To the editors:
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Nothing in my essay precluded Corbett’s argument that free jazz has developed its own quite sophisticated language; I simply didn’t focus on that element in examining a quite different point. Corbett quotes me as saying that free jazz “operates on a primal level.” But that comment did not appear as the blanket assertion Corbett makes it out to be; it represents my theory about why this music still makes people angry, more than three decades after it burst on the scene. My comment quite clearly refers to the effect of this music on its listeners; I did not say the practitioners of free jazz are themselves primal or lacking in intellect, as Corbett suggests I did. I’m quite happy to author comments that spur others’ insights, even when they disagree with my own. But I would expect Corbett to keep those comments in context, or else find some other straw man on which to drape his scholarship.
