Klarinet Archive - Posting 000322.txt from 1996/07

From: "Edwin V. Lacy" <el2@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: Musical thought for the day:
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 17:53:45 -0400

On Tue, 16 Jul 1996, Stan Elias wrote:

> Koppel ( to B. B. King): Tell me, B.B., exactly what _is_ the blues?
>
> King: Man, if I gotta tell you, you ain't _never_ gonna know!

Of course, there is at least a grain of truth in B. B. King's statement,
in that those well-versed in a particular type of music find it difficult
to convey to others the true essence of their particular genre of music.
Words are often inadequate to such a task, and especially so if the
person being questioned is something less than an expert semanticist.

The same statement has been attributed to other musicians. Louis
Armstrong supposedly responded in a similar vein when asked to explain
jazz, as did either Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie when questioned
about bebop. In the case of a bebop player, such a response would have
been consistent with their general attitude toward life, society, and
their audiences. They tended to divide people into two camps: the
"swingers," who were people who could either play or understand
bebop or who were sympathetic to the style and its adherents, and a
second group which consisted of everyone else in the world, sometimes
thought of as "scufflers," or those who "scuffled" to make a living.
Showing disdain for this latter group was a part of the bebopper's
unofficial code, so attributing to them the characteristic of being
unable to fully understand the music helped to reinforce this stereotype.

By the way, this should not be taken to mean that I personally am
critical of bebop or its originators, because it was their work that was
primarily responsible for transforming jazz into an art music, as opposed
to the commercial music it had become in the period just prior to and
during the Second World War. In fact, I have often compared Charlie
"Bird" Parker to J. S. Bach. Both of them fully assimilated all the
musical styles that existed in their time, and combined elements of these
styles in such an individual way that a new musical language was
developed. At the same time, both of them unwittingly sounded the death
knell for the musical style that they had created, because they were such
geniuses that no one else could ever again produce music in the style they
created as well as they themselves did.

In the case of Bach it was in large measure his own sons (with the
possible exception of Wilhelm Friedemann, the oldest one) who began to
experiment with new styles and the new aesthetic of classicism and to
regard their father's music as something of an anachronism.

In contrast, the musical language of Charlie Parker, bebop, has
influenced every player of jazz and jazz-related or influenced music
since his time. In fact, some jazz players now bemoan the fact that
such a large proportion of jazz performances of the past 50 years or
so has in some way been in the nature of a tribute to Charlie Parker and
his associates in the bebop movement, or at least an acknowledgement of
their work. Still, every jazz musician who plays with a good command of
the bebop style is compared to Charlie Parker, and I've never heard anyone
evaluate another player as being Parker's equal in that sense.

Sorry, this exchange of messages has set me to thinking about such
matters, and I think I rambled a bit here.

Ed Lacy
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Dr. Edwin Lacy University of Evansville
Professor of Music 1800 Lincoln Avenue
Evansville, IN 47722
el2@-----.edu (812)479-2754
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