ask deej

I dunno Ra's influence has filtered down to a lot of unexpected places that Duke has not. Duke is largely forgotten/immaterial to the vast majority of music being made today. Sun Ra, on the other hand, is referenced/cited/serves as inspiration for a pretty broad range of active musicians.

(this is all immaterial of course I just like thinking about Sun Ra)

u cant ignore how the audience for music is interacting w/ it.

who decides what the audience is tho? cuz you seem to be making some distinctions as to who is and is not a legitimate rap fan

sun ra & charles mingus -- the two artists who many rock / non jazz artists seem to cite that im assuming you're referring to -- were both huge ellington disciples

sun ra's early stuff was extremely ellingtonesque. compositionally

of course. everyone in jazz was an Ellington disciple to some degree or another! He was massive, no doubt about it. But he was confined to his genre in a way that Sun Ra was not, and in that sense Sun Ra's impact could be argued to be broader. Because jazz is pretty much dead now, and what is still left of it owes just as much to Ra (if not more) than Ellington, if only by virtue of the fact that no one runs big swing bands anymore - it's all small combos.

xp

who decides what the audience is tho? cuz you seem to be making some distinctions as to who is and is not a legitimate rap fan

― twat dust and ego overload (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, December 17, 2010 1:34 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

im not -- i take issue w critics ignoring huge audiences for rap & writing off large swaths of the music as being generic or rote or boring compared to the fascinating work of odd future & lil b. i dont think gucci fans are 'more legitimate' -- i do think theyre more numerous & that his musical contributions are underheralded

I don't even know how you estimate audience size in this day and age tbh

i dont think that sun ra's impact is 'broader' beyond a niche of artsy folks who enjoy the outsider-ness / weirdness / spectacle of his stuff. of course he was a great artist w/ lots of great songs ... but his impact on the structural nature of the genre is much smaller. what exactly has his influence been? what are ppl taking from him? does it really compare to ellington's 20s-30s innovations in terms of songwriting, textural use of instruments, innovations in voicings & ability to write songs around the instrumentalists themselves rather than generic parts for any performer?

i mean there is hardly a single jazz artist in the 20th century who would claim to NOT be influenced by ellington ... this is candle-in-the-sun type shit

hey deej you ever been back to thusday nights at NEO?

yah i went there on a saturday recently too & it wasnt that diff from thurs! more people, though

love that place tbh

i mean there is hardly a single jazz artist in the 20th century who would claim to NOT be influenced by ellington ... this is candle-in-the-sun type shit

if you had read what I wrote, you would realize that I'm not arguing this. Ra's influence extends BEYOND jazz (a genre that is currently microscopic in terms of its practitioners and audience)

u guys should have seen deej on the dancefloor at this place srsly

if you had read what I wrote, you would realize that I'm not arguing this. Ra's influence extends BEYOND jazz (a genre that is currently microscopic in terms of its practitioners and audience)

― twat dust and ego overload (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, December 17, 2010 2:14 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

its really not. there are jazz education programs in high schools basically across the country.

Currently being cut back like there's no tomorrow. (Which under the circumstances...)

i dont think the world is really teeming w/ geeked-out indie musicians who really dug sun ra's cosmic approach, maaan either.

a brief list of artists that take sonic inspiration from/sample/reference/or otherwise are indebted to Sun Ra:

Parliament-Funkadelic
the MC5
Wooden Shjips
MF Doom
Spiritualized
Outkast
a bazillion noiserock acts
Yo La Tengo

and I'm sure this list is much longer, this is just off the top of my head. Ra's influence over the last 30 years of music eclipses Ellington's easily. Now if you want to talk STRICTLY JAZZ, Ellington is the bigger giant no question, if for no other reason that he started working 2 decades earlier than Ra did, and by the time Ra was peaking, the genre was already in a state of diversification and decline.

xp

if only the entire genre of jazz were as popular as spiritualized or noize rock!

Unkle
X-Clan

are we talking popularity? I thought we were talking about impact on music as a whole

Primal Scream

shakey stop. i mean it's bad enough that we're zeroing in this much on examples picked out of the air for the purposes of an analogy, but jeez let it go.

Currently being cut back like there's no tomorrow. (Which under the circumstances...)

― Ned Raggett, Friday, December 17, 2010 3:16 PM

won't someone think of the young ppl

hey I was more than happy to let it go and noted it isn't really germane to the larger hip-hop question, but hey this is ILM...

this argument is besides the point anyway -- lil b hasnt had any impact on music-outside-rap yet & if he does he'll STILL be a marginal rap artist relative to gucci. similarly duke ellington is more important to jazz. i dont really care how many indie artists (p-funk is basically the only group u listed to even be popular in any conceivable way, and it basically comes down to what ... all the space-themed shit? couldnt that as easily have been influenced by star trek? i dont hear the musical influence at all) are influenced by sun ra. this is an attempt to turn jazz into music that exists only to benefit the narrative telling me that the MC5 are more important than any of the countless artists influenced by ellington in the last 30 years then fuck that

i really dont hear a musical influence from sun ra on any of the artists shakey listed anyway!

man your reading comprehension is terrible for someone who is paid to write

deej do you like skyzoo?

ok well if you mean 'andre from outkast dresses up funny & sun ra did too' then im gonna argue that this is a correlation =/= causation issue

once again tho your entire argument is a red herring -- unless you think indie's narrative is more important than jazz's, theres no reason that sun ra being more popular w/ the MC5 & noize bands = hes had a larger impact on music at large. this is basically white privilege shifted to music (w/ token black artists who used space- & comic book themes shoehorned in to suggest otherwise) -- 'jazz' is a genre in a shoebox, while 'everything else' is a narrow band of marginal rock artists & andre 3000 wearing fuzzy boots

similarly, lil b is 'important' to ppl outside of rap ergo he's given a more privileged spot in mainsstream crit canons -- rap is treated as a single stream, so being a weird outsider who isnt working w/in rap's framework makes you that much more valuable to mainstream critics who dont care how rap's own narratives develop. then a narrow strain of pfork readers & ilx posters & bloggers can pretend lil b is a big deal, which makes him so. gucci is more important to the development of rap, but lil b is a weirdo!! next thing you know, 100 years from now shakey mo jr. the III is arguing that lil b is a more important artist than gucci was, bcause rap is dead now but the long-running narrative of white ppl biting black forms is still going

deej do you like skyzoo?

― in my world of Hmong ppl (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, December 17, 2010 2:36 PM (24 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

occasional traxx, the one you posted in the pox swag cru thread is dope. overall, eh

arguing that lil b is a more important artist than gucci was, bcause rap is dead now but the long-running narrative of white ppl biting black forms is still going

I can't even parse this man sorry.

this was just a thread derail because you made a shitty analogy (Gucci = Ellington, lil B = Sun Ra), you got called on it, now yr throwing around all kinds of nonsense that isn't even worth responding to

'jazz' is a genre in a shoebox, while 'everything else' is a narrow band of marginal rock artists & andre 3000 wearing fuzzy boots

I mean what? this is just straight misrepresentation/strawmanning bullshit.

deej,

sorry to keep bugging about anonymous nyc rappers, but is red cafe worth taking the time to check out?

I'm glad you don't see any value in Sun Ra's conceptual motifs tho, even tho they were basically the whole point of his career and had the most lasting impact on people. good for you.

i didnt make a shitty analogy it makes perfect sense dude

m@tt, not really, he has occasionally cool songs but most of what ive heard is just so so

did you ever listen to max b? if you can track it down i rlly like the 'gain greene' best of mix

I'm glad you don't see any value in Sun Ra's conceptual motifs tho, even tho they were basically the whole point of his career and had the most lasting impact on people. good for you.

― twat dust and ego overload (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, December 17, 2010 2:42 PM (55 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dont think outkast listened to sun ra

well you are wrong

i think you're crediting 'sun ra' with 'huge sci fi pop culture detritus that everyone was exposed to'

did you ever listen to max b? if you can track it down i rlly like the 'gain greene' best of mix

yeah i dig what you've posted on the goon thread, real kinda sleazy charm i think, reminds me of a better version of what jim jones does...more sing-songy and drunk sounding...been meaning to check him out for while cuz you keep telling me to, i am gonna do that now!

"i didnt make a shitty analogy it makes perfect sense dude"

No it doesn't make any sense at all, you basically acknowledged it was flawed way up above.

oh look here's the Source namedropping Ra in reference to Outakst in 1998 re: Aquemini

http://www.thesource.com/articles/2538

xp

i think you're crediting 'sun ra' with 'huge sci fi pop culture detritus that everyone was exposed to'

what fucking ever. pre-Sun Ra there were no black people in outer space. He is ground zero for afro-futurism and stop pretending like that has no conceptual weight because the influence of that idea has gone far and wide.

Sun Ra is like the #1 artist that gets namedropped by people who it's never clear if they've ever listened to more than a small amount of his music or had it influence their music in any substantial way

deej, your thoughts on William Howard Taft?

let me know when li'l B comes up with something as massively deep and influential tho.

xp

oh wait that's not even Outkast namedropping him, that's just a generic critic pullquote about how they "conjure" his "spirit"! ooooh impressive stuff!

Sun Ra is like the #1 artist that gets namedropped by people who it's never clear if they've ever listened to more than a small amount of his music or had it influence their music in any substantial way

I AM NOT TALKING EXCLUSIVELY ABOUT HIS MUSIC GET ONE CLUE MR. HIP HOP IS ALL ABOUT PERSONAS

jesus christ

I need to back away and go get some lunch

"Sun Ra is like the #1 artist that gets namedropped by people who it's never clear if they've ever listened to more than a small amount of his music or had it influence their music in any substantial way"

Uh Erik Satie anyone?

arguing that lil b is a more important artist than gucci was, bcause rap is dead now but the long-running narrative of white ppl biting black forms is still going

I can't even parse this man sorry.

this was just a thread derail because you made a shitty analogy (Gucci = Ellington, lil B = Sun Ra), you got called on it, now yr throwing around all kinds of nonsense that isn't even worth responding to

― twat dust and ego overload (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, December 17, 2010 2:40 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what im saying is that ellington's impact on jazz as a whole is a bigger deal than sun ra's space suits supposedly influencing a bunch of rock groups and any artist that includes comic book or sci if themes. just bcuz jazz is a much diminished art form for contemporary artists doesnt mean its a less significant / more marginal art form in the grand scheme.

(than that constellation of groups you mentioned)