Conclusion
Monumental and successful works such as Miles Davis's Bitches Brew, Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters, John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra's Birds of Fire, and Chick Corea's jazz-rock group Return to Forever with their Romantic Warrior, to name a few, further advanced jazz as high art.
Labeling jazz became problematic in the 1970s because of the wide range of opinions among musicians, scholars, and critics on this topic. One thing is for sure, though: Most musicians in America at this time were borrowing from other styles to expand the musical language they were performing. Moreover, jazz, rock, and, to some extent, classical styles were at the center of this "fusion." Whereas early jazz-rock and some fusion tended to emphasize the musical process, the search for new avenues of musical expressions, particularly smooth jazz, managed to play it safe, emphasizing comfort and predictability rather than exploration. The enormous popularity of smooth jazz undoubtedly fueled the hatred that jazz neoclassicists such as Wynton Marsalis, in turn, felt towards jazz-rock. Suppose smooth jazz was born of fusion, and fusion was born of jazz-rock and other co-styles. In that case, jazz-rock must be to blame for the ultimate degradation of jazz into what traditional jazz fans perceived to be the sappy, overly sentimental, masquerading Muzak of smooth jazz. Such an over-simplification, however, should be taken with a pinch of salt. Jazz critics, expert, and novice readers of jazz should continue exploring musical creativity and artistry through recordings and performances rather than solidifying specific labels or stylistic categories to achieve a fuller understanding of jazz during these years. Nevertheless, and as mentioned in the introduction, this lesson has used stylistic labels only as a starting point in understanding jazz from the 1970s onwards.
