Welcome to jazz club
Jan. 5th, 2023 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
obstinatecondolementThis rant brought to you by ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
snowflake_challenge's third challenge for 2023!
I'm happy to have people comment on this, if they want, but I do not want to debate my points, as this is largely a vent, although I am open to criticism if I, as a white person, have made a mess of talking about racism. Disclaimer: I am a white singing student who likes jazz and has been learning about it for a few years. I am not a professional singer and I would not feel comfortable describing myself as a jazz musician, because I don't think that I'm that advanced in my studies. I am not trying to claim that white people cannot be jazz musicians or that singers are not musicians.
On December 9, 2020, I wrote an off the cuff post on Tumblr about Michael Bublé's cover of Santa Baby, because a) it was seasonal and hating on Santa Buddy is a Tumblr holiday tradition and b) I thought it would be funny to appropriate a common defense of modern art (which, to simplify it to the point of being overly simplistic: maybe it's supposed to make you feel angry and evoking that emotion means that the artwork is successful) to apply it to this song. Here is the post in question:
As I have had a few posts get bigger than I was prepared for in the past, and this was before it was possible to turn off reblogs on Tumblr, at this time I had a policy of asking people to ask if it was okay before reblogging my personal posts. Someone asked if it was okay to reblog this and I said it was fine, figuring it wouldn't amount to much.
By December 12, 20222 the post had 10K notes, although it hadn't gotten any new ones in a while, and I suppose I felt like swinging a baseball bat at that beehive again, because, after hearing the song in question when I was out with my sister, I reblogged it myself and added the following:
At the time of writing, the post now has 23761 notes.
I am probably being churlish to complain about My Critics™, because honestly, most of the responses took the post in the spirit it was intended (also, it mostly reached its intended audience of Bublé h8rs), HOWEVER, I am nothing if not a petty bitch and I will be using this opportunity to discuss a few common criticisms this post receives. Disclaimer: I will be paraphrasing from memory rather than directly quoting any one specifically.
First of all, obviously people can like whatever they want and artistic value is infamously subjective. Second of all, does my humourous skewering of Michael Bublé prevent you from liking him? If so that sounds like a you problem. Stand the courage of your own convictions and like what you like.
I never said that. I mentioned jazz musicians' lack of respect for Bublé because he cosplays a jazz singer without actually respecting the art form enough to study it. Now, granted, a lot of jazz instrumentalists do not respect vocalists in general and that's like... not great, but in Bublé's case it is entirely a fair cop. He is a glorified karaoke singer who sings in front of a big band. Again, nothing wrong with being a karaoke singer, but there is a history dating back over a 100 years of white musicians affecting the trappings of jazz while not making a serious study of it. See: the (arguably) first jazz recording from 1917, which was performed by white outfit The Original Dixieland Jass Band (which later changed its name to The Original Dixieland Jazz Band after the spelling of jazz became more codified). Like Bublé, they didn't improvise their solos (although, unlike him, they did write them themselves), and their place in the history of jazz is deeply controversial, not least because the leader of the group Nick LaRocca billed the group as having "invented" jazz in later years. The segregated early history of jazz, where white big bands and ensembles were given opportunities and breaks that black musicians were not, also complicates things even where white artists did engage seriously with jazz as an artform.
To be perfectly honest, a large part of it is that I don't find Peggy Lee's vocal tone to be annoying and smug. But, more seriously, Bublé is a more contemporary artist and harder to avoid, firstly. And secondly... I find his attempt to recreate a Jurassic Park version of swing big bands like he found Frank Sinatra's DNA trapped in amber to be creepy and disrespectful. Do you have to engage with contemporary jazz to love big bands from the 50s? No, of course not. But you also don't have to... I don't know, act like you're reviving and saving an existing and living tradition? I don't know. Maybe this is a reach, but it bothers me.
I mean. You can. No one can stop you. But, equally, you can't stop me.
snowflake_challenge's third challenge for 2023! Challenge #3
In your own space, Scream Into the Void. Get it all out.
I'm happy to have people comment on this, if they want, but I do not want to debate my points, as this is largely a vent, although I am open to criticism if I, as a white person, have made a mess of talking about racism. Disclaimer: I am a white singing student who likes jazz and has been learning about it for a few years. I am not a professional singer and I would not feel comfortable describing myself as a jazz musician, because I don't think that I'm that advanced in my studies. I am not trying to claim that white people cannot be jazz musicians or that singers are not musicians.
On December 9, 2020, I wrote an off the cuff post on Tumblr about Michael Bublé's cover of Santa Baby, because a) it was seasonal and hating on Santa Buddy is a Tumblr holiday tradition and b) I thought it would be funny to appropriate a common defense of modern art (which, to simplify it to the point of being overly simplistic: maybe it's supposed to make you feel angry and evoking that emotion means that the artwork is successful) to apply it to this song. Here is the post in question:
I might just be incredibly tired, but hot take: Michael Bublé's cover of Santa Baby "Santa Buddy" is the closest he has come to making an artistic statement. Like. He doesn't write his own solos: someone else writes them and he learns them off and as such he's widely disparaged by jazz musicians. But at least in Santa Buddy... he's saying something original. What he's saying is "I am absolutely Not fucking Santa" but it's something. It's a take on the work that is his own. And it makes me absolutely furious, which is An Emotional Response To Art. Which is more than I can say about any of the soulless saccharine pablum that usually drips from his grinning maw. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
As I have had a few posts get bigger than I was prepared for in the past, and this was before it was possible to turn off reblogs on Tumblr, at this time I had a policy of asking people to ask if it was okay before reblogging my personal posts. Someone asked if it was okay to reblog this and I said it was fine, figuring it wouldn't amount to much.
By December 12, 20222 the post had 10K notes, although it hadn't gotten any new ones in a while, and I suppose I felt like swinging a baseball bat at that beehive again, because, after hearing the song in question when I was out with my sister, I reblogged it myself and added the following:
Reblogging in honour of hearing Santa Buddy played in McDonald's the other day and once again becoming obsessed with the artistic choices of Mr. Michael Booby.
At the time of writing, the post now has 23761 notes.
I am probably being churlish to complain about My Critics™, because honestly, most of the responses took the post in the spirit it was intended (also, it mostly reached its intended audience of Bublé h8rs), HOWEVER, I am nothing if not a petty bitch and I will be using this opportunity to discuss a few common criticisms this post receives. Disclaimer: I will be paraphrasing from memory rather than directly quoting any one specifically.
Why does a song/singer have to have artistic value to be good? Can't you just let people like things?
First of all, obviously people can like whatever they want and artistic value is infamously subjective. Second of all, does my humourous skewering of Michael Bublé prevent you from liking him? If so that sounds like a you problem. Stand the courage of your own convictions and like what you like.
So a singer has to be a jazz musician to be an artist now??
I never said that. I mentioned jazz musicians' lack of respect for Bublé because he cosplays a jazz singer without actually respecting the art form enough to study it. Now, granted, a lot of jazz instrumentalists do not respect vocalists in general and that's like... not great, but in Bublé's case it is entirely a fair cop. He is a glorified karaoke singer who sings in front of a big band. Again, nothing wrong with being a karaoke singer, but there is a history dating back over a 100 years of white musicians affecting the trappings of jazz while not making a serious study of it. See: the (arguably) first jazz recording from 1917, which was performed by white outfit The Original Dixieland Jass Band (which later changed its name to The Original Dixieland Jazz Band after the spelling of jazz became more codified). Like Bublé, they didn't improvise their solos (although, unlike him, they did write them themselves), and their place in the history of jazz is deeply controversial, not least because the leader of the group Nick LaRocca billed the group as having "invented" jazz in later years. The segregated early history of jazz, where white big bands and ensembles were given opportunities and breaks that black musicians were not, also complicates things even where white artists did engage seriously with jazz as an artform.
There have always been jazz stylists as well as jazz musicians. Why are you so against Bublé but not Peggy Lee?
To be perfectly honest, a large part of it is that I don't find Peggy Lee's vocal tone to be annoying and smug. But, more seriously, Bublé is a more contemporary artist and harder to avoid, firstly. And secondly... I find his attempt to recreate a Jurassic Park version of swing big bands like he found Frank Sinatra's DNA trapped in amber to be creepy and disrespectful. Do you have to engage with contemporary jazz to love big bands from the 50s? No, of course not. But you also don't have to... I don't know, act like you're reviving and saving an existing and living tradition? I don't know. Maybe this is a reach, but it bothers me.
Can't I just enjoy his singing voice?
I mean. You can. No one can stop you. But, equally, you can't stop me.
no subject
Date: 2023-01-06 01:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-06 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-06 11:30 pm (UTC)(cosplays a jazz singer, glorified karaoke singer, attempting to recreate JP version of a swing big band with Frank Sinatra's DNA... I love these descriptions!)
no subject
Date: 2023-01-07 02:31 am (UTC)I just... Like, I'm sure he's a perfectly nice person, but as a musician I hate him so much. I probably wouldn't feel so strongly about him, if I hadn't so many times gotten excited when someone says they like jazz and then the first artist they list when I ask them who they like to listen to is Bublé. And, again, I don't want to be a snob or tell people what they can or can't like, but it's always very disappointing realising that we understand very different things from the word "jazz" and I won't get to have the conversation that I thought I was going to have
no subject
Date: 2023-01-07 07:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-07 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-07 08:54 pm (UTC)(Phantom of the Opera is a musical that was composed to her voice in particular, bc she was married to Andrew Lloyd Webber at the time.)
no subject
Date: 2023-01-07 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-07 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-07 10:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-07 09:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-07 07:07 pm (UTC)