Let each musical form and each people develop on their own

I'm reluctant to compare European classical music and American jazz because they really do come from different ethnic cultures and it's like comparing apples and oranges. Multiculturalism forces distinctly different cultures together, which naturally brings competition, along with deep resentments, etc., because human nature remains kin-centered and ethnocentric.

I've never understood why some jazz musician didn't follow what Miles Davis did and play fewer notes when improvising rather than more notes. Think of the difference between the improvisations of Miles and Coltrane. And speaking of Coltrane, although Coltrane was soulful and religious I usually found his notes more angry than melodic. I like Cannonball Adderley better because of his very melodic way of improvising.

Where Miles went wrong, which had later repercussions throughout the jazz world, was in "making it new" his God. Here the conservative philosophy would have helped, and Miles certainly was not a conservative. The popular album "Kind of Blue" was never surpassed by Miles (or anyone else) and Miles should not have sacrificed that form. That album brings jazz into its own as a great form distinctly different from European classical music. But instead, jazz followed Miles into new forms inferior to old forms, and Miles seems to have sunk into complete hedonism.

Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin could improvise like crazy, and on very complicated themes, but there were no recording devices around to capture it. We could think of their variations on themes as improvisations corrected and perfected as they were written down. But there is something very ballsy and exciting about jazz musicians improvising on the spot, although they do improvise on the same songs night after night. That creation-on-the spot is the uniqueness of the jazz experience.

But that sort of selflessness in jazz playing is almost ruined by the defensiveness of jazz musicians and critics, which is inevitable in multicultural societies. I'm reminded of Paul Fussell's comment on the sports "experts" in bars defensively talking statistics and trumpeting their importance like stock brokers,

Let each musical form and each people develop on their own.