Humans do music because they enjoy it. The musicians enjoy playing and the audience enjoys listening. Unfortunately, jazz musicians moved the slider bar way far to the the 'musicians enjoy' end of the scale and too far from the 'audience enjoy' scale. The result is much tuneless rambling.

That has to be the most depressingly restrictive bunch of tosh I've ever read here on Mudcat. To redress the balance a little:

Humans do music to commune with infinity & divinity. The musicians are shamans who play out of tortured necessity & devotion to their ancient craft - and the audience listen because they're in awe of their humility & genius. If anything Jazz musicians didn't move the slider bar far enough; Rahsaan Roland Kirk maybe tried too hard to teach his audience of higher truths, Sun Ra likewise, and Miles Davis, but the music still went way over the heads of many who failed to hear what they were doing. The result is an ill-educated population fed on mass produced reclaimed musak-based products who nevertheless think they know what 'real music' is all about and can dismiss the impassioned yearning of some of the greatest musicians ever to walk the planet as 'tuneless rambling'.

Here's Albert Ayler.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtiSA2RKDzc