A response to a currently circulating article from 2003.
The premise is that American’s don’t like jazz because they are a visually focused, ADD society which has lost its ability to appreciate high art. The argument takes on the fact that much pop music is vocally driven and assigns the reason for this to the fact that American’s cannot relate to music without it. The author extends this to the appreciation of visual arts, where he makes the claim that Americans cannot appreciate art which lacks something which they recognize. That, for instance, Voice of Fire is less liked than Creation of Adam because the later is easier to understand due to having recognizable figures from stories well known to those viewing the work, while the earlier is much more abstract and minimalistic and thus much more challenging to understand. Ignoring, of course, the relative fame of each work. Take Mondrain’s Composition 11 in Red, Blue and Yellow and Le Radeau de la Méduse by Théodore Géricault for a similar comparison.
The argument presented is tainted by an all too common nearly anti-American elitism which we of other countries often take. The first hint of such taint is the lack of discussion of music in other English speaking countries, such as Canada, Great Briton, Australia, New Zealand or even India. The author likely lacks personal experience of these countries and places, so he can be forgiven on this front. It must be noted, however, that singling out the United States is a ploy often driven by the rest of the world’s subconscious loathing-envy relationship dichotomy with the Americans. If nothing else, a quick look and presentation of sales numbers in the UK would have been in order, as such information is available.
Moving on from the subconscious, let us return the heart of the matter. American’s don’t like jazz because they cannot accept and understand abstract art. The abstract was the central feature and philosophy of the modern movement in the arts; musical, visual and performance. It was a reaction to that which came before, the romantic. No one considers jazz to be part of the modernity movement, however, but the generalities still stand. Jazz was less structured than the romantic music which preceded it, while still maintaining similar instrumentation. In the arts, the modern replaced with abstraction the vivid, photosimilar paintings of the previous period.
In architecture, modernity lead to buildings with high utility and little ornamentation. Architects were some of the first to react to modernity itself by reintegrating aspects of ornamentation to increase the aesthetic appeal of their structures, transforming the understanding of the movement. It was not that unadorned buildings did not function perfectly appropriately for their purpose, it was that the statement they made was insufficient to these first post-modern architects desires. Post-modernity is the name of the age recently closed, where the artists decided that they no longer held with the idea that you can communicate everything through abstraction alone. Abstraction has its place, but just because you can reduce something further does not make it necessarily desirable. I say post-modernity has passed since this is the consensus that is currently forming, although considerable debate exists as to whether post-modernism existed at all. We would likely find the author of the article in question would be one who denies the post modern and by extension its passing.
What is the meaning of all this? In short, the experiment that jazz represented has been replaced. We have moved on, which is not to say that jazz, like pure utility, has no place. Its place, however, is no longer the main stage. Jazz does not fit in what, for lack of a better term, we shall call the post-postmodern. To pretend that jazz is no longer commonplace because we are too unintelligent to properly grasp its meaning is pure and dangerous fabrication. If we lack the capacity to understand it, it is because it no longer resonates as it once did. Contemporary musicians have jazz, what came before and what came after to work with.
The purpose of the artist is not to create mocking works which the common human is incapable of understanding for the sole purpose of this elitism. The artist does their best to present the feelings, interactions and images they experience in a form which they feels best expresses it. Separating form from purpose is a meaningless endeavor doomed to create emotionally dead works which are, quite honestly, boring. Art in the style of Composition 11 in Red, Blue and Yellow created now might rightfully be accused of elitism, since we have moved on. The same with traditional jazz. It has its place, and certainly a too direct comparison of musical and visual arts leads to false results, but I feel as though the comparison stands.
In short, humans, the world and the arts have all moved on. Criticizing any of the above from moving on is foolhardy and wrongheaded. There is nothing wrong with not moving on, it is not necessary. I often wonder why certain types of alternative rock from the 1990s had to cease being produced, but I do not attack those who fail to grasp the greatness of many of these works and accuse them of being intellectual light weights. I may question their taste, however.
And a final point, the classical, and I use classical to mean premodern orchestral music, form of musical appreciation is outdated. I believe that the popular music, popular to mean all that has come since jazz (excluding country) form of appreciation is superior. Traditional folk music is meant to be played and enjoyed through participation and by just being in its presence. People would be doing things, preparing foods, talking and preforming other similar tasks during the performance. This is closer to the popular music form of presentation, which involves plenty of background noise of people enjoying more than just the auditory experience of the music itself, since music has always been about much more than just the sound. There is nothing wrong or wrongheaded about listening to music in silence, taking it all in. There is also nothing wrong about experiencing it as something else, as a background sound or as a participatory experience.