Put yourself in this jazz musician’s shoes for a minute. Your record label just dropped two of its most acclaimed acts from the roster in order to aggressively pursue pop artists. Still, you think you have a sound that’s relevant to the moment—and to prove it, you need a stay of execution from what’s starting to look inevitable. So you pick up the phone, dial the label president, and beg for release from the adjective that’s become pure poison in the marketplace. “If you stop calling me a jazz man,” you promise the boss, “I’ll sell more.” That’s exactly what Miles Davis said to Clive Davis at Columbia Records—more than 40 years ago.
Seth Colter Walls in this week’s Newsweek on the commercial and creative futures of the jazz genre.
I stopped pursuing a career as a jazz musician a little over two years ago, and when I finally decided to let it go, it wasn’t just because I was having trouble keeping up with my peers. What was most unsettling was that I was in love with this music, but that I had no idea where it was going, if it was going anywhere at all.
Talk to any jazz musician in the world about what he’s most afraid of. Chances are that it’s not the competition or the unstable employment or having to hustle to make ends meet that most terrifies him—it’s the notion that his music has nowhere left to go.
Have we reached that point yet? I don’t know. But if it’s true that every stone has been overturned and that there’s no new creative land left to pioneer, then there’s really no other way of looking at it: if jazz is stagnant, then jazz is dead.
I stopped pursuing a career as a jazz musician a little over two years ago, and when I finally decided to let it go, it wasn’t just because I was having trouble keeping up with my peers. What was most unsettling was that I was in love with this music, but that I had no idea where it was going, if it was going anywhere at all.
Talk to any jazz musician in the world about what he’s most afraid of. Chances are that it’s not the competition or the unstable employment or having to hustle to make ends meet that most terrifies him—it’s the notion that his music has nowhere left to go.
Have we reached that point yet? I don’t know. But if it’s true that every stone has been overturned and that there’s no new creative land left to pioneer, then there’s really no other way of looking at it: if jazz is stagnant, then jazz is dead.
