Why is Jazz put on the same level as Classical music?

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I think this is really more of a reflection of the audience who buys and listens to all that junk.

If people wanted to pay for good rap and hip-hip, then that would be the popular think on the radio. But the majority of the human race enjoys violence, womanizing, and lyrics that are not cohesive apart from constant meaningless profanity.

So that's what becomes popular, sad as it is. You have to do a bit of homework to find decent rap or hip hop.

I stumbled upon this the other day, and thought you might enjoy this Fnord: http://chipmusic.org/chromegold/music/m ... ant-decide

The download button's at the bottom of the page right above the comments. The genre is chip-hop, and it sounds like the guy recorded his raping over a Gameboy Z80 chip using the LSDJ program. No violence or nastiness in this one.

I suppose you could say jazz is a "Mish mash" of things, but only so much so as the English language itself also is. You mix Latin, French, German, Gaelic, and Hebrew, voila... English.

And just like English was very lovely and at its height back in the days of Shakespeare, so it can be with jazz, with the right mix.

Like English becomes it's own language in and of itself, every jazz song to me like a new world to explore. But I really enjoy identifying the different elements from other genres mixed in.

Some say the abstract nature of jazz makes it a more complex artform than the linear predictability of classical music.

Where does jazz fusion metal fall?

do not ever comment on something you don't understand. follow this rule.

I disagree with the modern music pedagogy, I don't think jazz is in any way shape or form superior to popular music, because it WAS popular music a century ago and suffers from the same maladies current popular music does: too much invested in ego, money, and fame, and not enough craft put into the art itself (there are anomalies in both cases). I also don't think tacking on a 7 to every chord makes it more complex (just annoying due to lack of resolution), nor is playing a Dorian scale more complex than an Ionian/Aeolian (they're all just patterns, even monkeys can learn patterns). Basically my opinion is that Jazz is completely over-rated, and music curriculum just hasn't caught up to modern times yet.

Your description of jazz seems highly oversimplified, and inaccurate. There's much more than "tacking on a 7 to every chord"... which is erroneous to say.

It's not that one scale is more complex than another. It's that jazz generally can swap between a variety of common and uncommon scales and time signatures. Or it can maintain a hip melody using even the most basic of chord progressions. Jazz is incredibly versatile, and is constantly changing.

And yet classical can do all the same things, Debussy anyone?

Debussy is one of my favorite classic composers, actually.

But there is still yet another difference. Even though Debussy does indeed do complex things with time signatures and chord progressions, he still follows within a rigid set of standards for classic western music. There is this element of order and specific instructions for specific instruments. He is the product of many classic musicians before him.

Now, I also understand that many composers would "push the envelope" of what they could do with older compositional standards. Some would even tread outside of what people generally found acceptible. This is what made them special, and what made people like Debussy and Tchaikovsky stand out above the rest. In fact, if they were alive today, I think both these guys including Mozart would have loved jazz, and might have dabbled in it themselves.

The difference with jazz is that while classical music is a bit sheepish with stepping out of the comfort zone, jazz is reckless and has no qualms about doing so. Jazz also has what you call "groove". Where you play improvisational melodies and backings while not staying perfectly within the rhythm or time sig. To some, it gives it special character, and a very cool and organic sound. Though it's not for the weak stomached.

Jazz is very freeform, where as classical adheres to a more standardized structure. Both are very enjoyable forms of music and take incredible talent to produce. I would not say that one is necessarily better or more complex than the other. That might ultimately depend on each independent song.

In terms of modern pop music... well personally it either bores me to tears, or just sounds trashy. It's not something I find enjoyable. It mostly sounds like a diluted form of rock, jazz, or hip hop. Plus it seems very centered around lyrics which I don't relate to in music very well.

Jazz may have been "popular" music 6 or 7 decades ago. But jazz is not the same as "Pop music". Pop music is a different more modern breed of "popular music". There is a lesser degree of variety in pop music, because record companies research and target those chord progressions and rhythms that they know will "rake in the money".

Most people don't understand or appreciate music that goes outside the bounds of pop music. Even less so in these modern times.

Here, this Wikipedia article can explain "pop music" the genre, better than I can:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_music

I use 'pop music' in it's intended form: popular music. That includes everything from madrigals and rondos to rap depending on the era and location it was 'popular' among the lay music listener. I'm actually glad you brought up Mozart, because I completely forgot: look at the scores sometimes and don't just listen to the music, you'll find Mozart was not very big on standard phrasing, he has numerous examples of 3, 5, and even 7 bar phrasing.

I just do not view Jazz as any great groundbreaking form, certainly not one that warrants it's own study outside of traditional classical music (a loaded term as well since 'classical' is it's own time period, but we seem to have a common understanding of how we're using the term here so no need to argue that as well). I have yet to see a piece of jazz music more difficult to perform than the vast majority of Paganini's work for soloists, I have yet to see a new revolutionary harmony they claim they invented (every post-romantic uses the same harmonic palette as jazz, i.e. Bruckner, Mussorgsky, Mahler, Respighi-- just sparingly due to having taste and all). Even the act of improvisation, which is most commonly associated with jazz is as old as music itself: the Homeric epics were sung to improvised harp music. I just don't see anything special about the genre, aside from the headache inducing qualities of repeating non resolving harmony and abuse of tin-sounding instruments (saxs, trumpets, trombones). It's an opinion, an opinion formed by being forced to sit through six years of the crap to get to the one thing I cared about: composition, putting ideas to staff. Same thing with 'marching band' I think it's a debauchery of musical form and intention, and being forced to do it for four years did nothing to warm my ears to it, it just made me colder to the style than I already was.

Gee, it sounds like you're just jaded and burnt out. Anything in excess can get tiring and monotonous, no doubt.

I don't know what to say. To each is own, really.

My favorite styles of jazz are fusion, and also putting jazz to chiptune style. Here is a cute, jazzy chiptune I released recently:

https://soundcloud.com/marcb0t/flowers-and-fields

I borrowed a little bit of a melody that I've heard before, and other people have as well. But I cannot identify it. If you can, please let me know. That way I can give them credit where credit is due. So yes, I admit that I borrowed a little bit of someone else's idea.

I programmed the tune to run on a Sega Master System sound chip. Some people like this style, others hate it. Very little in between, hehe.

Yeah, that's pretty good. I can accept it because it's synthesized and doesn't have constant tin-sounding brass instruments.

Modern Country music, at least the stuff that you hear on the radio is to country music, as Kenny G. is to jazz. --A poor, and very watered down approximation of the real thing.

As far as jazz fusion goes, I think that Spyrogyra is probably what most people think of, when they should instead be thinking Last Exit, Miles Davis from b*****s Brew to Pangaea, to early Al Dimeola and Weather Report.

Its not complex to me. It actually sounds like a group of musicians got together and can't decide what song they're playing. And then there is no personality in it. I can listen to Hank Williams Sr. he put such feeling and soul into his music. But people would dismiss it because its "too simple".

To get back to the original question- there is some history behind this. In the mid-to-late 20th century, many American conservatoires and university music departments started teaching jazz, which gave it the seal of high-culture legitimacy. As to /why/ they did this: mainly because it was a home-grown American art form that requires a lot of technical skill. In other words, something that could be taught to a high level, and something that could be defended against snobs who considered all American music to be simplistic trash. It caught on in a big way, so now you'll find tons of jazzers in music departments worldwide. And the more theoretical approach has fed into the style of modern jazz.

Please note that I am describing the historic process and the ideas behind it, NOT my own views on the relative values of different kinds of music. Arguments about that are a fools game: "de gustibus non est disputandum" an' all that jazz. You end up pitting "strawmen" against each other. As a musician and a listener, I've encountered plenty of raw passion in a classical piano sonata, and plenty of cleverness in a three-chord pop song.

I disagree intensely. When jazz began, through the swing era really, jazz was dance and pop music. But then, with big bands, and especially through the bebop era, jazz entered musical complexity and ambition every bit the equal of "classical," or art, music. Innovators like Django Reinhardt, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Art Blakey, Lee Morgan, Pete La Roca, Wayne Shorter, Mal Waldron, and so many others had such mastery of composition, expression, and performance that the genre was elevated to the American classical. Now many of the most important classical composers are also jazz musicians, and vice versa. Music programs around the world train musicians and composers in both styles. At its best, jazz can be as ambitious and visionary as classical, as expressive as blues or punk. There is some bad jazz, just like there's bad anything. But there's also a lot of amazing jazz. If you think it's just background music, then you don't know the first thing about it.

Perhaps the easiest way to illustrate my point is with third stream, the genre that combines classical and jazz. The genre began when bebop musicians decided they wanted to write their own orchestral works. Here's my favorite example:



Some of the most exciting music being made today is still jazz, btw: