Blue: The Murder of Jazz

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Summary: Piazza and Nisenson: architects of "straw men" and "essence"
Review: An irritating book. The argument is easily dismantled once someone picks up Nisenson's strategy. He speaks of the "spirit" of jazz and its constant violation by the "neoclassicists" who obsess with eliminating what Nisenson identifies is that spirit. I don't leave convinced that Nisenson has captured "the" spirit and "the taming" of that spirit.

Tom Piazza's book sends a message that is the complete inverse of Nisenson's. The neoclassicists are the vanguard for the "sprit" of jazz.

Both books are so fundamentalist, emotional and subjective in their perspectives that neither will change the mindset of anyone who has or has not chosen sides in these "jazz wars."

Sometimes I wonder if the bulk of jazz musicians really believe they are in a war or if the war is something that exists in the minds of critics and fans. It's hard to tell since Piazza and Nisenson seem uninterested in conversing with what they see as the fundamentally heretical opposition.

Piazza's book is worse because he doesn't attempt doesn't even attempt to structure his thoughts into the form of a coherent argument. Nisenson, at least, is more thoughtfully committed to providing the reader a completed work, which is a polemical work. That's not a problem in itself. However, it is so polemical and so obsessed with the social influences, personalities, words, and "anti-jazz" spirit of neoclassicism that he doesn't bother analyzing actual specific pieces of music that they make. He just keeps claiming that "neoclassicists" lack what "Miles called 'that thing." He tries to define "that thing" throughout most of the book by examining the jazz eras for their "innovative" and "reactionary" elements.

However, the book is thoroughly unconvincing because NOT ONE, NOT ONE, piece of music by the "neoclassicists" is analyzed for content. It's just all "anti-innovation," disembodied from "social environment," dispassionate, and cold. He simply categorizes a huge body of work as being anti-jazz neoclassicism. I find Nisenson to be as reactionary as the "straw man" he is criticizing or, should I say, condemning to hell.

Nisenson and Piazza are fundamentalists convinced that they have perfect conceptions of the essence of jazz. They create straw men but Nisenson is far less lazy in crafting his staw man and developing his conception of jazz's essence. Piazza just expects to do no work and have everyone buy into his argument.

Nisenson's book is overly repetitive, too whiny, and too detached from the creation of those he despises. I REPEAT: NOT ONE, NOT ONE, NOT ONE RECORDING BY the so-called "neoclassicists" is analyzed for content. Books like this don't have to be written by the most scholarly of music critics. I just want to see an attempt to get at the content of the real rather than the hypothetical music of those that jazz writers identify as being in the destructive opposition.

I warn readers of books like this. Please be careful of these lines drawn in the battlefield and the labels/categories assigned in the heat of battle. Listen to music carefully, reflect on it, record your own responses and feelings on its content. Be very skeptical when writers avoid the actual content of the music they are criticizing. Piazza and Nisenson are amateur social scientists/philosophers making an artform of overstatement about musical trends they refuse to examine for musical content.

They both know a lot about music but they both obsess and speculate so much on the social motivations of their perceived opposition that they willfuly neglect an examination of the actual music created by that opposition.

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Summary: Eye-Opening
Review: As a 46 year old European who moved to the US three years ago this book was something of an eye-opener. It was helpful in understanding the tensions and in-fighting that takes place in American jazz. Although I am no longer sure what I call "jazz" qualifies as the real thing. My impression from the book is that in many American circles music produced by white Europeans cannot be described as jazz.

I agree with the book in that I don't hear a lot of interesting new jazz music coming out of the US at the moment, but probably I am looking in the wrong places. I would like someone to write a book that explains why there seems to be a dearth of US new music at the moment - is it all the fault of Marsalis?

For me the great jazz years were the 1970s (this could be my age, or I may be a moron). I started enjoying American jazz around 1972. Initially it was Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Weather Report and Gary Burton. Gradually I got into John Abercrombie, Oregon, Pat Metheny, Miles Davis, Bobby Previte, Bill Frisell, John Scofield, Larry Coryell, Mike Stern, George Russell, John Scofield and Carla Bley. Up to the end of the 1980s there seemed to be no end to the talent coming out of the US, and American jazz musicians seemed to have an amazing level of creativity. In recent years this flow of talent seems to have slowed down.

I think that the jazz critics are a major part of the problem. They tend to believe that the golden jazz years occurred before Miles went electric. The US jazz scene as presented in magazines like Downbeat seems caught in an insular time-warp, focusing on aging artists long past their peak, making music that sounds like stuff I have heard before. The music of Marsalis and the new traditionalists is popular with critics, even though it seems like a pointless exercise in pastiche.

The critics have a problem in accepting jazz with electric instruments or use different rhythms. They also tend to snobbishly promote difficult music e.g. Coltrane. Most critics don't really understand rock or know a lot about classical music. For people of my age, rock was the music of our generation.

Annoyingly in his book, Nisenson writes about the technical superiority of jazz musicians over their rock counterparts, but I am not sure this is always the case. A lot of the old jazz musicians were self taught, and 1970s rock pianists like Elton John, Billy Joel, Rick Wakeman and Nicky Hopkins were probably "technically" better than Monk, Ellington or Basie who did not go to Music College. However, there is more to musicianship than technique. In his Kind of Blue book, Nisenson names Joaquin Rodrigo as Rodrigos, which is a small mistake, but more worrying I did not get the impression that he had heard Concierto de Aranjuez as a classical piece. With Spanish guitar and a symphony orchestra the music sounds a lot better than the version on Sketches of Spain recorded with trumpet and jazz band.

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Summary: Historians don't MAKE history, they just STUDY those who do
Review: Musician and author, Bill Cole writes in his biography of John Coltrane, "In music the course has been to investigate the structural manifestations of jazz and put importance on THAT far exceeding its worth and to call THAT scholarship. 'In structural [mode analysis], where form is held to determine content, its value is inflated beyond all reason, with the result that an analysis of how a thing is shaped or done is virtually now regarded as supplying the key to the essence of its being...'" (page 51) This consideration becomes particularly relevant in regards to the arguments presented by Nisenson in this book. Nisenson concentrates his attention on the work of Wynton Marsalis and those who reside under his banner at Lincoln Center, reprimanding the Wyntonians on many levels. For one, jazz has ALWAYS been the idiom of pioneers: Satch, Hawk, Duke, Dexter Gordon, Monk, Bird, Dizzy, Miles, 'Trane and many others who defied the conventions of their time (which was not often favored by the press.) It has ALWAYS been essential of any significant player to have a style of one's own. When the author consider's Wynton's musicianship in this regard, Mr. Marsalis seems to fall short. This is not meant to imply that Mr. Marsalis lacks overall ability. Marsalis DOES know how to play the trumpet well. His proficiency, however, never transcends technical understanding of forensic "correctness." As a player he aspires for historical accuracy (according to what he and his PURPORT to be "The Jazz Tradition") rather than dauntless individuality which is its own tradition. As a player, Wynton sounds like everyone who preceeded him. The real tragedy of this is that he is lauded for it. Another reprisal posed by Nisenson is of the hubristic position taken by the neo-classicists in that they feel entitled to imperiously ordain to the jazz community what is and is not "authentic." You don't have to be a genius to understand why no single criterion can define a music so diverse... esspecially when the principles are so stringently ultra-conservative. Nisenson takes a detailed inventory of the narrow parameters by which the neo-classicists appraise the value of an individual's work and then spends the majority of the book applying these standards to each generation in jazz's genealogy. The revelation of this is that when this dogma is applied, too many musicians central to the jazz tradition are discounted. One other issue addressed is the overall politics surrounding the situation at Lincoln Center. Nisenson makes an astute observation that the musicians seem to be following the critics which certainly IS NOT indigenous to the jazz tradition and is certainly to the detriment of ANY art form. Another observation is that Jazz At Lincoln Center seems to have hiring policies and programing that tend to exclude white musicians. When the classical establishment was accused of the same practices it was considered not only racist, but unacceptable. It is hard to imagine calling it by any other name when the circumstances are reversed. There is also something to be said for the quality of performances that take place under the leadership of Mr. Marsalis. The itenerary seems less about educating the public about the merits of jazz as it does to finance Wynton's fleet of groups who churn out rather watered-down, logically "safe", risk-free interpretations of music that was once compelling for being none of the above. I gave this book three stars because someone NEEDED to write this book. Nisenson is not an outstanding writer by any stretch of the imagination. There are times when I felt as though he presumed too much and did not explain enough, but for the most part he presents his accumen with efficiency and takes his time to present us with the evidence. As Leroi Jones said in his book "Black Music", "A bad solo, no matter how well it is played, is still a bad solo." I would contend in defense of this book with the following - A valid point, regardless of how poorly stated, is still a valid point. Nisenson pleads exuberantly, if not elloquently, for an art form that teeters perilously on the verge of extinction at the hands of its' paper heros.

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Summary: This polemic will make the jazz establishment sweat!
Review: Musicians like myself are frequently amused by polemic like these. In the first place, most workaday (but in many cases, top-drawer) jazz players I know probably couldn't even afford admission into Lincoln Center to hear what all the shootin' is about, a fact that in itself speaks volumes about how little has changed in the BUSINESS of music and how its establishment totally disrespects its practitioners.

Having said that, I think Nisenson had a hell of a lot of courage to "tilt at windbags" and go after the high and mighty the way he did. Personally, for what it's worth, I happen to agree with his assessment of things. If he were a musician worrying about career, etc., the smart money would say to keep his mouth shut. There is currently a surfeit of gifted musicians across the stylistic spectrum that can only be termed "disenfranchised", for many of the reasons Nisenson alludes to (eg.: ageism, commercialism, Crow-Jim, control of the industry by the few, critics falling in line with the "sainted one" and his minions the better to advance their own phoney-baloney careers, etc.). Nisenson cuts through this malarkey to expose this. Whether one agrees or disagrees with his assertions, he deserves credit for his courage and for "afflicting the comfortable". He raises issues that need raising. Perhaps after reading this, musicians will finally realize that there is strength in unity AND diversity, and that we are all on the same side in the pursuit of our individual visions of beauty.

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Summary: Jazz must die so that it may live?
Review: When I started reading this book, it was at a time when I was a rock and blues fan trying to get into jazz and understand it better. One question I always had at the back of my mind was, "Why is it that I usually like jazz records from the Fifties better than jazz records from the Nineties?" Another was, "What separates good jazz from bad?" Nisenson answers those questions in spades. I can understand some of the criticisms of the book in the reviews below, but despite its title, Blue: The Murder Of Jazz is a great book for beginning jazz fans to increase their understanding of the music. Serious jazz listeners will love it or hate it depending on their point of view, but I found it to be a quick read and highly informative.