final thoughts...

Rather than letting things stew in my mind, I'm going to try something different. Writing some each day on here until I get somewhere. Trying to figure out what to do about music for my radio show and paper combo that will be my "final" project. Though this is part of me...and it will be ongoing as I try and figure things out. I have, at the most, 2 weeks (and at the least, 1 week) to prepare and execute my radio show for this project, so I'm trying to think about what to do about material.

There are many areas to look at:
-What I've learned specifically through this project and process.
-What I had in knowledge, collection, techniques, expectations, etc. coming into this (and the lens I brought, which was mostly that of an inquiring DJ who is in an intellectual pursuit, not the other way around...or some other iteration of it)
-What foci I want to use - existing music (recordings), production techniques, playing techniques, DJing and beat-making techniques (as instruments as well)

I don't:
Feel I have a great grasp of musics of various decades (if one were to break them down arbitrarily that way). This has to do with the availability of examples in many cases, as well as the nature of most of the writing about Jazz that I've followed, which hardly mentions songs. It's a strange scenario, where, in the moment, these recordings were probably quite important but nothing compared to the real live musician - but at this point that's all that remains. And there are so many musicians who passed on without ever recording or who have been lost in the conversations about Jazz and its history/ies.
I'm relying on what youtube tells me. I've found interlibrary loan to be less than helpful...telling my items are out of region.

I'm trying to figure out a way to include DJing techniques into the discussion. I think I'll be using Kodwo Eshun as a serious cornerstone to a lot of my arguments, especially those about technologies and advancement. Though this is also a time to question some of the things he says about progress. I've heard, what feels like many times, Wynton Marsalis cited as a contemporary bastion of Jazz styles from previous eras, living in the past, refusing to let Jazz grow through him. I think this is an interesting argument, and I hope to include that in there somehow. What's also interesting....a few seconds of his "Skain's Domain" was sampled to make a B-girl/B-boy and house anthem called "Hot Music," by SoHo. "Hot Music" wasn't pushing the boundaries of house music or sample-based stuff....I didn't have to be innit in the minute to know that. It's a loop that someone picked out...they had a good ear, but it wasn't revolutionary or necessarily "taking it to the next level."
+One thing I think is interesting about Eshun's arguments though is that they seem to leave out the discussion of music as uplifting, captivating, and things of that sort. So, where he is talking about technological advances or theorizing of existent forms and styles (RAMM∑LLZ∑∑), there seems to be left out the section about how people feel in reaction to music and arts. While there have been technological advances in the manipulations of sounds that can shred one's mind or blast off into inner space and things of that sort, there have been advances in the techniques employed to manipulate listeners' emotions - both within individual songs, and within "sets" (be they of the band or DJ varieties). Hmmm...

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