What does jazz make you feel?

Sometimes when I listen to jazz, it makes me nostalgic. Either for a period of time in my own life, or a period of time I wasn't alive for. Like, sometimes I listen to older jazz albums, and I sometimes wish I was walking around the streets of NYC, at dusk, in the 1950s.

But, jazz almost never makes me sad, if anything, it inspires me, or at least makes me feel better (like the blues), or makes me happy. Even the most painful solo from a sax player ("who hurt this man?") will overwhelm me with good vibes. This music is sometimes best on a rainy day.

Then there's fusion. 70s Miles is like taking a trip through the recesses of your mind, or other worlds. Sometimes, it's the dark depths of the jungle. 80s and 90s fusion sometimes makes me think of walking around a college campus, in the halls of a basement or something like that. Some of that late 90s/2000s fusion reminds me of walks I sometimes take at night.

Thanks for the response js. I was hoping this thread could be a place of great discussion.

I was driving around earlier, and had one of the jazz radio stations on, and I was driving near a farm, it's very sunny out, and the music playing was some 60s post-bop (not sure who it was), and it gave me some great vibes. Could have been my coffee kicking in too....

darkshade wrote: Sometimes when I listen to jazz, it makes me nostalgic. Either for a period of time in my own life, or a period of time I wasn't alive for. Like, sometimes I listen to older jazz albums, and I sometimes wish I was walking around the streets of NYC, at dusk, in the 1950s. But, jazz almost never makes me sad, if anything, it inspires me, or at least makes me feel better (like the blues), or makes me happy. Even the most painful solo from a sax player ("who hurt this man?") will overwhelm me with good vibes. This music is sometimes best on a rainy day. Then there's fusion. 70s Miles is like taking a trip through the recesses of your mind, or other worlds. Sometimes, it's the dark depths of the jungle. 80s and 90s fusion sometimes makes me think of walking around a college campus, in the halls of a basement or something like that. Some of that late 90s/2000s fusion reminds me of walks I sometimes take at night.

Edited by Sean Trane - 30 May 2013 at 3:35am

Interesting question (from the OP) but there's a danger that (any) music we love that was created before we were alive becomes tantamount to a misplaced nostalgia for something that never happened in the first place. We've all heard sentiments that include 'the golden age of (whatever)' and every generation is automatically at odds with that preceding, so Robert Smith of the Cure was maybe right:
Tell me who doesn't love, what can never come back?.....

Nostalgia was probably the wrong term. More like "romanticize".

EntertheLemming wrote: darkshade wrote: Nostalgia was probably the wrong term. More like "romanticize". OK, nostalgia probably implies a shared experience/delusion. It should be borne in mind that so much of the finest music created over the past millennium was realised in spite of the prevailing societal conditions for unfettered artistic expression. I've always thought that in a perfect uncensored political landscape, the resultant music would be bland, anodyne and soulless. Maybe resistance is the source of that tension that has to exist at the heart of all satisfying aesthetic structures for longevity? (Dunno)

good point

I remember in the early days of ProgArchives (nostalgia, maybe?) some dude had posted a thread on how great and peaceful and troubleless the 70's were and it reflected on the awesome music of the era. He created quite a raucus, because the international board members had lived a very different 70's that this United Statian had. The planet was in a pretty fucked state during that , and not just because of the cold war... A Peruvian member (let you guess who that was) reminded us of the military juntas that ruled the southern american continent, than all of the nascent terrorism that took place in those years in seemingly stable countries like Canada, Belgium, Germany, UK (then on a permanent danger of collapse) etc... Not to mention the Post-Vietnam trauma, the continuing

And despite these unrests, excellent music happened in those lands like Los Jaivas (ok partly in exile), Univers Zero, Can, Henry Cow (heralding their very communist ideals) nd many more. Not to mention all those great bands running illegally behind the Iron Curtain, who were probably very rightist in their activism as a reaction to their gov't's communist regimes (Plastic People Of The Universe, for ex)

Makes me feel pretty damn good!

Often, I find myself using it as a drug for the most part. A mood elevator, or evener perhaps. So it's often Cool Jazz if I want to soothe myself after a sh*tfull day. Or something more uptempo if I'm trying to motivate myself.  Then there's listening simply for pleasure!