Is Jazz objective or subjective?

Is Jazz objective or subjective?

jazz is objective shit

shitting can be jazz subjectively

whatever you want it to be

subjectively, this album isn't good.
objectively, my opinions are better than yours, so you're a bitch

These four replies perfectly represent the state of this sad excuse for a board.

just because we don't share your appreciation of this degenerated art form?

I tend to agree with Steve Albini's opinion on it:

"Jazz serves a cultural function in the music scene. It is a signifier for musical "adulthood." To embrace jazz is to don a kind of graduation cap, signifying a broadening of tastes outside "mere" rock music. This ostentatious display of "sophistication" is an insult, and I find the graduation cappers transparent and tedious. Certainly there must be interesting music one could call "jazz." There must be. I've never heard it, but I grant that it is out there somewhere.
Jazz has a non-musical parallel: Christiania, the "free" zone in Copenhagen. In Christiania, like in jazz, there is no law. People are left to their own inventions to create and act as they see fit. In Jazz, the musicians are allowed to improvise over and beside structural elements that may themselves be extemporaneous. Sounds good, doesn't it? Freedom -- sounds good.
The reality is much bleaker. Christiania is a squalid, trashy string of alleys with rag-and-bone men selling drugs, tie-dye and wretched food. Granted Total Freedom, and this is what they've chosen to do with it, sell hash and lentil soup? Jazz is similar. The results are so far beneath the conception that there is no English word for the dissappointment one feels when forced to confront it. Granted Total Freedom, you've chosen to play II V I and blow a goddamn trill on the saxophone? Only by willfully ignoring its failings can one pretend to appreciate it as an idiom and don the cap."

This question doesn't even make sense. The words "objective" and "subjective" have been twisted and misused so much by this board that people don't even know what they mean anymore.

Your opinion of jazz is subjective. Meanwhile there are aspects of music that you could discuss (if you were musically literate) that are objective.

>This question i just answered doesn't make sense

Down syndrome!

Albini is a hack.

this

in theory, jazz grants you perfect artistic liberty

in practice, it's one of the most stuck-in-its-ways genres out there. you have to know a ridiculous amount of theory and be able to recite every note charlie parker ever played, in order, for anybody to give you any credit

maybe that has more to do with my local scene than the genre at large but i really don't think so

i get so tired of playing fucking real book tunes

I didn't know he was that retarded.

that said, fuck steve albini

and pic related is kind of an exception to the rule of gradual homogenization of the jazz scene

>maybe that has more to do with my local scene than the genre at large but i really don't think so
no it actually does
>i get so tired of playing fucking real book tunes
go to NY and see some real jazz musicians. playing standards from a real book is fine for a low key jam session for students but the best jazz artists write their own music or put new creative spins on standards

man i've been to NY, shit's poppin off over there, but literally anywhere else it's a different story

hell i mean even LA and SF are losing some of there edge

i write my own tunes and shit, but it blows having to go to the other fucking coast to find anybody who wants to read em

>there
*their

>tfw

also it's not like anybody i play with is literally reading from a real book but they might as fucking well be

>oleo
>misty
>blue train
>all in real book keys
>gig over

jazz is dead in LA. SF is better, but really NY and Philly is like the only place where people are doing creative jazz.

Yeah it sucks but if that's what you want to do you gotta get to the East Coast.

Yeah man I know.

>four
>another you
>star eyes
>no greater love
>blues in F or Bb
>rhythm changes

at least around here though sometimes people will do some Wayne Shorter or Joe Henderson tunes

jazz is...jazz

i love albini as an engineer and musician but his opinions are and have always been shit

>being this intimidated by Jazz

>Granted Total Freedom, you've chosen to play II V I and blow a goddamn trill on the saxophone?
So he's willfully disregarding Post-Bop, Free Jazz and Fusion styles?

Why cant rockists just be content with their music and restraint from ignorantly bashing other styles in order to inflate themselves?

It becomes even funnier when you listen to some of albini's own music and realize it's all basic bitch 4 chord punk rock

The issue with jazz is more that it has reached a point of stagnation than anything. There is no impetus to get out there and do something new. It's been the problem that has happened with rock for a while now. I have genuinely no idea of how to tackle this issue and where to go, but most people just kind of want to do the same thing. It's not like jazz has exhausted itself either, there is still stuff worth going after.

My main problem with jazz is the lack of subjectivity regarding musical quality: sure there are a lot of jazz variants that some people prefer more than others, yet I have never once heard of a jazz artist/ album/ composition that is universally considered "bad".

If something is completely devoid of criticism, should it really be considered a pure, genuine art form? Because, in my point of view, true art causes, you know, actual disparity in the way that it is perceived. Jazz always seems to divide people into two categories: those who like/ love it and those who aren't really into it, but wouldn't call it unpleasant and/or say they can still get a grasp of it's artistic value even though they don't find it appealing at all.

Really, how many people in your life have bluntly told you "I don't like jazz. In fact, I think it's fucking horrible."?

>Really, how many people in your life have bluntly told you "I don't like jazz. In fact, I think it's fucking horrible."?
This exact thing is posted almost daily on Sup Forums. Usually more than once. Granted it's Sup Forums so everything is taken to extremes, but jazz is often mocked on sitcoms and things like that. A lot of people don't like jazz.

Then again, almost of those people who aren't developmentally disabled can at least recognize that to play traditional jazz well requires a high level of musicianship and technical ability, so I think that's what you are recognizing.

Jazz isn't completely devoid of criticism btw. In fact good jazz critics are usually far more insightful and profound than critics of pop music. Of course there are no universal consensuses, but that's because it's art.

Read criticism of visual art or film, and there are no universal consensuses there either.

What a fucking retard, every genre of music has freedom. Jazz is probably the least free, do you think rock musicians carry a book of standards with them?