There’s something I’ve said frequently while writing about classical music for the last couple decades, which is that there’s no such thing as difficult music. Sure, there’s some music that may have less general appeal than others, but that doesn’t make it difficult. What “difficult” means in music is that it is unfamiliar in some […]
Jazz: Ancient Stories, by George Grella Read More »
People frequently (that is, once every few years) stop me on the street and ask me, “George” (no one really knows who I am), “should I be listening to jazz?” My first response is always, “absolutely!” Then, when they ask me why, this is what I tell them (again almost never happens, but it’s good
Jazz 2025: The Mid-Year Report, by George Grella Read More »
First, the good news: the Library of Congress last month added new albums to its National Recording Registry, which preserves the most important and salient examples of American audio culture. One of the new entries is Miles Davis’ monumental, complex, darkly thrilling Bitches Brew. It’s a testament to the brilliance and possibilities of this country
Jazz by Grella: Leadership Secrets of Miles Davis Read More »
Nostalgia is a perilous emotion. We all have comforts from the past that we want to preserve in our minds and hearts, but it’s very easy to turn that into an imagined utopia, a prelapsarian state that never existed, and put our energies and processes into a faux-restoration. At the very least, that’s reactionary, and
JAZZ: Honey for the Fight Read More »
What is the sound of being ghosted after going through a job interview? According to the prog-rock band KADAWA, it’s the crisp, complex rhythms, slashing riffs, and soaring major key guitar solo of “We’ll Get Back to You” off their album, Post-Graduation Fees. Take something larger and not focussed on an individual’s experience: What is
Spend time on social media, especially text-based sites like Bluesky (that’s what I use—and enjoy—now after deleting my account at the neo-Nazi’s site) and you eventually find people decrying a lack of media literacy. What they mean by that is the ability to see the difference between assertion and fact, to know what’s reporting and
JAZZ: “Evil is Always a Bad Stylist” Read More »
As a critic, I’m wary of addressing issues of taste. Taste is personal, it’s what we like and what we don’t—I love how in Italian you say you like something with “mi piace,” which means “it pleases me”—and there’s very little taste-wise that is truly bad. Bad taste, done with affection, is kitsch, which is
Jazz: Being Here, Now Read More »
This is just one calendar year, which may be sufficient time in the pop music manufacturing industry to spot a trend, but is a far less meaningful span in music that wrestles with its own history—the old is constantly being renewed and incorporated with ideas from other genres—as jazz does, and that is so free
Grella on Jazz: Best Jazz Albums 2024, by George Grella Read More »
Moral panics have been around long before Socrates was forced to commit suicide for corrupting the youth of Athens. Since civilization began, there’s been an endless cycle of social/political/artistic change provoking reaction from those who are fearful of any change whatsoever, or even, in Mencken’s immortal words, “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be
Crime Jazz By George Grella Read More »
