I’ve never liked it. At least, not the improvisational “cool jazz” of Miles Davis and his seemingly endless hordes of adherents. Hours of endless, monotonous, atonal noodling with no melody, no harmony, and no structure. Ugh.
All sorts of musicians get really excited about this stuff because the count is on the upbeat instead of the downbeat. Jazz is supposed to be very intellectual, very emotionally expressive, very creative. All of that is lost on me. I get blasted with jazz when listening to the local public radio station; for some reason, stations that play classical music and NPR news also seem to think their listeners like jazz, too. Well, not me.
I just don’t get it.
I think that part of what makes jazz hard to listen to for alot of people is that the format is so completely different from most of the popular types of music that we have grown accustomed to. When I was first introduced to Jazz, I thought that it was horrible. I felt that the variations in rhythm and melodic structure made it very difficult to follow as a listener. Later,I had the opportunity to experiance Jazz more intimately by performing a few pieces in a small ensemble. It wasn’t really until I was able to personally connect by way of playing that I began to really form a kind of love relationship with that particular genre of music. Basically the point of it all is to say that…..it makes complete sense to me why you would feel the way that you do. Jazz is weird and so are alot of the people who like it!
I like jazz. No form but it has function. Never repeats (just like conversation)(well, some conversatin repeats….)(well, some coversations repeat….).the song can be like a coversation, be it a story or exchange. Or it can be a melody.
I hated Jazz until I experienced my hot girlfriend play her trumpet. To sum up, we’re married and it just all of a sudden made sense to me.