What if it actually ISN'T jazz? That's ok.

I've been listening to Cassandra Wilson's new cd Thunderbird, which I think is as big of a change in sound for her, as Blue Light Till Dawn was about a decade ago. Lots of programming, loops, electronics, etc. It's a bold record, and a very good one. Cassandra sounds the same as always, the setting is what's new, and it's what made Blue Light Till Dawn and New Moon Daughter so fresh in the mid 90's.

Now I'm not here to argue the merits of whether this is a jazz cd or not. I don't have the time or interest in such arcane issues of musicology. In the broadest of terms, let me say, it certainly is jazz informed, but I think it's just as, if not more informed by the blues, folk, and other contemporary music. Which brings me to think, do those people in these other genres, get upset if you say, "you know Cassandra's new record is really more of a pop record than a blues album?" What I'm trying to say, is that in jazz, we have this paradigm that we work under that says if you say that something a jazz musician does "isn't jazz" it's somehow taken as an insult to the artist and the music. Why is that? I don't think Cassandra's new record is a jazz album, but I don't mean that in a negative way at all!

So why is it that jazz has this "ownership" issue and other music genres don't? I'd say it has something to do with the typical "jazz snob" attitude of there being two kinds of music 1) Jazz and 2) the bad kind. To put something outside the "jazz" world to a person of this mindset, and suddenly it's taken the music down a notch. It's suddenly not as important because of the value we have instilled in the word "jazz". The music is the same, but somehow the label gives it value. So I ask, is there anything wrong with labeling something such as this "not" jazz?