I was speaking with someone once who, for his own personal reasons not explained to me felt that the British singer, George Michael, was an excellent jazz singer. Having studied jazz guitar improvisation for over 25 years, I considered myself a serious student of the music, I listened to every 'important' innovator on every conceivably known instrument of the last fifty years or so, and when I heard what he said, I did nearly balk. Stunned was I. But wait a minute. Did I even have the right to feel taken aback? Or was I evincing a kind of 'jazz snobbery' that could not allow George Michael his place in the jazz pantheon? We could extend this exclusivity if we wished to any artist we do not particularly like, even if s/he were working in the jazz arena, simply because to somehow do so, does create an aura of specialness, of elitism that no matter how mature we think we are, we are most prone to, oh when it comes to this subject of what might jazz be, and who might or might not be a jazz musician. I thought long and hard about this. I told myself I personally could not be guilty of jazz elitism as I would include every artist from the poppiest of jazz-pop (e.g. Steely Dan) to the most avant-garde (you know, John Zorn), and many in-between, as 'proper' jazz. I wondered what my friend had in mind when he think of the word, 'jazz'. I realised after a long while, that there exists three very different perceptions of what jazz is, and they really do not intersect at all. The first perception is what I have come to identify as the 'mass perception' of anything, actually, but we are looking at jazz now so I will stick to music matters. Mass or public perception is whatever television advertisements and other marketing schemes tell people who or what is jazz. Simple as that. Alot of the bigger public's idea of jazz tend to involve a front and center singer of swagger and style, a diva or any gender will do - and brass instruments. Any music featuring a big band orchestra would be called jazz. Yet so much amazing and creative music has and is being created that do not conform to this notion of what billions of unaware people say is jazz, and creatives like myself fall into the problem of asserting that what we do *is* jazz without sounding pissed off or elitist. It's a fine line to tap dance on. And ofcourse it is impossible as well to please anyone from the second (broadly defined) camp of jazz perceivers, namely the conservatives; the music students from music colleges like Berklee, who dismiss anyone's jazz music as not jazz simply because the music is not consisting of the very tunes they are required to study in order to get their music degree. If a jazz musician does not wish to perform Autumn Leaves (or from the thousands of popular tunes from the 1940s and 50s), that artist is dismissed out of hand by those in the second camp. This group is better than the first in that they are better informed about jazz music, but adhere to an overly narrow definition of jazz; standard instrumental line-ups (bass, piano, drums, sax, guitar) playing conformed to jazz standards and original tunes that sound exactly like and are harmonically, temporally, and melodically indistinguishable from standard repertoire. Many here feel that mostly Americans can do jazz well, but anyone else.... ah, why even go there? Now the third group. A minority spread out over many lands, they help keep the creative spirit in jazz alive. A few do actually turn their backs on the conservative jazz world entirely. The main bulk, however, enjoy the jazz tradition and always seek to expand it, draw into it influences and ideas and instruments from every conceivable source, as long as it keeps jazz alive, vital, transformative. To this kind of listener (and performer), jazz is one music that they enjoy and find inspiration in, but there might be othe