Gooooooooooood evening people of the internet! Contrary to what my previous two little rants may suggest, this was never really meant to be a current affairs, political newsy blog. It was meant to be a little record of whatever I like, about music mostly, so I've decided that it's about time I started on that.
What people I know know about me is that I'm a bit of a struggling musician. I play a great number of instruments on various styles, however, as I'm not really a stunning guitarist, or a singer/songwriter, then I'm not really in much demand popularly on the university circuit. I have the strange affliction (as it seems to be) of being a *cough* jazz nut *cough* This means that I'm a bit of a pariah, there being very few other young musicians, at least where I am, who are interested in this kind of music. Despite a great many guitar based, rock bands pretending to do poor quality impersonations of the Rock bands of yore, Jazz from a few years before is still seen as something that is listened to only by old pretentious artsy fartsy people or that your grandparents danced to during the war...
There seem to be very few oppertunities for small jazz groups as there used to be back in the 50s, the only things that people are interested in are the odd possibility for big bands, however, my major gripe with this idea is that the music ends up becoming something that defeats many of the original jazz ideals, such as freedom of musical expression, there were many famous musicians, such as the great innovator Ornette Coleman, who were unable to read music at all. Improvisation and self expression seems to be a very limited and, by many, sneered upon aspect of popular music- all people want to do is be able to play pieces and solos exactly how they were played by the original artist. Although replication may be useful from an academic point of view, it defeats the reason why the solo was created as a section of a piece in the first place. Creation as a part of performance, to the musical circle of people that I know, seems to be unacceptable and abhorrent- whether they see it as being too self-indulgent (isn't showing off part of music?) This, I feel is more of a regression on the part of music, rather than a progression. Improvisation was part of music for centuries, Mozart and Back improvised when playing live, and now people decide that it isn't musically acceptable to put a personal stamp on pieces that you play.
This is a very personal rant to me, so if anyone has their own views/differing opinions, then please feel free to comment.
Keep the peace internet folk.
I just wrote a huge reply to this and then the internet broke. Dammit
ReplyDeleteBasically, I agree with you. Music is as much about expression and personal interpretation as it is about formal transcribing. Prioritising the composer or (worse) the person who transcribed the 'suggested solo' takes so much away from the performer, it's almost insulting. I learned to improvise in my church band and wasn't encouraged to do it in any of my music lessons; it's really no surprise that most people find it so difficult to be creative when they're first called upon to improvise or compose!