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Post by isaacs on Jun 24, 2009 9:50:08 GMT 10
Yet, on the other hand, though it's quite standard, as in all fields, to refer to jazz artists by their surnames, I've never heard anyone refer to "Davis". I think you're right re punters (including punters who are also musicians) whether Australian or not. Obviously you will see "Davis" when jazz writers are producing serious quasi-scholarly pieces. |
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Post by lloydswanton on Jun 24, 2009 10:14:11 GMT 10
When I was at University I was talking about Chick Corea with a lecturer. I kept saying "Chick" this and "Chick" that and with him it was always "Corea" this and "Corea" that You said potato and he said potahto? I had that once with a travel agent when I was booking a trip through Canada. I kept saying Regina the way it is pronounced (as in, rhymes with vagina) but she just wouldn't run with it, and every time I said Regina she said Regeena. It got to the point where I was trying to find as many excuses as I could for saying Regina again, just to make her uncomfortable and see if she'd say Regeena in response. Aaah you find your fun where you find it. |
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Post by trumpetguy on Jun 24, 2009 13:04:36 GMT 10
And there we go, you've heard non-Aussie jazz musos use the first name. I must say I don't find first name use odd - there is a long tradition of it in jazz but I do find referring to musicians as musos a little grating. Is it just me or is the word muso an uncomfortable one to deal with? |
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Post by isaacs on Jun 24, 2009 14:36:54 GMT 10
Quite right. We're not musos. We're artists.
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Post by daveyboy on Jun 24, 2009 15:16:37 GMT 10
I do find referring to musicians as musos a little grating. Is it just me or is the word muso an uncomfortable one to deal with? I was very much using it as an abbreviation. I'm no fan of the word myself, but by definition, when discussing the meaning of words, things can get very, well, wordy, and I was trying to make shortcuts where I felt they could be made without detriment to the discussion. |
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tomj
New Member
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Post by tomj on Jun 24, 2009 15:21:07 GMT 10
Australians tend to prefer first names rather than the formality of surnames.
I wonder happens in the film world? Do Film people refer to Scorcese as Martin? Or Marty?
Whatever, Monk is always Monk
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Post by isaacs on Jun 24, 2009 15:26:30 GMT 10
I do find referring to musicians as musos a little grating. Is it just me or is the word muso an uncomfortable one to deal with? I was very much using it as an abbreviation. I'm no fan of the word myself, but by definition, when discussing the meaning of words, things can get very, well, wordy, and I was trying to make shortcuts where I felt they could be made without detriment to the discussion. And there is the answer to your original question. Shortcuts. Jazz people don't pussyfoot around. Whatever works. As you say things may "by definition" get wordy when discussing the meaning of words, but by definition it still behoves one to use them with maximum, well....definition. Anyway most of us I wager don't really find "muso" that "excruciating" so maybe you won't find "Jack" and "Keith" so excruciating now... I reckon it was a good discussion anyhow, not to say it's finished..... |
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Post by shaggaz on Jun 24, 2009 15:48:35 GMT 10
Yeah...I'm gonna go with Tim on this one.
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Post by isaacs on Jun 24, 2009 15:51:55 GMT 10
I'm going to go with: welcome, and thanks to our new contributor and I thought it was interesting at its core.
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Post by bobbob on Jun 24, 2009 18:56:55 GMT 10
Yep, not so interesting in the long run i guess.Anyway. it always seems pretty much short hand and easy to simplify names whenever possible and it happens just as much in other countries. I mean.. Tony, Keith, Elvin... pretty much redundant to have to specify Oxley, Rowe and Bishop everytime when it's oh so clear.
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Post by lloydswanton on Jun 25, 2009 1:05:53 GMT 10
The musical abbreviation I just CANNOT abide is when personnel listings give a player as being on "keys", for keyboards. It makes my toes curl. I have a hard time explaining why, except that it sounds so triviliasing and petty. Not much of a reason, I know, specially when one considers that "keyboards" is hardly the proudest achievement of the English language.
Onto topic. I think I'm with daveyboy on this one. And I think I would consider using the word "excruciating".(And thank you very much daveyboy for starting this discussion. I think a few contributors here are quite missing the point. It's incredibly important to parse the language structures we use in a cultural environment such as jazz. There is so much to be gained from analysing the assumed meanings inhering in the terms we use, many of which we often don't even notice we're using.)
For my part, I have always referred to famous jazz musicians by full name or surname. I've never even used nicknames like "Bird" or "Trane". But as to why, I just did it. I hadn't analysed it until this blog came along.
It certainly isn't out of some great wish to show respect, like Archie Shepp's fastidious "Mr Coltrane" and "Mr Roach" and so on. No, when I think about it, I think it's because to refer to a jazz figure by their first name is suggesting that their place in the pantheon is assured, and I think that has at least a whiff of dogmatism about it. Yes, if one has a basic knowledge of jazz, there's little chance of misunderstanding who is under discussion when say, "Elvin" is referenced. No other player with the first name Elvin comes close to the position that Elvin Jones occupies in jazz history. But if you believe, as I do, that in order for jazz as a music to progress, that Elvin Jones' place in jazz history, like all the greats, should be under constant reassessment, well then to refer to him and only him as "Elvin", to me conveys the sense that the decision has been handed down, and it's final. There's a touch of hero-worship about it, which is something I've always refused to participate in.
Just for the record, I do feel Elvin Jones' place in the jazz pantheon is assured, but I don't believe that's any reason to start self-perpetuating the process, because there are other artists whose place may well be up for much debate further down the track.
Keith Jarrett is a good case in point for me. Very little of his music of the last couple of decades holds any interest for me. I think that a lot of the most amazing music of recent times is music that is well away from the area he's active in. So there's NO WAY I'm going to call him "Keith", as if he's The Man. Catch me on the right day, and I'd probably feel that Keith Rowe or Keith Tippett or even some other Keith is of greater significance to me. I don't dispute for a second that Keith Jarrett is a towering figure to many people in the jazz scene, but he's not to me; I think there's far more interesting music being made which may prove in the long run to be more significant. But even if I'm proved wrong, if I have any self-respect, why should I give him my endorsement in this subtle, subconscious way? Why should I speak as if I hang out with the guy when I don't care for much of his music?
But should I say "Elvin" because in my musical view his work is significant, but not "Keith" because I find his legacy less so? Ridiculous. So I think over the years I've studiously (if barely consciously) avoided showing any hint of partisanship, by staying right away from that particular language construct. I say let history be the judge, rather than setting ourselves up as some sort of cheer squad. OK, I'm going to bed.
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Post by bobbob on Jun 25, 2009 3:01:10 GMT 10
Oh. I really did think we were talking about Keith Rowe and Tony Oxely. We're not.?
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Post by isaacs on Jun 25, 2009 6:09:52 GMT 10
Lloyd, firstly it's great to read a post like that. Thanks heaps. I hope you'll stick around these parts. I've always enjoyed your quite frequent letters to the editor in the SMH so I'm glad you consider our little forum worth the effort. You'll get considerably more space here, and guaranteed publication. I'm glad you feel as I do that daveyboy's post was a worthy and important one to respond to. It's interesting that on the face of it you and I drew seemingly opposite conclusions from the phenomenon he cited. I felt the first names indicated that people in the world of jazz found the artists they admired personally knowable. And that the music has had an informal tradition in its presentation such that first names were a natural corollary. Your thesis on the other hand turned on hero-worship, the idea of the "one-and-only" and unshakeable tenure in the Pantheon. This seems an absolutely correct analysis to me. We can apparently confidently use first names - even very common ones - because there is no other "Jack" or "Keith". Of course there are other Jacks and Keiths playing jazz - I'd wager they would be legion - but none could possibly ever measure up to "our" Jack and Keith. I am fascinated that - to use political metaphors - I concluded that the use of first names was because of a propensity to democratise, whereas you saw it as the systematic entrenchment of a kind of hereditary aristocracy. The two seem mutually exclusive, but I wonder if they are? The mistake I made was to concatenate formality and reverence in a way that could imply that informality might mean less reverence. But this doesn't bear more detailed examination. That would mean that classical people revered their greats more than jazz people did theirs, simply because classical dudes did not use first names. But I have always believed the opposite: that jazz people show far more reverence. In an article a decade ago in Jazzchord I wrote of an apparent heresy in not.....wholeheartedly endorsing every note Coltrane ever played and went on to opine that Jazz is currently very subject to this sort of concatenation of supreme geniuses and Supreme Beings, partly I think because its geniuses are still warm and may yet be seen to arise and roll back the stone. History usually sorts it all out. The fact that no more than five or six of Mozart’s forty-one symphonies are ever played or recorded indicates that Mozart was probably no God. Anyone who has ever heard Beethoven’s Battle Symphony will acknowledge what a travesty it is. I have also elsewhere commented that it is quite acceptable for classical people to hold even more radical views about the Greats. Glen Gould hated Mozart period. Vaughan Williams loathed Beethoven. Tim Stevens cannot abide Shostakovich. But in jazz even mild questioning of the Fathers is howled down. It is unheard of. Let me now try and promulgate the view that Duke Ellington is overrated and see how far it gets me. Strangely, the greatest sin is to say something by a jazz great is "not jazz" (Wynton has never heard the end of that one, but it's not even a judgement that is inherently pejorative unless jazz people also place the artform itself on the same unassailable pinnacle as they do its practitioners) I would like to venture a view that fuses both my unpacking and Lloyd's of the "first name" phenomenon in jazz. Jazz canonises its major artists in a singular way that presents an inherent contradiction encapsulated in the use of first names. First names signal both the incontrovertible and singular distinction in which they are held but also the desire to temper such a potentially disempowering reverence with a dose of the egalitarian. Perhaps this phenomenon has its roots in the African-American culture in which jazz was born. One might speculate that those who were once slaves might in a sense be especially prepared to once again have permanent Masters, but ideally ones that weren't called anything like Mister. [By the way Lloyd, I also find it excruciating to describe anyone as playing "keys"] |
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Post by timothystevens on Jun 25, 2009 9:26:10 GMT 10
Glenn Gould hated Mozart period. Vaughan Williams loathed Beethoven. Tim Stevens cannot abide Shostakovich. Spot the odd one out. |
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jec
Junior Member
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Post by jec on Jun 25, 2009 10:49:15 GMT 10
Despite my earlier doubts I have enjoyed this topic. Lloyd's contributions got me thinking about a guy who I used to work with from NYC. We both had an obvious love of jazz however being from the source he belived that he had some sort of proprietal right over the whole jazz scene & history. I remember when we had our last child 'Leo' he wrote on the congratulations card, "Congratulations but Leo, that aint Jazz!!" expecting I suppose for me to call the child Miles, Duke, Charlie, Elvin or the like. The funny thing is however that since that time I keep finding out about jazz players who have Leo as their name. Some of them really great players, Leo Smith & Leo Taylor to name 2. In fact my Leo got to meet Wadada Leo Smith at an outdoor concert in the Blue Mountains and he was a very generous, humble man and a fantastic trumpeter and musician. There's also a classic line in the Simpsons where Lisa meets a kid called Thelonious and comments "I suppose the cultural appreciation is worth the beatings".
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