Okay, so this is a little on the long side, but I really recommend it if you can spare the time. It’s a talk by one of my son’s professors about why jazz matters (and includes some really nice jazz performance as well). I was a little skeptical at the start, but ended up finding it totally captivating:
http://sps.columbia.edu/talks/why-jazz-matters-chris-washburne
After 5-1/2 years on this board, I finally get up the courage to start my first thread and what happens? It gets no replies. None. I’m crushed!
Just kidding, of course, but I am curious as to whether anyone watched the clip I linked and, if so, what you thought of it. If I scared you off by saying it’s on the long side, it’s not that long - about 24 minutes. To pique your interest (maybe), it discusses some of the skills that a jazz musician needs - such as the ability to come up with new ideas and to create in real time, and the ability to really listen to others in a group and give everyone an equal voice - and how those skills have application to other endeavors.
If this post gets no replies, I promise I won’t bump this thread again. But at least I won’t have to look at that big, fat “0” next to it in the replies column. 
Hi. I did not watch the video - I am kind of jazz-friendly already. Now that I know what is in it, I feel like I watched it. I know - sometimes you try to give something awesome and it sits ignored, while some other thread draws endless quibbling over nothing.
Now I have just freshly watched the video. It was nice. It would be a good seed for discussion. As a non-musician, I ask what is the balance of rule-following and free expression in playing jazz. I was thinking of basketball, for example - there are rules, but each game can have exciting and unexpected results. How unexpected or new or exciting are the outcomes of a new improvisation on a jazz piece. Would a rock guitar solo offer as much of a feeling of new energy and fresh insight.
We are absolutely a Jazz family. My dad, a first gen white guy born in the Bronx used to go to Harlem and see Jazz all the time–only blue collar white guy in the club. I was raised on it. It was my kids’ lullaby. My D16 plays piano in the high school Jazz band and my D19 will likely play sax there next year (small band–few seats).
I watched the video when you posted it and enjoyed it very much! It nicely articulated what makes jazz unique and the skills it develops, and was layperson friendly. I think it would be a useful advocacy tool for school boards etc. Though probably if it were condensed and animated it might get more play. (Someone should do that!)
My son’s HS chamber orchestra group has been working on listening to and playing off one another as opposed to responding to only the conductor…that kind of communication and autonomy within the group that good jazz requires, and it is surprisingly difficult for the majority of them. (He’s the only jazz guy in the chamber orchestra.) I think these are important skills that should be introduced much earlier. I think jazz should be right up there with band, chorus, orchestra in importance and funding in the schools.
Your son studies jazz at Columbia? That’s incredibly cool. I’m sorry I didn’t comment earlier. I don’t post/comment much, but do appreciate all the info and links!
Thanks for the replies!
I found the professor, Chris Washburne, very impressive. An excellent speaker and an excellent musician, and one of my son’s favorite professors. Apparently, Professor Washburne has given versions of this talk in a number of settings, including Columbia Business School classes and the World Economic Forums in Davos, Switzerland and in China. He was also successful about a decade ago in adding a unit on jazz to the one-semester music course that every Columbia student is required to take, so everyone who graduates from Columbia has had some exposure to jazz. @indeestudios, I agree that it would be great to introduce more jazz at the high school level as well, and even at the elementary school level.
@GoForth, your question about the balance of rule-following and free expression is an interesting one. I can’t claim to be an expert, but in listening to jazz and talking with my son, there seems to be a wide range - from completely free form to fairly structured. But no matter what the form, there is always a significant degree of improvisation and real-time creation. At the same time, no matter what the form, the improvisation and creation is goal-oriented. I’ve thought some about the points Professor Washburne makes and how it could apply to my work in the business world, and there’s quite a bit that resonates. (I don’t know enough about rock to make that comparison. My sense is that the degree and complexity of improvisation in jazz is significantly greater, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you could make some of the same points about at least some forms of rock.)
@kandcsmom, you touch on another positive aspect of jazz that Professor Washburne didn’t mention, namely the ability of jazz to transcend color barriers. Most of the groups my son plays with are interracial, most of the jazz groups he listens to are interracial, and the clubs and other venues where he plays run the gamut from mostly white audiences to mostly African-American audiences to mostly Latin audiences, to a wide mix. He’s completely comfortable, and treated like family, in all of these environments. Color seems to be irrelevant.
I did watch the video right after you posted. I didn’t comment because, to be honest, while what Prof Washburne says sounds good, I’m not sure I agree with some of his basic premises and didn’t really want to say anything negative or get into a debate. I do agree, whole-heartedly, with the concept that “jazz matters”. Just not what he says about “corporate innovation” and jazz improvisation on the whole. Maybe “disagree” is too strong; I think he simplifies it to appeal to a non-jazz audience, which is understandable.
When my son and I visited Oberlin, we had a short but really interesting meeting with Gary Bartz. He talked about all genres ultimately being just about “music”. He talked about “improvisation” as just a jazz term for “composition” and I agree. I think this romantic idea that jazz musicians are creative savants that “improvise” every time they play is just that, a romantic notion. The fact is, like all musicians, they practice. They collect and practice licks, phrases, little snippets, and combine/re-combine them in different ways, always tweaking. It’s almost never a “fresh and new” idea except to the listener who is hearing it for the first time. For the performer, it’s just as obsessive as a “classical” musician perfecting a piece.
I do agree with the idea that jazz represents personal freedom/independence and equality. It is such a quintessential American art form; it provides some basic rules as a framework for how the “society” works together, but allows each participant equal space to express themselves. There may be a designated leader (as in a democracy) but no dictator or autocrat.
I also watched the video and I’m enjoying this conversation - especially ScreenName48105’s comments above regarding improvisation/composition. I’m a drummer and obsessed with some of the great jazz drummers who, although they may employ certain phrases, are responding to the other musicians in new ways all the time.
Don’t even get me started on Whiplash!
@ScreenName48105, I appreciate your thoughts (and sorry you were deterred by not wanting to say anything negative). I do understand what you’re saying about Professor Washburne oversimplifying. That probably appealed to me, as I’m not a musician and only know what I’ve learned through my son’s interest in jazz. But the concept of real-time creation, and particularly the concept of intense listening, equality of viewpoints and freedom of expression, really did speak to me within the context of a business environment.
I’m intrigued by the Gary Bartz comments you related, particularly given that my son is a fan of Bartz. Clearly jazz musicians practice (a lot) and there is a structure to the practice. But to my untrained ears, and based on what my son tells me, it seems to me that there really is a great deal of real-time creation within the structure of any given performance. My son speaks about developing ideas as he plays, and interacting with the ideas of his fellow musicians in the group, and it never seems to me like they’re playing the same piece identically. Nor does it seem like they’re cutting and pasting stock phrases, licks or whatever. Rather, it feels like a conversation. I recognize that the real-time creation may not be the same for every piece or every performance. When I go to hear Keith Jarrett, it does seem to me like he’s essentially composing an entire concert on stage. On the other hand, a set list of standards is recognizable as already composed music. But even within the standards, there is variation, communication and development that makes every performance different from every other. At least that’s my take as a non-musician. I hope it’s not just a parlor trick.
@drummergirl, don’t get my son started on Whiplash either. He refuses to see it. He’s friends with and plays with a number of the students in the Juilliard program (on which Whiplash is supposedly based), and they are generally disdainful of it. I haven’t seen it either, based on my son’s disdain for it, though everyone I know who’s not a jazz musician who has seen it has liked it. Have you seen it?
My son and I saw Whiplash the night before one of his auditions. It’s definitely entertaining with lots of sweat (and chairs!) flying and good acting too. But there’s no joy or collaboration in the music, the drumming is purely physical with hardly any originality or feeling, and the main character’s obsessed with Buddy Rich. Maybe if he was inspired by Elvin Jones it would’ve felt more authentic!
I did something tonight I shouldn’t have done. With my curiosity once again piqued by the last couple of posts, and with my son not home to save me from myself, I found Whiplash was available on iTunes and I watched it. Ugh! What a disaster of a movie. I can’t believe 95% of reviewers and audience liked it. This review that I found on All About Jazz pretty much sums up my feelings: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/whiplash-snidely-damien-chazelle-by-steven-hahn.php
From the review: “Whiplash is so ridiculous it hardly merits being called a disappointment.” If what was depicted in this movie bore any resemblance to jazz, then I’d have to say jazz really doesn’t matter.
Whiplash was a movie, no more and no less, and I don’t think it was striving to portray jazz music or jazz teachers accurately. There are music teachers like the guy in the movie in all genres, those who feel like their duty is to break people down, to eradicate their ego and so forth and there are those that quite honestly that if they were in anything other than music teaching would likely face all kinds of problems…the guy playing the teacher deserved the Oscar IMO, because he portrayed that type of teacher pretty well, and it was amusing to watch it, if in a shocked way.
The problem with the movie to me is that it turned Jazz music into some ideal of perfection, of mechanical perfection (n the case of the drummer in the story), and that isn’t what jazz is about, Classical music is full of that, but from what I know of Jazz it is about expressing the music, not about ‘playing it perfectly’. The story about Charlie Parker may or may not be true (I have heard it is apocryphal), but the teacher missed the point, it was about waking up Charlie Parker, and brutality wasn’t what made him, what made Charlie Parker was Charlie Parker. I have heard a lot of criticism of Jazz being taught in programs like Juilliard, that they are approaching it like they do Classical music, that it takes out the very individuality and creativity Jazz is known for, that they are ‘teaching how to improvise right’ rather than teaching Jazz, and so forth…I think the musicians in questions are projecting things, especially that a lot of the people teaching in the Jazz programs are working Jazz musicians and know what it means I think, but it does raise an interesting question, can jazz be ‘academized’ the way classical music has been all along, and retain what it is about? Some would argue that Jazz is already a museum piece, so it doesn’t matter if it is being taught rigidly, that innovation doesn’t matter, but I don’t think that is true, either.
I have heard things like the video in the original post, and I think that in some ways the way they are done is from the viewpoint of trying to say that Jazz music has ‘real value’, that for example the model of improvisation in jazz, the inherent teamwork of it where the individual is part of the whole, has lessons for corporate america, may be barking up the wrong tree, it is inherently saying to me that the music itself isn’t of value, but the lessons it teaches are, and quite honestly, won’t change many minds. I liked what other people wrote, that Jazz has been a kind of melting pot, that in some areas it was quite interracial (down south, on the other hand, it remained illegal for mixed groups to play well into the 1960’s, it is why Louis Armstrong refused to ever play in New Orleans again), and jazz itself came from a melting of various forms of music, and yep, is quite American. I doubt many people will see that as somehow a way to work around issues of race (one of the ironies of Jazz is that the laws that made interracial people ‘black’, helped with the creation of Jazz, in that classically trained interracial musicians found themselves making music within the broader black community, and the fusion of things like ragtime, with classical music structure and with the blues, led to Jazz, or at least that is what they taught us in the music history class I took).