Permanently Deleted
Im not doubting your experience but I am fairly surprised at the amount of musicians who are still genre racist you run into? Is it really so prevalent?
I have a hard time fitting in with other musicians too. I actually have a similar story as you, guitar since I was ten, high school band. Now Im an adult, and its hard to join bands with other adults, theyre grown but a lot of the time they are so immature its painful.
Its a relatively small community compared to other genres. You see plenty of people who are like “maybe we shouldn’t use gypsy anymore” but also enough people who don’t care that the genre is still called “Gypsy Jazz” more than the other two names.
I honestly hate referring to it irl because no one knows what I’m saying when I say Manouche.
That being said I’ve spoken to zero Manouche players irl. I’ve only been to one live jazz show and it was literally the week before Covid lockdowns hit and other folks at the table next to us were joking it would be the last one for a while and they were quite right.
Im not doubting your experience but I am fairly surprised at the amount of musicians who are still genre racist you run into? Is it really so prevalent?
I’ve learned to be really careful generalising my own experiences. Like I’ve lived most of my life around nerds/hacker culture here locally, and always found it to be welcoming and fairly left in terms of politics. But after having seen so many examples of tech-bro CHUDs the past 10 years, I realised I was probably just in some weird kind of bubble.
So, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a lot of right-wing loonies among musicians that just happen to escape my radar because they’re in different scenes.
you were in a ska band? unfathomably based
the fact you did ska at all makes your folk punk much more credible :very-smart:
I too was in a high school ska band. Played saxophone. Now I play guitar for bands (started when I was 13), and that’s my main thing.
Being older now, my main struggle with my music is that the local scene is so intertwined, that because I’m not “in” with the right people, we tend to get really shitty shows. On top of that, our band is just a 2 piece since yeah, it’s hard to find someone who vibes. I had close friends with me for a lot of my current band’s run, but then they moved away and I struggled really hard to get it going again.
That said, our genre is, on a whole, more progressive than what the genres you’re describing sound like. We’ve been fortunate to never run into anyone quite like that.
If you’re really looking to get out there, unfortunately, there’s not much other advice I have other than get out and try. If you run into some assholes, oh well. Don’t play there again. It’s tough and it sucks. It might be worth hopping on social media of your choice and looking around local music groups to find someone. That way, you can talk to them and filter out anyone you dont like before meeting.
From a fellow high school Ska band person, skank on comrade!
Music theory people are assholes because they’re authoritarians. I was in marching band too and this is where my perspective comes from. The academic musicians are constantly waiting to call someone out for being out of key or to prove they know a more complex way to play something. Its a cycle of abuse thing. Yeah, good music and creative shit comes out of it but its no fun socially.
Jazz people really are snobby in my experience. I prefer musicians that can’t read a note and have no idea what they are playing other than it sounds good. Perhaps you should go down a more punk route? Just because its punk doesn’t mean it has to be simplistic.
EDIT: By authoritarian, I mean they are devoted/enslaved to the correctness of theory in practice, rather than the harmonious joy that comes from creating music.
Punk stuff is where I came from and its always important to me, but I’ve always wanted to learn to solo well in a swing jazz setting. I do enjoy some of the rigor in learning music theory and reading music and all that. I do enjoy some math rock, I love bands like tricot and learned Potage with decent success but the way my brain works, I need to understand all the aspects of what makes something work and just creating new paths is difficult for me without some kinda map. I can learn to cover songs all day but writing music hasn’t made any sense to me until I started applying some theory.
Its also why I love manouche because its not very strict on the theory but you can still apply it to understand why X sounds and feels like it does. IE a lot of Django’s playing is heavily based around arpeggios and chromatic variations, which is very easy to get started with but difficult to master building lines. I want to really get a feel for chord changes and playing with the changes. Having that goal is helpful for me.
But yeah, that’s a good point on the authoritarian aspect of music theory snobs. Guitar always feels a bit outsidery compared to someone who only studies say jazz trumpet. Not many people who play the trumpet get anywhere by learning a couple notes and feeling it out the way a lot of guitarists, bassists, etc do it. Most folks who play a kind of brass or woodwind did so through school, like you in marching band. I skipped any and all school based music education so I was very much out of the loop in that regard. Classical guitar is similar but also funny because classical guitar is fairly young compared to a lot of the pieces played on it. One thing I do enjoy though is the variations of style with classical. Also the technical skills I’ve learned with strict classical practice have been incredibly valuable for random finger styles like folk, clawhammer banjo, finger style jazz chord progressions, etc. I can pick up most pieces and play decently without a pick which is neat.
My couple of friends who are more on the music theory side are really into it for the personal growth aspect and treat it like musical sudoku. Unfortunately it can be pretty isolating if when you [rightfully] can’t stomach the jerks in the scene.
Story time, one of my bffs tried to get into a audition only college jazz program after high school. He was really good, had been taking lessons for years, was in high school jazz band, etc. etc. He didn’t make the cut because it was so competitive and it honestly broke the guy. So unfair to kill the dream of a talented young person like that. I think it was his lack of connections tbh
It’s actually better to have other interests, this leads to more avenues of expression to work from
