quare id faciam?

'They forget that those cats listened to somebody, too.'

From a Baltimore Sun interview with jazz trumpet player Roy Hargrove, by Sun pop critic Rashod Ollison, in this past Sunday's arts & culture section:

"Man, there's a lot of jazz being produced today that – I don't know," Hargrove says, frowning. "I feel like it may be over people's heads. The swing element is missing, the element that makes people feel good and want to listen to it. There are a lot of cats that feel like they want to prove something, like [jazz] is the Pythagorean Theorem and [stuff]," he says with a chuckle. "They forget that people are listening to it."

Further on:

"Right now, I'm expressing the importance of tradition, something I think is being overlooked," he says, leaning back in his chair. "I find that when I go to schools, the young players gravitate more toward the progressive side of jazz. Pianists want to play like McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock; the saxophone players are all, like, Coltrane-influenced. And they forget that those cats listened to somebody, too. There's so much more to explore except what came after 1960. ... It gives you a more complete picture and maybe you'll have your own thing to put in there."

(Note, by the way, that Hargrove got his start under the influence of Wynton Marsalis.)

The last line from Hargrove above in mind, finally, toss in your blender this mid-life quote from Le Corbusier (a Ruskin devotee throughout his studies & into his early career; later well-known for argument from Classical models), excerpted in the biography Le Corbusier's Formative Years:

Today I am accused of being a revolutionary, yet I confess to having had only one master: the past; and only one discipline: the study of the past.

posted by paul bowman @ 10:47 PM