Improvisation transforms, one-ups, reinterprets, and synthesizes evolving human experience and its sonic signatures regardless of their classical, popular, or cultural origins.
There is no question that jazz is still present in the culture, but the larger question is: does jazz still matter? We think it does in ways that are rather astonishing in their implications. Jazz artists like Robert Glasper and Kamasi Washington and avant hip hop artists like Kendrick Lamar may forge a new synthesis of jazz, the avant-garde, and the popular that rivets new audiences or may provide a radically new relationship between art and the popular. The Black Lives Matter movement has inspired a florescence of socially engaged artistic expression in jazz (Terence Blanchard’s Breathless), popular music (Beyoncé’s Lemonade), and hip hop (Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly) that models itself on the artistic vision of jazz. We suggest that jazz improvisation remains a compelling metaphor for interrelationship, group creativity, and freedom that is both aesthetic and social. Improvisation transforms, one-ups, reinterprets, and synthesizes evolving human experience and its sonic signatures regardless of their classical, popular, or cultural origins. The most innovative popular musicians are returning to its acoustic power, representing the screams of Aunt Hester, as Fred Moten has put it, with the unconventional timbres and tones of haunting jazz.17 Understanding what has happened to jazz can tell us a great deal about the nature and influence of popular music as both a national and international art form.