Down with genres!

Sorry for the bad YouTube video. I hate them as much as you do.

Of late I've been really into this sort of trance like chant music. Check it out here (and here). When I first sang this type of music I thought it was a lot like some of the later vamping experiments in jazz that have so much soul in them. When I brought a chart like this to a rehersal I quickly learned that my fellow jazz musicians didn't see the same similarity, but it's not the first time I've gone out on a limb.

I was listening the Shostakovitch String Quartets lately. It surprised me how applicable to jazz some of his lines were. Of course jazzers have studied Bach forever, but Shostie has got some really outside stuff going on. If you think that Bird was listening to Stravinsky just to be cultured, or know what was going on around him, or because he genuinly liked it, think again. Bird wanted to use that stuff in his own music.

Among other things I'll never forget about Eric Gravatt, I'll always remember when he told us he used to skip school to listen to Stravinsky because he heard Bird listened to him. But then his mom caught him and he couldn't play the drums for a year. Now think about that: here is a drummer, of all instrumentalists, who is so interested in playing the drums (actually, music) that he's skipping school to listen to Stravinsky. And then his punishment is getting those drums taken away. Any other kid would be grounded, but Eric wouldn't have cared. That'd just force him to be around his drums, which would be a blessing. Truly inspirational.

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And with 121 days left of school, I am overjoyed that for another 121 days I will attend a school that teaches Latin, even though I don't take the language.