"So when the question of “Is that Jazz” came up I started to describe it in terms of what I knew it to be – dance music. Dance music from its earliest beginnings to where it is now. Prince may well be one of the greatest jazz musicians in the world – those are the people who play jazz music – they play jazz, they play music for you to dance by for you to jump up and down on, and the people who play other music, music that’s more thoughtful, music that’s more atmosphere creating in the clubs and the nightclubs where you sit down and ponder your yesterdays and tomorrows over a drink, those are the people who have inherited the jazz name but actually the Black classical attitude. So “Is that Jazz” was a playful sort of song but with a serious sort of question in terms of like: when is it going to be that we start to define our own art and start to describe what we do, in terms that we know and that we can follow and continue. That’s what “Is that Jazz” is concerned about." - Gil Scott-Heron
