If you’re a man, you’re probably on record as loving Miles Davis. You probably even call him “Miles.” You have a collection of Cds by Coltrane, Mingus, and Charlie Parker. You get all wistful when you discuss how great Chet Baker was.
If you’re a women, you’re really sick of this shit, but you’ve learned to tolerate it, in exchange for sex and security. But deep in your heart, you know he’s just pretending. He doesn’t really love jazz: no one could! It’s awful!
Men like to explain how you haven’t learned to “appreciate” jazz, and that’s why you don’t get it like he does. After all it’s so complex, and women tend to be simpletons, as least where music is concerned. When a woman hears Coltrane’s version of “My Favorite Things”,she is so ignorant that it just sounds like a horrible, excruciating racket. She will long for ear plugs, whereas the man who proudly put on “A Love Supreme” will adopt an expression of perfect rapture.
Men who are musicians are the worst, of course. They will be even more condescending than a civilian man when discussing the merits of jazz. It’s mathematical! You just don’t understand it! If only you weren’t a moron, you could grasp the genius of Thelonius Monk!
Jazz is a prop that affords men a posture of superiority. Nah nah, ladies, you might be gaining authority in other areas of life, but you don’t get jazz! Yet some women still buy into this fiction, like the people who declare that Jackson Pollack is as good a painter as Rembrandt. I think the time has come for women to let men off the hook, by revealing their fraud and allowing them to start making amends. Wait, I mean start listening to good music.
The tragedy is, for some men, that years of pretending have tricked them into believing they actually do like and enjoy jazz. Even when they’re alone, these men will listen to Dave Brubeck or study the history of Blue Note records. It’s kind of like the Stockholm Syndrome, but without the kidnappers.
Studies have suggested that men who pretend to love jazz have higher levels of testosterone than those who admit they either don’t like it or aren’t familiar with it. This holds true even for deaf men. In other words, the mere pretense has a masculinizing effect. Other studies have illustrated that when men talk about jazz, they tend to rate their own intelligence at least twenty points higher than when they talk about cars. Finally, recent research findings at both Oxford University and MIT imply that jazz is intolerable to all cultures where males are still allowed to beat women and set them on fire when honor demands it.
Don’t feel too badly about yourself if you are a man who “loves jazz.” Come out of the closet and celebrate your freedom to listen to punk, rhythm & blues, classic rock and death metal. You can still reads maps better than girls, if you need something to feel superior about.