Comments on: how not to write about jazz, probably https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2018/08/how-not-to-write-about-jazz-probably Lollards in the high church of low culture Sat, 01 Sep 2018 11:38:44 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2018/08/how-not-to-write-about-jazz-probably/comment-page-1#comment-2278057 Sat, 01 Sep 2018 11:38:44 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=31437#comment-2278057 i think i’d be hesitant to make the analogy too easily, since there’s no obvious equivalent in the techno world for america’s racial politics c.1940-60 — or of a coherent and unified body of cultural knowledge that tidily compares with the harmonic theory shared by the european schools of composition (up to the modernist break-point at least). the frontline beboppers were doing two things: gleefully demonstrating their mastery of this body of knowledge — a total understanding present in fingers and lips and lungs as well as brains — but also urgently showing there was potentially much more to music than just this knowledge. obviously there’s an element of “outsider politics” to EDM in its various forms, and to metal too — but on the whole it’s an outsiderness that manifests as “also we can go over here and do this, if you like”… i think there’s an argument to be made that this specific passage in jazz history helped set out the terms of the modern-day laissez-faire pluralist option, but it certainly wasn’t an option in the 1940s for young black jazz musicians, and that fact is reflected in the shapes the music takes and the energies it delves into

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By: Ed https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2018/08/how-not-to-write-about-jazz-probably/comment-page-1#comment-2277862 Sat, 01 Sep 2018 02:41:20 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=31437#comment-2277862 This is fascinating, thanks. So – reaching wildly for non-jazz parallels here – would I be right in thinking that this makes bebop the IDM of its day? So Charlie Parker : Count Basie :: Squarepusher : Goldie?

And to extend the analogy into the discourse, Philip Larkin and others who hated Parker were like the critics praising Ardkore over Autechre in the 90s?

The other thing it sounds a bit like is guitar shredding culture. There would presumably have been a whole industry of how-to videos if they had had YouTube then.

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