Past And Future Tense: A Jazz Roundtable

This week, our guest curator, Matt Fleeger got us thinking about the tensions between jazz's glorious history and its relentless drive toward the great new sounds. Tension is good, in a creative sense, right? But you can't help but notice how these dyad has driven some of the most ferocious conversations about the nature of jazz, and the rightful path for the American art form. Witness the fury over Stanley Crouch and James Mtume's epic head-to-head about Miles Davis' electric period, provided here (with added commentary from the always-excellent Ta-Nehisi Coates). Crouch basically suggests Davis was pressured by label execs to go for a broader audience. Mtume insists the decision to plug in was an artistic one, born of "technical exhaustion". It's a sample of a debate that consumes both fans and musicians. With Matt's help, we lined up three musicians who share very different views on the subject.