Art & Creativity Quote by Sonny Rollins

Rollins isn’t diagnosing jazz’s “problem” as a lack of talent, or even a lack of venues. He’s pointing upstream, to the social ecology that decides what counts as worth hearing in the first place. The line’s quiet force comes from how unglamorous its target is: not the industry boogeyman, not the fickle critic, but “the larger society” and its habits of attention. In other words, the crisis isn’t inside the music. It’s in the culture that has stopped being trained - or willing - to listen.

The wording matters. “I think” sounds modest, almost conversational, but it’s also the posture of someone choosing restraint over rancor. “General appreciation” is even more loaded: appreciation isn’t mere consumption. It’s literacy, patience, a sense of history, an ability to hear complexity without demanding instant payoff. Rollins is hinting that jazz’s marginalization tracks broader patterns: education systems that treat music as extracurricular, media ecosystems that privilege repetition over risk, and a marketplace that confuses popularity with value.

There’s subtext, too, about dignity. Rollins came up when jazz still carried mainstream prestige, when innovators could be public figures rather than niche saints. His remark reads like a veteran’s map of cultural decline: once a society stops cultivating serious listening, everything downstream gets warped - funding, coverage, careers, even the audience’s capacity for surprise. The problem “starts” there because that’s where the permission to care gets revoked.