ask deej

"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

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

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Friday, December 17, 2010 3:01 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

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

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Friday, December 17, 2010 3:02 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you realize dan just contradicted you

ive been listening to sun ra since i was in high school & ive heard tons of his stuff ... im a legit huge fan & wrote my jr. year thesis on his music & influence! this argument could not be more lol right now

deej do you realize that you make little to no sense?

no

Thanks. That was my only question.

1. ellington is more influential than sun ra
2. ellington's influence on jazz is a bigger deal than sun ra's influence on the handful of artists shakey described
3. although ra obviously had influence on lots of artists, i think shakey overstates ra's influence on some of those artists

is the picture clear for you yet?

So concise. Why don't you post like that all the time?

Shakey isn't overstating anything IMO; he's understating Ellington's influence.

More actually I would say he's privileging a certain type of influence over another. Which is fine, I'd argue that deej is basically doing the same thing.

More accurately, ahem.

Yeah that is fairer. (Obv I have my own bias here)

i dunno, ive listened to some spiritualized back in my 'im getting int music crit!' days, and i dont remember hearing anything that sounded particularly sun ra esque. being 'inspired by the spirit' of sun ra like that is also diff than, like, mingus directly copying compositional techniques from ellington. there's influential, then there's 'sun ra wore costumes and mf doom does too'

*sigh* I don't know why I bother.

re: Spiritualized - see Cop Shoot Cop

I think you are pretty much entirely misrepresenting Shakey's argument, but I'll let him make it. As I noted above I'm not particularly invested in this (now if we were arguing Lee Perry vs. Coxsone Dodd I might be able to get a little more up for it.)

or No God, Only Religion. or their version of Amazing Grace etc etc

can we get back to emphasizing that calling Gucci the Ellington of rap is some total bullshit, if nothing else because Gucci is not shaping/developing an entire genre the way Ellington did. the real Ellington of hip hop would be someone like, I dunno, Dr. Dre maybe

Marley Marl.

Definitely. I think it was J Spaceman who turned me on to Sun Ra in the first place.

More actually I would say he's privileging a certain type of influence over another. Which is fine, I'd argue that deej is basically doing the same thing.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Friday, December 17, 2010 3:20 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah but imo critics already privilege shakey's definition of influence over mine; im not arguing that mine is the truth & the light & sun ra needs to be removed from the canon entirely -- id rather he be a big influence going forward than idk black flag or something -- but that influence *on the mainstream of a genre* is entirely underheralded by critics celebrating outsiders that supports their hobbyhorse crit-genres

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.

this is succinctly put - thx Dan

*sigh* I don't know why I bother.

re: Spiritualized - see Cop Shoot Cop

― twat dust and ego overload (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, December 17, 2010 4:26 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it's LONG and has some IMPROV and a SAXOPHONE omigod omigod the scales have fallen from my eyes

can we get back to emphasizing that calling Gucci the Ellington of rap is some total bullshit, if nothing else because Gucci is not shaping/developing an entire genre the way Ellington did. the real Ellington of hip hop would be someone like, I dunno, Dr. Dre maybe

― twat dust and ego overload (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, December 17, 2010 3:28 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

good lord dude -- i already explained i wasnt saying 'gucci: the ellington of rap!' i was just comparing relative importance & this is what max & co. upthread were clowning you for

xxxp I don't buy that at all, sorry. I guarantee you many more pages have been written on Ellington's influence on jazz than Sun Ra's influence on anything.

Of course I totally see why someone who has such a weird persecution complex as you might think that, but I don't think it's actually a representative view at all.

xxxp I don't buy that at all, sorry. I guarantee you many more pages have been written on Ellington's influence on jazz than Sun Ra's influence on anything.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Friday, December 17, 2010 3:33 PM (57 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this was the work of jazz historians, not mainstream pop critics

i mean, as a general rule i happen to think that this narrative is *more correct* in weighing the relative significance of major artists, yes

haha i love the idea that Duke's work has been over-documented and it's Ra who doesn't get written about enough relative to his impact

'im not arguing its the truth & the light' meaning im not arguing some kind of only-major-figures type history of music, but i am arguing that some artists have a more discernably major impact, and that ellington is one of those

So wait your complaint now is that Sun Ra's influence on contemporary non-jazz music is more celebrated by non-jazz critics than Duke Ellington's influence on contemporary non-jazz music? I can't imagine why that would be?

"haha i love the idea that Duke's work has been over-documented and it's Ra who doesn't get written about enough relative to his impact"

You really do have a problem with reading comprehension, because I didn't suggest this at all.

yeah but imo critics already privilege shakey's definition of influence over mine;

it's not an either/or thing, the kinds of influences are just DIFFERENT. Ellington's influence was primarily formative and musical. He changed the way music was made, the way it was arranged, the way it was structured. But his influence is limited largely to his own genre: jazz. Sun Ra's musical influence is harder to parse because he was so diffuse and difficult to imitate. But where his influence is much wider is at the conceptual level - and this was kind of the whole point of his career. He was deeply invested in his personal mythology/philosophy and in so doing he created a narrative vehicle that has proven to be an exceptionally rich vein of material for other people to mine, primarily outside of his chosen genre of jazz. That being the case, his concepts have spread much farther afield than Ellington's, which are now kind of set in stone and relegated to a specific era. This is not to say that he is somehow a bigger figure in jazz than Ellington (he isn't). But insofar as what he did is still impacting a wide range of musicians working today (while Ellington is not) and will probably continue to do so in the future, I am arguing that in that sense Sun Ra's influence is more pervasive and, perhaps, even longer lasting. This is because I think the afro-futurist concept that Sun Ra invented is some incredibly deep, broadly appealing material that will continue to transcend genre boundaries in a way that Ellington does not.

that's about as clear as I can be.

I'm about 99% sure that this post has been entirely pointless and that deej will misrepresent it/misunderstand it entirely

haha i love the idea that Duke's work has been over-documented and it's Ra who doesn't get written about enough relative to his impact

― hey young ppl world (some dude), Friday, December 17, 2010 3:38 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

to be fair this is pretty much true only in pop music criticism these days -- jazz critics generally are of the consensus that duke is the biggest deal in jazz 20th century -- i happen to think they are probably weighing his import fairly accurately

sorry Alex in SF i can't tell what post you're actually responding to if you just put "xxxxxxp" at the beginning instead of quoting it so i may have misunderstood the context of your post

It is arguably not true to say Ellington is not impacting modern musicians, considering that the musical language he used in his big band work was the foundation of pop music.

This:

So wait your complaint now is that Sun Ra's influence on contemporary non-jazz music is more celebrated by non-jazz critics than Duke Ellington's influence on contemporary non-jazz music? I can't imagine why that would be?

Was in response to this:

this was the work of jazz historians, not mainstream pop critics

― *plop*ism rules (deej), Friday, December 17, 2010 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

But his influence is limited largely to his own genre: jazz. Sun Ra's musical influence is harder to parse because he was so diffuse and difficult to imitate. But where his influence is much wider is at the conceptual level - and this was kind of the whole point of his career.

^^^the problem i have here, shakey, is that you're relegating jazz to a supporting player in music history, instead of one of the 20th century's most significant (if not its most significant) movements in music. saying sun ra's influence was more 'diffuse' -- crossing more social boundaries -- is possibly correct, but that doesnt mean hes actually more significant, because those artists might have crossed boundaries but im not sure that they covered the breadth of music culture the way ellington & jazz did

"It is arguably not true to say Ellington is not impacting modern musicians, considering that the musical language he used in his big band work was the foundation of pop music."

Totally. But I also can see why it's not a particularly interesting subject to write about either (at least more than once.)

like, bebop wouldn't have happened without it, the emergence of rock and roll would have been very different and the entire doo-wop genre may not have existed, which would have had implications on a lot of the British Invasion bands, and so on and so on

Basically, without Duke Ellington the modern musical scene would not exist; something different would be in its place.

Totally. But I also can see why it's not a particularly interesting subject to write about either (at least more than once.)

Extremely fair point.

So wait your complaint now is that Sun Ra's influence on contemporary non-jazz music is more celebrated by non-jazz critics than Duke Ellington's influence on contemporary non-jazz music? I can't imagine why that would be?

my complaint would be that, just like w/ rap now, mainstream jazz crit is relegated to a feeder-genre for the central narrative around certain kinds of art rock & etc. that critics obsess over

hey deej i need to think of something to ask you about so we can start some other convo and pray this one ends

how about

i dunno

what's your fav R&B singles of this year?

ftr both Spacemen dudes were heavily influenced by Sun Ra from the beginning - their first album featured a version of the MC5 Sun Ra homage "Spaceship." I would also argue that "Suicide" and maybe parts of "Dreamweapon" were drawing pretty directly from aspects of the SR sound. & yeah, the vein is also esp. present in some Spiritualized stuff, esp. the live recordings from the LAGWAFIS period.

I would be more interested in knowing deej's indie rock singles of the year.

like, why is ellington's influence on jazz "just" influencing jazz less of a big deal than ra influencing a handful of artists that happen to be from a diverse range of genres, but on a much much smaller scale?