Forbidden Zones

[isaacs]

I'm really tired of the idea of "forbidden zones" in jazz.

Scarlatti doesn't have the serious depth of Bach but he didn't get excommunicated for it. His music occupies a place of its own in the repertoire and the music as a whole is richer for it. And there's no shame in appreciating his music.

Getting back to today's jazz, I enjoy Yellowjackets and Michel Camilo for example. Their compositions and playing both, though I don't want them on a steady non-stop diet. Mind you a non-stop diet of Beethoven or Coltrane would start me yearning for something else too.

[Kenny]

I'd like to think I don't have "forbidden zones", jazz or otherwise, merely stuff I don't like much.

This year I have gone out of my way to check out William Parker, as he's a name I come across often but had never heard. O'Neal's Porch - OK, a couple of others perplexing. A double CD, Blue Winter, with Hamid Drake and Fred Anderson: WTF? a long-winded way to say very little, it seems to me. But maybe - and this is the really cool part - next week, or next year, or next decade it'll all make sense.

At Wangaratta, I missed the second show by the Oliver Lake Trio, as I - much to my surprise - sat loving it through the whole set by Ren Walters, David Tolley and Co. That wouldn't have happened a few years back.

Sorry, Mark, nothing forbidden about the Yellajackets for me - I simply don't like them.

If there is a "forbidden zone" in jazz that I find disturbing, it is probably that which finds fans and performers of more contemporary styles simply unable or unwilling to listen to or enjoy older and more traditional styles. What is life without Jelly Roll or Milton Brown? Zilch.

[isaacs]

I agree, fusion and snappy-Latinjazz aren't the only "forbidden zones"

"Vintage jazz" has been a forbidden zone for many too. But the neoclassicistic ideas of Wynton and others have contributed to making that position far less respectable now (by the way Wynton himself is another "forbidden zone" I don't subscribe to).

Of course many jazz-lovers have always imbibed "vintage" music with or without Wynton, including fervent modernists like John Clare or Peter Rechniewski.

[Kenny]

Agree to disagree: Wynton is "forbidden" to me solely on the basis I don't like what I hear! There's far more music going around that I DO really, really want to hear.

[Kenny]

I'm a liar.

Of course I have at least one "forbidden zone".

Talent quest-style shows on commercial, free-to-air TV. There - I got away without even naming them!