Press reply to all, for a start... > >i am sorry but itotally disagree with you. in everything i have ever > >heard/ read about d techno i do not see any relationship between d > > >techno and improvised music or jazz. > > i agree. i think the answer as to why detroit producers want to be seen > to be linked to jazz is in how they perceive it. > > There's a common afro-futuristic-struggle and emphasis on innovation aka > 'meaning' in jazz that they want percieved in techno. > > But structurally they're far apart. Until you do some serious [sic] > genre-welding, like the Innerzone orchestra. Which is no bad thing...
And I disagree, structurally there is a lot more in common between the likes of jazz and techno. (Obviously there is a lot of dissimilarity, too, otherwise jazz and techno would be more obviously the same thing.) I think this is a healthier situation, though. Too many modern musicians try to jump onto jazz to achieve integrity, which is understandable, if not very wise. Take for example the Roni Size drum and bass stuff. It sounds "jazzy", but it's a very superficial resemblance. Sampling Lonnie Liston Smith or Pharoah Sanders doesn't make it jazz, it makes it SOUND like it. The method has none of the jazz aesthetic to it at all though. Except, perhaps, some of the old Photek stuff. In any case, genre welding in itself doesn't make jazz what it is. Techno, on the other hand, quite often does share the aesthetic. Avoid all the lame attempts at integrity through sampling/odd time signatures etc. and you might get it. Compare the blistering "central heating gone mad" keyboard's of Sun Ra to, I don't know, the strings in "Desire", say. Different sonic ends, same "emotional" means, in a way. The "jazz method" that I'm on about is also found in, for example, John Lee Hooker. Take a listen to "Bougie Man", then listen to Theo Parrish's "Smile" or even the "organic" (and improvised) Basic Channel. It's the need of expression that demands the method, I suppose, but that's jazz - to me at least. And this method provides a similarity of structure. Basically, I love and listen to a lot of techno and jazz and in all I've heard (forget about what you read) I DO find plenty of resemblance, but very little (thankfully) of it strikes me as merely superficial. Jonny. np: Jeff Mills "Metropolis" (Axis) wp: Sun Ra "La Nuits de la Fondation Maeght vol.1" (Shandar)
