Re: THE most dimwitted comment I have heard in years

Robert Schuh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>There is a rather clue less and no talent drummer that lives in Phoenix
>who recently told a student of mine this classic line, "You know, Miles
>and Coltrane got it so right in the 50s, there's no reason to ever
>change that." I was flabbergasted at that comment. [...]

Hi Rob, 

While I agree with many of these points, I'd like to bring the
discussion back around to one essential thing.  If that artist *really
has something to say*, then I don't care which language s/he is using,
as long as it is appropriate for what is being said.  Languages that
are 40 years old afford one the ability to express sublime ideas, at
least as much as languages that are 30 years old.  The idea of
"newness" isn't important in itself.  Anyone -- bar none -- can do
something new.  But actually saying something is another matter.  I
hear as many people who are touting their newness when the content is
otherwise empty.  People who use the term "avant garde" (or "new" for
that matter), are often trying to gain points on style alone.  For me,
if they have nothing to say, then it doesn't work at all.  By all
means, people shouldn't stop looking for things that are new.  The
adventurous spirit shouldn't be discouraged. But  I know some bebop
players with something deep to say.  I alsoI know some players who
purport to play bebop, but their music is shallow, like a tourist
trying to speak from a Berlitz phrasebook.  But that isn't *really*
bebop, which is more of a dark-edged music characterized by a kind of
urgency, the kind of urgency one can't muster up when one has nothing
to say!  I will be very interested when something new comes around,
something that has the richness and sophistication of the refined
older forms.  But all I've seen to date is "mere eclecticism" in most
circumstances, even on dates where there is some genuine feeling.
Eclecticism is too often taken as the ends, and yet without synthesis,
it is only a mere summing of parts.

Luke