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Results for "So You Don't Like Jazz"
Thirty Essential Transformative Guitarists
by Alan Bryson
"Best guitarist" lists are inherently subjective--often nonsensical. They rank the unrankable, folding popularity, technique, cultural impact, sales, and personal taste into a single hierarchy. This list takes a different approach, acknowledging thirty guitarists who transformed the instrument itself: they created new techniques, pioneered fresh concepts, expanded its sonic vocabulary, and changed how those who followed them played. ...
Jimi Hendrix: Showman and Sculptor
by Alan Bryson
When you think of Jimi Hendrix, chances are something flamboyant or incendiary comes to mind. His Stratocaster in flames at Monterey, or kneeling before a wall of amps at Woodstock. Those are in my memory bank too, but I'm one of a small group of people alive today who actually experienced The Jimi Hendrix Experience. The ...
Iconic Music in Film: Boomer Edition
by Alan Bryson
One of the pleasures of looking back at film music from the boomer years is realizing how quickly the walls were coming down. Classical themes turned into jazz-funk hits. Soul records won Oscars. Rock songs became character development. Bluegrass, blues, disco, Latin jazz, and spaghetti-western minimalism all found their way onto the screen, and in the ...
Sonic Loops: Eight Miles High on the Psychedelic Trane
by Alan Bryson
In the popular music of the '50s, the landscape revolved around individual vocalists, vocal harmony groups, and instrumental ensembles. In the early '60s, something radical emerged: self-contained groups--a collective of individuals with a group dynamic and identity. They wrote, sang, played instruments, and performed as a unified artistic whole. This represented a structural revolution in how ...
5 Epic Jazz Songs That Forever Changed the World
by Alan Bryson
So You Don't Like Jazz normally focuses on ways to turn people on to jazz, but this column focuses on five jazz songs whose impact profoundly changed modern music. In the process they also demonstrated that jazz could be successful in a modern culture dominated by pop, rock & roll, and rhythm & blues. Arguably the ...
All About Music—My AAJ Experience
by Alan Bryson
Music & Taste Music and food have a lot in common. Variety is the key--without it, even the best prepared food loses its appeal. It is telling that we speak of “musical taste," even though we experience music through our ears. Genres like jazz and classical music weave together themes, patterns, harmonies, and mathematical ...
The Unlikely Story of Cannonball Adderley's Rise to the Top
by Alan Bryson
For me, the most gripping music stories are the tales of “overnight sensations." In the jazz sphere, we have our share. There is the story of an eighteen-year-old Billie Holiday, discovered by producer John Hammond while she was a hostess in a Harlem club. There is the tale of a seventeen-year-old Ella Fitzgerald, whose triumphant debut ...
Why Is Music Like a Traffic Accident?
by Alan Bryson
Why Is Music Like a Traffic Accident? It is the kind of question that begs a punchline: “Because sometimes there is a lot of horn and not much direction." And while that might get a laugh from the rhythm section, the comparison can go deeper: Both can stretch your sense of time. And when ...
Don't Like Jazz? Give Me Six Minutes And Forty-Two Seconds
by Frank Housh
Don't like jazz? I think I understand. For many, jazz seems hyper-intellectual and inaccessible and, to be fair, it too often is. At its best, however, jazz represents the heart of the creative instinct; it began by taking popular songs and changing their harmony and melodies. This “variations on a theme" is nothing new. ...
Michael Jackson & Jimmy Smith to Stevie Wonder & Dizzy Gillespie — My Top Ten Jazz/Pop Encounters
by Alan Bryson
It's a good bet that most of us have heard people say they don't like jazz, or even worse, drop the H-bomb, “I hate jazz." If you choose to engage, the key is to tread lightly and tailor an approach that considers the tastes and sensibilities of the other person. The “So You Don't Like Jazz" ...
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