#KENNY G BREATHLESS REVIEW HOW TO#

The back of the CD is blessed with a close-up of his saxophone (the same picture is seen a total of five times throughout the album's liner notes). photographed in earnest black and white, smiling a winning smile, holding his saxophone in front of him with all the phallic subtlety of a Camel cigarette advertisement. The cover of his new album finds Kenny G. It's an all-embracing product, layered with visual clues that establish a framework for fans to connect with the musician. Pop music rarely gives itself much leeway within its tight confines, he's king, and nobody has had as long-running a career (since 1982) making instrumental pop as he has.Д«ut pop music uses more than music in its packaging and promotion. Yet it's his clarity of purpose that makes him popular: he tells you when to be sentimental or sad or hopeful. The titles of the songs - 'Sentimental,' 'In the Rain,' 'End of the Night' and 'The Wedding Song' - suggest the emotional frame within which he works, and instrumentally, the records are put together like any pop record, using standard sounds, rhythms and harmonies.

The background tracks for his saxophone playing are note for note those of any soul-inflected pop music, in keeping with the conventions of the genre. is a purveyor of raw sentimentality, something that no doubt explains his popularity. Like so many other pop musicians, Kenny G. Whoever figured out that the saxphone automatically implied jazz sophistication, regardless of what kind of music it was playing, deserves a statue on Madison Avenue. It's bizarre that a music with so little connection to jazz can claim membership in that family. They're playing instrumental pop music - smooth, seductive and functional, not that different from Whitney Houston's - and it should be called that. Kenny G., along with David Sanborn and others who have cashed in on jazz's cache, aren't playing jazz. Integrity and achievement can't be copyrighted, but they can be degraded.ДЄ simple change in nomenclature would be good for everybody. When one of the greatest products of a historically disenfranchised minority is used to sell something that doesn't reflect its music's achievements, suspicion and resentment can be expected. Jazz has such a long history and is so intertwined with the black community in all its struggles and its joyousness that the casual theft of the label can't be anything less than an insult. No wonder people who have spent their whole lives trying to master the art form, to little recognition, get resentful.Дeep down the issue is ownership. His work is improvisationally empty and doesn't swing, there's no blues sensibility, and he hasn't figured out the difference between emotionalism and sentimentality. either can't play jazz or won't, and his music is spectacularly lacking in any of the characteristics that define jazz as a genre. Their music is the basis for membership, and it's a music that takes one years to become adept at, much less master.

#KENNY G BREATHLESS REVIEW HOW TO#

Aspirants either learn how to swing, how to play the blues and a handful of other necessities, or they don't join the club. In pop, authenticity depends on the creativity of managers and producers jazz has it own set of rules. has been consistently marketed as a jazz authentic: a hipster privy to jazz's cool emotionalism, an artist with divine inspiration. President Clinton has called him one of his favorite jazz saxophonists (he performed at the Inauguration), and he has become, with his post-hippie looks and aura of guy-next-doorness, an identifiable media figure.ДЄll this success drives people with an affinity for jazz bonkers. 2 on Billboard's pop chart for six weeks it has hovered in the Top Five for the last two weeks. The single, 'Forever in Love,' propelled the album to No. The weasel-toned soprano saxophonist has sold more than 3 million copies of his new record, 'Breathless' (Arista). Rarely has anybody sold so many records and been so firmly ignored by critics.Д«ut Kenny G. They curse his name, then forget all about him. After listening to his music, populists throw up their hands and dismiss him as a product of the brain-washing machinations of the entertainment industry. is so sentimental, so slick and so popular that he turns the most avid populists into raving elitists.

Kenny g breathless review