What makes "jazz" the revolutionary music of the 20th century, and will it be revolutionary for the 21st century?

African American Review, Summer, 1995 by Fred Wei-han Ho

Indeed, every feature of the music is an expression of revolutionary dialectics. Demarcations are dissolved between soloist and ensemble; among the elements of melody, time, and harmony; between composition and improvisation; between "traditional" and "avant-garde"; between "artist" and "audience"; between "art" and "politics"; between "Western" and "Eastern"; etc. If there is any "tradition," it is the continual exploding of time and pitch in quest of greater human expressiveness and a deeper spiritualizing of the music that is fundamentally rooted in the struggle to end all forms of exploitation and oppression and to seek a basic "oneness" with life and nature.(3)

Much ballyhoo has been made about essentializing "jazz" as basically blues, swing, and improvisation: If these are lacking, then the music ain't "jazz." Interestingly, the proponents of this dogma can range across the ideological and political spectrum from black cultural nationalists to black and white neo-conservatives. Let's look more closely at what is meant by blues and swing.

Blues

In my view, blues is not simply a "style," or a 12-bar, AAB form, or a certain chordal progression. Musically, blues is first and foremost a unique expression of temperament - African American temperament! It is not, as Eurocentric musicology may attempt to codify, flatted or lowered thirds, sevenths, and fifths (notated in Western musical theory as sharp or raised seconds, dominant sevenths, or sharp or raised elevenths). Blue notes can be played on Western instruments without fingering minor thirds, dominant (flatted) sevenths, and flatted fifths if the player has the African American conception of temperament. The African American system of blues temperament is the synthesis of the Western European fixed, diatonic temperament with an amalgam of West and Central African pitch and modal systems. With this new temperament system, the distinction between major and minor is lost.(4)

Many authentic blues performers will actually retune their instruments to be more "in tune" with being bluesy. Conversely, inauthentic players who attempt to perform the mechanics of the blue notes by fingering minor thirds, etc., may sound unblue. The key aspect is not a fixed style (Jones/Baraka's "noun") but a process or approach to music making (Jones/Baraka's "verb"): the highly African blurring of pitch to reach an emotive and spiritual catharsis - in West Africa, literally, to "allow the gods to descend" - and thereby affirm both personal and communal humanity in the face of inhumanity.(5)

Secondarily, blues is a "form." The 12-bar, AAB form has become, in the analogy made by Jones/Baraka, another case of the verb-to-noun syndrome. It has been so thoroughly appropriated by (white, mainstream) "American" music in rock, country and western, disco, etc. that the "standard" blues form has practically ceased to be the blues! Historically, blues "form" has been expressed in 12 bars, 10 bars, 8 bars, 11 1/2 bars, 12 1/2 bars, 13 bars, 16 bars, etc. There have been blues based on three or more chords, blues based on one chord, and blues based on no chords!