[todda]

The trap that Roswell Rudd and musicians like him have fallen into is that they play jazz that does not fit neatly into a category. After free and fusion (two other terms that have worn out their welcome), critics ran out of categories and became lazy. Rather than just saying that Rudd was a jazz musician, they felt obligated to put another adjective in front of jazz to save themselves from having to explain the music he was making. Genre names are abstractions and are sometimes handy for generalizing what a musician is doing. Unfortunately, once you use a term experimental or avant garde or modern, you've backed yourself into a corner. If you don't come up with a new genre name quickly, you end up with the sort of nonsense that Rudd has to deal with.

The nice thing about bop and swing and cool, is there was an imaginary demarcation of time in which innovative musicians no longer played those kinds of music. Musicians that crossed those era demarcation lines (like Miles, for instance), weren't saddled with being just bop or cool musicians. Unfortunately, avant garde is a term that is always with you. It has no era demarcation. Once you've been tagged an avant garde musician, you have no place to go but down.