“This guy must not know a whole lot about jazz.”

A.J. Love said that on a discussion board over at thedailypage.com in response to my first column.

It’s an interesting assertion — and maybe it’s true. But he disagrees with me in places where I knew people would, places where I have purposely taken a controversial stand with the naíve goal of shaking things up. Does he realize this, or think I am simply an idiot?

I encourage you to read all of what he (and many others) had to say, but his main argument is that I’m defining jazz all wrong: “He [mentions] a whole bunch of artists, most of whom are not really jazz musicians but more fusion or funk musicians.” Then he further pigeonholes the genre by saying ‘jazz has to swing.'”

This definition is fine, but only if you want the genre to die. And personally (as my previous columns have demonstrated), I think the concept of jazz is a useful and important one. If we are open-minded in our attitude toward the genre, it is one that can be used to describe a type of music that is improvisational, socially relevant and musically progressive.

And although I told you I wouldn’t attempt to define jazz, there it is — my working definition.

***

For a long time, people thought jazz was dead. Miles Davis was playing funk, Herbie Hancock doing electronica, and many of the great masters of the genre were dead.

Then a new generation of musicians came along, and traditionalists celebrated the return of classic jazz. Roy Hargrove and Christian McBride stood at the center of this resurgence — one trumpet player, one bassist, each playing the classics (and classically tinged new material) with the vigor of old times. Down Beat Magazine calls Hargrove “one of the most ferocious of the Young Lions bred in the bebop revival sparked by Wynton Marsalis.”

McBride was there as well, dropping out of Juilliard to spread his powerful bass sound worldwide. Dave Brubeck even made an album with these prodigies entitled — appropriately enough — Young Lions & Old Tigers. Here, Brubeck and Co. rolled through a solid set of traditional compositions, most written by Dave on a notepad in standard head-solo-head format.

It was just like old times.

But in the background, something very different was happening. McBride, a Philadelphia native, had taken to the soul and hip-hop scene there — and began to hang out with guys like Ahmir Thompson (?uestlove) of the Roots. His first albums were simple and traditional, but the young bass player was changing.

By 2000, McBride had gotten strange with a contemporary piece called Sci-Fi, and in 2001 released The Philadelphia Experiment with the aforementioned Thompson and Philly keyboard wizard Uri Caine. McBride was moving away from his roots and away from the roots of jazz to a new kind of music. And he knew it.

By the time Vertical Vision was released earlier this year, McBride was ready to poke fun at his traditionalist past. The album opens with “Circa 1990,” a gritty hot jazz number that runs for 10 seconds before the sound is cut off and McBride says “no, no, no … put that other record on!” The band then jumps into a furious funk groove, sounding more like Return for Forever than Freddie Hubbard.

It was as clear a pronouncement as any — McBride was a Young Lion no more. In leaving the past and creating a unique type of music, McBride was creating a truer jazz, one that is pushing music forward, not echoing the pasts of others.

Roy Hargrove followed a procession similar to that of McBride, a fellow Young Lion and one-time bass player in his group. While McBride was immersing himself in Philly’s native culture, Hargrove was visiting the active city, moonlighting with hip-hop acts when not busy playing his own flavor of traditional jazz like all the others.

After years as a jam session warrior and guest on albums by cats like Common and Erykah Badu, Hargrove finally made his defining mark with this year’s Hard Groove, a part coming-out, part coming-of-age piece that teams the trumpeter with not just Badu and Common, but D’Angelo, Q-Tip and Karl Denson.

Like McBride, Hargrove’s move away from jazz has resulted in his most creative, relevant and appealing music — it’s jazz in a true sense.

By moving away from traditional jazz, both of these former Young Lions have entered a new place in their careers–a place where they are creating truly great music that may not swing, but carries the spirit of jazz no less.

You can read John Zeratsky’s “Jazz Activist” every other Tuesday in the Badger Herald. His other thoughts can be found on his Weblog at johnzeratsky.com. Elsewhere on the web, A.J. Love and others are still arguing about his first column: www.thedailypage.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=110