Archives - Music: Page 31
Author: amparo enriquez (Thu Sep 08, 2005 9:17 pm)
Title: "jazz is dead..."
According to the Austrian pianist Joe Zawinul (whose band “JAZZ AVANTGARD WEATHER REPORT” has worked together with Mile Davies band in the past): “jazz is dead and not because poor record companies performance or business blunders but because musicians have failed to do new innovative work”.
In the opinion of Zawinul (who has more than forty records (as a soloist) to his credit): “I don’t think that jazz is elitist it has always been popular, is a question of taste. Jazz was created by poor people, slaves that came from Africa. Is the result of European and African music that develop a new beautiful music born in New Orleans, later on moving to Mississippi, Chicago, New York, Saint Louis, Philadelphia and then all over the world. Jazz was the creation of poor people that had a need of expressing themselves because they didn’t have the right to talk but did have the right to play music”.
After Katrina I believe all of us that love jazz will have to work together to bring it back to life again.
Jazz will live.
Most of the area jazz calls home will never be the same, but the music itself did not drown out. As Americans we will do what we can to rebuild what was lost in New Orleans. Contractors, architects, and builders will reconstruct the buildings just as jazz musicians will survive what is arguably the only originally American music genre. As a resident of Gulfport, Mississippi, I am very confident the music in my hometown and its influences will be back very soon as well.
As for the lack of diversity and innovation to jazz, that will still be a hinderance to its survival. However, disasters such as these bring out the best in people, and soon someone will rediscover the essence of this music and revive it, just as bands like TBS and Something Corporate have revived punk, and just as Nirvana sparked the grunge scene in the early 90's. All it takes is one breakthrough to start a mainstream fad, and maybe that is what it will take for jazz.