There is lots of reaction to a Seth Colter Walls piece titled ‘Is jazz entering a new golden age?’ on The Guardian website over the past 24 hours. There’s a link to the story here

There have been a whopping 165 comments by 8am on 9 July, to put this in context, when a jazz review goes up maybe one or two comments appear on the same site, the typical comment running along the lines of ‘No’, or ‘I'm not sure it ever went away.’

The article itself does not tackle what the headline question asks but opens up on the state of jazz eventually in terms of zeitgeist releases perceived by the writer as key. It’s very much a subjective overview and veers around quite a bit.

It begins by claiming that jazz has had more attention in the past year because of influential rapper Kendrick Lamar’s use of jazz musicians in his output and the success of his sax player Kamasi Washington while others have received press coverage in the New Yorker and Pitchfork. The late David Bowie’s use of jazz musicians the writer says has also alerted the wider world to jazz musicians and the article then provides ‘a cheat sheet’ for listening.

Rather than discussing Golden Ageism – which is in this regard relying on the past perceived glory days of jazz stretching from roughly 1944 and the advent of Charlie Parker, through the heyday of Blue Note Records, on and on to 1968 and the last stirrings of the second great Miles Davis Quintet – it becomes a recommendation list and any debate goes out of the window. Terrace Martin, BadBadNotGood, and Shigeto working with Dave Douglas are names dropped, meaning the list is bang up to date. But a new Golden Age needs something to contrast against, surely, presumably a previous version fashioned out of mere tin.

The writer then refers to the mysterious jazz wars, which, a big caveat despite his claims, it ought to be pointed out that like weapons of mass destruction in Iraq never existed, involves classicists pitted against experimentalists and veers off the subject completely but the sub-heading makes more of a point that eclectic listening has become more the norm although this area is not further explored.

The last section about the classical community starting to embrace jazz seems very iffy. They haven’t just started it, a process of accommodation began as long ago as Third Stream and what has this to do with Golden Ageism, anyway?

Overall the piece is a missed opportunity. Why the writer did not get quotes from people testing his theory (eg The Guardian’s chief jazz critic John Fordham or the views of musicians and academics, even using some data from streaming sites or record sales) I do not know but guess because it is meant to be armchair provocation in design. The headline and sub headings draw you in so it’s a clever piece of editing, shame that the argument is not fully developed. But in its favour the fact that the article has got people thinking and reacting is positive even if a lot of the comment revolves around the ‘hey listen to this, and why not mention my favourite band’ Reddit reaction style. 

A new golden age might be a situation where beyond exciting bands flickering fleetingly on the radar:

• Jazz recordings sell in significant numbers to better sustain artists’ careers partly via increased label investment in marketing and promotion that it lacks at present at a corporate level. 
• Better media coverage via pro-active editorial decisions allows jazz at the very least to earn more cover stories in arts sections of papers than it receives at present and more to the point gain a better presence online in mainstream music sites.
• Jazz is taken more seriously in broader cultural discourse at curricular level even if progress has been made at Ivy League universities like Harvard and Princeton who have hired leading jazz players to help shake up their music departments.
• A new student age generation supports jazz in significant numbers for no better reason than, as some of the bands referred to here easily indicate, because it is cool and so a new era gradually negates the notion that jazz is only for much older people. 
• Above all: jazz continues to evolve and embrace innovation. In this regard a Golden Age is an absurdity because jazz is about the future rather than the past.