Jazz for aficionados

@audio-b-dog 

I’m an old guy and I’ve heard a lot of music, and I’ve come to a point where I like what I like.

What I’ve found is that, with age, it’s become more challenging to avoid being constrained by preferences developed over decades of listening. I don’t know whether this is inevitable or to what degree this may be circumvented but for me, at least, it’s a real issue. It’s become harder and harder to discover music that really grabs me. This is one reason I lurk around this thread.  ;o)  

stuartk, I think it's true for everybody that as we age our tastes tend to get frozen in time. I also try to resist this by going to concerts and hearing new things. I live in L.A., so there's plenty of music around. I also have granddaughters (twins) who just entered college and they introduce me to new pop music. And I also poke around the internet and that's how I found this forum. As you know, one of my loves is Brazillian music, and I have checked out new Brazilian groups, but a lot of it is rap related. To me, rap has little to no feminine side, and often tends toward misogyny. Explaining my resistance to the misogynistic would take a long time. You'll have to read my book when I finish it.  

Tyray, thanks for the Brazilian site. I'll check it out. I bought the Black Orpheus album when I was in high school in the early sixties. The film blew me away and then I went out and bought the album. I took it to college and played it all the time. That and Stravisnky's Firebird. I beat that album up pretty bad but I have a perfect  copy in my collection now. I have a number of Elaine Elias CDs. But if you can, poke around, try to find Tania Maria. I think she'll blow you away. I heard her in L.A. a couple of times. You can't sit down and listen to her music. Another recording I'd recommend is Flora Purim's Encounter. I had that album for years and couldn't listen to it. It was too abstract for my ear. Then one day--boom--it hit me. I was totally into that s**t. I listen to her all the time when my wife isn't around. It's like nails scratching a blackboard to her. For Bossa Nova, the female voice that really gets to me is Maria Creuza. She's got this husky fragility that touches me. For the Salvador da Bahia music, try Maria Bethania. I have an album with her, Vinicius, and Toquinho in which they sing Samba Da Benacao which became famous in the French film A Man And A Woman, that famous samba you can't get out of your head once you've heard it.

@audio-b-dog

I don’t enjoy Rap for a variety of reasons. I haven’t listened to female rappers, so I don’t know whether they display a different perspective than the male rappers I’ve heard. To my ears, Rap sounds more like a spoken-word genre than music.  

Brazilian music is an area I’d like to explore more deeply. My favorite Brazilian recording is Milton Nascimento’s Clube Da Esquina , which is, of course, not jazz. 

You mentioned Flora Purim. I find much of her most popular work dated-sounding due to the Fusion influence that was dominant in the mid to late 70’s. However, I do enjoy her work in Chick Corea’s first, Latin-tinged Return to Forever group and her later "Perpetual Emotion’, which is in more of a mainstream Jazz vein.

stuartk, yes you're right about the fusion aspect of Flora Purim. But I like it. I think Tania Maria might also have some of that. I like music you want to dance to. I can also listen to more cerebral jazz, though. With Flora Purim see if you can find the album Encounter. It is very abstract to my ear, but maybe some fusion in places.