Jazz for aficionados

stuartk, you're not understanding me at all. When I hear a jazz group I can hear what is planned and when a musician goes into improvisation. That's a no brainer. Coltrane on "My Favorite Things" plays with his band the setup going through the melody a few times. Then he goes off on his own and flies high above the band who is just trying to keep up with him. I think I understand jazz a lot better than you think I do. 

When L.A. had a commercial jazz station they would play what they called "soft" jazz. Sade, Diana Krall, maybe Davis playing "Some Day My Prince Will Come," and Trane playing something off his album "Ballads." I have an extremely abstract ear from listening to "modern" abstract classical. Shostakovich, Bartok, Stravinsky. In modern classical music the beat can be all over the place. Listen to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. 

I think in the jazz you're talking about nobody is on the beat yet it is implied and they all know where it is. And I know where it is. Coltrane often plays like that. And Davis on some of his later stuff. Bebop has syncopation. 

In classical music, there is light classical, early classical with composers like Bach, and even up to Mozart. Then the Romantic Era begins with Beethoven and people see that as a more serious classical. And more difficult classical comes with 20th century and 21st century classical.

It would be so difficult for me to explain to you my understanding of music, but it begins in the Upper Paleolithic with people who lived in caves. I know nobody knows what that music sounded like, but I think I know why they made music. It was a spititual thing. Just like Coltrane, Sanders, and Davis felt their music was spiritual. And I believe the shamans and creative artists were women. But that's another argument.

I'll stop with this. But I think you're really underestimating my understanding of jazz.

To be clear: the essence of music (Jazz or not) is not improvisation as such but it is rythm (an embodied gesture) .

The reason it is such is because the line between what is improvisation or not matter less than the difference between a felt rythm grounded in the musician gesture or a rythm metronomically imposed or used as an habit...

stuartk, sorry for my tirade. I have to admit that I felt insulted by what you said. I have mentioned how many live jazz concerts I have attended. How would it be possible for me to see so many live jazz concerts and not know what improvisation is? You can see it. Sometimes the band has musical scores which they look at for the setup and then the improviser goes off on their own and the backup no longer look at their scores. 

In regards to being lost, Malcolm Gladwell talks about types of artists in a New Yorker article called "Late Bloomers." He talks about two kinds of artists. One is exemplified by Picasso whom Gladwell says saw what he was going to paint in his head and then executed it. The other was exemplified by Cezanne who had to find his painting on the canvas while he was working. Action painters like de Kooning and Pollock were lost until they found themselves on the canvas. Another example might be Agatha Christie who did not know the ending of her crime novel until she got there. I think a lot of jazz musicians are lost until they find themselves in the spur of the moment on their instrument. That’s what I mean when I say I like being lost.

mahgister, very interesting what you say. I’m particularly interested in the word "gesture." What exactly do you mean by a musical gesture?

mahgister, very interesting what you say. I’m particularly interested in the word "gesture." What exactly do you mean by a musical gesture?

As i said i am not a musician and frogman could explain it better than me...

But "a musical gesture" is  an embodied rythm... Speech is born from embodied rythm as music is born from it too...

In an embodied rythm, musical time is internal to the gesture not external...

Poetry as music are grounded in embodied rythms...

This embodied rythm transcend all distinction of styles, genres, or the difference between written music and interpretation..

Why ?

Because the distance or the frontier separating improvisation from written music is created historically on the surface of the gesturing body of the speaker or of the musician... The embodied rythm is the hidden dimension, the fundamental musical qualia, the underground or the roots of all music...

This is why i could compared speaking about the musical time of musician as different as African yoruba master or Furtwangler... And Jazz musicians between these two extremes...

The meaning of music is in the embodied rythm in the gesture... The gesture express the musician body and instrument "timbre" which is a universal of music...The vibrating sound source , violin, drum, singer body, communicate an information about his internal state, his timbre, conveyed by an internal time and timing rythm like a breathing  which cannot be captured completely  by metronome abstraction...It can be abstractly described but the cost may be loosing his life...

It is why the african master said, this do not "roll"...

It is why Miles said, this "lag behind the beat"...

It is why Gergiev said about Furtwangler that he was among all maestro one who was able to let the music grow with and from  his internal time without imposing any  external time on it...The music cannot be separated from his timing embodied rythm...

I personaly think music and speech are born from the necessity from the mother communicating with his baby and calming it for survival...The mother body in synch with the baby body...It is also born from the males hunting synchronisation and communication... Hunting is silent  music or rythm and speech too... Embodied gestures means gestures executed as a rythm not in a discontinuous way but in a continuous flow...

In a collective hunt you must be  spontaneously act in an organized musical way...

@mahgister-

"I read a decade ago a story of a black musician who decided to  go back to Africa to study music there...

He encountered a master and discussing with him, the master said listening samplings of western music and jazz, this "does not roll"...

"this does not roll either"....Etc..."

The musician is Randy Weston.