A Love Supreme.

• Author: Gilmore, Brian

During a recent e-mail exchange I had with the Smithsonian Institution's Reuben Jackson, an archivist with its Ellington collection, he referred to jazz music as "moribund." I didn't argue with him. Sales of jazz CDs--including smooth jazz--represent less than 3 percent of all CD sales, this despite the success of Ken Burns's documentary on the subject.

The decline of jazz has been linked with the rise of rock and hip-hop, the end of music education in schools, and the lack of serious attention from the media. Radio play outside of public stations is really the bland leading the bland; Kenny G is not, and will never be, Charlie Parker.

But I wonder if the biggest rock weighing down jazz is the seemingly endless war between traditionalist and free jazz aesthetes.

The modern roots of the war go back to, at least, 1981. Ronald Reagan left California for the White House and Wynton Marsalis bolted from the studios of Juilliard to Art Blakey's band.

That year, Wynton was interviewed in Down Beat magazine along with his brother Branford, and though Branford kept an open mind, Wynton was already developing his well-known traditionalist chatter. It made sense, too: As Reagan was taking the country back to traditional values, so was Marsalis, the new jazz savior.

The same year Wynton Marsalis was born, 1961, Texas saxophonist Ornette Coleman released a controversial album called Free Jazz. It was a seminal moment, giving rise to a movement.

"In Free Jazz, the soloist is free to explore any area in his improvisation that his musical aesthetic takes him to; he is not bound by a harmonic, tonal, or rhythmic framework to which he must adhere rigidly," according Down Beat's review. "The performance (and his role in it) is completely fluid: rhythm usually follows the soloist's lead (though he may occasionally take his cue from it), and the remaining three horns contribute as they see fit--from complex contrapuntal patterns arrived at spontaneously and independently to accidental `harmonic' riffs of a sort."

Coleman's composition would open an era in jazz's modern history that could be the subject of its own documentary. His new wave first hit the saxophonists. John Coltrane embraced aspects of the free jazz movement, and countless other artists took their turns at deconstructing Charlie Parker's sacred bebop scripture.

Some of the musicians were Simply extraordinary, such as the late saxophonist Albert Ayler. Originally from Cleveland, Ayler recorded some of the most innovative and thought-provoking jazz albums of the 1960s. Coltrane was especially challenged by the directions Ayler took during this period, answering Ayler's call with his own remarkable work. Ayler's tragic death by drowning in 1970 was a bigger loss artistically than many critics have ever...