Being a (sometimes) jazz musician I was really looking forward to this lecture. When I first entered college, I did so under jazz bass scholarships. My high school band director was very much so a "jazzer," and he instilled in many of us an inherent dis-trust of classical music/musicians. I believed, for a long time, that these musicians obviously couldn't think for themselves, and so they just repeated what a bunch of dead European guys had to say a long time ago. When I actually arrived at college, I learned that I couldn't major in "jazz bass," but that I would have to major on an instrument in the "classical" sphere (much like the story Bradford relayed about his stuidents experience at the school that shall remain nameless...Indiana). I viewed this as simply another hoop that needed to be jumped through, so I did it. But I did it, initially, with a lot of animosity, with an almost tongue-in-cheek studiousness.

As Bradford said, it is common for jazz musicians to refer to classical music as "legit" music (thereby infering that the other types of music were "ill-legit"). It is funny that he sounded so upset when he said it because the jazz musicians are the only ones who use that lingo. I read portions of Miles Davis' autobiography a while back and alot of the things that he said were reiterated by Bradford. Davis had a very "ify" view of white jazz musicians. Ironically Davis' three top-selling (and most influential) albums were collaborations with white musicians-- Birth of the Cool (1957) included an all-white band (except for Davis), Kind of Blue (1959) featured white pianist Bill Evans (and his arranging style) prominently, and Bitches Brew (1969) included a white (and Euorpean!) bassist and guitaist, Dave Holland and John McLaughlin, and a white pianist, Chick Corea. In his book he voiced the opinion that these albums successes had nothing to do, really, with the fact these were his most groundbreaking efforts and that they were clearly his best performances, but, instead their success was due primarily to the presence of white players! I thought Bradford's term "jazz-like" was interesting. He didn't really give any objective criteria for what makes something jazz or jazz-like.

I hope I am not coming off as sounding condescending. I have enormous respect and admiration for Bradford. I have always been fascinated by Ornette Coleman's music, and I never knew that we had a former bandmate of his roaming around Claremont. I guess the thing I notice more and more about jazz and classical music is the generational gap that seems to be there. It may be true that 20-30 years ago (when most of the current professors were gigging) that jazz musicians didn't get the respect they deserved from the public or from academia, but I really feel that that is totally gone now. There are still a lot of jazz musicians with big chips on their shoulders, but most of them are older or inherited it from their teachers. To be quite frank, both classical and jazz music have become almost irrelevent in regard to mainstream America. The audiences for these two genres is growing smaller and smaller. Ironically, our universities and conservatories are pumping more musicians trained in these two genres (usually only one) than ever before! Sometimes I wonder waht all of these folks (myself included) are going to do when they realize that their music is dying...

Personally, I think that our classification system (classical, rap, jazz, alternative, etc) is going to break down pretty soon. If you look at a typical teenager's iPod there doesn't seem to be any regard for these classifications. You will see kids listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers, Snoop Dogg, and Carrie Underwood one after the other, without breaking a sweat. You won't see classical or jazz though. Maybe we will end up with two categories "not-cool" (comprising classical and jazz, mostly) and "cool" (comprising most everything else) musics! :)

Sorry that I get so long-winded sometimes...I was riveted by Bradford's talk. I wish there had been more time! I just can't help but make observatins based on my background. Thanks for indulging me. Congrats if you actually made it this far!