I’ve been appreciating the riffs on David Remnick’s 100 Essential Jazz Albums at Why not blog? and Yellow Dog—though my public library probably isn’t so happy about the influx of transfers—but these lists have thrown me into something of a crisis about expertise.
Donna and J. Rice—to say nothing of David Remnick—gain authority for their claims based on assumptions about how they experience jazz: when they listen to an album, the casual reader assumes, they do so informed of its context and its rules. We assume they have listened to that album multiple times, over a range of contexts and occasions—when their father would put on his favorite records in his study; when hanging out with friends in their dorm room; when they are putting together dinner on a Thursday night and need to feel a deeper connection with the world than rolling out pizzas for the grill might otherwise invite them to be.
We would expect a literary analyst to come at a text, even the first time s/he reads it, with a greater understanding of the text’s moves than would a more casual reader. But do these the assumptions about contextual range that take hold when we look at a list of essential jazz albums apply when we gauge literary expertise?
This is the essential hazard facing young academics: there are few texts I could write about with the authority Remnick has whenever he writes a word about jazz. I have a chapter on In Search of Lost Time that I am pleased with, but I can’t pretend to have read that text as frequently or for as wide a period of my life as Remnick can say he has listened to Art Blakey’s Moanin’.
I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place, because I could lurk on your blog for a long time, which lurking you might find offensive (and which certainly feels stalkerish), but on the other hand I will almost certainly make a fool of myself in your comments (because I’m in the dangerous place of being married to an English masters candidate so I erroneously think I’m entitled to have an opinion about the material for your blog), which is nearly guaranteed to offend your sensibilities and might not be welcome. Therefore please feel free to delete anything I put on your blog without my feeling offended in any way.
Thought number one: I saw Remnick’s list on the interwebs a few weeks ago and decided that I didn’t really think much of his opinion about jazz. (Melissa (my wife) thinks that I callously judge people by the CDs in their collection when we first meet. I think it’s more of just a sizing-up than a judgment, like finding out somebody’s political viewpoint so you can avoid points of contention in polite conversation, you know?) Anyway, Remnick’s list is heavily weighted to jazz produced before the 60s. There is a certain school of jazz folk that thinks this is the case. My current opinion of that school is not very high :) I mean, how can you ignore the second half a century of a merely 100 year old musical tradition and consider yourself well versed in it?
Thought number two: If you want more fodder for jazz appreciation, please feel free to e-mail me. There’s nothing I love more than trying to help people understand jazz.
Paul Huff, you’re welcome to comment on my blog any time you please!
So I got Ornette Coleman’s Sound Grammar last week, after reading the Gary Giddins article I’ve linked to elsewhere, and, to be honest about it, I don’t understand more than three or four notes on that album. I appreciate that other people can appreciate it—in a way, perhaps, similar to how non-lit folks can appreciate our appreciation of experimental fiction—but Coleman isn’t doing much for me right now, though Clifford Brown and Cannonball Adderly are.
I’ll email you, though, and we’ll see if we can’t get me a bit more educated.
Yeah, I started a comment on your top post about how Ornette Coleman isn’t really what I would call “contemporary jazz” at all, but Caleb (my son) got really whiny and I should have been working, so I scrapped it.
I’ll respond to your e-mail, and we’ll have to try and some more stuff for you to listen to :)