Jazz died in 1969 because I was born in 1969. The minute air fills my lungs, jazz stops blowing. Also, man landed on the moon in 1969. But let me be serious for once. The state of black arts has been that of total decline since 1969. (I wrote about this at length for an academic journal out of Columbia UniversitySouls, Winter 2003, Where Is Black Culture? “The Burden of the Golden Age,”) If blacks are not making jazz then they are making something that is artistically inferior. Jazz is the peak of black expression. As for Hancock’s 70s albums: Hearing them makes me feel much the same way that Jesus felt when he saw merchants in the temple. I want to turn over tables, kick in this, box the ears of that. Hancock, say it aint so. Why have you turned your silver fingers into straw?