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Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

This is the problem with modern jazz. Treating it as some kind of canon is the antithesis of what it was in the first place. It's tantamount to writing down a conversation between two ancient philosophers and repeating it ad nauseum, expecting some new insight. Keith Jarett wasn't concerned with the stuff Art Tatum had done. Miles Davis wasn't trying to build on Louis Armstrong's rendition of Wonderful World. They were both exploring new spaces and trying desperately to break from the past to discover new forms. The mindless repetition and riffing on standards is why jazz has died as a relevant genre of music, and is seen as something that corny old men in suits listen to while sipping whiskey and feeling refined. Jazz used to be the cool sound because it was the avant garde, not some pretentious collection of standards written by dead people.

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If you're not familiar with what those old philosophers said and how their arguments work, you're liable to make yourself look like a fool when you tread old ground not realizing it's old. Similarly with Jazz, if you wanna be avant garde, you should have some idea of the body of work that's come before you. A lot of the best musical rule breakers were classically trained and knew their shit.

>A lot of the best musical rule breakers were classically trained and knew their shit.

Classical training is a different story. Musical theory is endlessly useful to know. But jazz has been stuck in a certain kind of sound for the last 40 years since those people who actually made it gave way to those who simply play it. And now there's just this idea of what jazz is and ought to be, rather than treating it as what is was originally; a complete break from the roots of the western classical tradition into a wholly new art form informed by the limitations of what they were leaving behind.

It's sort of a cargo cult situation, really. You have these incredible artifacts left behind that came about as a result of complex processes of intense effort and struggle, yet those who inherited them act as if by imitating the same thing, they will get the same results. It's completely missing the point.

"a complete break from the roots of the western classical tradition into a wholly new art form informed by the limitations of what they were leaving behind"

Wait, what? A whole lot of the western harmonic tradition went right into jazz. The "standards" are Tin Pan Alley songs from the first half of the 20th century. A lot of the bebop harmony came straight out of Debussy and Ravel. Third Stream music was an explicit synthesis of classical music and jazz. Some of Coltrane's innovations came out of Nicolas Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Musical Patterns. The walking bass was in Baroque music (Bach). While you cannot neglect the African side of it (rhythm, the blues, improvisation) nor neglect that it was Black people who put together the pieces and created the music, saying that it was a "complete break from the roots of the western classical tradition" is farcical.

And it's a tradition, not a cargo cult. There are still people alive today who played with Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and so forth. I have played with some of them. They tell stories, give advice, and pass on things that you might not get otherwise. Before the advent of jazz programs in colleges, the music was passed on via an apprenticeship system, which is diminished but still extant.

Even in jazz, there has always been an interplay between old and new. During the jazz era, jazz was the sound of popular music, meaning that a lot of work for jazz musicians consisted of playing in dance bands that were as locked into a sound as some jazz performances are today. The jazz era didn't end with a bang, but had a very long tail, resulting in me getting hired for the same kind of work within my own lifetime. Everybody recognizes it for what it is, artistically, but on the other hand there's something to be said for making an audience happy.

Today, people approach jazz for different reasons, and of course at different levels of proficiency. Jazz is old enough to have a history and a canon, and the enjoyment of exploring and preserving that history is a good reason for some bands (hopefully not all of them) to exist. Given my stature in the local music scene (not a first-call player), a lot of my work is of that ilk. I approach it respectfully but not with utter obedience. As a bassist, the instrument that I play has undergone steady evolution, even post jazz era, so that what I play on a "traditional" gig is informed by the present as well as the past.

It's a mix of both. Musicians often want to seem like they didn't take lessons and don't have in-depth knowledge of music theory and old songs, but they often do (e.g., how many guitarists don't admit they took lessons and want to make it seem like they're just riffing but they mysteriously seem to hit the chord tones on the changes and manage to play in modes that work for a song). It's just not "cool" for a musician to be knowledgeable about music theory and history. I think every pursuit - not just music - is presented with a challenge once it's been around for a while, it's no longer new and unusual, and there exists a body of knowledge and history. It becomes a large task to learn from past performers and then try to innovate in your own way. Once a body of knowledge becomes large enough, it's a big life-consuming task just to get your head about the prior body of knowledge before you're able to go out on your own and attempt to innovate. I think the same thing is happening with rock. The same could be said for philosophy itself - philosophy used to be practical and applicable to everyday people (see Greeks and Stoics, for example). Now, it's largely confined to academia and extremely esoteric arguments among a cloistered elite.

See also Monty Python.

Different crowd (fewer suits, less whiskey) but same phenomenon: work deliberately created to be avant garde now repeated as canon.

But isn't that how it always goes? Things that were once avant-garde become “standard” and the next avant-garde has to be something different again. The same thing cannot stay avant-garde forever.

Back in the days when I was a teenager

Before I had status and before I had a pager

You could find the Abstract listenin' to hip-hop

My pops used to say, it reminded him of Bebop

I said, "Well, Daddy, don't you know that things go in cycles?

Way that Bobby Brown is just amping like Michael"

-- Q-Tip, A Tribe Called Quest, Excursions

Regardless of the art form, deeply studying previous works is the way to really understand how the artist created them. With drawing and painting it's learning by literally copying them, and with jazz, it's learning by playing the same song and experiencing it for yourself. When you've internalized what the "masters" have done then you're in a better a position (certainly technically!) to create your own works.

Of course Jazz greats such as Miles Davis etc would regularly play popular show tunes and use these as foundations for radical reinterpretation (eg. John Coltrane playing "My Favourite Things", Miles Davis playing "If I were a Bell"). If these guys had no qualms doing their own riff on something someone else wrote like "some day my prince will come" I dunno why anyone else should feel they're doing anything wrong doing the same.

Sheesh, it sounds like you are overly obsessed with being cool.

Learning songs written by other people is something every musician does. There's nothing wrong with playing covers and being able to play music that's familiar to your audience is essential for many working musicians.

That doesn't mean you have to play old standards when you could riff on newer music, but it also doesn't mean you can't. There's nothing wrong with reviving a tune written a long time ago and putting your own take on it.

Music is not necessarily more enjoyable just because it's brand new. It can be just as interesting if it's new to you, and there's plenty to explore.

https://xkcd.com/1053/

True, and the exact same thing can be said about classical music. The average person needs some sort of framework to learn the art form. And yes, this is more imitation than innovation, but nevertheless can serve as a framework for musical expression.

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