ask deej

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)

seriously the way rap & jazz are treated as feeder-inspiration for the 'real art' of rock & token approved outsiders like mf doom is ... ugh

"who cares if ellington was the most important jazz composer in history -- yo la tengo really liked sun ra!"

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

― twat dust and ego overload (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, December 17, 2010 2:50 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

im sorry that duke ellington's 'persona' wasnt wacky enough for you to bother understanding why his music might be worthwhile

The thing is, there is no need to downplay the significance of Sun Ra to make the point that Duke Ellington was more influential/important.

Like, everything Shakey is saying is basically true; the real issue is that Sun Ra did not wholesale invert/mold an entire genre in the same manner Duke Ellington did.

Sun Ra generated a niche and influenced a wide range of artists; Duke Ellington basically converted all of jazz music and the people who played it to his vision.

xp Isn't gonna stop deej from doing it anyway...

xp yeah but none of those artists were popular and only white critics care about that shit so hey let's all stop caring.

i think sun ra has had an influence! but it seems self-evident to me that ellington's towers over it in terms of 20th century music in the long view. this was why i made the comparison -- if id realized ppl here honestly believe sun ra is a bigger deal, i wouldnt have made the comparison for gucci vs. lil b!

i think 'marginal' outsider artists are important, have their place, should be celebrated. but they often are used, imo, to denigrate the importance of art forms like jazz or hip hop that have their own narratives & values that dont fit into the same ones that allowed, for example, my dad to think pfunk were cool but disco was trash, or that made sun ra a countercultural hero but sees duke as some old jazz guy. it doesnt acknowledge what these artists do that is so different because it doesnt recognize the values that jazz & hip hop frameworks are based around