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Music Lane It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes. |
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Music Lane It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes. |
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In Reply to: Is the jazz that's being released today interesting and accessible? posted by Mike K on March 21, 2011 at 10:07:06:
People have often said that bebop or free jazz or whatever moved the music away from audience tastes, but the fact is that during every era--including today-- there have been musicians performing jazz of every imaginable style. Audiences have always had a wide range of choices, and never more so than now.
Let's take the 1960s, just for the sake of example. Many people have written that the free jazz of that era was responsible for driving audiences away. And to a certain degree, I would agree: it seems obvious that the 'free' music of Cecil Taylor or Albert Ayler isn't going to pack the dancefloors or wind up on juke boxes. But it wasn't as if all other forms of jazz disappeared during that era. On the contrary, Louis Armstrong was still going strong, as were Duke, Count Basie, Woody Herman, Ella, Monk, Blakey, Dexter Gordon, Horace Silver, etc etc etc. The whole "free jazz killed the jazz audience" overlooks all of this, and assumes that free jazz was the only choice, and once people rejected it, jazz was done. But people had plenty of choices other than free jazz.
Fast forward to now. I would say we live in a time when there is more music of more genres available to more people than at any time in history. And yet, judging by the sales of recordings and concert tickets, people are consuming less of it than they used to. Why?
I don't think it's a matter of music being accessible: any style you want, seek and ye shall find. But people aren't seeking as much as they used to. Where during the '90s it wasn't uncommon for a top-selling CD to sell more than 1 million in a week, these days you can top the billboard charts by selling 40,000. The concert business is way down, too: orchestras are going bankrupt all over the country, live music clubs (for all genres, not just jazz) are becoming fewer and fewer, and the only rock bands that pack arenas are the aging boomer bands that made their names decades ago. The music business, as a whole, is circling the drain, not just jazz.
Like all 'serious' music, jazz is always going to be a niche market, and it's always going to have a smaller piece of the pie than the Kanye Wests and Taylor Swifts of a given era. When the pie gets smaller, jazz's piece shrinks along with everyone else's.
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Follow Ups
- I think that's a myth. - M. Lucky 10:50:35 03/21/11 (4)
- There lots of logic in what you say * - Mike K 20:52:03 03/21/11 (0)
- Stop making sense. nt - Rick W 11:19:55 03/21/11 (2)
- I had that album! - GEO 19:32:32 03/21/11 (1)
- Agree, with limited time/$$ its almost impossible to keep up. nt - Rick W 09:36:59 03/22/11 (0)
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