[78-L] Fw: The 5 most influential 78s ever/ Charlie Parker

[Francesco Martinelli]

My questions remains unanswered, or rather you subtly change categories 
between jazz  styles and other genres:

> "The general public, being less sophisticated but probably very honest in 
> their more conservative taste, wouldn't follow beyond the point at which 
> *tonality* was left as THE base of musical activity, and turned their 
> minds and ears to more accessible and listenable GENRES."

 (my emphasis). In other words, the great unwashed turned to rock'n'roll
 because of Charlie Parker.

 I rephrase my question: what killed the big bands and swing music? What
 prevented the masses to keep listening to the previous musical styles,
 offered commonly and copiously both live and on record? Why the advent of a
 new style of music in small circles drove the public away from, say, 
Hampton
 and other big bands (who kept a dwindling following)? More to the point, 
why
 the "new swing" of the 80's for example is not nearly as good as the
 originals of 40 or 50 years before? Or you listen to the Cherry Popping
 Daddies and you enjoy it like Basie?
 Or you think that the critics and the avantgarde musicians could prevent
 them to play as well, and also prevent latest composers to compose another
 Cavalleria? (why should they other than for being evilish, is another
 matter - as far as I can remember Schoenberg did not achieve fame or power,
 nor Parker did)?

 Besides, tonality and harmony are most emphatically NOT universal
 mathematical concepts (the mathematics are, not the sounds) but an
 historical product of a specific development in music, relative to a tiny
 (even if dominant) fraction of the globe, its history and its population,
 and depend on a specific convention (equal temperament). Being both a
 confessed dodecaphonist and a confirmed free-jazzer, not to mention a
 dedicated listener to non-European musics, I have to tell you that there 
are
 multitudes on the planet that listen with pleasure to seconds or microtonal
 intervals, finding european polyphonic music unbearably tuneless, raw,
 unmelodic an monotonous (read any testimony of Chinese or Arabic traveler 
to
 Europe). Your conception of "singable melodies and danceable rhythms" is
 widely different from "folks" in other areas of the planet, unless you can
 tell me that you can sing along pygmies' music (seconds) and korean opera
 (microtonal) respectively more popular there than Andrews Sisters and 
Verdi.
 I do not speak Chinese, and for me they only make funny sounds, but I know
 that for them is the same. Ignorance prevents enjoyment, and vice 
versa.....

 FM