Leroi Jones, Angela Davis et al. term Black American secular music post-slavery, the blues tradition. It is a popular tradition, meaning people dance and party to it. It evolves - blues, jazz, rock, soul, r&b, hip, hop - . It also gets its vitality, in my opinion, not only from individual geniuses,but from the interaction of the musicians and the merrymaking masses, especially young people, of course.
I respect Dave's opinion as a musician. Though I don't keep up with jazz as much as I used to, I hear great virtuosity and creativity at our annual jazz fest in Detroit. There is a living avant gard.
I guess there is a place within the jazz tradition for both Wynton Marsalis' preservationist/classcistist approach and Miles Davis' evolve-with-the-changes approach.
I say all this as someone who grew up as a jazz aficionado, collecting Trane, Miles Davis, Bird, Billie, Coleman Hawkins, etc. records (not CDs). My cousin was in Duke Ellington's band, and all that. Fats Waller used to play on the piano in my Great Uncle's parlor and it was meaningful for me to inherit the piano for that reason, that type of stuff. That Great Uncle was a mortician in Philadelphia , and buried Bessie Smith, etc, etc. My point is jazz is a personal family treasure for me.
On the other hand, like life, Black music changes. So to be a real Black music fan, I have to change with it. Also, the truly creative "institution" in Black music is the combination of music with partying, musicians with revelers. So, popularity, "vulgarity" even, is a problematic but necessary "ingredient" for creating the good stuff. There's a sort of democratic requirement.
So, Black music makes history, but not just as the intellectuals please.
Did I say all this the last time this thread came up ?
From: dave dorkin
I do disagree myself & I know alot of musicians who also do. How many I cant say, but most non musicians would be hard pressed to meaningfully evaluate the music, more so now than ever before. I would say that the general public in the US no doubt agrees with you though. I think jazz is something very different from what it used to be. More fused with other phrasings, timbres, styles, extended harmonies & rhythms the people you mention never imagined & the idea of a relative dearth of good jazz is much stronger in the musically more conservative american jazz imagination.
Dave
--- andie nachgeborenen: But I don't believe that most jazz people would put any of these people in the same league with Coltrane or Parker or Ellington or Armstrong. I actually don't believe that you do. If you do, well, you and I disagree about whether there is a falling off (or an efflorescence) that needs explanation.