You are right. How could I leave out Latin jazz? From Santana to Tito Puente to everything and everyone in between.

Jazz snobs try to keep it exclusive. There are different types of jazz, as there are different types of rock. To claim jazz stopped being relevant after 1965, or it ended around "Bitches Brew" or with modal jazz is to show the ultimate ignorance.

As for the snobby elitism, most of the jazz musicians I know (and most of them are truly amazing musicians) are about as non-elitist as can be. They just want to play music and pay their bills. They'll play in a 70s cover band one night, a more modern funk band the next night, then a big dance band at a retirement party, and small combos other nights. Then they will wake up on Sunday morning to play at a church service (contemporary, gospel, or classical sounding brass quintet). They live on the coasts and everywhere in between. And they listen to all sorts of stuff, including (outside of jazz) Mahler, John Adams, Bach, Josquin Desprez, live electro-acoustic music concerts full of composers you will never encounter otherwise, Alicia Keys, Radiohead, Willie Nelson, 2Pac, Johnny Cash, Erykah Badu, and the list could go on and on. They compose jazz music, pop music, and other stuff that brings in some extra cash. Elitism seems to exist more frequently among those who are not actually practicing musicians, or at least those who feel like they need to prove their own legitimacy.

Absolutely. I grew up with musicians who covered muliple styles, and I am doing this now. I am working on creating some hard funky bass lines to improvise over. I believe in a tone center, so my stuff is more accessible. It's the Radiohead debate again: music for musicians or music for public. People assume all jazz ended in some academic, codified corner. But the academics don't study post 1970s funk, r&B, and soul, which is where jazz went post 1965. Green Onions, Freddy's Dead? James Jamerson was a jazz bassist, as was Bootsy. George Benson is a jazz/blues guitarist. Anita Baker references Billy in her style, as does Indie.Arie. Alicia Keys and Beyonce reference Nina Simone...and so on.

If people knew more about modern-day jazz they would like it. But Big Record Co. and Big Radio have no idea of how to market anything not generic, and that doesn't just hurt jazz.

Jazz with a melody is powerful. Latin Jazz (Supernatural, for instance), is commercially viable, as is jazz funk and r&bjazz.

I'm happy Herbie Hancock won.People who don'y usually listen are listening now. The day after the Grammies that album was the number 2 download on Amazon. My students discovered it. Yeah!

Now if I can figure out a lick to play over a I-bIII-III-IV bass line that sounds hard and melodic at the same time (think Blackstreet) for comping under "Unchain My Heart", I'll be in business. Back to the Roland I go...

Jazz is very much alive - you just gotta poke around.

Far from dying in 1960(!), jazz not only had one of its best decades ever from '59-'69 (I'm with Kamiya re- Miles on that one), but right NOW plenty of great and accessible jazz is being created and played. Off the top of my head: Eric Truffaz, Nils Petter Molvaer, Sex Mob, Peter Apfelbaum's New York Hieroglyphics, Will Bernard, Charlie Hunter, Garage a Trois, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Rebirth Brass Band, Kermit Ruffins, Cassandra Wilson, Donald Harrison, Tomasz Stanko... all putting out great stuff.

And you can dance to a lot of it too.

And then there's Charles Lloyd's "Sangam" collaboration with Zakir Hussain and Eric Harland - amazing stuff, one of the best music shows in any genre I've seen in years. And speaking of Zakir, his collaborations with John McLaughlin in "Shakti Remembered" have been incredible - some of the best live music I've seen by anyone, ever.

I'm still a big rock fan - younger than Kamiya but I basically went through the same evolutionary course that he did. And I'm glad I did, and that I didn't let the snobbishness of some jazz fans put me off to such great music.

Why let what how music fans act influence one's appreciation of said music? I don't get that at all - it's like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

At this point I don't care what genre something is in (or supposed to be in), and I don't let fans or their attitudes dictate what I listen to either - if it's good I listen to it.

(And to the guy who said that Wynton Marsalis played with the Dead: that was Branford Marsalis, not Wynton - jazz purist Wynton wouldn't be caught, um, dead playing with the Dead. Branford however is much more open minded.)

aw, shucks...as Jimi Hendrix once remarked, I loves ya.

Kamiya is kinda odd. He thinks about this, he thinks about that.

He is not a Charles Krauthammer. Geez, ya know Robbe-Grillet just disappeared. There is a cultural slot open. Think about it, Mr. Kamiya, you can be relevant as well as interesting. Best wishes.

Far from dying in 1960(!), jazz not only had one of its best decades ever from '59-'69

I wrote in an earlier letter that jazz died around 1960. Obviously this was a bit of an exaggeration, but I think it is fair to say that by that time, or in fact ten years earlier, jazz was no longer the pop music that young people gravitated towards.

It is true that Miles Davis and his circle produced fine music in the 60's to much critical acclaim, and that the Latin fusion music of Getz/Gilberto achieved considerable success. In my earlier letter I suggested this collaboration as one of a number of possible starting points for listening to jazz.

It is also true that Frank Sinatra did well in the sixties, with, for example the live Sinatra at the Sands album with the Basie band arranged by Quincy Jones charting very high, even with the Beatles at their height, but appealing, I am sure, to a more mature audience. He also topped the singles charts with Strangers In The Night in 1966

Worth noting also that Louis Armstrong became the oldest man, at 63, to have a hit single (Hello, Dolly!) and knocked the Beatles off the top of the charts. I think this was the last #1 hit single for a jazz artist, if you don't count Sinatra, but perhaps someone can correct me.

However when you consider that one out of every three nickels dropped into a juke box between 1939 and 1942 played a Glenn Miller song, and that Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman bands had massive record and jukebox sales, then any success by jazz artists in the 60s pales by comparison.

Of course technology has always been a factor. In the 30s it was radio, jukeboxes, and sound movies that drove music sales and the top artists had their own weekly radio shows.

In retrospect one can say that the terminal illness of jazz as popular music started on January 16, 1938, the date of the Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall concert, the date on which jazz became respectable.

Technology kicked in again in the 1950's with the invention of the long playing record, which like the CD is the eighties presented fantastic opportunities for jazz musicians to reprise their earlier hits in collectors editions for fans who had now grown up a bit and were more affluent. The CD, of course, and the Internet made it possible for huge quantities of jazz music from the 50's to be readily accessible.

My jazz collection of a few hundred CDs that I have now would have been very difficult to put together before CDs existed.

But like painting, which has been pretty much replaced by photography as the main form of illustration, jazz continues as a kind of hand-made folk-art music appealing to various constituencies and people are still making a living in that field and always will do.

But I wonder which of the contemporary jazz artists will stay the course and be the classical music of 100 years hence.

I have from time to time bought jazz recordings by contemporary artists, or more or less contemporary, having heard something on the radio and liked it--artists like Hendrik Merkens, Manfredo Fest, Martin Taylor, Caribbean Jazz Project, Buena Vista Social Club, Diana Krall, Cassandra Wilson--but, without wishing to be in any way elitist, I have found that their CDs rarely stand up to a lot of listening in the same way as the classic era of jazz recordings, and tend to fall into disuse after a few plays.

I really, really want them to be good, but after a while I tend to regret buying them.

Incidentally I really, really like Santana and I think that the album Abraxas is a great classic even if the sound quality is a little substandard. I still play it several times a year, but I have never regarded it as jazz, and in my opinion his later efforts after the first three albums became increasingly pathetic. The Supernatural album (is that what was referred to?) seemed to me like a late career valedictory effort, a kind of lifetime Oscar for an old trouper.