Welcome to the weekly /mu/ jazz Blindfold Test thread. Every Friday and Saturday.
If you're new, the point of these threads is to have fun and encourage critical listening, discussion, and general enjoyment of jazz. All critical music listeners are welcome. The more participation we have, the more fun and successful these threads will be. In the interest of keeping the thread alive and bumped, any general jazz discussion is welcomed here as well.
For more information about how the threads work and listening suggestions, please refer to the pastebin:
http://pastebin.com/5cjEr3A6 THIS WEEK'S THEME: Spiritual Jazz
COMPILED BY: Jazzpossu
NEXT WEEK: ???
COMPILED BY: ???
If you missed last week's thread, DON'T WORRY. It's not too late. Here are the links for the mystery tracklist. Download the tracks, record your thoughts/guesses/evaluations for each one, and then come back and post them in the thread. Remember, people will be posting guesses and thoughts in this thread so don't read the thread until you have listened to the music and collected your thoughts in order to avoid spoilers. Track info for this week's tracks will be posted on Saturday, so if you see the thread is close to dying before then, give it a bump.
http://www76.zippyshare.com/v/0mP3YRNq/file.html Posting with names or tripcodes is encouraged as it makes discussion much easier.
Anonymous
>>66423118 do people actually pass this test
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
Quoted By:
>>66423144 It's not a pass/fail kind of test. It's just for fun to write down your thoughts about the music with no previous info about it and to see if you can guess who any of the players are.
Jazzpossu
In the /blindfold/ test everyone is a Winner!
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
>>66423312 Who are you seeing today?
Jazzpossu
>>66423340 so far mostly local Finnish groups today - Aki Rissanen Trio was excellent, Ricky-Tick Big Band & Julkinen Sana - a combination project of 3 rap MCs and a big band, psych/prog/electronic pop/free jazz/you-name-it influenced trio Tenors of Kalma, singer Nina Mya
Snarky Puppy is playing right now, then Finnish guitarist Teemu Viinikainen and his new trio, after that Gregory Porter and then there would still be Ms. Lauryn Hill, but I don't think I'll be staying for that
Jazzpossu
Quoted By:
oh and Matthew Halsall & the Gondwana Orchestra too that I really enjoyed
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
1. This one reminds me a lot of Coltrane but I’m not sure if it is. The saxophonist sounds like he doesn’t have the same fire that Coltrane did. The pianist does sound like McCoy Tyner though. This sounds like it might be a blues form but with some of the chords altered or something. I liked this one though, I think the piano player was Tyner. 3.5 stars.
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
>>66423763 4. This sounds kind of similar to the previous one with the vocals happening behind everything but the melody sounds much more modern and post-boppish. The solos remind me of the first track from last week’s playlist where they were playing super fast over ESP. This one would have been more enjoyable without the bass solo, but I liked the rest of it. 3.5 stars.
5. So no sax on this one, just trumpet. I could definitely see Freddie Hubbard or Woody Shaw doing some stuff like this in the 70’s. This sounds like what I imagine Coltrane would have done if he had played trumpet instead of sax, so I guess it’s a good one for the spiritual jazz theme. I liked it but it got kind of long. 3 stars.
6. This one was cool. I like the unique sounding instruments and I’m getting more of an African vibe from this than I have from any of the others. I like the inclusion of percussion. The piano solo went on for too long though. I thought it was over and then it kept going but overall it’s a nice track. 3 stars.
7. My favorite so far. It’s definitely still Coltrane influenced but it also sounds more modern than anything I’ve ever heard Coltrane do. There is so much energy on the whole track but especially on the piano solo. Normally I’d probably say that the piano solo goes on too long but he never runs out of ideas and the rhythm section never lets up. 4.5 stars.
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
Quoted By:
>>66423785 8. Even stronger Coltrane influences here. But then more with a Latin feel as the song goes on. The piano solo was pretty good but not great but then I liked the sax solo a lot. You can tell this sax player is really going for the Coltrane sound. It’s pretty good but not that original. I guess it’s cool to put a Latin twist on it. 3.5 stars.
9. This was good but pretty similar to track 7. The piano player is a lot different though. He doesn’t have the same energy but he probably has more traditional piano chops. I also liked the sax player better on track 7 so this one was good but comparing it to that track I don’t like it as much as I normally would probably 3.5 stars.
10. This one really sounds like Coltrane. Maybe this is actually him. Probably just somebody’s tribute. It reminds me of My Favorite Things and some of his later stuff blended together. Then they start singing John Coltrane so I’m thinking it’s definitely someone’s tribute. It’s pretty good. The vocals are kind of haunting and the playing is nice. Track 7 was my favorite but this one will stick with me. 4 stars.
Jazzpossu
Quoted By:
>>66423763 Certainly most of spiritual jazz is aptly characterized by sax players sounding like Coltrane and pianists sounding like McCoy Tyner, but that's the territory pretty much so I just embraced it. :)
Many good observations here - I'm also quite fond of the piano solo of track 2.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66423663 How is Snarky Puppy? I just realized it's been two years since I saw them live.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>66424096 I've noticed from seeing snarky puppy that having certain key members there makes a world of difference. Snarky with Cory Henry is a way better trip then without.
Jazzpossu
>>66424096 Not terrible. I saw them previously in 2014 and I think they are sounding better now than I remembered them sounding then.
It's pretty nice for what it is, they got people dancing a little even though it's raining. I just wish there was more personality to the playing and solos.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>66424202 Yeah, that Berklee funk genre leads to some solos with a whole lot of notes that don't say anything important or sensitive. By jazz fags for jazz fags
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
Quoted By:
>>66424202 Yeah, that would be around the time that I saw them. By far my least favorite part of the show was the 10 minute keytar solo near the end when the rest of the band looked completely uninterested.
My thoughts for this week's tracks incoming.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>Track 1 >Track 2
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66424776 >Track 3 Anybody else reminded of Footprints by this vamp? This sounds quite a bit like McCoy on piano again. That sax solo was pretty nice and I like the way the rhythm section supported him while still keeping that original vamp as the undercurrent of everything. I wish the mixing were better though. The way the choir swells in is pretty interesting. And it works pretty well then when they get to the main theme where they’re saying the lyrics. I like that the harmony keeps changing behind the same melody. I liked the effect of the solo vocalist with the saxophonist, I wish that would have gone on longer. The track came to a nice ending too. The solos were decent here but I really like this one in terms of composition. Even though it was a very long track, it never became stagnant but still all felt like a complete piece at the end. It’s based around simple melodic fragments but they keep coming back in new ways. Also the track flowed so naturally you almost don’t even notice that it’s in 5. This sounds like what Kamasi could be if he actually put some thought into his content.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66424805 >Track 4 And speaking of Kamasi, I think this is from The Epic. I guess it was kind of a cool effect superimposing that melody over the choral thing going on but at the same time I think it kind of takes away from the melody itself. I remember not liking the trumpet player’s playing much at all on this but he actually sounds pretty great here. I don’t quite get what the pianist is doing though. At times it sounds like he’s comping in a different key… maybe going for a polytonal effect kind of like in the head. Sometimes it works and sometimes I don’t think it does. Kamasi’s solo is pretty good too. I like the start of it a lot. But then I think he starts to repeat himself and the solo kind of loses steam. He keeps coming back to that same lick which usually I would like but he mostly just keeps playing it in the same way and doesn’t do anything different with it. Except for the one time when he plays the lick a few times in a row transposing it to different keys. That bit was nice. I don’t remember the name of this track but I think it’s probably one of the strongest on The Epic. The trumpet and sax solos were both good and there was a good amount of interaction from the rhythm section. This track makes me think of the Brecker Brothers oddly enough.
>Track 5 I probably could have done without the intro but once the tune gets started it’s pretty cool. It’s kind of unusual to hear just a trumpet in the lead in a group like this. Could be Charles Tolliver maybe? At times the trumpet player reminds me a little bit of Woody Shaw too. I think it could have benefited from a little more contour during the trumpet solo- they pretty much stayed stayed super high energy for the whole solo- but the piano player was doing some nice stuff. I don’t think this one would have been as good with a different pianist.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66424830 >Track 6 Sun Ra? No, probably not. I think the sound quality and combination of odd instrument timbres made me think of him. I don’t really have strong feelings about this one way or the other. Nothing about it was really interesting enough to hold my attention for long. Some of the rhythms they got into were cool but it was a long track and there weren’t really very many such moments.
>Track 7 I’m liking the drummer. This actually reminds me quite a bit of Dave Liebman’s group Quest who I included on last week’s Shorter playlist. Sounds a bit more like like Kenny Barron or somebody a bit more Tyner influenced on piano though. This definitely has that quintessential 70’s sound. There are some good moments in the piano solo too but there are also some messy bits that get pretty tiring to listen to. There’s just so little space in his playing. The soprano solo was my favorite part.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66424853 >Track 8 This sounds like somebody doing a decent Coltrane imitation. Well that intro was pretty long. It’s almost 5 minutes in when the actual tune starts. Well once the tune came in I was thinking this might be something from Conrad Herwig’s “The Latin Side of John Coltrane” but lack of trombone kind of puts that theory out. The pianist is great and I’m loving the Latin groove going on. Actually there are a few sloppy moments in the piano solo, but it’s kind of endearing. His playing reminds me a lot of how I’d solo over something like this. When the sax solo starts I noticed something interesting which is that for a long time he sticks only to one mode, it sounds like Dorian, and he doesn’t play a single note outside of those seven. There was no tension to it. Eventually he starts throwing in some more chromatics but slowly and mostly he still sticks to those original notes. I’d say this is a second-rate Coltrane impersonator, Pharaoh Sanders maybe? He nails some aspects of Coltrane’s playing, like tone and phrasing, but ignores others like chromaticism and melodic contour.
>Track 9 Wow notice how much better the rhythm section sounds once they settle into the piano solo. I think they were purposely playing “loose” on the head but their time feel was all over the place. The pianist is great and sounds like Richie Beirach or Kenny Kirkland or one of those other 80’s guys like that. This saxophonist’s playing reminds me a lot of Kamasi, maybe this is Pharaoh? You can hear him coming back to the same licks and pentatonic scale. And then the solo plateaus with the obligatory overblowing crescendo. I liked the piano solo here and the rhythm section sounded good at times, I just wish the saxophonist had something more interesting to say.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66424878 >Track 10 More Coltrane imitation but I like this quite a bit. The melody is well-written and the pianist is playing some nice dark voicings behind it. The drummer’s snare work is nice too. There’s some good interplay going on here and I like the subtlety of the sax playing. Oh I just realized what this was once the vocals came in. It’s the John Coltrane track from Glass Bead Games. This one was good, it’s nice to see a more subtle, understated take on Coltrane.
Final thoughts- This week leaves me wondering about something: What are the musical characteristics that define “spiritual jazz”? So without taking song titles, album titles, or album artwork into account, what makes spiritual jazz distinct from modal jazz? Thoughts?
Jazzpossu
>>66424805 The writer is definitely primarily a composer.
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
>>66424776 >Coltrane’s quartet. So this one is actually Coltrane?
>>66424830 >And speaking of Kamasi, I think this is from The Epic Oh I'm surprised I didn't realize this. I was expecting him to be on here.
>reminds me a little bit of Woody Shaw too I was hearing that too
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
>>66424853 >There’s just so little space in his playing. The soprano solo was my favorite part. I really liked that piano solo.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66425197 >So this one is actually Coltrane? I could be wrong but I thought so.
>>66425329 It had its moments but it was just too much.
>>66424927 Muhal Richard Abrams maybe?
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
Also I put together some more playlists this week so now the ones I have ready to go are:
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
Quoted By:
>>66425844 That sounds good. We'll see if anybody else wants to do one for next week but if not we'll do the steeplechase one.
Jazzpossu
>>66424830 4: Right on. Wanted to have Kamasi here because I feel like spiritual jazz is a good context to think of much of his music.
5. Tolliver and Shaw are both good guesses - the trumpeter is "if you don't know this recording, you almost certainly won't recognize his name" level obscure, but his sidemen are fairly prominent in this kind of music and did work with Tolliver and Shaw around the same time
Jazzpossu
>>66424878 8: sax player is certainly a musician best described as someone trying to sound like Coltrane
9: it is actually Pharoah here and it is from the 80's. Felt like including something that actually swings at times because /jazz/ and all.
Jazzpossu
>>66424902 10: indeed from Clifford Jordan's Glass Bead Games. One of the gems in the Strata-East catalog that's one of the important labels for this kind of music.
I have some thoughts about the nature spiritual jazz that I'll hope to get into at latest in the reveal...
Jazzpossu
>>66425790 1: is indeed Coltrane - one of his earlier strongly modal tunes. First I had no 'Trane, but felt wrong not to have the roots in there since his legacy is so strong in spiritual jazz.
Picked this track because it's so repetitive and harmonically simple, both qualities that are very common in spiritual jazz.
Also it feels symbolic to me for the early 60's how Coltrane solos on the two chord vamp, but McCoy goes for a more traditional bluesy approach.
Abrams is not a bad guess for the composer - it's a non-American. Probably difficult to guess, I reckon.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66426501 >I feel like spiritual jazz is a good context to think of much of his music. Especially with the previous track to compare it to.
>but his sidemen are fairly prominent in this kind of music and did work with Tolliver and Shaw around the same time Maybe I'll give this one another listen tonight and make some guesses as to the sidemen. My other thoughts for the trumpet player was maybe Johnny Coles or Eddie Henderson but neither are that obscure.
>>66426538 >it is actually Pharoah here and it is from the 80's. Felt like including something that actually swings at times because /jazz/ and all. More straight ahead than most of his stuff I've heard. I take it none of my guesses for the pianist were right. Maybe I'll make a few more guesses on this one tonight too.
>>66426560 >10: indeed from Clifford Jordan's Glass Bead Games. Yeah an awesome album. I just listened to it within the past few months so it was sounding very familiar but then once the vocals came in I realized what it was.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
Quoted By:
>>66426600 >First I had no 'Trane, but felt wrong not to have the roots in there since his legacy is so strong in spiritual jazz. Yeah, especially since a large portion of the genre seems to be people imitating him.
Anonymous
Spiritual jazz is the worst kind t b h
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
Quoted By:
>>66426600 >1: is indeed Coltrane That's the only Coltrane track this week?
>>66426999 >Spiritual jazz is the worst kind t b h Instead of making statements like this why not join in and you can tell us exactly what you like about each track? It's literally the point of the thread.
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
bump. What are you guys listening to this week?
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
Anonymous
Just getting into jazz and looking for recs.
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
Quoted By:
>>66429453 Try Dialogue by Bobby Hutcherson.
Jazzpossu
Quoted By:
>>66426755 yeah, not Beirach or Kirkland on piano on #9 - he's a little older than Beirach with some recording credits in the 60's already.
Jazzpossu
Quoted By:
>>66424902 >>66426999 it's a certainly not a style that appeals to all jazz fans because it leaves out a lot of the sophistication and the tracks are often quite long repetitive jams
While "spiritual jazz" is accurate for what early figures in the style like John and Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders were doing, by the early 70's it becomes more the music of pan-africanism. It's pretty often presented as the music of the black community and black people with strong African roots - like Eddie Gale put it in the title of his Blue Note album, it's "Ghetto Music".
Much of what is commonly classified as spiritual jazz was released on artist controlled small independent labels and often performed in venues that weren't traditional jazz clubs. There's this sense of musicians wanting to take control of all aspects and casting aside white man's culture and I think this is also one of the motivations while the music is often harmonically simple and tries to go for a more tribal feel. There's also often all kinds of percussion like bells and chimes giving the impression that it's music that the community can participate in.
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
Anonymous
>tfw I can't get into diz
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
Anonymous
>>66431631 What have you listened to?
Anonymous
>>66433636 Groovin' High, Quintet at Massey Hall, the album with Sunny Side Up, live at newport 57/58 with his big band, and Afro.
It's not like I don't like him I just prefer others but I know that i'm missing something because all those musicians I love are praising him so much.
Anonymous
>>66433691 Have you ever watched videos of him playing? I think it adds something to see just how much effort he puts into his playing.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>66433752 I think only where he was older. When he played with monk in the 70's.
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66431631 >He's too abrasive to me I guess Do you like any other players who have a more abrasive sound?
Bebob
>Track 1 >Track 2
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66435159 >could be Steve Davis That could be it. I thought that bass solo was really lame.
>Track 2 >Piano solo was the highlight by a large margin. The rest of the track sorta meandered. Agreed.
>This track list is long, so I might have to take another sitting to finish it before the reveal. Agree with this too. Took me 3 different sessions to get through all the tracks.
Bebob
>>66435159 >Track 3 I like the piano part, has that good spiritual jazz effect of sort of putting you in a trance. Ooh vocals. A whole choir it seems. I've never heard a jazz recording with a choir accompaniment but this is pretty cool. That high leading voice sounds fantastic. I like the addition of the flute. I like the arco bass as well. This is a really cool track so far. So is this just one person switching wind instrument several times, or different players coming in? I assume if it was different players they'd play together some. If it is one, he's getting a whole load of solo time. I was a little worried by the runtime at the beginning given that repeating piano part, but this track has really justified it. I've been engaged the whole way through. There's so much to listen to, and the choral voicings really immerse you in the feeling of the song. Loved it. 4.5 stars
Bebob
>>66435515 >Track 4 More choral stuff? I didn't know there was this much out there. In a lot of ways this reminds of a bunch of really tight big bands I don't like all that much. I like a bit more looseness to the playing, so that sort of head doesn't do much for me. The drummer is doing some decent stuff, and so is the piano, though this trumpet solo isn't that interesting. It sort of sounds like he jumped out the gate with all he had, so after that it feels directionless. The use of the Rhodes keyboard is nice. It's tasteful in the context of the track, sort of nicely slots in in the texture. I'm liking this sax solo a lot more. He's doing some interesting rhythmic stuff here and shaping a lot more in terms of pace and leading towards the higher pitches. They just drop the choral thing completely during the solos? What was the point in having that in the first place? Whoa, that bass player is fast. The way this is mixed, with the drummer still on the ride but way down in volume, is really nice. Allows the focus to really be on the bass solo. Now the choir's back for the head, I guess. Seems sort of strange, since now they seem extraneous. I would believe this was Kamasi I guess, but if it is I'm much more impressed by the soloing of the group than in anything else I've heard. Whoever this is, on the basis of this track I'd listen to more. 3.5 stars
Bebob
>>66435558 >Track 5 Nice to hear no sax. I like the percussion. I'd believe this was Don Cherry or someone else into that world music type stuff. I guess this probably isn't Cherry since that tone is a bit stronger than his. I find the percussion and the drumming on this enjoyable; makes it feel like chase music. I like its style, but I don't think it justified its length. 3 stars
>Track 6 Interesting selection of woodwinds here. I think they might be repeating that theme a few too many times. I feel a bit like I'm listening to the MASH theme or something. I like the use of a violin. I think I also hear tabla, which is pretty cool. This track would definitely be getting boring if that beat wasn't so good. I find myself sort of wishing the percussion was actually louder, cuz I could just nod my head to this beat for ages. I definitely feel as if it could've been shorter though. Sorta thing that just grooves along. 2.5 stars
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
>>66435159 >And the piano seems to have a bit of Cecil Taylor influence with the tonal clusters. Might this be some early Taylor? I heard some Cecil Taylor influence in this too but it the recordings sounds too good to be early Cecil Taylor
Anonymous
recs for good jazz albums by bassists besides Mingus and Paul Chamber?
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
Quoted By:
>>66436770 Try Dave Holland
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
Jazzpossu
Quoted By:
>>66435397 yeah, spiritual jazz tracks tend to be very long
>>66436195 the track certainly represents a time period much later than early Cecil in this list
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
Quoted By:
>>66436770 Seconding Dave Holland. Also Ray Brown, Oscar Pettiford, NHOP, Johnny Dyani, and Scott Colley.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66426501 >but his sidemen are fairly prominent in this kind of music and did work with Tolliver and Shaw around the same time Stanley Cowell or Onaje Allan Gumbs on piano maybe? I know Cowell played with both Tolliver and Shaw, I don't know if Onaje ever recorded with Tolliver though... I haven't heard all that much of his 70's and 80's stuff.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
Quoted By:
>>66435558 >It sort of sounds like he jumped out the gate with all he had, so after that it feels directionless. This is a good way to put it and I feel that way about a lot of Kamasi's solos throughout that album. It's definitely happened to me where I've run out of ideas before my solo is over and I think that's what's going on in that album sometimes.
Jazzpossu
>>66438684 good guesses, but not one of them. Cowell plays on two tracks this week though.
Jazzpossu
Quoted By:
Here's some contemporary mellow spiritual jazz I heard live yesterday from Manchester, UK - reveal will probably be a few hours later than usual on Saturday due to my festival adventures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoL_LUdKTxo jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
Quoted By:
>>66438929 He's on Glass Bead Games I think and maybe also track 9 could be him. It can be pretty hard to tell all those 70's and 80's Tyner-influenced pianists apart. Mulgrew Miller, Stanley Cowell, Kenny Barron, George Cables, Onaje Gumbs... The list just goes on and on and in similar settings they can all sound pretty similar.
s !!jjK8RvFRaoG
Quoted By:
Here I go
s !!jjK8RvFRaoG
Quoted By:
6. Has a different sound than others but doesn't really stick out save the part about 4 minutes in. It's not bad I guess, I'm just not fond of this style. I find some aspects of this similar to Michael White's approach to spiritual jazz though it's very different in style.
s !!jjK8RvFRaoG
Quoted By:
>>66425844 I might try and put together one soon but not for next week. Steeple Chase sounds nice, I gotta dig more into it.
>>66426538 >9: it is actually Pharoah here and it is from the 80's Interesting. All the one I've heard is earlier than mid 70s so I'll be checking this one out.
>>66427773 >What are you guys listening to this week? I got around this. It was lovely. Thinking of going around other complete recordings, probably Coltrane's 1961 Village Vanguard.
Jazzpossu
Gorgias !!nhBnMG4tQUI
Quoted By:
I have to sleep, so i will post just a few songs i´ve listened, i will post the rest later.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
Spiritual jazz is such a fucking meme
Anonymous
>>66440171 Tomasz Stanko performs in my neck of the woods in August. He's going to play with Juhani Aaltonen and the Alexi Tuomarila Trio. Pretty excited for that.
Anonymous
Jazzpossu
Quoted By:
>>66440495 Hello there Oulu-area person! I'd love to hear that - Aaltonen is still sounding pretty good for being 80.
Anonymous
Anonymous
Jazzpossu
Quoted By:
spiritual bump
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0eliUpwA1M Eddie Gale's Ghetto Music is a bit of an odd album in the Blue Note catalogue - apparently label co-founder Francis Wolff liked the material so much that he personally financed the production and release
s !!jjK8RvFRaoG
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
Quoted By:
Alright well unless anybody else has a playlist ready to go, next week we'll do Steeplechase theme by JTG.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>66435049 I love Cannonball if that counts. I guess my problem is with trumpets playing in the high register and I think Dizzy does it a lot.
Dolphy's Ghost
Quoted By:
>1 >2 >3 >4 >5 >6 >7 >8 >9 >10
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
Ambassador Satch
Bump.
Jazzpossu
>>66445485 Glad to have you join this week!
No hurry yet, I'm still at the jazz festival with limited posting capabilities - just saw Steve Coleman & Five Elements, I got the feeling it was kind of like ritual funk music. Challenging, but in a pretty good way.
I'll have a chance to do the reveals in about 3 hours from now, so keep the thread alive until then.
Ambassador Satch
Quoted By:
>>66445574 Kk, I think I may just post them as I listen to them after I get up to where I am.
Ambassador Satch
>track one >track two
Bebob
>>66435822 >Track 7 I like the drumwork on this one. I actually like everyone on this one. They manage to make the band sounds huge even though it's only a quartet. I'm not really sure who any of these players are. The soprano player's use of note-bending is pretty unique. The production on the piano makes it sound a bit thin, but the person playing is doing some cool stuff. I also like how the bass is really active. They all do a very good job of playing around the beat rather than being right on it. Not a huge fan of how it fades out though. Still, very strong playing. 4 stars
>Track 8 This track has taken a really interesting route in terms of pacing. Now it goes into this latin groove? It feels sort of directionless overall. The drummer is also just doing his own thing and not reacting to the piano player's solo in any way I can parse out. This is also beginning to feel a bit long. I'm all for lengthy tracks, but this one seems to lack development or shape as a whole. Okay, they did finally come back to the thing at the beginning, and with a pretty smooth transition as well. 2.5 stars
Clueless
>Track 1 >Track 2
Clueless
Quoted By:
>>66446335 >Track 3 Started off as pure Coltrane worship, and if you took out the choral stuff that's all the first four minutes would be. Started to win me over with the bowed bass/sax solo. It's definitely a really poweful arrangement, but the improvisation doesn't excite me much. Maybe if it wasn't in a playlist with track 1 I wouldn't be so inclined to compare it unfavourably. At the moment it's 3 stars but I think if I gave it a fair chance it'd be higher.
>Track 4 Sounds similarly huge as the last track. Crazy drums though. Once that all stops it sounds like there's some heavy late-60's Miles influences going on. In fact other than the opening arrangement I don't think there's much "spiritual jazz" about this track. It's pretty great though. The climax at the end of the sax solo followed by the subdued overall sound during the bass solo was really nice, though the switch to arco was a bit abrupt. Doesn't stop the bass solo being the best bit though. This is my favourite so far. 4 stars.
And I only managed to listen to those four tracks this week. I'll post later if I get chance to hear any more.
Bebob
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>>66446157 >Track 9 I like the screaming sax, though it makes this feel a bit more pop-esque for me. This track as a whole sorta feels that way. Maybe it's just cause that drum beat sounds as if it's in 2/4 for the most part. I do feel like this is the kind of song that'd be playing when the main character in a movie has just started exploring New York. I like the piano's use of polyrhythms. Now it just feels as if it's repeating. Only piano and sax ever get to solo? And how many times are they gonna restate that theme? There's nothing really bad about this track, but there's also nothing really interesting that pops out at me. 2.5 stars
>Track 10 I like how it starts off with just bass. Always a good appraoch. Was that a harp? Or a harpsichord? It hasn't come back so I guess it was just a strange sound made from the piano. And now they're singing about Coltrane. I really like the bass playing, and how this track is chill in comparison to the rest of the tracks. 3.5 stars
Ambassador Satch
>>66446147 >track three The drummer is good. His comping is involved, the piano player and him are setting the pace and as he’s upping the intensity of his playing , the piano player gets more dissonant and gets loud with him. The sax should have picked up on what they were doing! That was a good chance to join in on a crescendo but he was way too low in his register to match them. Maybe he had to watch the clock for the choir? It just feels like a missed opportunity but things cook up plenty with the vocals. This is the sound Kamasi was going for but this isn't as syrupy and sterile as The Epic often is.
This arrangement is pretty complex and they've got a good gospel choir. Appropriate for the “spiritual vibe”. Wow, that soprano. Her voice is so piercing. I was mostly listening to the sax player before she came in and he had the sense to play off her with some spectacular results.
The bowed bass solo was a good idea. It took the air out of the crescendo smoothly and gave a bit of breathing space to the composition. Between the tremolo and how high in its register it was, it sounded like a different instrument and was a nice colour change for the piece. His playing sounded eastern or African or something. As did a lot of the track but it was really strong here.
The way the sax and flute pick up the bass melody and lead it into the sax solo is way too perfectly. Obviously the choir was recorded separately but maybe the sax is also recording with them playing flute?
The track should have ended after the sax solo. They don’t drag it out too much further after that and I guess they wanted to recapitulate stuff but the fade out at 7:45 ish would have been perfect as an ending. I was more into the sax player's soloing this time around and it was a plenty high enough note to go out on.
They don't introduce anything new and they sacrificed a better ending for the sake of showing off all the cool themes again. It’s good music but I can just replay the piece.
Bebob
>>66425844 >Live at the Vanguard That sounds great. I'll be looking forward to this one.
Ambassador Satch
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>>66446536 >track four Miss Understanding, the best track on The Epic. The head is some of the best musicianship on the album, really well executed. There’s a lot of reaching for ideals on this album. It’s ambitious, often at its own expense, but this intro is really good. The drumming is particularly inspired. There’s so little the choir, strings and horns need to contribute, he’s like a fucking hurricane.
Kamasi has the better folks from his band soloing afterwards and while the improv isn’t as impressive as the pre-composed stuff, it’s as good as it ever gets on the album. The trumpet solo is melodic, the drummer contributes the most interplay between ensemble and soloist that appears on The Epic and Kamasi is adventurous, though he is more hit and miss. As usual he’s got a good sense of how to use timbre in the development of his solos and while some of his melodic ideas aren’t great, the fact that the drummer is following the emotional arc of his solos and picking up on rhythmic ideas makes it pretty entertaining.
Thankfully we also don’t have “Thundercat” on this one. Man, if he did, this would be the best solo of his career as far as I’m concerned. The bass didn’t catch my ear in the accompaniment but his solo is my favourite on the track (and maybe the album). I like this type of bass playing. There’s bits of LaFaro influence all over his pizzicato playing and he’s able to use that dense playing in a way that is melodic, jazzy, bluesy and lyrical. His bowed playing is enjoyable too and I think reintroducing the keys for it was a good idea. The timbre change in the bass suited the electronic keyboard and the track felt a lot more fusion, in a good way. It was a nice direction change for the solo and executed pretty seamlessly.
Then they go back into that really sharp head. They sound well practiced, it's damn tight.
Ambassador Satch
>track five Very floaty. Lots of drums. I liked it at first but they let this more rhythmically free section run on way too long. I didn’t find the crescendo particularly affecting and I was just waiting for them to go into a more rhythmically stable section for most of the second half of the intro. I suppose with the amount of drums they had going in the head I should have expected how funky and African this would wind up sounding.
The percussion is a pretty big draw for me and took up a lot of my attention but the trumpet solo was pretty nice. More Freddie Hubbard style post-bop than spiritual but I’m not complaining, I like that stuff more than some of say the modal/free stuff from the first two tracks.
I was never bored listening to the track even though the trumpet player was pretty ambitious with the amount of time he took. There's a hell of a lot going on here rhythmically and it's enough to keep my head spinning.
>>66446719 This, or jazz versions of classical piece.
Ambassador Satch
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Gonna take a break. I might be back later but I'm going to play Dnd with a few friends so I probs won't be back till late so don't wait around for me Blindfold guy.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66446147 >The bass player’s solo was WAAAAY too safe though. He stuck pretty close to his prewritten line and that bit at the end of his solo just felt like he was about to try find his voice when he was cut off by the head. Yeah, I noticed that too. What a letdown of a bass solo.
>>66446147 >I’m thinking maybe we could just call this thing a sub-genre of modal jazz? This was kind of what I was saying yesterday... I don't know that there are a lot of "musical" characteristics that are unique to spiritual jazz. The musical elements seem pretty similar to modal jazz with just song titles, lyrics, and themes that relate to spirituality. I think Jazzpossu made a point though that spiritual jazz can often include African percussion and African influence in general.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66446536 >This is the sound Kamasi was going for but this isn't as syrupy and sterile as The Epic often is. I said something similar to this.
>>66446783 >I liked it at first but they let this more rhythmically free section run on way too long. I agree with this and one of the other tracks this week has a similar intro that was too long. I think they're going for the "prayer" effect and I think that could be a musical characteristic of spiritual jazz- the slow horn melody over the rhythm section playing textures in one key area without any sense of time.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66446719 >>66446783 I think people might not be that excited for the SteepleChase theme but there's some fun stuff in there that I think people will be pleasantly surprised by.
I actually had a lot of stuff I wanted to include but had to edit a lot of it so I'll probably do another SteepleChase theme at some point.
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
>>66447317 I'm looking forward to it. And jazz versions of classical.
Anybody else have theme ideas? Either ones you are working on or ones you'd like to suggest in case someone else would like to put them together?
Ambassador Satch
>>66447317 SteepleChase would be good. I usually like stuff from that label and I associate it with Criss Cross to an extent.
Ambassador Satch
>>66447080 >>66447259 There is deffinitely a specific style. If there weren't so many people making that style, I don't think people would even bother calling it a sub-genre. Like if this had ended with Coltrane, even after he'd laid 90% of the genre's groundwork, people wouldn't have said it was so unique it warranted a sub-genre.
The African influence is an interesting point and is a fairly nice defining characteristic but there are pieces on this week and that I'm aware of in general that don't have that African influence and stuff I wouldn't strictly consider Spiritual Jazz that have African influences like Max Roach or McCoy Tyner.
Bebob
>>66447944 I think lots of Indian influences come in to it as well, especially with Coltrane's music. Alice's as well.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66447712 They definitely have a lot in common, the main difference is that SteepleChase recorded a LOT in the 70's and got some really cool sessions of some pretty big names from the 60's playing together. Criss Cross didn't get recording until the early 80's and a lot of those records are big names playing with European rhythm sections.
>>66447646 I've got a good start on a Pacific Jazz playlist and I'll probably do an ECM one too though I haven't started it yet.
It's been fun putting together the playlists of cover versions of jazz composers so I'd like to do more of those. I was thinking one for Horace Silver, one for Coltrane, and maybe one for Ornette Coleman too.
Anonymous
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apropos of nothing, the interplay between lambert and hendricks at 6:44 feels like the essence of jazz. i smile ear to ear watching them.
https://youtu.be/Ul54NWmwLxs Ambassador Satch
>>66447967 So I mean, if we're to put a name on it, it'd be "African/oriental folk influence" or something? As a common characteristic but maybe not as a defininging one. I think the whole religious vibe (though a bit less clear an idea musically) is the big thing that sets it apart.
>>66447983 I really need to dedicate more time to post 60/s jazz. I've a good conception of the times most people were around and posting things happened up until around fusion/free jazz but beyond that I'm just kinda like "ECM happened at some point, smooth jazz started existing, etc.". I know there's so much out there I'd love, there's just not enough hours in the day.
Jazzpossu
>>66448335 it's kind of difficult to nail down what is or isn't spiritual jazz - it's a fairly nebulous concept and I think there are multiple different sub-genres you could categorize it to, but you could just dump most of it into "modal jazz" and it would be at least technically correctly classified. I'll have some of my thoughts on this in the reveals that begin in just a minute
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66449043 Forgot to say I have a guess about track 2. Last night I had the thought that it's probably David Ware and Matthew Shipp. I've never really listened to much of that stuff but the piano player definitely sounds like Shipp.
Jazzpossu
The John Coltrane Quartette - Tunji
Jazzpossu
Jazzpossu
>>66449108 exactly right!
Track 2:
David S. Ware - Aquarian Sound
from Flight of I (DIW 1992)
David S. Ware - tenor saxophone
Matthew Shipp - piano
William Parker - bass
Marc Edwards - drums
The golden age of spiritual jazz pretty much ends around the time hip hop rises as the new music of black America, but on the more free jazz side some musicians still engage in modal jams that have a similar flavor.
Here's an example from the 90's from saxophonist David S. Ware who has done many things that have a spiritual jazz vibe.
I like Matthew Shipp's playing here in how it's very abstract, but still it has some sophistication and it feels like he's in control. In spiritual jazz of the 70's there's a lot of random mashing type free jazz piano, so it's nice to hear something more thoughtful when the jam goes crazy.
Jazzpossu
Track 3:
Jazzpossu
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Track 4:
Jazzpossu
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Track 5:
Jazzpossu
Track 6:
Mtume Umoja Ensemble - Utamu
from Alkebu-Lan, Land of the Blacks (Strata East 1972)
Mtume - percussion
Gary Bartz - soprano sax, alto sax
Carlos Garnett - tenor sax, flute
Stanley Cowell - piano
Leroy Jenkins - violin
Buster Williams - bass
Billy Hart - drums
Ndugu Chancler - drums
Apart from being often released on artist controlled indie labels, spiritual jazz was also often performed in locations that were not traditional jazz clubs. One hot spot was The East educational and cultural center in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. Weekly "Black Experience in Sound" -events were held on weekends where many notable musicians came to play for far below their normal wages to an all-ages audience in an environment with no alcohol or smoking allowed and a strict "blacks only" policy.
Jazz listeners today are most likely to know of The East from the Pharoah Sanders album title "Live at the East", but that album was actually recorded in studio with East regulars brought in as an audience.
One noteworthy album that was recorded live at The East is Alkebu-Lan, Land of the Blacks. It's a pretty nice cultural artifact chock-full of the Pan-African themes and styles and aesthetic of early 70's spiritual jazz - certainly worth looking into for anyone interested in this style of music.
The album looks, sounds and feels very underground, but the line-up is pretty high profile led by percussionist James Mtume who was playing in Miles' band at the time with Miles alumni Gary Bartz and Carlos Garnett on saxes, Stanley Cowell on piano and two great drummers - Billy Hart and Ndugu Chancler.
Here's a nice article on The East with also background info on this album:
http://www.corenyc.org/omeka/files/original/4823c7a9d589da82e72837249d2723a3.pdf Jazzpossu
Track 7:
Jazzpossu
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Track 8:
Jazzpossu
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Track 9:
Pharoah Sanders - You've Got To Have Freedom
from Africa (Timeless Records 1987)
Pharoah Sanders - tenor sax
John Hicks - piano
Curtis Lundy - bass
Idris Muhammad - drums
The modal music that inspired the spiritual jazz style was just one small part of John Coltrane's work, but Pharoah Sanders' entire Impulse! catalog is pretty representative of this style and the African influences and repetitive jam nature resonated heavily with some audiences - he was a very revered performer at The East for example.
I figured the Impulse! stuff is pretty well known, so might as well pick something from later on. This recording from the late 80's shows that eventually spiritual jazz ideas got more fused with more traditional jazz playing and Pharoah himself also started playing more standards and such.
I believe this tune You've Got To Have Freedom is one of his more well known and popular post-Impulse! compositions, so I chose the more obscure recording of it thinking that some of you would be familiar with it, but since no one apparently was, I probably should have gone with this earlier recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYKHCvmu1z4 Jazzpossu
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Track 10:
Clifford Jordan Quartet - John Coltrane
from Glass Bead Games (Strata-East 1974)
Clifford Jordan - tenor sax
Stanley Cowell - piano
Bill Lee - bass
Billy Higgins - drums
Just in case there was not enough Coltrane, here's a beautiful dedication to him written by bass player Bill Lee (that some may be familiar with as the father of director Spike Lee) from Clifford Jordan's Glass Bead Games.
This album and Alkebu-Lan of track 6 were released by Strata-East records formed by Stanley Cowell and Charles Tolliver with the idea that the rights of the recordings would stay with the artists that has added to the mystique of the label among record collectors since re-issues happen sort of randomly. It's certainly one of the most prominent independent labels that released spiritual jazz and similar music in the 70's and their catalog is worth delving into for anyone looking to go deep in more obscure jazz releases.
Here's a nice write-up on the label with some examples of important releases:
http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2014/06/strata-east-guide Jazzpossu
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and that wraps it up for this week - thanks to everyone who took the time to get through the lengthy list!
s !!jjK8RvFRaoG
>>66449309 I was hearing some David Ware on here but I didn't really think pianist was Shipp so I discarded it being his quartet. Oh well. Haven't listened to much of his stuff anyway, will resume with this.
>>66449926 I was pretty sure I had heard this but for some reason I could only picture Michael White while listening to it. Also thanks for the article link.
Again, nice picks, I'll listen to many of these.
And I wish that record wasn't so damn expensive.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66449498 This one is really interesting and a nice change of pace from all the African roots type spiritual jazz that you mostly think of with the term "spiritual jazz." Although I would have guessed this was "black music."
When I read this it reminded me of an article I read a while back in an old Downbeat about a jazz mass written by a white jazz musician for his daughter who had died and recorded in the late 50's or early 60's sometime, before the "spiritual jazz" movement became a thing.
It took me a while to find it but eventually I did and I found a nice summary about the album and some excerpts from the Downbeat article from 1960.
http://www.theancientstar-song.com/2014/04/ed-summerlin/ A lot of hard bop has gospel roots but I'm thinking this may be one of the first examples of a "spiritual jazz" album.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
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>>66449926 >but the line-up is pretty high profile led by percussionist James Mtume who was playing in Miles' band at the time with Miles alumni Gary Bartz and Carlos Garnett on saxes, Stanley Cowell on piano and two great drummers - Billy Hart and Ndugu Chancler. Yeah, interesting. These are a lot of players who I am familiar with and like, but this track really didn't do much for me.
Also strange for Ndugu Chancler to come up here. I've met him a few times and he's a real character. He's played on some good jazz records but he was also the drummer on Michael Jackson's "Thriller."
One of the times I've seen him was at a clinic and I remember the person who introduced him made a joke about how his name sounds like a Star Wars character.
Jazzpossu
>>66450466 Discogs says there's a new reissue vinyl of Alkebu-Lan out this year, but I couldn't find any place that would sell it, but did find some people who mentioned having bought it ._o No doubt even that one is going to go for three figures soon.
Michael White is actually someone I considered for both this and the Impulse! list I did before this one. Blessing Song is a cool track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGLC9yt4qmU s !!jjK8RvFRaoG
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>>66450775 I just checked the discogs page and under the 2016 reissue there's a guy selling for about 110. Pretty spot on.
Ambassador Satch
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>>66450015 Damn, I wish I'd made it further in the listen. I really love this album. People tend to downplay Tyner's ability because he's less versatile than some of the other goat pianists but there's a lot of diversity on this album in particular and to my tastes, he's a very emotional player. He absorbed a lot of Coltrane's sensibilities for conveying that sort of ALS-tier religious epicness.
Ambassador Satch
>>66449043 I suppose every genre is like that. When you start trying to label art, you tend to find blurred edges and vague descriptions. It's hard to make strict terms that don't have exceptions and weird cases that defy easy categorization.
Jazzpossu
>>66450595 "black music" is certainly one term the musicians themselves would have used, certainly in those circles many disliked the word jazz. I think in the opening monologue on Alkebu-Lan there's some mention that the "music you're about to hear is not jazz" or something to that effect
calling this type of music spiritual jazz is probably a fairly recent thing
Ambassador Satch
>>66451159 >"black music" is certainly one term the musicians themselves would have used, certainly in those circles many disliked the word jazz Is spiritual jazz an inherently black thing though? I mean, it comes out of gospel music and black musicians but jazz isn't a racially defined genre and I see no reason white people shouldn't be able to make this specific type of music. I don't know a huge amount about this as a movement outside of it's origins in Coltrane though and maybe it is an unprecedentedly black genre?
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66451079 >It's hard to make strict terms that don't have exceptions and weird cases that defy easy categorization. Well of course you're always going to have those cases, but the interesting thing about it is that I think most of the other jazz sub-genres have pretty clearly defined musical characteristics that separate them from the other sub-genres- e.g. Bebop (chromaticism, chord substitutions/alterations, melodic tendencies for outlining harmony) Modal Jazz (non-functional or ambiguous harmony, quartal voicings and harmony, slow harmonic motion) but I think it's hard to come up with a list of musical characterstics like that for spiritual jazz apart from instrumentation and maybe influence of traditional African/Eastern music.
>>66451159 >calling this type of music spiritual jazz is probably a fairly recent thing Really most of the genre labels we put on classic jazz now are a fairly recent thing.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66451330 >Is spiritual jazz an inherently black thing though? Well how many albums that you would call "spiritual jazz" with a white person as the leader can you think of?
There were white people making religious themed jazz as early as 1960(see
>>66450595 ) and maybe even earlier but I think what we came to be known as "spiritual jazz" is pretty much associated with black musicians of the late 60's and 70's and a lot of the time has ties to the civil rights movement.
Jazzpossu
>>66451330 that really depends on the definition - like if you check what's on the Jazzman Records spiritual jazz -compilations, they have two volumes dedicated exclusively to European music, but there's such a wide range of stuff that I find it hard to find much that the tracks would all have in common
One could certainly make the case that spiritual jazz should mean jazz that is primarily spiritual or meditative in nature, but I've personally seen it mostly used to refer to this kind of post-Coltrane style music, so that's what I usually take it to mean. I think it's one of those styles where hardly anyone actually making music in the style proudly uses the term themselves, but "why can't everything be called just music" only gets you so far.
Some people were trying to make the word kozmigroov a thing to refer to music that would encompass a lot of this type of black music, but I think that's a terrible name for anything.
I think it's actually a little bit of a problem with jazz that after fusion and post-bop there are very few commonly accepted new terms for jazz styles and sub-genres that would help in defining and discussing trends and developments.
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
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I'm glad to see the thread is still alive and that the topic has sparked some good discussion
>>66450015 I've seen this album posted sometimes but never heard it so I will definitely have to check it out because I loved that track.
Thanks for putting this playlist together.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66451783 >I think it's actually a little bit of a problem with jazz that after fusion and post-bop there are very few commonly accepted new terms for jazz styles and sub-genres that would help in defining and discussing trends and developments. Wouldn't you say that generally holds true for most art mediums? I think that's kind of the whole idea behind post-modernism.
Anyway there was the M-Base movement from the late 80's and 90's. I've also heard the term neo-bop used quite a bit although I've never been able to quite figure out exactly what falls under that category...
But you bring up an interesting point. What definite trends and sub-genres would you say have emerged in the last 20 years and what would you name them?
Bebob
>>66452928 Hip hop fusion
Post-post Bop (Like Alex Sipiagin's stuff)
Modern Third-Stream
Acoustic Fusion (The Bad Plus, Brad Mehldau, other acoustic jazz covers of rock)
These are the most notable I can think of. I'm sure there are others.
Ambassador Satch
>>66451424 There are blurred edges around bebop though. There's a gradient towards post-bop and there are people like Coleman Hawkins who sowed the seeds of bebop but who were playing swing.
Modal jazz is....weird because it's unusual in how it has one specific defining characteristic: lack of changes. Even that is hard to pin down because out playing can be done to varying degrees of abstraction.
>>66451564 >Well how many albums that you would call "spiritual jazz" with a white person as the leader can you think of? I don't know any but I'm also fairly ill informed on the genre. I was wondering if anyone else knew of any non-black people who played this sort of stuff. I'm just inherently suspicious of people who say "x is a black genre" because I've heard jazz,blues,R&B, Soul, etc. described this way which inaccurately.
>I think what we came to be known as "spiritual jazz" is pretty much associated with black musicians of the late 60's and 70's and a lot of the time has ties to the civil rights movement. Is Max Roach's Freedom Suite Sipiritual jazz? It's African themed, vaguely spiritual and racially charged but I've always thought of it(and seen it described) as post-bop.
Jazzpossu
>>66452928 M-Base is another one of those things where the musicians involved insist that it's not a style. I was just reading up on that a bit today actuallt while I was waiting for Steve Coleman's set to start.
One thing in Europe at least that would certainly benefit from more accepted terminology is the Esbjörn Svensson -type electronic music influenced jazz. I guess nu jazz and future jazz are some accepted relatively recent terms, but neither feels right for that EST style and there's quite of a bit of music done these days that's similar.
I guess it's understandable from the musicians' perspective when modern day jazz musicians are generally so versatile and capable of playing in a wide variety of styles that they don't want to be pigeonholed to some particular style or sub-genre as artists so there's some natural resistance for new terminology to be accepted.
Anonymous
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>>66452928 no jazz historian but based on my library, the really university academic type jazz that guys like Iyer make comes across as more recent.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66453143 >Hip hop fusion definitely
>Post-post Bop (Like Alex Sipiagin's stuff) Ha. I like that. What would you say separates this stuff from just post-bop?
>Modern Third-Stream What would you say is an example of this? Maria Schneider and Henry Threadgill come to mind.
>Acoustic Fusion (The Bad Plus, Brad Mehldau, other acoustic jazz covers of rock) This has definitely been a major trend and I think that's a good name for it. I think you could also make a case for Electro-acoustic jazz- with some of Vijay Iyer and Brad Mehldau's stuff.
I've used the term post-fusion before to describe some of the things like Alex Sipiagin or the Dave Holland Quintet- blending elements from fusion and post-bop. What do you think about that as a style/term?
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66453187 >There are blurred edges around bebop though. There are always going to be some blurred lines but I'd say the term "bebop" and its meaning is more agreed-upon and accepted to mean certain things than the term spiritual jazz
>Modal jazz is....weird because it's unusual in how it has one specific defining characteristic: lack of changes. Actually I'd say most modal jazz has changes, just less changes a lot of the time.
Though on the subject of lack of changes, I think another point worth mentioning is that the term "free jazz" is pretty widely used, but is really pretty ill-defined and has been used to describe a lot of wildly different music.
>I'm just inherently suspicious of people who say "x is a black genre" Well yeah I disagree with people who say things like black people are inherently better at certain genres, but I don't think you can just ignore the cultural ties of black people to certain kinds of music.
>Is Max Roach's Freedom Suite Sipiritual jazz? It's African themed, vaguely spiritual and racially charged but I've always thought of it(and seen it described) as post-bop. Good question. It seems like it fits the criteria we've been using to describe "spiritual jazz" in the thread so far...
But let's go even further- How about A Love Supreme? I think you could accurately describe it as spiritual jazz, post-bop, and modal jazz.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
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>>66453327 >I guess it's understandable from the musicians' perspective when modern day jazz musicians are generally so versatile and capable of playing in a wide variety of styles that they don't want to be pigeonholed to some particular style or sub-genre as artists so there's some natural resistance for new terminology to be accepted. I think that's probably a big part of it. Look at somebody like Chris Potter and all the different kinds of music he's put out (both as a leader and a sideman).
Not to mention the point you brought up earlier that a lot of the time the names for these movements characteristics of these movements aren't really defined until much later, and even then the definitions are pretty vague and really just sort of a starting point. Maybe in 30 years jazz musicians will have some names and ideas about movements that have happened within the past 20 years.
Bebob
>>66454292 >What would you say separates this stuff from just post-bop? The drumming style mainly. To me it's a lot more influenced by breakbeats. Like if you listen to "Videlles" off Destinations Unknown, the way Harland is drumming is totally different to 60s postbop drumming. Robert Glasper's In My Element also contains a lot of this, especially in "G & B". Both those records are just categorized as post-bop, but I think the beat and also maybe the use of more simplified harmonies distinguish them from being the same thing as the stuff from the 60s.
>Modern Third-Stream I haven't listened to much of your examples, but I think Iyer's work (Accelerando, for example) and Rudresh Mahanthappa's work would fall under this category as well.
Electro-Acoustic is a very good term and a definite trend. There was a track in a blindfold thread a while ago that someone described as "a jazz EDM cover" and I think that term describes it very well.
Post-fusion is a term that could definitely apply to those examples you mentioned, and I think it has the added quality seen in a lot of modern jazz of combining electric and acoustic instruments in one setting. Tons of groups use both Rhodes and acoustic piano, and I think a lot of the stuff Holland is doing follows directly from the textural blend of Corea's work.
Bebob
>>66454696 Another example I just thought of which would fall into both acoustic fusion and post-post bop is Brad Mehldau's Wonderwall cover. It has that 15/16 bassline under the 4/4 syncopating through the entirety of the A section. That sort of thing, including the use of drums in that recording, I think shows a definite differentiation on how rhythmic ideas are expressed in the original post-bop movement versus what would now still be considered post-bop.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66454696 >The drumming style mainly. To me it's a lot more influenced by breakbeats. Like if you listen to "Videlles" off Destinations Unknown, the way Harland is drumming is totally different to 60s postbop drumming. That's an interesting idea, but there are times too when I think the drumming sounds really, really influenced by the 60's post-bop style too. Listen to Harland during David Binney's and Chris Potter's solos on Next Stop Tsukiji and I think he sounds a lot like Joe Chambers or Elvin Jones on those classic Blue Note post-bop records. On Tempest in a Teacup he sounds like Tony Williams. But then on the more straight-eighth tracks there is definitely a lot of influence from breakbeat and rock.
>Robert Glasper's In My Element also contains a lot of this, especially in "G & B". Both those records are just categorized as post-bop, but I think the beat and also maybe the use of more simplified harmonies distinguish them from being the same thing as the stuff from the 60s. I can't really speak about the Glasper record but I've studied the music on Destinations Unknown pretty minutely and I would say the harmony is actually VERY similar to the 60's post-bop.
>There was a track in a blindfold thread a while ago that someone described as "a jazz EDM cover" and I think that term describes it very well. I think it might have been GoGo Penguin or maybe Frank Wueste. But yeah I remember that, I think that's something we'll see a lot more of in the next few years too.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
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>>66454783 I would say that odd time signatures in general were a major trend in jazz during the 2000's.
Anonymous
i want to get into esbjörn svensson trio, what albums should I listen to and in what order?
Bebob
>>66455006 I was talking about the harmony more with regard to the Glasper record. Even he still uses dense harmonies, though. I suppose I was more referring towards a reduction in dissonance, but even that isn't consistently the case. I definitely still think there are a lot of similarities between this and the 60s stuff. I guess my point really is that still calling it post-bop at this point, with the focus on odd time signatures, less straightforward drum beats, and shorter repeating ostinatos, seems almost as if they're saying nothing's changed in 50 years. I guess I just think it's evolved enough that I would call it something new.
In terms of drum beats, I could talk about that for ages. Modern drummers have much less of a willingness to revert to straight ahead swing beats, which comes from players like Tony Williams of course. That break beat sorta stuff is also incorporated on swing tunes, just maybe not on that record. Marcus Gilmore does stuff like that, and so do Chris Dave and Damion Reid. I also hear a lot more doubletime swing against straight eighth melodies in the 2000s stuff, which Damion Reid does as well.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66455678 >I suppose I was more referring towards a reduction in dissonance, but even that isn't consistently the case. Yeah I don't think I would necessarily say there has been a big reduction in dissonance.
>I definitely still think there are a lot of similarities between this and the 60s stuff. I guess my point really is that still calling it post-bop at this point, with the focus on odd time signatures, less straightforward drum beats, and shorter repeating ostinatos, seems almost as if they're saying nothing's changed in 50 years. I guess I just think it's evolved enough that I would call it something new. Yeah I agree with you. That music is obviously very inspired by 60's post-bop but it's clearly not the same.
>That break beat sorta stuff is also incorporated on swing tunes, just maybe not on that record. Got any examples of this?
>I also hear a lot more doubletime swing against straight eighth melodies in the 2000s stuff and this?
I think I know what your talking about with breakbeat over swing tunes, but I don't know what you mean about double time swing over straight eighth.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
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>>66455610 I like E.S.T. plays Monk, Leucocyte, and 301 but I haven't heard all of their albums.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
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>>66455678 >Modern drummers have much less of a willingness to revert to straight ahead swing beats, which comes from players like Tony Williams of course. This is kind of interesting too because I would say another characteristic of good modern drummers is that they can keep a good groove, whether it be swing, rock, funk, Latin, or whatever, but then they also know when to let the groove go and just follow the soloist. I think that idea definitely comes from Tony.
Bebob
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>>66455944 So "G&B" in the live versions is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about. It's still swing but brings in that kick and snare. I'm sorry I can't link right now.
Ambassador Satch
>>66454506 >I'd say the term "bebop" and its meaning is more agreed-upon and accepted to mean certain things than the term spiritual jazz That bebop is more popular has helped that a lot. Spiritual jazz isn't near as widely used. It can imply a few specific qualities as a label and thus is useful but often, music that can be described as spiritual jazz can be labeled other existing and more popular genres(like modal, free, post-bop, fusion, etc.). I don't think there's a "need" to use it because if you tell someone a piece is one of those other terms, you can still give them a fair description of what the piece is like. I think it's like one of those terms like "zeuhl" where you could use a more common word, or you can use the more esoteric but ludicrously specific one.
It's a personal choice and maybe one or the other works better in different circumstances.
>I'd say most modal jazz has changes, just less changes a lot of the time. I mean, one could also say it's a bunch of improvised changes with only overarching modes. When I said lack of changes though, I meant a lack of precomposed chord progression. I suppose a mode change could be called "changes" but I start thinking about that and I start getting the willies. Like, modal pieces have chord progressions where the chords are just all 7 notes in a diatonic mode and the musicians are just choosing which notes in the chord to voice, but they're always playing the same chord (Emaj7add2add4add6). It's spooky stuff and you start poking at music's guts like that, you might not like what you find.
>I think another point worth mentioning is that the term "free jazz" is pretty widely used, but is really pretty ill-defined and has been used to describe a lot of wildly different music. I remember that chart you put up categorizing the different elements that need to be absent to make a "totally free" song. The one talking about the Miles Quintet. That was a nice way way of showing how continuous this spectrum is.
Ambassador Satch
>>66454506 >but I don't think you can just ignore the cultural ties of black people to certain kinds of music. Yeah, I might just be trying to be too pc. I probably wouldn't say reggae isn't a "Jamaican genre", even though there are plenty of people of other races who make it.
>But let's go even further- How about A Love Supreme? I'm very much in the realms of postulation here but I figure that's because they're made by really popular artists. Spiritual jazz isn't respected or widely used enough and there are more people who have heard of ALS than have heard of "spiritual jazz" and so the more popular (but possibly less accurate) terms get used. We've seen other terms used for the Coltranes and Roaches of the world and so we associate them with them.
Upon thinking about it, it's pretty apparent that they do fit the criteria but there's like a mental block in my head to calling ALS spiritual jazz.
jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
>>66457469 >music that can be described as spiritual jazz can be labeled other existing and more popular genres(like modal, free, post-bop, fusion, etc.) That's a good point.
>but they're always playing the same chord (Emaj7add2add4add6). Well really those are just the implied chord extensions of the Emaj7 anyway... the 9th, #11 (because Lydian is better) and the 13th, so that part of it wasn't really a new or unique concept to modal jazz, but the slow harmonic motion and non-functional chord motions were (for the most part.)
>It's spooky stuff and you start poking at music's guts like that, you might not like what you find. I like poking the guts and finding the spooky stuff. That's one reason I love teaching theory is that in trying to explain this stuff to other people I find all kinds of patterns that I never quite realized before. That circle of fourths is just full of weird patterns.
>>66457689 >Upon thinking about it, it's pretty apparent that they do fit the criteria but there's like a mental block in my head to calling ALS spiritual jazz. Really? I guess I'd kind of consider it as the father album that gave birth to spiritual jazz. Maybe it'd be proto-spiritual jazz.
But anyway, I think the main point is what you were saying earlier that pretty much all spiritual jazz can probably also fall into another (or several other) jazz subgenres.
Anonymous
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good thread. bump.
Anonymous
Anonymous
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>>66450015 I just want to say that I loved this track. Listening to the rest of the album now.
Anonymous
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Track 9 is DEFINITELY Pharoah Sanders' You've Got to Have Freedom. I could tell it was Pharoah from the second the track started
Anonymous
>Track 1 >Track 2 >Track 3 >Track 4 >Track 5 >Track 6
jazzisprettycool
>>66460952 cont.
>Track 7 Love the quarts in the piano. The sax solo is really unexpected. I like these kind of wild crazy save-esque solos. The piano solo is blazing fast and amazing reminds me of someone losing their mind and yelling until they pass out. This is all over the place in a good way. Best track since Track 3.
>Track 8 I can't tell if I like this or not. Didn't really like the first section but the second one piqued my interest.
>Track 9 The quacky sax tone didn't really make sense until the other instruments came in. Love the structure of this though. The sax player is amazing, so is the pianist. One of my favourites of this week. Amazing interaction between the musicians.
>Track 10 I like the piano player swiping the strings with his fingers. Cool touch. Not spectacular though.
Favourites: Track 3, Track 7, Track 9.
Least favourites: Track 5, Track 6
Probably killed the thread tbqh
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
>>66461455 Thanks for participating this week.
If you didn't see, the reveal info for this week got posted already.
>>66449181 jazzisprettycool
>>66462151 Yeah I avoided reading the thread because I didn't think it was posted and didn't want to spoil it. This is the first time i've done this in a few months
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
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>>66462187 Looks like we both liked track 7 a lot but I didn't really like 9 as much.
Anonymous
How can someone learn to play piano like McCoy Tuner?
Anonymous
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>>66462576 listen to a lot of mccoy tyner
Anonymous
Anonymous
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>>66462576 Years of practice
Ambassador Satch
>>66458523 >Well really those are just the implied chord extensions of the Emaj7 anyway... the 9th, #11 (because Lydian is better) and the 13th, so that part of it wasn't really a new or unique concept to modal jazz What do you mean "implied chord extensions"? They're the other notes in the scale and can be used as extensions but if you see Emaj7 written down, you can play a C# but it's outside the chord you were given. People still did it before modal jazz but isn't that a step further towards modal music? I know the slow movement is a major feature as well but I thought the fact that the given modes replacing chords changes was the big defining factor? The way you're describing it, beyond having an easier progressions to work around, this type of music didn't offer any more harmonic freedom than was already in use.
Anonymous
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You fucking nerds
Anonymous
>>66457469 >I remember that chart you put up categorizing the different elements that need to be absent to make a "totally free" song. can you repost this?
Ambassador Satch
>>66466415 I don't have it saved, soz. JTG probably still has it though.
It's got a bunch of solos listed from the second great quintet and categorises them based on what elements of non-free music they were playing without. It's a nice illustration of how free the quintet as well as what constitutes "free" in music.
Anonymous
BlindfoldTest !jM7LiDIYEY
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Reposting the link for next week in case anybody missed it earlier in the thread.
http://www112.zippyshare.com/v/mqCTcRyi/file.html jtg !kZY4UEIaT6
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>>66465938 Well basically ever since bebop it's pretty much accepted that even though we notate the chords as just a seventh chord, the extensions are implied and you can add them into the voicing at your discretion. That's why I tend to think that modal jazz is more about the form and harmony of the tunes than the actual "modes" themselves.
