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are jazz charts disappearing from DCI ?


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On 10/28/2017 at 10:35 AM, waliman4444 said:

with the exception of BD and Bluecoats, it feels as though jazz is disappearing 

Jazz has been gone for years. I would pay big money to attend a drum corps show with diverse styles such as Jazz, Spanish, British, & Scottish. Gosh how I miss the show and uniform diversity of the '70's and '80's.

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3 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:

i think the diversity in DCI's programming is incredible lately, and even the chop and bop stuff is slowly dying out.....mashups are the rage. In previous eras, jazz or classical with some light pop ruled the day. 

I agree... the programming of recent years is certainly more engaging than it was in another era... at least it is to me.

Times have changed.  Hey... I love Big Band Era swing jazz... but I know it's not coming to a drum corps field anytime soon.  LOL.

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15 hours ago, Fran Haring said:

I agree... the programming of recent years is certainly more engaging than it was in another era... at least it is to me.

Times have changed.  Hey... I love Big Band Era swing jazz... but I know it's not coming to a drum corps field anytime soon.  LOL.

To play Devil's Advocate for a moment - why not?  BB jazz has pretty much completely disappeared, despite corps seemingly looking to every other era in music ever these days.  Are the band directors just burned out on it, or as Chuck Naffier once theorized, is *true* jazz playing too much work for little reward?  You can't even make an argument about audiences anymore - most are too young to remember when corps did it anyways.  What was the most recent DCI finalist to do a true full mainstream-type jazz show?  Crossmen in 2001 / 2002?

(At our band regional, Claudia Taylor Johnson, one of the big TX schools, in their show this year started playing Birdland.  You could actually hear the crowd getting excited.  Then they veered straight into Medea's Dance of Vengeance.  You could actually hear the crowd stop being excited.)

Mike

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27 minutes ago, MikeN said:

To play Devil's Advocate for a moment - why not?  BB jazz has pretty much completely disappeared, despite corps seemingly looking to every other era in music ever these days.  Are the band directors just burned out on it, or as Chuck Naffier once theorized, is *true* jazz playing too much work for little reward?  You can't even make an argument about audiences anymore - most are too young to remember when corps did it anyways.  What was the most recent DCI finalist to do a true full mainstream-type jazz show?  Crossmen in 2001 / 2002?

(At our band regional, Claudia Taylor Johnson, one of the big TX schools, in their show this year started playing Birdland.  You could actually hear the crowd getting excited.  Then they veered straight into Medea's Dance of Vengeance.  You could actually hear the crowd stop being excited.)

Mike

In fact, it could be argued that Corps don't play (use) any conventional genre of music and have created their own - sound tapestry for visual effects.  It might be a long time before we see any corps do long development of any style music.  Too bad.

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This is an interesting discussion. Looking at the bigger picture of corps repertoire historically:

- 19th Century corps music sounded like this:

 

- in the early 1900's, Sousa began incorporating "Bugle Trios" in many of his marches, mainly to give the other winds a rest. The Thunderer is a good example.

- when "modern" drum corps got rolling after WWI, these open tone tunes were still the norm until Bill Ludwig placed a horizontal valve on the horn. Voila! Enter diatonic marches and even some classics like Commonwealth Edison's Tannhauser and a few pop tunes like Over There, from Irving Berlin's Broadway show.

- it's hard to pinpoint when "jazz" entered the picture, but it was probably the early '50s, depending how you define the term. By the middle of that decade, that Murphy cat in Lt. Norman Prince was wowing crowds  with Sweet Georgia Brown, and Bobby Adair quickly followed in the Reilly Raiders with Stardust. Latin-inspired music had been around since the late '40's (think Caballeros, founded in '46). Even the Air Force Corps played Perez Prado's Mambo Jambo by the mid-'50s.

- as entertainment trumped patriotism in the late '60s and into the '70s, Mangione and Tower of Power became source material. (The hippest version of Squib Cakes came from the Iowa cornfields, courtesy of Doc Crosser's Osage Precisionaires.)

Capturing a jazz "feel" has always been a real challenge for corps ensembles, much more so for drums than horns. Given the current infatuation with velocity, there won't be much swinging on the field, and even double time gets crushed to the point of being mechanical.

Do not despair, however. The pendulum and the music are sure to swing back.

 

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38 minutes ago, ironlips said:

Given the current infatuation with velocity, there won't be much swinging on the field, and even double time gets crushed to the point of being mechanical.

Thank you for mentioning this!  I've been on the tempo-is-restricting-musical-choice soapbox for a while, but I think I may have reached "crazy speaker on college campus steps" status with it.

Mike

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1 hour ago, MikeN said:

To play Devil's Advocate for a moment - why not?  BB jazz has pretty much completely disappeared, despite corps seemingly looking to every other era in music ever these days.  Are the band directors just burned out on it, or as Chuck Naffier once theorized, is *true* jazz playing too much work for little reward?  You can't even make an argument about audiences anymore - most are too young to remember when corps did it anyways.  What was the most recent DCI finalist to do a true full mainstream-type jazz show?  Crossmen in 2001 / 2002?

(At our band regional, Claudia Taylor Johnson, one of the big TX schools, in their show this year started playing Birdland.  You could actually hear the crowd getting excited.  Then they veered straight into Medea's Dance of Vengeance.  You could actually hear the crowd stop being excited.)

Mike

I hear ya, Mike... all good points.  I hope you're correct.

I would love to see some swing jazz performed, but the way shows are programmed today,  the way concepts tend to be the "hot concepts" that many marching units feel they must follow if they don't want to pay a price on the scoresheets... I'm not sure I will. 

Not bashing today's shows... like I've said, I mostly enjoy what I've been seeing and hearing, with drum corps and bands. But again I hope you're right that there is room for other types of programming.

Edited by Fran Haring
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2 hours ago, MikeN said:

(At our band regional, Claudia Taylor Johnson, one of the big TX schools, in their show this year started playing Birdland.  You could actually hear the crowd getting excited.  Then they veered straight into Medea's Dance of Vengeance.  You could actually hear the crowd stop being excited.)

Mike

Wow... Birdland into Medea?

I would have no clue what that show theme was, or what it was trying to convey.  LOL.

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not all reactions to all music genres are the same.

the excitement one feels for an upbeat jazz chart is very different from what one might feel for a barber orchestral piece.  that doesn't mean excitement ceases to exist for one vs the other.  just wanted to make that clear.

i got up and whooped and hollered for madison in 99 when they did some big numbers from jesus christ superstar, but i was equally as excited by BK's wind orchestra music show even though i didn't get up and yell once. pretty sure i'm not alone. 

i want more jazz for sure, though. lots of amazing big band charts that haven't hit the field for dci yet. 

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Jungle show.  They played Under the Sun (92 Crossmen Closer), Puma (92 Crossmen drum feature - yes, that one), about 30 seconds of Brazil, Medea (Crown's Western version), 20 seconds of Birdland and more Medea.  It felt like "one of these things is not like the others...")  :lle:

Mike

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