When I first started listening to jazz in the early 60s, the music already had a rich tradition, and innovators like Coltrane, Miles, Pops and Duke were still on the scene. There were jazz radio stations and clubs in large cities and college towns, and two major festivals, Monterey and Newport. One jazz magazine served as the only real source of information, Down Beat and I could name all the tenor players on the scene just from reading a few issues.

The world has changed markedly since my youth and so have I. Jazz had also gone through a metamorphosis. Now, there are more tenor players than I can track. We can thank Trane and Sonny Rollins for that!

But jazz fans are an opinionated lot and I’m always hearing how nothing is really happening in jazz, that the younger cats aren’t playing in the same league as their predecessors. To be honest, I really don’t care.

I think jazz is in a pretty good place. The awareness of the music is higher than it’s ever been. Yet that word, jazz, means many things to many people. For the man on the street, it could just as easily mean Kenny G. as Louis Armstrong. Rather than get caught up in semantics, let’s just say that jazz is a tree with many roots and branches. Because listening to music is a totally subjective experience, one listener’s Albert Ayler is another’s Everett Harp. Wise man Duke Ellington said there are only two kinds of music, good and bad. I share that philosophy.

Most of what is being played today is good for somebody. I personally find Smooth Jazz a form of torture, but office workers tell me it provides a soothing background.

One thing’s for sure, there are more jazz musicians, good and bad, than ever before. The seeds planted by the early innovators have been sown, and given birth to musicians in every corner of this planet who want to get their chops together and come to New York, the jazz mecca.

Accordingly, the number of jazz CDs available in larger stores and on the Net is absolutely staggering. It sometimes seems like everything ever recorded has been reissued and is now in print. And there’s no shortage of information either, with three print jazz magazines in America and a number of others worldwide. The interest in the music is truly global. At last count, there were something like 10,000 jazz sites on the web!

Since the death of John Coltrane, there have been no major innovators in jazz. No one has come along to single-handedly take the music to the next level. I think the next major changes in the music will come from musicians who’ve taken the language of jazz and incorporated into it their own cultural heritage.

Accordingly, I’m really excited by the music being created by such musicians as Chucho Valdes, David Sanchez and William Cepeda. These remarkably adept Latin players bring their indigenous rhythms and styles to jazz, creating a truly Pan-American Latin jazz.

Of course I always go back to the masters, that music is truly eternal, but there’s nothing like putting on a new CD and finding the right groove. If the music reflects the times, even better. The problem with most new music is that these are pretty vapid times. The late 90s won’t be regarding as a cultural watershed in any of the arts. In jazz, it’s not the musicians who are at fault, it’s our shopping mall, consumer culture that’s to blame.

The real hope for mankind and the future of jazz rests in the Internet, a decentralized medium that allows for the free exchange of multi-media information. This tool of empowerment will enable creative people to reach out and share their music without interference from a middle man.

Stay tuned!