Abstract

Paying The New Jazz Dues

The article focuses on the fading popularity of jazz, the Afro-American music in the U.S. Jazz was never a popular music but by contrast with the present, there have been periods during which it made parable breakthroughs to a sizable public, thereby providing reasonably steady work for the uncompromising improvisers as well lag for the popularizers. In the 1930s, there was enough ballroom and theatre work for scores of less publicized, mostly Negro, full-strength jazz bands. There was another popular interest in jazz in the 1950s. The folk renascence had not yet begun and in addition, the modern jazz innovations of artists Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie turned out be relatively easy to assimilate. However, the present popularity of jazz is again questioned.