High Brow Claims Charles Mingus

My husband and I subscribe to the Disney Concert Hall. It is our attempt to be cultured, such the high brow aesthetes that we are. Last night was our last to attend a show there. We like to remind each other that we can now go to Lincoln Center to hear the Lincoln Center Jazz. It seemed fitting that our last at the Disney hall was to here Charles Mingus' "Epitaph," an epic composition he worked on his entire life and only played in public once before his death. OK. I have studied music, play music, am an avid music lover/listener, but nothing blows me away as listening to Jazz musicians play. I can here the melody, but how they here the tones above and below the melody to me is art at its most impressive. The Disney Hall, a building that seems to jut out of the earth in all of its swirls and swoops, is a hall where there is no bad seat, really. And since the building opened, we have probably sat in every section, moving from section to section.

In one of the movements of this epic piece (we had to leave at intermission since this Magnus Opus was 19 movements), Charles Mingus and Max Roach had played this part of the piece together where each got to improvise on their respective instruments.

Let me say that I did own the requisite number of famous jazz albums, but I was far from a true aficionado. My husband, during the very early part of our dating days, invited me to a Max Roach concert at the Catalina Room--at the original location on Cahuenga. Being 26, I showed up not having a clue who or what Max Roach did, more concerned that I look cute for this new boyfriend. When I realized that he was a drummer, who would be improvising a great deal, I turned to him and said, "He plays the drums?" Despite my ignorance about jazz music, he still hung in there. I can say that my knowledge about jazz has improved only a tad bit since that first outing. It also felt as if everything had come to its full orbit since we saw our friend last night, the same one who had accompanied us on that date to hear Max Roach. So, there we were the three of us, again going to hear jazz, this time in a symphony hall instead of a small jazz club.

Now when I go to listen--I've heard some great musicians--I listen with the ears of a neophyte. There's always a moment during these shows when the music fades a bit and my mind wanders. I love going to this hall as much for the people watching as for the music. The way this hall is designed and where our seats are, I can watch everyone in the hall. You can learn a great deal about people by watching them in such an unguarded moment.

What I have found so fascinating during our subscriptions to the Disney is how jazz, a form of music that had struggled to achieve legitimacy, has now become high brow. I think about Pierre Bourdieu's, "A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste." These jazz musicians, dressed in tuxedos, are now on this stage, still swinging as if they were playing in a smoke-filled club. And instead of the "hip, artsy" patrons, who would frequent these clubs, usually in not so great areas, the seats were filled mostly with men in suits and women in dresses. Although this is LA, so there were just as many people wearing jeans. It is significant since Charles Mingus, who had studied the cello, never had the opportunity to play with the great symphonies of the country because of his race. And now to have his composition treated with as much respect as a composition by Beethoven says more about the cultural wars that are waged unbeknown to most of us. Who or what decides what "art" form is now legitimate, changing the ways in which we consume the art form?

With the plethora of self-created videos available on the net, will reality television, at some point, achieve middle brow status? So that "American's Next Top Model" will be recast in one of those old movies houses where they used to only show Charlie Chaplin movies? It is something for us to consider. Just think, you could be sitting in a dark theater, munching on popcorn, as you watch Tyra Banks, swiveling her head and telling some emaciated teenager that she doesn't have what it takes to be a Top Model.