Roaring Back

Regarding “The Young Lions’ Roar,” by Richard Guilliatt (Sept. 13):

I see no contest between keeper-of-the-flame Wynton Marsalis and the proponents of non-jazz fluff like fusion, New Age sound effects, etc.

Showing respect for classical works of brilliance is not “retro” anything. The music of Bird and Monk and Dizzy and Duke will still be played, admired, taught and studied long after today’s fusionists have hung up their synthesizers and retired. Tootling a lot of notes as quickly and as shriekingly as possible does not a saxophonist make, and crap played on computers is just computerized crap.

Here’s an assignment for you: Go into an ordinary record store and try to find tapes or CDs by a jazz giant who is still cooking and contemporary and swinging : say, guitarist Kenny Burrell. Don’t waste too much time; he won’t be there. Now notice all the albums by the pop-fusion guitar technicians who call themselves “jazz artists” (neither word is valid).

That disgrace is what Marsalis et al. deplore: the trickle-down effect of real jazz musicians being displaced by non-swinging, non-creative contrivists who have hoodwinked gullible listeners into thinking such stuff is jazz.

TOM BURNS

Mesa, Ariz.