Absolutely brilliant, Gary! Thanks from a fellow lover of these two worlds of music that take the body and the soul to new heights. Both are all about thinking real hard AND profusely letting go, aren't they?

The type of jazz that I like, such Bitches Brew and Bill Frisell, sounds a lot like the ambient/techno I also enjoy. To paraphrase a previous poster, it's when a bunch of technically proficient jazz virtuosos start soloing over the same set of chords that I get turned off.

Unfortunately, "louder, faster, higher" will never make up for the lack of a coherent melody.

Yes, "Flip Fantasia" is another good example of collaboration. Also, the Black Eyed Peas (whatever you think of them) did a song with Sergio Mendez. That brings up Latin Jazz, which has also barely been mentioned on this thread. Lots of salsa bands (popular music where I live) incorporate big band sounds and instruments. And even though this is also "older," I love Stan Getz, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and bossa nova more generally. Another fun recording is an album called "Classic Meets Cuba." Not jazz and rock, but Latin-tinged versions of familiar classical tunes. Some of it has jazz qualities. I suspect that the snobs will criticize the album, but from a music teacher's perspective, it's great.

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.

The two best conversations between rock and jazz that ever made the charts in America.

Heard it in a looo-oove song...

can't be wrong.

Don't ask me what jazz is. It is indefinable.

Any discussion of jazz always seems to end with a falling out over terminology, and I guess there are just lots of types of music that are grouped under the heading of jazz.

Recent letter writers have mentioned Ken Vandermark and the Urban Knights.

I checked them out with an open mind, never having heard of either.

Here is Ken Vandermark:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/recsradio/radio/B000GFK8P6

Sound like a load of incomprehensible honking and screeching to me. If this music makes you happy, then go for it. If it ain't got that swing...

And here are the Urban Knights

http://www.amazon.com/gp/recsradio/radio/B0000001US

Sounds like easy listening light soul/pop to me--the kind of thing you would hear in a hairdressing salon on the radio--but again, if this is what puts you into a state of ecstasy, then go for it.

We all have this tendency to try to convert others to listening to the music that we love, the music that moves our souls, because we want them to share our joy, but really it is a waste of time. You can only take the horse somewhere in sight of the water, and if the horse wants to be a mule, that is the end of the matter.

I am never going to fall in love with Ken Vandermark. I am never going to put myself into a state of ecstasy listening to his stuff while I am barreling up the highway. (If I did pla play his stuff, I would never notice that truck honking behind me or the squealing tires.)

Give me that old time jazz stuff,

It was good for our mothers...

...And it's good enough for me.

Here we go again. Jazz, somehow made to seem as it's to be deciphered (sp?) as you would an arcane language or intricate code. Jazz as a trip to the dentist instead of an impromptu encounter with joyful noise. Jazz as something just too darned COMPLICATED to withstand for longer than, say, a millisecond.

This article was, I know, not malign in its intention. In fact, I applaud its honesty and attempts at balance. But I get weary after a while of the way people keep tying themselves in knots trying to explain their resistance to jazz, even unto middle age. Boomers hear a big band and all they can think about are "Tonight Show" fillers and Rat Pack ring-a-ding-ding swagger. A woman acquaintance of mine even said she couldn't stand the "sexism" in jazz. "Sexism"? Are you referring to jazz, whose leading bandleader in both critics' and listeners' polls is Maria Schneider? Whose most promising clarinetist is Anat Cohen and whose best living pianist may well be Geri Allen? (With Renee Rosnes not far behind.) I drop these and other names in rebuttal and all she wants to talk about is Miles Davis' misogny. Which is to say that all she wants to talk about is Miles Davis.

And they say we jazzbeaux are too tied up with the past!

I know that jazz has a lot to answer for in creating this stubborn veneer of impenetrability. For decades, the music seemed proud of the way it drove itself to points G and K while everybody else was still on points A and B. (Just an expression, kids.) But just because rock, rap, folk and other forms Get You Wherever You Want To Go quicker doesn't mean that, most of the time, they take you anyplace different. Right now, I'm listening to Gonzalo Rublacaba's new disc, "Avatar", and am getting zealously caught up in its harmonic byplay and rhythmic knottiness. You don't get the immediate visceral surge from such music that you get from Amy Winehouse (who I love just as much). But you can carry these sounds with you the way a movie character is borne along by his or her movie's soundtrack. For the thousandth time, jazz is not a wall, it's a door opening up a space whose particulars may not be clear at first, but reveal themselves by degrees. Whether it's Louis Armstrong's solo on "Tight Like That", Coltrane's variations on "Greensleeves" or Ella's spiralling take-offs on "Mack the Knife", you're supposed to just go along instead of end up someplace. (Radiohead, for what it's worth, gives me similar satisfactions.) If all you want is a quick trip to Point A -- or even C. There's enough of those rides available. Too many.

One thing to re-emphasize: Just because magazine and newspaper editors don't think jazz "sells" any more doesn't mean jazz is dead. It'll always be There, Somehow, Someway. Can one say the same for magazines and newspapers? Just asking...