From: Ryan Novak <ryan_novak@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: Things I just don't get

Yeah, right- it ain't "new" so it's no good. Didn't we have a recent discussion based around this little obsession? Sometimes some nerd who runs a sine-wave for an hour gets more kudos than someone who can actually play, just because it's the new thing. The quality is what matters to me, the voice, and if it comes with newness- great. But sometimes someone just playing from their heart is rare enough to look "new". Let me tell you, Albert Ayler's power was not in how new his music was.

Just to set the record straight, the previous discussion we had some time ago, a discussion that led to all sorts of misunderstandings, had to do with the notion of the "avant-garde." My original comment was if there was still an "avant-garde" in music post-free jazz, post-Cage, etc., it would likely be in electroacoustic improv, where the ideas of electroacoustic music are combined with improvisational elements. Then a lot of people got bent out of shape thinking that I was saying that there was nothing of value in the area of "avant-garde jazz." Nothing of the sort. Then somebody else wrote in and said that the "avant-garde" was simply a genre, to which I replied that when an avant-garde becomes "genre" its no longer avant-garde, by definition. (Or, to put it differently, if the avant-garde becomes a genre, the whole notion of the "avant-garde" becomes suspect, so we may now be in a milieu where nothing can truly be avant-garde anymore.) Now you have us saying that a sine wave generator is more interesting and exciting than a free jazz blower like Vandermark. I may or may not feel that way, but I wasn't judging Vandermark's worth on the basis of a comparison with Sachiko M, for example. They work in completely different areas, so I see little to compare. As for the part about "nerds" playing sine waves versus those who can "really play," I think we can simply chalk this up to a bias against some of the new music. Being able to "play" and being able to "make music" are not necessarily the same. Some who cannot "play" well according to the received definitions of playing can often have musical senses as compelling or better than the ones who "play" well. Keith Rowe talked about the Duchampian move in the new E/A improv. Well here you have it. People work within the received concepts for a long time, then someone arrives to turn the concepts on their heads and invents a new language. I'd say Rowe's assessment is a bit of wishful thinking. When Duchamp arrived, his art attacked the entire institution of art, top to bottom. I see Rowe and the new breed as continuing to reinforce certain institutions of experimental music all the while proposing some radical concepts of music. Duchamp was more radical. Enjoy your Vandermark, then. But Remco was right when he said that V's no longer avant-garde. And Skip was right when he said that avant-jazz has become just another category of music with its own set of rules and practices, which isn't to say that the music isn't any good. Read carefully or else this will be just one more thing we just don't get. ------------------------------------- His face is turned towards the past. Where we preceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. --Walter Benjamin on the Angel of History _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com