What Jazz Is: An Insider's Guide to Understanding and Listening to Jazz

by Jonny King

"You have to talk about how jazz is like a language. Musical improvisation can put people at a distance, primarily because of jazz's limited exposure. When people realize that everyone who creates a sentence is improvising within basic rules, making statements up spontaneously, the music begins to make more sense." –Jonny King Imagine you are in the audience of a jazz club. The piano player invites you up on stage to meet the musicians after the set is finished. You listen to them talkabout the tempo of the last tune, the order of songs for their next set, and the different jazz greats they admire. What Jazz Is gives you the experience of "being there" as Jonny King takes you on stage and into the core of modern jazz. From the unique perspective of a professional jazz pianist, King explores the basic elements and language of jazz. He explains each instrument's role in locking in the tempo, establishing the harmony, and stating the melody, and he reveals the order and logic behind the seeming randomness of improvisation. Along the way, he celebrates the distinctive playing styles of such classic jazz artists as Art Blakey, John Coltrane, and Thelonious Monk, as well as his contemporaries, such as Kenny Garrett, Christian McBride, and Joshua Redman. Whether you are about to attend a jazz club for the first time or buy your umpteenth CD, your listening experience will be enhanced by reading this eloquent and passionate account of how jazz works and why it sizzles!

Genres: Music, Jazz, Nonfiction

176 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1997

Reviews

[Bob R Bogle · Rating 3 out of 5]

An old friend of mine used to say he didn't like listening to jazz because it was too much like doing calculus problems. I know what he means. Jazz is at the musical intersection of math and linguistics. And yet despite, or because of, these problems, I've long been lured by jazz. I can tell it's a foreign language, or many foreign languages, but I can't make out the words. This book from my local public library seemed the best bet to start breaking me into the jazz world.

It is a good starter in some ways, and yet I must say that it's frustrating because in the first two-thirds it's trying to set into words what can only be taken in through the ears, and rather than providing specific illustrations, say specific illustrative tracks on albums, Johnny King spends most of his space on these pages listing the names of Jazz players or of bands: he's talking about sounds such as so-and-so's band could make in the late '50s. Unfortunately, this is the least helpful you can be if you're trying to explain jazz to a newbie.

In the last third of the book King takes ten jazz songs, not really greatest hits, and uses them finally to try to illustrate his points. That's nice, but I wish he'd done so in the first 88 pages as well. This book is not really what I'd hoped or expected it would be.

Occasionally helpful, but not really terribly useful for understanding and listening to jazz. I guess I'll try Ken Burns' 10-volume DVD collection and see if that works.

[Lauri Hälinen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hyvä pikakatsaus jazziin ja tarkemmin 50-60-luvun taitteen hard bopiin. Tästä on hyvä aloittaa kallis harrastus.

[Bakari · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first chapter of the book is somewhat technical for readers with no background in understanding musical notes, chords, etc. But the author does a pretty good job of describing the role of the bassist, drummer, pianist, saxophonist, trumpet player, etc. in jazz music. And the then he uses the second half of the book to describe the playing styles and artistry of musicians like Coltrane, Monk, Kenny Garret, and Joshua Redman in about 8 or 9 selected jazz standard songs. Most, but not all, of the songs he discusses can be found on Rdio.com or other music streaming sites. It's great to listen to each song a few times as you read what King writes about them.

[Robert B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jazz pianist King attempts to describe how jazz works, first by looking at the components of a jazz group -- the rhythm section, the front line, the set list -- and then by examining ten pieces from the 1950s and 1960s (all of which are available on YouTube). Some of his descriptions of the music -- particularly his discussion of jazz drumming -- are quite good, but there will always be a limitation to using words to describe music, which is essentially beyond words.