[Jazz] veterans make the art of the invisible—that is, music—three-dimensional. They convey the music's meaning through their gestures, their speech patterns, their anecdotes, their humor and camaraderie, their elegance, their grasp of romantic frailty, their down-home recollections of the human lore that underlies the swivel and sway of the rhythm, and their acute listening both on and off the bandstand. | | | | South African alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana in Amsterdam, May 21, 1983.
(Frans Schellekens/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | | “[Jazz] veterans make the art of the invisible—that is, music—three-dimensional. They convey the music's meaning through their gestures, their speech patterns, their anecdotes, their humor and camaraderie, their elegance, their grasp of romantic frailty, their down-home recollections of the human lore that underlies the swivel and sway of the rhythm, and their acute listening both on and off the bandstand.”
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| | rantnrave:// So someone went and puked a decade-plus worth of major-label recording contracts and amendments to major-label recording contracts all over TWITTER Wednesday, one page at a time, and it's a little bit much to take in in one day for any number of reasons, but here they are conveniently collected in one Google Doc, thank you DANI DEAHL, and I think we can stipulate, without even reading them, that they'll confirm that recording contracts are not necessarily written with artists' best interests in mind. But take your time, page through them if you're so inclined, make sure your most recent edition of ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE MUSIC BUSINESS is close at hand, ask yourself if someone and someone's lawyers had their own copy of the book close at hand when they affixed their signatures to most of these documents long after someone had become a global superstar, and we'll reconvene sometime soon to discuss... Addendum #1: WENDY DAY notes that someone has his own record company and has signed his own artists to record company contracts, and politely requests that someone post those on Twitter, too... Addendum #2: Someone has asked TAYLOR SWIFT, who has fought similar battles on similar platforms but with more complete sentences and fewer capital letters, for a co-sign. A beautiful dark twisted irony. It must kill someone to know that Swift has 100 percent of the leverage vis-à-vis that particular request... Swift could be found Wednesday night singing to an empty GRAND OLE OPRY HOUSE as part of the ACADEMY OF COUNTRY MUSIC AWARDS, which took place at three socially distanced Nashville venues and which was mostly but not completely pre-recorded. It was fantastic music television and a good model, in many ways, for other pandemic-era awards shows to come. Where MTV, characteristically, went for the glitz with its VMAs broadcast—CGI, green screens and locations that might as well have been in outer space—the ACMs went for the promise of the real. You could practically smell Nashville in the intimate performances in front of the empty wooden pews of RYMAN AUDITORIUM, which the cameras were careful to show. You could hear the brush of fingers against guitar strings. You could imagine yourself in one of those pews. One of the few truly live performances was also the best: MICKEY GUYTON's searing version (backed by the show's host, KEITH URBAN, on piano) of "WHAT ARE YOU GONNA TELL HER?," one of the year's most unlikely, and welcome, breakthroughs. Guyton was the first Black woman to perform on the show, and she highlighted a night where women were celebrated with performances and nominations but—do I even have to finish that sentence? CARRIE UNDERWOOD was named Entertainer of the Year, but had to share it, in the show's first-ever tie, with a surprised THOMAS RHETT, and you could hear the sound of scratching heads even inside the empty Grand Ole Opry House. Men won Album of the Year, Single of the Year, Song of the Year, Group of the Year and Duo of the Year, but shoutout HILLARY LINDSEY, only the second woman to be named the ACM Songwriter of the Year, which she didn't even have to share... Were he still writing today, the legendary jazz critic and cultural iconoclast STANLEY CROUCH "would've been canceled more often than a New York Times subscription." That's WBGO's NATE CHINEN quoted in jazz pianist ETHAN IVERSON's lengthy obituary of Crouch, who died Wednesday at 74, and I'm here to raise my hand in disagreement. Crouch, whose influence on jazz was enormous (and somewhat controversial), was canceled plenty of times in his prime, including, for example, the time the VILLAGE VOICE fired him for physically attacking his colleague HARRY ALLEN, or when JAZZTIMES canceled his contract via email after he published this incendiary (and almost certainly true) column about white critics and musicians. Neither incident slowed him down in the slightest. He continued to write scholarly, insightful and jazz-like prose about the music, from a point of view that was relatively conservative and traditionalist and never less than razor sharp, and civil rights, an arena in which he was accused of being both radical-left and radical-right. He loved DUKE ELLINGTON and WYNTON MARSALIS. Not so much SPIKE LEE, TONI MORRISON or hip-hop. MILES DAVIS? It depended. He was a man about town in New York and everyone (more or less) wanted a seat at his table, from which he shaped the discussion as well as the art itself. Canceled today? In the sense of being made to feel bad about his point of view or unwelcome in polite circles? He a) wouldn't and b) wouldn't care. And then he'd write some more. RIP... STEVE EARLE & THE DUKES planning to record an album of songs by JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE, please pass the Kleenex... BOB DYLAN reviving his THEME TIME RADIO HOUR, maybe the best celebrity radio show ever made, for one more episode, revolving around whiskey, to air Monday on SIRIUSXM's DEEP TRACKS. Classic episodes will air the rest of the week... Our friend DAN RUNCIE, of TRAPITAL, hooks up with MARCUS COLLINS to chat about hip-hop's greatest marketing campaigns in a livestream at 2pm ET today... Is KOBALT for sale? Is it? | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| "We want to let everybody know where it's at / It's right here: Yo! MTV Raps." Those words, rapped in unison by DJ Jazzy Jeff, the Fresh Prince (a.k.a. Will Smith), and Ready Rock C on August 6, 1988, served as the official welcome to Yo! | | |
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| A quintet of exiles liberated a continent’s jazz perspective. | | |
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| Crouch's engagement with American culture spanned over five decades, numerous mediums and many dustups. His influence on the life and shape of jazz will remain unquantifiable. | | |
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| The beloved idol’s public shaming and professional punishment felt hasty, and unfair. But it didn’t go unanswered. | | |
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| “Old Town Road” showed the app’s potential as a hit generator. But its relationship to the business is far more complex. | | |
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| Carrie Underwood couldn’t have summed things up better at the end of Wednesday’s Academy of Country Music Awards. “2020, man.” | | |
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| For a refugee family in St. Paul, Billy Ray Cyrus and Tanya Tucker provided a window to a different, more Americanized world. | | |
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| Who cares about substance when you have hype? | | |
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| (Originally published April 2003.) White jazz musicians who can play are too frequently elevated far beyond their abilities in order to allow white writers to make themselves feel more comfortable about being in the role of evaluating an art from which they feel substantially alienated. | | |
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| Few cultural critics have a vision as eclectic and intriguing as Stanley Crouch's. Fewer still actually fight to prove their points. (Originally published Nov. 6, 1995.) | | |
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| The Roots’ frontman talks continuously improving as a man and MC. | | |
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| The acclaimed singer was once famous for mythologizing the U.S. Now his “bossy and bitchy” new album expresses discomfort with the country. | | |
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| During the early '90s the word 'rave' conjured up images of the era's legendary acid house parties. 30 years on -- hijacked by the tabloid press to feed search engine optimisation and commodified by marketers who use its imagery to sell products -- it's become a maligned term . So what does rave mean in 2020? | | |
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| BMG CEO Hartwig Masuch on catalog vs. hits -- and what big money investors want out of music. | | |
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| Thirty years ago, LL COOL J was fueled by negative reactions to his second album "Walking with a Panther," which was deemed “too flashy” and “tone deaf” given the state of Hip-Hop at the time. Posed to come back with a vengeance, LL COOL J turned to Marley Marl and DJ Bobcat to create "Mama Said Knock You Out." | | |
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| Musicians like Justin Timberlake, Adele, Björk and Rod Stewart have all had surgery to treat vocal nodes. Nodes are so widely discussed, they've almost become a boogeyman in the singing community. But is this condition really as common as people fear? And when nodes do develop, is all hope truly lost? | | |
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| The musician-producers’ continuing project highlights living legends on inspired old-school terms. | | |
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| Originally located in an abandoned bus shelter that was renovated into the iconic nightclub from which it takes its name, Ministry of Sound has been a leading electronic music label since its launch in the mid-90s, when London was a primary hub of the then-burgeoning dance scene. | | |
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| With an efficient safety concept the Salzburg Festival was able to take place this summer -- in a significantly slimmed-down version, and against all odds. | | |
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| Experts across the fields of journalism, live music, marketing and more talk through the terms they wish they knew before they started the job. From 'advances' to 'riders' to 'above the line' - Industry Jargon Explained will help to demystify the language of the music industry. | | |
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| | | | | Dudu Pukwana and the "Spears" |
| | From the South African alto saxophonist's self-titled 1968 album, rereleased this year by Matsuli Music. Now scroll back up and read (or re-read) "How South Africa’s Blue Notes Helped Invent European Free Jazz." |
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