"Always New and Centuries Old": Jazz, Poetry and Tradition as Creative Adaptation.

Jazz writers have often debated whether a tradition of standard jazz practices should be followed or transcended. Against this backdrop, Jackson investigates the unjustly neglected performance of the poem “In the Tradition,” a collaboration between poet LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), drummer Steve McCall, and saxophonist David Murray. Jackson argues that their approach to the jazz tradition is more constructive than the rigid conventional views: theirs represents “less a closed canon than . . . an energizing, inspirational base.”