ask deej

'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?

actually since PF didn't post ballots maybe deej should just post his EOY lists here?

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

― hey young ppl world (some dude), Friday, December 17, 2010 3:46 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

a fairly obvious list i think ....

lay it down, the el debarge/faith evans, the miguel despite jcole, window seat ... i feel like im missing some obvious ones, ill have to check my list when i get home from work

actually since PF didn't post ballots maybe deej should just post his EOY lists here?

― hey young ppl world (some dude), Friday, December 17, 2010 3:48 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

im gonna post them on my blargs, trying to downplay the connection between my boarding here & my irl life for maybe obvious reasons

but im not sure that they covered the breadth of music culture the way ellington & jazz did

they span one of the hugest and most influential r&b acts of all time (P-funk) to British drone rock to chart-topping hip hop to underground noise acts. I dunno dude that's a pretty broad swath of the culture. Afrofuturism is ALL over the place.

xp

"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"

But those music critics are contemporary art-rock critics?!?! I mean quite obviously they are going to be more interested in artists/sounds that are more directly influential on the stuff they are currently interested in, right?

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?

because jazz is dead. altho Dan has a fair point that there's kind of a domino effect into how jazz's developments rolled over across other genres (which raises the question of where do you draw the line cuz if you keep going all the way to British invasion bands... I can't really think of one that bears any sonic resemblance to Duke Ellington)

xp

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

― Tina Tina Cheneuse (DJP), Friday, December 17, 2010 3:47 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

not sure about singles but i really liked the ariel pink (aside from the two out-&-out punk-ish songs 2/3rds through) because it sounds like steely dan imo, also dig girls compositions altho im not as into dude's singing voice i can put up with it alright cuz the songs are good. as usual though i havent heard a lot of indie though. oh and there are some jams on the LCD album esp "home."

i like some DFA stuff too if that counts -- "since we last met" "static on the wire" black van

jazz is pretty dead but i still feel like it has a history that im invested in & that the entire story of jazz, rise & fall, is still relevant to us today i guess.

but id want to understand it in a way that observes how certain artists impacted it in as accurate a way as possible

xp Dude then you should write about it all the time! Pitch every review/story with it!

i always resent when ppl say jazz is dead...it's not dead, it's music that's so of the moment to me, esp more free/improv stuff, it's always alive when you are seeing a great jazz group playing, it's never the same

from a narrative perspective its pretty dead

i do agree that its innovations in that regard are as alive as ever, though @ m@tt

it's always alive when you are seeing a great jazz group playing, it's never the same

this is true

fwiw seeing the Arkestra at ArthurNights is one of my all-time favorite concert memories

one of my fav records of 2010 - rag by davu seru/george cartwright, review half down the page, peeps should check it

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=37038

altho Dan has a fair point that there's kind of a domino effect into how jazz's developments rolled over across other genres (which raises the question of where do you draw the line cuz if you keep going all the way to British invasion bands... I can't really think of one that bears any sonic resemblance to Duke Ellington)

Well, "British Invasion" is misleading there; I'm really thinking of the reintroduction of more complicated doo-wop-esque harmony back into rock music, which was really more of an American thing with The Beach Boys and The Byrds but happened at about the same time as the British Invasion and was processed by a lot of the bands that came after them.

The basic point is that Ellington introduced a harmonic language that was embraced, transformative, and is still in use across multiple genres including pop, classical, R&B, hip-hop, etc. None of what we listen to today would exist without what he did; this is why he is a larger, more important influence than Sun Ra (who is a pretty big influence! We may be saying similar things about him in 30 years but I don't know that he's baked deeply enough into the musical infrastructure to reach the same level of stature).

Also really the only reason jazz is dead is because people keep saying it is.

suxx that james moody died this year -- saw him play back in like 2000!!

the other thing ellington did that was incredible was how he found this apex of the point where individuality meets group dynamic during jazz's most popular era ... that he would compose pieces specifically for individual artists in his band, taylored for their respective styles, it captures the central tension of jazz's relationship w the music it was rebelling against

i mean you could say kind of blue reached a similar apex but jazz as a populist movement was already on the wane at that pt

well fwiw, in strict musical terms yeah Ra's influence will never approach the scope of Ellington - his shit is just too weird, too dissonant, too idiosyncratic.

funnily enough while I am sure Dan is correct about the formal impact of Ellington's innovations still being felt in contemporary music, I bet the percentage of currently performing artists who are actually familiar with Duke's music is probably roughly analogous to the number who are actually familiar with Ra's lol

xp

lol btw, thank you Google Ngram thread:

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=Duke%20Ellington,Sun%20Ra&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1900&year_end=2010

lol

Way back in 1910 a very small % of ahead of the curve music critics were really on top of Sun Ra.

what is that?

That is a graph showing the hit rate of "Duke Ellington" vs "Sun Ra" in published material indexed by Google Books, normalized for publishing volume across decades.

see here: Google Books Ngram Viewer

thats amazing

by comparison:

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=Gucci%20Mane,Lil%20B&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1900&year_end=2008

(sorry, I just had to post that because LOL)

lol

lol

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=whiney%2Cdeej&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

what happened in 1923 is what i'm wondering.

should be vs. shakey

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=shakey%2Cdeej&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

sorry, deej