ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the state of jazz in America at the turn of the twenty-first century. The chapter describes the global jazz musicians are creating new and exciting music that is just starting to be heard in the United States, offering a viable alternative to the rampant conservatism here. Francis Davis most effusive obituaries grew noticeably ambiguous about the last twenty years of his career and especially about the last ten. The reason was that a standardized, some may say homogenized, version of an American jazz mainstream had emerged. The broader cultural context of popular music, classical music, and cinema revisiting the past that the young lion's trend, emphasizing the primacy of the tradition, flourished in jazz, particularly during the late 1980s to 1990s. This feeling of mode retro in jazz was also reinforced by jazz repertory and concerts and albums 'celebrating' the music of an icon from the golden age of jazz.
