Here’s another old excerpt from some of my writing on social media. Hopefully, it will be food for thought and grist for discussion.

On the 1968 masterpiece album “Congliptious” by the saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell there is an amazing piece of improvised music called “Jazz Death.”  “Jazz Death” is a fairly lengthy unaccompanied trumpet solo by Lester Bowie which is bracketed by two short bits of spoken word theatre. Someone (I always assumed it was Roscoe Mitchell) plays the role of a jazz journalist. The piece opens with the “journalist” interviewing Mr. Bowie. He asks Bowie, “Is jazz as we know it dead?” Bowie then plays a 6 or 7 minute unaccompanied solo consisting of the most magnificent resume of all possible sounds that can be made by a human being and a trumpet. At the conclusion of this freakishly marvelous solo Bowie concludes the theatre by saying, “So you see, it all depends on what you know.”

What he said.

I think the problem is that in the late ’80s corporate interests took over jazz. They promoted a certain group of artists (so called Young Lions- now increasingly Gray Panthers) and they marketed a certain image and branding of what jazz is and what it isn’t. In order to market something you have to brand it and define it. That is not something that was ever part of the jazz ethos before Wynton and his cohort hit the scene. 

I started playing jazz in about 1967 as a young teenager. Back then nobody told us what was cool-except Downbeat…and everyone took even their opinion with a grain of salt. We played all kinds of jazz and proudly called it jazz: free jazz, hard bop, modal, funk, fusion, soul jazz…call it what you want to. The music was alive and it was improvised. It was happening…right then. We didn’t worship our elders. We respected them and learned from them and kept our eyes to the front. I was a 20 something working professional before I really heard swing era music and I was an almost 30 year old grad student before I really checked out early jazz. I think I was typical for American jazz musicians of my generation, regardless of race.

I guess I’m just old enough to remember jazz before the corporate take over of the music and its commoditization. The music had to be confined to be defined and it had to be defined to be marketed. It had to be canonized to be institutionalized and fit the mold of Lincoln Center, the Smithsonian Institution (a MUSEUM!) and most educational institutions. This led to the exclusion of certain music and musicians from the world of jazz and revocation of their membership cards. It led to elevation of some canonized musicians beyond the level of esteem I personally feel they deserve (such as Armstrong or Ellington-your mileage may vary).

The corporate imposed and institutionally supported definition of jazz built a wall around the music…even going so far as to revise history and exclude or marginalize certain things from the canon of jazz that had been virtually mainstream when they were created…things like free music, funk, fusion, etc. For example, Miles in the ‘70s (with amazing JAZZ musicians like Dave Liebman, Sonny Fortune, Gary Bartz, Al Foster…) was very powerful and influential among young musicians and music lovers. Today “jazz” people talk about that period of his music like he had moved to Mars and set up shop. Go look for these musics –any music outside the superimposed canon of jazz- in the Ken Burns series. For that matter, go look for white musicians or European musicians or musicians making music anywhere except New Orleans or New York (and only certain New York cliques during certain decades). I know that my Indianapolis-based elders, friends and colleagues find it hard to believe that you can do a video series on the history of jazz with out mentioning Indy’s illustrious native sons, not even J.J. Johnson, Wes Montgomery or Freddie Hubbard.

In the wild the music would continue to morph and grow, so we need to hold it captive. That funny smell of something dying is the smell of music held captive by certain people’s definitions. Many say the music that has been defined and marketed as “JAZZ” for the last 30 years is not cool. I would agree. However, there is vital and relevant artistic music that in 1965 would have been called jazz or is a direct evolution from the jazz of 1965. Unfortunately, most of that vital and still “cool” music falls outside the rubric imposed on jazz by corporations and institutions.

A few years ago the International Association for Jazz Education met its demise when it was infiltrated by corporate money from entities such as BET, record companies, music industry players, etc. The mission of the organization was subverted by these corporate influences; education and creative music became a footnote and audience development and market share became the focus. While I am presently a member of organizations such as JEN and ITG, I am skeptical of their ability to remain incorrupt by the influence of corporations and corporate money.

Many musicians that are playing brilliant music that I would consider jazz have relabeled their music to avoid the creative strictures and audience/market limitations that today are inevitably tied to the term “jazz.” In my youth my favorite music was “free jazz.” Today jazz audiences by and large diminish this approach to music making and marginalize all but a few legends of this music (and how many current “jazz lovers” actually listen to Ornette or Cecil?). Many creative free improvisers now run from the label “jazz” and find an appreciative niche audience by promoting their work as “improvised music.”

Institutional jazz seems hell bent on canonizing the historical greats of jazz and focusing on the music as an historical event. It is very hard to drive forward if you keep your eyes obsessively on the rearview mirror. I was raised to believe (as Kenny Werner has said) that innovation and personalization was the jazz tradition. Not slavish imitation of dead cats. Michel Foucault opines that canonization is an act of violence on history. To me it seems that things like Essentially Ellington are acts of violence on jazz.

If all of this seems weird coming from someone who was a collegiate jazz educator for almost four decades, I guess what I am saying is, don’t let corporations and institutions tell you what is and isn’t jazz music.