The Day Jazz Became Classical - Pt. 2
March 08 2009

Some of my best friends are over 30. In fact I am over 30. But...

The Pianobabbler was surveying his audience recently. Great people, all. But nary a one under 30. Except the 15 and 13 year old boys-2-men sitting with their jazz-loving mom, screaming silently why-did-you-bring-us-here-MOM?

If there had been willing young'uns in the audience, the Pianobabbler would have known they were students in a jazz program.

How could this have happened to jazz? Not so long ago it was the music that would have royally p****d off mom. It was the gangsta rap of its day. Degenerate. A threat. Ergo, cool.

My best guess is that it was some time in the 70's that jazz flipped over from the hip to hip-replacement. Miles Davis was no longer innovating, Oscar Peterson was repeating himself, and Ella Fitzgerald stopped singing 'young'.

At the same time, university jazz programs started popping up. Now, the Pianobabbler knows: if you want to smother a breathing artistic life-form, take it to the university. I say this as a former Assistant Professor...

Which- digression alert -reminds me: when did Mission Statements become a necessary part of the arts? Whoever the over-theorized academic was that thought up the requirement, requirement. that an artist- musician, painter, photographer -put their art into words, little understood words, art or artists. But I do digress...

What I'm getting at about jazz, is that it seemed to stop looking forward in the 70's, and to start looking backward. What should we play, became what did they play. What are today's jazzable tunes, became what were yesterday standards.

Not that the quality of the music or musicianship has diminished. On the contrary. The playing is more dazzling than ever.

No, it's the rise of the preservationist imperative, at the expense of a commitment to the present. The music being played has come to be judged by the music that has been played.

It's in this sense that jazz has become classical. It was more than it is. Re-creation informs the creation. The movie is over. Everything is a remake, however modern the dress and language.

This is not necessarily something to lament. And like most generalizations, holes can be picked in it. There is some real innovation in jazz. And like classical music, jazz is thriving.

But we jazzers should have a clear sense of what we're doing. And our sense of place in music today should be mindful of what we're doing. We are now appealing to a more limited, older, but well-educated (and well-heeled) demographic. That's not a bad thing. It's the same demographic classical music enjoys.

Cory Doctorow recently called opera "culturally disconnected bloat-music for weird people, supported by charity, that will never disappear." Huff and puff as opera-lovers will, and the Pianobabbler speaks as a faithful classical music junkie,
there is truth in Doctorow's snipe.

Where does this leave us?

The philosopher Wittgenstein (a hero of the Pianobabbler's) once wrote that if science or philosophy had the answers to all the world's questions, we would just have the answers. Life would go on as before.

And so it is with the view that jazz has become a classical music. Jazz is what it is today. I don't see that changing in the near future.

Long live jazz. Jazz lives.

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