Contemporary jazz artist Nicholas Payton has taken issue with the label given to his genre.  “Jazz,” he says “is an oppressive colonialist slave term and I want no parts of it.” Wow.  No, Payton does not play jazz, he insists, he plays Postmodern New Oreleans Music, or Black American Music (#BAM).

Payton argues that jazz died in 1959, the same year as The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s seminal album Time Out.  Even if you’ve never heard of Time Out you’ve surely heard of the third track on the album, Take Five, arguably the most famous jazz single ever, and the first jazz single to sell one million copies.  Also occurring in 1959, Miles Davis released what is regarded to be the best jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue.  I may be reading Payton’s poem argument wrong, but it seems to me as if he pronounces jazz dead in the very year that it seemed to be reaching new levels and new audiences.  I don’t get it.

“Jazz,” Payton says is a necessarily limiting term, confining its practitioners to a realm of triteness.  “Jazz was a limited idea to begin with.”  I hate to tell a painter what painting is all about, or a musician what music is all about, but the essence of jazz is exploration.  Listen to John Coltrane’s Live in Paris, and tell me it’s “limited,” in it’s scope.  Or, better yet, listen to Miles’ catalog and tell me it’s “limited,”  confined, or lacking originality.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  To be fair, the Miles example is cheating a little, Miles himself disliked the term “jazz” as he thought it limited his ability to achieve a pop hit and relegated his music to the ghetto–a statement which in my opinion is more racist than most others concerning the word jazz.  Duke Ellington himself, when asked to define jazz, stated, “It is all music.”

The roots of jazz trace back to black communities in New Orleans.  Second-Line funeral processions playing up-tempo numbers followed the primary funeral processions (hence, second line) in celebration of the deceased’s life.  The second-line music evolved and emigrated to Chicago, and in the second decade of the twentieth century, jazz as we know it was born.  To be sure, jazz originated as black music.  But in the 1960′s jazz was co-opted by whites (see: rock’n'roll).  People like Paul Desmond, Buddy Rich, Louie Belson, Dave Brubeck, Peter Erskine, and Stan Getz redefined jazz forever and brought it to new audiences.  While jazz may have originally, and may still be primarily black music, to change its name from Jazz to Black American Music is to exclude and ignore the accomplishments and contributions of white musicians.  Black American Music it may have been, but jazz does not remain to be the domain of blacks alone.

But, why bring race into it at all?  Can’t I just enjoy Cannonball Adderly’s Somethin’ Else without thinking about its racial implications?  No, Payton argues, because “Jazz  is an oppressive colonialist slave term” which was foisted upon the musicians, “Jazz is a label that was forced upon the musicians.  The musicians never should have accepted it.”  Well, Mr. Payton, that is just factually wrong.  The etymology of the term jazz is a little bit hazy, but the Yale Book of Quotations tells us it appeared around the time jazz was making a splash in Chicago, about 1915.

Blues Is Jazz and Jazz Is Blues…Saxophone players since the advent of the “jazz blues” have taken to wearing “jazz collars,” neat decollate things that give the throat and windpipe full play, so that the notes that issue from the tubes may not suffer for want of blues–those wonderful blues.

Point being, if the musicians themselves are wearing “jazz collars” before the term was widely used the notion that the term was forced upon the musicians is dubious at best.  Further, the first musician to use the word “jazz” in his groups name, Bert Kelly, was black.

Say what you will, Mr. Payton.  Lament the state of your art as you wish–for it is lamentable.  I, an avowed jazz lover, lament with you.  The state of jazz is sorry.  But do not find racism where none is present.  Do not change a century’s worth of tradition and art for your benefit.  You may call it Postmodern New Orleans Music, but the moment you invoke the term postmodern you sound like someone who is trying too hard.  Jazz is jazz, man.  It has been, and always will be.  There is nothing wrong with that.  Taking fault with the term “jazz” as a result of the sorry state of your art is like hating the term “school” because you are receiving F’s.  It’s not the label, but the body of music that counts.  Changing the name will do nothing, it really just sounds like you are whining for attention.