Author: seabreeze
Date: 2017-08-24 21:21
Fuzzy,
The New Orleans jazz scene has always been weird and fascinating, like so many other things about this crazy city. Charles Suhor does a fine journalistic job of covering it in his "Jazz in New Orleans: The Postwar Years till 1970." Thomas W. Jacobsen in "Traditional New Orleans Jazz: Conversations with the Men Who Make the Music" offers a different perspective that includes such local clarinetists as Michael White, Evan Christopher, and Tom Fischer. The bittersweet attempts to teach jazz in local schools are followed by Al Kennedy's "Chord Changes on the Chalkboard: How Public School Teachers Shaped Jazz and Music in New Orleans." This one is a real eye-opener for many readers who naively suppose that jazz just falls from the sky like a force of nature. Jazz players are usually fervently looking for people to "school" them, and Collins in his Bechet biography, for instance, painstakingly shows how Bechet played hooky from one school to be educated in another when he chose to hang out with the best clarinet players he could find all over the city. Fountain spent many hours outside the doors of the places Fazola played, listening to and mimicking every note and phrase.
When people say music comes naturally to a certain player, they are only telling half the truth. What comes naturally is the desire to spend the countless hours of listening and practice time necessary to become a good player. The desire and aptitude are forces of nature (and specific human cultures) but the accomplishment of the goal is always time consuming and very hard work even for those gifted with talent--as it was for Bechet and Fountain and Artie Shaw.
Post Edited (2017-08-24 21:43)
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