Like Classical, Jazz is not a casual musical language. It requires extensive knowledge by both the artist and the listener.
Edit: Getting some resistanc, which is more than fair. I was a bit flippant with this answer. Like most genres of music, when someone mentions it, people think of the style that they know most.
For me, jazz is best represented by BeBop, which MANY people are imagining when they think of dense, non-melodic jazz that they hate, and that’s what I was thinking of. To understand Bop, it really, really helps to understand the underlying music theory. Bird and Diz and Miles and Trane were doing some amazing things, that become even more amazing when you know the theory.
OTOH, if the mention of jazz calls up Big Band music, or the Smooth Jazz of the 90s, you wouldn’t need any more musical knowledge to enjoy those, any more than any other more popular music.
Those genres are legitimate jazz as well, as are others, and I am actually a huge Big Band fan, so I shouldn’t have been so dismissive.
Like Classical, Jazz is not a casual musical language. It requires extensive knowledge by both the artist and the listener.
Edit: Getting some resistanc, which is more than fair. I was a bit flippant with this answer. Like most genres of music, when someone mentions it, people think of the style that they know most.
For me, jazz is best represented by BeBop, which MANY people are imagining when they think of dense, non-melodic jazz that they hate, and that’s what I was thinking of. To understand Bop, it really, really helps to understand the underlying music theory. Bird and Diz and Miles and Trane were doing some amazing things, that become even more amazing when you know the theory.
OTOH, if the mention of jazz calls up Big Band music, or the Smooth Jazz of the 90s, you wouldn’t need any more musical knowledge to enjoy those, any more than any other more popular music.
Those genres are legitimate jazz as well, as are others, and I am actually a huge Big Band fan, so I shouldn’t have been so dismissive.
Hard disagree. It’s like anything else: people like what they like.
I don’t know fucking shit about fuck and I still enjoy jazz longer than 30 seconds.