I suspect this might not be a welcome interjection. But I’m going to make it anyway. On the basis of free speech, alternate views, healthy debate, etc.
I’m no fan (nor hater) of Kenny G. I barely know of him or his music, except that it’s ‘smooth jazz’, or ‘jazz-lite’, and seems to have once been quite popular; but not amongst jazzers, who mostly seem to see ‘The G-meister’ as a butt for their vitriol and scorn.
One of the only things I know about him, outside of the above, is that for a while Bruce Carter was his drummer. Bruce was the drummer for the group Pleasure, who were a superb Portland band, taken under the wing of The Crusaders’ Wayne Henderson (at the recommendation of Grover Washington). That alone makes me prepared – in theory; I’ve never actually put it to the test – to give the G-man a chance.
Outside of pop music, which is shoved down our throats daily by the suits, I choose to just ignore what I don’t like, rather than attack it.
And, quite frankly, why shouldn’t anyone duet with anyone else? If they want to. I’m into freedom for all, not the proscriptive denial of others freedoms. Should Bill Laswell be barred from making his ‘mix translations’? I think his Santana Divine Light project is fab. And his Miles stuff is pretty good as well.
Alice Coltrane was attacked for having the temerity to add strings to her husbands’ recordings, John Coltrane bring something of a sacred cow. The album she created, Infinity by doing so, is, in my view, sublime. But the tsunami of reactionary hatred it generated meant we got no more in that line. A real shame.
I think I dislike snobbery and proscription more than I dislike most music I’m not keen on. Sadly jazz seems peculiarly afflicted with virulent strains of snobbery. Once upon a time such jazzers might hold that anything claiming to be jazz not from N’Orleans, and/or pre-1929, was the work of insidious imposters. These guardians of ‘true jazz’ became known as ‘moldy [sic; a US term!] figs’.
Nigel, you dislike Kenny G. Fine. Don’t listen to him. But who are the real threats to respect for the jazz traditions? I think Kenny G’s hubris is relatively inconsequential. The hideous beast that is modern corporate pop, on the other hand? There’s an enemy of all music (and the human spirit) worth getting worked up about.*
PS – I can imagine the perfect pithy riposte to my lengthy disquisition… ‘f*ck *ff, Seb’!
*I’m more offended when I hear contemporary pop rap or r&b artists totally ripping off vintage soul and jazz, using it as karaoke in effect, with nary a nod to the authors of the music they desecrate with their vacuous egomaniacal ranting.