If anyone is familiar with Stanley Crouch and his history in the American jazz scene, and if anyone is familiar with his dismissal/revocation from JazzTimes after his statements that the jazz scene is a "union of white people" committed to "the elevation of white jazz musicians over their black betters."
Being that Stanley Crouch has been a staunch critic of the jazz scene, sometimes praising and often times berating, he has become an impresario of sorts for jazz.
He has defined jazz within narrow limits—a music that doesn't stray far from the blues or the techniques that have traditionally produced it, musicians who never, ever forget where and how the sound was born. One doesn't have to be black to find a groove but one must be willing to bow to the "Negro aesthetic." He is convinced that the white establishment resents a musical history from which it can't help but feel alienated, and so champions jazz that sounds "white" instead of jazz that looks backward. In this view, the desire to innovate past swing is tantamount to fearing its origins and the people who created it. The lines between the advancement of a music and the rejection of its history become entangled in the vast mire of racial politics.
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