Why Doesn't Contemporary Jazz Get Any Respect?

A lot of the practitioners of so called "smooth jazz" rely heavily on a narrow range of cliches and are making sure that the Pat Boone/Michael Bolton syndrome stays alive in contemporary instrumental music. Fluff peddlers who have taken the easy path and succumbed to a movie sequal mentality are not the only musicians who have had a hard time earning respect. If Kenny G, Spyro Gyra and the Yellowjackets spin your propeller that's great, but there's a huge amount of non threatening stuff with a much lower velveeta content that you'd probably like way more.

Calling Kenny G, The Rippingtons and most similar stuff contemporary jazz is kind of like calling cool whip and velveeta cheese modern cuisine. Contemporary players like Dave Holland, Tim Berne, Fred Frith, Gerry Hemingway and Ken Vandermark get a fair amount of respect, (but maybe not a whole lot of $$$). Going back a couple of posts, it could be argued that blues and a few of its evolutionary mutations have American origins. Instrumental surf rock per the Ventures, The Mermen, Los Straitjackets, Link Wray and Dick Dale for example. Sorry if this is getting a little too off topic, but another huge uniquely American figure (whose recent death has been puzzlingly overlooked on this site) is Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart). He put out records with percussive elements and phrasing that you can't pin on anyone else and he influenced a heck of a lot of other recording artists.

Some rap shows a lot of vocal agility, comes from a real place / displays some originality ... and delivers impressively tight, complex clusters of syllables. I don't have much of an appetite for the stuff, but I respect it way more than most of the swill that's tagged as smooth jazz. As stated earlier there's a lot of music out there that functions very well as wallpaper without carrying around a load of stale corny cliches.