Nextbop: Jazzaneutics

This week's post over at Nextbop is all about using Antonius Guillimus Amo's teachings on hermeneutics in listening to and analyzing jazz music. I've wanted to write about this for quite some time but the Holy Spirit finally stuck it in my head how to write it.

To wit:

Amo is heralding authorial intent and states it must be considered when analyzing a work (at least when using a biographical criticism), otherwise, the analysis is ultimately invalid. Cross apply this notion to jazz and its criticism. Right now, one of our biggest issues (upon which I rail habitually) is that of nomenclature. If authorial intent is to trump all according to Amo, if a musician believes his or her work is considered jazz, the audience or the critic theoretically has little basis to state otherwise. The author intended the work to fit under a certain category and the audience must oblige.
Once we pass the issue of nomenclature, the issue on which our community should truly focus should be that of remembering to bridge that gap between the works and the audience. With the dawn of bebop, the genre was decried for moving away from the dancing general populace to an over-intellectual, erratic foot-tapping few. These tendencies and arguments have only increased and intensified over the last fifty years and the genre continued to splinter and evolve. Such is the nature of art.

It's a bit of a difficult read, to be frank, but I'm quite happy with how it turned out.  If you can get through the first few paragraphs of the piece, the rest really brings it all home. Head over there and check it out.