There’s an old joke amongst jazz musicians that goes something like this. “How do you become a millionaire playing jazz?” The answer...”You start with 2 million...then you go on tour..:”
Making instrumental music is an uphill battle any way you slice it from a commercial standpoint. With instrumental jazz music...the hill is even steeper. Jazz music is simply not the pop music it once was...and by pop, I’m talking about popular. Many of the tunes that were/are standards were vocal tunes that everybody knew to begin with...fifty plus years ago. Some were show tunes...others were just great songs that appealed to everybody. The songs had romance, they were sexy...and they reflected the generation they were created in. The image of all the jazz players wearing designer suits was the fashion of the day.
Somewhere along the way, jazz music in general lost touch with all that. It became more about the licks than the music. In the 70’s and 80’s, Disco, Motown, Rock and Roll, and New Wave started to become the pop music of the era. Jazz started to become a kind of music you learned in the classroom and not on the street. It slowly became socially disengaged with the culture around it...
These days when a jazz artist tries to do something a little more relevant to the culture...as in doing groove music or covering a Nirvana song instead of a Cole Porter song...the jazz police have a hissy fit. They seem to forget that jazz music was never about staying in one place musically. It was about integrating music of the time and taking it some place else. There are people in the jazz music who think there was/is no real jazz music after 1965. If it doesn’t swing it’s not jazz. If there’s overdubbing on the record, it’s not jazz. If the instruments aren’t acoustic, it’s not jazz. Then they wonder why jazz music doesn’t sell the way it used to.
Unfortunately, jazz music now to most people (in the west) is lounge music...elevator music, background music...the stuff you hear at weddings...OLD PEOPLE music...lol. It’s music for snooty people with Armani suits drinking Martinis trying to impress their dates. In some ways, much of that is justified. Having taught guitar lessons for many years now, I never get one student that wants to learn to play jazz for the sheer love of it...and I’ve had students from 6-56. The only time anyone comes to me wanting to take up jazz is when they have an audition to get ready for to get into a post secondary music program.
