chord changes etc. He initiates and writes Big Band arrangements of his
songs, of standards like Invitation (arguably with help from various
sources), which is not too typical of non-jazz musicians, and tours and
performs these arrangements. Every single step along the way is a wonderful
jazzmoment.
So here's your argument that what he actually played was jazz.....whereas
you just argue that it isn't. You do not qualify that argument in any way,
other than just to state that in your opinion it's not jazz. You don't
analyze what he did play - or did not play, or what portion of what he did
made it non-jazz, so you don't have an argument, you just have a
statement...a non-valid one too!
Now you state that Gil Evans walked Miles coattails. Well, how ridiculous is
that. If we even needed someone to counteract that statement, why not take
Miles, who praised Gil before, during and after the albums they made
together as the perfect jazzarranger. No question that their collaboration
helped illuminate Gil's genius, by giving him a perfect partner on every
level, but so what? Nobody else could have done what Gil did, and nobody
has.
Anyway - I am not so desperate to try to get you to say "yes, Jaco is jazz"
or "OK, Gil Evans was a great jazz arranger". Who cares whether it was or
not, even more so, who cares if Bongo Jed believes so or not. Miles, for
one, hated the word jazz, called it a "nigger word" meaning that if you
stamped someone with that, you stamped them in a negative racially biased
way, and that's how the word has been used most of the time - excluding
people rather than including, or as an excuse to not treat them seriously.
Jazz purists, in their dogmatism, have used the word the same way purists
always use what they can to limit other peoples freedom of expression,
quality of life, and try to straightjacket people with precisely those
qualities of adventure, improvisation and exploration that so should define
what "jazz" is all about.
To quote Miles again - if there ever was more of a wonderful jazz musician,
I don't know him/her - Miles was once told he had the most lucrative
recording contract in jazz, and his response was "yeah, but it is still a
jazz contract". Meaning, he didn't get the same level of investment,
attention and financial reward as he would have had he been defined not by
the word jazz but perhaps "music".
End of chat with you Bongo Jed...people like you have no fun in life.
ACT