By NATE CHINENDEC. 30, 2014
In the opening scene of “Whiplash,” the breakout second film by Damien Chazelle, the rat-a-tat of a snare drum echoes in darkness, each stroke landing quicker than the last. It’s a rudimentary warm-up made to feel sinister — “like gunfire,” the screenplay suggests — and it sets up a mounting tension that the movie strives to maintain.
I’ve been reminded of that setup recently, whenever my thoughts turned to the past year in jazz. Not just because “Whiplash” achieved the rare feat of putting “jazz drummer” and “Oscar buzz” into the same speculative orbit. (Another such film is “Birdman,” though its original drum score, by Antonio Sanchez, was shortsightedly ruled ineligible for the Academy Awards.)
Jazz in 2014 — or more accurately, the discourse around jazz in 2014 — often resembled a crescendo of gibes and gripes, with each new affront calling forth a fresh wave of umbrage. In the end it wasn’t any single skirmish that led to my air of weary resignation, but rather a brisk accumulation of them, quickening into a blur. And what surprised me was the exasperation I felt not only with jazz’s cynical assailants, but also with its gallant defenders, some of whom could seem as starchy and reflexively scandalized as Margaret Dumont in a Marx Brothers flick.
read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/arts/music/jazzs-year-of-complaint-citing-whiplash-and-the-new-yorker.html?_r=0
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