Again, this is a limited sample size. When I lived in Denver, the people I knew that would go out of their way for a concert by Dotsero – a popular local smooth jazz group – were all upper middle-class corporate types. If I went into the field with someone that was playing smooth jazz in their vehicle, again it was a corporate upper middle-class type in a Lexus, Infiniti, or similar high-end brand name of car or SUV. I wondered whether the people that surrounded themselves in smooth jazz actually liked it, or whether they played it as self-validation of being “upscale”.
Nah. I don’t really like music, and I don’t like smooth jazz even moreso.
Like outfits from Lands End or LL Bean are clothes for people who don’t like clothes.
Anytime not-offending is the first priority, that is a kind of pandering.
Kenny G::Paul Desmond ::: Thomas Kinkade ::Pablo Picasso
I love smooth jazz and have for about twenty years or so. In fact, it’s one of my favorite genres of music. Maybe it’s an age thing (I’m 61). Since my early to mid-forties I’ve found myself developing an appreciation for beauty and some of the finer things in life which I couldn’t have cared less about in my younger days. Books, paintings, sculptures, certain aspects of interior design, flowers, single-malt scotch (;)) - these are all things I enjoy immensely now but couldn’t have cared less about when I was younger, and I’d include smooth jazz in this group as well. To me it sounds rich, comfortable, sophisticated and pleasant, and imparts a feeling of life being well lived.
There are some very fine musicians making smooth jazz music these days - Pat Metheny, Lee Ritenour, Larry Carlton, Dave Koz, Marion Meadows, Kirk Whalum, and Boney James, just to name a very few, and anyone who thinks their music is for people who don’t like music couldn’t be more wrong. My favorite smooth jazz musician by far is British musician Paul Hardcastle, who records albums both as the Jazzmasters and under his own name. Fourplay also gets a lot of airtime at my place too. (And Slithy Tove, don’t tell me you couldn’t have sex to this tune, or to this muhfuh from Paul Hardcastle. 
Don’t kid yourself, there is a great deal of superb wine and candlelight music in the smooth jazz genre. Needless to say, however, you won’t being hearing it in elevators or at your neighborhood grocery store.)
Anyway, I don’t if this really explains the attraction the way you wanted to hear it, DChord. All I can say is that at this time in my life it just really resonates with me, for whatever reason.
Which brings back the problem of definitions and labels. I doubt Metheny, Ritenour and the like are being gently piped into the laundromats and dentist offices’ of the OP (though maybe the owners have good taste). While they may not be to someone’s taste, to call them simplistic and banal is to never have heard them.
If you want to read Pat Metheny’s point of view regarding Kenny G, read here. It’s, um, a fairly well-articulated opinion, which in part includes:
::snerk::
Wow, fantastic. I like how he sets up the technical and foundational reasons for his opinion, then lets loose in a bit of abstract hyperbole.
Oops, your quote of the article wasn’t there when I first replied – editing to delete the repeated quote.
Yeah, sorry - that bit was too good to leave out of my post…
Well stated, I must say, and goes to the heart of what music means to different people. I used to listen to Fourplay, David Benoit, Lee Ritenour and the like some years ago, but ultimately became bored with it (I still like the early Benoit). Not enough edge or challenge to the music for me, I guess.
I wouldn’t have considered any of those three to be smooth jazz. In particular, Pat Metheny’s Song X with Ornette Coleman is about as far from a smooth jazz aesthetic as you can get. (And Pat has a lot to say on that album - he’s not just keeping up with Ornette, he sets the pace on several of the tracks!)
Didn’t Kenny G play with Pat Metheny sometime in the mid-70s? If that factoid is true, I haven’t found proof of it in the last ten minutes…
You can’t find it because you’re looking about ten years too late. It could also be that they only played together once, but it was a 20-minute jam.
Would you call yourself upper middle class?
Like many artists, Ritenour, Benoit, et al, have turned to recording smooth jazz to pay the bills. Artistic integrity doesn’t usually keep a roof over one’s head, and this is nothing new: Fats Domino, Nat King Cole and many others turned to pop recordings as a way to make ends meet.
Yeah, a steady diet of it is a bit much even for me. But I feel the same way about all genres of music. Any given day can find me listening to anything from Steely Dan to George Throgood, Corinne Bailey Rae to Kelli Ali (formerly of the Sneaker Pimps) or from Van Morrison and Elton John to former 50 Cent protege The Game.
I wouldn’t want to have to listen to any particular style exclusively, and frankly there is a certain “sameness” to smooth jazz which I think is it’s biggest problem. Since I like smooth jazz so much that quality of sameness doesn’t bother me, but it does cause lots of people who start out liking that it ultimately to become bored with it.
And on preview, thanks, Chefguy, I was just about to address Le Ministre’s question as well. I agree that Carlton, et. al aren’t solely or even primarily smooth jazz musicians, but their presence does in the field does help illustrate the fact that smooth jazz is not “for people who don’t like music”.
First, thanks for taking a stab at answering my question.
Thus perhaps validating the OP’s premise?
Actually, you’ve gone part of the way toward articulating why I dislike Smooth Jazz so heartily. I’m a lifetime rock ‘n’ roller – though there are surely many other genres I appreciate as well – and most of the music I still love best has some element of youth, rebellion, or at least a left-field way of looking at things (that’s a baseball, not a political analogy!).
To me, rock itself goes wrong when it strays too far from this basic premise. I abhor “sophistication” in a rock context (it’s fine if we’re talking the Gershwins or Cole Porter). I detest stuff like Boz Scaggs’ “Lowdown” and nearly all disco for that same reason…and this could also explain my antipathy toward prog and most anything that’s just too pretentious for its own good.
I may be painting with too broad a brush, but when I hear typical Smooth Jazz, I picture today’s equivalent of the gold chains and the open frilly shirts. But that’s just me – everyone’s musical journey in life is different, and to each his or her own.
I’m not saying that all music must have only three chords and the most basic instrumentation (though some of my all-time favorite stuff has just that). I’m just talking about the overall feel or attitude projected, which is a product not just of lyrics but also the musical approach taken.
I don’t claim my statement describes ALL Smooth Jazz fans…but I think it describes many of them. Many are casual music fans who want all music to be in the background rather than the foreground of their lives. It just so happens that Smooth Jazz fills this bill better than most any other genre short of true “elevator music.”
And it’s that much worse for people who never liked in the first place!
Seriously, this is very much the case with the stuff they play on the XM Smooth Jazz channel at the venue I mentioned. Beyond the overall “feel” I was speaking of earlier, from a musical standpoint it gets to where you can nearly unfailingly predict where any given piece is going as far as the melody line, the chord changes, the rhythm section and the overall musical texture.
To be fair, as you hinted in another post, there are different flavors of the stuff, and one doesn’t necessarily get to hear all of them on the radio (or today’s satellite equivalent).
Like any genre, even including the dreaded rap, if you dig deeply enough, you can probably come up with something you can at least tolerate, and maybe even appreciate. But most music tends to be known by its most visible (or audible) examples.
XM used to have a channel called Beyond Jazz, and it was far superior to the Smooth Jazz channel they have now. One of the casualties of the merger with Sirius.