In a message dated 4/22/02 7:16:08 AM, Dflahm writes: >Fred, I agree completely with your post. It seems ironic, but the more >she works with jazz musicians, the less interesting her music-writing becomes. >Perhaps lyrics and experiments with sonorities (instrumental sound-qualities >and combinations thereof) became more important to her.
It's a really interesting question. I've put a lot of thought into it, and while I don't have it all figured out, I do think I have a few plausible answers. I'm not sure about the idea that she has become more interested in exploring sonorities, because she has always been quite involved in that, and has always excelled at it. Maybe you're right that she is now interested in that to the detriment of melody and harmony. I do agree that hanging and working with jazz musicians is a factor, a case of an intuitive genius diluted with partial education. I also feel that she may have convinced herself that her earlier work was not as "hip" as this new, exotic jazz world she was discovering, failing to realize that it was her own unschooled self-invented language that was truly hip, hipper than any grafting of jazz could make it. Another component may be one that Joni herself identified in younger female singer/songwriters who had been influenced by her, she had paved the way for them, but subsequently they had rejected her, which she aptly described as "killing mommy" ... I think perhaps she has succumbed to this herself. Finally, I have to consider the sad possibility that her "melody well" has dried up. It happens. And if so, as I am always careful to stress, it in no way whatsoever diminishes the magnitude of her previous achievement. Nothing can take that away from her. Fred
