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Well, you know my thoughts on Zorn. (I like him a lot, despite the quantity of wank, for everyone else out there besides Roth.) As I understand it, the original purpose of Tzadik was simply to be a home for Zorn's wide-ranging output. He had so much shit on so many different labels in several countries that I think it was getting a little out of hand. From what I've read, the fact that out of print discs of his were bringing large sums on the collectors market, none of which went to Zorn, was a factor as well. So Tzadik was his imprint, replacing Avant, Warner Brothers, Sony Japan and so many more. It's really pretty impressive that in the span of about six years he's managed to reclaim so much of his work.
It's also a response to the established Jazz community, one for which Zorn has little respect, as evidenced by song titles like "Jazz Snob Eat Shit".
But the fact that Tzadik has evolved into something approaching a cultural archive is a happy side effect. While it's certainly fringe, there's a lot of artists who wouldn't get half the exposure they do without Zorn's label. I know there's records I'd never pick up that I look at because of the Tzadik label. Doesn't mean I buy them, but I then know who the people are and if I come across them later, I'm already positively predisposed towards them.
It's gotten to the point where Tzadik seems to be trying to communicate some expression of experience through its catalogue - [notice that it's gone from he(Zorn) to it(Tzadik) - no longer simply Zorn's vanity label.] And there I find the problem that I have with so much post-modern work, that there's an assumption that either
a)I know more than I do about the topic at hand
or
b)that the work is communicating more than it is.
Admittedly, both of those are problems that potentially lie more in the audience than in the artist, but with that in mind, what steps can be taken to ensure that the aim of one's work will be understood? A lot of the liner notes on these records can barely be discussed as such, and it's a place where Tzadik might be better served by verbosity, rather than the current arty minimalism and "let the music speak for itself" ethos. There's no doubt that all of the Masada work, as much as I already love it, would be more resonant if I knew more about the musical heritage on which it is based? Is it Tzadik's responsibility or mine to provide that education? Mine, certainly, but given the average level of investigative determination, it would be nice to have a reading/listening list, if nothing else. But then, Zorn has an aestheic ethos as well as a musical one, and that's not going to change, even if it stands in spite of the desired effect of the work.
But the question:
is it worthwhile, both financially and culturally, for there to exist labels which promote what's usually considered "difficult" or "other".
can be answered with an emphatic Yes. Simply putting the Tzadik name on a record gives it an identity, and in a situation where we're talking about stuff that might otherwise be seen as being far adrift, culturally, that's a good thing with respect to communication between artist and audience, not taking into account what I've mentioned in the paragraph above. And I think it's a lower level identity than that now-common ethic of 'branding' - the Tzadik label is an inclusive one, albeit inclusive based on Zorn's estimation of worth. There's a lot of Japanese stuff on Txadik that hardly fits the Jeish Culture mold, but it's a fringe interest of Zorns, so it's in. |
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