The Death Of Jazz

I grew up and lived most of my life in New Orleans, hearing jazz as a small boy I remember those sounds so well. There were old jazz clubs everywhere in the city and all little boys were taken to them from time to time. I liked that jazz...until  it was when in my 20's or so when old jazz, traditional jazz seemed to fade away into whatever old jazz is today. As far as some people are concerned, jazz, meaning old jazz, isn't just lost today. It's dead.  Few people pay attention to any kind of jazz anymore. Instead, musicians who play it present us with a strange aberration it is many find boring and without any "soul" at all. Modern Jazz seems like a McDonald's hamburger. It is full of sound and fury, signifying little.

What we have now is a commercialized idea of what old jazz was. But then, I am not a musician I am just an observer of culture and think that the death of Jazz is the same dying of culture that we have and are experiencing in the dawn of the computer chip and other technological assassins. When culture changes so rapidly we hardly realize what we lose it is a particularly bad form of change.

One can still visit the "museum" of old jazz at Preservation Hall in New Orleans, that music venue for those who want to remember the spirit and soul of a form of music that used to excite the listener, but which is less today even than elevator music. Beyond Preservation Hall, it's hard to find old jazz in New Orleans anymore. Instead we have that bubble gum of jazz everywhere there, Neo jazz. But then I am just a little informed person who remembers old jazz and laments what it becomes.

Too, I am inadequate in knowledge of the field and incapable of defining old jazz. Thus, I am only capable of lamenting its passing. I do know that something of great cultural value came quickly and has now evolved into something mush less. Perhaps too few others have that recognition. Here is a vintage clip of Mardi Gras scenes from the 40's and of an New Orleans old jazz tune, 'Eh La Bas', by Kid Thomas Valentine (a trombone phenom). Sadly, real jazz is hard to find anymore, even in modern  New Orleans. If you don't feel sad that this kind of jazz is gone then I have just been whistling an empty tune here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quyHJODhyvo&index=2&list=PLZryXP-J6HpNtVZgURyOIxm1TnNscn7Lw