Jazz and Women

Passing near the Catalina Bar and Grill last night (on my way to the Cat and Fiddle) put me in mind of the Roy Hargrove concert there of a couple of weeks ago (see also here), which in turn put me in mind of a conversation I had a week later during which something slightly disturbing occurred to me. Let me explain. (A clickable picture of Roy Hargrove in action at the concert is below)

roy hargroveI was having dessert over at a friends house after a nice dinner in Pasadena, and three of us were kicking around thoughts, stories, and ideas. The subject of musical likes and dislikes came up – I think because someone put something on the CD player, and one of my friends said that she did not like Jazz. I was not quite sure what she meant by this, and since she’s a friend who I like a respect a lot, I probed further. I tried to ascertain how much she’d actually heard, since I my opinion Jazz is a very large and many-splendoured thing and to say you don’t like it after having heard a little is like trying sweet and sour pork, not liking it, and then deciding that you don’t like Chinese cuisine. I explained this opinion, and having established that she preferred “classical” music, (another large and encompassing term for a huge variety, of course) I tried to explain how she might find a way into Jazz by using that as an entry point.

My point was not that she was wrong to not like Jazz, but that she should keep an open mind about it until she’s given it a fair chance. I explained another key point that might help. It usually becomes clear at a point like this in a conversation of this sort that one of the key problems for the listener is that they’re not aware of a great deal of what is going on in the music, that there are often several layers of interesting things going on that someone who wants to listen a little more than superficially can hear if they learn what to listen for. But it takes practice, experience, and the development of a vocabulary. And an open mind. Much of this is true for listening to a lot of musical types, to be sure, but it is arguably more so with a greater component of Jazz than for most other types.

gerald claytonAnd then there is a major component that is missed a lot – had she ever been to a jazz concert? I asked this because I think this is really a key way of learning about one of the most wonderful things about (some of) the best jazz – communication. Once you know what to listen for, you can hear the communication between the musicians by listening to a recording, of course, and one of the best ways to train your ear it to use your eye to help. Go to a concert, sit up close, and make sure you can see all the players. Watch them as they play…. look for the exchanged glances, the smiles to each other or just to themselves, the nods, tilts of the head, etc. Listen for the grunts of acknowledgement, the transfer of one musical phrase from one instrument to another (yes, this does include the drums) – that wonderful trading of ideas which happens throughout the music. (Look at the picture of pianist Gerald Clayton as he plays a solo during the aforementioned concert – click for larger view – he’s looking over at other player during a particularly wonderful exchange of this sort.)

Then of course there is the whole issue of what the musicians are doing up there. When someone takes a solo, are they just playing random stuff, or are they actually composing an often beautiful and intricate piece of music on the spot? Does the composition/solo have no point, or is it in fact a complete story, rather like a wonderful juicy tale told you by an interesting friend, a wonderful story-teller? I would say that the answer to both is (if you’re listening to good jazz) the latter and not the former. Once you’ve learned to listen for these things, recorded jazz will make infinitely more sense than before.

Anyway, you’ll be relieved to know that (I think) I brought out the ideas I mentioned above in a pleasant conversational way, and not like the stern lecture it sort of seems upon reading it!

Now here’s the thing that gave me pause. My friend mentioned something else. She’s of the opinion that Jazz is in fact a “guy thing”, and that (on balance) women don’t really like jazz. This includes everything from the music itself to the whole business of sitting in a small dark (sometimes smoky – but less so these day) room listening to this stuff. It’s a guy thing. Women just tolerate it.

My first instinct was to laugh at this, but she was deadly serious. I commented upon the huge number of women friends of mine, past and present who love jazz. I also commented upon the large number of women who actually play jazz, both as a hobby and professionally.

But she pressed the point, and I pressed back, as did our other friend (also a woman, who likes some Jazz). But then (as can happen with me sometimes) I fell back into a bit of self-doubt. How do I know that all those examples are really good examples? Among all the women friends I remember discussing and enjoying Jazz with, including ones I’ve been to many concerts with, how do I really know that they liked it as much as I did (whatever that means)? What if they were just humouring me? Maybe I get that look in my eye when I’m enthusiastic about something, champ down on the bit, get the wind in my sails, and go off on one of my long explanations and examinations (see above). Some women will push back (yay!) but maybe a whole bunch (maybe most?) were just agreeing with me for the sake of it. Maybe they were just being nice, or they were happy to just peacefully enjoy the excellent single malt scotch I’m prone to break out when I’m playing jazz at home at night, or…

I fell silent at the horror of this thought that a huge part of my social life in the past might have been based on a lie, and the conversation moved on to some other topic.

So tell me, dear reader – please. What do you think? Do you agree that more men like jazz than women1? Or not? Why? I’m a bit confused and distressed by this… Help!

-cvj

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1This may or may not border on the issue of whether men are better than women at analytical subjects like science and mathematics, (I don’t think that they are, for many reasons – this is an issue that’s been probably discussed enough here for a bit) so you can see the large wriggling can of worms that lurks beneath. Or maybe it has nothing to do with that. I’m not sure….

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37 Responses to Jazz and Women

  1. Clifford says:

    Sorry….

    But feel free to just ignore them if you don’t want to read them.

    -cvj

  2. Hmmm says:

    Nothing could have ruined this interesting post more then seeing a Motl trackback at the bottom of the page.

  3. Amara says:

    Mmm, I love jazz, but I also love a variety of other kinds of music too.

    I’m going through a ‘Europa’ phase presently. This is the song by the master, Carlos Santana:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weoGpyvIqP8.
    There exists a blues-y guitar version:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKo0FK6-O-E
    too, but the version I like the best is the sax version. Here is a sample by Gato Barbieri
    http://www.mp3search.ru/asx.m3u?id=2888947
    that brings tears to my eyes. I must admit, however, that my jazz tastes have been influenced by my dad, so here is a Europa version by him:
    http://www.amara.com/Europa_AlGraps.mp3.

  4. JC says:

    Clifford,

    *slightly offtopic*

    Were you ever into the type of jazz where everything is improvised on the spot, with nothing pre-written? (I don’t know what it’s called offhand).

    Years ago I use to go see jazz jam sessions of this sort at various nightclubs, largely to watch how the guitar players played. I was mainly interested in seeing what technical playing tricks the guitarists were using, which I could pick up and figure out later. Sometimes I would approach the guitarists after the gig and have a chat with him/her about various technical things in their playing style.

  5. Clifford says:

    Thanks Jeff,

    As I said… Perhaps we just choose to emphasize different things.

    Cheers,

    -cvj

  6. Jeff Chamberlain says:

    Clifford:

    I’m not sure we’re really disagreeing all that much, nor do I think you are disagreeing with the various historical assessments.

    Most male jazz musicians had no important influence on the form, and there were many, many more of them than there were women. There are only a few musicians of either sex who were seminal. It is indeed difficult to measure the influences of particular participants on the field, but that is not quite the same as identifying those who had important influences, however imprecisely defined, and distinguishing those individuals from the rest. That males have had more influence on jazz than females is, I think, a brute fact. There were so many more males playing jazz than females that this is not surprising. It’s simple counting, and the pertinence was that I responded to your question about whether more males than females like jazz with an expansion into comparing the numbers of females vs. the numbers of males who played jazz and influenced jazz. The reasons why there were so many more male jazz musicians than females is not quite the same subject, and I for one have no quarrel with the view that much of this is explained by bigotry (“social norms”).

    Various jazz histories discuss why the male/female imbalance is especially skewed between instrumentalists and singers. That imbalance provoked, in part, the comments comparing the influence on the form of instrumentalists versus singers, sorted by sex. To say that women, as a whole, were “not significant in the history of jazz” is an overstatement. It is more accurate to say that women, as a whole, have been underrepresented as important instrumental contributors, but highly influential as singers, where they have been disproportionately concentrated as jazz musicians. Women have also been underrepresented, both in numbers and influence, as jazz composers, arrangers, conductors and producers. I really don’t think this is controversial, any more than I think it would be controversial to point out that there are a lot more male physicists than female physicists, and that if you look at the history of physics you’ll (therefore?) find more important contributions to the science from males than females. One reason to point out these imbalances could be historical accuracy. Another could be to help try to change it. A third could be to provide data to permit a sociological analysis of why it’s the case. None of these should be confused with trying to use historical data to justify the imbalances.

    What might be more controversial would be an argument that women instrumentalists, composers, arrangers, bandleaders, and producers were relatively uninfluential even as a percentage of their comparatively small numbers. I neither made, nor reported, such an argument (and I’m not a good enough music historian to know if such an argument is viable). Interestingly, it is not controversial that women jazz singers have had huge influence disproportionate to their numbers (either absolute or compartive), and that’s an “emphasis” I personally make whenever I get a chance.

  7. David says:

    Dear Clifford,
    I think from my personal experience I somewhat agree with your friend. I hope the notion of gendered activities are not a priori deemed sexist- as some of the above comments imply. Here is a conjectured reason which you are free to dismiss, not sure I believe it myself. Apparently, the frequency of autism and aspergers is much higher in jazz musicians (and probabley in listeners). Autism, following work of Baron-Cohen is viewed as an extreme version of “maleness”. Men show statisticly higher tendencies to all things autistic eg list making of their music collections. It is possible that the male tendency towards jazz is part of the male autistic tendency. It goes without saying that you don’t need to be autistic to like jazz and women can be great jazz lovers and musicians. (sorry if the last sentence is a bit of a disclaimer).
    dsb

  8. JoAnne says:

    Just to chime in here, I am very well educated musically (barely chose physics over music as a career) and played electric bass guitar in jazz band during high school. Nonetheless, I simply don’t care for jazz. It’s better than rap or hip hop, but is not something I would chose to listen to. And I never dreamt that my musical tastes were due to my gender! Gee….my favorite color is blue, is that due to my gender too? Don’t you think people go overboard on this?

  9. Clifford says:

    I just saw your latest post…. why are you focusing so much on instrumentalists, by the way? To measure contributions to jazz using that criterion alone would leave out Duke Ellington, for example, arguably one of the most significant (and prolific) composers of the 20th Century whether if be in Jazz or any other form)*. Are you saying he did not have much influence on Jazz since he was not a great instrumentalist?

    Consider the possibility that Jazz remains male dominated, and -to come back to the subject of the post- remains perceived as a “guy thing” precisely because of the sort of over-emphasis that people place on how seemingly insignificant women were in its history. Your posts were not off-topic at all.

    Cheers,

    -cvj

    (*He was an excellent pianist, but people don’t really remember him much for that.)

  10. Clifford says:

    Jeff,

    Why is it pertinent to point out so markedly the women you and your references consider to be irrelevant (before even doing justice to the ones we know about who were relevant)….especially when there are countless male jazz performers – that you don’t mention – who may well also have done nothing for the development of the form.

    Would it not make more sense -given how remarkably hard it is to measure the effect on a field of just one person’s contributions- to focus on the positive contributions that have been made, rather than dive right in with an assessment (based on somewhat subjective analyses) of how insignificant an entire group is? Especially when the social norms of the time were known to put them at a serious disadvantage with regards equal access to opportunity to contribute. Why do we make the same mistakes of blindness again and again?

    What I’m talking about here is how the things that are being emphasized in your postings simply serve to emphasize the erroneous view that women were not significant in the story of jazz, whether that was your intention or not. This is the sort of example that serves to damage the whole enterprise (in terms of access to all), in my opinion.

    Forgive my pressing on this point, but I just have a bad reaction to this sort of self-fulfilling historical assessment. Let’s put it down to a difference in approach and leave it at that, shall we?

    -cvj

  11. Jeff Chamberlain says:

    I’m sorry, I cut myself off….

    There is a good deal of historical information about resistance to women in jazz, and not just from the expected bigots but from many male jazz musicians themselves. Dahl’s book has several striking examples. I’ve not seen any reputable modern arguments that women are in any way “unsuited” for jazz, nor any historical arguments contradicting the idea that a large reason why there were so few women in jazz was lack of opportunity. Nor am I aware of any literature “discounting” the “exceptions;” indeed, my sense is that exactly the opposite is usually the case. There is, by the way, a fairly good-sized literature about women in jazz, written by women.

    Mary Lou Williams … yes. As an instrumentalist and a composer and an arranger and a producer. But we’re back to counting, again, and what I was reporting was the virtual nonexistence of women instrumentalists who have been significant in jazz — for whatever reason. It’s not that there have not been good women jazz instrumentalists — comparatively few, but still a bunch. It’s that I haven’t found a jazz historian or musician who identifies women jazz instrumentalists who have influenced the genre in a significant way. (I appreciate your not trying to kill the messenger here … but I have to say that I can’t think of any either — other than Williams.)

    All this is somewhat off-topic, I’m afraid. The original post was about whether women “liked” jazz as much as men, and here I am running off at the mouth about history and musicology and other similar things which are only tangentially related to that. I don’t know if women like jazz as much as men do, or if not why not, but historically and musicologically jazz was and still is male-dominated. It is conceivable — maybe, I suppose — that some of this relates to taste.

  12. Harv says:

    Yet another woman jazz-lover here (I also play trombone and am an astronomer – so go figure).

    I’ve always loved Big Band / dixieland / Louis Armstrong-type music – I guess since I grew up listening to a lot of marching band music (and there I was also exposed to the Night in Tunisia/Birdland/Caravan/etc.) However, my appreciation grew after taking a jazz history class in college. I also really loved seeing the Ken Burns documentary as well. My fiance just pulled out my textbook and read through it, so we’ve had some interesting conversations about who shaped jazz history.

    In particular, one of the people that I now love very much is Miles Davis. After our first class, I walked right out and bought Kind of Blue. 🙂

    Since then, I’ve loved seeing Sonny Rollins in concert, and have really enjoyed Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. And we both think that Sting is one of the premier jazz musicians of our time. 🙂

  13. Jeff Chamberlain says:

    Perhaps I was not as clear as I should have been. No one of any repute that I know of denigrates the influence of voice in jazz. And no one (“) denies the influence of female jazz singers. There were not, however, very many of them that had any real influence (although the relative few that did had enormous influence).

    The Bessie Smiths and the Billie Holidays were clearly not just “along for the ride.” But many of the “girl singers” were. Their jobs were often mostly to provide a link between the bands and their audiences; they strengthened bands’ commercial appeal. They wore flashy clothes and lots of makeup, and their musical jobs were to come out front of the band periodically and sing a few bars of melody. Most of them — not all of them — contributed not much to the music itself. Linda Dahl, in Stormy Weather, The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazz Women, calls these singers “vocal pom pom girls.” Almost always — not always, but almost always — they were the lone females in the bands. There were hundreds of them, and musicologically most of them are legitimately “dismissed” as having little or no lasting influence on the form.

    No one (“) denies the huge influence of female jazz vocalists on jazz instrumentalists (of any sex). CJJ’s example of Billie Holiday is undoubtedly the best. I know of no jazz player, or historian, who does not think she “changed everything” and “influenced everybody.” And Holiday was of course not the only one. It’s easy to expand the list. But there still weren’t very many women singers who had an important influence on jazz. Counting is not the only thing, but it counts. It was a quantitative point, not a qualitative one.

    The comments about singers performing in other genres was mostly definitional. There are arguments about whether certain singers are properly considered “jazz” singers, and one of the arguments you’ll hear in favor of a “no” answer is when a singer performs mostly in another genre. I, myself, think that’s pretty restrictive. But a related point is worthy of some consideration. Collier, for example, is inclined to discount Ella Fitzgerald as a “jazz” singer because, he says, while she was “capable of singing with jazz cadences” she was presented mostly as a popular vocalist and therefore “tied to the melody line” to a degree inconsistent with his rather restrictive view of what, properly, should be called “jazz.” I, myself, think this is too restrictive, but a related point is worthy of some consideration. Collier, again, argues that Fitrzgerald (and others) “at times … have a tendency to land squarely on the beat, thus interfering with the swing.” Maybe, or maybe not, but the point should not be rejected out of hand.

  14. spyder says:

    Then again, if this were a thousand years ago, those great jazz women singers and piano players (and where’s the list of great women jazz sax, trumpet, trombone, drum, bass players??) would be listed as Anonymous.

    Peter Apfelbaum various incarnations of the Hieroglyphics Ensemble included many quite excellent female performers featuring their skills on sax, bass, drums, and lead guitar. At times Zappa assembled units with excellent female players, particularly those with jazz leanings who were officially aligned with European symphonic orchestras. So, yes, they are out there, but not in the glaring lights as more and more of them need to be.

  15. Clifford says:

    Exactly.

    -cvj

  16. Samantha says:

    Huh. This never occurred to me before – there are so few women composers relative to the number of male composers (if one counts through the ages). There are a number of possible explanations for this, is one of them that women are just intrinsically less musical than men?

    Likewise with artists, accountants and garbage collectors… what could this all mean?

  17. Clifford says:

    Hi Jeff,

    Thanks.

    Nonetheless, it is probably true that there have been no female jazz instrumentalists who were seminal to the form (at least historically). Collier does take a somewhat restrictive view of what “jazz” is, and this contributes to the imbalance as there were (a few) more women instrumentalists participating in music which Collier would not recognize as “pure” jazz but which others might include within the genre.

    I have several issues with the thesis you are reporting on here. (I’m not shooting the messenger). These are the same arguments that are used to argue that women and people of colour are inherently unsuited to doing physics or mathematics because of the attitudes that meant that they did not get the same opportunities to contribute to it at earlier times (and even now, but that’s another story) except for a few “exceptions” which are discounted for some reason or other.

    I could go on about that point, but let’s move on….

    We come then to whether The Bessie Smiths and Billie Holidays were just “girl singers” along for the ride, or whether they helped shape the music. It’s unbelievable that someone who really understands Jazz can even question the huge influence of the human voice on the entire core of the music. Listen to any of the great saxophonists who are quoted as representing some of the foundations of the genre (Pres, Bird, etc) and what do you hear? You hear the human voice. You hear the stylings (note choices, timing, etc) of some of the great singers of the day. When those guys finished playing a gig, who did they sit and listen to for their inspiration a lot of the time? Those “girl singers” so dismissively referred to.

    Can you listen to a huge amount of Lester Young without hearing Billie Holiday? And there are so many more examples…. you don’t get very far before you find a male Jazz musician from those times (the honest ones) listing singers as among their greatest influences. Sometimes those singers are male, but then who influenced them?

    And how can you discount the amazing contributions of Ella Fitzgerald to Jazz (oh my goodness) because she sang in other genres too? Does that mean that Wynton Marsalis is not a jazz musician because he has made many fine classical recordings? Or Louis Armstrong because of all of his “feel good” popular recordings? Or maybe Miles Davis because he invented fusion, played rock and roll, and recorded Cyndi Lauper’s “Time after Time”? Or because he is a guy we get to say instead that he was a pioneer and simply invented new forms. Different rules for the men than those we use for the women….

    And then we come to the instrumentalists…. funny how we can pin so much on the influence of one man (in the case of say Charlie Parker, or John Coltrane, or….), but when there is one woman doing something, we say that due to the small numbers she can’t be counted as significant? Don’t you find that a little odd? So let me mention Mary Lou Williams…. for a start (goodness knows how many have been forgotten because the history is usually written by… men… big surpirse).. How come Mary Lou Williams is not mentioned in the above?!! It boggles the mind. Where would the whole Kansas City sound be without her playing, composition, leadership and arrangements, I wonder? What about all those great male players who grew up learning their chops in her band? What about Nina Simone (later on)? If she chose not to sing she would still have been a kick-ass pianist and arranger….

    Wow. It is easy to see where my friend partly got her misunderstanding from, really. The role of women is still totally written out of the story by people today. And a lot of men continue to perpetuate the mythology that Jazz developed with little or no significant input from women. Then, hearing it repeated so often, women start believing it, and then the whole thing reinforces itself. The analogue with attitudes to women and minorities in the sciences is almost perfect. This is very discouraging indeed.

    Ok, I need to go cool off now. 😉

    -cvj

  18. TBB says:

    Jeff Chamberlain, interesting information, thanks. As far as the female singers you mention, I recall the Pure Jazz CD I picked up once because of a sudden desire to compare all versions of “Summertime.” Some of these I have whole albums of – Billie Holiday, Etta James – but again the rest I prefer to see played live (of course we can’t see Holiday live ;-). Same with Big Band music, I just realized. My ex-boss played the slide trombone with a local group of, yup, men, at little bars and the swing dancers would come out. I don’t like to listen to Big Band music at home either. (As a side note, I prefer the studio recordings of most rock and pop music versus listening to them live for contrast.)

    I don’t have a problem that jazz is mostly dominated by males, as is most of my favorite music, but since my sister chose the saxophone for band in elementary school and played throughout high school I don’t have the idea that men are necessarily better at it, but it is curious that the girls in school did not choose the sax, horn, trumpet, and trombone- most went for the flute and clarinet. ???

    I just realized that one of your questions: “how do I really know that they liked it as much as I did (whatever that means)? What if they were just humouring me?”

    Hmm, yeah, what does that mean? If one is saying “I like jazz” when they really don’t, that’s easy enough to discern – what do they away from you? But as far as levels of intensity, i.e., “as much,” that can be compared to many things. If someone likes flowers, do they like them less than you because they don’t grow them or know all their names as you do? Does physics fascinate them less because they can’t do all the equations? Does someone love a poem less because they don’t know about iambic pentameter? I’m curious as to why “as much” would even matter.

  19. Jeff Chamberlain says:

    A good place to start researching this is James Lincoln Collier’s book, The Making of Jazz (which is one of the older standard histories). Collier suggests that jazz is indeed a “male thing.” Virtually all of the “founders” were male, and almost all jazz instrumentalists(at least up through the 1970s) were in fact male. There’s a suggestion that jazzmen discouraged women from participating. It was not “ladylike” music, and the cohort of jazz males were often uncomfortable incorporating women into the bands. There were, of course, exceptions, but they were just that. However, their existence does indicate that there is probably nothing “inherent” in female-ness which precludes jazz instrumental competence. Nonetheless, it is probably true that there have been no female jazz instrumentalists who were seminal to the form (at least historically). Collier does take a somewhat restrictive view of what “jazz” is, and this contributes to the imbalance as there were (a few) more women instrumentalists participating in music which Collier would not recognize as “pure” jazz but which others might include within the genre. There are also several books devoted specifically to the history of women in “popular” music, including jazz (although I’ve not found one that I think is quite as good as Collier; and “popular” is in quotation marks because there is a legitimate question whether jazz is properly “popular” music).

    There were some female jazz singers (although once again Collier takes a restrictive view of what this means), and some jazz historians have implied that females constitute the majority (or at least the best) of the jazz singers. Names often remarked include Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Ivie Anderson, and Anita O’Day. If one broadens the definition a bit, the “girl singers” with Big Bands (and swing bands) can also be included (at least once they became part of the music and not just window dressing). Many people would include Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Helen Forrest, and even Julie London, although these singers (and others like them) were never “pure” jazz musicians (and sang a lot of music other than jazz).

    In modern times, women are still underrepresented as jazz instrumentalists, but less so than previously. And there is a current crop of female jazz (or at least jazzy) vocalists who are at least competent and sometimes spectacular. Examples include Catherine Russell, Stacey Kent, Tierney Sutton, Ingrid Lucia … and there are many more. (It’s a good time for “chick singers.”)

  20. Mary Cole says:

    Clifford- I still have those recordings of Miles Davis and John Coltraine you gave me about twenty years ago, in an attempt to introduce me to Jazz. I’m eternally grateful that you did this because it certainly broadened my musical horizons. I don’t think jazz is a ‘guy thing’ at all but I can see how this perception comes about, partly because many of the instruments we most associate with Jazz (trumpets, saxophones, double basses etc) have in the past been traditionally more associated with men, although as you say there are in fact many female Jazz musicians.

  21. I don’t think women like jazz less than men do, but I do get the impression that jazz circles have traditionally been predominantly male circles. My local jazz bar is usually full of groups of men or coupls, but I’ve yet to see groups of women there, or unaccompanied women, whereas men are often there unaccompanied. I don’t know if this is because jazz has traditionally been a male thing (with the occasional participation of women singers), or simply because some bars are predominantly male spaces. Or maybe it’s the performance-in-a-bar element that makes jazz circles traditionally male circles? I would say that performing jazz in spaces that aren’t typically dominated by one gender (eg, concert halls as opposed to smoky bars) is a recent thing. Maybe none of these are significant, and your friend is just basing her comment on her experience and the experience of friends who don’t like jazz and happen to be female. Who knows?

    I like jazz and I’m female, for the record.

  22. Yvette says:

    Girl here who liked jazz before being told she shouldn’t. That seems a rather common thing in my tastes actually.

    The reason I like it is firstly, I grew up in Pittsburgh which had at some point one of the most vibrant jazz scenes in the country, so I was exposed to it at a very young age. You know how the main NPR station usually plays classical? Yeah, in Pittsburgh we do jazz. It’s the way to be.

    The second reason I like jazz is because jazz involves being clever in a sense that few other genres of music do… my favorite thing about it is how you can hear several different versions of the same melody by different artists and they won’t nessecarily sound the same at all. This doesn’t really happen in other genres of music, which I think is a pity.

    But then, I will note that I like pretty much all music short of rap, techno, and country, so if your post was about, say, indie in the same context I could list a few reasons as to why it’s great. 🙂

  23. TBB says:

    I forgot to say that I’m a female, but I find I’m rather genderless in my tastes for all things. “Women just tolerate it” sounds like they’re just hangers-on appeasing a date – hmm. I do think jazz, blues, and R&B appeals to more males than females, on the whole, anecdotedly speaking, but then there may be a social stereotype aspect to that, not the actual music. It may have to do with certain women’s personalities in perceiving those social stereotypes. Wait…but country music has social stereotypes too. I’m confused…

  24. TBB says:

    Now here’s the thing that gave me pause. My friend mentioned something else. She’s of the opinion that Jazz is in fact a “guy thing”, and that (on balance) women don’t really like jazz. This includes everything from the music itself to the whole business of sitting in a small dark (sometimes smoky – but less so these day) room listening to this stuff. It’s a guy thing. Women just tolerate it.

    My mother used to “drag” us to smoky dark bars (nice ones) where local jazz artists played back when I was an adolescent (won’t go into that, but we loved it). I’ll never forget the regular saxophonist there; seeing jazz live is invigorating and I enjoy the intimacy of small places where one can see the instruments being played. Likewise I recall seeing a Spyro Gyra concert in a small round theater with a rotating stage and enjoyed it immensely even though I mostly don’t listen to jazz, blues, and R&B much at home. (At home I like music I can sing or dance to get me moving. Jazz and blues is for relaxing.)

    However, just looking at Wikipedia’s entry on jazz, what type of jazz are we talking about? I have to agree with Duke Ellington’s comment: “It’s all music.” I like what I like. But traditional jazz I prefer live, yes, and I really don’t know much about it as a genre. But that’s the great thing about music – you don’t have to – that’s up to you. There’s a visceral enjoyment and a technical/skill level enjoyment, and they are two different things.

  25. Pioneer1 says:

    Interesting. May I tie this to physics? I used to listen to jazz a lot previously. But then I realized that what is called jazz is amorphous and it is changing continously.

    During my lifetime Jazz got fusioned into rock and classical and all other genres. What distinguishes jazz from other genres?

    It seems that if some talented instrumentalists come together and put a nice sound which doesn’t sound like any of the other known stuff then it is called jazz. To me this is like string theory.

    Jazz is undefined. Just like String Theory.
    Jazz is elegant. Just like String Theory.
    Jazz is cool. Just like string theory.
    Only a few dig Jazz. Just like string theory.
    Jazz is improvisation just like string theory.
    And Jazz makes no predictions. Just like String theory.

    I may be all wrong though. Or maybe I am not even wrong. Just like string theory 🙂

  26. Jude says:

    Well, Sam, thinking that more men like monster truck racing is pretty sexist too. I live across the street from a venue which puts on monster truck races, and it appears to be equally popular with both races, and perhaps even more popular with women. As the mother of sons and a daughter and the sister of brothers, I would say that most of what society says about gender differences, aside from those directly caused by biology, are hogwash. So it does seem like a sexist world to me.

  27. Samantha says:

    It seems like a somewhat ignorant thing to say. If you love music, then you should spend at least some time investigating jazz. Not to do so just seems odd to me, a female jazz loving terrible driver.

  28. Sam Gralla says:

    I would just like to comment that having the opinion that men like jazz more than women does NOT make one “sexist”. Unless you want to everybody who suspects men might like monster truck racing more than women to share that label too, in which case you’ve got a rather sexist world on your hands (congratulations!).

    I don’t know if women like jazz less, but it might be true. I played jazz a lot when I was younger, and almost always with men. Also, in a smyphony orchestra, you always find the male/female ratio greatly increased on the loud/big instruments like brass and bass; this prefence may carry over to jazz, which usually contains more ‘louder’ than ‘softer’ instruments.

  29. candace says:

    Jude: I hear “women drivers” comments all the time. And “women cyclists”, since it is true that there is a statistically significant gender imbalance in the number of cycling casualities, at least in London. But for the driving, my usual retort is along the lines of: if women are such shit drivers, then why is our insurance cheaper? Hmmm.

    Now on to my wibbling about the subject at hand:
    I don’t like some Jazz, and this is mostly due to ignorance and pure bloodymindedness. I like the soft comfortable and homey nostalgia that dixieland offers up, and any other sort of melody-oriented jazz that conjures the humid nights back home. But this is liking jazz more as temporal colouring, and not as a musical genre in its own right. When people ask me if I like it, I say, ‘sure, but not that free-flow stuff.’ I can appreciate the talent, but oftentimes I don’t appreciate the music. I can’t even really sit down and listen to Charlie Parker. Maybe I’ll give it another go.

    My reasons for not being attracted to jazz have nothing at all to do with my gender that I can see. But if I step back and take a look at my concept of jazz culture, I can see elements that might put some women off. Appreciating jazz carries the conceptual baggage of getting to grips with lots and lots of contextual information, like who is playing what with whom. This seems to be beyond simply knowing, say, who was in the Beatles, and the cliche jazz culture encourages the sort of spoddy-type geekery most associated with men. At least in my mind.

    As Clifford says, “But it takes practice, experience, and the development of a vocabulary.” Some people won’t be bothered with this, they just want the simple enjoyment of the music. Anyone might enjoy the music, male or female, but if building an information structure is required to do so, I figure women might disproportionately be put off. This isn’t because women can’t build information structures, but because it still isn’t a ‘ladylike’ thing to do. Men are supposed to obsess over trivial things (cars, trains, single malt whiskies, jazz), women aren’t (we’re supposed to shut up and look purty)– I still see this as a force in society even now, even though it should be outdated. The question to me of if men like jazz more than women is akin to: Are there more male trainspotters than women? Are there more male stats-reciting sports fans than women? Are there more men reading sci fi series that arc over twenty books of an alternate reality? Are there more men in whisky shops than women? And, yes, are there more male scientists than women? All of these things have in common a somewhat-obsessive building of mental frameworks that aren’t ‘becoming’ to women.

    I don’t let it get to me. I think I have more than a hint of that obsessiveness about me, so that sort of thing would never put me off liking jazz. But, yes, Clifford, I can definitely see those wriggly worms, and I’ll give jazz another try. Praise the lord and pass the whisky.

  30. Kandie Webster says:

    My 20-year-old daughter is a jazz pianist, and plans to be involved in playing for vocal and instrumental ensembles long after college, even though she is not going into jazz as a professional. The interesting thing is, she went into high school as a 14-year old pianist/composer and said, “I don’t like jazz. It sounds funny.” Now she would not play anything else (except musicals). her sophomore year, the music director of “Oklahoma!” (that she was the pianist for) asked her to be in his beginning jazz band, and she said she did not know jazz. He said, “You will.” Her senior year of high school, she was honored with the jazz musicianship award.

    I probably used to be like your friend. I would even go so far as to have been closed minded where jazz music was concerned. I used to say, “I don’t like jazz.” Until July 2005, I just tolerated my daughter playing in various jazz groups. At a jazz festival that my daughter was participating in, I met a very prominent jazz guitarist and basically fell in love with his music. His music has turned me on to so many others, including my new jazz buddy, Roy Hargrove, and my big brother in jazz, John Clayton (Gerald’s father). I was even the announcer/emcee at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival workshops for four days in the 900-seat capacity Ballroom last year.

    Regarding the women and jazz issue: Your friend might be interested in seeing or hearing something like an all women’s jazz group, like Sharie Maricle’s Diva Jazz Orchestra. Seeing them is amazing! They are incredibly talented not only instrumentally, but took to scatting and dancing at times. They also were very contagious in that you could not help but just be happy watching and listening.

    I am now involved in jazz research and jazz media, and I can truly say it is my passion.

  31. Jude says:

    I suppose that when I call your friend sexist, it comes from the sensibility of being a female born in the 1950s, pre-feminist movement. To me, it’s like saying you can’t appreciate something because you’re black or Hispanic or pigeon-toed. When I was little, I heard the phrase “women drivers” as a pejorative. No one would think of saying that today. Because I fought through and with that sort of thing, I hate it when I hear women use gender as an excuse. If I’d been there, I would have called her on it in a probably rude and obnoxious way.

  32. I’m a newbie to jazz, but I like spyder I have the impression that jazz musicians are overwhelmingly male. And female jazz musicians tend to be either singers or pianists — there seems to be a male monopoly on other instruments. I’m female and the gender of the musicians doesn’t matter to me, but perhaps it does to other women.

  33. spyder says:

    It might have something to do with who plays it too. Considering that it has only been in the last fifty+ years that symphony orchestras have expanded to include many more women than in their pasts, the frequency of female jazz performers (core rhythm sections??) has begun to slightly increase. Is jazz a guy thing because guys play jazz??? No, i dont think so, but that could easily be a perception that could be taken as measure of the orientation of the music.

    Odd, given your comments about trying to explain jazz performance to her, that i, and many my friends, have used the very same rhetoric to explain the music of the Grateful Dead. Substitute GD for Jazz in your third, fourth, and fifth paragraphs, and i have heard, had, read, those very same phrases and concepts mentioned. Indeed there are many who feel the Dead were at their best a jazz band (including praise from folks like Miles Davis, Branford Marsalis, Ornette Coleman, etc.). Physh came out of that same tradition, and Pink Floyd had some of those roots. Does this make you want to wade into that repetoire? No, of course not, not any more than such conversation would entice her to do so with Jazz.

    My own personal pet theory is that (at least in the US) much of our musical sensibilities develop from our connecting with certain strands and pieces of recorded material during our pre-pubescent through pubescence period. These riffs or patterns of rhythms and melodies imprint upon us, and later return as guides towards our appreciation of this or that genre, styling, group, and so forth. It is easier for classically trained kids to move towards jazz, than it is for kids immersed in pop/rock realms, given the required sensitivity of the ears. All said, after so many decades of being in and around the great music scene that is the US (damn we have a lot of music), i still will choose screaming electric guitars over most other sounds.

  34. donna says:

    As a jazz-loving woman, I think it says a lot more about your friend than about women in general. I wonder if her world is classed into “girl” and “guy” things, and she thinks as a “girl” she’s not supposed to like “guy” things? This is one of those varriers that also keeps women from entering technical fields like scince and engineering, and I find it rather heart-breaking myself.

    Sexually sterotyping musical preferneces seems like a really narrow-minded thing to do. I’m glad you broadened her world a bit. Please, don’t doubt yourself- there are plenty of women who love jazz, perform it, and enjoy it.

  35. Athena says:

    Clifford,

    My immediate thought upon reading that your friend believes jazz to be a “guy thing” was that I had never heard that before (now I need to poll some friends later!). I can emphatically say that I love jazz, and I am a woman. I have never “tolerated” a jazz piece, live or recorded, rather I was extremely pleased and elated.

    I own a wide variety of music, and jazz constitutes about 30%. I appreciate jazz more now than when I was younger because I have been exposed to more. Also, playing (and thus having a better understanding) helps, but that’s just me.

    The closest I ever came to someone inferring that my musical tastes were not of the norm was the time I was having dinner with a bass player (somewhat known, he now plays for a local jazz vocalist — one would assume he’s seen a lot). When I said I had just bought The Very Tall Band CD with Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, and Milt Jackson, his reaction was that he had never met a “girl” who had heard of Ray Brown. I think he was trying to flatter me, but that’s not how it felt.

    So in answer to your question, I think jazz is one of the many flavors of aural pleasure, and certainly not restricted to gender, but rather, individual preferences. I think we’ve all humored friends’ selections at some point in our lives, but I really doubt (just my opinion) that was your case. After all, isn’t that one of the really great things about music — we can all enjoy it in our own way? A good friend of mine is a jazz saxophonist, and while he’s pointing out to me the scale that the solos are based on, I’m thrilled to just pick up on the glances when they’re trading fours. My ear is not as trained as his, so I’m sure some nuances escape me that maybe could have improved my enjoyment, but having my friend complement the performance with his commentary is for me one of the more delightful (and fun) parts of listening to jazz.

  36. Clifford says:

    Hey Jude,

    Thanks for your thoughts…. Don’t be too hard on my friend! Maybe she was just thinking it through out loud.

    I might well be at some of that festival. It’s not really about seeing famous groups, by the way, and not as many of those performers come through LA as often as you might think.

    Cheers,

    -cvj

  37. Jude says:

    Gees, Clifford, who knows? Gender seems irrelevant to me when it comes to liking music, so I think your friend is off-the-wall and sexist.

    I was raised on Big Bands and Dixieland, so I took a jazz appreciation class in college to help me move beyond about 1955 in my musical tastes. I didn’t make it all the way, but it helped. Jazz changed so drastically in the late 1950s and early 1960s that my dad didn’t keep up.

    I think that jazz and perhaps, much classical music, require an intellectual commitment. You can appreciate them at one level, but when you learn more, you appreciate more. They aren’t really “surface” types of music. With jazz, it’s all about the interplay. Sometimes, it’s about occasional cacophony resolving itself into beauty. How far can this performer stretch me, the listener, musically, before he brings it back? It’s challenging to listen to.

    I can understand people having difficulty with the intricacies of jazz, and being unwilling to make the intellectual commitment to learning to appreciate and love it, but to claim that it’s gender-specific? That’s just annoying.

    This brings up my excitement at the fact that Wynton Marsalis will be at the Aspen Music Festival this summer, in the evening after one of the free concerts which I usually attend. Fortunately, as long as he’s in the music tent, I can sit outside for free and listen, even if I can’t watch. He’ll be performing his composition, Congo Square. I know that’s no big deal to a man who lives in LA and sees famous groups all the time, but it’s a big deal for rural western Colorado.