Blue: The Murder of Jazz

by Eric Nisenson

A disturbing and provocative examination of the author's conviction that jazz is dying explains how the musical form has lost its edge through the corruption of mass marketing, mainstream appropriation, and the lack of artistry displayed by today's musicians.

Genres: Jazz, Nonfiction, Music

Hardcover

First published November 1, 1997

Reviews

[Lukasz Pruski · Rating 4 out of 5]

"This is why so much bland improvised music is popular now: the tinkling bells, liquid melodies, and vapid prettiness of New Age; the dentist's-office jazz of Kenny G. and Grover Washington, Jr.; and the reactionary and utterly predictable watered-down hard bop of the neoclassicists. It is improvisation without risk, without ecstasy, without soul."

I envy the author his writing skills! I wish I could pen phrases like "vapid prettiness of New Age," "utterly predictable watered-down hard bop of the neoclassicists," and so many others. I completely agree with the author, Eric Nisenson, in his 1997 grim diagnosis of the state of jazz in the mid-1990s. I dearly love jazz, mainly the 1960s' jazz, but also many earlier and more recent works. The only two kinds of jazz I cannot stand are the so-called "smooth jazz" - the "dentist's-office" music - and the soulless, riskless, ecstasyless mechanical "jazz" that Wynton Marsalis and his ilk used to produce

The blurb on the cover of Eric Nisenson's Blue. The Murder of Jazz very aptly describes the book: "A road map to the current jazz wars," a quote from the Wall Street Journal. And what a great road map it is! Of course, I am biased: I seem to love the same type of jazz that the author loves, yet even without the bias a careful reader cannot disagree with the author's line of reasoning and his clear, item-by-item, logical exposition of why the kind of music promoted by Jazz at the Lincoln Center had nothing to do with the supposed "resurgence of jazz." It is precisely the other way around: the neoclassicist ideology - as espoused in the writings of two jazz critics, Albert Murray (the "Karl Marx" of the movement) and Stanley Crouch (the movement's "Lenin") - and the neoclassicist practice of jazz - as implemented by Mr. Marsalis and other artists under the Lincoln Center's banner - killed jazz. The neoclassicist movement murdered everything what was valuable in jazz: the spontaneity, the creativity, the seeking of what has not yet been done.

For any jazz lover this is a great book to read, even if one does not want to take sides in the fight for the soul of jazz. From the introduction, where the author charmingly paints his lifelong love for jazz, through the quite detailed yet never boring or overwhelming history of jazz music - period-by-period, with chapters on swing, bebop, cool, fusion, etc. - to the clear exposition of the mid-1990s sad state of things, the text captivates the reader with clarity, depth, and good writing.

Let me now return to polemical mood and quote some of the issues that the author mentions but - in my view - does not emphasize enough. First is the fact that the neoclassicist movement is controlled by business interests and that much of it has little to do with art. Yes, Wynton Marsalis is a virtuoso, no one questions his enormous talent, yet the music he produces is evidently designed to sell not to inspire. Second - and the author is way too polite to state it unequivocally; I do not need to be polite - comparing Mr. Marsalis' music to that of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, or Sun Ra - is simply insulting. Yes, his musical skills may be comparable, but his music sucks because it has no soul.
Genuine jazz music has to be created "in and for the moment" and "reflect the lives and times of the musicians playing it." Its depth comes about "from the souls of the musicians" who create it at a particular moment in time.

To end on a less vitriolic note: I am thankful to the author for including quite a long passage on Sun Ra and his Arkestra - some of the greatest innovators in all music. I will look for further readings about Sun Ra and the band.

Four and a half stars.

[V. · Rating 4 out of 5]

White people doing the "jazz changed my life" thing always feels a bit off-putting to me, the almost evangelical way he talks about it ironically feels like the same kind of nostalgic yearning that he criticizes. If you can get beyond the uncomfortable finger wagging from a white guy about black music, it's fine.

But, my personal feelings aside, I do have to give Nisenson his credit. This is quite a comprehensive text covering a vast swath of jazz history. It's not all-encompassing, that's beyond the scope of this book, but it does well enough illustrating the social landscape of jazz over the course of several decades up to the 90s.

Nisenson's biases tend to show, particularly with his views on Fusion and how quickly he seems to skim over that decade and the achievements of artists like Jaco Pastorius, and Wayne Shorter's non-Weather Report work in the 70s. Most frustratingly, he is painfully repetitive in his insistence that jazz needs to come from the individual experience (he's right, but he states it ad nauseam).

It's a fun, light, read. For those who are familiar with jazz but ignorant of its history, this will serve as a great primer as there are many interesting anecdotes, sources, and, beautifully, a text-relevant discography included at the end of the book. Tons of rabbit holes to go down for those interested.

Do I agree with Nisenson as I'm writing this in 2024? Yes and no. I think jazz largely still suffers from the same issues he brings up here. Even in Chicago, many of the jazz clubs here feel like gateways to the '40s and '50s, places that you come to in order to hear the same standards being played in a quartet/quintet.

Access to great music has become easier than ever (Nisenson's discography section laments that some albums may be out of print, but I can just easily Spotify them and call it a day) and its not hard to find innovators online. But offline is a different beast, most clubs are content to allow their spaces to remain snapshots of the "golden era" rather than a space for the true jazz tradition. These are the places made to appeal to individuals with a very superficial view of jazz, who think of it as a cozy, high-brow, music that they can accrue social prestige for their "appreciation" of. It's a shame, and not something I see changing in the near-future. But jazz is still very much alive today.

[Geof Sage · Rating 1 out of 5]

Blue 4/53.

I really hate jazz (bar Cowboy Bebop). This book distilled everything I hate about it. Also, he appeared to have this weird racial apologist agenda. The usual story: White boy from the 'burbs discovers jazz AND OMFG IT CHANGES HIS LIFE. Also the book was terrible.

[AlastairWatts · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most important books about jazz, in my opinion, for the lucid manner through which it deconstructs some of the common misunderstandings implicit in the mainstream media, especially with regards to jazz history and the current state of the music. This from a book published in 97(?).
I'd heard about this book from a drummer friend of mine, who urged me to read it after I'd watched Ken Burn's valiant (but for me incredibly frustrating) 'Jazz'. I'm sure there is plenty to disagree with in this book, but it seemed to repudiate, in ways that sat right with me, the conservative and ultimately damning manner in which jazz is discussed academically, historically (in the academy and in Burns' film) but also in the press. I also found it interesting to re-examine my own work in the light of Nisenson's critique of romanticism; here not as a negative, but as a realisation of the jazz musicians need for the new, the new thing, the new sound, the quest for innovation. Has it changed me, this book? It may be, given some of the other reviews of the book here and elsewhere, that it only reinforced my views- gave them voice, or rephrased my already established arguments- and that I'm wrong but the argument IS worth having, and the book offers wonderful opportunities to continue a discussion and promote deeper listening. What's not to like?

[Jon]

Eric Nisenson does worthy work here attacking Wynton Marsalis's pretensions and offers an adequate thumbnail history of jazz (though anyone interested enough in the genre to pick up a book like this in the first place is likely to be familiar with much of the material he presents). There are some editing errors--the Bob Dylan song is not called "Molly's Farm"--and I wish just once a jazz critic, writing about the bop-era "heroin problem", would point out that drug prohibition was the real problem. But Nisenson makes some interesting points, especially in his discussion of Sonny Rollins, who, he says, is as great as he is inconsistent (two qualities Nisenson views as inseparable). I concluded from reading this that the prognosis for jazz is not good--maybe it should just be left to die when Rollins and the last remaining masters of the form do. All those great records will still exist....

[Djll · Rating 4 out of 5]

While it may seem to be coming from a sour-grapesish perspective (Who "won" and who "lost" the jazz wars of the 1990s? A: The "Neocons" won and the "Avant-Garde" lost), the central thesis of Nisenson's book rings true: One can't take a dynamic, living art form such as jazz and proceed to honor, preserve and protect it by enshrining one very specific and limited set of aesthetic tenets as dogma. This is what Albert Murray, Stanley Crouch and Wynton Marsalis collectively attempted -- with the eager participation of the mass media -- and what Nisenson brilliantly puts critique to in this volume.

With hindsight, we observe that the Jazz Pope and his Canonicals have failed, and mostly for this reason "Blue" is now a dated, but still worthwhile, read.

[Troy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I see this didn't get rave reviews, and while it's not perfect, I can assume that the people who REALLY didn't like it are Stanley Crouch groupies and Wynton Marsalis acolytes.

The discussion comes back to them so often because they've shaped the notion of jazz over ther past twenty years so much. Sure, its in an unfavorable light, but it's hard to simply take that the past forty years have brought no great artists to bear and nothing is really worth the time to discuss. Except, of course, Marsalis' epic works.

I enjoyed the book. I'd be interested to see if a second edition comes out, if only to comment on the further influence of Crouch and Marsalis.

[Blair · Rating 2 out of 5]

I get his point: The the industry of jazz has stifled the genre. But he gets a bit too over the top about it. I love jazz. A lot. And it's probably true that any/all music/art suffers from this sort of affliction. But the title is telling about how worked up Nisenson gets about it. Jazz isn't dead. There's always a flourish of obscurity in art. I feel like he gets too nostalgic about jazz - we can't go back to the golden age of it, but there's still great work being done.