Three enemies of art include sentimentality, instead of emotional rawness, academicism in trade of creativity, and pretentiousness where accessibility should be the end. Unfortunately for the art form of jazz, itap carried too many of these kinds of enemies with it into the 21st century. Two creators of a new Denver record label want to do their part to change this.
“Jazz is not an outdated form of music,” said Nick Spreigl, drummer for Denver hip-hop act and partner with musician Jared Atol of the new label. “Itap constantly evolving, and it will continue to evolve if we let it. But that won’t happen without changing how itap presented to people.”
Starting a jazz label in Denver — anywhere, for that matter — is no task for the timid. Spreigl and Atol, two jazz-trained musicians who met at the University of Northern Colorado, are not naïve about the challenges they face. But they’re not intimidated by them, either.
“We’re passionate about these issues,” Atol said. “We don’t like whatap happening and want to be part of part of a solution, not part of a status quo languishing toward oblivion.”
The (R)evolve partners are aware that even the term “jazz” itself is somewhat of an anachronism, as detailed in master trumpeter . But, whatever the music is called, how itap delivered to audiences is another matter. In our digital age, Spreigl and Atol want to make the music accessible to people in a language they will understand.
The technological revolution thatap occurred over the last decade-plus has made it easier for everyone to both access and create music. Spreigl and Atol see this meeting of creativity and opportunity as a positive force for jazz. They believe the digital platforms available today are still a largely untapped potential for jazz.
“When change happens, you can either try to fight it or accept it,” Atol said. “We want to make jazz relevant in this contemporary light. Other musical forms like dub step, hip-hop and electronica, to name just a few, have done this. Jazz hasn’t.”
Spreigl has worked with many hip-hop acts and doesn’t believe most jazz artists make themselves as available to audiences in comparison.
“Lil’ Wayne’s put out like 30 mix tapes. Chance the Rapper is still not even on a label and he’s been successful. But no one can buy your music if they don’t know about it,” Spreigl said. “A lot of ideas come from being critical, whether of yourself or the situation you see around you. The mentality that, ‘I studied music in school for years and I’ve practiced on my own for years so I deserved to get paid” isn’t working. In a perfect world, it should, but itap not working now.”
If the way jazz reaches people is outmoded, how much relevance can the music retain? As an improvisational form, jazz will likely never provide the popular and familiar-sounding melodies that many research studies show people crave today. Too much has changed since the 1940s, when jazz was America’s pop music.
But jazz has always been a gumbo that can accommodate many different ingredients, from blues to classical, hip hop to country and folk, and now, electronic music. The form remains both malleable and vital. Unfortunately, many recordings today, produced by extremely accomplished musicians, no less, sound as if they could have been released 30 years ago. Too often, rawness and risk seem absent.
“I feel people are drawn to honest music, and I think they can detect it,” said Spreigl. “Thatap the music we want for (R)evolve. I listen to all genres and, to me, there isn’t good or bad music. Either it interests me or it doesn’t. We want music thatap honest, and, consequently, interesting.”
(R)evolve, which is currently set up for mobile recordings, plans to release both live and studio performances. While a new definition of jazz might take a while, Spreigl and Atol hope (R)evolve can at least expand on it what it means to people, some of whom have never really heard it.
“For people younger than me who are in their teens and early 20s,” said Spreigl, “genres of music don’t really exist any more, because the high school cliques that sustained genres never existed for them. I went to school with Goths, punkers, jam band hippies, the hip hop crowd. Thatap gone now, and itap reflected in people’s relationship to music.”
The revolution thatap digital culture speeds on whether we know its destination or not. The road signs have been torn down but there are more passages available. Maybe itap time that jazz, once the music of the street, not only gets hip to this, but embraces it.
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Denver-based writer Sam DeLeo is a published poet, has seen two of his plays produced and recently completed his novel, “As We Used to Sing.” His selected work can be read at .
