Having 2 percent of all record sales last year is as close to irrelevancy as any genre might want to be. Nate Guidry covers jazz for the Post-Gazette and is a regular contributor to JazzTimes magazine. Some of these questions about race and where jazz comes from are interesting and provocative, but ultimately if the music is to survive, we've got to let it just speak for itself. It's a big mistake.
Jazz music is as healthy as it has been in some time.
People like Wynton Marsalis and others are doing wonderful things to keep the music in the forefront. Burns historiography wasn't without problems. The film had a difficult time placing into context musicians who are neither black nor white. Consider the important contributions of Cuban, Puerto Rican and Brazilian musicians. Burns also had trouble breaking away from the assumption that jazz is quintessentially male.