POP IS LIKE PULP FICTION. JAZZ IS LIKE LITERATURE

WHY JAZZ IS NOT POPULAR LIKE POP MUSIC

     First, we’ll see why most people like pop music. ‘Pop’, is ‘popular’ music that appeals to a broad spectrum of people of all age groups, especially those between eight and nineteen.

     We will also get to understand why there are so many pop music listeners and so few that allow themselves to listen to Jazz or Western classical music or Hindustani and Carnatic classical music.

     Most people aren’t into music. That’s the sad truth. Most people can do without music during their daily lives. They are nescient to music; it’s of no significance to them. They do not know, nor do they want to know about music. Music to many is like aural wallpaper, like elevator music or shopping mall music. The general listener sort of eavesdrops and overhears a tune which can be listened to without paying it too much attention.

     Those who are superficially into music, like their music for what they expect music to do for them: some like music that will make them dance. Others like their music to bring on nostalgia, or make them happy.

     So why is pop popular, and why is other music not popular?

     Pop is good songs - Pop music is usually simple accessible music with words. People respond well to music that has both melody and lyrics. Catchy melodies are the hook and lyrics or words make it easy to connect meaning to songs.

     Simple rhythms -- In addition to lyrics, pop music has rhythmically simple and steady beats, the beat may be fast or slow, and go dum-dum-dum-dum; but then, that’s what makes listeners feel they’re part of the music.

     The simple appeal of pop music. The strong beat and the lyrics make pop easy to listen to. It is easy fleeting music. Pop music is not for thinking about, pop listeners don’t want to intellectualise their music. By and large there are no surprises in pop, that’s why among the many genres of music, American Country music is popular, because it ticks all the boxes: good lyrics, simple melodies, simple rhythms, and simple logical harmonies.

     Music videos - People are also suckers for visual gratification. People love to gape at music videos. Pop music world-wide, is typically promoted by picturising a song where a video or a movie visually supports the song - creating visual cues along with the melody. This visual entertainment adds another mode of connecting to pop music and lyrics.

     To all generalisations there are exceptions - some pop songs are more complex than others, they have interesting chord progressions and harmonies, but these songs are less popular. The more mature music lovers, usually beyond the 13 to 19 age group that pop is aimed at, appreciate these songs. These songs are also appreciated by those who are open to listening to other kinds of music.

     Since this piece is about why people listen to pop and not jazz, we will focus on jazz and not on classical music though we love and listen to classical music too.

     What’s with jazz?  Jazz is a highly technical art form that is more complex than simple. Jazz is very often instrumental - there are no lyrics or words to relate to, only tunes, and that too tunes with harmonic complexity and quite a bit of dissonance.

 Jazz is characterized by improvisation, and an inimitable sound: a swinging rhythm, complex chords, harmonies and chord progressions, pitch deviation (when a musician intentionally leaves the scale but still makes strange but beautiful music), blue notes (certain notes in the scale that are flattened. Blue notes are called blue for the feeling they give that touch our souls),

 and dissonant notes (jazz, western classical and even rock music as well as in Carnatic classical music make use of dissonance, that is, sounds that sort of clash with each other. In Carnatic music dissonances are called ‘vivadi’' and skilled musicians use these to enhance a raga's charm).

     Jazz is improvisation – To listen to Jazz is also to listen to great technical prowess by the musician and to revel in the creativity of the musician while s/he improvises and innovates on the spot. Jazz musicians use a melody and chord progression of a song as a guide for their improvisation, creating variations and new interpretations of the music.

     In Jazz, each piece/tune is full of twists and turns, a story with beginning, a middle and end that travel and take the listener on a journey of exploration and discovery.

      Jazz is sometimes discordant - less predictable, and it often strays into extreme syncopation, changing time signatures, syncopated rhythms (rhythms that accent or emphasize the offbeats) and polyrhythms (simultaneous use of two or more rhythms).

     Then there is vocal jazz, and surprise, surprise, vocal jazz has swing and blue notes, unique tonality and pitch deviation, dissonant notes, polyrhythms and improvisation too. 

     Jazz vocalists interpret songs which may be 'jazz standards'* but, to do so, the jazz vocalist should be accomplished enough to keep up with the band and impart the feeling of jazz through phrasing and rhythmic subtlety; through melodic vocal improvisations called scat singing, where the vocalist imitates an instrumentalist's tone and rhythm. In vocal jazz it is the way the song is sung that matters, the same song can be sung in different ways; a jazz singer would invest a song with different subtle emotions.

     Listening to jazz, both instrumental and vocal, requires some listening and comprehension skills to enjoy jazz musicians’ aesthetic, their lyrical playing, their rich musicianship, their creative artistic intent and their profound and emotive lyricism. 

     Pop is popular. Jazz is uncommon and unfamiliar. Before we touch on the analogy of reading page turners and literary novels and listening to pop music and jazz, we must first admit the sad truth: Most people don’t read. Many have never a read a book if it is not work-related, or if it’s not in their academic curriculum. They do not want to read. They have no desire to read. They are quite indifferent to reading; reading is not important to them.

     The analogy - Pop music is like pulp fiction, potboilers and page turners. Jazz is like literary novels or literature. Just a small percentage of people read for pleasure and just a small percentage of people listen to music for the pleasure of listening to music. More people read pulp fiction like Mills and Boone romances, and Lee Child’s ‘Jack Reacher’ books, or James Patterson or Danielle Steele novels in preference to books by literary writers like Amitava Ghosh, or Salman Rushdie, or Zadie Smith or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, or Arundhati Roy. 

     Readers of literary writing love the profound way in which language is used, and how words are used for their emotive and descriptive qualities. Literary writing takes us through many realms of experience that stay with us, feed our souls and our minds ear, and all this while we relish the aesthetic, the lyrical writing and the rich and creative artistic intent. Readers of literary novels, plays, and poems - enjoy the pure, unadulterated, sensual pleasure of reading, and enjoying the craft of the writer. They appreciate well-written sentences, and the way we are transported to an adventure that unfolds and enfolds - where we hear with our eyes and see with our ears – where we are carried away by imagination like it happens while listening to jazz and classical music.

     The difference between reading potboilers and literary novels is: you can just give your mind a rest while reading a page turner as one does while listening to most pop music, but jazz and classical music has to be listened to attentively.

     Jazz lovers are attuned to listening carefully/attentively to music and since one gets involved with the music, it evokes deep emotions and passions. Listening to jazz needs time and concentration, and due to this attentiveness to music, hears beauty in all types of music and is especially taken in/up by jazz with its core value of breaking musical boundaries and its improvisation, lyrical playing and its rich and creative artistic intent which stimulates emotions and the intellect as Jazz can be hot, intense and otherworldly, cool and introspective, and at the same time jazz can be joyous, light-hearted and amusing.

     To a regular listener of pop, jazz is not easy music to listen to. Pop music does not require an investment in time specially to listen. Since it is easy listening music listeners of pop are not conditioned to listen to music as the only thing to do, whereas listeners of classical music and jazz make time to listen to music exclusively. Just as readers love reading and music lovers appreciate music, it really doesn’t matter whether what one reads or listens to, whether it is mass culture, popular culture or high culture.

     All music is music to our ears, and all readers are appreciative of writers for writing pot boilers or pulp fiction, or, literature and literary fiction, all of us who love music are grateful to all creators of music for making music. We are glad to listen to all music – pop, or classical, or jazz. 

*Standards are enduring, timeless and well-known tunes among jazz musicians which can be sung and played in a wide variety of styles and tempos. Standards allow musicians to use the melody and chord progression of these songs to provide a framework to fashion variations and new interpretations of the music in their improvisation and put their own unique stamp on the music.

Lyric Poets 3 JONI MITCHELL - THE CIRCLE SONG - BOTH SIDES NOW

Joni Mitchell - Roberta Joan Mitchell, is widely considered the most influential female recording artist and composer to have emerged from the folk scene of the 1960’s

Joni Mitchell's gift of melody and her lyrics, which approach pure poetry brought a new import and seriousness to pop. To my mind she was more than a pop or folk singer, her music traversed the aesthetics of music right across folk, rock and Jazz.

Renowned lyric poets and contemporaries, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen admired her. She was revered by such groundbreaking jazz musicians as Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Shorter, and Herbie Hancock.

Here’s what her musician friends say about her – David Crosby: “She's a better poet than Dylan and without question a far better musician. I don't think there's anybody who can touch her”. On another occassion, he said, "She’s the best singer-songwriter of her time. She’s as good a poet as Bob [Dylan], and she’s 10 times the musician Bob is.” 

Neil Young: “I love Joni. She’s wonderful. She’s one of the greatest artists of our generation. She may be the greatest artist of our generation.” 

Dianne Reeves: “Joni Mitchell's music reaches generations of listeners because it is beautiful poetry set to elegant music” 

Herbie Hancock understood something implicit about Mitchell when he said “she was never -- ever -- a folksinger. Her compositions have always walked wildly adventurous rhythmic and harmonic terrain”

“Joni Mitchell exists outside the typical conceptions of modern music as she balances narrative and musical complexity”

Joni Mitchell had a soaring soprano voice in the beginning of her career, her voice dipped to a lower register later, but was equally compelling, and in addition to her expressive singing voice, her guitar, piano and dulcimer playing were innovative, ethereal and refined.

I will feature two of the songs that I first heard by Joni Mitchell that made a lasting impression. Born in November 1943 in Canada, Joni Mitchell was 24 - 25 years old when she performed/recorded these songs. THE CIRCLE GAME and BOTH SIDES NOW.  

THE CIRCLE GAME - In this poetic song, Joni Mitchell tells the story of a child's journey to adulthood, expressing the inevitability of time and growing up. She uses a carousel as a metaphor for the years that go by, pointing out how we can look back, but we can't return to our past.

The Circle Game was partly written in response to Neil Young's song about lost innocence, "Sugar Mountain". Young and Mitchell are both from Canada and met in the mid-'60s. Joni Mitchell said: "I didn't write 'Circle Game' as a children's song, but I'm very pleased to see it go into the culture in that way."

THE CIRCLE GAME

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star

Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like when you're older must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels thru the town
And they tell him take your time it won't be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There'll be new dreams maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round

In the circle game
© March 22, 1966; R. Joan Mitchell

Listen to Joni Mitchell sing The Circle Game -  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9VoLCO-d6U
Musicares tribute to Joni Mitchell 2022- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AikTwSXdKrQ

BOTH SIDES NOW is another wonderful song. This is how Joni introduced the song when she first performed it: "This is a song that talks about sides to things. In most cases there are both sides to things and in a lot of cases there are more than just both. His and a hers. His and theirs. But in this song, there are only two sides to things… there’s reality and I guess what you might call fantasy. There’s enchantment and dis-enchantment, what we’re taught to believe things are and what they really are."

At another performance she said she was inspired by a certain idea while reading Saul Bellow’s book ‘Henderson the Rain King’. She said, “there's a line in "Henderson the Rain King" that I especially got hung up on, that was about when he was flying to Africa and searching for something, he said that in an age when people could look up and down at clouds, they shouldn't be afraid to die. And so, I got this idea 'from both sides now.'”

BOTH SIDES NOW

Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way

I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I've looked at love that way

But now it's just another show
You leave 'em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know
Don't give yourself away

I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It's love's illusions I recall
I really don't know love at all

Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say "I love you" right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I've looked at life that way

But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I've changed
Well something's lost, but something's gained
In living every day

I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

I've looked at life from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all
© June 19, 1967

Listen to Joni Mitchell  - Both Sides Now  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcrEqIpi6sg
Dianne Reeves & Caecilie Norby - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tne9onzuqDU

Joni Mitchell has put wondrous poetry into music. The lyrics of these two songs transport the listener to a very high place, way beyond the ordinary. Joni Mitchell's lyrical stories of love, loss, hope and transformation sing to the soul. 

She sings pictures and paints music.
For one who never wanted to be a pop star. Joni explained she was nothing more than “a painter derailed by circumstances” 

She says, "I am a painter who writes songs. My songs are very visual".

All I can say is, I consider myself lucky to have lived in a time of poets who wrote stories and put them to music.

Lyric Poets 2 Leonard Cohen - Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen had many nicknames, 'pop icon', 'folk icon of the 60's', 'Lord Byron of Rock 'n' Roll'. 'Poet of Pleasure and Pain'. 'Legendary Ladies Man', 'Maestro of Melancholy', 'Canada's High priest of Poetry'.

Leonard Cohen was dedicated to being a songwriter, though he wrote two novels and several books of poems, to me, he is the quintessential lyric poet. The poet of song, the 'lord of song'.

Cohen's poetic lyrics or his tunes didn't fit into any genre of music or recognisable format ever since his debut in 1967 with 'Songs of Leonard Cohen', which came out in the same year as the first albums by the Doors, Jimi Hendrix and David Bowie, his work stood apart and was different from everyone else in the world of Rock and roll, folk, country music, skiffle or anything else. The depth of his lyrics, his care of the language, the philosophies he drew upon and his poetic craftsmanship were absolutely unique. Though one did hear in his music plenty of Spanish guitar, and Spanish Oudh and references to the Spanish poet whom he revered, Frederico Garcia Lorca. 

Alan Ginsberg coined the term Lyric poet, to describe Bob Dylan’s songs which he admired, Ginsberg felt that poetic songs bring poetry to a great number of people who would otherwise never have voluntarily strayed into reading poetry.

Writing a lyric is a different discipline from writing poetry, it is the marrying of poetry and melody. And unlike poems, lyrics of songs usually look bland on a page without the structure or the musical form holding them in place. Lyrics are not meant to be read like a poem, but to be heard, they're to be sung. Even so, many of Cohen’s words, like those of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Paul Simon and Tom Waits, among the rocking, folk, or other genre bending lyric poets I’ve come across, can often, but not always, be read on a page without the brilliant music they write, and still be considered poetry.

The beauty is that in addition to his spare, elegant and precise words, Leonard Cohen wrote attractive and sometimes catchy melodies that just fitted the words so well that one can't imagine the words separated from the melody. 

A fitting description of the craft of a lyric poet is - the merging of language with melody.

Leonard Cohen’s songs Suzanne, So Long Marianne, Hey That's No Way to Say Goodbye, Sisters of Mercy, Famous Blue Raincoat, Dance me to The End of Love, Everybody Knows, Bird on A Wire, I'm Your Man, If It Be Your Will, Take This Waltz, Chelsea Hotel, Joan of Arc, Democracy, The Stranger Songs are just a few of my favourites from his 'Tower of Song'.

Here's what Pico Iyer wrote about Leonard Cohen in 1998. "Cohen has always made a practice of defying every category--he's a community of one--even as he has moved from poems to novels to songs: the only writer I know who managed to become an international singing sensation, the only #1 performer who's also been a prize-winning poet. He tops the charts in Norway and Malaysia, and you hear his spirit behind every new generation of poet-songwriters (there are 12 tribute albums to him worldwide). He defined the Sixties for many of us, with songs like "Suzanne" and "Bird on a Wire"; he caught the bravado of the Eighties ("First We Take Manhattan"), and, having already plunged deep into the time out of time ("Night Comes On"), he then summarized the Nineties ("The Future"). ~ Pico Iyer

But this essay is not about Leonard Cohen, it's about a song he wrote in 1984, ‘Hallelujah’, one of the songs in an album called 'Various Positions'.

The lyrics of the original version of Hallelujah from ‘Various Positions’ was culled to four verses at the last minute before it was recorded, from the 80 verses that Leonard Cohen had written over the course of ten years. 

‘Various Positions’ was not a commercial success, nor was the song Hallelujah, noticed at the time. The producer said the album was a mess, especially after hearing Hallelujah, which he didn’t like at all, and reluctantly released Various Positions to limited markets in Europe in 1984 and America the following year (I got the cassette Various Positions from Rhythm House, Bombay in 1988 and couldn't get enough of all the songs in the album - 1. Dance Me To The End Of Love  2. Coming Back To You  3. The Law  4. Night Comes On  5. Hallelujah  6. The Captain  7. Hunter's Lullaby  8. Heart With No Companion  9. If it be your Will)

Hallelujah didn’t make an impression on the radio or the pop charts where Cohen was competing against the music of Michael Jackson and Madonna. Not even when Bob Dylan who liked the song when he heard it and sang it at a few concerts in 1988. John Cale performed his own version of the song in his tribute album to Leonard Cohen ‘I’m your Fan’ in 1991, and then Jeff Buckley sang his version of the song in the 1994, when it was noticed, but the song really took off when Rufus Wainwright sang it, modelled on the John Cale version of the song, in the animated movie ‘Shrek’.

Though the song and its title, to me, is confusing with its uncommon mix of images and thoughts, it still somehow holds together as a song.

"Hallelujah" in modern English, is a shout of praise or thanksgiving to express happiness that a thing hoped or waited for has happened.

Salman Rushdie would many years later note that “only Cohen would rhyme ‘Hallelujah’ with ‘what’s it to ya?’” In fact, every verse is built around the central not-quite-rhyme of “you” and “Hallelujah,” as if the pronunciation of “you” that’s necessary is a recurrent punch line built into the rhythm of the song. Cohen has said, “They are really false rhymes,” “but they are close enough that the ear is not violated.”)

The original version of the song in Various Positions has some biblical references, suggesting the stories of Samson and Delilah from the Book of Judges ("she cut your hair") as well as King David and Bathsheba 
("you saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you"). 

Cohen has always been ambiguous about what his "Hallelujah," with its sexual scenery and its religious symbolism, truly "meant." When asked, Cohen has said, "This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled,". "But there are moments when we can ... reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that's what I mean by 'Hallelujah." “I wanted to push the Hallelujah deep into the secular world, into the ordinary world,” he once said. “The Hallelujah, the David’s Hallelujah, was still a religious song. So, I wanted to indicate that Hallelujah can come out of things that have nothing to do with religion.”

Canadian singer K.D. Lang whose effortless, version of Hallelujah Leonard Cohen liked, said in an interview shortly after Cohen's death, that she considered the song to be about "the struggle between having human desire and searching for spiritual wisdom. It's being caught between those two places” 

Now this brilliant and beautiful song, with its inspired ascending melody, has been recorded, arranged and reinvented countless times and performed by every type of singer, and sung on all occasions. It has become a secular hymn. A modern standard.

Here are the lyrics of the song

Leonard Cohen’s 'Hallelujah'

Now, I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing hallelujah

Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the hallelujah

Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well really, what’s it to you?
There’s a blaze of light in every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken hallelujah

Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the lord of song
With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah

Some additional verses sometimes performed instead or after the original second verse

But baby I've been here before
I've seen this room and I've walked this floor
You know, I used to live alone before I knew ya
And I've seen your flag on the marble arch
And love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah

Well there was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show that to me do ya
But remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah

Maybe there's a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen original 1984 version 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1rB_XvrM5Q

Jeff Buckley  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8AWFf7EAc4

Rufus Wainwright 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQK4YfiPj1Q

K.D. Lang - Leonard Cohen felt 

"It's really been done to its ultimate, blissful state of perfection."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_NpxTWbovE

Lyric Poets 1 BOB DYLAN - A HARD RAIN’S GONNA FALL

A SOCIAL-PROTEST, FOLK BALLAD

To be distinct in character, works of literature, novels, plays and poems use poetic and literary devices such as imagery and symbols to help convey and illustrate the overall theme of the stories to readers, viewers and listeners. 

Musicians, poets and lyricists use alliteration and repetition to help certain verses become indelible in the listener's mind.

Bob Dylan’s allegorical Folk Ballad, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" shows how these literary devices are used to express his views on war. At first listen, the song, is ambiguous. It is cryptic and obscure. Yet it is poetic.  It is full of imagery and symbols, alliteration and repetition. 

"A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" was one of three social protest songs Dylan recorded on ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan', which he wrote at the age of 21 in 1962 at the time of USA’s unnecessary and illegitimate war in Vietnam.

The  Vietnam war, called (in Vietnam) the “War Against the Americans to Save the Nation”, was a protracted conflict from 1954 to 1975 between the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, the 'Viet Cong', against the government of South Vietnam and its ally the United States. 

The economic and human costs of the long inhuman conflict in Vietnam was apocalyptic. It was a barbarous, inhuman and exhausting war for all involved, and claimed between 2.5 million to 4 million lives, most of them Vietnamese civilians, however, in the end, the 'United States' was defeated and withdrew from Vietnam. 

The line in the song, “I met a young woman whose body was burning” was prophetic and prescient, because it was ten years later, in 1972, that the world would see the unforgettable photo of the little Vietnamese girl, Kim Phuc, running naked from her napalmed village. This image would drive home to the world, the horrors that that US was inflicting on Viet Nam.

Bob Dylan was perhaps also concerned about a possible nuclear war, as tensions between Russia and the U.S., which came to be called the Cuban Missile Crisis, peaked in October 1962. And ‘Hard Rain’ could possibly refer to nuclear-rain - radioactive fallout.

HARD RAIN’S A’ GONNA FALL

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? 
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?

I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?

I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept dripping
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleeding
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?

I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warning
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazing
Heard ten thousand whispering and nobody listening
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughing
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?

I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall

Oh, what will you do now, my blue-eyed son? 

Oh, what will you do now, my darling young one?

I’m a-going back out ’fore the rain starts a-falling
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the colour, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinking
But I’ll know my song well before I start singing
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall

Bob Dylan - A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXn9ZKPx6CY

Patti Smith - Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize performance 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=941PHEJHCwU

JAZZ MUSIC IS LIKE GOOD CONVERSATION

In truth, the art of all music is the art of listening. 

     Listening is what musicians do, whether it is western classical music, or Indian classical music. Listening is vital, especially in ensemble music, and in music where there is an element of improvisation.
Jazz is not esoteric, difficult music to listen to. Jazz is just music that has to be listened to attentively. 

     "Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate upon it in order to get the most of it. You must absorb most of it. The harmonies within the music can relax, soothe, and uplift the mind when you concentrate upon and absorb it. Jazz music stimulates the minds and uplifts the souls of those who play it was well as of those who listen to immerse themselves in it. As the mind is stimulated and the soul uplifted, this is eventually reflected in the body"  ~ Horace Silver – pianist and composer

     Jazz compositions are highly structured and completely planned pieces of music, at the same time, jazz is a musical art form that is partly planned and partly spontaneous, this means that jazz musicians in an ensemble play to an agreed upon musical theme, and while playing the tune, the musicians in the band add their own ideas to it in a musical dialogue, spontaneously improvising as they go along.

Recognizing Jazz

     To recognize jazz music, the music should swing, or, have passages of improvisation, or, have intriguingly placed flattened, dissonant, (blue) notes, and/or, create a variety of emotions.

.     Jazz Swings - it has a rhythm that makes you sway and swing, rather than rock back and forth, like the Duke Ellington song title says, ‘It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing’. 
.     Jazz has passages within the arrangement for musical improvisation.
.     Jazz has some flattened, dissonant and what are called blue notes in odd places within the composition.
.    And Jazz creates and conveys a variety of emotions in the listener.

Jazz is a journey of inventiveness and discovery

     "The essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing & instrumental personality." Mose Allison

      Jazz performers, whether they are vocalists or instrumentalists, are highly disciplined because jazz is a relatively complex music with several musical, technical, intellectual, and emotional elements happening in the music simultaneously, that's why jazz is called a musical art form.

Jazz could be said to be the art of listening and co-creating music.  

     Jazz musicians get together and play to a set musical theme - the planned part - and while playing the theme as planned, each musician adds their thoughts and ideas to the overall theme through their voice or musical instrument by listening to the last soloist and carefully responding.
Jazz musicians exchange ideas by evaluating and responding.  

     Every jazz musician learns to listen; it is a key skill which they deliberately develop and work on. It’s a jazz musician’s discipline to listen carefully and respond suitably. They exchange ideas, and this  sharing requires evaluation and response. ‘Evaluation’ is listening and understanding to what the others have said or played, and ‘response’ is in the clarifying, acknowledging, and retorting befittingly. Each musician adds to the ideas of the soloist; taking the thought further; continuing the thread, or, by re-joining with a new idea that is relevant to the theme which is in turn taken up and responded to by the musician who takes the next solo. What they improvise is always relevant to the conversation they're having.
Jazz musicians have good conversations. 

     Each soloist in the conversation responds to the mood of the music and to the other musicians in the conversation by extemporizing musical notes from their instruments; first creating a phrase, then a sentence and going on to creating a whole paragraph.      
     The beauty of the discipline of jazz, is that each musician plays an agreed upon number of measures, sometimes four, or eight, twelve or more measures. Each musician complies with the discipline, all the while being thematic, and, within the arrangement and sentiment of the tune. So, in every good jazz session, whether the musicians are playing standards or new compositions in a formal setting, or in an impromptu jam session, they listen to each other and improvise, but they keep the theme in mind and add their own ideas to the theme.
Listening to jazz
     For a lover of jazz, listening to jazz is an absorbing and immersive experience. To listen to Jazz and all music in which there is improvisation, is to listen to great technical prowess by the musician and to revel in the creativity of the musician one is listening to, in her/his ability to improvise and innovate while making complete sense.
     A jazz lover is accustomed to listening carefully/attentively to music and therefore is open to listening to all music, specially that which is involving. And due to this attentiveness to music, hears beauty in all types of music and is especially taken in/up by music which stimulates emotions and the intellect.

     A jazz lover often likes the classical music of their region, whether it is European Classical music or Hindustani classical, or Carnatic classical, or regional music from any of the continents on the planet. They even like pop music, folk and rock music. Jazz lovers usually like everything that catches the fancy of their intellect. However, their greatest musical preference is, more often than not - jazz.  
     Listening is not only the priority of the musician, but it is also that of the listener. Jazz is the art of intelligent musicians. But as Art Blakey says, "It takes an intelligent ear to listen to jazz."