Monday, July 2, 2007

Is Rock the New Jazz?


Quote of the day:
"There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do."
--Bill Watterson

The other day I was very surprised to hear Tom Petty say that rock is becoming more like jazz and blues: a historical American art form with small appeal. His comment was part of a documentary about contemporary music called All We Are Saying, produced by Rosanna Arquette.

Others on the documentary suggested that the mantle of cultural change-agent, to the extent it exists in music, has now been passed to hip-hop. Just like rock in the 60s and 70s, and jazz in the 30s and 40s, hip-hop is now the forum for the musical expression of youth.

We who grew up in the rock era like to think of rock music as creatively superior to hip-hop. But it’s really not. As several other musicians admitted in All We Are Saying, the fundamentals of rock are simple chords and rhythms.

Nonetheless, hip-hop is very different from rock-and-roll. Whether you like either, both or neither is a matter of taste based on experience.

Jazz is a different matter. Because the field is wide open to rhythmic and melodic variation and improvisation, a key characteristic of jazz is restraint.

In the July/August 2007 Atlantic, Benjamin Schwarz reviews a book of essays about Frank Sinatra’s huge cultural influence in the 20th century. He calls that influence second only to Elvis Presley’s.

In the 1930s and 40s, Schwarz writes, “jazz, as played by the big bands, was the most popular musical form.” He goes on to say that the initial “poppy” phase of Sinatra’s career “hastened the demise of the big bands and unmoored a mass audience from sophisticated popular music.”

So, in addition to looking for entertainment, maybe what we need to be looking for is sophistication. Who are the musicians setting new standards, and going places never gone before?

Some say Eminem has done this for hip-hop, or that Radiohead is doing it for rock. I suppose we won’t know until this era is over.

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