Ornette Coleman Jazz Conversation

I was just alertred, via Avant Music News, to this recorded interview/conversation with Ornette Coleman (on PDX JAzz). I haven't heard most of it yet - it's longish - so consider this a heads-up and not a comment. He sounds like his usual elusive self so far, though. Enjoy.

Attribution

Brian Morton in the latest Point of Departure on the question of attribution and its role in the listening to music:

"What matters (...) is whether attribution and re-attribution help you listen to music – or appreciate any other art - in a potentially creative new way. In an ideal world, of course, we’d approach all music unlabelled, unattributed, unburdened with critical reputation, as we presumably once did in a more organic and less differentiated society.

(...) Part of our job, of course, as music “critics” is precisely to offer those textual references and contextual information. It makes some difference to how you hear a record if you know the artist’s previous form, and it significantly deepens appreciation at one level. On the other hand, if any work of art is to be considered entire and autotelic, then such knowledge is by definition irrelevant and probably misleading. Jazz, because it is an art form that treads so many philosophical dividing lines – not least that between the personal and impersonal, “works” and work, now and that oppressive thing, history– seems uniquely susceptible to questions of this sort."

As one with interest in the history of music, sure, I agree. As far as its importance in the listening process, while knowledge of who is playing - or even, who has written the song/tune/work in question - without doubt will play a role either on a conscious or subconscious level, in my experience it has played too big a role for some, especially for lesser critics. There have been dubious cases, in my opinion, where artists have been bumped up a grade or two seemingly on the basis of their names or the names of the contributors alone. A recent Solomon Burke record could serve as an example. Where it to my ears, and at least one other guy, sounded dull and uninspired, it was much heralded here, there and everywhere much due to its - undoubtedly impressive -list of contributing songwriters. Little attention was payed to the fact that almost all of the songs where far from the best work of either one of the songwriters in question. Some perspective is needed, though I have no doubt the best critics don't let the question of attribution get in the way of the listening itself.

Portland Jazz Festival

From The Seattle Times: Avant-garde pays off at Portland Jazz Festival. Ornette Coelman and Cecil Taylor headlined. Conclusion:

"With so much talk today about jazz dying out, moving to Europe, becoming stale or unfashionable, Portland's resurrection of the avant-garde was a smart move, galvanizing a large, often young audience."

Tord Gustavsen gets no rave, tho'. I'm not surprised.

Hard to Be Human

(Hype, not hype: Though I may be underestimating my readership base, I don't think it is strong enough to start let alone sustain any blog-hype. So there).




I've only played it a few times yet, but the opening salvos of this record sounds very promising indeed, especially "Hard Feelings", the first track and single, which initally reminded me of the Mekons' great "Hard to be Human Again", at least in the delivery if not so much in sound or theme ("Hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, hard feelings"/"Hard to be, hard to be human again"). Subsequent listens will reveal whether or not it's a keeper.

Si Se Puede

As I was watching Barak Obama speak to an audience in Texas last night, I noticed several banners among the audience which read "Si Se Puede". From what I gather, that is the Spanish translation of Obama's now famous "Yes We Can" mantra. It is also, incidentally, the title of one of the tracks on Matt Lavelle Trio's Spiritual Power, one of my favorite jazz records of 2007 (Plus, the motto of the United Farm Workers). This provides me with the opportunity to not only big-up that record, but also to post this suprisingly good Will-I-am/Obama/superstar collab.

Oh, this is bullshit.

I shouldn't really respond to this, but I'm going to anyhow. BBC's pop music coordinator Lesley Douglas claims, according to Idolator, "that men respond to music on an intellectual level, whereas female listeners have an emotional reaction to songs". Despite it being a stupid generalization of archaic proportions, I bulked at what Mrs. Douglas thinks of as the intellectual side of music, i.e. "the tracks, where albums have been made, that sort of thing". Trivia, in other words, is the intellectual response in question and not e.g. thinking about what the music means, the lyrics, the interplay between the two, it's place in society, historically or contemporary, everything that the EMP Pop Conference stands for, themes that in turn cannot be so easily removed from emotional responses as Douglas seems to think.

No Depression shuts down

Via Christgau. Never read much in it, though I know several people who are, or at least were, very fond of the magazine.

Xgau sets the record straight

The anti-Vampire Weekend backlash got a lesson in Afropop from the one crit that actually knows something about it a few days ago. In his new blog (he has a new blog?), Robert Christgau attacks several bloggers for getting VW's Afro-tinged references wrong. Several others have chipped in with similar sentiments (see links in Xgau's piece, and also Zoilus). Take that, naysayers.

What's interesting to note is that, apart from their ill concieved idea of calling their music Upper West Side Soweto, both those positive and negative to VW's schtick seem to have blown the Afro-bits of their music out of proportion. In reality, only a few songs have a clear Afro-tinged sound, and as has been noted by others that sound is more like some of the Afro-influenced American pop/rock music of the 80s than that of their fellow African musicians. They are interpretations of those sounds rather than copies. Plus, it sounds pretty clear to me that VW use the Afro-interpretations as deliberate tools, as in the trying-to-pick-up-a-freshman-girl "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa", where they state "This feels so unatural / Peter Gabriel too", which pretty much says that they're very much aware of the fact that they may not get afropop right themselves (much less getting nookie) as well as an awareness of the issues that trying to play it at all may raise. If there is a solid afro-influence to VW's music, it's more to do with what SFJ claimed was lacking in current indie rock/pop; you know space, bass and all that (their geekie Ivy-league influences notwithstanding).

Reissues

Two great albums have been reissued this February. Just as The Feelies' pre-indie/post-punk/new wave classic Crazy Rhythms from 1980 is about to hit the store, I recieve a notice through SquidCo's mailing list that Touchin' on Trane, the gloriously careening racket made by Chales Gayle with William Parker and Rashied Ali in 1991 and my favorite jazz record of that decade, is being reissued by the German label Jazzwerkstatt, albeit with a different cover image. Great news, indeed.

Big list update. Now for coffee.

What it says on the tin: I've updated my lists of favorites from 2007 if anyone is interested. Still have a few records pending and/or falling between the 6+/7- (or B+/A- if that's your bag) bracket that may or may not be added later.

Packaging

Seriously, if you're in a record company and worried about increased downloading, illegal or otherwise, why on earth would you wanna make listening to music even more difficult by wrapping a piece of cardboard around the CD that cannot be removed by any other means than brute force, as is the case with the packaging of the delightful-though-not-terrible-different-form-the-EP-that-was-leaked-last-year-even-if-I-wish-they'd-kept-that-song-"Ladies of Cambridge-which-is-ace new record from Vampire Weekend. (And if you're able to read Norwegian, let me point you to this write-up of the album from Platekompaniet's on-line shop, which is a much better take on the album than any other review I've read so far in the Norwegian press).

Reissues + Idolator's thing-a-ma-jig

Forgot to list reissues (jazz) yeaterday, 'though in my defence I've not made enough of an effort to follow the flow of reissues this year, jazz or otherwise. In some cases I've not even listened to the reissue if I own an older issue of the album. Out of those I have picked up, they would rank something like this:

1. Thelonious Monk Trio: Thelonious Monk Trio (1952-54, Prestige)
2. Charlie Mingus: Tijuana Moods (1957, RCA Victor/Legacy)
3. Alber Ayler: The Hilversum Sessions (1964, ESP)
4. William Parker & Hamid Drake: First Communion + Piercing The Veil (2000, AUM Fidelity)
5. Andrew Hill: Compulsion (1965, Blue Note)

As a side note, I just want to mention that Black Saint relaunched their online music store last year, and while they are not actually reissues, many of the records in their great catalogue have not been widely available for some time (The same is true of a few other lables as well, e.g. Candid).

I also noticed that my 2007 list is part of Tom Hull's Year End Mop Up, which I take as an honor and proof that someone is still reading my blog. Thanks, sir.

Idolator's 2007 Poll.

Jazz in 2007 + the Village Voice's Poll

A tad bit late, but a post that was meant to coincide with and comment on the Village Voice's 2007 Jazz Poll. My initial reaction after seeing the list was to question whether I was completely out of touch with the knowledgeable people polled. My second reaction, after reading Francis Davis' enlightening comments, lessened that feeling but rather mirrored some of the reactions to Destination-Out!'s 90s Poll, strengthening the contention that we are indeed in an age where there seems to be less and less consensus about what good jazz is. Nonetheless, the top of the list is filled with old timers (Mingus (!!!), Brecker, Lovano/Jones, Hancock, Lincoln). No harm in that as such, but most of those records operate in fairly safe waters, in my opinion (and some of them I don't think are all that good). It leaves me with the feeling that the real winner this year were those who feel that jazz was better "back in the day" and/or played by those old enough to remember "how to". The first album on VV's poll to appear among my favorites is Andersons/Drake's From the River to the Ocean at 16. My list would look something like this:

1. (((Powerhouse Sound))): Oslo/Chicago: (((Breaks))) (Atavistic)
2. Assif Tsahar/Cooper-Moore/Chad Taylor: Digital Primitives (Hopscotch)
3. Adam Lane/Ken Vandermark/Markus Broo/Paal Nilssen-Love: 4 Corners (Clean Feed)
4. Mostly Other People Do the Killing: Shamokin'!!! (Hot Cup/CD Baby)
5. Billy Bang Quintet Featuring Frank Lowe: Above & Beyond: An Evening in Grand Rapids (Justin Time)
6. Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake: From the River to the Ocean (Thrill Jockey)
7. Tyshawn Sorey Quartet: That/Not (Firehouse 12)
8. Matthew Shipp: Piano Vortex (Blue Series)
9. David S. Ware Quartet: Renunciation (AUM Fidelity)
10. Kahil El'Zabar's Infinity Orchestra: Transmigration (Delmark)
    

Happy to see Tyshawn Sorey do well both in the main poll and getting top spot for best debut. He would get my vote for debut of the year.

Honorable mentions to:

• Matt Lavelle Trio: Spiritual Power (Silkheart)
• Jewels and Binoculars: Ships With Tattood Sails (Upshot)
• The Claudia Quintet: For (Cuneiform)
• David Murray Black Saint Quartet: Sacred Ground (Justin Time)
• William Parker: Corn Meal Dance (AUM Fidelity)
  

Matt Lavelle is probably the one record out of those most likely to push for a top ten spot. Murray and Parker both made good but slightly disappointing records (even having a similar post-bop-with-vocals starting point). Yet to hear Happy Apple's Back on Top - praised by Tom Hull - in any length, but it does sound promising.

I Told You So + Happy New Year

Every year people seem too eager to review the year in music, and every year I get asked to submit top 10s as early as November. Similarly, every year good records pop out from nowhere late in the year or sometimes even well into the following year (which is what happened when I discovered This Moment in Black History's It Takes a Nation..., released in 2006, as late as January 2007).

The best late comer last year was Shamokin'!!! by the splendidly named Mostly Other People Do the Killing. May even crack the top ten, but even if it doesn't, it's still a highly enjoyable, hard swinging bop record.

I don't have internet connection at home for the time being, but hopefully more regular blogging will resume in a short while.

Dissensus, jazz style-e

In discussing the results of Destination-Out!'s 90s jazz poll to which I contributed earlier this year, a friend and colleague noted that although he found it a fun and interesting exercise, he was a bit disappointed in the lack of consensus among the contributors; very few records got more than one vote. If I understood him correctly, he felt that this made it difficult to find a common base to work from when discussing music, in this particular circumstance 90's jazz.

Why do I mention this? Well, PopMatters have posted their Best Jazz of 2007-list, and none of their top 12 (!?!) records are similar to my picks of the year. 'Though I'm certainly going to give the Robert Glasper record another spin, and the Joe Lovano and Hank Jones collab is fine enough, but the other records failed to grab my attention this year (sorry, Mr. Cline). Let's agree to disagree, then.

Talent Alert: Tyshawn Sorey

Tyshawn Sorey Quartet: That/Not (Firehouse 12, cat.no. FH 12-04-02-oo5, 2007)

Tyshawn Sorey is a young (b. 1980) multi-instrumentalist and composer who has been making a name for himself playing with such notable figures as Butch Morris, Dave Douglas, Muhal Richard Abrams, Hamiet Bluiett, and Anthony Braxton, plus as a member of Fieldwork with pianist Vijay Iyer and saxophonist Steve Lehman. I first noticed him drumming on the Sirone Bang Ensemble's Configuration from 2005, and doing a pretty decent job at that.

Sorey has just released his first record as a leader. It is called That/Not and is released by Firhouse 12, a New Haven label which also functions as a live venue. Sorey says about the album:

"This record is very different from the work that I do with other ensembles, (...) I am a drummer who composes music; the function of this album is not a demonstration of my abilities as a drummer, but my interests as an artist. My objective with this music is to question who and why we are, to question the very nature of what it means to perceive something. The music here is our life and soul expressed in sound."

Ambitious fella, but the record is very interesting indeed. It explores the use of space, minimalism and repetition in a way that makes me think of Steve Reich. In between are dynamic bursts of more songlike structures - mostly quiet and sombre, others more forceful - that hints more than it plays to the jazz tradition, much in the same way William Parker's excellent 90's records did. Well done, and I'm looking forward to hear more from mr. Tyshawn Sorey.

The album can be streamed in it's entirety from the label's website (follow the link above), and purchased from Amazon and Downtown Music Gllery among others.

Get the vote out!

The non-Pazz and Jop part 2. December 21 is a bit early, no? Any guesses for the top spot? M.I.A.? Arcade Fire? Spoon, even?

Duke Ellington - Afro-Eurasian Eclipse

Duke Ellington - "Chinoiserie" from Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (Fantasy, 1971)



Duke Ellington, via Marshall McLuhan:

"(...) the whole world is going oriental, (...) no one will be able to retain his or her identity".

For "oriental" insert "miscegenated", if you will. Judging by the recent discussions concerning indie, it didn't quite work out that way, did it?

Last Friday I sat down to write what I had hoped would be my final thoughts on the subject, but computers being the mischievous things that they are, this one decided to delete the whole thing, and stupid me had made no back up of the piece. Infuriated, as you may expect, I let it be. But I still have a few more thoughts I'd like to jot down - among other things the problem of defining indie or any genre for that matter - and will hopefully do so in the next few days. In the meantime, enjoy the fabulous piece of "oriental" music posted above, and note in particular the kicking tenor solo by Harold Ashby.

It’s Not Only Rock ’n’ Roll

In case you missed it in last Sunday's New York Times, John Pareles on Tom Stoppard's play "Rock 'n' Roll" and the Plastic People of the Universe.

Point of Departure

I have to tip my hat to Point of Departure, an excellent online zine which has covered jazz and improvised music in bi-monthly issues since September 2005, though I only discovered it earlier this year. It is run by one Bill Shoemaker, who also contributes reviews and columns. Issue 14 (November, 2007) was just posted, and contains a column by Art Lange on Gunther Schuller, plus reviews of Muhal Richard Abrams and Albert Ayler's Hilversum Sessions. Go read and update your links!