I'm glad to encounter your Substack. It's always good to find serious reporting on jazz outside the American mainstream!
As a long-time, non-musician listener who writes a personal Substack on jazz, I try to be alert in my own writing to the cynicism musicians often feel about layperson "critics." My main guardrails are:
1) Do not use technical terms that I'm not certain I understand (and this leaves very few); impressionistic descriptive writing is not a problem.
2) Check each assertion to see if it might be wrong; insert qualifying language as needed to indicate what is an assumption, speculation, or personal impression (in your example, I would write "reminds me of Sex Mob" rather than "is influenced by Sex Mob").
3) Stay humble and charitable. If I really dislike an artist's music altogether, I'd rather simply not write about it than sit in haughty judgment.
Hi, Tom. Thanks for your reply. I can only guess that we (so-called “critics,” writers, journalists, etc.) evolve over time. I wrote my first CD review in 2007. Now, with this kind of time distance and experience, I can reflect on my “failures” and on some situations that made me reconsider different approaches to writing about jazz. And this is still a process. “Stay humble” sounds like a good reminder and something we should be aware of all the time.
I'm glad to encounter your Substack. It's always good to find serious reporting on jazz outside the American mainstream!
As a long-time, non-musician listener who writes a personal Substack on jazz, I try to be alert in my own writing to the cynicism musicians often feel about layperson "critics." My main guardrails are:
1) Do not use technical terms that I'm not certain I understand (and this leaves very few); impressionistic descriptive writing is not a problem.
2) Check each assertion to see if it might be wrong; insert qualifying language as needed to indicate what is an assumption, speculation, or personal impression (in your example, I would write "reminds me of Sex Mob" rather than "is influenced by Sex Mob").
3) Stay humble and charitable. If I really dislike an artist's music altogether, I'd rather simply not write about it than sit in haughty judgment.
Hi, Tom. Thanks for your reply. I can only guess that we (so-called “critics,” writers, journalists, etc.) evolve over time. I wrote my first CD review in 2007. Now, with this kind of time distance and experience, I can reflect on my “failures” and on some situations that made me reconsider different approaches to writing about jazz. And this is still a process. “Stay humble” sounds like a good reminder and something we should be aware of all the time.