Comments (11)

hm... you should let music suck you in, and let jazz be one of the tunnels, but be sure to go down the other tunnels too.... it's all fascinating.

we should seriously be able to delete comments in here, just for the rare case where we accidentally 'double' enter or something, so that we don't have to fill another comment box w/ this mumbo-jumbo seeing how we can't delete the second comment. :P

Jazz is the longest and darkest tunnel though, with the brightest light at the end, and I'll be in here the rest of my life, I reckon.

Of course I don't expect you to understand what I'm saying... unless you understand the music.

For me, all forms of music from the most generic rock and roll to the most abstract experimental noise have a spirit in them. I seem to derive some sort of emotion from anything I hear. That's not to say that we all enjoy everything all the time, but it means that music is a power all on its own not neccessarily bound by the limits of everything else. Yep...

Oh, and Andy, I had a dream last night where I was playing a bass for some reason. I thought of you.

oh, trust me. i understand the music.... of course, i understand the instrumental aspect of it more. i play clarinet, remember? i didn't have the time to be in the [awesome, if i say so myself] jazz band at my old school, but i was involved.

i don't know if i could limit myself to just one tunnel, however. i think i like the variety of music out there too much. :D

I agree with Andy. All music is facinating, but jazz has something that the others just don't have. You listen to it and can just see the history of it fold out in front of you for you to see. There's just an emotion of past greats in jazz that I don't hear in any other genre of music.

What about some of America's vintage guitar icons?

Watch a video on Monk or Sun Ra, or if you're really feeling adventurous Ornette Coleman. Free jazz is at the height of improvisatory music, which is the most emotion filled music there is. To me music is a language... rock and roll has a grade school vocabulary, whereas some other genres have more. A greater vocabulary lets you think and express yourself more clearly (than raw down-and-dirty grunge and whatnot). I think there's a necessity for all these genres too; there's something just nice and pure about a simple song but it's hard to get revelations or epiphanies from them. Vintage guitar icons like Robert Johnson are absolutely amazing as well, but maybe for different reasons. I listen to Jimi Hendrix for instance because I like putting myself in the mindset of the average 60s pop fan and getting blown away. Then I like transferring that feeling to my current mindset and imagine the possibilities of what could blow me away. Of course when I'm listening to it I never think about these things.

Anyway, one of the other things I love about jazz is that almost every musician is a philosopher... and that introspectiveness and reflection come out clearly in the music. Jazz is about life, not because it has sax and double bass, rather because the music is coming straight from the heart - and not taking any alternate paths.

So I suppose the main difference in the complications of the two is something like this. Jazz says, "I need to understand the wold around me and love it as much as I can," whereas Rock and Roll says, "Don't let the Man get you down." It's not a release, it's an exploration.

But where do you draw lines between the many styles?

a style isn't just a sound, it's an idea...