Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner - Non Classical Nicholas Payton on Jazz

http://nicholaspayton.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/on-why-jazz-isnt-cool-anymore/

What do you guys think? I actually agree for the most part.

The guy doesn't have a clue what jazz is about.

He is considered to be one of the best trumpet player right now along with people like Wynton Marsallis, Roy Hargrove. I wouldn't say he is clueless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Payton

Here's video of him playing with Kenny Garret and Roy Haynes.. those are the kind of guys Nicholas Payton play with on regular bass.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0oOUvqx9_8

Aside from his qualification as a "jazz musician", I think he brings up really good points about the perception of jazz in the public. People like Kenny Werner have said that they don't play jazz, they play music, because they do feel that the whole idea of "playing jazz" confines them into a genre. You also have this constant about people claiming what's jazz and what isn't, and seeing how people like Robert Glasper and other musicians mix so much musical influences, you realize you live in a world where "what is jazz" really isn't very clear as it used to be.

Nicholas payton is featured in the documentary "Icons among us" and him and other people make a valid point about how jazz has fallen from the mainstream.. and that has a lot to do with how jazz is portrayed as this old music, when in reality there are a lot of really creative young artists out there(but then again a lot of purist would call their music "not jazz").

After all that and done, he still doesn't have a clue what's it all about.

Don't know how to argue with that

For someone who is "doesn't have a clue what it's all about" he seems to be doing really well...In fact he is doing better than most of us as a "jazz" musician.

About that video... you know what's not so cool, all the comments based on non visceral observations. I think this is what Payton might be aiming at...

I agree with and support what he said. In a follow up blog, he says he plays Black American Music, not "jazz". Or, in the original piece, he plays post-modern New Orleans Music, not "jazz". The word "jazz" is a trumped up, self-limiting trap to describe something most have hopefully long since forgotten, the exotic, erotic, almost dirty "white men watch your women folk" message of the past. What we cannot understand, we frequently give labels, marketing mnemonics that hide the embarrassment of our ignorance.

Did Bill Evans play Black American Music? Of course he did, as did Gerry Mulligan and so many others. Lose the term; embrace the music. For its own sake.


P.S. BTW, I'm white, but that shouldn't matter. I also eat Italian bread, Chinese food and Latin beans and rice (as did Pops, aka Louis Armstrong).

Jim Frazee,

I agree, the problem is that people see jazz as or Diana Krall or Harry Connick Jr. (not that there's anything wrong with it), and I think that's how it's portrayed most of the time.

When you look at Miles Davis, a lot of people say he stopped playing jazz and "sold out" at one point. I think it's great that we study the music from that time period (50s-60s) as the foundation of our musical vocabulary... but for some reason I feel like people are just stuck on that, and you end up with guys like Wynton Marsallis. I like what John Clayton says about learning jazz here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-zGrV8pmUE

It's kind of like saying you have to write music like Bach, Mozart or Beethoven as a classical composer, while neglecting classical composers that came after the 1950s. Don't get me wrong, it's good to be able to write Sonatas and fugues as a classical composer, and build foundation for your knowledge and skills, but it's just a tool.. we shouldn't be defined by it, and we should be free to dispose it whenever it's necessary.

I find it amazing that people can't accept terms for what they are.

There is a concept called the semiotic triangle. It basically represents the fact that things, our thoughts of the things and are words representation for the things are all distant.

Jazz is a perfectly fine term.

If I go in a record store, I like to see a "Jazz" section.
And a rock section.

And I'm looking for a record of Charlie Parker, I will go towards the jazz section, not the rock section.

Just becuase you play jazz doesn't mean you can't play something else. And nothing prevents you from mixing genres.

But you have to accept the fact that some terms make it easier for us to desribe what we do, without actually doing it.
Jazz, be-bop, Smooth Jazz, Free Jazz, Acid Jazz, Rock, House, Techno. All those describe something pretty accurate. More accurate would become almost pointless.
Just like grass. How many english words for grass? For the most part. Grass does it.

If I see an ad on craigslist, it's nice when people say :
We play Jazz, or we play Smooth Jazz. If someone says "we play smooth jazz", they are specifically saying "no bebop".

When you see someone on craigslist saying "I play jazz in the style of Red hot chili pepper". Then I think they are mis-using the term jazz. Jazz by itself would have to refer to what most of us consider "mainstream jazz". Not New Orleans jazz, not free jazz, not acid jazz.

When people keep saying "All I play is music", they're just not helping themselves. The music section at the store is useless to me. Everybody plays music.