The Gods Have Spoken - Most Jazz Sucks!

Does jazz suck? A question being discussed on jazz blogs courtesy of a remark by Kurt Rosenwinkel on his Facebook page – as follows:

yo- most jazz now sucks. at least not the good s—. please can we all just make sure that the music doesnt suck? and get real if it does. take care of it. please! FWiW MF’s thx k

As I’m not one of Kurt’s followers (in more ways than one), and missed the remark and ensuing brouhaha, I came across this debate via Peter Hum’s excellent blog. The bassist and jazz curmudgeon Dwayne Burno weighed in with what can only be described as a rant against pretty much everybody (except himself presumably..), as follows:

most jazz today sucks because not many people trying to play what they believe JAZZ to be, really even KNOW what it IS or really should FEEL and SOUND like. ruined by the monetary pitfall of collegiate jazz higher education, undergrad to Ph.D, I have to laugh at all the kids with masters degrees that can’t play a blues, rhythm changes, a standard ballad, sit at a piano and comp two choruses of swinging blues, or just flat out SWING on their instrument. Everyone wants to make some jazz-hybrid concoction, magic BULL—- elixir to circumvent showing that deep down, they’re really rock and roll lovers that think jazz is something cool with no rules. there’s even a bulls—er’s manifesto you can buy and read talking about how effortlessly you can master the music and yourself, yada, f—ing yada, yada. YET, none have mastered anything enough to surpass the MASTERS like Tatum, Monk, Ellington, Coltrane, Parker, Gillespie, Basie and too many more to fit here. The idiot’s response would now be to talk of how old and outdated swing is. I go back to my statement where I said there are a great deal that THINK they KNOW what the MUSIC IS but are not even on the same planet because they haven’t and cannot deal with the prerequisites, like knowing how to swing and make music that sounds pleasing to the ear. It is not our job to allow d—heads at BEATDOWN and JazzTimes or any other pompous publication to dictate the direction of the music with the ignorance of their agenda or their underlying hatred and lack of respect of the music as the creative and expressive form and forum of art that it is. Our job as musicians is to soothe and heal the soul of those that listen to us. We may also stir up emotions and feelings and provoke contemplative thought as well but the backlash I know that is coming my way once I hit reply won’t be from those in the know or from those that can play this music. It will be from the posers and charlatans that work everyday to fool themselves as well as the fools they can rope in to listen to their sad s— because the truth hurts.

What strikes me about Dwayne Burno, both in this interview and others I’ve read, is that he is an incredibly bitter man. Rather than coming over as someone who is defending and promoting something he loves, he always seems to be just resentful of everyone else. The level of anger and bitterness (and the almost scary amount of capitalisation) he displays clouds any message he may have. He comes over as the kind of guy you would back away from if you met him in person and you inadvertently pressed his red button by mentioning the state of jazz today. He obviously believes he’s telling it like it is, but he comes over as just being an intemperate angry man. His dismissal of Kenny’s great book as being an attempt to provide a magic bullet for lazy musicians who don’t want to do any work, only shows that Burno has never read the book. He’s the jazz version of the choleric ex-army man who believes in compulsory service in the army as the cure-all for society’s ills.

Peter Hum described his diatribe as powerful and passionate, but for me it’s just so full of generalisations and half-truths and is delivered in such an intemperate way, that it is closer to being a foaming-mouthed rant than being powerful and passionate, and any points he may be making get lost in the bile he displays towards virtually everybody

And as for the ‘jazz sucks’ argument, (actually a completely daft generalisation using a scatter-gun approach worthy of the St Valentine Day Massacre), it is probably true to say that there is a lot of sub-standard jazz played these days, but the truth is that most jazz around the world is played by musicians who are not that great. Just like most pop music is played by very ordinary musicians, and most classical music too. The majority will always be ordinary, and their music may not be the most impressive advertisement for the art form, but then you get the better players who are the ones who define the music and move it forward.

And it’s always been thus – there seems to be an idea out there that in certain eras all the jazz players were great. But that’s just not true. History is written by the winners, and the great players we hear from the 30s, 40s and 50s were, for the most part, the best players around. And for every great jazz artist of that era, you can be sure that there were hundreds of jazz hacks in every city in America, playing jazz that, to use the current buzz-word, sucked. The only difference between then and now is that the poor players in that era were never recorded, but now, due to the cheapness of the technology, anyone can a) record, and b) get it out there via the internet. So we’re probably more exposed to poor jazz than we ever were, but I’m pretty sure the amount of poor jazz being played is about the same as always.



And there’s so much great jazz being played all the time by players coming from a myriad of bckgrounds, that to say that ‘most jazz now sucks’ is just a ludicrous statement and makes me question the motives of Kurt in saying it. Presumably he’s not including his own music in the general suckiness he perceives, so is he surveying the jazz world from his own creative Olympus and telling the rest of the mere mortals to ’take care of it’? And if he does see himself in that kind of superior position, what does that say about his objectivity about his own music? Shouldn’t he be focussing on his own music rather than expending his energy telling everyone else that they suck?

And in the same vein, I have to say, the clip Hum posted of Burno in action (below) revealed precisely the kind of music that puts so many lay people off jazz – saxophone players battling it out over a vamp, having no doubt already played lengthy solos – faster, higher, louder! That has to be good, right? That couldn’t suck, right? Could it..........?






Addendum



Recently regarding this blog post, Dwayne Burno has been directly in touch with me and told me that he was personally offended by what I wrote. I should make it clear that I never intend to personally offend anybody with my opinions, and I regret that Mr. Burno has felt personally offended by them in this case. I should make it clear, that though Mr. Burno and I may disagree on several issues relating to this subject, and very definitely on how the opinions on these issues are expressed, I had no intention of personally offending anybody, least of all a fellow musician. And I should also say that I have the highest respect for Mr. Burno’s musicianship, and have done for many years.