The Return--Know your audience

Greetings, all. A confluence of maddening factors removed me entirely from the computer age. Leaving one internet provider and moving to the new one, the modem was broken. Meanwhile, in stealing-wireless-from-distant-neighbors land, my laptop took one too many tumbles off the ledge of the couch. For three days I was able to use the screen while I literally held my left hand on the bottom left edge of the screen, but alas things fall apart. Now, I'm back, and plotting a way to get my four saved blog posts (in Word, that is) off of the harddrive. In the meantime, cutting to the chase:

What was with the Tijuana Brass?

I mentioned in my last posted post that there really is no money in the brass quintet when compared to the musical money universe. In high school for a research project, I interviewed the renowned jazz educator Tony Garcia for a broad interview on "defining jazz" that I used for my required senior research project. (I since have seen the error of my ways in our post-Wynton age. Read as little or as much sarcasm as you wish into this.) While Garcia--now a jazz professor at Virgina Commonwealth University, then at nearby Northwestern University--dutifully put in his two cents on "what jazz is," as I naively asked. A certain beat, forms, improvisation, placement in a historical context, yada yada.

As with so many things, though, the line between jazz (or, in the even snobbier world, classical) and other music is defined by what the "inferior" music does not have. Complex rhythms, harmonic interest, "artistic commitment." Too listenable! And of course some of this is necessary for discernment and the growth of a defined taste in order to navigate between the sound-stimuli that bombards us.

What stuck with me the most with Garcia, however, was his realistic attitude to that "not-jazz," and to the murky, often cheesy genre of music that falls between the cracks. Think of it like a pie, he said. The world of music (recordings) sales is the entire pie. Country takes up a surprisingly (to a yank like me) large chunk, and pop/rock, rap/R&B racks up sales. Classical and jazz, however, each comprise only between 2 and 3 percent of the sales pie. 5 percent total of highbrow music, perhaps. (These are rough estimates made during the year 2000.)

Out of classical music, brass quintets compete with thousands of albums of orchestral warhorses, operatic superstars, well-promoted piano and string virtuosi, and "...for a [Rainy/Sensual/Sunday/Relaxing/Brooding] Afternoon" compilations. One can only imagine how miniscule, say, the American Brass Quintet's sales are in comparison with the Julliard String Quartet, their better-promoted counterpart. And as an old teacher told me, strings will win every time because they don't empty their spit onstage!