Music changes, but critics are largely conservative. Every artist that contributes to music brings some innovation, but critics often want to pin music down within some definitive framework. For Stanley Crouch, jazz has to have 4/4 swing, blues, afro-hispanic rhythms and ballads - these four things. Against this, you could argue that a measure of the strength of a culture is its ability to absorb aspects of other cultures, and yet remain itself. These are if you like the two poles of the argu...
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