"The Marvelous Ego Labyrinth" by Steve Provizer

Too much of a bad thing, no doubt, but being unemployed has induced hyper-posting.  My Little Grey Cells, otherwise preoccupied for the last 12 years with idle strategies for world domination have lately been inspired by things people write in the comments. In this case, the ego posting.

The interplay of ego on the bandstand is a marvelous labyrinth-a combination of conscious and unconscious body language, visual signals and-whether playing music with or without harmonic guideposts-perceptions of how much and how well people are listening. 

The most successful collaborations calibrate egos through listening-active and intensive listening-which to me means an openness to allowing what someone else plays to effect your next musical decision. As with any kind of communications, this will be more or less conscious on the part of a given player. But somewhere along the line, the player has to decide that responsibility for the music's success is shared; that he or she is willing to be a part of a larger group that either delivers the goods or screws up.

Solo genius is not predictive of collaborative genius. Bruno may disagree, but when I listen to Bird playing fours with other horn players, I don't have the impression of a person who has made the decision to really share the space. While the other soloist plays his 4, Bird's next entrance seems to say that he had been listening less than thinking about what his next 4 bars would be.

I think that many of us have been in the position of sharing a bandstand with a musician who simply wants to get his own agenda across. This is acceptable if you've understood that your role is sideman, know the limits of your soloing, etc. But in any purportedly collaborative situation, it's alienating and disastrous. Amazingly, I'm not sure the audience always hears it. Visuals can be so important to an audience and musicians are oiten too well-mannered to let their irritation and frustration show. When I talk about a bad playing experience, this is at the top of the list, above audience size, response and finances.

"Gimme Some Jazz-Over Easy" by Steve Provizer

And one thing leads to the next...C.R. mentions in his ego post comment the degree of effort audiences will apply to "something non essential like aesthetic nourishment." This leads to the knock heard for so long about jazz: you have to work too hard to 'get' it.

It's sometimes framed as "accessibility,' a word that either puts up walls or acknowledges that walls exist. The passage through a maze can be accessible. High mountain gaps in Tibet can be accessible.  In any case, some effort is involved.

In one way, jazz fans have no problem with this idea. It marks them as an elite; gives them intellectual bragging rights-and maybe a shred of "cool factor." This may also resonate some with musicians. Unfortunately, musicians also have to deal with audience shrinkage and the attendant psychic and financial ramifications.

It's tough to quantify the elements of Hard/Not Accessible. Lack of recognizable melody? Complex rhythms? Polytonalism? Too much fortissimo? Certainly 30's jazz seemed-and seems-Not Hard to a lot of people, but "free jazz" does. Some strains of jazz have become background for car chases and sex scenes, thereby falling off the scale completely.  Some people have brought in hip hop, rock, disco, etc. to shift the balance.

It may be true that one person's "hard" music is another person's "easy," but sales and downloads show that most people's hard is not some else's easy. It's their hard. too. Otherwise, there'd be a more random statistical pattern.

In a way, this question has a kind of moral/puritan ethic undertone, like that in the "personal responsibility" or the "greatest generation- versus-the-boomers" debate. I.e., that audiences don't have
the "right stuff."

Have the expectations, energy and capacities (lack of attention span or other psychic shortfalls) of audiences changed over time or remained stable? Is there a smaller group of people willing to tackle challenging music? Are there simply so many more aesthetic choices that this change isn't measurable?

Findings of the Institute

In 2008, the Rex Stewart/Jabbo Smith Meme and Trope Institute undertook a multiple year study of the increasingly distant proxemics, gestural and spatial relationship between the jazz performing cohort (expanding) and the jazz audience (contracting). This is a précis of our findings.

The Institute initially proceeded under the supposition that the jazz performer-audience relationship could be viewed through the lens of the larger cultural zeitgeist, i.e., economic, sociological and political pressures. However, no pattern emerged that would allow a viable corollary thesis to be formulated.

The second supposition was that changing musical patterns could explain the phenomenon. However, bitonality, ‘free’ playing, the fragmentation of musical forms, etc., while somewhat disruptive, could not be definitively cited.

Eventually, Institute interdepartmental collaboration led us to undertake a media-centric analysis and it was this approach that yielded conclusive results. To wit: photographic and cinematic evidence showed that the disparity and disaffection cited above could be attributed to the rise of the bad jazz moustache and the general decline of the jazz musician tonsure.

It was noted that during the era of increased synchronization between jazz audiences and performers-c.1920-1945, few musicians of stature sported ‘beavers’ of any kind. A profusion of moustaches was noted, with good examples furnished by Mr. Berigan, Mr. Hawkins, Mr. Prez and many others. However, the nattiness and subtlety of these ‘lady ticklers’ began to see a precipitous post-WW II decline and a new crop of facial hair, more akin to ‘crumb catchers,’ supplanted what had once been modeled along crisp, carefully groomed lines.

The final phases of the schism began in the 1950's when, to use the vernacular, “all hell broke loose.” (The idiosyncratic facial hair outcroppings of Thelonius Monk preceded the 1950’s, but the Institute deemed Mr. Monk an anomalous factor, much like the ‘free radical’ of the chemist). Research showed that ‘parts’ in the hair, once firmly established through the use of Brylcreem and other hair pomades, began to wander erratically from side to side.

So too, at this point, did the goatee, Van dyck and ‘soul patch’make their appearance under the 'beatnik' rubric and spread like fungus (eukaryotic organism). Mr. Ornette Coleman, first photographed wearing a conservative sweater and non-obtrusive ‘stash,’ exploded in random hirsuteness (c.f. R.R. Kirk at right).

In some ways, the transformations of Mr. Sonny Rollins-“Mohawk” haircut, followed by shaved head-marked the definitive point at which the proxemics, gestural and spatial relationship between jazz performers and audience made a final disengagement.

The entire final report of The Rex Stewart/Jabbo Smith Meme and Trope Institute can be seen here.

Next Study:Digital Metronomes: Threat or Menace?