Talk:Straight-ahead jazz

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A very nebulous term, and I'm not always sure what people mean by it- I thought it would be interesting to start an article on what I understand by it, and to get some kind of consensus view. Edit mercilessly! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kisch (talk • contribs) 03:18, 14 April 2006

Straight-ahead is best understood in the period post Miles going electric as music that held on to the principles of hard bop in terms of being acoustic and recorded with a certain limited group of instruments by a band consisting of between three and six and classically five players. A lot of seventies recordings on Strata-East, Muse and certain European and Japanese labels fit here. It could be seen as a conservative form, but players like Lee Morgan (until his 1972 death), Cedar Walton, Clifford Jordan, Charles Tolliver and numerous others were devoted to the notion that innovation is central to the being of small-group jazz. As such it was not conservative. It could be contrasted with the more clearly heritage-y jazz of Winton Marsalis and numerous others from the early eighties onwards Jasonpfinch (talk) 11:55, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
 * No, no - that is not a definition of the term. "Straight Ahead" predates electric Miles Davis!! While one might respect your personal opinion as far as it goes, that's pure Original Research. 104.169.19.227 (talk) 15:21, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
 * In all fairness, the entire article was original research. In fourteen years it never cited a single source.  I just made an attempt at a re-write, citing a couple of sources (and according to which, you're both right).  It's not much, but now it's sourced. -- Gyrofrog  (talk) 06:03, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your attempt to rescue it, but it's not much of an article, esp. for an attempt to define a genre, something that's always difficult. It ought to be considered for deletion. I suspect the same ideas appear in other articles about jazz, so this adds nothing and might even subtract from readers' understanding.Vmavanti (talk) 18:54, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I came close to nominating this for deletion myself, seeing how it sat here with no sources at all for about 14 years. When I noticed the Allmusic source (linked in next section) I figured that was enough (IMO) to support the article.  I went through the bookshelf and found "straight-ahead jazz" mentioned in a book.  I agree it's not much but it's what I was able to quickly cobble together, based on what amounts to a few paragraphs between both sources.  -- Gyrofrog  (talk) 19:02, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll run it by EddieHugh or you can. Thanks.Vmavanti (talk) 19:16, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Done. I'll put a note on WT:JAZZ as well. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 21:16, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Is it worth having an article on this? Is it likely to be another article that flops around trying to define something that can't be defined? Maybe yes to both. It could probably be fleshed out; equally, it could be changed to a redirect to the main jazz article, summarized in a sentence. If you want to choose fleshing out: a book called A Jazz Lexicon dates the term to the mid-1950s, and there was an early 1960s album – Straight Ahead (David "Fathead" Newman album), so there's an immediate contradiction of the sources represented in the article now. Looking through a few other sources, the term is often used to mean regular/standard/established etc, in contrast with new/free/experimental etc. Is that really a thing, a form of music? EddieHugh (talk) 22:01, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Eddie, I agree with your concern about the article flopping around etc. (To a degree, I think many if not most of the subgenre articles have been affected by this, at one time or another.)  I think that's what we had before, and I pared it down to something that could, at least, point at some sources.  The whole "straight-ahead" concept (as opposed to what, frivolous jazz?) is probably one part of the bigger "tradition vs. innovation" debate that's (probably) gone on since World War 2 if not earlier (see Hugues Panassié).  But, I couldn't (& wouldn't) go into that without sources to that effect.  For example: Ron Wynn (in the first Allmusic Guide to Jazz, 1994) describes how bebop (i.e., pre- or post-) used to be the divider in jazz criticism, but that the rock era had since become that divider.  In the 1986 edition of The Harmony Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz, the foreword (by Wynton Marsalis) and introduction both make quite a Very Big Deal about how jazz had been led astray, but that by the time of the new edition, jazz was returning to its roots.  However, none of these actually use the words "straight-ahead," and ascribing this phrase to those sources, for the purposes of this article, would (I believe) be original research.  My point is that it's part of a bigger debate, and using "straight-ahead" as a descriptor is just one part of it.  If there's some succinct content about this debate in the jazz article (I hadn't looked), then this article could redirect to that section (or some sort of anchor therein). I'm certainly not set on keeping this article, but my edits were simply intended as an easy fix for something that had gone unsourced for so long. -- 00:32, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
 * P.S. (and in hindsight, perhaps I could've just said this) if we do want to change this to a merge and/or redirect, then Jazz seems as good a target as any (but "straight-ahead" isn't yet mentioned in that section which is why I brought up the word "merge"). -- Gyrofrog (talk) 00:36, 31 March 2020 (UTC)


 * It's a term I don't see very often. I agree with EddieHugh's first post.Vmavanti (talk) 00:07, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Gyrofrog: I didn't intend to come across as criticising you – I'm sorry if that's what happened. I just meant to summarise the sources that I'd looked at briefly, because they suggested something different to the sources that you summarised in the article. Traditionalism in the 1980s is possible; there was, as you point out, traditionalism in the bebop era, and then traditionalism that (ironically?) led to hardbop. 'Straight ahead' appears to have developed as a term in the 1950s/60s and is still used, so it could be added to any relevant part of the jazz article from then on (sources permitting). But, if you see a route to expanding this one and want to, then please do. We should probably decide which way to go soon, though, while we have three people discussing it. EddieHugh (talk) 21:24, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
 * No worries, Eddie! I was leaning more to merging into the main jazz article, but as you point out, this might need to redirect to an earlier section. I really could go either way on keeping this article or merging & redirecting (but not outright deletion).  I may need to sleep on it... -- Gyrofrog  (talk) 23:34, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

(Three weeks later...) Well, I slept on it, all right... (joke). I added a concise (IMO) definition and cited a source (though it's a dissertation and I'm mindful of WP:SCHOLARSHIP). -- Gyrofrog (talk) 16:52, 22 April 2020 (UTC)