Breaking Free of the Jazz Police

For the last couple of decades, the ultraconservatove jazz movement known to some as neoclassicism and to others as “The Cult of Wynton Marsalis” has had a profound influence on rising young musicians. But Marsalis’s influence seems to be slipping, as a new generation of jazzers raised on hip-hop and R&B comes of age. Some of the new breed feel that the neoclassicisists confuse history with tradition, and are eager to branch out into new realms of musical exploration.