There is a new article in the Atlantic Monthly which provokes the music fan to consider the life of Jazz as a musical genre. We will review this article but before I do that, let me review a few songs from the group "Tom and Joyce" and also a few new songs from artists like the group Groove Collective. I wonder if Frankie Beverley and Maze counts as Jazz let alone new songs from that Michael Bubbly or is it Effervescent? I can't remember but he sings really nice new and old songs that I like to listen to on the radio. He is a happy singer. I believe there is also a jazz festival scheduled in every respectable city for the next year or two at minimum with the sole purpose of inviting tourists to attend the poorly managed environs with angry civil servants, transit staff and police who are never thankful for their pensions it seems. I hear they are getting new coin counting fare boxes soon which should help to increase revenue by a few million and keep yearly increases to fares low or negligible. Take care and God bless!
The real issue, as an aside, is not the end of Jazz as the article points out quite clearly but the changes in inspiration for more improvisation and musical elaboration. Jazz was initially a melding of various old-world musical styles known popularly as classical music ( Chopin and Bach) with the new world and its tempo for spontaneity and syncopation from the various hot beds in the south and marshmellows with chitlin https://www.google.ca/search?q=chitlin&hl=en&safe=off&tbo=u&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=RqTSUMLgD7Ps2AWV7oHoDw&ved=0CEgQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=571camp fires. This is not to forget the rhythms from the latin-influenced countries in the Caribbean and the Mexican Mariachi bands. A lot of Black Americans met some friends while building the Panama canal so the original source of Jazz was essentially cultural and cultural melding burnished with the human desire for spontaneous and individual expressions. Jerry Lee Louis knows along with Chet Baker.
At this stage, the source of jazz was the same as it is now. David Brubeck knows as one can see in listening to "Pick Up Sticks" or "Blue Rondo" or uh "Take five". The song books are just that; song books and evidently anyone is welcome to read them after an original song like "Night in Tunisia" is written and included within the book but the song book is not the source of the music but a depository for these original expressions and record for all posterity. Listen to Incognito and Marcos Valle and St. Germain which are considered either jazz, jazz fusion, latin jazz(sometimes) or acid jazz artists. At best, the song book is a good source for the uninspired song writer who will take the risk of infringing on copyright in his efforts to reinterpret. The real source for Jazz, like the wheel, penicillin, and Hydrogen fuel for uh trains and air planes and rockets and vehicles, is God -inspired human ingenuity This is the genius of rappers who pay copyright for using Herb Alpert's music and rhythms in songs patched together successfully by engineers working with wealthy and happy, ingenious, tall, muscular rappers like Notorious B.I.G.. Come on now? Anyway, here is a new article by the employer, I mean the Atlantic, on World War II. What we can tell from reading it and the real comments of those who experienced it as contained within the article's summary is the following: Hitler did not send his U-boats to the coast of England to prevent all those supply ships coming in. He did not close down the airstrips used for Allied landing and he did not establish a permanent beach head in Calais or even the Isle of White or Jersey. He was a good employee according to many historians who authored this article and provided these summaries. The link is here below.
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/07/world-war-ii-the-battle-of-britain/100102/
Warren A. Lyon
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