Why do humans like jazz?

[bloodshoteyed]

well, there's at least some truth to it...

 

[Nonick]

Why do humans like jazz?
Simple, because:

 

[Anton D]

Jazz was popular when it was easy to listen and dance to and less complex, like Louis Armstrong, Glenn Miller. Same is true for classical (think of Johann Strauß and Puccini operas).

Agree, jazz was the dance music of its time, now supplanted by other formats.

I have a theory that is wrong: I think we listen to the music that matches the energy we return.

So, when I was 14 and had Sabbath and Zep energy, that's what I played.

As I got older, I had less energy to match the music and my listening habits changed.

I mean, I still like to listen to it, but I certainly don't rock it like in my youth.

This song is my joke about myself....

 

[Timcognito]

Jazz is like bitter beer, once one likes getting high the bitterness takes on subtlety that you come to appreciate. In Jazz there are shared conversations, crowed and open spaces, with musicians manipulating the melody, timing and chromatics but staying aligned with each other. Once one can share that alignment as a listener the bitterness can go away and the pleasure is enhanced. Sometimes it is easy to get lost if one is not playing. Not everyone's cup of tea.

 

[Steven Holt]

I'm a jazz fanatic. Love Jazz from Coltrane, Oscar Peterson, bebop, blues, swing and even Fusion. However, I never acquired a taste for free form, avant garde Jazz. My wife on the other hand never enjoyed it. Her most common question is "why are there so many notes?"

If your favorite musician is the Boss or hard rock and your musical training is mostly made of attending rock concerts then Jazz may be a foreign dish. But as someone who has studied jazz recordings, spent thousands of hours practicing jazz improvisation patterns and loved listening to performers pulling tremendous solos out of the air, I can say - Jazz is as much mental gymnastics as a wonderful intelligent musical style. It takes a great ear, intuition, heart, soul and practicing day and night until the music just clicks. And a few musicians can take it to an unbelievable satisfying listening session where I am simply blown away with the alternate melodic passages of powerfully gifted performers.

In the words of the great Joey Ramone : One chord is just fine, man. Two chords you're pushin' it. Three and you're into jazz.

 

[DRMLFL]

Then it doesn't really explain the why so many liked it during its heyday and fewer now.

I can only really enjoy jazz (not every style) since I started playing drums 2 years ago.
Remember the debut of Lady Gaga? Or Trap music? People first have to get familiar with something and get used to a certain style/rhythm/groove before they can "enjoy" it and feel the loop. This is what the video actually tells us at the very beginning with the example of african polyrhythm.

I assume that radio/media is the main cause that not "many" people like jazz nowadays, simply because they are not used to "complex" structures/chords and their progressions anymore (or individuality). Music has become something like a giveaway just to promote other products (some will say music alone is a disposable product, others will say it is an art). The vast majority of people does not play any instrument so they want something very simple to "digest" and want to be able to clap their hands on beats 1 & 3.

Radio and later television has "promoted" certain music genres more than others because more and more people wanted to have radios in their homes and were listening to be connected with the world. Think of radio as the internet of earlier times. My 2 cents.

Stay focused!

Edit: typo!

 

[Philbo King]

I'm not a fan of the 'never ending series of random 32nd notes on saxophone' type of jazz, because I prefer musicians who actually use the music to say something (beyond 'look how fast I can play').

 

[ahofer]

”Jazz” covers such a wide variety of music I find it hard to make any generalization that fits.

I mean, fit Bill Charlap, Bix Beiderbecke, Oscar Peterson,James Blood Ulmer, Miles Davis, Anthony Braxton, Charlie McBride, Spyro Gyra, Weather Report, David Sanborn, Pat Metheny, Freddie Hubbard, John McLaughlin,Ornette Coleman, Art Blakey, Keith Jarrett, and all these new minimalist Scandinavian jazz ensembles into one thought.

 

[Timcognito]

”Jazz” covers such a wide variety of music I find it hard to make any generalization that fits.

I mean, fit Bill Charlap, Bix Beiderbecke, James Blood Ulmer, David Sanborn, Pat Metheny, Keith Jarrett, and all these new minimalist Scandinavian jazz ensembles into one thought.

I think there huge debates over what is jazz. My streaming service of choice, Qobuz, has a lot of what I call jazz and they call some jazzy pop music jazz. One has to be open minded about jazz and like what you like. All jazz must have improvisation by musicians but how much and what kind is difficult to define, so the borders overlap with other styles and other styles can be and do get interpreted in a jazz format.

 

[Emlin]

I think there huge debates over what is jazz. My streaming service of choice, Qobuz, has a lot of what I call jazz and they call some jazzy pop music jazz. One has to be open minded about jazz and like what you like. All jazz must have improvisation by musicians but how much and what kind is difficult to define, so the borders overlap with other styles and other styles can be and do get interpreted in a jazz format.

Qobuz had Barbara Thompson down as bebop last time I looked. There's lots of genre misclassification out there...

 

[ahofer]

I think there huge debates over what is jazz. My streaming service of choice, Qobuz, has a lot of what I call jazz and they call some jazzy pop music jazz. One has to be open minded about jazz and like what you like. All jazz must have improvisation by musicians but how much and what kind is difficult to define, so the borders overlap with other styles and other styles can be and do get interpreted in a jazz format.

But all the artists I mentioned unambiguously fit in “Jazz” by conventional definition.

 

[Timcognito]

But all the artists I mentioned unambiguously fit in “Jazz” by conventional definition.

Yes very much so and jazz has great variety, even for purests.

 

[DRMLFL]

Jazz is like Hip Hop is like Rock and so on with lots of sub genres and styles. Hip Hop has the styles of Gangsta Rap, Conscious Rap, Trap, Crunk, Neo Soul.
Rock has Pop Rock, Prog Rock, Blues Rock, College Rock just to name a few.
Jazz has styles like Bebop, Big Band, Swing, Nu Jazz and many others I never heard of before (looking @ Wiki)
All sub genres have something in common but still are different to each other. It is mainly the difference of the beat/instrumental and instrumentation/tempo etc.
The difference between two styles is so often in the eye of the beholder, or maybe I should say in the ear of the listener.

 

[Fahzz]

”Jazz” covers such a wide variety of music I find it hard to make any generalization that fits.

I mean, fit Bill Charlap, Bix Beiderbecke, Oscar Peterson,James Blood Ulmer, Miles Davis, Anthony Braxton, Charlie McBride, Spyro Gyra, Weather Report, David Sanborn, Pat Metheny, Freddie Hubbard, John McLaughlin,Ornette Coleman, Art Blakey, Keith Jarrett, and all these new minimalist Scandinavian jazz ensembles into one thought.

Improvisation.

 

[ahofer]

Improvisation.

Perhaps, but improvisation is not exclusive to Jazz.

 

[Emlin]

Perhaps, but improvisation is not exclusive to Jazz.

But if it isn't jazz, it's usually called a bum note.

 

[Down South]

ahofer has it right - you can't generalise about Jazz or any other kind of music. Bipeds like to put labels on everything, it makes them feel more 'secure'.

There was a time I couldn't listen to 'jazz'. Trad jazz didn't touch me and the likes of Coltrane/Davis just sounded like a discordant noise. Then one evening walking by the kade/canal that runs through Scheidam with my first Dutch girlfriend, we passed what would have been a row of merchants houses and one had the ground floor windows open and there was a middle aged man who was just lighting up a 'stickie' and he had put on an LP. It just fitted a quiet, warm summer evening. For the first time I really 'heard' the music. I called through the open window who is that. The man replied "that's the master,John Coltrane, it's a track from The Gentle Side of John Coltrane". I had to stop and listen to the whole side. From that evening I could connect with straight ahead Jazz. Jazz Funk was panned by the purists but there was some really good stuff that got you jumping.

I've found that there are basically two types that are into music, any kind of music - those who are stuck inside their heads and those who are whole body trippers. The head trippers will never understand that there is music that makes you move your body - what the Dead said in one song on Blues For Allah - when the music plays the band.

I'm not knocking the head trippers but the music they like is a head trip not a body trip, it's nothing for me and they definitely don't like my kind of music. An LP they would hate which I have mentioned before - Grover Washington - Live at the Bijou - check it out.

 

[DavidEdwinAston]

Fascinating clip investigating human evolution, the physics of neurons, information theory, and thermodynamics to explain why some humans enjoy dissonances and complex forms of music:

Cos' We're the King of the Jungle, a Jungle VIP.

 

[harleydave]

Well as at least one human I can say there is no form of music I dislike more than Jazz.

For me, I can't do Country music. Although, you play it backwards and your wife comes back, crops come in, and you didn't spill your beer. Joking, to each his own.

 

[stalepie2]

Fascinating clip investigating human evolution, the physics of neurons, information theory, and thermodynamics to explain why some humans enjoy dissonances and complex forms of music:

That is interesting about ratios at 5:34 and 12:04. I wonder if a similar thing applies to visual perception like with aspect ratios in movies, screens and photography. (Or perhaps I'm just looking for a reason to not like 16:9 as a display standard).