Idolator
Jazz composer Wynton Marsalis—whose last major beef was with Miles Davis—is picking some pretty big targets in his campaign against hip-hop. In an interview with the U.K. Guardian, the 46-year-old lashes out against Messrs. Jackson and Bridges:
Wynton Marsalis is 10 minutes into an angry denunciation of hip-hop and he's just hitting his stride. "I call it 'ghetto minstrelsy'," he says. "Old school minstrels used to say they were 'real darkies from the real plantation'. Hip-hop substitutes the plantation for the streets. Now you have to say that you're from the streets, you shot some brothers, you went to jail. Rappers have to display the correct pathology. Rap has become a safari for people who get their thrills from watching African-American people debase themselves, men dressing in gold, calling themselves stupid names like Ludacris or 50 Cent, spending money on expensive fluff, using language like 'bitch' and 'ho' and 'nigger'"....
"[Sampling] just shows you that the drummer has been replaced by a loop. The drum - the central instrument in African-American music, the sound of freedom - has been replaced by a repetitive loop. What does that tell you about hip-hop's respect for African-American tradition?"
Oddly, Marsalis anti-hip-hop stance hasn't prevented with closing his new album with a rap, one that includes such couplets as "You got to speak the language the people are speakin'/'Specially when you see the havoc it's wreakin'" and ""The rap game started out critiquing/Now it's all about killin' and freakin." No word on whether it's spit on top of an 808 beat.
Shock of the new [Guardian Unlimited via Spine Magazine]
Comments
If I remember correctly, about five years ago Gary Giddens pointed out that Kind of Blue was regularly outselling all of Sony's contemporary jazz releases COMBINED, including (presumably) the stuff Wynton was putting. So this douchebag's just trying to sell some records in a eternally-shrinking market because he's incapable of riding his own neo-con coattails, is all.
Also based on the sketchy stuff I know about the musics of the African diaspora, you can possibly make a claim for the guitar being more central to the African-American tradition than the drum (as for the African-Caribbean tradition, that's a totally different story).
Wikipedia: "As of 2006, United Artists is considering releasing a feature film biopic on Marsalis, with Will Smith widely purported to be in consideration for the role." LAFFS.
Marsalis has been a major critic of hip-hop for years, although his arguments are shared by many fellow jazz musicians. Their main beef is that hip-hop isn't encouraging kids to learn how to play a musicial instrument, hence the future of jazz suffers (but then again, jazz hasn't figured in American pop music for nearly 40 years). Of course, jazz also suffers if it's kept in a glass case at a museum, which is what Marsalis has made a career out of, and is what pissed off Miles Davis so much.
"The Pursuit of Crappiness" ??
Ugh. Sorry. So...you guys heard of this Arcade Fire P4K BNMed today?
"Wikipedia: "As of 2006, United Artists is considering releasing a feature film biopic on Marsalis, with Will Smith widely purported to be in consideration for the role." LAFFS."
"The Pursuit of Crappines" Zing!
That's embarassing.
I can't wait for the scene where Miles (played by Eddie Murphy) hisses at Marsalis, "Stop playing 'So What' and 'Jeru,' you motherfucker!"
@Cam/ron: "but then again, jazz hasn't figured in American pop music for nearly 40 years"
I sincerely hope you're not serious. Jazz has provided the backbone from which thousands of acts, from De La to JT, have found inspiration. If you think jazz is not alive & well in american pop music, you're only listening to "ludacris or 50 cent".
forget about hip hop, wynton thinks that electricity shouldn't be used in jazz. according to his luddite, trad-mongering posterior, the fender rhodes is a contraption cooked up by some rogue satanist conspiring sully the divine majesty of jazz...or something. the guy is a joke with respect with jazz, no less music that's actually relevant and popular.
forget about hip hop, wynton thinks that electricity shouldn't be used in jazz. according to his luddite, trad-mongering posterior, the fender rhodes is a contraption cooked up by some rogue satanist conspiring sully the divine majesty of jazz...or something. the guy is a joke with respect with jazz, no less popular music.
Racist.
I was addressing how straightup jazz songs hasn't figured into American pop for the past four decades, not its influence or how hip-hop sampled it. Of course, instrumental music rarely makes the American pop charts at all.
Wow-his pontificating is even more tiresome than his music...seriously, has anyone seen him and Stanley Crouch in the same room?
Wynton Marsalis Should get a job writing for Stereogum.
"A safari for people who get their thrills from watching African-American people debase themselves, men dressing in gold, calling themselves stupid names. . ."
This sounds like a pretty good description of your standard Pithfork-reading white boy Clipse fan, yes? Or, what, it's the subtle word play?
calling themselves stupid names
But you know, even KRS-One lamented the presence in hip-hop of "a lot of suckas with colorful names/'I'm so-and-so, I'm this, I'm that...'" Granted, "colorful" is not the same as "stupid," but still, it looks like Wynton and Kris are in agreement that they're all just wick-wick-wack.
@mike a: You're making distinctions that WM isn't.
I always liked Branford more.
The truth hurts.
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