No, I’m not mad at my friend and colleague Lara Pellegrinelli for writing this. It’s a provocative statement, and that’s a writer’s job. Lord knows I have my days when I can’t face turning on the stereo or going out to a club. I don’t share Lara’s view even remotely, but I do understand burnout, and I read her post more as a personal take on the act of listening and the vagaries of taste than an authoritative judgment on the State Of Jazz.
For that matter, I’ve found that there is indeed a subset of jazz critics and commentators out there who do not like jazz. I’d much rather they come out and say so.
What I do find demoralizing is the volley of 50-and-counting comments to Lara’s post. She’s right, jazz sucks! Too loud, too dissonant, too radical! Too quiet, too consonant, not nearly radical enough! Why can’t jazz still sound like Dexter Gordon? Why does jazz still sound like Dexter Gordon? Why are young musicians so afraid to break the rules? Why are young musicians so heedless of the rules?
This, again?
If there’s anything that would ever make me stop being a jazz critic, it’s the jumble of contradiction and self-loathing typified in the ABS comments box under Lara’s post. (No, I don’t mean every single comment, of course.) Oh, to be able to sit back and enjoy today’s phenomenal music without having these tendentious arguments swirling around in my head.
4 Comments
David, I can't agree with you more. What a waste of energy. I feel sorry for her attitude. She obviously does not realize what she's missing.
The most recent comments are much more thoughtful and heartening, FWIW.
I must say, though, I've heard multiple rumblings to the effect that she's right…as of this moment, they say, the best jazz scene on Earth is actually Chicago.
Don't know that that would be very reassuring to Lara, though…
I don't know what it means for Lara to be "right" – she's right that she's personally unmoved by most jazz at the moment, and that's pretty unfalsifiable. Again, I don't read her as making some grand claim – more like "it's not you, it's me." I think.
I agree with your assessment, David; looked at that way, I think "Confessions" is a compelling essay. But whatever the author's intentions, I can't see why NPR would have published the piece if they weren't looking for the reaction they got.
Not that I blame them. They want eyeballs, and you get eyeballs by provoking discussion. What's frustrating is that this is one of those discussions that never seems to go anywhere…