A friend gave me an article the other day, this is what it said:
"All music genres go through a very similar life cycle: birth, growth, mainstream acceptance, decline, and finally obscurity. With black music, however, the final stage is never reached because white people are work tirelessly to keep it alive. Apparently, once a music has lost its relevance with its intended audience, it becomes MORE relevant to white people.
Historically speaking, the music that white people have kept on life support for the longest period of time is Jazz. Thanks largely to public radio, bookstores, and coffee shops, Jazz has carved out a niche in white culture that is not yet ready to be replaced by Indie Rock. But the biggest role that Jazz plays in white culture is in the white fantasy of leisure. All white people believe that they prefer listening to jazz over watching television. This is not true.Every few a months, a white person will put on some Jazz and pour themselves a glass of wine or scotch and tell themselves how nice it is. Then they will get bored and watch television or write emails to other white people about how nice it was to listen to Jazz at home. “Last night, I poured myself a glass of Shiraz and put Charlie Parker on the Bose. It was so relaxing, I wish I had a fireplace.” "
This was my reply:
whoever wrote this is an idiot. I'll agree that there are some people out there like the person in this last paragraph, but you could say the same thing about every kind of music. "Indie rock" kids are made up of true lovers of the music, but mostly a bunch of people who thought that dressing and acting unique came hand in hand with listening to a bunch of obscure artists who
write lyrics like they were 5 years old.
People who really love jazz are the ones that realize jazz isn't about race and it never was. That's why Miles Davis (though he hated white people and felt like he had been mistreated by them his entire life) hired them anyway because he found that some people are just better jazz artists than others. Jelly Roll Morton was a white, anti-semetic windbag that was a pain to work with but he is still known as one of the most influential, compositional jazz artists of all time.
I'm not trying to say that jazz shouldn't be accredited to black origins, it should and will always be a part of black and American history. Jazz lives on for the same reason that classical music lives on: it is intelligent, creative music. We haven't "moved on to Indie rock" because it bores us to tears some times.
"All music genres go through a very similar life cycle: birth, growth, mainstream acceptance, decline, and finally obscurity. With black music, however, the final stage is never reached because white people are work tirelessly to keep it alive. Apparently, once a music has lost its relevance with its intended audience, it becomes MORE relevant to white people.
Historically speaking, the music that white people have kept on life support for the longest period of time is Jazz. Thanks largely to public radio, bookstores, and coffee shops, Jazz has carved out a niche in white culture that is not yet ready to be replaced by Indie Rock. But the biggest role that Jazz plays in white culture is in the white fantasy of leisure. All white people believe that they prefer listening to jazz over watching television. This is not true.Every few a months, a white person will put on some Jazz and pour themselves a glass of wine or scotch and tell themselves how nice it is. Then they will get bored and watch television or write emails to other white people about how nice it was to listen to Jazz at home. “Last night, I poured myself a glass of Shiraz and put Charlie Parker on the Bose. It was so relaxing, I wish I had a fireplace.” "
This was my reply:
whoever wrote this is an idiot. I'll agree that there are some people out there like the person in this last paragraph, but you could say the same thing about every kind of music. "Indie rock" kids are made up of true lovers of the music, but mostly a bunch of people who thought that dressing and acting unique came hand in hand with listening to a bunch of obscure artists who
write lyrics like they were 5 years old.People who really love jazz are the ones that realize jazz isn't about race and it never was. That's why Miles Davis (though he hated white people and felt like he had been mistreated by them his entire life) hired them anyway because he found that some people are just better jazz artists than others. Jelly Roll Morton was a white, anti-semetic windbag that was a pain to work with but he is still known as one of the most influential, compositional jazz artists of all time.
I'm not trying to say that jazz shouldn't be accredited to black origins, it should and will always be a part of black and American history. Jazz lives on for the same reason that classical music lives on: it is intelligent, creative music. We haven't "moved on to Indie rock" because it bores us to tears some times.
