April 12, 2024

Jazz

Jazz is a mystery to me. I don't like it.

Jazz (whatever it is) has many forms and varieties.
So far I don't like any of them.
Some people do, and are enthusiastic about it -- which is the greater mystery.

When I say I don't like it, I'm not saying I hate it, just that it doesn't get me excited or interested. I don't find it objectionable, but that is all I can say.

What does Rick Beato say about it?

Quite a lot as it turns out: It seems to be impossible to appreciate jazz without some musical sophistication. You need to understand chords, inversions, triads, and be entertained when the musicians do interesting things with them. At least this is one of my theories.

To talk about jazz you have to talk about chord progressions and improvisation.
And not just chord progressions but "sophisticated chord progressions" (I wouldn't know a chord progression if it bit me on the ass).
If you don't understand what "minor 7, sharp 5" chords are (and recognize them when you hear them), you will never enjoy jazz.

This rapidly leads to the "jazz snobbery" that so many people hate.

I never hear people use words like this when they talk about music by the Rolling Stones or the Beatles or any of the popular rock groups.

Rick says that to like jazz you have to understand improvisation.

In other words, you need to be somewhat (or even quite a bit) of a musician to enjoy jazz. At least this would seem to be necessary, but is probably not sufficient.

This is from one of the comments on the videos above:

"I don't think people hate jazz so much as they hate people who like jazz
This can be true also of classical music. I also enjoyed this joke: 
Rock: 3 chords played in front of 10,000 people
Jazz: 10,000 chords played in fron of 3 people
Like many jokes, a truth lies at their heart. Here are more great quotes: 
"Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny."  - Zappa
"America hates music, but loves entertainment."
"The jazz musicians are amazing, the music is awful"
In jazz, it's more about the way a song is played, rather than what song is played.
It may boil down to this. Jazz was the pop music of the 1950's -- but pop music has moved on. Jazz now belongs to an older generation and a niche group of musicians. Jazz gave way to bee-bop, which was displaced by Rock in the era of Elvis and then the Beatles. Pat Metheny in the 1980's was the tail end of jazz. Rick says nobody under 50 years of age attended a Pat Metheny performance in 2018 that he attended.

He claims that audiences in Europe and Asia are more sophisticated and appreciate jazz.

Steely Dan is/was a rock band, but showed a lot of jazz influence. One guy calls "bee-bop" the punk rock version of jazz and says that the musicians in Steely Dan were huge bee-bop fans.

Greatest Jazz recording of all time: "Kind of Blue" 1959.

Rick says that Jazz blues has never gone out of style. He also claims that Rock departed from blues in the mid-90s and since then Rock has lost its popularity. What is the blues? It traces back to African-Americans and slavery.

Another connection that Rick points out is dance. People once danced to Jazz, then to bee-bop, and then to Rock and Roll -- but as Rock moved on, it was no longer something to dance to. Is this a definition of "pop music"? Something that the current generation dances to?

After 20 minutes of the 55 minute "why people hate jazz" livestream, I bailed out.

Pat Metheny

These odds and ends here are from the (almost 2 hour long) interview with him by Rick Beato above. I paused it after 20 minutes and began compiling the above from some other videos on jazz by Rick Beato.

Some notable music of his. 

Bright size life
Midwestern nights dream (notable bass melody)
80/81
To talk about Jazz and Metheny's music we get a lot of insider talk with people you may or may not ever have heard of -- and terms (like triads and other jargon from music theory) that you may not ever have heard of.

After about 30 minutes of the interview I got bored. A listener feels like an "outsider" when the talk is all about people and concepts he is unfamiliar with. (It is like listening to an interview with a star football player if you are not a football fan).

So I can see why people avoid any Rick Beato videos with "jazz" in the title. Life is too short.