Have you seen the Wikipedia entry on smooth jazz lately? Probably not, but it's a mess. The administrators have tagged almost every section with provisos: “Its neutrality is disputed"; “needs additional citations for verification"; “reads like an advertisement"; may contain “unverified claims."
Poor smooth jazz, besieged by haters. Being righteous about what's called traditional jazz is easy. Being righteous about smooth jazz is much more difficult. It is a commercial construct, a radio format more than a style of music. For 20 years it has appealed across race and class and gender, partly because it asks so little. It is a physical presence but an intellectual absence. It is an unverified claim.
It lost ground last week when WQCD-FM, the New York radio station known as CD101.9 and the station with smooth jazz's biggest market share in the country, went off the air, replaced at 101.9 by the rock format WRXP. In related news, the saxophonist Kenny G -- the regent of the smoothiverse, a man who at his height moved 15 million copies of just one album ("Breathless," from 1992) -- has been selling fewer records lately. Well, so has everyone. But as a consequence he now plays where actual jazz performers play, like the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, where he appeared on Tuesday.
The concert was an outside rental and not a production of Jazz at Lincoln Center itself, but there was still a paradox in there somewhere. The organization has effortfully formed definitions of what jazz is and is not, and Kenny Gorelick, one assumes, is a boldface Not.
Poor smooth jazz, besieged by haters. Being righteous about what's called traditional jazz is easy. Being righteous about smooth jazz is much more difficult. It is a commercial construct, a radio format more than a style of music. For 20 years it has appealed across race and class and gender, partly because it asks so little. It is a physical presence but an intellectual absence. It is an unverified claim.
It lost ground last week when WQCD-FM, the New York radio station known as CD101.9 and the station with smooth jazz's biggest market share in the country, went off the air, replaced at 101.9 by the rock format WRXP. In related news, the saxophonist Kenny G -- the regent of the smoothiverse, a man who at his height moved 15 million copies of just one album ("Breathless," from 1992) -- has been selling fewer records lately. Well, so has everyone. But as a consequence he now plays where actual jazz performers play, like the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, where he appeared on Tuesday.
The concert was an outside rental and not a production of Jazz at Lincoln Center itself, but there was still a paradox in there somewhere. The organization has effortfully formed definitions of what jazz is and is not, and Kenny Gorelick, one assumes, is a boldface Not.
