I don't listen to much jazz these days and, when I do, I tend to revert to my heroes of the '20s and '30s - Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Eddie Lang, Joe Venuti, Bix, etc. - rather than anything else. However, the aspect of jazz that differentiates it from traditional music (and many other forms) is that its improvisational base can be all-embracing. There are endless debates about what is "folk" or what isn't "folk", but any tune from any genre can theoretically be raw material for jazz. I'm not saying there can't be an improvisatory nature to traditional music, or blues for that matter but - unlike those two types of music (for example) - the jazz improvisor can draw on the world's music. Whether that same improvisor makes anything of it is another question, and I can recall endless post-gig drunken debates in after-hours pub sessions about the relative merits of this and that musician, session, gig, record, etc.

However, I rarely recall debates about the relevance or otherwise of the raw material. Many bands did, of course, stick to their chosen style and repertoire, but the baseline of tunes could be very wide.