how does a largely white audience effect the music?

[Kyle]

djstarr-

Unfortunently, there is one prominent Dj that does maintain a book primarily of black musicians with only a spattering of white because he/she feels that "white" music is inferior. Personally, i find that view a bit narrorw minded, but to each his own. (no need for names )

I also know of that famous story about the interview with (i always forget his name) where he told the radio DJ, i think, that he could tell the difference between a black musician and a white musician, he could tell the difference between black bands and white bands, between a white artist doing a black arrangement, etc....

Of course, he failed on every single question.

[12bars]

i didnt think that the author was really asking, "why arnt more blacks intrested in this music", as much as much as he was asking, "how does largly white audience effect the music", although, reading the paragraph on its own with out the context of the rest of the chapter can make it seem that way. he actually talks about something similar to what you bring up, djstarr.

excerpts from the prevoius page: (note: while the book is about blues, it applies to swing, which is why i posted it here instead of in other music. one could argue that you could put the word "swing" in place of "blues" and it is still as effective")

"generalizations are inaccurate by definition, and to say that black people no longer listen to the blues simply isnt true....
...for the most part, though, guardianship of the blues has passed from the black community to white bohemia....
...instead of "guardianship" i almost wrote "ownership", a word to which some might object but one which perhaps reveals why so many white blues fans view this turn of events with such dismay. in one sense it hardly matters who listens to the blues. everyone is intitled to listen to whatever he or she chooses, and more power to those white audiences who are helping to keep the blues commercially aloft. in another sense, whos listening matters a great deal. if 4 decades of rock n roll and close to 3 of rock criticism have taught us anything, its that audiences play at least as great a role as preformers in determining the musics meaning. the notes i hear when i pop charley patton in my cd player are the same notes black victrola owners heard in mississippi in in the late 20s, arent they? when john lee hooker performs at a blues festival, am i not hearing the same music that a black man of hookers own generation who might happen to be in the same audience is hearing? i think so, but i honestly dont know.

"what i do know is that someone like hooker once played for performed almost exclusivly for black audiences aprox his own age; now his audience consists mostly of whites young enough to be his grandchildren. who now has more in common with his audiences, an younger black blues preformer like lonnie pitchford or a grown up white 60s revivalist like charlie musselwhite?"

[12bars]

after the quote i started this thread with he writes, "some of us people of pallor just fall in love with the music, and i have no inkling of what is going on in the souls of those white folks that show up at summer blues festivals shirtless, spill beer on themselves, trade high 5s with their girlfriends after every number, and shake their a$$es like poster children for rythymic deficiency anemia. [who i think is the same guy who requests "zoot suit riot", so he can do charlstons and kick people, then throw some arial like in the swing kids movie.]...

...hardly anybody contests the right of whites to sing the blues...not that a performers race goes unnoticed...this controversy was given a new twist..." he then quotes paul garon in the june 1993 issue of living blues..." 'no matter who sings the blues, no matter how wonderful they may be, no matter how much they have suffered or 'lived the blues', [for this magazine], black culture is an inseparable part of the blues. that is to say, for us the blues is defined culturally and not acoustically...[hoping that this mag will] continue to perform the function for which it was created: to document a vital and important aspect of african american culture.' "




at anyrate...i wasnt really intrested in a "why aren't there more blacks in today's swing community", that has been done in many threads on yehoodi, as pointed out.

[mousethief]

I still don't see the point as it relates to DJs. Sorry but it's just claptrap to me.

The title has changed again. It doesn't affect squat.

Kalman

[Albert System]

Most musicians I know- black and white- will tell you that who is in the audience doesn't matter- what matters is that there is an audience period. To most musicians I know- everyone is green- as in $.

I agree with the notion that you can't tell just by listening if a band is white or black- or mixed for that matter. It is how and what they are playing.

From the earliest days of recording jazz, record producers forced balck bands to play racy blues tunes- even though they often played waltzes and other more proper music on their gigs for people who wanted to dance to those things. And white bands were forced to record more tame and trite sounding pop tunes for fear of offending the white audiences- even though they played hot jazz and blues on their gigs because people wanted to hear that.

As DJ's you need to remember that the music on recordings is just a small slice of the bands' repretoire- and often contains music a record producer wanted to record, and doesn't always reflect what a band actually played on gigs.

[Lawrence]

how does a largely white audience effect the music?

1) "affect," not "effect."

2) Without a "white" audience, blues and jazz (and Lindy Hop) probably would have been LONG dead by now. But the same is true about Mozart, Beethovan and other classical music, as well.

The difference between a white or black audience is nowhere near as significant as the difference between a complacent and enthusiastic or between an ignorant and appreciative audience. Because many white audiences are enthusiastic and appreciative, that is what the musicians need, not a color.

[CafeSavoy]

Most musicians I know- black and white- will tell you that who is in the audience doesn't matter- what matters is that there is an audience period.

[....]

As DJ's you need to remember that the music on recordings is just a small slice of the bands' repretoire- and often contains music a record producer wanted to record, and doesn't always reflect what a band actually played on gigs.

"As a player, to me, he was the most significant giant of all. He played beautifully, intellectually, low-down, dirty, funky old blues. I remember going down South with him one time, and the first day, the black promoter came over, "Now looka here, Charlie Parker, we don't want no bebop down here." Bird looked at the crowd, the dancing people, all blacks. In those days you could play -- you played two gigs. You played one night for blacks, and the whites sat upstairs, and the next time for whites, and the blacks sat upstairs. And Bird said, `Don't worry about a thing, we're going to play rice-and-beans music,' and he went into (imitates horn) blues, and he broke the crowd up."

-- Red Rodney

[Zot]

What a fascinating quote, Rayned. Where's it from?

[mark0tz]

man, i know i have stompin' the blues around here somewhere... time to crack that sucker open.

[Lawrence]

Most musicians I know- black and white- will tell you that who is in the audience doesn't matter- what matters is that there is an audience period.
[....]
As DJ's you need to remember that the music on recordings is just a small slice of the bands' repretoire- and often contains music a record producer wanted to record, and doesn't always reflect what a band actually played on gigs.

"As a player, to me, he was the most significant giant of all. He played beautifully, intellectually, low-down, dirty, funky old blues. I remember going down South with him one time, and the first day, the black promoter came over, "Now looka here, Charlie Parker, we don't want no bebop down here." Bird looked at the crowd, the dancing people, all blacks. In those days you could play -- you played two gigs. You played one night for blacks, and the whites sat upstairs, and the next time for whites, and the blacks sat upstairs. And Bird said, `Don't worry about a thing, we're going to play rice-and-beans music,' and he went into (imitates horn) blues, and he broke the crowd up."

-- Red Rodney

Does using this quote suggest that we are still hopelessly mired in outdated stereotypes? Are there still "rice and beans" black audiences who want simple swing music and don't dig bebop?

Again, I wildly and rudely suggest that perhaps the enthusiasm and attentiveness of the audience is far more important than the color of the audience or how brightly their skin reflects light back to the stage. ("Ow, the glare!! Damn, I wish they were all black!")

[Albert System]

Larewence-

You are correct. As I stated before- musicians I know, regardless of color- are happy to have a gig that pays. They don't care much about who is there, and who is paying, and who is dancing or listening. The point is- it is a paying gig!!

That quote is hopelessly outdated, and actually today is probably completely backwards. Most black people (and of course this is generalizing, but forgive me) who I know that are jazz fans tend to enjoy bop and fusion jazz and don't as much care for the older styles of swing or ragtime etc. Why is this?? Again- who knows? and really who cares? As long as there are good musicians playing good music in different styles, and there are audiences who appreciate and support them, what does it matter what any of them look like?????

[CafeSavoy]

Does using this quote suggest that we are still hopelessly mired in outdated stereotypes? Are there still "rice and beans" black audiences who want simple swing music and don't dig bebop?

Again, I wildly and rudely suggest that perhaps the enthusiasm and attentiveness of the audience is far more important than the color of the audience or how brightly their skin reflects light back to the stage. ("Ow, the glare!! Damn, I wish they were all black!")

Are you saying that when that quote was written there was a large audience for bebop? There was a reason why jump blues became more popular than jazz. I think there a song called "This Joint Is Too Hip For Me" that pokes fun at bebop. If you are implying that the dance crowd (i.e., the Saturday Night Function crowd) wanted to hear bebop, I would like to see the evidence.

If you are saying that race doesn't play a role when evaluating an audience then I don't know what world you live in. That is not to say that race is the only determinant but it is a factor. And no one said that jazz musicians preferred a black audience to a white audience. If that was true, so many of them would not have gone to Europe (although there were additional Jim Crow reasons for enjoying the European experience). And no one has suggested that black audiences would not listen to white bands either. I met a gentleman at Tower Records one night who had lived through the swing era in Washington DC who noted that Benny Goodman was a popular downtown as he was at the Howard Theatre. Of course he wasn't allowed to watch Benny Goodman downtown so couldn't really comment on that experience, but he could confirm it was standing room only at the Howard Theatre. He was also a good example of how race is not a determinant of taste since he was huge Stan Kenton fan.

[CafeSavoy]

That quote is hopelessly outdated, and actually today is probably completely backwards. Most black people (and of course this is generalizing, but forgive me) who I know that are jazz fans tend to enjoy bop and fusion jazz and don't as much care for the older styles of swing or ragtime etc. Why is this?? Again- who knows? and really who cares? As long as there are good musicians playing good music in different styles, and there are audiences who appreciate and support them, what does it matter what any of them look like?????

wouldn't it be more true to say that most jazz fans tend to enjoy bop and fusion jazz more. Actually probably the largest percentage of "jazz" fans probably listen to smooth "jazz."

actually i find the animus towards the original question very interesting. and probably does more to answer 12bars question as anything anyone could have posted. the question reminds me of an interview i heard on the radio about Robert Johnson with someone who had just released some work about him. The author commented that part of the reason for his popularity was that some aspects of his music appealed to some conception of what some people (mostly whites) had of what raw vital music should sound like and he noted that Robert Johnson himself was more interested in playing the smoother urban music of his time.

[Albert System]

Yes- it is true that today most so-called jazz fans are into smooth jazz. Ugh. It is also true that bop was never popular music. Jazz in general ceased to be "popular music" on any great scale when bop came around. There are very few, if any, bop hit records. There are many reasons for this- one of them being that many places where bop was played didn't have dancing (and many of the musicians wanted it that way as a response to stilted dance bands of time), and that the music itself isn't the type of thing that the average guy whistles in the shower.

I think the quote from Red Rodney just shows that in the late 40's/ early 50's people still wanted to dance, and the jump blues craze was happening, and this particular crowd (who happened to be black) was there to dance to jump blues. I say- good for Parker for giving them what they wanted- which goes back to my original point. Parker played blues that night because that is what the guy who was paying him asked him to play!

[12bars]

actually i find the animus towards the original question very interesting. and probably does more to answer 12bars question as anything anyone could have posted. the question reminds me of an interview i heard on the radio about Robert Johnson with someone who had just released some work about him. The author commented that part of the reason for his popularity was that some aspects of his music appealed to some conception of what some people (mostly whites) had of what raw vital music should sound like and he noted that Robert Johnson himself was more interested in playing the smoother urban music of his time.

(was that the interview on npr with elijah wood, book titled escaping the delta, cause i think i herd that too)

something that i have been reading (about the blues)is that producers would record the songs of an artist that the producer thought a particular audience would buy, not the variety of songs an artist played. this happened pre-40-50s with producers recording songs that they thought would appeal to black audiences, and again in the 60s, when white audienced wanted "authentic" blues, ie country blues, and wouldnt consider bb king or muddy waters blues cause of the amplification. the idea of what the blues was was diffrent if you asked the artist, or the producer. what we understand as the blues now is what got recorded. anyone know if it happened like that in jazz?