Tiger Years: First Official

Good morning all,

I sit here in high spirits because I though that my class started at 9:30 this morning, but at breakfast found out that it in fact starts at 10:30. I LOVE these late class things. I though it might be about time for a "scholarly discourse," so I have decided to talk about the origin of the word "jazz," and what exactly jazz music is.

The texts we have read for class, spend about 20 pages answering the question of "what is jazz?" with "we have no idea." The origin of the word has been attributed to shortened versions of the french word "jaser," the African word "ja ja," or that it was derived from the word gism. Interestingly enough, the word "jazz" didn't appear in print until 1913 (and no one was really sure how to spell it: jas, jass, jaz, or jazz), and it was originally used by sports casters to describe baseball players' energy on the field. The energetic feeling of "jazz" music is no doubt what prompted people to start calling it by that name. Scholars also can't pin down exactly how to define jazz music. There are three approaches to this. The first is a very strict definition, involving a certain amount of improvisation and "swing feeling" (they're also not quite sure on how to define swing. We all know it as a rhythmic pattern, but people have gone as far as describing it as merely "a lilting feeling"). Obviously, this leaves out a lot of music that we usually consider to be jazz, like a lot of Duke Ellington's band music. This also rules out artists who record a song or riff that might have been improvised at the time of the recording, but is no longer considered improvised because they emulate their recording in performance. The second approach is that of "family resemblances." Music is jazz if it is done by artists who are normally associated with jazz, or artists that could be associated with those artists. This obviously presents problems because it doesn't actually define jazz. The third, and my personal favorite, is the "you'll know it when you see it" approach. Basically, jazz's two main components are improvisation and swing, but there are varying degrees of each in any given jazz piece, and jazz doesn't necessarily HAVE to have both of them. Scholars don't like this, because again, it doesn't give a concrete definition of jazz, but it seems to work the best of the three approaches to me.

So that was week one of Jazz History and Styles, besides learning about what music is, and all the different elements of music we will be listening for.

I've also been swing dancing this week, and I LOVE it. The place they took me to is filled with people WAY above my dancing level, but they were really nice, and didn't mind slowing down and teaching me new things. I think I'm 3X better already just being there for a couple hours. There are 3 places to go dancing during the week here, and a 4th in Austin. It might be going a little overboard if I go dancing 3X a week, but I'm definitely thinking about it....

I have included a picture of the new member of the family, Hephaestus: