1st Academy of Music

Most importantly, the modern jazz player has had to developed skills
in an art form that is both antiquated and decreasing in popularity.
Gone are the days when a teenager (or pre-teen) would have been
immersed in jazz as the contemporary pop culture of his day. In the
50’s and 60’s jazz was running a close second to Rock-N-Roll in
regards to market share for teenagers and young adults.

A conscientious student who wanted to emulate the big artists of the
day (Diz, Coltrane, JJ Johnson, Freddie Green) need only turn on their
radio to listen to their favorite songs on heavy rotation. Quality
instruments could be had for a song (pun intended) at the corner pawn
shop, easily borrowed from a school, or reasonably financed at any one
of a number of neighborhood music stores. Once an instrument was
acquired, lessons could be had from their pick of dozens of qualified
players fresh from the road or playing nightly at the local ballrooms.
Once a moderate skill level was reached, the young player could then
hone his craft with hands-on experience in any one of hundreds of
dance bands practicing in church basements and school gymnasiums in
their own neighborhood every day.

That same player would have been encouraged to develop his skills by
the promise of at least part-time employment once they played at a
passable level. Additionally, his contemporaries, parents and school
mates would have been much more supportive in their efforts due to the
fact that jazz was a living part of the pop culture. You would be
cool-in-school if you were able to play an instrument at any
reasonable level of proficiency. (read: you got the girls)

For the past 25 years, opportunities for jazz playing have dried up to
the point where they are now considered relics of a bygone era. Modern
teenagers would be hard-pressed to tell you who Paul McCartney was,
let alone recognize the laundry list of legendary musicians who were
once considered icons by teens a few decades past. Mediocre
instruments, while still considered reasonable priced when compared to
“Cadillac” professional level models are still costly enough to
discourage novices (or their parents) from making the decision to
pursue training in the first place. While new sources of instruments
such as Ebay seem to make instruments readily available, the fact
remains that most parents are uneducated in the area of musical
instruments and are hesitant to spend $300~400 or more on something
that they know nothing about and cannot first examine before
purchasing.

Most importantly, jazz has fallen from the radar and would not even
remotely be considered as entertainment by school age children.
Strangely enough, even guitar solos have been absent from rock songs
for years. The days of a fiery mid-song improvisation by Eddie Van
Halen or even more recently by Wes Borland, Dave Navarro, or Tom
Morello have been virtually non-existent from the Billboard charts for
the past ten years.