In psycho-linguistics, a speech community is a group of individuals who share a common language, language here meaning the larger sense of belief systems, feelings/emotions, sensibilities, esthetics, experiences, education/knowledge, all of which go towards forming the mental paradigms (schemata, etc.) which are used to decode experience/text – this is a gross over simplification but it will have to do for the moment. If these individuals speak English, just as an example, they will have within their speech community an idiolect/sub-dialect which is not shared by and may be incomprehensible to the larger body of English speakers. LTG is a speech community. English is its general language, but it definitely has its own idiolect, one that I am not yet fully competent in. There are the acronyms. There is the shared knowledge which allows for elliptical discourse which is initially baffling to outsiders. There is a shared affective/emotional/esthetic affection for pretty much anything with a Guild badge. LTG is a strange, eccentric, and delightful microcosm within a much larger world. If we move to away from LTG and look at the ability to read for example, you (NYWolf) and I could enter a large library and we could both probably lead each other into areas of the stacks, where we would become totally illiterate. You are obviously competent in the English language – you write well – you seem be quite intelligent and have given me no cause to suspect any mental deficiencies – yet, I could pull English language text after text from the shelves that would be totally incomprehensible to you – you would become effectively illiterate. The texts would be written by and for a speech community which you are not part of. You could also demonstrate my relative illiteracy in exactly the same manner. Music has speech communities in which the larger sense of language extends into the mechanics and methods of performance of music itself. I have friend who is a brilliant Jazz pianist of the Keith Jarrett/Brad Meldau persuasion. He is also well educated, and among his degrees is a Masters in electronic music. He was once well-regarded in his speech community of electronic music – sharing computer code modules with the community, etc – he was thought to be quite brilliant – and yet, if I ran the code for some of his electronic compositions for you, they would probably sound like nothing more than the voice tracks from some tacky dolphin porn movies to your ears. You are probably not part of this speech community. You are, however, a self-confessed member of the speech community of the New York downtown avant-garde noise jazz underground scene. You do get Mary Halvorson; you just don't like her music. No problem. I get Herb Ellis and Barney Kessell – highly competent players with chops to burn – but they leave me cold. I don't like them.
I'm still confused, what Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, or Ornette Coleman has to do with Mary H.?
Absolutely nothing other than she is the recipient of similar disparaging commentary to what this lot received. I like Anthony Braxton a lot. I like Mary Halvorson. But I do not think they are in the same league as Miles, Parker, Monk, Coleman, Dolphy, Coletrane, Shep, etc. They are way too far outside the envelope – no real tangent to the music of popular culture – no recognition that there is an envelope. Music that breaks out of the envelope in the most delightful ways always recognizes and acknowledges the envelope before it goes about trashing it. Freedom (as in playing free) is meaningless when there is nothing to be free from. Miles (I have almost everything he has ever recorded – LOVE him) always had one foot in the popular music of black American culture, even at his most outside and particularity with his last music – John McLaughlin said he could hear no difference in what Miles was doing from first to last – it was popular music that had changed, not Miles.
Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, or Ornette Coleman People who love jazz music are very fond of those artists,
I'm sorry but you are wrong here. I know people in their 80s for whom Jazz ceased to exist after Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden. I bought a nice first edition Mingus album at a garage sale once a few years back from an elderly Jazz lover who was horrified that I actually wanted his decades-old mistaken purchase of cacophonous noise. I know people for whom Jazz is Spyrogyra, John Klemmer, Chuck Magione, George Benson (These people hate my old GB albums), Kenny G, Tom Scott and the LA Express, the Japanese group T-Square, etc, etc. For this group of people, Monk, probably my all time super-hero of brilliant eccentricity (I would love to play guitar the way he and his younger disciple Randy Weston play piano), is not even within their definition of music, never mind Jazz. Different speech communities.
It evolves, true, but the way we relate to music stays pretty much the same. It's still melody-harmony-rhythm that we relate to.
Yes, but what is acceptable as melody-harmony-rhythm changes over time and from speech community to speech community. A perceived lack of any of these elements may simply be that what is on offer in a particular performance is outside a personal envelope of acceptability. When I listen to North American aboriginal music, I hear mono-tone chanting to rhythm. It doesn't do a lot for me. Yet ethno-musicographers have demonstrated that there are micro-tonal melodies and that the chants are not all the same – uh yeah yeah yeah, uh yeah yeah yeah.... Friends who grew up on reserves are totally pumped by the music. I am not part of the speech community the music was composed by and for. I don't get it. Stravinsky caused a riot with the first performance of The Rite of Spring – people were actually duking it out in the audience – speech communities collide in music, as well as politics.
Even within a speech community, the experience of music is not the same for everyone. Individual members of an audience see and hear different things on stage. Joshua Redmond has a female subsection of his fan-base, who, while they do enjoy his music, are totally turned on by his physical appearance, in particular his soulful bedroom eyes – this is as much a part of their enjoyment of a performance as the music itself. Is it wrong? I once went to see Living Color with one of my Japanese students. We did not see the same show, although we were at the same concert. For him the music was entirely secondary to the enjoyment of being part of the crowd – the energy, the excitement. Additionally, for him the show was a kind of theatre – he liked the stage costumes – he liked the interplay in physical space between the musicians – he liked the colourful guitars and the changes of guitars. He did not talk about what I consdier music. Maybe it was like some kind of Kabuki theatre for him? Who knows? I don't. Is his experience wrong? Is his enjoyment wrong?
If an outside player can gather an audience and the audience digs what is happening, it's cool. There is a social event in which people are participating. The Han Bennink, Terrie Ex, Brodie West concert I saw at IronWorks was enjoyable in a wierd way – much like my Japanese student, I was caught up in the energy and excitement of the crowd. The group's performance was enegetic and highly theatrical. Although I had no idea what to make musically of what Terrie Ex was doing, I was impressed that he had the sheer chutzpah to do it – way, way over the edge with no safety net. And Han Bennink, well .... I love him so much that I would pay good money to watch him even if he were dead – I am certain that he would find an exciting and offbeat way to handle the performance of decomposition. He was great. The club was packed – SRO. Nobody walked out. People cheered and applauded. Cindy Santana-Blackman, a great drummer, applauded loudly. She went off back stage after to the show, presumably to talk to Bennink. Something was happening in the club that night. It was strange, and in its own weird way it was exciting. Maybe it was music. Maybe it was theatre. The audience loved it. Personally I didn't and I don't get Terrie Ex, but I am not lining up to slag him, either.
In the years I've been out here there has only been one issue that went over the top, and that finally worked itself out. Disagreements that stimulate discussion are the best way to learn. If everyone agreed about everything and was always PC no subject matter would ever be advanced. Bring it on!
