The jury is out on a lot of jazz players today. Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor (all recognized in the jazz community but not crossed-over for the public). Albert Ayler, Charles Lloyd and many new young faces such as Esperanza Spalding. (She is hot!)
Check her out on YouTube.

Coltrane opened the doors with his shifting tonalities. One of the keys to his concepts, check out the bridge to "Have You Met Miss Jones" by Rodgers and Hart.

Today, I think jazz is considered as a legit art form by music critics. Of course, one person's cacophony is another's consonance.

There is an underlying kinesthetic aspect to jazz of all types. Also, virtuosity.

This thread relates to folk music as jazz being a development of African American
folk music more than classical music folk themes from European folk music. The jazz playing style was originally a musical expression that sounded like African-American singing.

Many of the African-American gospels and spirituals were played by New Orleans jazz marching bands for funerals and processions. A "keening" style was developed as a result like is done at wakes in Ireland. Singing and wailing were intertwined.

The music itself displays quarter-tone slides, glisses and wide vibratos as advanced
by the singers of blues, gospels and spirituals. The incorporation of modal scales from West Africa indicate what has become known as the "blues scale" and the blue note is
a "wail from a downhearted frail".

The blues carries through in jazz right up to the present day. Charlie Parker, Miles Davis,Theonlius Monk, John Coltrane and others have adapted the blues in a very sophisticated way that influences chord progressions and harmonic patterns.

There is a strong line of African-American tonality that carries through all of jazz.

When jazz leaves this connection it tends to become something else. So-called "Third Stream Music" which tries to amalgamate classical music and jazz has never really caught on to a great degree. Someone like Monk is closer to African-American jazz roots than he is to Stravinsky, Bartok, or Schoenberg, however, he has brought the music along in sophistication and subtlety.

Again, the Dizzy Gillespie quote about Louis Armstrong, "No Louis, no me" resonates
today in an understanding of the roots of jazz.

Racism historically has been a component to denigrate jazz as a legit art form.
As a result, bands like Whiteman, who ironically labeled himself "King of Jazz"
was an attempt to legitimize jazz in the same way that Sam Phillips tried to reach white audiences through acts like Elvis who could sing "black".

Louis had it right when he insisted on playing in integrated bands. He realized that jazz really does transcend the notion of "race" although its roots are unmistakable as African-American. Many arrangers in the swing band era adopted "licks" and "riffs" that came from Armstrong and fueled the dance bands of the Thirties and Forties.

Jazz could rightly be called an evolution from folk music.

Frank Hamilton