Keith Jarrett and Pop Swing Time

I would tell Keith Jarrett to sit down.  Upon reflecting on the concept of swing rhythm or rather swing "feeling,"  modern musicians who knows nothing about either would tell me to sit down.  Playing with a computer, a synced track, or anything produced in a studio by others is not being in a band.  It is not being a musician.  I turn on late night TV, I try to watch a musical guest, and I turn the channel..... to more commercials.  There are more drug commercials on the evening national news than there is news.  I would tell Keith Jarrett to sit down.  Upon watching one of his live DVD's of the standards tour with Gary Peacock and Jack Dejohnette, I was trying to wrap my head around Keith's presentation.  Jazz is not popular.  It never has been.  It was and is an underground music.  Mr. Marsalis has tried to take jazz "to the people" by abandoning swing rhythm and replacing it with pop rhythm.  Again modern performers would tell me to sit down.  What's the difference they say?  No one knows.  "Anything is jazz," they would say.  Not so.  Swing feel and pop rhythm or style are not the same.  The only similarity between them is that pop style  attempts to swing between its quarter notes.  It is a drunken lope rather than a swing feel, and it can be created with a pick rather than with a real emotional feeling.  This is how many a name band made their money, faking it with this rhythmic concept.  I would tell Keith Jarrett to sit down, because....  Bueller?  Anyone?  Does anyone think that Mr. Jarrett's physical contortions are natural?  Or are they an act?  No other jazz pianists I know of dance while they play, not that we could call his movement dance.  He just moves around, and because of this movement his lines lack swing feel.  I was watching this trio, Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, and Jack Dejohnette trying to get their style.  Mr. Dejohnette plays pretty rigid.  He does not move his body very much to show internalization of the time or feel.  His back is straight and he plays with his wrists.  Then again there is so much movement in Mr. Jarrett's performance, there is enough.  With all of that movement, a stiff approach could be appropriate.  I guess they figured it out.  That trio has their own rhythmic concept, and it has worked for them.  Jazz is not popular music, but they have remained in the mainstream as long as they have been playing.  I hear different cuts from those standard recordings, and often I hear Keith hit his target.  After lots of searching through classical approach, improvisation, and soul he will find the center of a tune.  He will play a truly authentic phrase that purely is jazz.  That is something to which I want to listen, a master.  Then I bought the DVD.  I had to listen through the distraction of his movement.  I thought does this augment this performance?  My conclusion was no.  It appeared to me that he is missing the little finger on his left hand.  That is a set back in piano playing.  I wanted to hear his piano playing, his lines, his ideas, and his expression, but all of this was upstaged by this strange movement.  As I continued to watch these three great musicians play together, I realized that how they are playing is not really swing in nature.  None of these three jazz musicians were articulating the time at the same place.  Each musician had his own idea of where the time was, hence there were three different interpretations of where the time was.  They were not hitting together.  By definition how could this concept swing?  They are playing despite one another or against one another.  That traditional swing feeling that is achieved by playing together in time was absent for the most part.  It was a dialog of jazz ideas but not played in time together as a trio.  It reminded me or "pop."  Pop does the same thing.  It only is a framework, a set of fence posts in between which the musicians play, often not together.  There is no possible way to achieve a swing feeling playing this way, because swing is ensemble music.  In ensemble music you must play together.  I hear Keith searching for the answer, and often he gets it.  I only could think you are only making it more difficult for yourself by creating an undulating cloud in which to play.  How will anyone know if you ever play together, because you are trying to hard to disguise the traditional body language that suggests ensemble playing.  Perhaps it is a duality.  Mr. Jarrett wants the freedom of expression not to be tethered to the piano bench.  The rules of piano realization are concrete, and he is breaking them.  It should be no surprise that they don't swing.