Christopher Walker wrote:

><snip>
>The one thing I can agree with unreservedly is that people in the 1960s
>began interpreting art as free expression, and training could be viewed
>as a detriment because you weren't playing-what-ya-feel-maaaaaan. All
>that technique crap would suppress or block your true gift, ahem, oh
>Childe of Gawd. The idea that Coltrane or Miles Davis or Joan Baez
>could actually READ music and didn't just blare into or strum their
>instruments...never mentioned. [KW]
><snip>
>
>Perhaps I'm being unfair, but this seems wrong in most of the ways available
>to it to be wrong, beating the 60s with an inappropriate shtick. For a
>start, a fair amount of jazz and folk music was produced not by literate
>musicians but by those whose practice was intuitive. So it was the
>recognition that what had been informal (Blind Joe Whatsit, rediscovered
>from the 20s or a *commercial* medium such as film) might be admissible as
>*art* nonetheless that characterised the 60s, not that Blind Joe Whatsit
>came striding out of the cottonfields onto the Ann Arbor folk circuit with
>his degree scroll under his arm.
>
>
Well, I would of course love to correct myself and therefore avoid one
of those protracted bullshit arguments for which we are world-renowned,
but I not a damn chance. The people I knew back then had no clue and
cared less that Lou Reed studied with Delmore Schwartz. They didn't
know whether Linda Rondstadt took voice lessons or that Joni Mitchell
credited her high school English teacher with her love of words and
facility with them. To this day I have no clue whether Dave van Ronk or
Richie Havens could/can read music--and for several months I "hung out"
with Havens when he lived on East 3rd Street. We did not care if the
were trained or intuitive technicians. Frankly, nobody I knew cared
particularly whether whosywhatsis was classically trained unless
Whosywhatsis was Vladimir Horowitz.

Alan Lomax found these black guys in Angola and Parchman who were more
musical that Giovanni Martinelli. So?

>And for those who were so qualified, training and technique hardly
>constituted an embarrassment. Difficult to imagine who _didn't_ know that
>Lou Reed was a graduate or John Cale ex conservatoire.
>
John Cage? Frankly? Who cares? Lou Reed appeared to be a poet with a
shitty but expressive voice. Shitty but expressive voices like his,
Dylan's, David Blue's and even Springsteens ruled the day. Tim Buckley
had one of the mos gorgeous voice I ever heard but the stupid bastard
OD'd at some absurdly young age. No correlation there.

>Or take Cecil Taylor
>(NY College; New England Conservatory): 'The thing that makes jazz so
>interesting is that _each man is his own academy_.' (_emphases_ mine).
>
Yeah, but nobody questioned that Cecil Taylor was trained. Parker was
the surprsise. So was 'Trane, Miles, a few others. Play what they felt
yet work from the page. What a concept.

You think the Fugs were musicians???? Frank Zappa, who did a lot of
stuff equally over the top, most certainly was. How could anyone tell?

> Now
>there is every suggestion here that technique is important, and the implicit
>self centredness is a bridge, I think, between (on the one hand) the
>personal-is-political aspects of 60s feminism, the further shift in focus
>during the 60s from the art object per se to creator and observer _in
>relation_ to the object, plus the opening out of the object in relation to
>its environment, and (on the other) the Gordon Gecko self centredness of
>what came later.
>
>
Too rich for my blood. I'm not playing dumb, I really am. I could care
less about the aesthetic of 1960s music. WHICH 1960s music?

>Was technique really seen as an impediment to self expression? I don't think
>so. Or at least not in those terms. Yes, to the extent that the 60s were
>inclusivist, prone to projects of liberation, technique was seen as one way
>in which the Academy had bolted its doors and windows. But that is not at
>all the same point: 'Permission granted, but not to do what you want,' as
>Cage put it. Thus the simplicity of (say) *In C* is about open access not
>about some 'playing what you feel' burlesque.
>
>
Hello. There was a widespread PERCEPTION that technique was a barrier
to free expression. That does not mean it was true. I still cannot
guarantee who read music, who studied theory and technique, and who was
just some love-and-flowers Do What You Feel sort of freakazoid.

>As to the function of impediment itself, what links Toshi Ichiyanagi
>(Julliard) and his 60s piece (name escapes me; Martin will probably know) in
>which the players are physically prevented from playing their instruments;
>Tom Johnson (Yale) and his 1970s piece *Failing* in which a single musician
>is distracted from playing, and (say) Brian Fernhough's work is the idea
>that obstruction ('It can't be done, Mr Edison') is, in fact, the door. Or
>some sort of door, at least.
>
>
Physically prevent from playing their instruments. Off the top of a
very tired head late at night--regardiless of the theoretical rationale
behind this, it sounds not simply bizarre, it strikes me as destructive
and asinine.

Ken

--
---------------
Kenneth Wolman www.kenwolman.com kenwolman.blogspot.com

"You have to be a speedy reader, cause there's
so, so much to read!" - Dr. Sousé