‘Be afraid, be very afraid’. The tagline from The Fly can extend to jazz and improvised music quite easily. Audiences frightened by having to put their foot through the door of a club to hear what they might find to be strange experience; or musicians uncertain as to whether their concept of music may put off their audiences. Innovation can generate fear on both sides.
Meanwhile, in The Mighty Boosh, they wonder if it is to do with the lack of rules and boundaries? But, as Don Cherry said: ‘When people believe in boundaries, they become part of the problem’
Fears related to jazz may be that it enters worlds that may make us insecure? As this quote from History Today, about the 20s, says: ‘ The censorious public discourse connected jazz with insanity, drug addiction, chaos, the primitive and bestial, criminality, infectious disease, the infantile, the supernatural and the diabolical. Across the United States, writers, politicians, music educators, critics and ministers framed jazz as a monstrous threat.‘
The topic for this week came from a previous week, through violinist Victoria Moore.
This discussion is open to all. So, if you are a frightened – or confident – musician, listener, or just curious, please turn up.
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