[Dixielandjazz] When is it not jazz?

[Ken Gates]

 A friend lent me the Smithsonian collection of classic jazz.  Or at least, one of it's forms.
Got up to side 11----The second track is 11 minutes of Cecil Taylor---"Enter Evening".
Now--I'm not going to attempt to define jazz---but certainly it must be the sound of musical
instruments (or voices) and rhythms---and important to many of us---that do so
in a manner that "swings".

Better and more knowledgable "ears" than mine can make sense of various "modal" forms and
other "modern" constructs----and I have no problem understanding that certainly those are 
bonafide
forms of jazz.   But random sounds?  That is what it sounds like to my "primitive" ears.
Maybe "abstract interpretations of sound" is a category---but "jazz"---I don't get it.

Ken Gates (still striving to climb the evolutionary ladder)