The Death of Jazz

(or the evolution of a style/type of music...)

Well. These kind of pronouncements get made often, usually as people age. :) That being said, I have to ask Carl:

When, exactly, did it die, and why is it pegged there?

Was it really mid-Miles? Could "A Love Supreme" have been the last step one could take and still be called jazz? Did the post-Coltrane era have nothing to say while still anchored to the roots of their music? Did the Art Ensemble of Chicago have nothing in common with New Orleans? Where do we consign the large body of work that continued to be made through Blue Note? ECM?

Are the vanguards (and/or "keepers of the flame") working (hardly!) today invalid (you pointed to Bad+/Mehldau)? Dave Holland's myriad of groups? The innovative work of Darcy James Argue's "Secret Society", a complete re-thinking of what the big band genre was/could be?

Maybe a more salient point would be whether the *audience* for a given genre has "died", or perhaps become more splintered and smaller in comparison, rather than the music itself.

One last thought: many of the styles of music that became trends or movements in the last 50 years can - at least in part - be tied to the channel of transmission: the recording producers. Certainly, entire bodies of work, very important pieces, can be located in large collectives of artists who collaborated with a label or producer (as mentioned with Blue Note, ECM, probably others). This has, of course, come to a grinding halt.

I tend to believe that now, just as in any time of creative human spirit, there is a large amount of fascinating music being made. *My* personal frustration is that the playing field (and, more importantly, the *distribution*) has become so level and flat that it is nearly impossible for me to find my way to these musics. On the other hand, I've kind of given in to the frustration, and when I do come across a new voice or vision (through tenuous threads of artists leading me to other artists, or recommendations of valued friends/listeners), it becomes a real discovery - how in the hell did I find *this*?

Whether post-jazz, post-classical, post-whatever, the musicians are still working with the preceding body of information and re-imagining it in new ways. It's a bitch to find amongst the Mountain of the Mundane (yay Garage Band! yay ease of recording! Music made the way blogs have proliferated!), but I'm still finding people that are making relevant, transforming music.

YMMV.

Cheers,
Jon