[NewMusic] Fat New Explosion

[Chris Broderick]

I stand well corrected.  Thanks for that info.

In recompense, here's a short story by the late great
Donald Barthelme that seems somehow apropos.

http://sarahdeming.typepad.com/spiralstaircase/2007/03/the_king_of_jaz.html

-Chris


--- Matthew Goodheart <matthew at matthewgoodheart.com>
wrote:

> On Mar 15, 2007, at 5:49 PM, Chris Broderick wrote:
> 
> > I'd say that Cecil is an iconoclast, in that his
> music was (and is)
> > percieved by some as an attack on jazz traditions.
> But I imagine he'd
> > be irritated to be thought of as such, and hardly
> thinks of his music
> > as attacking the settled beliefs of other
> musicians, institutions,
> > etc.  He's less interested in tearing down
> institutions than he is in
> > approaching music-making in his own way.  I doubt
> he's much interested
> > in shocking the prudes or raising the ire of
> critics.
> 
> I doubt this very much. Sorry for the length here,
> but. . .
> 
> During a panel discussion in 1966 Cecil asked for:
> 
>   “a boycott  by Negro musicians of all jazz clubs
> in the United States.
>   I also propose that there should be a boycott by
> Negro jazz musicians
> of all record companies . . . all trade papers
> dealing with music . . .
> and that all Negro musicians resign from every
> federated union in this
> county. Let’s take away the music from the people
> who control it.”
> 
> In the Unit Structure's liner notes he wrote:
> 
> "Time seen not as beats to be measured after
> academy’s podium angle.
> The classic order, stone churches with pillars
> poised, daggers ripping
> skies, castrati robed in fever pitch, stuff the
> stale sacrament,
> bloodless meat, for the fastidious eye; ‘offering’
> sought the
> righteous; only found sterility in squares/never to
> curl limbs in
> reaction to soundless bottoms."
> 
> In article in the Village Voice in 1963 he wrote:
> 
> "Crtitics are sustained by our vitality. From afar,
> the uninformed egos
> ever growing arbitrarily attempt to give absolutes."
> 
> The comments I heard from him during rehearsals in
> the mid-90's were
> right in line with these notions.
> 
>  From the way I understand it, Taylor sees
> institutions as the ones who
> are attacking jazz tradition by destroying the
> creative forces that
> jazz represents: he is the one salvaging
> it/embracing it. He has said
> that “The greatness of jazz occurs because it
> includes all the mores
> and folkways of Negroes during the last fifty
> years.” The way I
> understand it, Cecil's "music" carries within it a
> rather radical (for
> the time) unification of history, individuality,
> spirituality, racial
> awareness, and cultural revolution. He is, in fact,
> extremely
> interested in tearing down traditional conceptions
> of music, technical
> practices, institutional authority,
> political-economic systems, even
> overturning the very language with which one talks
> about these things.
> It is deeply embedded in a philosophy that
> institutions and the "status
> quo" are corrupted things, and his practices
> represent a return to the
> deepest foundations of music; as Archie Shepp called
> his work, a
> "natural music." Here's a final quote from an
> interview with Len Lyons
> in the early 80's:
> 
> "I'm interested in the cultural importance of the
> life of the music.
> The instrument a man uses is only a tool with which
> he makes his
> comment on the structure of the music. That's why
> the evaluation of
> what a cat says about how he plays music is not too
> far from the
> noninteresting things he does when he is playing.
> That person wouldn't
> have too profound an understanding of what has
> happened in the music
> and the culture. We have to define the procedures
> and examine the
> aesthetics that have shaped the history of the
> music."
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Bay Area New Music Discussion Group
> NewMusic at music.mills.edu
> http://music.mills.edu/mailman/listinfo/newmusic
> 



 
____________________________________________________________________________________
We won't tell. Get more on shows you hate to love 
(and love to hate): Yahoo! TV's Guilty Pleasures list.
http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/265