danuv | (no subject)

I was finishing up the last two discs in the Ken Burns documentary about Jazz that he did for PBS and in a section about a musician named Ornette Coleman there was an interview with a writer, Albert Murray, who had this to say about Ornette and his music,

"Ornette Coleman came up and said, 'This is Free Jazz', but what is freer than jazz? As soon as you say jazz you're talking about freedom of improvisation. The whole thing is about freedom, about American freedom. So why would anybody want to free it because the whole idea of art is to create a form that is a bulwark against entropy or chaos. You see, that's the function of jazz. It's not to be formless and absolutely self indulgent. ... That's like embracing the waves in the sea. You cannot embrace entropy. You cannot embrace chaos."

I was a bit astounded. Seems pretty presumptuous of him to define not just what 'jazz' should be but what art is. I'm not even sure I can define art for myself and I certainly wouldn't attempt to define it for other people. I might not like what you do, I might not understand it or chose to participate in it but that doesn't mean I'm going to tell you it isn't art.