1

I've been thinking about what to talk about in my Jam Band presentation. Jam music is a large category, it could encompass a lot of musicians, and is present in other genres of music. I thought it would be good focus on one band and their approach to jamming. I guess jamming is a part of most types of music, and itself is just about synonymous with the word improvising, which happens just about every time music gets played. I was thinking of doing a presentation on Ali Farka Toure, an African blues guitarist I recently started listening to and wondering how to present Farka-toure in a jam-band context, then I thought about Captain Beefheart, another guy I just started listening to, and wondered the same thing, but then I thought "why not talk about the Grateful Dead?" They're a jam band. So that's what I'll do.

I liked what I heard in the Jazz presentations last class. I learned some things about Jazz in general, and about some jazz musicians I hadnt known much about before. I'd never seen Miles Davis on video, it's always interesting to see musicians play their music--he seems very serious. Youtube is a good place to find live performances. I watched the Dave Brubeck quartet do "take five" on the youtube last night, it was good to see four nerdy-looking white guys in suits playing such groovy music.