I'm especially interested in what I call practitioner criticism, which is when people who practice an art form start writing about it on blogs. I think that's an immensely important development. I want to see much, much more of that. People who make music who are verbally articulate. And not all musicians are verbally articulate. But those who are should be encouraged to write about what they do and their perception of what other people do. It makes the discourse smarter.
Terry TeachoutThis impeccably researched study of the classic black insult game may be the funniest work of serious scholarship ever published.
Terry TeachoutEXTREMELY FUNNY! A SUPER-VIRTUOSO! I expected to enjoy 'The Two and Only,' but I didn't expect to be touched, much less to find my eyes growing moist.
Terry TeachoutI know that luck has a way of happening to people who shoot high, who never sell themselves short.
Terry TeachoutThe papers that flourish will be papers that serve a national audience. Papers that have figured out how to make the transition to the electronic platform that aren't simply providing a duplicate experience of the words on paper experience, but are doing something that arises organically from the new electronic medium. It's really just a matter of finding the right platforms for the way people want to read newspapers. I mean, maybe it will be the iPhone. But one way or another, newspapers on paper are just not really going to exist to any significant degree within a decade.
Terry TeachoutI was interested in Armstrong to begin with because he is the most important figure in Jazz in the 20th Century. There's simply no question about it. I mean, if you're going to compare him to somebody, it's Shakespeare in terms of centrality of the tradition, in being at the beginning of it.
Terry TeachoutThere will be this mix of people like me who write for major national newspapers and amateur critics, practitioner critics, whose primary way of distributing what they talk about is through blogs and on the web. The line between professional and amateur criticism will become increasingly blurred. The problem here is that if you want to do this for a living, you have to be able to earn a living doing it.
Terry Teachout