To his credit though, Mr. Burns doesn't just have his own jazz, he also has his own baseball and his very own civil war. He has badmouthed anything and everything after bebop and then pretty much plagiarized ' Blood on the Fields ' from John Carter's 5 symphony cycle dedicated to the history of African-American music. I feel better now. The letter referred to here is a document of censure that I'll be sending to both Ken Burns and Mr. Marsalis, and this wise and kind gentleman can duly consider his name attached to it. Jazz is America, it could come from no other country because no other country possessed its strange mix of freedom and subjugation.
Jazz is a music suspended in time, and it needs no historical context.
Those who can't, teach. Those who can neither do nor teach, criticize. In my time I've done all those things - but I've done them with a fresher approach than to haul out a hackneyed insult usually reserved for Gym teachers. I encourage you to try harder with all you do in life. Using my rationale, only people who know what they're doing should listen and play the music and should have to WORK at it.