Jazz Fatality?

So there I was watching the Documentary Channel last night. All of a sudden a documentary comes on about modern day jazz and how the new artists struggle for notoriety and separate themselves from the jazz legends that came before them.

It was a fascinating character study and even more than that a reflection on modern society in our information age.

Now I'm the first person to raise my hand and tell anyone, I don't know jazz, I have no appreciation for jazz, I don't get jazz. Not the masters and not the new guys. What I did understand though is that jazz has changed over the years and that is what the director of the doc was trying to get across.

In today's age jazz is not as relevant as it once was. There really are no legends that have taken the jazz form of music and advanced it to a different plane as the older generation has.

Jazz meant something different for the generation that came before these musicians did, and something different for the musicians before them. It was a reflection of the times and now the times seemed lost to these musicians. They feel that this is their day to shine.

One musician simply said that the past is dead and gone as are the musicians, yeah they were great but we can't play what they did. He also felt that the past generations would be ashamed if the new generations would be playing the same styles as they did then and didn't advance it.

That's an excellent point. I'm positive that Hitchcock would say the same thing about today's filmmakers, a point I regularly make when it comes to sequels and remakes which I loathe. We've see that story before, tell a new one.

What I really see happening though is perhaps jazz falling into a small niche style of music now. Today there are a thousand and one different types of music to choose from, not to mention different types of entertainment competing for your attention.

While jazz was once king of the music world today it might barely register as a blip on the entertainment radar. Within another two or three generations jazz might not even exist.

Perhaps jazz has become a victim of today's celebrity driven pop culture. There really isn't a celebrity spokesman or an American Idol for the jazz genre. While I'm not a fan and really no appreciation for the genre I'd still be sad to see it fade away.