The flattened American landscape of minor musicians

[Robin Landseadel]

On Feb 27, 2009, at 1:09 PM, rich wrote:

> my peeve is that marsalis and burns have their vision of proper jazz
> (particularly Marsalis)--why is the avant-garde/free jazz movement the
> only form plucked from the mix and ridiculed--it was jarring
> considering the tone of the whole series. they dropped being
> documentarians and became critics

Just spent a session with my music buddy, we heard John Cage : Solo  
for Voice 58 (18 Microtonal Ragas) & Homage to Charles Parker [George  
Lewis, Trombone, Anthony Davis piano, others]

http://www.otherminds.org/cgi-bin/shop.pl/page=Cageragascd.html/SID=1206037466.16242/buy=1

http://www.amazon.com/Homage-Charles-Parker-George-Lewis/dp/B0000010W6

and as far as I can tell, this sort of stuff is still going on. It's  
not like John Dowland ever had an audience of over 100 listeners, and  
it's not that being in the minority makes you nonexistent. or  
musically unimportant. Just ask Captain Beefheart  and Nick Drake.  
Those brave folks that have made music even weirder than any that Ken  
Burns or Winton Marsalis can suffer were and still are an essential  
part of the history of jazz and other improvisatory musics.