(Untitled)

[arababy9]

just saw woody allen's new 'matchpoint.' it was definitely not what i was expecting, which i think was a good thing. i had no idea what it would be like when i went into the theater and i ended pleasantly surprised. i was looking forward to a nice comedy though, and that's certainly not what i got, which probably added to the gut wrenching even

Comments

[anonymous]

all of this completely goes along with the same idea that jazz means different things to different people. obviously there are great jazz composers (mingus, gil evans, etc.), though the way jazz came about was through the idea of improvisation and modification. perhaps this has to do with why mingus and evans were so influential? they actually composed pieces rather than all the improvising done in jazz before them. and let's face it; most of the time a piece is composed to simply give the improviser a template and mood to work with. also, the "typical blues song structure" mentioned (i assume you mean 12 bar blues) was only standardized later for use in jazz, though it was based on blues. i know jazz and blues have similar stems, that was a misstatement on my part, but it doesn't defer the fact that jazz has many more possibilities than blues. you yourself have even complained of blues being too limited and repetitive. blues did not begin as an improvisational music form, and jazz did. so in that sense, blues borrowed from jazz

[arababy9]

--peter

[arababy9]

i've almost always been informed that that piece was considered blues. specific citation -- martin scorsese's the blues.

[arababy9]

debatable. any other examples?

[arababy9]

key word: 'recorded.' jazz was around long before records.

[the_4thb]

Along these lines: according to Wikipedia, Handy's "Mempis Blues" was the first modern blues song, and I assume you were taught in your class that it was the first jazz song. This if nothing else proves your assertion that jazz and urban blues in their infancy were essentially one and the same.

[arababy9]

first you have to distinguish the very difference between jazz and blues to prove this point. but of course you can't because genres don't mean anything right?

but if we can only depend on records as evidence, then how does anyone know that blues was around first? we can look at the fundamental differences between the two (which are debated in other posts, but i'll use my own definitions): blues was written down, jazz was improvised. maybe this is why jazz has no evidence before records: because it was improvised.

[the_4thb]

You've got that backwards... delta blues was never written down. It was not until it became more "classical" in nature, that is, more geared towards large professional bands playing for captive audiences, that anybody wrote it down. Coincidentally, this is the same time jazz started appearing. Blues can be played by just one guitar, whereas it is difficult to get a real jazz sound with just one person. Thus, jazz by nature is much more geared to classicization, and to being written down.

And if you want to play the proof game, Rome never existed and Australia is a myth.

But seriously, I don't even know what's being discussed here anymore.