Musical Liberty vs Purist Snobs

I feel like maybe snob is a bit too strong of a word to describe the incident that inspired this blogpost but oh well.

Studying Jazz and Improv at uni is awesome. Like, I get to study music. I GET TO STUDY M-U-S-I-C. Call it useless, a waste of time, whatever you want but in the grand scheme of things we're only here for a short time, and no one is going to give a shit about the status or grandeur of what you or I or anyone studied so shut up.

Anyways. I'm in a couple ensemble group things. One of them is awesome, our director is the coolest dude and the people are also chill. The other group is fine too, just a bit eh. Certain people I'm not very fond of, moreso coming from them themselves and less so in a musical sense, but anyways, I diverge. Today we did a standard in a different style (someone brought in an arrangment). I thought it was awesome, we played it today in a thing where all the ensembles get up and play and get feedback from staff. Our feedback was a bit more critical, mostly in the sense of our stylistic choices not reflecting the sentiment of the song which is fair.

But this along with some other things (me sending song ideas) instigated this whole thing from this one dude who was basically like "I'm putting my foot down, we're sticking to Jazz" (trad, standards etc.). Had this whole back and forth until mentally I was like this is a waste of time it's like talking to a wall. I indeed had better things to preoccupy myself with (one might ask, why the fuck are you writing this then???). But I was just really put off by the whole conversation to be honest.

Firstly, dictating what people can and can't bring in and what we can play as a group? Um? Shut up. Thanks.

And then, the purist mentality and whole perspective on what is and isn't jazz and just ugh. Lots to say but I don't really want to re-read it at this point. Anyways. It got me pondering (yes, I like to ponder) back about how sad and just ew it is how some people restrict themselves to certain music and refuse to take in anything else. It can be pretty bad in the jazz scene. I'm not saying you're not allowed to like what you like, like and dislike what you want. But especially in a group setting that everyone has to be apart of be open to things??? ARHHGHH. The most frustrating part was him jumping from point to point and then sort of contradicting himself when I pointed it out and then changing what he was saying again. Some people can't be helped I guess.