[NewMusic] The breathtakingly bad John Zorn

[Matt Davignon]

I feel about John Zorn about the same way that I feel about John Cage.
Both have done some work that has opened up the language of "this
music" in a major way. I was crazy about their work when I first heard
it, but eventually came to the realization that I was impressed by the
work more than I truly enjoyed it.

Which leads me to an interesting distinction among experimental
musicians that came up in a different discussion this week. There are
musicians whose goal is to wow an audience with their
ideas/techniques/aggressiveness/tools/weird-noises/range-of-musical-knowledge,
etc, and then there are those whose goal is to make music that people
will enjoy listening to. I find that while the former category fits
more with the definition of 'experimental music', and thus gets more
attention, most of what I listen to now falls in the latter category.

Matt

On 6/27/07, Jacob Lindsay <jacobmakesnoise at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Nice article I think.  I'm by no means an expert on
> Zorn, nor do I care to be, but this article tends to
> sum up my feelings about him all the same.
>
> The overlap between free improvised music and
> hipsterism is interesting.  For some it's the road in,
> which is fine, as long as you move on from there. I
> often wonder why some hipster groups doing mediocre
> work in the "out-jazz" genre get audiences that are
> much larger than other groups that are far better than
> them.  Well...I don't wonder, I know.  As Hajdu says,
> it's all about the status, making the scene, etc.  Oh
> well...there's my rant for today.  Later.
>
>
> --- Tom Duff <td at pixar.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > An "appreciation" of John Zorn, by David Hajdu, from
> > The New Republic.
> >
> > http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dcg26k79_139f6pt25
> >
> > "To say that Zorn is one of a kind, as he certainly
> > is, is to ignore the
> > larger matters of his nature as an artist and, more
> > significantly, the
> > nature of his work, much of which is thin and
> > gimmicky, and some of which
> > is elementally corrupt".
> >
> > It's pretty obvious that Hadju and Zorn differ
> > fundamentally on the nature
> > of music and the composer's role in it.  My
> > experience is that when people
> > have aesthetic disagreements and one of them gets
> > angry (I think accusing
> > an artist of being "elementally corrupt" entails
> > anger) it's usually
> > because his inability to understand the other's
> > point of view leads him to
> > believe that his opponent cannot really hold his
> > stated position and so
> > must be insincere.
> >
> > --
> > Tom Duff.  Smallist in residence.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bay Area New Music Discussion Group
> > NewMusic at music.mills.edu
> > http://music.mills.edu/mailman/listinfo/newmusic
> >
>
>
> Jacob Lindsay
> http://www.bayimproviser.com/artistdetail.asp?artist_id=44
> http://www.myspace.com/mryellowcake
>
>
>
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