The latter, as would be noted by subsequent generations of musical scholars, was inferred to provide an objective basis for the claims for transcendent greatness of what was being analysed, namely canonic masterworks deriving from white, European males. Relatively soon, all this would be exposed and criticised as cultural chauvinism at best; white supremacy masquerading as objective scholarship at worst.
Kenny G. Metheny and those who cite him have evidently failed to learn the underlying lesson from the collapse of these defences of the traditional canon. The only difference is that pure jazz now occupies the summit, with the debased form represented by Kenny G and others viewed as fundamentally unserious and beneath discussion.
The grounds on which this is claimed is just the same as it was in the past: some analytic characteristic is shown to be present or absent in the objective structure of the music, which is taken to be a proxy for aesthetic merit, artistic seriousness of purpose, or the lack of it based on the assumption that there is a necessary connection.
Showing that there is a difference in their minimalisms is not so trivial. One certainly finds objectively less chromaticism in B. Music has for centuries functioned to reinforce social hierarchies and define the boundaries of elite class identity. As much of the PMC has descended into a precarity associated with the traditional working class, musical tastes and other markers of class status have assumed disproportionate significance.
But while doing so might provide some psychic consolation, as a political act, it is a dead end. It is clear that we now have little to gain by investing ourselves with the attitudes and ideology of elites. Nevertheless, he has been rewarded with enormous wealth and popularity, and is synonymous with "jazz" in the minds of many.
Fairly, or unfairly, his prominence makes him a symbolic exemplar of countless white artists who have been idolized by the same mainstream audiences that ignore and reject the artists of color who created the genres and styles in the first place.
Thus, he is regarded as an undeserving appropriator of the creativity and artistic risk-taking of others. The white jazz artists who have escaped this contempt typically a have done more personal artistic risk-taking and creative work and b have been perceived as more visibly respectful of the genre's originators.
It's unclear exactly why Kenny G is the object of so much vilification, particularly from jazz musicians. Kenny would probably never claim that what he plays is jazz. I get the impression this is like the weaker kid in a school class who gets picked on by a couple of pupils, and then everyone jumps on him.
There seems to be no objective justification for the hate, even if one assumes it's possible to be objective at all about music beyond the most basic level e. There's an interview with Pat Metheny where Pat covers some of this. He would have been prepared to ignore Kenny G, but what really sends him off the rails is Kenny G overdubbing himself on top of Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World".
This is a simple pop ballad, and probably the least musically interesting thing that Armstrong ever recorded, but the interview turns into a rant:. But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks even one of his lesser ones , he did something that I would not have imagined possible.
He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician.
The question is garnished with a photo of Miles Davis sitting next to Kenny G and looking somewhat less than happy. The claim that this is evidence of Miles' dislike of Kenny G doesn't hold up. I don't think I've ever seen a photo of Miles smiling except on the cover of his album titled, with a touch of self-irony, "Miles Smiles".
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You're basically asking the users here for their opinion on other people's opinions. It's just that as jazz or even as music in a general sense, with these standards in mind, it is simply not up to the level of playing that we historically associate with professional improvising musicians.
So, lately I have been advocating that we go ahead and just include it under the word jazz - since pretty much of the rest of the world OUTSIDE of the jazz community does anyway - and let the chips fall where they may. And after all, why he should be judged by any other standard, why he should be exempt from that that all other serious musicians on his instrument are judged by if they attempt to use their abilities in an improvisational context playing with a rhythm section as he does?
He SHOULD be compared to John Coltrane or Wayne Shorter, for instance, on his abilities or lack thereof to play the soprano saxophone and his success or lack thereof at finding a way to deploy that instrument in an ensemble in order to accurately gauge his abilities and put them in the context of his instrument's legacy and potential. Suffice it to say, on all above counts, at this point in his development, he wouldn't fare well. But, like I said at the top, this relatively benign view was all "until recently".
With this single move, Kenny G became one of the few people on earth I can say that I really can't use at all - as a man, for his incredible arrogance to even consider such a thing, and as a musician, for presuming to share the stage with the single most important figure in our music. This type of musical necrophilia - the technique of overdubbing on the preexisting tracks of already dead performers - was weird when Natalie Cole did it with her dad on "Unforgettable" a few years ago, but it was her dad.
When Tony Bennett did it with Billie Holiday it was bizarre, but we are talking about two of the greatest singers of the 20th century who were on roughly the same level of artistic accomplishment. When Larry Coryell presumed to overdub himself on top of a Wes Montgomery track, I lost a lot of the respect that I ever had for him - and I have to seriously question the fact that I did have respect for someone who could turn out to have such unbelievably bad taste and be that disrespectful to one of my personal heroes.
But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks even one of his lesser ones , he did something that I would not have imagined possible.
He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician.
By disrespecting Louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, Kenny G has created a new low point in modern culture - something that we all should be totally embarrassed about - and afraid of. We ignore this, "let it slide", at our own peril.
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