What I learned from this is that the word "jazz" is used to mean many different kinds of music. The early jazz of the 1927 film is what I think people would call "Broadway Tunes" now. It is music with lyrics that is like pop music, but with exaggerated hand and facial gestures. The 2014 jazz is modern big band music. Big Band, is swing music, like Benny Goodman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIoTpeM6o2A
I can't image that there is a person in this world who wouldn't like "sing, sing, sing". It's impossible. It's too fun and beautiful.
Your experience is with improvisation jazz, which unlike the other two mentioned above, does not use sheet music. It is difficult, I agree, to like it. I think that is the whole point of it. It's an acquired taste. It's a game where you submit yourself to a kind of torture until you can pick out the few seconds it actually sounds good. That is your reward for patiently waiting for the musicians to create something that sounds good on the spot like that together. (It's improvised, WOW!) It is an achievement and you were there to experience it, hence the pleasure. It's a kind of negative feedback meditation.
But, there is already beautiful music that some musicians spent hours or years perfecting to sound not only good all the way through, but sublime, like Glenn Miller's "In The Mood" which is also considered jazz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vOUYry_5Nw
My husband loves jazz. it is his music of choice in the car, in the evening, when he is cooking... I am learning to tolerate it, some of it I don't mind but then I don't think I will ever say I love it. We sound so bourgeois when I tell people that in the evening we sit in the lounge and listen to jazz, but that's as good as it gets for me x
This reminds me so much of the first time Mia and Sebastian talk about Jazz in La La Land. I’ve watched that scene and the one after it a dozen times or more and just love it.
(a) You and my wife would get along great. She refuses to watch the Pixar movie “Soul” because it has jazz. (Very good movie, btw.)
(2) Hearkening back to your New Age music article, when I moved to CA from RI in 1990 I had to find new radio stations. The only ones who played the music I liked also played “smooth jazz” cuts. Alas, by 1993, when I departed for PA, the “jazz” had overwhelmed the “smooth” and I was mostly listening to pop rock stations. And there were zero New Age stations in south central PA. ☹️
Coincidentally I just saw two movies that are about "jazz": "The Jazz Singer" (1927) and "Whiplash" (2014).
https://moviewise.wordpress.com/2021/07/31/the-jazz-singer/
https://moviewise.wordpress.com/2021/07/27/whiplash/
What I learned from this is that the word "jazz" is used to mean many different kinds of music. The early jazz of the 1927 film is what I think people would call "Broadway Tunes" now. It is music with lyrics that is like pop music, but with exaggerated hand and facial gestures. The 2014 jazz is modern big band music. Big Band, is swing music, like Benny Goodman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIoTpeM6o2A
I can't image that there is a person in this world who wouldn't like "sing, sing, sing". It's impossible. It's too fun and beautiful.
Your experience is with improvisation jazz, which unlike the other two mentioned above, does not use sheet music. It is difficult, I agree, to like it. I think that is the whole point of it. It's an acquired taste. It's a game where you submit yourself to a kind of torture until you can pick out the few seconds it actually sounds good. That is your reward for patiently waiting for the musicians to create something that sounds good on the spot like that together. (It's improvised, WOW!) It is an achievement and you were there to experience it, hence the pleasure. It's a kind of negative feedback meditation.
But, there is already beautiful music that some musicians spent hours or years perfecting to sound not only good all the way through, but sublime, like Glenn Miller's "In The Mood" which is also considered jazz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vOUYry_5Nw
So, it's not "all that jazz" 🤗
My husband loves jazz. it is his music of choice in the car, in the evening, when he is cooking... I am learning to tolerate it, some of it I don't mind but then I don't think I will ever say I love it. We sound so bourgeois when I tell people that in the evening we sit in the lounge and listen to jazz, but that's as good as it gets for me x
This reminds me so much of the first time Mia and Sebastian talk about Jazz in La La Land. I’ve watched that scene and the one after it a dozen times or more and just love it.
Jazz, I do not love. It gives me a headache. 😂
A couple comments, Ramona:
(a) You and my wife would get along great. She refuses to watch the Pixar movie “Soul” because it has jazz. (Very good movie, btw.)
(2) Hearkening back to your New Age music article, when I moved to CA from RI in 1990 I had to find new radio stations. The only ones who played the music I liked also played “smooth jazz” cuts. Alas, by 1993, when I departed for PA, the “jazz” had overwhelmed the “smooth” and I was mostly listening to pop rock stations. And there were zero New Age stations in south central PA. ☹️