“You’ve referred to jazz as the “king of all musics.” ....Well I think that, especially in our world, we have so many kinds of music now. There’s your so-called popular music and all these offshoots and world musics. But jazz is somehow the tops. And I don’t mean this in a way to sound like I’m putting other music down. I’m not. Everybody loves jazz music. I find guys who play all styles of music and when they talk about jazz music, they speak in a very reverential way. They know how difficult it is to play.”
Stick to your sax, dude: ‘thinking’ isn’t your life’s calling.
I think "popular music" today reflects contemporary tastes as much as radio's declining audience, television's declining audience, Big Media's declining boxoffice and magazine sales, et al.
The public is being force fed pablum they never consented to. They are pursuing entertainment in ways that are not so easily tracked (listening to numerous Pandora stations randomly serving up songs, 10000 song shuffles on an ipod, used records, netflix, etc.).
The "charts" are less a gauge for popular culture than they have ever been. Too many options, only a few tastemakers being asked "what's selling this week".