Reading Comprehension

PT150 · S4 · P1 · Q6 Wynton Marsalis

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This passage was adapted from an article published in 2003.

Topic

Wynton Marsalis, his influence on jazz, and the complicated impacts of focusing on jazz tradition.

Framework

Challenge Position / Problem-Solution

Main Point

While Wynton Marsalis helped bring attention to jazz’s rich history and its legends, his focus on jazz tradition has been criticized as stifling innovation and inadvertently contributing to an environment where record companies prefer reissuing old recordings over supporting new artists. (Most valuable sentence: — Paragraph 3)

P1: Marsalis’s Influence and Recent Criticism

For about 20 years, Marsalis was the top jazz musician and promoter of jazz history, highly admired and influential. More recently, he's been criticized for focusing too much on tradition, and both his and jazz’s future seem a bit shaky.

P2: Marsalis’s Career Shift and Industry Trends

Marsalis stopped releasing new music after putting out a huge batch in 1999 and lost his record contract. At the same time, major labels began losing interest in new jazz artists and started focusing more on reissuing classic albums.

P3: Critics Blame Marsalis for Jazz’s Stagnation

Some critics say Marsalis’s emphasis on tradition has made jazz too rigid, making it harder for innovation to thrive. He’s seen as someone who looks backward, turning jazz into a “museum” piece instead of a living, evolving art.

6.

The author would be most likely to agree with which one of the following?

  1. Correct

    Ironically, record companies have embraced

    Why this is right

    This actually is pretty Big Picture gist-y. Remember, the author is blaming the record companies, not Marsalis, for the grim state of affairs facing jazz. Lots of people blamed Marsalis for being so obsessed with the oldies that he corrupted the jazz industry into being totally backwards-looking. The author defends Marsalis, saying that he "never advocated mere revivalism". He wanted to honor the tradition but move it forward into new places. Meanwhile, the record companies' cynical economic ploy is to stop investing in new musicians and just repackage the old recordings they already own. "Repackaging catalogs of vintage recordings" is mere revivalism. The word classicism is used in the 2nd paragraph to describe an unrelenting focus on the classics, a codified orthodoxy, a sanctified canon. The record companies are acting like "Duke, Miles, Coltrane, Count Basie, Ella, Nina, and Satchmo ... this is your canon. This is the jazz orthodoxy. You will keep buying their recordings .... you will buy this new Miles Davis box set for people on your Christmas list."

    Skill tested: Author Opinion · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

    78% picked this

  2. Contrary to what critics charged,

    Out of Scope: promoted artists

    The author is saying, "contrary to what critics charged, Marsalis energetically promoted new musical directions". He emphasized past masters in order to get people hyped and excited about jazz. But "he has demonstrated in his compositions how to ... take the nature of that tradition and push it forward". He didn't advocate revivalism. He advocated honoring the past while continuing the experimental evolution of jazz. But nowhere in the passage does it talk about him promoting any emerging acts.

    8% picked this

  3. Understandably, Marsalis's fellow musicians have

    Unknown Comparison: more vocal

    The end of the 1st paragraph says, "after drawing increasing fire from critics and fellow musicians alike". The rest of the passage is all about critics blaming him. So at no point in the passage do we ever hear about musicians being more displeased than critics are. In the 1st paragraph, they are presented evenly, without the scales tipping in either direction. And then since the rest of the passage only mentions critics, if anything, we would tip the scales towards the critics being more vocal with their displeasure than are the fellow musicians.

    2% picked this

  4. Surprisingly, most of today's young

    Too Strong: most young artists

    The ever-dangerous "most" (so frequently wrong on RC and Nec Assump). Nowhere in the passage does it make a generalization about today's young artists, so we have no way to assign any trait or view to "most" of the them. Our author takes issue with critics' negative views of Marsalis, but we don't hear about any young artists joining our author in rebuking these critics.

    4% picked this

  5. In saturating the market with

    Unsupported Causal Relationship

    This answer is saying that releasing so many CDs in 1999 caused Marsalis to be criticized. The passage never states that sort of causal connection. The passage says that Marsalis is vulnerable to criticism because of his "neotraditionalism". He's criticized for extolling the past masters too much, to the point that audiences don't seem interested in hearing new jazz. No one was mad at him because he released a lot of music in one year.

    8% picked this

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