What Sucks About This Genre: Jazz Edition
 

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Time for another controversial post to give you all something to bust my balls about! :D

Personally, jazz almost always leaves me cold, and though I've come across a few decent albums/artists in the last few years, it's still the last genre I turn to when I want to listen to something for enjoyment.

That said, what really sucks about jazz is what I'll call "Jazz People" - fans and adherents of the genre who seem to think that because they're into it and you're not, that you're somehow inferior. The level of arrogance, condescension and pure snobbery prevalent among Jazz People is incredible. It's like they consider you a different form of life. Reminds me of those old English gentlemen's clubs, where the stuffy upper class guys read their newspapers and smoked their cigars and huffed and puffed and tsked and harrumphed at the world outside their little microcosm.

Jazz People (and I definitely include several members here, and they know who they are) give you the idea that it's YOUR fault it you don't like jazz. They don't consider that, you know, maybe it's just not for you. It's almost a crime not to like it, and some (though not here) listen to it exclusively, refusing to listen to any other music because they deem it not worth their time. It's like, this music has been around for so long, it's so respected, how could you not like it? There must be something wrong with you.

THAT's what makes jazz suck, for me anyway.

Right. Come at me, bros.
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Dumbasses who don't understand emotion or freedom which makes them hate the genre.
Jazz players with no voice, just reiterating the conventions.
Ideas of "real jazz" when jazz is more than a genre, it's a philosophy.

2 suck. Fluff is taking bets on how heated this thread gets.

Doesn't seem too heated yet.

I don't listen to a lot. In fact, I listen to so little jazz that I can post all of the albums I own right here:

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You jazz guys love this one. Mmmm... good stuff. Bring out the whipped cream and the strawberries. Gonna have a night just with yourself and this album. Simply delightful, isn't it?



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Almost like the real thing, eh? No? Ahh, whatever.



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"Sacrilegious! Uncultured pleb! Get thee out of here with those tragically plebby albums."



I've also got a handful Bebel Gilberto albums. Those are technically bossa nova related, which is a genre related to jazz or a sub genre of jazz.

But what this basically amounts to is that I don't give much of a damn about jazz.

See a good jazz band live. I think that can be enough to convert anybody. Studio recordings don't always convey the tension of performers improvising off of one another, carrying a fragile moment of beauty for as long as they can. You get to experience it when you're there. Also if you're meh on a performance, some performers will notice and change up to try to impress you.

The only jazz band I ever saw live was performing at some free-admission inner city jazz festival. They were obviously terrible and amateur. Think the sort of middle aged white men that embarrass themselves playing low tier blues while everyone ignores them.

I know exactly what you mean and that's one of my least favourite parts of jazz as well.

To me, jazz is something that has evolved over time to reflect a multitude of different ideals across many eras...ever shifting. Which is why it continued to morph and split off into new forms even into the 80's and beyond. To that end, I can put Eric Dolphy or Jörgensmann on a playlist with the smooth jazz giants like Yellowjackets, Special EFX or even the video game cheeseball-fusion of DIMENSION and enjoy the overall experience. Hell, even Kenny G has chops if you go back to his earliest stuff. There's very little in jazz I haven't loved.

So gonna go with a 1 here since its one of my major cornerstones as a music fan overall.

It’s ****ing beautiful, I love it but like ambient or classical it’s not something I typically spend my casual music time listening to. It’s something I have to be buckled in and ready to experience. I even took a class on it in college as an elective and enjoyed it despite it being a weird mixture of very easy and very hard (we had one exam where the prof played clips and you had to identify the saxophonist for example, that was kinda brutal).

But yeah it’s amazing. Never seen a live performance of it which sucks, I gotta seek that out sometime

The category of simply “jazz” is so broad that there’s not really any general comment I can make about it.