2019 Who's dead already ?

[Seriously]

Most likely this one, that my friend Paul Schreiber at Tandy developed with Bob Moog's blessing and schematics.

It was def. branded MOOG though !

[boatme99]

Larry Langford (D), 72. Discraced former mayor of Birmingham, Al. USA. after realease from prison on humanitarian grounds.
Mr Langford was convicted on 60 counts! He served 9 years of a 15 year sentence.

[WWII70]

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[WWII70]

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[skywatch]

Joseph Jarman, age 81, passed away today. Brilliant musical innovator with Chicago Art Ensemble and elsewhere. Part of the crazy Afro-American improvised radical jazz that helped me form my musical language (which really wasn't foreign, "ethnic" or crazy at all, I think.)

[tribe125]

I found the language of those guys very off-putting. ‘Art Ensemble’, ‘Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians’, etc.

Too earnest, too self-conscious, too precious.

I’m wary of music with an overt agenda, whatever the genre.

[skywatch]

I found the language of those guys very off-putting. ‘Art Ensemble’, ‘Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians’, etc.
Too earnest, too self-conscious, too precious.
I’m wary of music with an overt agenda, whatever the genre.

I understand your reaction to the rhetoric, but the music itself was so joyful. It helps to think about the context when these movements began within the USA in the late 1960s, a time of divisive racial uprising, the shooting of Malcom X and ML King, when black people were trying to define their own cultural values and reclaim some of the vitality that had been slipping away from jazz while rock ("white people's music") was ascending. The difficulties of race in the USA are sometimes puzzling to people who see it from the outside. Obviously, it's a problem that hasn't gone away, either.

When I was growing up, my father played jazz guitar, but he was also a bit of a racist. I have trouble figuring that out. He played west-coast cool jazz, in the style of Stan Getz, Barney Kessel, Vince Guaraldi. I started to think it sounded boring and very "white." When I discovered Art Ensemble, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sander, late Coltrane, Cecil Taylor - they opened my ears to something radical and fresh. Although I don't play jazz, I think a lot of that experimental approach worked its way into my approach. I owe them a debt of gratitude.

[tribe125]

Yes, I understood the context - or at least, I’d read about it. Black jazz musicians, all the way back to Sidney Bechet, often found themselves better accepted in Europe - to the extent that some, like Bechet, came to live here. But things like the AACM, ironically, seemed to create a different kind of separatism or elitism.

Generally, I’m averse to things that come with a manifesto, whether it’s Dadaists or jazz musicians who (again ironically) seem to be aping the elitist aspects of Western classical music. It smacks of people who are taking themselves too seriously. And in a final irony, some of the AACM didn’t like being called jazz musicians!

But yes, I’m spite of all that, some of the music could be fun.

[skywatch]

Generally, I’m averse to things that come with a manifesto, whether it’s Dadaists or jazz musicians...

Oh, I certainly get that. When we had people like André Breton deciding who could and couldn't be considered "Surrealist" based upon political affiliations or whether he thought they might be homosexual or such. Yet, I think many artists use manifestos as internal creative signposts, more than as a marketing device or preaching. When faced with an infinite number of choices, while trying to find direction, one benefits from taking on an idealogical framework with which to filter ideas. Sometimes it may seem overly restrictive or pushy, but frameworks help to focus one's mind and reduce options. In the end, "the proof is in the pudding" and I think a lot of those AACM artists made some incredible new music. I don't think it would have been as vibrant without the underlying sense of a mission or purpose. Of course YMMV.

[WWII70]

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