What's all the fuss about?

I don't get jazz music, I really don't.

Recently on CBC2, the radio station that plays classical music most of the time, they rearranged their evening schedule and now every evening at 6pm comes a show called Tonic. Tonic is a jazz show, and since I'm often driving home after 6pm, I've recently been getting to hear a great deal of jazz.

But I don't get it! I can't understand how people get pleasure from listening to it. All my life, when someone has asked me what kind of music do I NOT like, my answer has been "rap and opera...oh yeah, and experimental jazz."

So much of it sounds like five guys all playing different songs together. Musical primadonnas who can't agree on which song to play so they all do their own thing, oblivious to the others. It's atonal, no one is keeping the same beat, it's full of the inexplicable, drowsy thump-thumping of the bass, hyperactive horns, drums that don't keep time with any of the other instruments. None of it fits together.

How come people like this stuff so much? Am I missing something? Do I have aural colour-blindness? Is there some secret to jazz appreciation that no-one's let me in on yet? Or am I perhaps like the kid in the story, pointing out the emperor's "new clothes" ? I picture all these cool cats and chicks sitting around in a dark smoky cafe grooving to smooth jazz in their black clothes and berets and I think...are they just pretending, or what? Surely they can't really like this??

So I'm going to write to the host of Tonic and ask her to please tell me what all the fuss about. Why is jazz so popular, why has it lasted so long, why is it so highly regarded by people who you'd think would know better? And then I'm going to ask her to try and explain to me how I can enjoy it too. I'm willing to try.