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[Hugelittle]

I am currently a Junior in High School and play in jazz band, a sextet and a trio. My school requires everyone to take certain classes and one of them is a full year of communications. Unfortunatly, those students who are enrolled in Band and Jazz band do not have room in their schedules for cummunications, especially if they are taking a foreign language. This is the problem I am currently experiencing. I talked to the principal and got permission to try to persuade her to wave me from a communications class if I can prove that Jazz is a form of ommunication. Well, duh... It is not a hardtopic to write about butto make my point, I would like to include jazz musicians' views on the topic.

How is Jazz a form of communication.

Thanks everyone!

Hugh Little

[DIS]

Jazz communicates a mood to the audience. Blah, blah, blah. You're on a slippery slope when you set out to describe this.

Rather, ask yourself these questions: What are the ways that a composer or arranger communicates his music to musicians? (This gets into the complexities of written music itself.) What are all the ways that members of a musical ensemble must communicate with one another? How is a one-time performance sometimes communicated to hundreds of thousands of listeners?

And good luck!

[bubber]

Jazz improvisation is communication - you can go anywhere (almost) in the world with your instrument and communicate with people whose language you don't speak - your common knowledge of the language of jazz will make you communicate much better than politicians speaking the same language do.
Jazz is communicating your feelings and your intellect.

[Hugelittle]

I like the intellect part.

Was charlie parker smart? he played like a God and yet he took drugs that eventually killed him. I dont think he was smart. I think it was just the drugs and the fact that he practiced 12 hours a day for four straight years.

I will add your last sentence to the paper...in my own words...i won't plagerize

--huge

[JSngry]

Uh...if you just have average ideas, practicing 12 hours a day for 4 striaght years will do little more than make you EXTREMELY facile with those average ideas.

Can't harvest what ain't in the ground...

[David]

Originally posted by JSngry
Uh...if you just have average ideas, practicing 12 hours a day for 4 striaght years will do little more than make you EXTREMELY facile with those average ideas.

Can't harvest what ain't in the ground...

Amen!

Mis- or un-directed practicing leads me nowhere. I usually have had the greatest 'leaps' in my ability occur from either transcribing or simply listening to certain recordings. I remember the first time I heard Giuffre/Bley/Swallow's 1961, I felt like my musical world had just expanded by a million miles... Careful listening of that record added a whole new dimension to my playing without me having to 'practice' a single note!

It's also why someone like Bruce Hornsby will never be a jazz pianist, no matter how much he practices (I love Bruce Hornsby, by the way, but mainly as a composer of classic American pop).

[bubber]

Hugelittle: Was Charlie Parker smart? Depends on what you mean by smart. I read somewhere (Bird Lives?) that tests made when he was hospitalized indicated a very high IQ.

A lot of intelligent people do things that are not so smart. That goes for musicians, scientists, politicians etc.

[markvi]

if you want to prove that jazz is communication, find someone you are comfortable trading 4's, 8's., or choruses with and take him into the principal's office and start trading fours. or pick out a good blues tune and play the head and give him a great couple of blues choruses and then ask the principal if he got the message. communicating your response to his challenge on your instrument might be a unique way to prove your point.

also it matters not one bit if charlie parker were "smart". iq only measures qualities that society thinks is important and it is grossly overrated for judging what someone is worth. society too often confuses smart with good and dumb with bad. don't fall into that trap. the only thing that matters is his playing and his saxophone iq was 400. that was good.

[ryanoceros]

Originally posted by David
[/B]
I remember the first time I heard Giuffre/Bley/Swallow's 1961, I felt like my musical world had just expanded by a million miles... Careful listening of that record added a whole new dimension to my playing without me having to 'practice' a single note!
[/B]

AMEN to YOU, sir.

Jimmy Giuffre 3, 1961 is one of the most important sound recordings of the last century.

and it manages to be extremely free and avant garde while being achingly beautiful and even accessible.

[Saundra Hummer]

Originally posted by bubber
Hugelittle: Was Charlie Parker smart? Depends on what you mean by smart. I read somewhere (Bird Lives?) that tests made when he was hospitalized indicated a very high IQ.

A lot of intelligent people do things that are not so smart. That goes for musicians, scientists, politicians etc.

I see we have a teenager writing in about Charlie Parker. As a teen I knew Charlie Parker, although only fleetingly! I'll tell you one thing, he had a heart. There was a kindness in him that you couldn't miss. I really cared for him a lot. I still have the 45 album that he gave to me back in the 1950's It was a happier time for him that day. I was there when he received the news of his little girls death, and it was one of the most tragic scenes I have ever seen. I don't recall ever seeing him again after that. The drugs and the life hadn't helped him that is for sure, but smart, he was smart, kind, the kindest, right choices, not always. Loved, forever!

[Saundra Hummer]

Originally posted by Hugelittle
I am currently a Junior in High School and play in jazz band, a sextet and a trio. My school requires everyone to take certain classes and one of them is a full year of communications. Unfortunatly, those students who are enrolled in Band and Jazz band do not have room in their schedules for cummunications, especially if they are taking a foreign language. This is the problem I am currently experiencing. I talked to the principal and got permission to try to persuade her to wave me from a communications class if I can prove that Jazz is a form of ommunication. Well, duh... It is not a hardtopic to write about butto make my point, I would like to include jazz musicians' views on the topic.

How is Jazz a form of communication.

Thanks everyone!

Hugh Little

Well don't they call music the "Universal Language"? Look up that one, it is written somewhere!

[Tim Givens]

Originally posted by Saundra Hummer


Well don't they call music the "Universal Language"?

The King of Thailand didn't speak English well, but he didn't need an interpreter when he got out his sax to jam with Benny Goodman. Just one example of music being a great language of diplomacy. Some of these international jam sessions may have done more for world peace than any "summit talks" could hope to. Who knows, if Saddam had been a jazz man, we might have avoided our recent deadly disagreement.

[Saundra Hummer]

Originally posted by Hugelittle
I am currently a Junior in High School and play in jazz band, a sextet and a trio. My school requires everyone to take certain classes and one of them is a full year of communications. Unfortunatly, those students who are enrolled in Band and Jazz band do not have room in their schedules for cummunications, especially if they are taking a foreign language. This is the problem I am currently experiencing. I talked to the principal and got permission to try to persuade her to wave me from a communications class if I can prove that Jazz is a form of ommunication. Well, duh... It is not a hardtopic to write about butto make my point, I would like to include jazz musicians' views on the topic.

How is Jazz a form of communication.

Thanks everyone!

Hugh Little

I am wondering if Hugh Little ever answered back on this post, and what his thoughts were, and what did happen with his school. I imagine that there were several other posts that were lost in the crash, but I do wonder that did end up happening.

[jazzbluescat]

.....I talked to the principal and got permission to try to persuade her to wave me from a communications class if I can prove that Jazz is a form of ommunication......

Explain it to her in simple common ground terms. Compare music notes with words or letters of the alphabet. Letters (and words) sound like...signify a particular sound (nevermind meaning). Then show her this particular note (any note) signifies this, a particular sound.

[Note: While music is a language, needless to say it ain't the same as spoken words. Maybe she is concerned with another agenda, just getting higher grades on standardized testing; which translates into a whole host of stuff.]

[Mike Neely]

On a mundane level music notation is a language as is a computer program - it conveys information, how to accomplish something. But there are emotional and spiritual elements to music that go beyond what written or computer languages can do. With music you can communicate with people who are from a totally different culture that may have no written language at all. I have worked with people intellectually unable to comprehend written language (Mentally Retarded) but put on the right music and it was dancing in the living room. There are many books on this topic - with some internet and library searching I'm sure you could put together an interesting case. Seems to me that of all the languages music has the widest and most accessible reach.