Jas Academic Antithesis

"Jas, from which we get our word jazz, is an old Creole term, one meaning of which is to dance.  Just as dance is music made visible, so jazz is dance made music.  Its study and discipline are part of an oral tradition, best imparted by master-player to student.  

"Imagine this - jazz is first physically conceived before the mind takes over.  It is visceral.  Jazz playing cannot be learned by merely memorizing transcribed solos, for instance.  To play from transcription is like trying to get nourishment from a picture of a meal.  Jazz, unlike classical music, is not an interpretative art.  Unlike classical music, a music of theme and development, jazz is a music of time and development.  It is more verb than noun.  And it is a process antithetical to standard academic practice..."

Freeform "Jazz" - Politics versus Excellence

"Jazz discipline has established the parameters for improvisational music in the 20th century... There is a jazz movement begun in the 1960s called Freeform, which utilizes the techniques of jazz improvisating minus the time discipline... a reaction against the perceived limitations of the ternary form and well-trod chord patterns relentlessly repeated.  The cry went up for 'Freedom,' but, unfortunately, it came at a cost.  Form gives music its force, as it does for a couplet or a painting or for water squeezed through a hose.  Freeform resulted in absence of form - formlessness.  And among the first things to go was harmony..."

Jazz And The American Christian

"... The difficulty is in trying to find where contemporary Christian music is anything other than pop and the like.  What of 20th Century classical?  Jazz?  Avant garde, in the higher art sense?  Believe it or not, there are such.  But  where to find it on any Christian web page is a question.  I mean none disrespect, but Christian music has come to mean only that which speaks in  youthful vernacular, all too often set to adolescent mating music.  Notice how  virtually every Christian music web page advertises the music with fantasy  images... Is it really true, then, that Christian music is only about what is easy to sell?  And do Christians, as with the broader range of American society, believe that only children can make new music?.."