Skip (et. al): Not just a "double standard" but a code word as well, sort of like "urban music", "radical feminist" or "chosen people". If Ayler, CT and others are continuously labelled "avant garde" the labeller can use this as a way to warn people that what's being played isn't "normal jazz" like Lester Young or Dicky Wells played for instance.[remember these are their definations, not mine]. For example, Toronto (and Canada's) largest newspaper employs the type of critic who sees (hears?) the music as nothing but good time, party sounds, characterized by technical facility. Whenever he has to review -- or more likely preview -- an improvised music happening, his report slips in the words "avnat garde" along with "screaming", "dischordant", "screeching", "difficult" etc. so that the mainstream "jazz" fans know that this is a performance or CD to avoid. Ken Waxman --- skip Heller <velaires@earthlink.net> wrote:
Then someone kindly explain to me why a lot of 40-yr-old musical tactics (as set down by Ornette, Cecil, Ayler et al) are still being referred to as avant-garde? At this point, those guys are as fixed in the jazz firmament as Lester Young or Dicky Wells, but nobody calls those guys avant-garde. I sense a sort of double-standard.
===== Ken Waxman mingusaum@yahoo.ca www.jazzword.com - Jazz/improv news, CD reviews and photos ______________________________________________________________________ Post your ad for free now! http://personals.yahoo.ca