Originally Posted By: bobcflatpicker
...I think somewhere along the line the upper echelon of jazz musicians forgot that music is supposed to be musical, aka “pleasing to the ears”.

You can call that “dumbing down” the music if you like, but it shouldn’t take a Masters Degree in Music Theory to enjoy a song.


How do you feel about classical, Bob? The same?

Yes it does take education and acquired taste to enjoy both genre's, classical and jazz. I've said it many times here, jazz is rapidly taking it's deserved place next to classical and it will continue to be taught and heard in the same way as well. Taught in universities and heard at selected concerts. The highly educated crowd is not enough to maintain a national presence for jazz. The local small jazz scene is almost gone, you can still find it but it's not easy anymore. I'm guessing it's mostly found in the big college towns now just like at one big town in the midwest had a string quartet in a local pub. Music students will dig it but nobody else.

I'm not being elitist at all but look at history. Why do they call the 50's and early 60's the golden age of TV? It's because at that time TV's were quite expensive and only the upper middle class and higher could afford one so those are the people the shows were aimed at so the quality was much higher. Somebody with a Master's degree in anything is not interested in Gilligans Island or He Haw. Note those shows didn't happen until the explosion of more affordable TV's in the mid to late 60's. I remember reading and having lots of conversations about the loss of good TV. Prior to that it was Your Show of Shows with Sid Ceasar and Steve Allen because that comedy was complex and required some intellect to appreciate. Same as the music of that era, jazz. It's been in a long, slow decline since. But I fully realize it's only in a decline from my educated old fart point of view, the vast majority of people one generation behind me don't see it that way at all. They say good riddance.

How many times have a lot of us here mentioned the state or lack of it of the current education system in the US? This is the reason for the Billboard show last night, no more music appreciation classes. Five percent of that show was actually musical, the rest is something else and don't ask me to define it, I have no clue.

No doubt the kids love it, the MGM Grand venue is the same one they have the big fights in, it seats over 15,000 and it was packed plus parts of the show was broadcast from other casinos and those rooms were totally packed too. I wouldn't be surprised if the Billboard Awards brought over 100,000 young adults to Vegas. It looked like 95% of the crowd was 21-28. That is the future of "music".

Of course, not totally yet. It takes time for the millennials to make their presence felt but as they get older and can afford to spend more, what I saw last night will become the current mainstream and pretty much all of our various styles of "classic" music will be gone. The 80's big hair bands, classic funk, rock and roll, jazz, all of it.

We'll be having this completely irrelevant discussion at the nursing home.

Bob

Last edited by jazzmammal; 05/20/13 03:56 PM.
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