Jazz is not as heard as years before, in fact, less people bought jazz albums in 2014 than in 2013 in the U.S. That is according to the latest Nielsen report, which states that jazz accounts to only 1.4% of all albums sold in 2014. Not only this number is extremely small compared to other major genres, but it has decreased in comparison to years before. In 2011, 11 million jazz albums were sold, and that right there was only 2.8% of all music sold during that year. A total of 5.2 million albums were sold by all jazz artists in 2014. To show how small that number is, compare it with how many copies of her last album’1989’ Taylor Swift sold during the last two months of 2014: 3.7 million.
Jazz is not selling well. That is a fact if we consider jazz as what Nielsen believes it is. It is impossible to define it when something that has its roots on jazz stops being jazz. Take ‘bluegrass’ as an example, it doesn’t sound like New Orleans jazz, but it is organized and has a similar structure. Jazz itself is not just genre, it is a philosophy, and a huge amount of modern popular music would not exist if it weren’t for jazz. Jazz has evolved because that is its very own nature, since the beginning musicians have been trying to create new kinds of ‘jazz’, and for these reason we can find so many styles, from Swing to Be-bop, jazz has always been trying to innovate, even if what is popular at the moment seems to be perfect.
Today jazz is not the same, but how can one expect a genre to stay the same for over a hundred years? Jazz is different, and that is not a bad thing. It has become an essential part of today’s popular music, take for example Kendrick Lamar’s latest album ‘How to Pimp a Butterfly’, it is not a rap album with some jazz in the background, it is a full-length jazz album mixed with Kendrick’s words. Jazz is always changing, people will not listen to a new jazz musician who will keep playing the same old songs, people will listen to artists who have something different to play.
Jazz listeners usually buy albums from ‘jazz legends’ such as Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and many more great musicians. That alone might be one of the reasons why newer jazz artists are not very popular, they get ignored because they are not as ‘good’ as former performers. If you wan’t to see how fanatical jazz fans are about past musicians, take a look at any jazz related forum, or at Reddit’s jazz section (/r/jazz), and you will notice that most posts are about old songs, and pictures of old album covers. Jazz is alive, artists are still creating music, and the people who care about its survival should support them.
As said before, most jazz artists don’t want to imitate what has been done before, they try to create music in new ways and styles. For this reason some of then stop being appealing to the average listener. When jazz groups emerge with mainstream jazz and try to appeal to a larger mass by infusing pop or rock to their music, criticism start falling on them by ‘jazz purists’, and if they are not supported by the jazz community, then how can they succeed? They simply can’t.
Some current artists evolved from jazz to other genres. Take Michael Buble as an example, he became famous for his covers of famous songs, and at the beginning of his career he took a similar approach than Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, who made successful covers of jazz and soul songs. Bubble became famous thanks to jazz songs and the amazing arrangements that he and his band put on them, but he has been evolving recently, his music can barely be called jazz anymore, even if there are traces of swing in some of his new songs.
On the other hand, respected jazz singer Tony Bennett have been trying to appeal to a broader audience by featuring famous singers into his newer albums, such as John Mayer, Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga, and Alejandro Sanz. Mr. Bennet even released a album in collaboration with famous singer, Lady Gaga. Even though Gaga’s performance in the album can only be described as wonderful and sophisticate, some forums criticized Tony Bennett for making music with a pop singer. This kind of thinking will never help the genre earn more listeners, in fact, it will make it more obscure.
Jazz is part of the American culture, it represents freedom, creativity, and hard work. Jazz is an important part of this country’s culture and history, it should never be forgotten how jazz brought emotional freedom to the African Americans who weren’t free around one hundred years ago. Jazz also represents how music can become a way of life, how an instrument can become more than an instrument and be part of what a person is. All the true jazz masters have dedicated their lives to music, not because of financial reasons, which is extremely strange in today’s music scene, but because they are truly in love with music, and playing is a necessity to them. Jazz can’t die, and will never die, because there will always be people who will need to express themselves through their instruments, and jazz is the best way, because as Miles Davis once said: ‘When you’re creating your own sh*t, man, even the sky ain’t the limit”.
whooopee 