Jazz in Search of Itself
The introduction to the book helps explain his thinking. Discussing the numerous disciples of saxophonist Lester Young, Kart writes: “Any thought that jazz could be viewed from a safe, museum-like distance now seemed absurd; this was an art in which history was always happening, and it was happening to us.” To Kart’s mind, when jazz starts to romanticize its antecedents, rigidly emulate past accomplishments, and place less emphasis on personal investment, it ceases to be a living thing.
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Although Kart began listening to jazz as a teenager, it wasn’t until he became a student at the University of Chicago in the 60s that his tastes matured, particularly when he heard the early work of the AACM–he caught informal performances by the likes of Roscoe Mitchell and Lester Bowie at the school’s Reynolds Club. His first piece of criticism was a brief essay he read onstage to musicians from the collective before one of their performances. In 1968, a year after he graduated, he took a job as an assistant editor at Down Beat, where he became a vocal booster of the AACM as well as a prolific writer on more mainstream jazz. He left the magazine a year later, over a salary dispute; in the mid-70s, a part-time job writing TV listings at the Tribune led to a full-time arts-writing position.
Kart is generous in his praise of the trumpeter’s astonishing technical mastery but assails his conception of a jazz artist. Dressing down his 1985 album, Black Codes (From the Underground), Kart writes:
