 Wynton Marsalis How come when a pop artist like Prince decides to release 10 albums worth of material in four months it's intriguing, but when an artist like Wynton Marsalis decides to do it, it's annoying? Wynton launched his "Swinging into the 21st Century" project in '99, which totalled something like eight albums by the time the new year rolled around … to me, that's much more of a marketing program than an artistic one. Sony was probably looking at all the frickin' music Wynton had in the vaults and started thinking "How the HELL are we going to sell all this?" It's not like he didn't have enough music on the market – pretty much everything he's ever released remains in print, the total volume being in excess of 30 albums. His prolific nature gives him the impression of genuine importance, though to be honest I'd say that a hundred years from now he'll be about as culturally "important" as Anthony Trollope or Stephen King are in literature. My problem with Wynton Marsalis is that he has devoted so much of his career to composing, which is the one thing he does the worst. He's a brilliant player, one of the best – he's a great teacher and a tremendous popularizer. Some credit him with resuscitating jazz after what is considered the vapid 70s – certainly jazz is more popular now than it's been in years, thanks in no small part to Wynton's efforts. But on the other hand, despit making so much music, he hasn't made much music I'd want to sit down and listen to. The standards albums are unnecessary, while the ambitious "masterpieces" (i.e. Blood on the Fields – which received a Pulitzer Prize but no one wants to sit through the whole thing) are just not well-composed. He isn't Ellington, and he can't become Ellington, no matter how hard he tries. The saddest thing is, he's probably more comparable to Louis Armstrong, in other words, a figurehead rather than a true artist. I'm not saying there's no art there, but rather that popularity often limits art, and in Wynton's case in particular, the fact that he's allowed to try anything he wants doesn't always make for the best music, as interesting as these experiments might be for him. Oh, the disc at hand. At the Octoroon Balls is Marsalis's first chamber work, a string quartet that doesn't fit purely within classical or jazz forms, but rather exists in its own bluesy little style that is quite pleasing to the ear. Nothing particularly memorable melodically, but the use of fiddle technique throughout makes for a novel composition. I suppose it's closest to Bartok if anything, full of 20th century dissonances, but heavily reliant on folk/blues conventions. If I had to pick out a selection of Wynton Marsalis CDs for a road trip in which I would only be allowed to listen to those CD's, this would be one of them. But it wouldn't be in the first two thousand CDs I would pick to be stranded on a desert island with (unless there were a used CD shop conveniently located on that desert island, in which case I could always sell it for coconut money). The CD features the quartet as well as "A Fiddler's Tale Suite," which has a ragtime feel that is enjoyable enough. I do like the cover a lot. Honestly, this CD would probably come off a lot better if it were a shocking new release from a reticent artist. Maybe if it were like Wynton's 10th ever CD, I'd take it a bit more seriously. I doubt I'm the only one in the world that feels totally confident in not caring too much about this, though.
Review by Darkfart |