Jazz Musicians In Shapiro’S Book

Jazz Musicians In Shapiro’s Book

Each musician has very high self-conceit. He/she believes that he/she is the best of all musicians out there. One sees the world from his own point of view, where he is the only one who knows how music should be like. In the book “Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya” by Nat Shapiro shows very clearly what many well known jazz musicians think about each other.

The book “Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya” contains of their own words, such famous jazz musicians as Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Fletcher Henderson, Buck Johnson, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Clarence Willians, Jo Jones, Jelly Roll Marton, Billy Holiday, and many others, recall the birth, growth and changes in jazz over the years. Moreover, in this book jazz musicians tell their opinion on some other musicians. Many of them don’t think that all well known musicians deserve to be called jazz musicians for many reasons. According to Coleman Hawkins “Kenton’s music to me seems to have no rhythm to speak ofвЂ¦Ð²Ð‚Ñœ (Hear Me Talkin, page 386). On the other hand here is what Dave Brubeck say about Kenton, “Kenton. Who is offering to the young American composer anything near what Kenton is offering in terms of freedom to his arrangers? For that he deserves great credit.” Of course, there always would be someone who thinks negatively about certain musician, and there also would be someone who totally admires him, and it’s normal. Let’s remember, there is no perfect person or a musician out there (Gann, 2001).

The reason they criticizes other musicians negatively is because they think that they do it better and why others are out there who don’t have any idea how jazz should sound like or what it is about. To critique others work is important and useful as long as it’s done correctly. When critique is done professionally that means with respect to others and information is reliable and meaningful, then this kind of critique will help not just other musicians to learn valuable observations, but also helps jazz to improve and get better. However, along with critique it’s important that many jazz musicians in Nat Shapiro’s book also talk about people they admire and also call them their teachers. It’s very important to remember the people who had influenced jazz as well as many well-known musicians. Like Dave Brubeck said, “It was Milhaud who encouraged

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