[Dixielandjazz] A New Thread for the DJML to fight over

[Stephen G Barbone]

Bob Ringwald posted Tom Wiggin's challenge to us about music to fight  
over. If was blog #116 about "Stuff White People Like". The main point  
seemed to be that white people get hip to black music after black  
people desert it for something hipper.  Then, the following quote:

"Historically speaking, the music that white people have kept on life  
support for the longest period of time is Jazz."

We could get into all sorts of opinions about Dixieland or just laugh  
it off. Consider the following quote from a book review about the  
writings of one John Barth, The review claimed that Barth helped  
define American Post Modern Fiction decades ago and is now  
contributing to its demise by doing that which he criticized in the  
1960s. Check out this quote, by reviewer Gregory Miller of the San  
Francisco Chronicle, Nov 18, 2008. The book is "The Development of  
John Barth" The capitals in th below quote are mine, for emphasis:

"His 1967 essay 'The Literature of Exhaustion' made the powerful case  
that writers of serious fiction must shun the inheritance of realism  
or else doom themselves to stale variations within a tradition that  
had used up its potential for innovation. Writers who took this route  
would be like lion tamers or DIXIELAND JAZZ PLAYERS: delightful  
adepts, perhaps, but hardly essential to the contemporary moment."

Me? I'm of the laugh it off school. For what do critics or bloggers  
innovate? <grin>

Cheer,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband