Mainstream

Paraphrasing... the classic catchy tune?

Always helps

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream

But...

Mainstream is a term that means "a current known by the masses", of "trend". It is generally used in the arts, such as music, cinema, literature, news, and many other cultural fields in opposition to minority cultures.

In literature, mainstream usually indicates "non-genre" fiction (for various reasons, genre fiction is often considered "low quality", in contrast to the "high quality" of literary fiction).

Often the term is also used in a derogatory sense, to indicate artists who tie themselves to typically "trendy" genres (e.g., action films, pop music) or to a particular target (e.g., adolescents), for purely commercial reasons; in opposition to underground, subculture, counterculture.

Index

Minority cultures: what will be meant?

I mean in a jazz context

And indeed reading...

With the term mainstream jazz, one generally identifies the modern evolution of bebop and swing that occurred starting from the fifties. Subsequently, depending on trends, it has been identified with genres such as R&B, disco and dance music, rap, and in general pop and rock.

Today, the expression mainstream Music aims to indicate popular, commercial, and trendy music in a certain historical period. It can therefore include musical genres that have always been popular, such as pop music and its derivatives, or rock. Mainstream music can be considered a synonym for Popular music.

If you don't mind English... otherwise I will try to translate

http://www.swingmusic.net/Classic_Jazz.html

Read. Interesting. Looking here and there, however, I have found interpretations that are quite distant.

In the end, rather than a musical movement, it could be a definition for all those jazz pieces that are performed without references to a particular style (bebop, Swing, cool, hard bop etc.).

DrJellyfish wrote:

Read. Interesting. Looking here and there, however, I have found interpretations that are quite different.

In the end, rather than a musical movement, it could be a definition for all those jazz pieces that are performed without reference to a particular style (bebop, Swing, cool, hard bop etc.).

But if all these pieces have something in common... they always belong to a style... no?

That is the point. What style is it? ;-)

DrJellyfish wrote:

That is the point. What style is it? ;-)

What style is Brahms'?

I am asking because every composer that has ever existed identified themselves with their own style in a language. What I believe is called 'Style' in jazz, in my opinion, corresponds to the "language", style in the strict sense and the way an artist expresses themselves... always identifiable

This certainly applies to every form of art, but in classical music one can classify musicians by historical periods or musical genres; in Jazz you can indeed distinguish an hard bop track or musician from a dixieland one, but how do you categorize an Oscar Peterson or a Miles Davis performing Stella by starlight, for example?

DrJellyfish wrote:

This certainly applies to every form of art, but in classical music one can classify musicians by historical periods or musical genres; in Jazz you can indeed distinguish an hard bop track or musician from a dixieland one, but how do you categorize someone like Oscar Peterson or Miles Davis performing Stella by starlight, for example?

Interesting, and Mahler writing a symphony on Fra Martino, Bach on Pietist chorales... etc. how do you recognize them?

Without provocation, are you claiming that you wouldn't recognize Miles Davis from Oscar Peterson... could it be?

DrJellyfish wrote:

This certainly applies to every form of art, but in classical music one can classify musicians by historical periods or musical genres; in Jazz you can indeed distinguish an hard bop track or musician from a dixieland one, but how do you categorize an Oscar Peterson or a Miles Davis performing Stella by starlight, for example?

I say that there have always been contemporary musicians who identify by style. That is to say, Chopin and Schumann are perfectly recognizable and are only a few years apart. I don't know if what I mean is clear. Same language (romantic syntax) and different style.

The same must apply to 2 artists playing dixieland or hard bop.

Without going too far, we all recognize Pausini from Giorgia... right?

Berg from Webern

Bartok from Rachmaninoff

As Talentuoso says, Davis from Peterson

I didn't say recognize, but rather frame, in the sense of classifying.

If you talk about Bach, you can refer to Baroque music; if you talk about Charlie Parker, to bebop, and so on.

I used the example of Davis and Peterson because in some performances of Stella by Starlight, they cannot be classified as swing, bebop, hard bop, west coast, etc.

What I mean is that a musician like Parker can be classified as bebop, Horace Silver as hard bop, Davis as cool jazz, electric jazz, and so on depending on the periods or styles, but musicians like Oscar Peterson or (often) Bill Evans?

In other words, by dividing Jazz history into historical periods (e.g., the Swing era) and genres, they could only be framed within the dates in which they produced music.

Or indeed within a Mainstream current, which in a broad sense includes all those jazz pieces performed without particular references to this or that genre.

If you listen to a piece of baroque music or be-bop, you recognize it as such. If you listen to a piece by Bill Evans, you say: it's Bill Evans (which is no small thing, but I was making a different point...).

And no, I listen to a baroque music album... I mean, okay, it's baroque music... but it's Bach, or Handel, or Vivaldi. These are perfectly recognizable because they are composers who have a style.

DrJellyfish wrote:

but I was making a different point..

I didn't understand it...

So let's not talk about style, which perhaps is not the most appropriate term, let's talk about genre. As you just said, Bach, Handel or Vivaldi can be traced back to Baroque music, just as Parker and Gillespie can to bebop etc. But what about an Oscar Peterson, for example?

I had missed this

DrJellyfish wrote:

I didn't say recognize, but rather frame, in the sense of classifying.

If you talk about Bach, you can refer to Baroque music; if you talk about Charlie Parker, to bebop, and so on.

I used the example of Davis and Peterson because in some performances of Stella by Starlight, they cannot be classified as swing, bebop, hard bop, west coast, etc.

What I mean is that a musician like Parker can be classified as bebop, Horace Silver as hard bop, Davis as cool jazz, electric jazz, and more depending on the periods or styles, but musicians like Oscar Peterson or (often) Bill Evans?

In other words, by dividing Jazz history into historical periods (e.g., the Swing era) and genres, they could only be framed within the dates in which they produced music.

Or indeed within a Mainstream current, which in a broad sense includes all those jazz pieces performed without particular references to this or that genre.

DrJellyfish wrote:

let's talk about genre.

DrJellyfish wrote:

But what about an Oscar Peterson, for example?

Jazz?