Theodor Adorno's "On Jazz"

[@dakkireads]

Ah, the essay that made Adorno a meme. My take: He was probably judging jazz based on shitty 30's Euro cafe renditions. I have no other explanation for his weird hatred.

[@pricesmith8450]

was he actually racist? This is new to me.

[@IgNaceus]

​​@@pricesmith8450His arguments were other, and definitely more complex. He didn't wield the theme of race in his rejection of jazz. Still, his aesthetic parameters are not only those of Western art music, but within it, specifically the Germanic classical-romantic tradition, as developed in the two so called "Schools of Vienna". Might be a biased perspective after all. Go figure.

[@bce6936]

​@@pricesmith8450its a jazz black he don't like jazz therefore he don't like blacks kind of logic

[@LesterBrunt]

@@bce6936 which is pretty much a self report because the jazz he wrote about like swing were some of the whitest music genres in history. If you read the text and actually look up his examples, which is very easy on youtube, it makes total sense. The jazz he talks about was the most cookie cutter, stick up your ass, barely can be called jazz, trash that people were force fed through mass media.

[@peterkerj7357]

He thought Sibelius was an example of music going to shit, why would Charlie Parker change his mind about jazz?

[@warrenthebard]

It's important to note that the kind of jazz Adorno was critiquing was not the kind of jazz most of us are familiar with. However, his summary dismissal of new forms of musical construction are still worth critiquing, especially his use of terms like savage.

[@joshuawaring4180]

‘You like Jazz?’ -Theodore Adorno, ‘On Jazz’

[@primalpatel8015]

Jazz has also extended its vocabulary, conventions, instrumentation, structures, arbitrariness, complexity, essentially its purpose significantly since adorno’s time.

[@gmmaal7161]

Adorno was not a racist. He is not prejudiced, he is not supporting discrimination, or antagonism against other people because they are of a non-western, non-white or non-christian-jewish ethnicity. He criticizes capitalism as an ideological form of fascism. - Jazz does not escape the structures, it only evokes the ideological impression as though it would. - Adorno is very well aware of the codes that dominate the compositions of both Bach and Brubeck - and it is exactly that which he is aiming at in his criticism. Revolutionary music is done with codes like this. It slaps tradition right in the face.

[@stephanieroberts4837]

I realize this video is two years old but - Adorno was very well aquainted with Wagner. He mentions Wagner many times throughout his writings, so I don't know where you got the idea that he was unaware of him.

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

When do I say Adorno wasn't aware of Wagner?

[@stephanieroberts4837]

@TheoryPhilosophy At 23:34, when discussing Mussolini's enjoyment of jazz, you say that Adorno has "never heard of Wagner." Who yes, Hitler was a big fan of. Unless I misheard you and you actually say he *has* heard of Wagner? If so, I apologise.

[@Ohyehah]

I found your playing refreshing, feel free to do so again :) What I would question, however, was the choice of pieces. I've had a hard time finding the text myself, but I gather Adorno wrote this in the 30's. This was at a time before much use of expanded conceptions of tonality and rythm in jazz, like we see in Brubeck who came much later. I am definitely not saying Adorno's judgements of quality are valid, but I believe this is based on a mistake that you might ever so slightly have repeated here: Judging aesthethic value on the basis of precisely the beliefs of the aristocracy. That complexity is good, that repetition is bad, these are huge assumptions. Before Wittgenstein's influence and other developments in the field of aesthetics, essentialist views on art were fairly common. And Adorno didn't in my understanding look to Beethoven as the ultimate standard of musical quality, but rather Schönberg and other avant-gardists, who did produce much more complex rythms and harmonies than any jazz artist at that time. As such I can partly understand Adorno's initial attitude, but I find it damning that he didn't question his view of artistic merit, and also that he never re-examined his statements.

[@roberth7921]

I don't think you have a grasp of how developed Adorno's musical ears are. A very achieving composer himself, he writes quartets using the twelve-tone system. Listen to those first and decide whether he 'heard only noise' from jazz.

[@AndySalinger33]

Finally! A comment not falling in line with the overwhelming majority here! I wholeheartedly agree with you. Very well written.

[@JUNNY923]

Guitar and philosophy... two of my favourite hobbies. It's like the algorithm has conspired against me! In all seriousness though, I find chromatism a more difficult concept to implement in my playing than diatonicism. It's also ironic that jazz has been relegated (or elevated?) to the musical elite. I wonder what Adorno would say if he were still alive.

[@rarestudor5173]

Same here

[@MaxvergaxS]

Adorno talked about the transformation of music under industrial production in the 30's ya dork, people never seem to get actual philosphy

[@saradiart5994]

I like it very much, that you intersect Philosophy with particular other things: music or chess

[@IgNaceus]

Not only did Adorno listen to Wagner, he wrote essays about his music. And his arguments against jazz, although highly debatable, are not exactly about it not conforming to "standard" music theory.

[@stuarthicks2696]

Kinda reminds me of Boudrillard’s take on the myth of wine 🍷 in French culture. Makes the point that it seemingly makes people feel like no matter what walk of life they’re from wine unites them into one class and hides the fact that some are much better off than others.

[@Novalarke]

Charlie Parker was 16 years old when Adorno wrote On Jazz.

[@sebastienleroy6013]

Jazz! Guitar! Philosophy! .... great video david!

[@Megaghost_]

His critique is from 1936, right? What did he think of jazz after 1959 when the genre evolved further in complexity? Did he write anything more about jazz after that essay? BTW, Absolutely fantastic video!

[@jrnfischer9906]

Adorno actually says that the spirit of doing the things for the things sake (he is quoting Wagner) is leading to both, the complexity of the classical music and the uprising of the Hitler. You didn’t do your homework. Adorno did.

[@rya2989]

It’s weird to me that people believe the manipulation of sound over time is hierarchical and that more sophistication is somehow “better” than minimalism. It may not always be explicitly stated but that’s the feeling I get often when listening to my peers opinions on “classical” music.

[@LesterBrunt]

True. I think what is meant by sophistication is that there is more meaning to the music besides this might get popular and make lots of money. I think he called it 'truthful' music, music that actually says something about the world. Like Schoenberg's concept of serialism was not developed to be the next #1 hit and sell many platinum records, the point was to discover a truth about music, human cognition and human culture.

[@zakaminzada4737]

Does anybody know what word he uses at 6:47, it kinda sounds like “ut putsu”

[@viktorwengbrsted7752]

I think he says “haute couture” which is something like the high-end fashion you see on the runway

[@dr.brianjudedelimaphd743]

I love this channel ! Quick thing to consider for “”Take Five,” the note that you state is outside of the scale (A natural) is from the Eb blues scale and the first part of the melody uses this Eb blues scale Keep up the great work !

[@theblackponderer]

Bruh! Bustin' out the guitar like a virtuoso. Awesome critical theory and awesome playing 😎

[@lionelrowe617]

bustin' kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZqXHqoiVnLxpjac

[@rskyler1]

Do you think he's making a comparison between classical music and classical writing that used meter?

[@beastofthepriest]

A nicely intonated guitar you've got there. Your playing is pretty much on point, Bruh.

[@JAYDUBYAH29]

This is great! Adorno didn’t know what he was authoritatively and ideologically opining upon. I would add though that the comparative statements with classical music are more accurate to the Baroque period. Later classical continues experimenting further and jazz is a direct extension of that lineage. Further jazz is the great American art form, displays many unparalleled black geniuses, and is profoundly emancipatory, intellectual and deep.

[@battragon]

"Ever make mistakes? They're clouds now." ^^ (Great guitar lesson; I didn't see that coming.)

[@rabbyssi4392]

Noise music (the genre) seems to fit Adorno’s characterization of jazz better than jazz itself. And Unlike jazz, it is wholly unmarketable except for a small niche of consumers (such as myself for example, I own many collectible Merzbow cd’s). I used to listen to noise because it was otherworldly and completely captured my attention. It was “liberating” at least in the sense that my inner monologue was drowned/repressed by it. I will give it to Adorno though, my avant jazz phase was a product of my noise phase. I started jazz with cecil taylor and sam rivers lol. Ik that such jazz was a much later development than what Adorno was analyzing but even then there seems to be more “theoretic structure” at play in their work than Merzbow’s. But… if Adorno was totally wrong, then what explains the natural progression of my taste from noise to avant jazz? Unless noise, too, is part of the same tradition of Beethoven?

[@rabbyssi4392]

Actually, didn’t classical music begin as a sign of the degradation and corruption of ecclesiastical music?

[@joeyt5427]

I love noise music too, and sick pfp bro

[@rabbyssi4392]

@@joeyt5427 thanks :)

[@Zing_art]

Is it Take Five by DB?

[@ConnerFields-jr9kb]

He was responding to 1930s jazz, no?

[@Arrrghmageddon]

This was incredible. Thank you for this.

[@thiccanie]

i just found your channel and you are so based please keep doing what youre doing

[@Ludwig_Cox]

Really interesting, cool video!

[@quayscenes]

Wonderful playing! I would like to hear your thoughts on the music of Schoenberg which Adorno seems to have enjoyed. Also, I wonder if Adorno had an opinion on Brubeck specifically. Brubeck studied with Darius Milhaud and brought a unique refinement to the jazz that Adorno would have had in mind when he began writing on the subject.

[@TheKhurana95]

Great video! Though I believe the sax melody on take five was by paul desmond

[@SPACEDOUT19]

I fully agree with his essay

[@timcareymusic]

Wonderful video. Just a heads up that Miles Davis attended Juilliard as a student. Your guitar playing sounds great!

[@DaMonster]

Yoo I’m a jazz guitarist - I did not expect this

[@23Stork]

you say John Coltrane I shout Beethoven you say Dizzy Gillespie I yell Mozart you say Louis Armstrong I SCREAM Chopin

[@confusedarmchairphilosopher]

Meaning what?

[@23Stork]

@@confusedarmchairphilosopher it's a reference to posts you see under popular old rock band's videos on youtube. Usually in the place of the jazzmen it's lady gaga/justin bieber and in the place of the composers it's metallica/led zeppelin

[@voidlr]

dude is talented in chess, guitar and phil omg 🤩

[@gmmaal7161]

The aristocracy in Europe was not the bourgeoise society. So it is true that Adorno adored certain characteristics of the aristocracy, but this was only because they were opposed to the bourgeoisie.

[@saraafonso4646]

Hello! Thank you so much for this video :) So I'm trying to investigate the effects of this type of claims made about jazz as an inferior music in today's music school environment. Do you think decades of bashing Jazz as non serious, immoral and savage music still has effects on music academia these days? I'm sorry for the random question. I'm having a hard time finding information on the matter. I've done a survey and there seems to be a divide between the musicians of each genre, the majority of jazz and classical students have made or heard depreciative comments about the other genre. I'm testing the hypothesis of it having to do with this early connotation of Jazz as low art by people such as Adorno. What do you think? Thank you :)

[@saraafonso4646]

Oh by the way, Miles did go to Julliard on a scholarship 🙂

[@mrlawilliamsukwarmachine4904]

I recall showing my flute teacher a couple of Yusef Lateef and Harold McNair CDs. She was like [shrugs] 'whatever'.

[@edwardgivenscomposer]

A frequent comment is that the Jazz of the time wasn't very good - hence his negative view of it. That it's not the complex intellectual Jazz we know and love today. I don't buy that. As a commenter says elsewhere here - "That complexity is good, that repetition is bad, these are huge assumptions." He can't but view Jazz through his own ethno-nationalistic spectacles, any more than Schönberg, who claimed to have "discovered something which will assure the supremacy of German music for the next 100 years." The world is wide. Relegating the aesthetics of people from other cultures to cheap consumerism is...pretty cheap.

[@LesterBrunt]

How was 1930's Swing music from other cultures?

[@edwardgivenscomposer]

@@LesterBrunt where was Adorno from?

[@LesterBrunt]

@@edwardgivenscomposer Germany and later USA. Also if you want to claim that nobody outside of the USA is allowed to analyze and critique US culture that would be rather absurd. And further, his critiques on Jazz are just a tiny part of a larger work that looks to critique Western society on its flaws and mistakes.

[@edwardgivenscomposer]

​@@LesterBrunt No need to put words in my mouth. Schoenberg seemed to think that "German" music was superior (via atonality) The dominant music of the 20th century was Afro American, not German. I don't consider that to be a cultural flaw or mistake.

[@philosophicsblog]

Mate, clip-on mic + guitar = no no... love your perspective

[@Michelle_Wellbeck]

If Adorno lived in this millenium I'd bet he'd say that dubstep is fascistic music

[@thefebo8987]

Maybe it is, who knows

[@joeyt5427]

WE NEED MORE GUITAR VIDEOS

[@JamesFox-o8p]

complete blockhead analysis, particularly your comparison of Bach and Brubeck as a rebuke to Adorno. Read Philosophy of New Music.

[@JamesFox-o8p]

adorno was deeply critical of the prevalence of 'classical' music and the 'old tonal order'. to say he didn't understand jazz because of blue notes is so stupid, he championed 12 tone. why don't you read a book before you get all hopped up on self righteousness and start clogging up the internet with stupid videos

[@ricochet8104]

Not a good book, epistemologic or musically wise. Heck, almost all philosophy made since the second half of the 19th century can only be described as utter trash, as his interpretation of musical culture and ""metaphisics". He should have stayed on his terrain, braindead marxist theory instead of clogging other artistic mediums with his awful taste and his understanding of the capitalist regime. Not a surprise, he was a self-righteous, childlish, psychotic thinker most of the time, like all the other members of the cancerous frankfurt school.

[@JamesFox-o8p]

@@ricochet8104 you play video games on KZbin so don't really think you have any basis to call other people childish

[@ricochet8104]

@@JamesFox-o8p I do. In fact, i have pretty much all the right to do so. Specially with "Thinkers" like Theodor if you can even call that "think". Also, i'm not the one in the video. Try harder.

[@chindico]

Excellent!

[@ice9055]

Damn. I was about to fall asleep, but it seems they'll have to be delayed for half an hour.

[@schadowizationproductions6205]

I always found some jazz music hard to enjoy but for Adorno here the problem is that it is too marketable. It seems like everything that at least looks less sophisticated than a web is part of what constitutes das falsche Leben.

[@zival.9663]

I am sorry, since I would want to kind of agree with you, but you've got it all mixed up. The main point of Adorno is that jazz (and other popular music) is not able to confront the problems that the form imposes on the artist and therefore can not proceed into a form dialectic that would push the form itself into historical development. He states that the form itself becomes like "a can" into which the material is put in. So you are mixing up the meaning of the word form that Adorno uses: you think of the "form" as an abstract genre (like defined by its sound or "vibe"? either of those call for musicological treatment and are not evident by itself), but the form Adorno is talking about is musical form, an overarching "building" principle into which the material is made up into a full piece. Your demonstration of the Bach-Brubeck is showing us the main material of both pieces, which is completely irrelevant to what Adorno is talking about here (+ the Brubeck "colouring of the scale" is what Adorno calls pseudoindividualisation, which you are probably aware of). The analysis of form would call for more than some licks - it would call for complete analysis. You are also stating that all Adorno heard in jazz was noise - that is simply and straightforwardly not true. He even calls some schlager and jazz pieces quite original, well composed. Another problem that i have with your essay is the statement about appropriation. Reducing music to music only and taking what is "put on extramusically" as "an appropriation" is an epistemic statement that is wrong in Adorno's (and my) view because it ignores the fact that these "worlds" (of the music and society) are intertwined and therefore not reducible to one or the other - that is the main methodological problem that Adorno tries to dechipher and put into account in his lecture on sociology of music. Thinking of music as music only which is than appropriated by specific societal forces is a way of thinking from 19th century and is rooted in bourgeois art history and theory. That's why i think this video essay is misleading to say the least. Adorno is a thinker who put out a very specific critique of jazz and other popular music, which is very much a child of its time, but his points are, whether you want it or not, still alive today and to be taken seriously if one is to engage with popular and other music in a theoretical fashion (that's why almost all of the philosophical and musicological engagements with popular music start with explicating their relationship with Adorno). Where one disagrees with Adorno, he should first engage with his ideas and actually try to understand what he is talking about before putting out such a strawman.

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

ONly BeEThOveN iS ReAL MuSiC!

[@zival.9663]

@@TheoryPhilosophy Ah, good old music, the one field that anyone with five minutes of time can tackle with absolute ease.

[@alphakid9000]

I disagree that 'colouring the scale' would be 'pseudoindividualisation'. This is what people mean when they say Adorno doesn't understand. It's the idea that the music isn't systematic. The choice to 'add colour' is completely based in theory, the 'blue note(s)' come from other modes of the major scale that are superimposed over the chord to create a harmonic tension to later be released. Which colours are chosen is based on knowledge of which harmonies are compatible and there absolutely can be wrong notes. Another area where you can see his ignorance is his understanding of syncopation and swing. These elements come directly from African music which utilises polyrhthyms and 'harmonic' rhythm - utilising multiple rhythms simultaneously to create rhythmic 'chords' as one would do with notes in a harmonic sense. The basic form of jazz utilises a simple polyrhthmic ratio of 6 within 4 to create the swing rhythm and then adds syncopation to give the feeling of basic jazz There is no 'off' beat. There are two rhythms which, together, form a ratio and are explored alternatively for tension and release and to give rhythmic propulsion. Again, systematic. Adorno sees this as arbitrary because he sees Africans and derivations of their music as primitive

[@edwardgivenscomposer]

@@alphakid9000 exactly and don't forget his assertion that the sax - a German invention - was now being downgraded to convincing people of the "vitality (meaning sexuality) of Blacks". He couldn't face the fact that Jazz extended the vocabulary of tonality, and even more egregiously was created by African Americans. So much for the "supremacy of German music"

[@gratefuldead3750]

Why do you say Adorno was racist?

[@JHimminy]

Reflex

[@peter_puype]

The booklet was written in 1933. The examples you give (Miles, Brubeck and Parker) are all written after 1933. It is true that Adorno misinterprets it somewhere. Yet he speaks of jazz that was 'on the market' before the revolutionary bebop from the 4ties. I think you are primarily an American conservative with a particular hate for Marxism. In other words: a troll. And talking about Take 5: There's nothing 'special' on that song, it's just written in an Eb blues scale. About the 'racist' Adorno: Born in Frankfurt in 1903 to an Italian-Catholic mother and a German-Jewish father who had converted to Protestantism, Theodor Adorno spent his early years ensconced in the vibrant fin-de-siecle world of Austro-German culture. In the 1920s, he worked professionally as a pianist, composer, and critic, while pursuing graduate studies in philosophy and aesthetics. For him, music went hand-in-hand with Marxism. When Max Horkheimer took over the Institute for Social Research in 1930, he assembled an impressive array of philosophers and social critics that grew to include Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, and Erich Fromm. After fleeing Nazi Germany in 1934 for England, he reached American shores in 1938, where he would remain throughout the war, living in New York and Los Angeles, before returning for good to Germany in 1949.

[@ricochet8104]

Wouldn't call him a troll. Every iteration of hate against marxism is perfectly genuine.

[@jacobplitman6183]

This is a great video, and you sound good on the guitar! Though using Brubeck to prove that jazz follows rules is a little too easy imo, and I'm not sure that Brubeck's diatonicity attacks the crux of what Adorno was (racistly) saying. But regardless, I think you're exactly right about Adorno's flat out ignorance of the structures within jazz. He doesn't exactly recant, but some of what Adorno writes in Aesthetic Theory does walk back the claims he made in the much-earlier jazz essay. Anyway thanks for making this!

[@patricktan7120]

nice start to the video lol

[@veinrock4650]

E-F#-G#-A-B-C#-D#-E

[@dimkilago2958]

Although I agree in several parts with what Adorno says about Jazz (syncopation, etc), I would really like to see his face when he found out that several of the pieces of his beloved Alban Berg are as if they came out of cliché thrillers,lol. To me the happy melodiousness of a Jazz piece and a tighter Mozart piece for example sound almost as irritatingly lifeless, almost like a parody, although I can appreciate Mozart's ability to create harmonies more. Western music has no soul. The best fate it could have is atonal music. The critical construction of lifeless structures. If one wants to hear deep personal emotions (sadness, joy, etc.) being captured, one must look to the East kzbin.info/www/bejne/b2rbY4ijdpWngNE&ab_channel=%CE%91%CE%B5%CF%81%CE%AC%CE%BA%CE%B7%CF%82%CE%9A%CF%81%CE%B7%CF%84%CE%B9%CE%BA%CF%8C%CE%9C%CE%BF%CF%85%CF%83%CE%B9%CE%BA%CF%8C%CE%95%CF%81%CE%B3%CE%B1%CF%83%CF%84%CE%AE%CF%81%CE%B9-%CE%A3%CE%B5%CE%AF%CF%83%CF%84%CF%81%CE%BF%CE%BD. The spirit of the idealist revolutionary who had caught by Beethoven in several of his works stands to this day fresh. The only thing I feel fresh in Western classical music.But already the idealistic revolutionary is far from drama and joy.

[@minotaurmangum7911]

I don’t think it’s valid to use examples from the 40’s & 50’s to refute claims Adorno made in the 30’s, since Jazz transformed radically in those decades. You need to base it the kind of music he may have been actually hearing.

[@alphakid9000]

I think it's fine. although jazz did change dramatically in the late 40s/early 50s, the techniques that Brubeck was using in the time of take 5 were quite simple compared to the likes of Coltrane in the same era. For example the techniques stated here are very fundamental to jazz and are plentiful in the 30s and 20s. The likes of Duke Ellington and his orchestra (around from the 20s) contain compositions much more ambitious. This idea that jazz only developed this post war is a stretch

[@LesterBrunt]

Adorno gives many examples in the text, if you look up those it is very obvious that he is talking about a Jazz genre that was the most bland, cookie cutter, run of the mill, purely made for popularity, garbage.

[@philosophicsblog]

There are a few perspectives relating 'Classical' music theory as privileging the West and by extension 'white' music and racism. Here's a decent take: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gaOWoqh9nZyjgKM

[@tannerhagen774]

I’ve noticed when someone really cares about something there is this elitist tendency people can have. Like a buddy of mine who is fully ensconced in film can get snarky with movies, that are for the most part enjoyable for a wide audiences, that don’t fit a certain criteria.

[@smkxodnwbwkdns8369]

That’s because their taste is more developed. A sophisticated taste is more sensitive and the opposite of that, a naive taste, is more susceptible to the superficial qualities and easier manipulated, etc. I never understood anti-intellectualism, or people trying to disregard any possibility of experts that everything must be understood on this innocent and naive level.

[@smkxodnwbwkdns8369]

Where your friend is going wrong is he lacks magnanimousness. He can be his snobby self unto himself and with other snobs but lording that over others is wrong.

[@tannerhagen774]

@@smkxodnwbwkdns8369 I agree that not everything has to be written in the "innocent and naive level" and in fact it is quite rewarding to struggle through understanding someone like Adorno where you have to put in the work of thinking rather than having something spoon fed to you. Having said that how do you distinguish between this intellectual endeavor versus intellectual masturbation? To play a little devils advocate, I often find that some people can say a whole lot while saying nothing at all. One example of Judith Bulter, "The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural tonalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power" You don't have to explain this, but just an example of overly wordy for the sake of being overly complicated. I can invoke intelligent thinkers who are quite clear such as Orwell who highlights straightforwardness compared to obfuscation. Seneca has a few lines regarding this as well, "instead of those who by their teaching do their best to make philosophy seem difficult rather than great" & "I prefer to that my letters should be just what my conversation would be if you and I were sitting in one another's company...spontaneous and easy, for my letters have nothing strained or artificial about them". Do you ever oscillate between the intellectual and simplicity and if critiquing the "difficult" automatically mean to be anti-intellectual? Is there a trade-off between the two? I leave the questions vague to get a more creative/interesting response from you if you decide to respond, apologies for the long message.

[@LesterBrunt]

@@tannerhagen774 You are spot on about the pretentious language. I had to read Adorno in Dutch and it was one of the most horrible text to read through. Page long sentences with thousands of commas. And such a shame because I really like his ideas but it is almost impossible to read through. I have Dialectic of Enlightenment but I just can't physically read more than a page in a sitting, I guess my intelligence reached it limits. But maybe there is no way around this. If you want to describe very complicated things you have to use complicated language. I once read a text from Barthes about music where he developed a way to talk about a piece of music without any adjectives and it was insanely difficult because he basically had to invent new concepts and perspectives to talk about music, that you first have to learn to understand what he is talking about. But if you do then it is really interesting what he has to say about it and it makes a lot of sense. But inherently you can't do that without it being very complicated and almost impossible to follow.

[@luisgonzalez-aponte2856]

Did this guy literally just base his whole argument on a non-harmonic tone? If he had just played more of the same Bach prelude you would see Bach does more than Brubeck when talking about harmony and counterpoint, including the uses of non-harmonic tones. Was Adorno partial to aristocracy? There is plenty of information to support that claim, but not enough to insinuate some of the more defamatory and insulting claims made in this video. Beyond the the baseless claims made, this guy does not realize bringing up names such as Miles Davis is completely worthless. Miles Davis was a baby when Adorno was publishing some of his more acclaimed works. The state of Jazz was vastly different at the time of Adorno than by the time Bee Bop had been taken to its now known evolutions. It would be as if a music critic from the time of Guillaume de Machaut critiqued Luciano Berio.

[@TheoryPhilosophy]

Where's the bee bop hive??? Can bees bop?? 🐝

[@primalpatel8015]

Jazz is arguably not a genre. Like other forms it is an anti-genre (possibly).

[@cwoodward6614]

👍 P-R-O-M-O-S-M!

[@LesterBrunt]

Well there is something to Jazz having this mystical exotic aura. There is something to what Adorno says. Jazz is known as “free” from constrains and doing its “own” thing but you could also argue it does very little of that. Learning jazz is also learning a very strict vocabulary and norms. The vast majority follows or is based on “standards”. The guitar has to have a certain tone and the drums need to be played a certain way, etc. Every song is basically “main theme > impro > main theme > impro > etc”. The harmony is extremely focussed on ii V I. And it has huge culture of elitism. You can’t “not like” jazz, you either like it or you don’t understand it. Pop/rock is “low” art and jazz is “high art”. Jazz icons like Davis and Armstrong are mystified to ridiculous proportions, completely dehumanizing them. I noticed that Adorno’s critique of Jazz is the thing people mention to show “look he isn’t always on point”. But isn’t he showing a blind spot? Oh sure him burning popular music to the ground that is fine but don’t you dare touch jazz, jazz is sacred. I totally get how him calling jazz primitive is extremely problematic. But to some extent I can also follow it. I can also see jazz as some kind of orientalism, this fake image of the “other”, you have “western” music which id “normal”, “ours” and you have “jazz” which is exotic and foreign. Kinda like how you painted the picture that jazz was formed by African-Americans based on their African culture even though by the time jazz was created they were Americans and fully integrated into American culture. Of course oppressed and extorted but nonetheless Americans by culture. What exactly is non western about jazz? It is diatonic, it uses western instruments in standard western set ups like bass drums guitar piano, it follows a western AB or rondo form, harmonies are completely western, based on western sheet music, etc. Jazz is an American product and thus by definition shaped by American culture. And to some extent jazz is not that complicated. Of course it is very hard to learn and all those players are insane virtuosos, no denying that. But the music relies on improvisation which limits the music to some capacity. Improvisation is what makes jazz so interesting and exciting but it constrains the music. Even the best improviser can only think so much ahead. And doing it with 3 other people means you can’t just do whatever and have to follow some kind of form. You can’t improvise gamelan, it is impossible that 10+ people can make that up on the spot. To reach a certain level of complexity you have to have forethought and deliberation. Of course the word primitive is problematic because it implies linear evolution and hierarchy. But in a sense that problematic word also perfectly describes the possible thought people had at that time of jazz and why it was so popular. Like a form of minstrel show, jazz is exotic, it is “free” from western constrains, it is inspired by a “primitive” time before they were corrupted by the west. In your own comparison you showed how Brubeck is essentially nothing new compared to 300 year old music and fundamentally western yet it is represented as “jazz”, the “other”, “free” music. And if you compare the whole pieces there is objectively more complexity to Bach because the music is completely conceptualized and Brubeck is based on improvisation and thus has to rely on simple forms like theme > impro > theme > impro, etc.

[@mathiashinke1707]

As always things are more difficult as there is time to explain. Unfortunately the analysis conclusions you have taken do not mention his motivations for a teleological understanding of the artist in the aftermath of the holocaust. His negative dialectic, more a "culpa nostra" for the german intellectuals than a real theory, tries to assign to art a beacon-role for the prevention of any further instalment of fascism in Europe by reaching to the audiences not with comforting and pleasant music but rather with one that would remind of the horros of the past and point to a future where the distribution of the sensible has been organised in a society that has fully become modern. He, just as Latour and Ranciere, is interested in the political dimensions of aesthetics or better put in the aesthetic regime of the distribution of the sensible. All this does not exempt him from performing epistemic violence by permitting himself (as an European intellectual) to talk about all others from his vantage point. Thank you still for the video!

[@iracknads]

You all realize that Adorno and George Martin wrote all Beatles songs up until biological James Paul McCartney was ritually murdered on 11SEP66, don't y'all?!? All of their records were recorded by professional studio musicians like Vic Flick and Ronnie Verrell. The Beatles was one of the top five psy-ops of all time. Lenin, Starr and Harrison couldn't play their way out of a paper bag!

[@LesterBrunt]

Bernard Purdie played the drums, that is what he claims.

[@tunateun]

baffling take by mr adorno, also since lots of classical music at that time was incredibly disharmonic and experimental, and simultaneously lots of jazz music borrowed heavily from classical music theory like Bach

[@Megaghost_]

Yes, but can you provide many - not obscure - examples of that kind of jazz from the 30s, when Adorno wrote his essay? This is why I asked if he had anything to say about jazz after the 50s, it took a sharp turn into experimentation and complexity that puts a lot of distance from what was usually on the radio decades before.

[@alphakid9000]

@@Megaghost_ I think this is wrong as some of the most ambitious and complex jazz music was being made in the 30s. Duke Ellington was extremely popular and is direct inspiration to pretty much every genius from that great era of experimentation that you are speaking about (Mingus, Coltrane, etc). It was happening and the language those guys stand on was created much earlier, it was also the most pop in the 20s/30s and I think this plays into the misconception. The step from ellington to Davis is very small. I listen to a song like Caravan by Ellington and can easily imagine this over Miles' modal playing in the late 50s. Sophisticated Lady of 1933 is also easily heard in the likes of Misty by Errol Garner over 20 years later

[@Megaghost_]

@@alphakid9000 I can't disagree on the examples you gave, they were very innovative, although from the point of view of someone in 1936, who could have predicted the path Jazz was going to take even when its foundations were already set in motion? My point is that it would've been much harder to stand up for that essay 20 years later. Even then, it is not my intention to defend it, at the time it was written his criticisms were already asinine and unfair for the most part.

[@iliagogoberidze4776]

I think problem with jazz is the form, like that of classical sonata form. it is structured in a way that requires a lot of skill and knowledge. Beethovens late sonatas, Mahler symphonies or Wagner operas are vastly superior forms of music simply because of it's nature. improvisation will not get you that deep. jazz follows very simple structure but of course jazz musicians are as incredible as anyone because of their mastery of improvisation

[@red_apple]

The absolutely stupid opinions about music of Adorno have kept me away from reading any of his works, I don't think he deserves my time

[@smkxodnwbwkdns8369]

Well you appear to have the king of stupid opinions on your profile picture, why not read Adorno if you read someone that believed the progress and equality of women was a bad idea.

[@xenoblad]

I like this essay because we can all be making similar mistakes like Adorno. I generally have a very hard time appreciating current popular rap and hip-hop music, but I don't want to give in to my bias. I try to listen to Cardi B, and while I still haven't gained that appreciation, I learned that I'm simply a layman not musically trained enough to identify the value of her music from an unbiased view. I, on paper, have always believed that all music is equally viable, but actually internalizing it has been a life long journey. My current project is understand why some people enjoy a genre which is called "noise". This one kind of seems nice I think? kzbin.info/www/bejne/rXaod2BoesqNqbs&ab_channel=leeccdoo it's called "Inner Mind Mystique 5" by Masonna

[@Michelle_Wellbeck]

I'd be glad to try to help you appreciate Rap music. I think Cardi B has some of the most approachable and easy to listen to rap music these days. For example take her track "Bodak Yellow" and appreciate the immediate impact of how her vocal delivery arrests the listener through the slurred delivery of the lyrics which skillfully manipulate where emphasis is placed within the musical bar. On top of that the atmosphere and intensity of the song is built through the tone of her voice delivering smart boastful lyrics.