[Dixielandjazz] Mayday For The Music

[Steve barbone]

The below was posted by "JayKay" on another jazz chat list. It was in
response to the "Mayday" thread which appeared on that list also.

Cheers,
Steve

Jazz has covered a very wide stylistic range during its years of existence,
so wide that it may be expecting too much to suppose that a listener who
enjoys Goodman will also be a devotee of Coltrane, that someone who bumps to
Jelly Roll Morton music will dig Rollins. We can trace the evolution and
call it all jazz, but the differences outweigh the similarities by a great
deal.  

Jazz was at its most popular when it was a "good time" type of music:
bright, swinging sounds that made people want to move - the rhythm,
altogether accessible, eliciting a fundamental response in every listener.
This function, which to me is at the core of music's appeal, was taken over
by rock 'n' roll and what has followed from that, while jazz moved from
free, open swinging music to an introspective, isolating, angular type of
approach.  The listeners looked (and listened) elsewhere for what they
wanted, more so as the "new sounds" became aligned with and reflective of
causes relating to politics, race, sex that were divisive rather than
gathering. 

Okay, that's life, and that's the world we live in, but the whole package
was labeled "Jazz" even as its latter-day styles drifted far from the
original appeal of their roots The "jazz" that is considered contemporary is
not easy to listen to and will never have mass appeal.  I realize that
I'm generalizing outrageously in this concise diatribe, but I tell you this:
rock music is wildly popular for many of the same reasons that made jazz
popular, while today's "jazz" has lost touch with most of those factors.