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Originally Posted by evollove
Okay. I have no idea what hardcore jazzheads think about this stuff, I now realize.
I wonder: how much shit did Miles get for In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, etc? Was the jazz community excited by a new direction, or were these records perceived as blasphemy?
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I want to be a kind, generous listener, but those YES track titles! Especially side two. Gonna have to listen to this ironically at first.
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Jazz is the use of theory to improvise upon existing melodies, using modulation, tempo, timbre, volume, etc ALL AT THE SAME TIME, essentially composing on the fly, which is it's innovation and basis for existence. Until you can instinctively improvise on electronic instruments and do all these things in real time, then you will not be playing Jazz music.
the main dixieland jazz community hated the swing era of jazz, and saw it as pop watered down crap. the swing jazz fans, once that was evolved into more artistic forms, hated the bebop era that did away with the swing/big band arrangements and stripped it all down to a small band. the bebop jazz mainstream hated the Hard Bop which took bebop and amped the shit up to 11, creating new forms. Once those were exhausted, the hard bop people hated on MIles "cool" modal jazz, based not on scales but on modal forms of music. When that became the mainstream, jazz fans started hating on Gillespie's explorations into latin samba and bahia music, combining jazz with polyphonic latin rhythms. Once that became mainstream, the Jazz fans hated the Free Jazz of cecil taylor and Ornette Coleman.
it goes on and on. the thing is, that until Miles Davis started making jazz albums with electric instruments, which, at the time, could not be modulated in as many ways as an acoustic instrument could (and still can't really, without three hundred effects pedals), jazz purists felt that what was being created was a new music, not Jazz.
ever since then the "jazz" is formalized and old-fashioned, even though there have been amazing jazz albums by people like Marcus Roberts and the Marsalis bros.
the rock and funk musicians that Miles played with were in no respect the equals musically of a seasoned Jazz musician. This drove people away from Fusion.
Oh, and Kenny G is not Jazz.