[Dixielandjazz] Why Americans don't like jazz: analysis of pop music.

[Kent Murdick]

I'm going to generalize quite a bit here, but I think it will be useful 
in answering the question.  These are my own observations.

Today's pop music (rock' n' roll based music)  started roughly around 
1950 perhaps as a reaction to the complexity of Bebop jazz.  It evolved 
until around 1970, at which point everything that could be done with the 
genre had been done.  And then it went on for another 37 years with no 
end in sight.  This is a highly unusual run for such a simple form with 
little hope of evolving into art music.

I think the reason this has happened is that because the music is 
guitar based, music literacy has been lost and as the form has been 
passed on to the next generation, it is incapable of evolving.  Unlike 
the horn, the easiest way to first learn to play the guitar is to play 
by ear.  The guitar is peculiar that there are usually three places to 
play the same pitch and every time one shifts up a fret, the whole 
musical landscape changes - it's tantamount to changing the key of the 
horn every time you shift.  Reading on the guitar  is hard, so no one 
learns to read.  Learning to be free with the guitar in terms of playing 
what you hear is also very difficult, but it is very easy to play a 
pentatonic scale on the guitar - one can become fluent in rock 
improvisation in a few weeks or even days. The difference between 
playing rock and jazz is like the difference between a story teller and 
a novelist.  The story teller can be good, but he can't pass on his art, 
and he can never be as good as the novelist. In addition, mass marketing 
encourages the rock genre because most established institutions resist 
change. 

So there it is, pop music is like the proverbial broken record, doomed 
to repeat itself for the next millennium.  People who are used to simple 
music have trouble listening to more complex forms, so it's not that 
Americas hate jazz, they just don't understand it.